At quarter to nine that night, Stella closed the spreadsheet she was working on and pulled up her internet browser. Needing a break from the endless stream of numbers she was looking at, she decided to do some research for her trip with her sisters. She needed to find a place in Cologne where they could all have a nice Christmas dinner.

The Reyes women didn’t know how—or care to learn how—to cook for themselves. They were all busy, professional women with other things to do, and finding a place where they could get something to eat on a holiday was becoming a bit of an issue. Stella wrote down the names of a couple of restaurants she thought might be open on the day, and typed out an email to her to sisters to get some opinions on their options.

After she hit send, her stomach growled so loudly she was certain that Logan could’ve heard it. He was still in his office, the delicious aroma of the Italian he’d just had delivered wafting out to Stella, teasing her.

She was tempted to go in there and steal a bite of the ziti he always ordered, such was her level of desperation. But she only had a couple more things to finish up, then she could go home and order all the Italian she wanted.

If only the smell of the delicious food from the other room wasn’t driving her crazy.

She fished a lone spork out of the depths of her bottom drawer and grasped it in her hand, ready to walk into Logan’s office and beg for a meatball—for anything—when he walked out with two containers in one hand, a bottle in the other. He placed the top container down in front of Stella and opened it.

Inside was her favorite: chicken parm. He’d even gotten the lemon-flavored tea she liked so much, the charming, observant bastard.

As much as he drove her crazy, he was incredibly attentive and thoughtful, and thoughtful things like this made it impossible for her to decide to move on with her life, to drag her heart kicking and screaming away from this man.

“Thank you,” she said, before spearing a piece of chicken with her spork.

Logan winked at her, sending goosebumps across her skin as he sat down in the chair on the other side of her desk, and started eating. His tie was loosened, his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up just below his elbows. She liked that he felt comfortable relaxing around her once everyone else had gone home.

“Working on something for one of our German subsidiaries?” he asked slyly, nodding at her laptop.

Stella shrugged. “Seeing as it’s quarter to nine and my day is technically supposed to be over at five, I took a break to do some personal business.”

He lifted a piece of cheese-covered garlic bread to his mouth and took a big bite. It was really disheartening that he could eat like he did and still look like he did, chiseled abs and all.

Not that Stella had ever seen those abs herself, of course. But she had seen some paparazzi photos of him on a beach vacation a few years ago, back when he was dating a C-list actress who loved her publicity.

She thought about those pics more often than she probably should.

“What kind of personal business are you doing?” he asked, sounding somewhat hesitant about the answer as he pointedly looked at his food, not at her.

Stella sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I’m looking for somewhere my sisters and I can have Christmas dinner in Cologne. Finding a restaurant that’s open is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be. We’re going to wind up having macaroni and cheese, if we can even find that.”

“You don’t cook?”

“I spend most of my eating hours here. Why would I bother cooking of all things when I’m finally free of this place for the day?”

Logan smiled. “Are you staying in a hotel?”

“An Airbnb,” she replied suspiciously. Why did that matter?

Logan rolled a meatball to the corner of his takeout container. “I could set something up for you.”

Stella was slow on the uptake, something she blamed on the fact that the food hadn’t quite made it through her system, and that she’d been in the office for going on 12 hours. Set something up…”Like a dinner?”

“Like a personal chef.”

“You know a personal chef in Germany?” The Anderson family had connections, but she didn’t know that Logan could commit to a personal chef in a foreign country at the drop of a hat.

Her disbelief played into two things that she knew Logan loved: someone doubting his ability to do something, and surprising people with said ability to do that thing.

He leaned closer and rested his elbows on the table, offering her a Logan Anderson-patented panty-dropping smile. “You’d be surprised at all the things I know, Miss Reyes.”

The cocky way he said those words sent a shiver down her spine.

“A personal chef is a great idea, but it’s not in the budget.”

“It’s in my budget.”

Stella dropped her spork and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re just going to get me and my sisters a personal chef?”

“Consider it payback for being such a pain in the ass all year. It’s the least I could do.”

Stella narrowed her eyes. “This better not be a trick.”

He looked truly hurt at the suggestion. “You think I would do that to you? Ruin your Christmas?”

Truthfully? No, she didn’t think that. As much as he liked to tease her, she got the feeling that disappointing her was the very last thing he’d want to do. Logan was a flirt, and, yes—he could be difficult sometimes—but she’d seen the man he truly was underneath it all. The kind, thoughtful one who made sure she ate when she stayed late, the one who wanted to lead his family’s business into the future, the one who was so nervous about severing ties his father had kept up for decades that he was dragging her upstate to a party to make sure he didn’t forget even the smallest detail about any of the people who attended it.

That’s the kind of guy who would hire a personal chef to make her holiday a special one. Sometimes she didn’t know what to do with that guy, so she resorted back to teasing him.

“If I accept, you better follow through or you’re going to have three very angry women on your hands.”

He laughed. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Well, that was a reminder about his life that sent Stella careening back into reality.

“Thank you for taking on the extra work,” he said earnestly as he went about picking at his food. “I know it’s a lot, but I trust you more than I trust anyone else. You know my dad wasn’t so sure about retiring, about handing everything over to Drake and me. I don’t want to disappoint him, but I also don’t want him being right about me and the risk I took moving us more into the tech side of things.”

Something took hold of Stella, made her reach across her desk and put her hand on top of Logan’s. The office was so quiet, she heard his intake of breath, the stillness between them as they touched.

“I know you want to prove to your Dad that he made the right choice, and show him you know what you’re doing. I’ll do whatever I can to help you with that.”

Logan’s eyes softened, warming his whole face. He watched her intently, searched her face as it seemed like he wanted to say something more. Then he took a deep breath, flipped his hand over to give Stella’s a squeeze.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely, following it up with a grateful, intimate smile that made Stella’s heart flutter its way all the way up into her throat.

She thought back to her conversation with Liz earlier that morning.

Maybe moments like this meant more to her than they did to him. Maybe he was flirting with her to keep her hanging on.

Still…it felt real.

And it was working.