If Gabe had been the older brother, things at Heart Chocolates would be done differently.
“Instead,” he mumbled, “I’ll always be the little brother.”
The junior partner, forced to fight for every scrap of recognition. Maybe he should have just gone home to the penthouse apartment he kept in Huntington Beach. He rented out half the top floor of the best hotel in the city and enjoyed the views and the convenience of twenty-four-hour room service and housekeeping.
Today he was in a foul mood, so he should have gone off by himself. But he didn’t want to be alone, either.
“Oh hell, just admit it. You wanted to see Pam. Talk to her.”
In the last six months, Pam Cassini had become more important to him than Gabriel was comfortable admitting. He hadn’t been looking for any long-term relationship when he met her. And maybe that’s why he’d fallen into one. He was no stranger to women wanting to hook up with one of the Hart brothers. But Pam was different. She was strong and smart and ambitious. She had her own career and she was as passionate about it as he was about his. He admired that.
Pam’s tiny condo on a quiet street in Seal Beach was warm, welcoming, even to its bright yellow door flanked by terra-cotta pots filled with cheerful splashes of pink and white flowers. You could fit the whole damn place inside his apartment twice over, but there was something here his own place lacked. Pam.
He knocked and stalked the small porch while he waited. When she opened the door, Gabe blurted out, “My brother has a head like concrete.”
Pam sighed, gave him a sympathetic look and opened the door wider. As Gabriel stomped past her, she asked, “He’s still not willing to try a new line?”
He walked right into the living room and stopped in front of her small, white-brick gas fireplace, hissing with a few flames dancing over artificial logs. “He reacted like a vampire to garlic.”
Shaking his head, Gabe turned around to face her in the narrow living room. He hardly noticed the comfortable furniture or the fresh coffee scenting the air. But as she walked toward him, even his fury with Ethan couldn’t keep him from taking a moment to simply enjoy the view of her.
Pam was short, with a lush and curvy body that drove Gabe mad with hunger. Today she wore a tight, white T-shirt that clung to her breasts, and a pair of black yoga pants that defined every line of her butt, hips and legs. Her feet were bare and her toes were painted a deep scarlet.
She also had long black hair, the warmest brown eyes he’d ever seen and a wide, full mouth that had tempted him from the moment he first met her, more than six months ago. That was at a chocolate convention. He’d been there representing Heart Chocolates, of course, and Pam was handing out cards for her burgeoning PR business.
They’d had dinner that night, and by the end of the week they were inseparable. They’d been together ever since. In that short amount of time, Pam had become a kind of touchstone to him. She listened to his plans, liked his ideas and encouraged him to stand up to Ethan and fight for his own plans and ambitions. For all the good it was doing him.
She put one hand on his arm and looked up at him. “Trying to convince Ethan to change his mind isn’t working. I told you, Gabe, all we really need is the chocolate recipe.”
She’d been saying that for weeks now, and still Gabe hesitated. A chocolate recipe was sacred to a chocolatier. As ridiculous as it sounded, there actually were corporate spies out there, eager to steal a competitor’s recipe. They could use it themselves, sell it, post it online or simply find a way to ruin it.
The Hart family had guarded their basic recipe for generations, just like every other chocolatier. And Gabe was hesitant to be the first member of the Hart family to trust an outsider with it.
“Think about it, Gabe,” Pam was saying. “I know a great chocolate chef we can trust. With the recipe, we can have my guy make up samples of the new flavors and present them to Ethan as a done deal. Once he’s tasted them, he’ll see you’re right and he’ll jump on board.”
A nice fantasy, Gabriel conceded, but hardly based in reality. He snorted. “You don’t know Ethan.”
“But I know you,” she said softly, her voice dropping to the deep, breathless, sultry tone that always drove him crazy. “You’re determined and when you believe in something, you just never quit. You don’t give up, Gabe. You get what you go after. You got me, didn’t you?”
In spite of everything, he smiled. How could he not, with this gorgeous woman looking up at him with hunger in her eyes? “We got each other.”
“Ooh, good answer.” Pam licked her lips, gave him a slow smile as she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid that luscious mouth over his. He went hard as stone instantly and gave himself up to the need she quickened inside him. He’d never known a fire like he felt with her. And a part of him wondered just how long that fire could last.
Then he stopped thinking entirely. Frustration, anger, everything else in the world simply faded away at the touch of her mouth to his. And as they moved together, in a rhythm that seared his blood and stole his breath, he knew there was nowhere else he wanted to be.
“Um,” Sadie said, looking at the baby in Ethan’s arms. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“It’s not mine, if that’s what you mean.” He glared at her. He’d always been careful. He had no children and didn’t plan on any. “I think I’d know if I’d made a baby. Besides, you just told me I don’t have a life. How could it be mine?”
Sadie sighed. “First, not an ‘it’. It’s a girl.”
“Fine. She’s not mine.”
“She is now,” Sadie reminded him. Glancing through the paperwork the social worker had left behind, she said, “Bill and Maggie Baker were her parents. Ring a bell?”
He frowned and then frowned deeper when the baby kicked impossibly small legs, screwed up her face and let out a howl a werewolf would have been proud of. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Being called it, probably,” Sadie muttered, and snatched the baby from him. Positioning her on one hip, Sadie bounced and swayed in place until the child stopped crying.
Ethan took a step back just for good measure. The damn social worker had done her job. She’d handed off the baby, a car seat and a diaper bag, then left so quickly he hadn’t had time to argue about anything. But he was ready to now. He couldn’t take care of a damn baby. The idea was ludicrous. Who would have made him a guardian? Ethan had never been around a baby. He didn’t even own a dog.
Baker. Bill Baker. Why did that sound familiar?
Ethan glanced at Sadie and, in spite of the situation, felt a hot rush of heat jolt through his system and settle in his groin. He’d worked with this woman for five years and he’d been fighting his instincts about her for every second of that time. It hadn’t gotten any easier.
Hell, there she was, holding an infant and he still burned for her. She smiled at the baby, then kissed her forehead, and Ethan’s belly jumped. He wanted her badly, and now that she’d resigned, he could have finally made a move on her. But if he did that and then was able to coax her into not quitting her job, after all, there’d be nothing but complications. So no move.
