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“I see you trying not to snicker, Ryker McQueen,” she sighed. “I looked in the mirror when I brushed my teeth this morning, I know what you’re seeing. I’ll have you know, I actually finger-combed my hair.”

“It’s not your hair, I love your hair. It looks like freakin’ sex hair! It’s the raccoon eyes that have me laughing. I’m thinking you have a thing for eyeliner.”

“Maybe,” she drawled out. “Now that we’ve judged my appearance do you want to hear about my chef or not?”

“Does this mean you’re finally considering taking Lark up on the loan?”

“This time it’s Lark’s mother, not Lark who wants to give me the loan to start my restaurant,” Amy told him. He could see the gleam in her eyes. Even with all the eyeliner and mascara smudge, her eyes were beautiful.

“Lark told you that?” Ryker asked.

“Nope, Beatrice flew out to D.C. She said she had some symposium she had to attend, but I know she was bullshitting me because she spent all of Monday with me. I don’t know how she knew that Monday’s are my day off, but she knew.”

“Gazillionaires have their ways of knowing everything,” Ryker laughed. “So, you are going to take her up on the loan, right?”

“I don’t want a pity loan, I want to earn it on my own,” she said fiercely.

Ryker scratched his chin with the back of his fingers. “Hmmm.”

“What does hmmmm, mean?” she demanded to know.

“Did she just offer you money, or did she talk to you about your plans?”

“Lark sent her my business plan a month ago. She said that her mom could probably have one of her people look it over and tweak it so it would look better for the bank. I was all over it.”

“Therefore she didn’t just offer you a loan, sight unseen. She’d seen your business plan. Did she have any suggestions?”

“Yeah, she said I needed to double my space, and suggested that I open between Columbia Heights and the Smithsonian.”

Ryker leaned into his computer screen. “Pretty fancy digs.”

“Right? I said that area has too much competition, but she said that’s where the high-end clientele goes, and that’s who I want to attract. She said with the type of chef I’m thinking about hiring, I have to go all-in. But with doubling the space and rent in that part of town, I’m talking five times the rent.”

Ryker whistled.

“It gets worse. She said I should buy the building. That way I would be able to have consistent cashflow coming in from the current shop owners.”

“Holy shit, Amy. No wonder you’re freaked.”

“I can’t do this. I’m not a grown-up. I’ve only been managing this restaurant for four and a half years,” she wailed. “How can Beatrice have this much faith in me? I’ll fuck it up, and screw up my friendship with Lark.”

“You’ve been best friends for how long? A decade?

“Almost. I met her when she was working the crime beat for the Washington Times. It was when I was working in the shittiest café in town, but she always tipped well, and I made sure to get her the best pieces of pie we had. She was too serious. I got her to go out and live a little.”

Ryker snorted. “I could see that. That’s why I’m telling you, there is nothing you can do that will screw up your friendship with Lark, and you would have to lose about a hundred million before Beatrice Allen would even notice it was gone.”

“She’s talking about putting up three million of her own money so that I can get the bank to loan the rest. It’s crazy. I’m too big a risk. She doesn’t know everything about me. I’m a bad bet.” Amy’s voice trailed off.

“Sweets, what are you talking about? I spent half the night with you when we first met, and we’ve talked for sixteen dates worth on the phone now. You’re a great bet. You’re so much smarter than me, it scares me. I always worry that you’re going to throw me over the side and put your hook back in the water.”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t say anything.

Ryker leaned in even closer, and it was as if the screen had frozen with a deer in the headlights look on her face.

Was what I said really that scary?

“Amy? Talk to me. Did the screen freeze?”