The name rang a bell, an older woman who wore her hair in a tight bun. “Oh! Delores! Yes, you were at the Brewery. How are you?”
The only people besides her siblings who called her Frannie were the longtime employees of the Beaumont Brewery. They were her second family—or at least, they had been.
“We’ve been better,” Delores said. “Listen, I have a proposal for you. I know you’ve got those fancy art degrees.”
In the safety of her room, Frances blushed. After today’s rejections, she didn’t feel particularly fancy. “What kind of proposal?” Maybe her luck was about to change. Maybe this proposal would come with a paycheck.
“Well,” Delores went on in a whisper, “the new CEO that AllBev brought in?”
Frances scowled. “What about him? Failing miserably, I hope.”
“Sadly,” Delores said in a not-sad-at-all voice, “there’s been an epidemic of Brew Flu going around. We had to halt production on two lines today.”
Frances couldn’t hold back the laugh that burst forth from her. “Oh, that’s fabulous.”
“It was,” Delores agreed. “But it made Logan—that’s the new CEO—so mad that he decided to rip out your father’s office.”
Frances would have laughed again, except for one little detail. “He’s going to destroy Daddy’s office? He wouldn’t dare!”
“He told me to sell it off. All of it—the table, the bar, everything. I think he’d even perform an exorcism, if he thought it’d help,” she added.
Her father’s office. Technically, it had most recently been Chadwick’s office. But Frances had never stopped thinking of her father and that office together. “So what’s your proposal?”
“Well,” Delores said, her voice dropping past whisper and straight into conspirator. “I thought you could come do the appraisals. Who knows—you might be able to line up buyers for some of it.”
“And...” Frances swallowed. The following was a crass question, but desperate times and all that. “And would this Logan fellow pay for the appraisal? If I sold the furniture myself—” say, to a certain sentimental older brother who’d been the CEO for almost ten years “—would I get a commission?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Frances tried to see the downside of this situation, but nothing popped up. Delores was right—if anyone had the connections to sell off her family’s furniture, it’d be Frances.
Plus, if she could get a foothold back in the Brewery, she might be able to help all those poor, flu-stricken workers. She wasn’t so naive to think that she could get a conglomerate like AllBev to sell the company back to the family, but...
She might be able to make this Logan’s life a little more difficult. She might be able to exact a little revenge. After all—the sale of the Brewery had been when her luck had turned sour. And if she could get paid to do all of that?
“Let’s say Friday, shall we?” That was only two days away, but that would give her plenty of time to plan and execute her trap. “I’ll bring the donuts.”
Delores actually giggled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Oh, yes. This was going to be great.
* * *
“Mis-ter Logan, the appraiser is here.”
Ethan set down the head count rolls he’d been studying. Next week, he was reducing the workforce by 15 percent. People with one or more “illness absences” were going to be the first to find themselves out on the sidewalk with nothing more than a box of their possessions.
“Good. Send him in.”
But no nerdy-looking art geek walked into the office. Ethan waited and then switched the intercom back on. Before he could ask Delores the question, though, he heard a lot of people talking—and laughing?
It sounded as though someone was having a party in the reception area.
What the hell?
He strode across the room and threw open his office door. There was, point of fact, a party going on outside. Workers he’d only caught glimpses of before were all crowded around Delores’s desk, donuts in their hands and sappy smiles on their faces.
“What’s going on out here?” he thundered. “This is a business, people, not a—”
Then the crowd parted, and he saw her.
God, how had he missed her? A woman with a stunning mane of flame-red hair sat on the edge of Delores’s desk. Her body was covered by an emerald-green gown that clung to every curve like a lover’s hands. His fingers itched to trace the line of her bare shoulders.
She was not an employee. That much was clear.
She was, however, holding a box of donuts.
The good-natured hum he’d heard on the intercom died away. The smiles disappeared, and people edged away from him.
“What is this?” he demanded. The color drained out of several employees’ faces, but his tone didn’t appear to have the slightest impact on the woman in the green gown.
His eyes were drawn to her back, to the way her ass looked sitting on the edge of the desk. Slowly—so slowly it almost hurt him—she turned and looked at him over her shoulder.
He might have intimidated the workers. He clearly had not intimidated her.
She batted her eyelashes as a cryptic smile danced across her deep red lips. “Why, it’s Donut Friday.”
Ethan glared at her. “What?”
She pivoted, bringing more of her profile into view. Dear God, that dress—that body. The strapless dress came to a deep V over her chest, doing everything in its power to highlight the pale, creamy skin of her décolletage.
He shouldn’t stare. He wasn’t staring. Really.
Her posture shifted. It was like watching a dancer arrange herself before launching into a series of gravity-defying pirouettes. “You must be new here,” the woman said in a pitying tone. “It’s Friday. That’s the day I bring donuts.”
Individually, he understood each word and every implication of her tone and movement. But together? “Donut Friday?” He’d been here for months, and this was the first time he’d heard anything about donuts.
“Yes,” she said. She held out the box. “I bring everyone a donut. Would you like the last one? I’m afraid all I have left is a plain.”
“And who are you, if I may ask?”
“Oh, you may.” She lowered her chin and looked up at him through her lashes. She was simply the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, which was more than enough to turn his head. But the fact that she was playing him for the fool—and they both knew it?
There were snickers from the far-too-large audience as she held out her hand for him—not to shake, no. She held it out as though she expected him to kiss it, as if she were the queen or something.
“I’m Frances Beaumont. I’m here to appraise the antiques.”
Oh, this was fun.
“Donut?” she asked again, holding out the box. She kept as much innocence as she could physically manage on her face.
“You’re the appraiser?”
She let the donut box hang in the space between them a few more moments before she slowly lowered the box back to her lap.
She’d