“I don’t know.” She ran her hands through his soft, thick hair. “I always wake up before it’s over.”

* * *

• • •

“THANKS for meeting me. I hope you weren’t asleep.”

Royce shook Sam’s hand in the parking lot outside The Spice Mill. Despite the fact he’d only just stepped off a flight from Singapore, he was clean-shaven and dressed in a crisp navy-and-white-checked shirt, pressed navy dress pants, bright white running shoes, and a loud, red and navy, tartan-style tie.

“It’s five thirty A.M. Of course I was asleep.” Sam ran a hand through his damp hair. He’d managed to get showered, dressed, and out of the condo without waking Layla up after he got Royce’s text to meet him at the office. A small blessing, considering he didn’t know how to deal with their night together. He’d never let a woman stay overnight. Nor had he ever slept with a woman he expected to see again. He couldn’t take the risk that they would want more from him than he could give. But with Layla, he wondered if he could take that chance.

“This won’t take long.” Royce patted his satchel. “I only have a six-hour layover before my flight to London. I thought I’d check out the new office while we catch up on business.”

Sam led him to the entrance. He could hear someone shouting in the kitchen, doors slamming, pots banging on a stove. He felt a small stab of guilt for keeping Layla up late. She usually helped her mother in the mornings, although from the sound of chatter echoing up the stairs, it was clear her mother wasn’t alone. He’d left Layla a note about the early-morning meeting. As long as he got Royce out of the office before she arrived, everything would be fine.

“Sounds like the restaurant is open. Tell them to bring up a couple of espressos and whip up a brioche, light on the butter.”

“It’s an Indian restaurant,” Sam bit out. “They don’t do espresso or brioche. And they aren’t open yet.”

Royce gave a dismissive wave. “They’re service people. They like to serve. And I thought you said the owner told you they were struggling financially, which was why they were subletting the office in the first place. They’ll be glad of the extra business.”

“We have a coffeemaker upstairs, and I think there are some leftover donuts. We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t you have a receptionist to handle these things?” Royce followed Sam up the stairwell to the office.

“She doesn’t start work this early.” For the briefest of seconds, he considered calling Daisy and asking her to come in to serve breakfast to him and Royce for the sheer amusement of listening to her swear into the phone. And if she did come to the office, he would get a front-row seat for the fireworks when she went head-to-head with Royce. He couldn’t imagine two people who would irritate each other more.

“Fire her. We don’t need the deadweight.”

“She’s strangely competent at her job so I’ll keep her for the time being.” He headed to the kitchen to make coffee while Royce checked out the office. By the time he returned with the beverages and a plate of stale donuts, Royce was sitting at Layla’s desk.

“Great desk.” Royce ran a hand over the pipework frame. “Excellent choice. This one is mine, I assume.”

Sam snorted a laugh. “I’m more than happy for you to have it.”

“Who’s sitting here now? Your secretary?” He shuffled through Layla’s papers, seemingly unconcerned about notions of privacy or confidentiality.

“The landlord’s daughter. She needed a place to work for a few weeks, and I said she could stay.” He sat at his desk and sipped the coffee, almost gagging at the taste. For all Daisy’s quirks and eccentricities, she knew how to brew good java.

“Looks like she’s doing some branding.” Royce held up a colorful logo design for a company called Excellent Recruitment Solutions. “Recruitment agency?”

“Yes.” Sam studied the drawings. They weren’t as professional as the logos Evan designed, but they weren’t all bad.

Royce leaned back so far, Layla’s chair creaked in protest. “Make sure you get a kickback if she wants to use you to source clients.”

Sam winced. “She didn’t ask, and even if she did, it would be inappropriate to hand out her card to people I just fired and then have them walk into the office the next day and see me here.”

“I don’t worry about that kind of moral or ethical stuff.” Royce gave a dismissive wave. “But that’s why we work well together.” He leaned across the desk and stared at the fishbowl. “What’s with the fish?”

“They’re supposed to be lucky.”

“She’s going to need more than luck if this is the best she can do.” He plucked a black Sharpie off the desk and absently scrawled on one of Layla’s designs. “Amateurish. I hope she didn’t pay someone to come up with this.”

“Royce, put the pen down.”

Royce pulled another design from the pile and laughed as he wrote on it. “Looks like a roll of toilet paper. No sense of color or style.”

“Royce . . .” Sam pushed away from his desk.

“Boring.” Royce wrote on another page and flipped to the next. “Unprofessional. Is this a business or a kindergarten?” Flip. “Awkward. This star looks crippled, like it’s missing some limbs.” Flip. “And what animal is this? Its eyes are huge. It looks like it’s on drugs.”

“Those are her personal papers.” Sam shot out of his seat, covering the distance between them in a few quick strides. But by the time he had reached Layla’s desk and wrested the pen from Royce’s hand, his business partner had managed to scrawl cutting remarks on most of the designs.

“These are appalling.” Royce sneered. “Even the name. Excellent Recruitment Solutions. Dull as ditchwater. It’s got no ring to it. No alliteration. Nothing to make it stand out from the dozens of other recruitment firms in the city.”

“She’s the landlord’s daughter,” Sam snapped. “Do you want us to get kicked out right before Alpha Health Care is supposed to let us know about the pitch?”

Royce put his feet on the desk and bit into a stale donut. His leather shoes were handmade by a small family business in Naples and shipped to him four times a year by courier. By contrast, Sam bought his Italian leather shoes off the shelf at Nordstrom. Shoes were shoes. He didn’t need them hand embossed. They just needed to function.

“We have a lease—or sublease, to be precise,” Royce said. “I’m pretty sure giving free branding advice isn’t a stated cause for termination. Lighten up, partner.”