Page 27

That gets her to glance at me.

The terrace light catches the shine in her eyes. She’s furious about that too, I can tell. Furious that they made her feel it,furious that I saw it. Furious, perhaps, that I am standing here at all after seven months of being nowhere.

I understand fury. It has always been one of my better languages.

The same mouth I kissed open in the dark. The same dark lashes. The same softness that does not diminish her face but gives it warmth, gives it life. A woman like her is dangerous to a man like me.

“I had wondered,” I say, “what happened to you.”

That gets her attention back. She turns her head and stares at me fully this time, something between shock and caution moving over her face.

I continue before she can answer with something false. “You vanished.”

A beat passes.

Then two.

“I didn’t vanish,” she says finally. “I got off a plane.”

The line should amuse me.

Instead, I feel my mouth tighten.

“Yes,” I say. “Without leaving a name. A number. Anything useful.”

She lets out another laugh, softer this time and with no real humor in it. “Useful to who?”

“To me.” The words are out before I decide whether I should say them.

She goes still. Rain whispers over stone somewhere beyond the terrace. Inside, I can hear the dull murmur of dinner finally settling into motion. The music has started again. Strings, soft through the glass.

Her gaze stays on mine. “Why?” she asks.

A very simple question. And an irritating one.

Because you got under my skin in the span of one flight.

Because I spent weeks thinking about your mouth.

Because I have fucked other women since you and remembered you anyway.

Because there are not many things in this world I fail to find when I decide I want them, and the fact that I could not find you offended me more than I care to admit.

I say none of that. Instead I tell her a smaller truth.

“Because I wanted to see you again.”

She looks down at the binder in her hands. Not coy, just overwhelmed, perhaps. Or trying to steady herself. The wind lifts a strand of her hair and pushes it across her cheek. Before I can think better of it, I reach out and tuck it back.

She freezes, and so do I.

The contact is nothing. Barely there. My knuckles brushing warm skin. A simple gesture. And yet the effect is immediate. Her breath catches. My body remembers her with humiliating speed.

I drop my hand.

Too late, of course. We are both already feeling it.

“I shouldn’t be out here with you,” she says.