Page 8 of Faking it with my Bad Boy Crush

This was what seven years of effort looked like. This was what CIA training plus restaurant experience and Romano family tradition created.

Let the investors try to replicate that.

At 6:30 PM, I locked up the bakery and walked the three blocks to the community center. I'd changed into dark jeans and a crisp white button-down—professional but not trying too hard. My dark hair was pulled back in a neat braid, and I'd put on the simple gold chain that had been my grandmother's.

I looked like exactly what I was: a serious businesswoman who happened to make her living with flour and sugar.

The community center was already packed. I recognized most of the faces—fellow business owners, island council members, concerned citizens who cared about Lopez Island's future. The energy in the room was tense, curious, defensive.

I found a seat near the front, next to Emily Russell who ran the island's only bookstore. Emily gave me a tight smile. "Ready for this?"

"As ready as I'll ever be." I pulled out my phone, opening a note-taking app. If these investors were going to pitch their vision, I was going to document every word.

At precisely 7 PM, Richard Sterling walked to the front of the room. The longtime island attorney commanded respect simplyby standing there, his silver hair and steady presence a reminder that he'd been protecting this community for over four decades.

"Thank you all for coming," Richard began, his voice carrying easily through the room. "Tonight we're here to learn about potential economic development opportunities for Lopez Island. I've invited a consultant who specializes in helping small communities navigate growth and investment."

My fingers were poised over my phone, ready to take notes on whatever corporate pitch was about to happen.

"I'd like to introduce Ethan Caldwell," Richard continued. "Many of you won't remember him, but Ethan grew up on this island before moving to Seattle, where I mentored him. He's now a successful attorney in how own right, and he's here to present on behalf of an investment group interested in our community."

My head snapped up.

Ethan Caldwell. That name—I knew that name.

A man stepped forward from the side of the room, and my stomach dropped.

Tall, maybe 6'2", with light brown hair styled in that perfectly casual way that probably cost a fortune to maintain. Expensive charcoal suit that fit him like it was custom-tailored, which it probably was. Sky blue eyes that scanned the crowd with the confidence of someone used to commanding rooms.

He looked nothing like the angry eighteen-year-old who'd vandalized my grandfather's bakery twenty years ago.

But those eyes—I'd know those eyes anywhere.

For one mortifying second, fourteen-year-old me fluttered in my chest, remembering the crush I'd had on the troubled boy my grandfather had tried to help.

Then thirty-four-year-old me crushed that feeling down hard.

Not again. Never again.

Because this wasn't the misunderstood bad boy from my teenage fantasies. This was a corporate lawyer in an expensivesuit, working for the exact kind of people who wanted to destroy everything I'd built.

Ethan Caldwell had come back to Lopez Island after twenty years.

And he was here to take my bakery.

Chapter three

First Collision

Ethan

Istood at the front of the Lopez Island Community Center, acutely aware of every eye in the room fixed on me. The space was packed with at least two hundred people in a room designed for half that.

I'd presented to hostile rooms before—boardrooms full of skeptical investors, courtrooms with opposing counsel looking for any weakness, negotiations where millions of dollars hung on my ability to stay calm under pressure.

This should be easy.

So why did my hands feel unsteady as I opened my laptop and connected it to the projector?