Ricochet - Dallas Thorne

She built her restaurant on precision. He built his on instinct. Now they share a kitchen - and neither one is willing to leave.

Margaux Delacroix doesn't make mistakes. Classically trained at the Institut Bocuse in Lyon, she turned a small Austin tasting-menu concept into one of the city's most talked-about restaurants. Every plate was architecture. Every service was flawless. Then her business partner emptied the accounts and disappeared, and Margaux lost everything - the restaurant, the money, and the belief that control could protect her from anything.

Colt Brannon doesn't follow rules. A self-taught pitmaster from Lockhart, Texas, he turned a sixty-seat barbecue joint into a cult-favorite with fourteen-hour brisket, loud music, and a kitchen that ran on chaos and instinct. Then someone set fire to it. The kitchen is gone. The crew scattered. And the only thing Colt has left is a debt to his brother he can't repay.

When a too-good-to-refuse lease throws them into the same warehouse kitchen, they have sixty days to open a restaurant together - or lose the only chance either of them has left. The concept: two menus, one pass, one service. French precision on one side. Tex-Mex fire on the other. Her silence against his noise. Her discipline against his recklessness.

They call it Ricochet.

But sharing a kitchen means sharing a pass, sharing a crew, sharing a hundred small decisions every night that force two people who can't stand each other into something dangerously close to trust. Margaux can't stop watching the way Colt moves at the grill - confident, reckless, exactly right. Colt can't stop pushing past the walls she built to keep everyone out. And when Margaux's ex-partner resurfaces with a lawsuit designed to destroy them, the only way to save the restaurant is to stop fighting each other and start fighting together.

Ricochet is a sharp, sensory enemies-to-lovers romance set in the high-pressure world of professional kitchens. It is a story about two people who were never supposed to work - and a kitchen that doesn't care what's supposed to happen.