“Always a negotiator,” Ian muttered under his breath, shaking his head. But when he looked at her, there was a hint of a smile curling at the edges of his lips. “I should fire you for making me panic like that, you know.”

Brooke smiled. “Well, seeing how you make me do all the firing, I’ll be sure to get on that one right quick.”

* * *

LATER THAT EVENING at Firelight, a bar Brooke had been meaning to check out for ages, Ford raised his glass of champagne in a toast. “Congratulations to the new executive vice president and general counsel and part owner of Sterling Restaurants.”

Brooke grinned. “It’ll be a long time before I get tired of hearing that.” She clinked her glass to his and took a sip.

“So this means the job at Spectrum, the whole moving to Charlotte deal, is officially out of the running, right?” Ford asked.

“Yep. As soon as my meeting with Ian was over, I called Spectrum’s CEO and let him know that I was declining the offer,” she said. Palmer had been surprised, and disappointed, but the conversation had ended as amicably as one could hope given the circumstances.

“Any regrets?” Ford asked.

Brooke thought about that, then shook her head. “Not a one.” In fact, she’d already begun step two of her plan to have more balance in her life. She’d e-mailed Rachel to say that, yes, she’d love to meet for lunch any day next week, and she’d also called her parents while walking home from work to tell them her news. She’d caught up with them for over an hour, undoubtedly the longest non-work-related phone conversation she’d had in about two years.

She looked around the bar, the part owner in her unable to resist checking out the competition. “So this is the place you, Charlie, and Tucker are always raving about.” She gestured teasingly to the appetizer in front of her. “Must be the crab cakes.” Actually, she was pretty sure it had a lot more to do with the all the attractive women dressed in jeans, heels, and camisole tops that showed lots of tanned skin.

Ford grinned mischievously. “Sure is. Love the crab cakes here.”

Brooke could certainly see why. About a dozen of those “crab cakes” had been subtly checking out Ford since they’d sat down. She was about to make a joke about cramping his style, when something—or someone, rather—caught her eye. “This really is the happening place. Even the Twitter Terrorist is here.”

She easily recognized Kyle Rhodes, an extremely wealthy computer genius turned businessman who’d originally shot to fame after hacking into Twitter when his then-girlfriend, a Victoria’s Secret model, tweeted a video of herself cheating on him with a movie star. Like most Chicagoans, Brooke had followed all the media drama surrounding his arrest and conviction—not realizing that one day she would have a personal connection, of sorts, to the case.

Ford glanced over, then shrugged. “I’ve seen him here a few times. I think his friend owns the bar or something.”

“And that must be Rylann,” Brooke said, referring to the woman with long, raven-colored hair having dinner with him. She watched as Rylann shook her head at something Kyle said, and then laughed at whatever he said next.

Hold on. You’re friends with a woman whose fiancé you sent to prison?

“You might want to stop drooling, Brooke,” Ford said. “I’m pretty sure the Twitter Terrorist is already taken.”

She blinked. “What? Oh, no—I was looking at her.”

Ford raised an eyebrow. “Now this is getting intriguing.”

Men. “I wasn’t checking her out, Ford. I know her. Or at least, I know of her. She’s friends with Cade. I was thinking about how he once told me that it’s a weird situation since he’s the one who prosecuted her fiancé.” She smiled, remembering their conversation that night. “I asked if he thought they would invite him to their wedding, and we were laughing about whether they made a card that said, ‘So glad we’ve all gotten past the time I called one of you a terrorist in open court.’” She smiled, and then shrugged at Ford. “You probably had to be there.”

“Another inside joke.”

“Yes.” She felt her smile falter a bit, and exhaled. She forced herself not to dwell on negative thoughts—this was a celebration, after all. “Let’s talk about something else. Like the blonde in the pink shimmery shirt who’s been eying you all evening.”

“Brooke.” Ford looked at her in all seriousness. “Why don’t you call Cade? I get that you were holding back before because of your work situation. But that’s not a problem anymore.”

She nodded, having realized this, too. And a part of her was tempted to do just that.

But.

“I just . . . I don’t know what he’s thinking. When I told him about the job offer from Spectrum, he wasn’t exactly begging me to stay in Chicago.” To the contrary, really. Knock ’em dead in Charlotte, Brooke.

“Well, did you say anything that indicated that you were considering him in your decision?”

Brooke took a moment, thinking through every word of their last conversation. “Okay, no. Fair enough. But that’s just it. I’ve suddenly had this epiphany, this new outlook on what I want in my life, but that’s me. What if I go to him and tell him everything that I’ve been feeling and he doesn’t feel the same way?” Potentially the one thing worse than having Cade tell her she wasn’t a big-picture girl, she’d decided, would be having him tell her that she’d never been in any picture.