Guilt was a sour, metallic taste on Chloe’s tongue, a flavor she hadn’t been able to wash away with two cups of bitter black coffee.
The kiss.
It replayed in her mind on a relentless, searing loop: the desperation in Liam’s grip, the surrender in the press of her own lips, the explosive rightness of it all that was so fundamentally, terribly wrong.
He was Bennett’s brother. He was her contractor.
He was the one man on earth she should be keeping at a professional, sterile distance, and instead, she had melted against him in the half-finished children’s nook, seeking a comfort she had no right to ask for.
When the bell over the front door chimed, her entire body went rigid. She didn’t have to turn from her perch on a stepladder, where she’d been obsessively wiping a dust-free shelf, to know it was him.
The air in the store shifted, became heavier, charged with a current that hummed just beneath the surface of the morning quiet. She could feel his presence like a change in barometric pressure.
“Morning,” Liam’s voice was low, a little rough, as if he hadn’t used it yet today.
Chloe took a steadying breath before turning, her cloth clutched in her hand like a shield. “Morning. You’re early.” She forced a brisk, business-like tone that sounded brittle even to her own ears.
He stood near the entrance, holding two coffee cups from the diner down the street. He looked tired, the skin around his deep blue eyes shadowed, his jaw tight with a tension that mirrored her own.
He hadn’t shaved, and the dark scruff only sharpened the rugged lines of his face, making him look more dangerous, less like the boy she remembered and more like the man who had shattered her composure last night.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, his gaze unwavering. It was a confession, not an excuse.
He closed the distance between them, the scent of fresh coffee, sawdust, and his own distinct, masculine scent wrapping around her. He set one of the cups on the counter. “Figured you might need this.”
“Thanks,” she managed, descending the ladder with stiff, deliberate movements.
She refused to meet his eyes, focusing instead on the cardboard cup as if it held the secrets to the universe. “You didn’t have to.”
“Chloe.”
His voice was soft, but it sliced through her defenses. She finally looked up, and the world tilted.
The memory of the kiss was right there in his eyes—the heat, the hurt, the confusion. It was all reflected back at her, a perfect, agonizing mirror of her own turmoil.
“About last night,” she began, her voice barely a whisper. “It was… it was a mistake. We were both emotional, and it can’t happen again. We have to work together, and we need to keep this professional.”
Every word felt like a lie. A necessary, painful lie.
A muscle worked in Liam’s jaw. He didn’t look angry, he looked wounded, and that was so much worse. “A mistake,” he repeated, the words flat. “Is that what it felt like to you?”
No, her heart screamed. It felt like coming home after a decade in the wilderness.
“Yes,” she said, her voice cold.
He let out a short, humorless breath and ran a hand through his already messy hair. “Right. Professional. Got it.”
He turned away from her, grabbing a set of blueprints from the counter and unrolling them with a sharp snap. The sound echoed the cracking of the fragile truce between them.
“Fine. The electrician is coming at ten to finish the wiring for the new overheads, and the final shelving units for the back wall arrive this afternoon.”
The shift was jarring. He’d built a wall in an instant, his tone all business, his posture closed off.
It was exactly what she’d asked for, so why did it feel like a punch to the gut?
“Good. That’s good,” she said, her hands trembling as she picked up her coffee.
They worked in a charged, suffocating silence for the next hour. Every time they had to pass in the narrow aisle between stacks of unboxed books, a jolt of awareness shot through Chloe.
When he reached for a tool on a shelf just above her head, his arm brushing her shoulder, she flinched as if burned.
He pulled back instantly, a muttered “sorry” hanging in the air between them like smoke.
The tension was a living thing, a third person in the room with them. It coiled in the spaces between their words, thrummed in the moments their eyes accidentally met.
It was in the way he watched her when he thought she wasn’t looking, his gaze intense and hungry.
It was in the way she found her own eyes tracing the line of his shoulders, the movement of his strong hands as he worked.
This was infinitely worse than before the kiss. Before, it had been a question.
Now, it was a secret they were both keeping, a memory that set every nerve ending on fire.
Just as the electrician arrived, Chloe’s laptop pinged with an email notification.
She sat down at her makeshift desk, grateful for the distraction. The subject line made her stomach clench.
SUBJECT: Loan Account 74-B31 – Notice of Intent
Her blood ran cold as she clicked it open. The language was stark, legal, and utterly devoid of sympathy. Phrases leaped out at her: failure to meet profitability covenants… property offered as collateral… formal review by our board…
And then, the final blow: …the bank has set a final, non-negotiable deadline. You have ninety (90) days to present a viable plan for profitability and secure new financing, or foreclosure proceedings will commence.
Ninety days. Three months. The words swam before her eyes.
“Chloe? What is it?”
Liam was standing over her, his work forgotten. The professional wall was gone, his face etched with pure concern. She couldn’t speak, just pointed a shaking finger at the screen.
He leaned in, his arm brushing hers as he read. She felt the warmth of his body, a solid, grounding presence in her spinning world.
He read the email twice, his expression hardening from concern to a grim, steely resolve.
“Sons of bitches,” he muttered, his voice a low growl. “They can’t do that.”
“Apparently they can,” she whispered, the fight draining out of her. “Ninety days, Liam. How are we supposed to do this in ninety days?”
He crouched down beside her chair, forcing her to look at him. His hands hovered near her arms, as if he wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but was holding himself back because of the boundary she’d drawn.
“We do it the same way we were going to before,” he said, his voice firm, pulling her back from the edge of panic.
“We just do it faster. We finish the renovation, we get the community involved, we launch the new cafe. We work. We don’t have time for anything else.”
The bell over the door chimed again, making them both jump. A man in a suit that probably cost more than Chloe’s car stepped inside.
He was impeccably dressed, with slicked-back hair, a predatory smile, and the kind of polished confidence that immediately set Chloe on edge.
“Chloe Morrison?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over the half-finished store with a look of faint disdain. “My name is Marcus Sterling, from Sterling Development Group.”
He offered a hand, but Chloe was too stunned to take it. Liam rose slowly to his full height, positioning himself slightly in front of her. It was a subtle, protective gesture that sent a wave of warmth through her chest.
“Can we help you?” Liam’s tone was clipped, unwelcoming.
Sterling’s smile didn’t falter. “I’m here to speak with Ms. Morrison. I have an offer for her. One I think she’ll find very… persuasive.” He directed his gaze back to Chloe, completely dismissing Liam.
“I’ll be blunt. This location is prime real estate. A bit of a relic, this bookstore, but the land it’s on is a gold mine. My group is prepared to make you a cash offer, well over market value, for the property. You could walk away from all this,” he gestured vaguely at the books and sawdust, “and all the debt that comes with it. Start fresh somewhere else.”
The offer hung in the air, seductive and poisonous. He was offering her an escape hatch. A way out of the ninety-day deadline, out of the stress, out of everything.
“It’s not for sale,” Chloe said, her voice stronger than she felt.
Sterling chuckled, a condescending sound. “Everything is for sale, Ms. Morrison. It’s just a matter of finding the right price. My initial offer is one-point-five million. As is. No inspections, no contingencies. We close in two weeks.”
Chloe’s breath hitched. That much money would solve every problem she had. It would pay off the bank, Bennett’s medical bills, everything. It was a life-changing number.
She looked around the store—at the familiar worn floorboards, the towering shelves that held a lifetime of stories, her father’s legacy.
She looked at Liam, standing beside her, his jaw set, his eyes boring into Sterling with undisguised hostility.
He was waiting for her answer, and in his gaze, she saw a flicker of fear. Fear that she would take the easy way out.
That settled it.
“Mr. Sterling,” she said, standing up and meeting his gaze squarely. “As I said, The Next Chapter is not for sale. Not for one-point-five million, not for ten million. This is more than just real estate. It’s my home. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a lot of work to do.”
Sterling’s smile finally vanished, replaced by a flicker of irritation. “That’s a foolish, sentimental decision. But fine. The offer stands. When the bank comes calling, you’ll know who to find.”
He slid a sleek business card onto the counter and turned, his expensive shoes clicking on the floor as he walked out.
The bell chimed his departure, leaving a thick, ringing silence in his wake.
Chloe’s legs felt weak, and she sank back into her chair. Liam turned to her, his expression a mixture of relief and something else, something deeper.
“You didn’t even hesitate,” he said, his voice soft with awe.
“It wasn’t a real choice,” she whispered, looking at the business card as if it were a venomous snake.
He knelt in front of her again, and this time he didn’t stop himself. His large, calloused hands covered hers where they rested on her knees.
The contact was electric, a jolt of pure, undiluted energy that shot straight through her. All the tension of the morning, the fear from the email, the anger at Sterling—it all coalesced into this one, single point of contact.
His thumb stroked the back of her hand, a slow, mesmerizing motion. His eyes held hers, the professional boundary she’d tried so desperately to build crumbling to dust.
“Ninety days,” he said, his voice a low, intimate rumble. “And vultures like him circling. The pressure’s on now.”
“I know,” she breathed, unable to look away, unable to pull her hands from his.
“We’ll beat them, Chloe,” he said, his voice raw with conviction. “We’ll beat all of them. Together.”
He squeezed her hands once, a silent promise, before letting go and standing up. He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame.
He looked back at her over his shoulder, his gaze burning with the secret that still lay between them, the kiss that had changed everything.
“Professional,” he said, the word laced with a wry, painful irony. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He left, and Chloe was alone in the quiet of the bookstore, the weight of the bank’s deadline pressing down on her, Sterling’s offer echoing in her ears, and the ghost of Liam’s touch searing her skin.
The professional boundaries were a joke.
There was nothing professional about the way her heart was hammering against her ribs, or the undeniable truth that the only thing more terrifying than losing her bookstore was losing him.