rel="nofollow" href="#ud7791d1d-4700-5a8c-b816-5f84335fd9b0">Chapter 10
“Who put the scowl on your face?”
Cole Sinclair looked up from the newspaper he’d been absorbed in to see his stepfather standing in his office doorway.
“No, don’t tell me. Let me guess.” Victor Gray raised a finger in a halting gesture. “Stiletto Cosmetics.”
Folding the business section in half, Cole slung it across his desk in disgust. “How’d you guess?”
“If you’re frowning, it usually has something to do with them.”
Cole pushed away from his desk and began to pace in front of the wall of windows offering a panoramic view of downtown Nashville. He’d known when he’d returned to his hometown that reviving his family’s troubled cosmetics company would be a monumental task.
The widely held opinion that Espresso Cosmetics was old-lady makeup was firmly entrenched. Moreover, an upstart cosmetics company had set up shop in town, grabbing both headlines and Espresso’s dwindling customer base.
“The media’s handing out good press to Stiletto like candy on Halloween,” he muttered. “Meanwhile, we can barely get a reporter to return a phone call.”
Victor hovered in the doorway. “They’re just capitalizing on their fifteen minutes of fame since that singer mentioned them on television. It won’t last much longer.”
Cole wasn’t so sure. Stiletto had been generating buzz on the web even before pop star Crave gave them a shout-out on national television. He stopped midpace to glance out the window. An electronic billboard in the distance stood out against the gray January skies. It flashed continuous images of a cheeseburger with toppings stacked nearly as high as Espresso’s aging eleven-story building.
He stared blankly at it, his mind on how Stiletto was gaining ground with a generation of young women Espresso was desperate to attract. Unfortunately, an article in today’s paper had pushed that demographic even further out of their reach.
“I stopped by to see if you wanted to go to lunch with me later,” his stepfather said. “I saw a billboard of the most mouthwatering burger I’ve ever seen on the drive in this morning, and I’ve been drooling ever since.”
That burger did look good, Cole thought. Real food. A lot better than the upscale dining experiences he’d endured while handling Espresso business these past months.
He also recognized that Victor’s invitation was for more than lunch. His late mother’s second husband, the only father he’d ever known, was extending another olive branch to help rebuild their once-close relationship after eight years of estrangement.
“Another time, Vic. I doubt I’ll have an appetite by lunchtime. Dinner, either.”
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on or keep frowning until your face gets stuck like that?” the older man said, still hovering in the doorway.
“There’s something you need to read.”
Cole watched his stepfather hesitate before venturing beyond the doorway into the overhauled office that no longer bore the feminine traces of the company’s founder.
Cole snatched the copy of America Today off the mahogany executive desk he’d brought in to replace the elegant Queen Anne writing table his mother and Espresso founder, Selina Sinclair Gray, had ruled from. Snapping it open, he pointed out the article responsible for his current mood and handed it to Victor.
He watched his stepfather’s eyes narrow as he zeroed in on one of the photos accompanying the story. The older man drew the newspaper in until it nearly touched his nose.
“Wow!”
“Exactly,” Cole said, still steaming over it. Then he caught an uncharacteristic gleam in Victor’s eyes. It lit up his entire face. In fact, he was practically ogling the newspaper.
What the...?
“God knows I worshipped the ground your mother walked on,” his stepfather said, “but would you take a look at those long legs in that short skirt and those high heels. I don’t see a thing here to put a frown on a man’s face.”
Cole snatched the paper back from him.
Victor shook his head and a sly grin spread over his lips. “She’s got a young Angela Davis thing going on with that wild Afro, too. Yes, sir! If I were five or ten years younger, she’d be your new mama.”
Cole stared at the smaller photo he’d ignored before, the larger one having grabbed his attention and earned his ire.
“More like twenty-five to thirty years younger,” he grumbled. “She could be your daughter.”
Cole frowned at the photo of the woman sitting on the edge of a desk. So this was Stiletto’s owner. His gaze drifted to the untamed mane of kinky coils surrounding a no-nonsense face and full, unsmiling lips. Sage Matthews looked exactly like what she and her company were—a pain in his ass.
He shoved the newspaper back at his stepfather and pointed. “This photo is the problem.”
Victor re-examined the newspaper and then looked up at him. “The young lady in this one is okay, but not nearly as good-looking as that Matthews woman. She’s
