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  Copyright 2018 Natalie Ann

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without a written consent.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication- To my brother, because siblings are always there for you!

  The Road Series-See where it all started!!

  Lucas and Brooke’s Story- Road to Recovery

  Jack and Cori’s Story – Road to Redemption

  Mac and Beth’s Story- Road to Reality

  Ryan and Kaitlin’s Story- Road to Reason

  The All Series

  William and Isabel’s Story — All for Love

  Ben and Presley’s Story – All or Nothing

  Phil and Sophia’s Story – All of Me

  Alec and Brynn’s Story – All the Way

  Sean and Carly’s Story — All I Want

  Drew and Jordyn’s Story— All My Love

  Finn and Olivia’s Story—All About You

  The Lake Placid Series

  Nick Buchanan and Mallory Denning – Second Chance

  Max Hamilton and Quinn Baker – Give Me A Chance

  Caleb Ryder and Celeste McGuire – Our Chance

  Cole McGuire and Rene Buchanan – Take A Chance

  Zach Monroe and Amber Deacon- Deserve A Chance

  Trevor Miles and Riley Hamilton – Last Chance

  The Fierce Five Series

  Brody Fierce and Aimee Reed - Brody

  Aiden Fierce and Nic Moretti- Aiden

  Love Collection

  Vin Steele and Piper Fielding – Secret Love

  Jared Hawk and Shelby McDonald – True Love

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  Fierce—The Restaurant—where there is more than food heating up the kitchen.

  Aiden Fierce is the cockiest of the Fierce Five, and with reason. He has culinary talent like no one has ever seen. Skill that many work their whole lives to achieve and can’t even skim the surface. But with cockiness comes trouble. Comes expectations so high that they threaten to crumble down the mountain before he can reach his peak.

  Nic Moretti knows about family pressure. She knows about trying to hold it all together and what it means to fail. Guilt—that’s what failure feels like. The charred smell that remained after her family business burned to the ground. A sense of loyalty and responsibility is the only thing she can focus on, pushing all her own dreams aside until…Aiden Fierce enters her life.

  Chi si volta, e chi si gira, sempre a casa va finire. –Italian saying.

  Translation: No matter where you go or turn, you will always end up at home.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  High Expectations

  More Nervous

  Most Familiar

  Heating Her Up

  The Hard Part

  Take the Victory

  Definitely Weird

  Her Name

  Something I Want

  All in the Kiss

  Nothing Suspicious

  Here We Are

  Thing for Older Men

  Kind of Cozy

  Understood Him

  That Easy

  The Truth

  Not About Money

  All the Nerves

  Something Special

  Your Dream

  Felt the Same

  Shield of Secrecy

  My Intent

  Little Incident

  Make Excuses

  Never Survive

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The alarm clock buzzed loudly throughout the room, sounding like a bullhorn going off, though the volume was only set at two.

  Aiden Fierce pried his tired eyes open, slapped around until he found the right button, then looked at the flashing red numbers lighting up the room: 3:00 a.m.

  He was driven.

  He was determined.

  He was nuts.

  None of his other classmates were getting up at the crack of butt-ugly dawn. And he’d bet none of his professors were either.

  But he was in Long Island at the Culinary Institute of America and he was taking advantage of this opportunity.

  It didn’t matter that it was demoralizing he wasn’t the head of his class like he felt he should be. That he wasn’t a standout here like back home. Or that he had so much more to learn than he’d ever imagined.

  All that mattered was that he was going to prove himself. He wasn’t going to be looked at like the Southern boy whose parents owned and operated a pub. A guy who’d never make more of himself than frying up burgers and wings.

  Nope. He and his siblings—the Fierce Five as they were dubbed—were going to transform the pub their parents had started into the hot spot of Charlotte. They were going to put Fierce on the map. And it was going to start with him. The food.

  Just because things weren’t going as smoothly as he’d thought—hoped—didn’t mean he was going to let his family down. Just meant he had to work harder.

  The five of them had made this plan. They all picked a path that suited their skill levels and personalities, and they were ready to do their part. They were going to give their parents the retirement they deserved.

  Did he miss his three brothers and his sister? Absolutely. Like his soul was ripped from his body. In some ways, it felt exactly like that.

  Quintuplets. Never separated at all. Now they were all on their own, though he was the farthest away. They talked when their schedules allowed, but it wasn’t enough. It never could be. It was as if his heart was missing a few beats almost daily.

  But it’d only been a few months and it would get better, his mother assured him. She’d never been wrong before and he hoped she wasn’t this time.

  He pushed the thoughts of family aside and crawled out of bed, then made his way to the shower. Time to get to work.

  He didn’t need the money. He needed the experience. He felt he was behind the eight ball and he wasn’t going to continue to let that happen. Instead, he’d sought out the best he could find in New York and bartered free labor for mentoring. So far he was on his second place. A local bakery. They started baking at three every morning, but told him to be in at four. Lucky him for the extra hour of sleep.

  At the end of his three-hour shift, he went back to his room and crashed face down on the bed, thrilled his classes wouldn’t start for another two hours.

  When he finally made it to class—fifteen minutes early and not even the first one there, but at least not the last—he took his seat and waited for the instructor to arrive. Finals were being handed back early. Last day of class and then they were on their way for the holiday break.

  He’d prepared and recreated his dish so many times he could do it in his sleep. Since he’d been dreaming of it for weeks, he practically had. He was banking on an A.

  He had this.

  He was going to move into that top spot before his first full year was over. He knew it!

  When his paper was placed in front of him on the desk, all he saw was a note to go to the back page. He looked around the room and saw everyone’s grades were on the front.

  Flipping to the back he didn’t see a
grade but another note. One that said, “Forged/Copy, see me after class.”

  He started to sweat. No way this was happening. His recipe was original. Everything was. No one had access to it. No one.

  Now what? He couldn’t fail this class. He couldn’t fail period. But worse yet, with the strict rules on cheating, he could be expelled.

  What would he tell his family? He couldn’t let them down.

  He couldn’t be the one to crush the dreams of making Fierce what it was destined to be.

  High Expectations

  Twelve Years Later

  “Really, Shawn?” Aiden snarled. He wasn’t known to lose his temper in the kitchen, or in life in general. Not unless it was major…and this to him was sort of major. His kitchen and his staff were everything, but he still only curled his lip rather than shouting.

  Something had to hit Aiden hard for him to slip up and show even that much emotion, though. Normally his staff knew his passion was mixed in with high expectations and they performed to his level, never wanting to receive anything other than his praise.

  Yes, he was cocky, and he didn’t care. He’d worked hard for it. He earned it.

  But now, right now, there was no controlling his frustration that someone was letting him down. That someone wasn’t living up to his standards, or at least his requirements.

  “I’m sorry, Aiden. I love it here. You know I do.” Shawn held Aiden’s brown-eyed stare. He’d taught them all to look him in the eye. He didn’t care if they were right, wrong, scared, or nervous, eye contact was always the best way to show confidence—forced or not. But even with the eye contact, Shawn was shuffling his feet around.

  “You aren’t even giving me any notice,” Aiden said, the heat rising up his neck. Shawn was good. One of his better line cooks. Fast, efficient, and driven to learn as much as he could. He’d had high hopes of moving Shawn from the pub to the restaurant soon. This loss was going to hurt bad, but worse yet were the shifts he had to fill on such short notice.

  “I’m giving you three days,” Shawn said, quieter now.

  “Again, really? Two weeks minimum is what I’ve always required. You know that.”

  Shawn took a deep breath. “I know. I know we make more here than anywhere else and there are requirements and expectations. But I don’t have a choice.”

  Aiden sighed and tried to gather himself. He walked forward and shut his office door, even though there wasn’t anyone else around in the kitchen this early, then turned and said, “Have a seat and tell me about this choice you don’t have.”

  Shawn sat in the chair opposite Aiden’s desk, where he planted himself after he’d shut the door. A glance at his computer didn’t help his mood any—where he was planning this weekend’s specials and had hoped to get Shawn’s input when he came in. That was out of the question now.

  “You know Lauren is home on leave. She has to go back on Sunday.”

  Lauren was Shawn’s girlfriend, who served in the Army. A nice girl, from the few times Aiden had seen her around.

  “Yeah. I gave you last week off to be with her too. That was a last-minute request I accommodated.”

  “And I really appreciated it. Lauren did too. But we were talking…and we don’t want to be away from each other again.” Shawn inhaled a huge breath, looking like his chest was going to explode, then rushed out with, “We’re getting married on Saturday and I’m leaving with her.”

  Aiden stopped the roll from escaping his eyes…barely. Love. That’s what this was about? Talk about bat-shit crazy. “How long have you two been dating?”

  “A year,” Shawn said. “But I’ve known her a long time. We went to school together.”

  “How old are you?” Aiden asked, not thinking Shawn was even close to twenty-five.

  “Twenty-two,” Shawn said, lifting his whisker-free face higher.

  “You’re a baby,” Aiden said before he could stop himself.

  “I’m really sorry, Aiden, but I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to follow my heart. Haven’t you ever just wanted to do that?”

  Aiden ground his teeth. “It’s not about me. It’s about you. It’s about Fierce. Look, I’m sorry if I overreacted. I’m sorry if you think I’m not happy for you. It’s sudden, but I get it. I just wish I had more notice.”

  “I know, I know. I was afraid to tell you. I look up to you so much and I really didn’t want to let you down. But I need to do this.”

  Aiden grudgingly stood up and reached his hand out to Shawn’s. He could see there was no use wasting his breath trying to convince Shawn otherwise. “I wish you luck. I really do. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Do you mean that?” Shawn asked, a little wide-eyed.

  “Yeah.” Aiden pulled his business card out of a drawer, then flipped it over and wrote on the back of it. “My cell is on the back. If you need help finding a job, or a reference, let me know where you end up living. I know a lot of people and I’ll do what I can for you.”

  Shawn took the card and then pumped Aiden’s hand fast and furious. “Can I have a hug?”

  “No,” Aiden said, laughing. “Get out of here before I get angry. And Shawn,” he said when the door was opened, “good luck.”

  “I don’t need luck. I’m in love.”

  This time Aiden rolled his eyes. Love, yeah right. He’d take luck any day over that.

  ***

  “What has you looking so grouchy?” his brother Brody asked him when he walked into the upstairs conference room an hour later for their weekly meeting. Aiden had come in early today hoping to get some work done, before Shawn showed up unannounced hours before his shift. Instead, Aiden spent the past thirty minutes looking through old resumes.

  “I only want to say it once, so let’s wait until everyone gets here.”

  The two of them sat there quietly for ten minutes, Brody grinning at him, like Brody always did when he knew something was bothering one of his brothers and was trying to get under their skin.

  Brody, as the oldest—by all of five minutes over Aiden—was looked to as the leader. A title that Aiden was glad someone else in the family inherited. He had his hands full running the restaurant when he’d much rather just be in there cooking and not worrying about the little things…like staffing.

  Mason and Ella walked in together, Cade rushing in at exactly ten like he always did. That was actually early for him.

  “Now that we’re all here…” Ella started. Ella always started all the meetings. She ran the numbers end of the business, the personnel end from a higher level too…and what Aiden and his brothers always said behind Ella’s back was that she ran them too. “Anything we need to focus on today other than the normal around-the-room reporting?”

  No one said anything and Aiden wasn’t going to either. It wasn’t that big of a deal for the group as a whole. His problem was solely his problem and responsibility.

  “All right then,” Ella continued on. “Revenue is nice and steady in the bar, restaurant, and brewery. Here are the reports.” She passed them around the room. He’d look his over in more depth later today. Ella was always thorough and he wished he had an ounce of that trait outside of his culinary skills. “Cade, here is your budget for the upcoming events on the docket. Let me know if it’s too much or too little, and we’ll negotiate.”

  Cade picked it up and looked it over, never batting an eye. At one point in time they all argued over whether Ella had the right to give them budgets, but then realized, she really did. She was the only one with her finger on every pulse and they trusted her judgment. Aiden knew he sure the hell didn’t want to deal with that, either.

  “That’s all I’ve got for the moment. Who wants to go next?”

  “I think Aiden should go next,” Brody said. “He’s sitting over there percolating like leftover chili on an already upset stomach.”

  Aiden flipped a single digit at his brother, which only resulted in a laugh. After the year Brody had, Aiden was hard pressed to be annoyed over Bro
dy’s little digs. He was just glad Brody was back to the brother he’d always known and loved.

  “Fine,” Aiden said. “I didn’t have anything to report until Shawn showed up early this morning. He gave me his notice.”

  “Ouch,” Mason said. Mason and he were the closest to each other in the group, and he knew he’d get sympathy from that end. “Now we know why your eye is twitching and you’re fidgeting in your chair. You know, if you ever let off a little steam then you wouldn’t look like you’re having a stroke when you’re annoyed.” So much for Mason always being in his corner.

  “I’ll be happy to help place ads and sort through resumes for you, Aiden,” Ella said, obviously trying not to laugh.

  “I’d appreciate that,” he said, ignoring them as a whole.

  “You’ve got two weeks to find someone. People are knocking down the door to work with you,” Cade said. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Aiden snorted. “Nope. He’s done on Friday.”

  “Why?” Ella said. “Two weeks—that’s what we expect.”

  “Expecting and getting are two different things,” Brody said. “In this business, Aiden and I know what it’s like. It’s not the same as working in an office, Ella.”

  Brody was the last person he’d expected to back him up. “Thanks.”

  “No thanks needed, but now I know to keep away from you. If I thought you looked pissy before, it’s only going to get worse. Remember the last time he had to interview?” Brody asked everyone else in the room.

  “I hid for those two weeks,” Cade said, “and relied on feedback. I think you all exaggerated, but I didn’t want to be around to find out if it was true.”

  “Come on, guys,” Mason said. “He’s not that bad. He just has high expectations.”

  “We all do,” Brody said, “but we don’t all snarl during the process. Of course, I appreciated all the food he was mass producing to work off steam.”