All's Fair in Love and Chocolate (Marietta Chocolate Wars #1) - Amy Andrews Page 0,11

and have good connections with head office. That way if issues ever arise they’re comfortable with speaking up.”

Viv had always admired the we’re-all-in-this-together ethic of the company. It had been started by Harriet Walker three decades prior. She’d grown up in Harlem and opened her first store there before quickly expanding over the next decade. Harriet believed in lifting people up, in nurturing them, and her company had thrived. She was still the CEO thirty years later.

“And that’s what you do?”

“Yep. Pretty much.”

“It sounds…”

Viv braced herself for the usual response. Lonely. Disruptive. Unsettling. Hard. Disorienting. Flighty. Not many people understood her nomadic existence.

“Interesting. New people. New places. New challenges. Never a dull moment.”

She blinked as a rushing noise filled her head. So this was why she’d been attracted to Reuben. After less than twelve hours in her company—the majority of which they hadn’t spoken at all—he got her.

“Yes.” She smiled at him over the rim of her glass, a flood of what could either be gratitude or sexual attraction coursing through her system. “Exactly. It’s great to meet someone who understands that. Thank you, Officer Price.”

She’d noticed his nametag out on the street earlier. Viv supposed she should feel embarrassed that she’d let Reuben do her against her hotel wall within half an hour of meeting him without knowing his surname.

But screw that.

“Well now, that’s hardly fair, Vivian,” he murmured, still sprawled casually back against the cushion behind him. “You know my full name but I don’t know yours.”

She smiled. “It’s Dawson. And you can call me Viv.”

He shook his head. “I like Vivian.”

Shrugging Viv said, “Suit yourself.” She’d never been fond of her full name and had been called Viv her entire life by everyone except teachers on the first day of the school year who’d been very quickly corrected.

She wasn’t sure why she’d introduced herself as Vivian that night. Maybe it had been a way for her to slip into another skin for a while? Or maybe it had been a subliminal attempt at keeping some kind of barrier between them? Whatever the reason, she liked the way he said it with a kind of vibration on the v’s that gave it a husky quality.

She’d especially liked how he’d groaned it in the dark just before he’d come.

He leaned in then, sliding his elbows on the table. His big, broad shoulders and chest filled her vision before their eyes locked. “You ran out on me, Vivian Dawson,” he said softly.

Okay…so small talk was obviously done. “I didn’t run. I walked out. After a shower and packing my bag. I can’t help it if you slept the entire way through my departure.”

It was true she’d tried to be quiet but she hadn’t exactly made a ninja exit, either.

“Well…I was exhausted. From a weekend of busting up fights with wannabe rodeo idiots. And a night with an insatiable woman.”

Viv smiled, not ashamed of her appetites. She loved sex. She didn’t get a lot of it and Reuben had been very, very good at it.

She had been insatiable. But then so had he.

Raising her eyebrow, she said, “I didn’t notice you complaining at the time.”

“You won’t notice me complaining now, either.”

He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took another sip and Viv’s gaze drifted to his whiskery throat once again. The sudden urge to feel that prickle against her lips brought the whole purpose of her agreeing to this drink back in sharp focus. She wasn’t here to rehash that night in every glorious detail. “I had an early start,” she said forcing the conversation back on track.

“You could have woken me.”

“But you looked so adorable lying there stretched out all naked and snoring.” Truth was, it’d been exceptionally hard not to wake him for round five.

“I was not snoring.”

Viv laughed at his affront. No, he was not. Although given his stupendous performance he could have snored like a train for all she’d have cared. “Damn it,” she said with a sigh. “I knew I should have recorded it.”

He chuckled then at her teasing, his affront dissolving before her eyes and God…it would be so easy to suggest he come back to her place and prove he wasn’t a snorer. But. Picking up her wineglass she took another sip as she regarded his laughing green-gray eyes.

“Just so you know from the get-go, we’re not going to sleep together again.”

“We’re not?”

If he was disappointed at her pronouncement he didn’t show it, a small smile still tugging at his mouth. Viv shook