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Carrying the bag stuffed with heavy fabric, I struggled toward the elevator across from the stairs. A man in a suit stepped into it before I reached it, and I quickened my pace.
“Hold the elevator!” I called.
His hand shot out, stopping it from closing. I dashed inside, dragging the bag of fabric behindme, only to find myself face-to-face with the man I’d been ogling not an hour before.
Memories of Hawk had done everything he’d set out to do: heart fluttering, stomach quivering, palms clamming. His texts had done the same. Seeing him now, his beautiful face and the blaze of crystal blue in his eyes, had a sugary-spiked effect on my blood pressure.
His eyes widened. That glance—and the tantalizing smell of his cologne—had the full force of a storm, unavoidable and impossible not to feel once I was submersed by it.
I was doused by a downpour that was all him.
My cheeks blazed as though I stood beneath stage lights. It made matters worse when his lips widened into a brutal smile.
“Well, hey there, Ella,” he said. And the elevator doors closed behind me, trapping the two of us in.
NINE
hawk
Work wasbusy enough without adding theft into the mix.
Ever After Sweet Shoppe had become a national brand in just a few decades. I’d never been one to eat much candy myself, but my dad had hailed from the era of the Willie Wonka-style sweet shops, where kids could pause for an hour with their friends and sit at a bar to order their favorite taffy or ice cream sundae, where various confections were offered in vending style, filled by the bagful at the customer’s behest and sold by the pound.
My marketing team was talking about commercializing. Going big, packaging the brand to be sold in big-box stores across the country. But I liked the idea of Dad’s boutique stores, of keeping them from being mainstream.
I’d branched out, set up shops all across the eastern seaboard and throughout the southern United States as well. And I wanted to keep it that way.
Everything Ever After Sweet Shoppe offered—toffee, peanut brittle, cake pops—were old family recipes that Dad had streamlined for mass production. The shops were well-known secrets that had made appearances in magazines and been featured on Food Network for their charm and personal, hometown feel.
While that had been pretty amazing—and had certainly helped with sales and exposure—my marketing team had it in their heads that more exposure was the way to go.
I knew they had a point. Hershey had done it. He’d distributed in stores all over the world. He’d even established a town where his factory made the very air chocolate-scented.
I wasn’t sure I wanted a chocolate-scented town. I worried it would destroy the cozy ma-and-pa feel people got from my boutique candy shops.
When customers stumbled across one of my charming stores, they felt like they’d discovered a hidden trove of delicious things that had been packaged and designed just for them.
I sank onto the cushy chair behind my desk and rested my head in my hands.
What would happen with this expansion endeavor if word about not one, buttwothefts began to spread?
Publicity was good if it shed the right light on the company. But negative publicity could alter things so much more, from the safety concerns already swimming among my staff to the smudge this would put on my reputation.
The last thing I needed was to start losing employeesover this, or for them to feel they and their belongings weren’t safe.
Never mind the fact that stealing was just wrong.
So far, the only things that had gone missing were business-owned items, but what if employee-owned items went next?
The missing items weren’t that expensive, and could all be replaced, but I never thought anyone on my staff would stoop that low, let alone at Christmastime.
Then again, that was just it, wasn’t it? Money was tight for a lot of people. Whoever it was had probably already sold the items.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, sir,” Ethan had assured me when he’d first apprised me of the situation. As head of security, I had complete trust in him.
With that trust in place, I passed the reassurance on to others. In the heart of full disclosure, I sent a notification to ensure the staff lock up their personal items.
See that you don’t leave anything important where someone can get ahold of it,the last companywide email had said.We’ll keep a close eye on this feed and ensure this doesn’t happen again.
