Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

to the farmer’s market for the best, freshest ingredients. If I were to have a superpower, it would be the ability to be in more than one place at once. The transition time when I have to travel from place to place often drives me up the wall.

It’s well after dark before I knock off for the day. Between the exercise earlier, the drinks after, and the intensely concentrated brainstorming session I’ve just put in, I’m physically and mentally spent. Sleep should come easy tonight.

I look at the clock and see that it is almost exactly twenty-four hours since the fire at Stone’s place. Time flies when you’re repressing a disastrous experience.

Stone. I frown as I gather up my notes and snap my laptop closed.

I had been spared a possible public tongue-lashing at the club today, but I had also meant it when I told Tira I didn’t think the business was over with yet. Angry billionaires can be a problem for us working stiffs.

Still putting my things away, I reflect on the near miss. As terrified as I had felt, and as relieved as I had been to return to see those two empty chairs, I was still curious about Stone.

I had been right about him being in good shape—one look at his tanned and toned arms in his short-sleeved Polo shirt had told me that. And I can’t speak for the other girls at the table, but I had looked more than once in the brief time we had all been at the table together, however awkwardly. It had been much easier to ogle his arms than to meet his eyes.

Those eyes. Brown and intense.

And full of resentment, I think. Don’t forget that.

Suddenly, I feel more tired than ever. The events of the past two days are catching up with me and I’m crashing hard. It takes everything I have left to brush my teeth before I fall into bed early and sleep like a dreamless log.

My last thought before drifting quickly off is that tomorrow it will be back to work and routine and sanity and I won’t have to see Trent Stone ever again.

Chapter 6 - Trent

“This is a long way from over,” I say into the phone.

On the other end, my contact man, Scott, heaves a big sigh.

“Trent, you need to let this thing go, at least a little. It was an accident. Accidents happen.”

“No, an accident is when you burn the toast, not when you burn an entire house down.”

“Your whole house didn’t burn down,” Scott says patiently. Patience is one of his best characteristics, and it’s his methodical nature that I can rely on for odd requests such as the one I’ve called him to make.

“It was just your kitchen and a little bit of hallway,” he goes on. “Bad, yes, but not what you would call a total loss. You could almost be said to being petty with this request.”

My homeowner’s insurance completely covers the cost of rebuilding the damage to my home, of course, but the figure for it is still pretty impressive.  I quote the figure to Scott and ask him if that sounds petty. He admits that it doesn’t.

“Okay, okay,” he says, conceding. “Run me through your ‘plan’ one more time.”

“It’s simple,” I reply. “I need the sharpest-tongued food critic in the business. Someone with a razor blade in their mouth. The kind that restaurant owners go into a cold sweat at the thought of.”

“And you want this person to go to White’s restaurant to do a hatchet job on the food there?”

“Not at all,” I say. “I want a fair and impartial review of the restaurant in question.”

“‘Fair and impartial?’ Is that why you’re looking for the culinary equivalent of a contract killer?”

“I want a total professional, someone who won’t pull any punches when it comes to criticism, especially if the situation calls for it.”

Another sigh. “Trent, let’s be honest here—you want to savage this woman’s reputation as revenge.”

I say nothing.

“Trent?” he prompts.

“Still here,” I say. “Start making the calls. Remember, I want—”

“I know, I know,” Scott interjects. “You want the best.”

“Not just the best,” I tell him. “The toughest there is. Get back to me when you’ve got the deal clinched.”

Scott hangs up. He’ll come through. He always does. I’m so sure of this that I go ahead and call White’s third restaurant, the one with the Michelin Stars, to book a reservation for tonight. I believe in striking while the iron, or in this case, the kitchen, is hot.

A little while later, Scott calls me back. Chicago’s most feared food critic, Angelo Tomasso, is now at my disposal for the evening. In the food circles, Tomasso’s nickname is “The Closer” because in the wake of his scathing reviews, several of the high-end restaurants in town had closed.

I have seen him in action on television, on the food channel as a cooking show guest judge. He had reduced one of the contestants, a fireman from Detroit, to tears with his brutal evaluation of the man’s cooking.

He sounds perfect.

I get in touch with Tomasso, who sounds as humorless as a Dark Ages monk in a drafty castle cell. He’ll do it, but he won’t be happy about it. In the first place, he doesn’t sound like the kind of person who’s ever happy about anything anyway, and in the second place, he’s having gall bladder surgery the following week and is thus feeling, in his words, “grouchy.”

This just gets better and better.

“I don’t owe many people many favors,” he says. The tone of his voice suggests he has plenty of acid to spare for his opinions, which is fine by me. “I owe Scott Wilson one, though, and I’m obliged to do this for him.”

“And I appreciate it,” I tell