“I wish you’d let me pick you up at the airport,” Cullen said, taking the offered chair and waving to the bartender. He held up one finger and then pointed at me before turning on the stool in my direction. “It would’ve been no problem to take off a little early.”

“You say that, but you’re obviously under a lot of strain. I’m here to help, not add to that strain. Besides, it was a nice cab ride over. The driver spoke to me in French the entire time. I don’t even think he realized I only understood about ten percent of what he’d said.”

Cullen chuckled and then glanced at his watch. “Evie should be here any minute.”

I took another swallow of Scotch and nodded without comment. It was stupid to half wish she’d be delayed and not make it at all. But call me stupid, because here I was, wishing it. Somehow over the past couple of years, annoying Evie had morphed into curvy, hot-as-hell, infiltrating-my-dreams Evie, and it was slowing killing me. On the flight over, when I should have been crunching numbers, I’d nodded off and promptly had the most erotic dream of my life.

We were at the lake near their family summer house, and even though I hadn’t actually been there with Evie since she was around ten, dream Evie was all grown up. I was taking a swim on a moonlit night. She walked up to the water’s edge wearing a man’s dress shirt—my dress shirt—and nothing else.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as she unbuttoned the shirt one painstaking button at a time. Almost in slo-mo, the sides of the shirt opened to reveal what had to be the most banging body of all time. Gorgeous, full tits. Hips big enough for my hands to get a good grip on, and trim, toned legs that were killing me because I couldn’t decide whether I wanted them wrapped around my waist first or my face.

Evie.

I’d woken with a start right as she’d stepped into the water, buck naked, and pressed the full length of that soft body against my oh-so-hard one. And lucky thing I did, because things were about to get sticky in first class.

“You want to order a couple appetizers while we wait?”

I jerked my gaze back to Cullen and cleared my throat. “Sure, whatever you feel like.”

Could I be more of an asshole right now? The guy was thrilled to see me after almost a year, and here I was, picturing his sister naked. Not that it had really been her body I was picturing. No possible way could she be that sexy under those clothes.

Could she?

Just as my blood started draining south again, I slammed the door on those thoughts and reached for my briefcase.

The best cure for sex on the brain was work.

“So, talk to me about what’s going on at Sophia’s. I ran through the numbers you sent me, and it seems like the expansion may have been a little premature.” Sophia’s was the lingerie company started by his grandmother when Cullen was still in diapers.

Cullen winced, but I held up a hand.

“Don’t freak out. Things were looking really good, and it’s not catastrophic. I think it can be fixed, but you’re going to have to get creative. It would be a major plus if there was a way to increase sales before the end of the year in order to beef up cash flow a little.”

“Funny you mention that,” he said, taking a sip of his Scotch. “We’re already looking at new sales avenues, expanding our reach on social media and trying some new advertising. That part’s all still in its infancy. Before Nana died, she was against all of that. It was like pulling teeth for her to even consider monetizing the website. She was old school. She wanted people to come in and touch the fabrics, have the boutique experience. No matter a woman’s body type or age, she wanted them to walk out feeling beautiful.”

Cullen’s smile was tinged with sadness, and for a second, I envied him. Yes, he’d lost his grandmother, but when she was alive, at least they’d had that close-knit bond. The whole Reed family did.

I had been lucky enough to get adopted at the age of six into a loving family, but my parents had been in their mid-fifties at the time, and my adopted siblings were all much older than me. I was really only close with my youngest sister, Pam. I loved them all dearly and would forever be grateful for all they’d done, but I’d always felt like I’d been missing something, always felt like the odd man out.

“This company was your grandmother’s baby, and I want to make sure that we never lose that core concept. That’s the brand. So we’ve got to maintain that personal feel of a boutique on the front end while making the back end function much more efficiently businesswise,” I said, hoping I was calming his nerves.

I never imagined I’d be working with Cullen, but running a small part of my own family’s well-oiled machine left me with some down time. I was the type who’d rather fill that time with something productive rather than laze around. I guess you could call me type A.

Cullen’s grin widened and he shot me a wink. “That’s where you come in. Can you help us figure out how to make the capital we do have stretch a little further to get us through the winter? Once spring arrives and all the fashion shows come to Paris, we’re going to be golden. But for now?” He shrugged. “Things are lean.”

I popped open my briefcase and pulled out the file folder I’d spent last week preparing. Then I slid it across the bar in front of him. He opened it and scanned the summary page quickly, and then shot me an incredulous glance.

“Seriously?” he asked. “Are you sure?”