A Ceo In Her Stocking. Elizabeth Bevarly

beyond the superficial. Even though, he supposed, knowing the biological classification of the entire nautilus family—in Latin—by the time he started first grade went a little beyond superficial. That was different. Because that was...

      Well, it was just different, that was all.

      “Nothing in particular,” he finally concluded. Even if that didn’t feel like a conclusion at all.

      Clara didn’t seem to think so, either, because she insisted, “Oh, come on. There must have been something. All of Hank’s friends have some kind of passion. With Brianna, it’s seashells. With Tyler, it’s rocks. With Megan, it’s fairies. It’s amazing the single-minded devotion a kid that age can have for something.”

      For some reason, Grant wanted very much to change the subject. So he turned the tables back on Clara. “So, owning a bakery. That must be gratifying, taking your childhood passion and making a living out of it as an adult.”

      For a moment, he didn’t think Clara was going to let him get away with changing the subject. She eyed him narrowly, with clear speculation, nibbling her lower lip—that ripe, generous, delectable lower lip—in thought.

      Just when Grant thought he might climb over the table to nibble it, too, she stopped and said, “It is gratifying.”

      He’d just bet it was. Oh, wait. She meant the bakery thing, not the lip-nibbling thing.

      “Except that when your passion becomes your job,” she went on, “it can sort of rob it of the fun, you know? I mean, it’s still fun, but some of the magic is gone.”

      Magic, he repeated to himself. Fun. When was the last time he had a conversation with a woman—or, hell, anyone—that included either of those words? Yet here was Clara Easton, using them both in one breath.

      “Don’t get me wrong,” she hastened to clarify. “I do love it. I just...”

      She sighed with something akin to wistfulness. Damn. Wistfulness. There was another word Grant could never recall coming up in a conversation before—even in his head.

      “Sometimes,” she continued, “I just look at all the stuff in the bakery kitchen and at all the pastries out in the shop, and, after work, I go upstairs to the apartment with Hank, and I wonder... Is that it? Have I already peaked? I have this great kid, and we have a roof over our heads and food in the pantry, and I’m doing for a living what I always said I wanted to do, and yet sometimes... Sometimes—”