“Anytime you need a fabulously handsome fake fiancé, my lips are at your service.” He made a theatrical bow. “It’s the least I can do after you managed not to throw up from my kiss.”

Daisy shook her head, unsettled by his teasing warmth. He didn’t act like a man who would stand her up and disappear for ten years without a word. He acted like the old Liam, the one who’d made her feel like her quirks and lists and plans were perfectly normal, the one who’d made her laugh and kept her safe and filled the hole in her chest that her mother had left when she moved to New York, leaving her young family behind.

“Nothing has changed, Liam.” She heard the chill in her voice. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

He flinched the tiniest bit, but a slight smile still played on his lips. “So the engagement is off? I’d say it was a pleasure but . . .”

“It wasn’t.” Daisy finished his sentence.

A shadow of sorrow flickered across his face so quickly she wondered if she’d seen it. “See you in another ten years.” His softened tone, unwanted and unexpected, rippled gently over her senses like a warm summer breeze.

Disconcerted by the flare of heat that flooded her skin, she stumbled over her final words. “That will be too soon.”

She left him in the foyer and hurried down the hall. After so many years, she’d finally gotten her closure. So why was her heart still pounding? And why did her lips still tingle from his kiss?

• 3 •

LIAM Murphy had to hand it to the cocky entrepreneur standing in front of him: the dude didn’t waste time. And in the world of venture capital funding, time was everything.

“Disposable, biodegradable, edible, sustainable sex toys made with kombucha slime.” The thin weasel-like man with slicked down hair and a peach-fuzz moustache held up a thick ring made of what looked to be amber-colored plastic laced with oil.

“What’s our scorecard for sex toys this afternoon?” Liam murmured to his junior associate, James Sunjata. After scrambling to be noticed in New York, James had jumped at the chance to move to San Francisco to help Liam open the new West Coast office, with a view to taking over when Liam joined the partnership.

Evolution’s management had all but promised Liam a seat at the partnership table, and that would mean a permanent return to New York. It would be the pinnacle of his career. He would show the world that a high school delinquent could rise to the top of his profession, even without a college degree.

If only his grandfather were alive to share in his success. It was life’s cruel irony that only a few weeks after Liam had moved back to San Francisco and reconnected with his grandfather after an almost twenty-year estrangement, the old man had passed away. Between the houseful of Irish relatives, the funeral arrangements, the wake, and the pressures of working in a temporary space while he and James tried to find a new office, he hadn’t had time to properly mourn.

“This is pitch number five,” James said quietly. “But it’s the first sex toy made of slime.”

Liam had made up his mind after the word slime, but this was supposed to be a learning opportunity, and after bumping into Daisy, his head wasn’t fully in the game. He handed the reins to James. “First impressions?”

“Honestly, it sounds kind of exciting,” James said. “Biodegradable sex toys? Do you know how many of those things wind up in landfills?”

“We call it King Kom.” The inventor handed the sample to James. “I’ve tested it extensively. Six hours and I was still going strong. Eight hours and it just melted away.”

While the inventor set up his slideshow and James examined the product, Liam flipped through the conference brochure searching for Daisy’s company. Although Daisy had made it clear she didn’t want to see him again, he was desperately curious about her life. What did she do at Organicare? No doubt something high level. She’d been a straight A student, and one of the smartest people he’d ever known—capable of work way beyond her grade level. Hell, the only reason he’d graduated from high school was because of her.

Although he had been capable of doing the work, he just hadn’t been interested. He’d had too much on his plate, dealing with his dysfunctional family, to waste time adding up numbers or drawing diagrams of food chains. But any time he had “accidentally” left an assignment on the Patels’ kitchen table, he’d found it completed and tucked into his backpack, all ready to be handed in. Daisy had never mentioned it directly, and he’d never thanked her, but it was clear she had understood that admitting he needed help was a weakness he couldn’t afford to show. The feelings of unworthiness that he had tried so hard to keep buried could never have been spoken out loud.

Turning his attention back to the pitch, he asked James, “What do you think?”

“Um . . .” James cleared his throat. “It’s . . . uh . . . Interesting . . . uh . . . Slimy.”

“‘Interesting’ isn’t good enough. If you think it’s worth going through due diligence, you have to try it out. Would you use a kombucha slime ring in the heat of passion?”

James grimaced. “No, sir.”

“That’s a problem,” Liam said. “The dude wants five million for a five percent stake in his company. That means you have to think of five million reasons why it’s a good idea before we can put the proposal to the partners, and one of those reasons has to be that you believe in it and you’ve seen it work.”

“It’s pretty much all I can see.” James tucked the ring back into its plastic packet.

“Do you believe in King Kom?” Liam persisted. “Would you be happy to go to trade shows and Costcos extolling the virtues of the product to convince distributors to put it on their shelves? Are you ready to save the environment one King Kom slime ring at a time?”

James paled. “Not when you put it that way.”