“I want to read it.” My voice betrays me, and I don’t care. I am desperate to know what he wrote.

He relents. “You’re irresistible. Next time, I’ll get you the Chagall.”

“I love Chagall’s kissing painting.”

“Of course you do.”

Smiling with utter delight at my accomplishment—convincing him—I turn it over and read his words.

I can’t stop thinking about you.

My heart glows. My blood runs neon. I’m a firework shooting high into the summer sky.

I meet his eyes. They’re a warm chocolate brown, and they’re sketched with tenderness and desire.

Something else is stamped in them too. Hope.

This card, these words—they don’t change the reality of him, me, and my personal goal to focus on building a business. But even so, I’d be a fool of another kind if I let this moment pass me by. “It’s the same for me.”

In some other world, some other place, we’d fall into the close-up shot of an almost-kiss. And then we’d become The Kiss.

In this world, sneakers slap the pavement, and I straighten instantly.

“What’s the same for you?”

It’s Noah, splashing cold water on us as he runs closer in running shorts, showing off his golden skin.

“Are you dressed for a run?” I ask, doing my best one-eighty.

“You know that adage about dressing for the job you want? I want us to be first place at the end of today, so I’m dressing like Usain Bolt.”

Leo lifts an appreciative brow. “Is this your second run of the day?”

“Hell, yeah. One wasn’t enough. After I left you in the dust and went home, I had a ton of energy, so I ran down here. And I came up with awesome ideas as I ran this morning. Speaking of, I had this killer new idea for sales. Want to hear it? We have a few minutes before we start.”

Leo nods and turns to me, mouthing later.

I motion that I’ll join them in a few, then I take a sip of my coffee, fueling up.

“Hey, Lulu!”

I turn in the direction of the voice and I see the white-blonde RaeLynn striding over to me.

“Hi, RaeLynn.”

“I was hoping to catch up with you. I’ve been reading about your chocolates, and everything I’ve seen on blogs about you is tremendous. You were picked as one of BuzzFeed’s Top Five Chocolatiers to watch.”

“Thank you. I was honored to be named.”

“I know you’re working with Heavenly, but I’d love to work with you too, at some point. We should talk about doing a partnership together.” She’s so intensely earnest that it throws me. She doesn’t seem like the same woman who made comments about my USB T-shirt yesterday.

“Thanks, but I don’t see my Heavenly partnership ending anytime soon.”

“Oh, well, you should be really careful, then.” She nods in the direction of Leo.

I scrunch my brow. “What do you mean?”

She gives me a you’re so silly look. “Well, isn’t there kind of something between the two of you?”

I blink. Is it that obvious? Was it evident from the whispers between us that we were saying I want you? Honestly, it probably was.

I do something I hate, but that’s necessary for survival. I lie. “There’s nothing going on. We’ve known each other for a long time. He was the best man at my wedding.”

There. I hope that’ll get her off the scent.

“Oh, thank God there’s nothing going on.” She wipes a hand dramatically across her forehead. “Because you need to be smart in this environment.”

“What do you mean?” A kernel of fear takes root in my chest.

“Aren’t you an employee of Heavenly? I’m sure they have a policy that says you can’t get involved with the executive who hired you.”

I blanch. “Well, I’m not technically an employee. I’m a contractor, so it’s different.”

“True, though you have to think about not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law too. Personally, I find you can’t be too careful these days,” she says in a sisters-looking-out-for-each-other way.

As she walks away, I want to trip her.

I want to shout at her.

But I don’t have any ground to stand on.

She’s right.

You can’t be too careful. There aren’t any hard and fast rules in place, but the fact is there are unwritten rules. And while I’m not worried that Leo would screw me over at work, I do worry how this might look to others—like I slept my way to this opportunity.

I cringe inside at that thought.

And now I have a new wrinkle in the should-I-or-shouldn’t-I debate.

The concern isn’t only whether it’s wise for me to get involved with someone I’m working with while I build my business, but how that involvement might appear to others.

What seemed clear moments ago has once again been muddied.

The same could be said about the clue Kingsley hands us.

25LULU