“Excuse me?” Mack sputtered. “How is she totally wrong for me?”

“Because all the women you date are wrong for you,” Gavin snorted.

Mack sputtered again before responding. “Dude, you’ve known me for less than six months.”

“Yeah, and in that time you’ve dated six different women. Amazing women. All smart, talented, gorgeous. Perfect.”

“And that’s a problem?” He sounded defensive, which made him feel defensive. Dammit, he was defensive. They were supposed to be buying books, not analyzing his love life.

Gavin shrugged. “You tell me. You dumped them all.”

“Because it didn’t work out with them,” Mack said in a growl.

“And it’s different with Gretchen?”

“Yes,” Mack said.

“How?” Malcolm asked.

Mack had no response to that. It was different with Gretchen because, because . . . dammit, because he was ready for it to be different. Wasn’t that enough? He was tired of watching his friends live happily ever after while he fruitlessly searched for the future Mrs. Mack—someone he could spoil, grow old with, and cherish forever. He was the founder of the damn book club but the only one who’d never experienced the real thing. So, yeah, he was working extra hard this time to stick with it because, dammit, he wanted his own happily ever after.

Gavin held up his hands in a truce. “Look, all we’re saying is that for all your talk about being the expert, it seems like you miss the most important lesson of these books.”

“Which is?” His tone now edged toward petulance, but he didn’t like being lectured about the lessons of the manuals—which was what they all called romance novels—by the newest member of the club.

“There’s a big difference between romancing someone and loving someone.”

Mack rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say. You fell in love at first sight with the perfect woman.”

Gavin sobered. “My wife isn’t perfect. She’s just perfect for me. And there’s been nothing easy about our marriage.”

Tension once again tugged at Mack’s gut, this time from guilt. Gavin and his wife, Thea, had nearly divorced six months ago before the book club stepped in to help Gavin get her back.

But rather than apologize for being an asshole, he dug in. “I’m going to prove you wrong,” he seethed.

Mack yanked his wallet from his back pocket, heart pounding with the arrogance of something to prove. He shoved a hundred-dollar bill at Del.

“Five-to-one odds that after tomorrow night, I officially have a girlfriend.”

CHAPTER TWO

“You look beautiful tonight.”

Mack reached across the table for Gretchen’s slim fingers. She smiled as he brushed his thumb across her knuckles. The earrings he’d given her last week for her birthday hung from her delicate earlobes and sparkled in the candlelight.

“Thank you,” she said. “You certainly say it enough to make me feel beautiful.”

“New dress?”

She laughed and looked down at herself. “Um, no. I got this at Macy’s a couple of years ago. Clearance rack.”

“It’s beautiful.”

She tugged her hand back. “Thank you. Again.”

Gretchen tore her gaze from his and looked around at the restaurant. Their VIP table in the loft gave them a full view of the urban-chic decor. Wrought-iron chandeliers hung from the high ceilings, and exposed-brick walls gave it an unfinished feel. But when paired with the dark woodwork and the ornate gold, it also had an old-world opulence to it.

“I always wondered what it looked like in here,” Gretchen said.

“What do you think?”

“It’s, um . . .” She winced as if reluctant to criticize. “It’s a little over the top.”

“So is Royce.”

“You know him?”

Mack adjusted his sport coat as he sat back in his chair. “We’ve met several times. Charity golf tournaments and that sort of thing. We tend to run in the same circles as business owners.”

“Ah. Of course.” She squinted. “I don’t really run in those circles, you know.”

“You run in more important circles.” Gretchen was a public defender specializing in immigration cases.

Their waiter approached the table with a bottle of chilled Dom Perignon. Mack had ordered it when he’d made the reservation, along with the signature dessert—the Sultan cupcake. It was so elaborate and expensive, it had to be ordered in advance. He couldn’t wait for Gretchen to see it.

“Champagne?” Gretchen asked as the waiter popped the cork.

“We’re celebrating,” Mack said with a wink.

The waiter poured two tall flutes and then left the bottle in a bucket of ice next to the table before saying he’d be back in a few minutes to go over the specials for the night.

“Sure,” Gretchen said, accepting her glass. “So what’s the occasion?”

Mack raised his glass. “I closed the deal today on the new building,” he said. “But more importantly, here’s to us. Three months. And hopefully many more.”

Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes when she clinked her glass with his. He thought at first that he was imagining it, but she looked away when she took a drink.

“Everything okay?”

She swallowed and nodded. “This is wonderful.”

“So are you.”

There it was again. The not quite a smile smile. Mack set down his glass and reached again for her hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m just . . . To be honest, I feel a little guilty being at a place like this.”

“Why?”

“My clients can barely afford boxed macaroni and cheese for their children.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t spoil you, does it?”

“I don’t need to be spoiled, Mack.”

“But you deserve to be.” He tried again with the wink and the smile. This time it worked. Her fingers relaxed in his.

“Thank you. You definitely know how to wine and dine a woman.”

“I aim to please.” He gave her fingers a final squeeze and let go. “Now I hope you’re hungry. Because I have a surprise for you later.”

Gretchen drank from her champagne and looked at her watch.

“I swear to God, why not just light a thousand bucks on fire?”

Liv Papandreas stepped back from the stainless-steel counter to study her latest culinary masterpiece with a disgusted shake of her head. As a pastry chef at Savoy, it shouldn’t surprise her anymore what the one percent would waste their money on, but sadly, it did. And she had known the minute her boss put the gold-infused cupcake on the menu that the city’s richest celebrities and show-offs would order it in droves just because they could.

Well, that, and so they could pose for an Instagram-worthy photo with Royce Preston, celebrity chef, television host, and the dickhead who signed Liv’s paychecks.

Every week, millions of fans tuned in to his reality show, Kitchen Boss, for a dose of his smooth-talking charm. Little did they know that his smooth-talking charm was as fake as his hair. When the cameras were off, he was a belligerent douchebag who stole most of his recipes from his own staff. Liv had somehow managed to survive an entire year in his kitchen, mostly because she had a stubborn disdain for wealthy posers. Who could’ve guessed that a teenage career in breaking rules and antagonizing authority figures would actually help her someday?

Rumor had it that tonight’s cupcake schmuck was some nightclub owner. Liv wouldn’t know. Nightclubs weren’t really her thing. Because people. People weren’t really her thing either.

Suddenly, her fellow prison inmate—er, pastry chef—Riya Singh clapped her on the back. “You don’t think your talents are worth a thousand dollars?”

“I think my talents are worth a lot more. I just don’t think a single freaking cupcake is. Every single person who orders one of these should be forced to immediately write a check for the downtown food bank.”

“Starting with Royce.”

Yeah, right. Men like Royce didn’t give money to charity. They hoarded it, flaunted it. Bribed their kids’ way into elite colleges with it. And he was about to make a helluva lot more of it. In one month, the first official Kitchen Boss cookbook would be published—a cookbook full of recipes he’d ripped off. One of Liv’s was in there—a twist on baklava using pomegranates and natural honey.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t just quit and take your sister up on her offer,” Riya said. “You could be free of this place forever if you wanted. The rest of us have to stay because we don’t have any other choice.”

Liv’s sister, Thea, had offered at least a dozen times to give Liv the money to open her own business. Thea was married to a Major League Baseball player who made a major league salary. But the thing no one seemed to understand, including Thea herself, was that Liv didn’t want to succeed because of someone else’s money. If that were the case, she’d just call her rich father and finally accept his endless offers to buy his way back into her life. She didn’t want his guilt money, though.

Anyway, Liv had worked too hard and overcome too much to take the easy way out now. She had the drive and talent to succeed on her own, and she was going to. If she could last one more year here, she could write her own ticket in the cutthroat culinary profession, because everyone knew that if you could survive Royce, you could handle anything. Every single day was a fight, but Liv had worked too damn hard to risk her career now by spiking the man’s breakfast smoothie with rat poison.

Not that she’d, like, thought about that or anything.

Jessica Summers, a young hostess who’d started just a month ago, crept over to the counter, biting her lip. “Is that it?” she asked breathlessly, staring at the cupcake.

“Yep,” Liv said.