Suddenly we were standing so close, and then he leaned toward me.I didn’t lean back.I didn’t want to.He looked at me, and then I leaned forward before I could stop myself.We kissed.
It was quick and sudden and achingly real.I’d never been kissed before, and it stole my breath away, sent a flutter through my chest and down into places that were still a secret, waiting to be discovered.For a few seconds, it was just me and him, the world receding into nothingness as the shock of his lips on mine, his tongue meeting mine, turned my insides to liquid heat.
It only lasted a few seconds, but it stayed with me for days.
I heard my mom call my name, and I ran away, my heart beating with the thrill of something new, something secret, something special I knew I would never forget.
“You don’t know what it’s like out there,” Fleur says, looking at me like she doesn’t understand me.“It’s a jungle.If you can get a man, agoodman, as well as agood-lookingman, then you need to hold on to him with both hands.Wrap your legs around his waist and cage him in if you have to.”
“Fleur!”I cry.She can be funny.She’s dramatic, a diva, but funny.She has to laugh though, after all the dating disasters she’s had.
“Does he have a good head of hair?”
I laugh out loud.“He has a beautiful head of hair,” I whisper, and just saying it makes my stomach flip.He also has the sexiest of five o’clock shadows, and I’m always tempted to trace my fingers all over it.
In the restaurant, as we were led to our table, I saw heads turning.It was impossible to miss the way women looked at him; the lingering glances, the quick assessments, the subtle interest that followed him.
But he didn’t seem to notice or care.I saw the way the waitress sidled up to him when he first arrived, but he barely noticed.
He made it all about me.The compliments, that look of admiration in his eyes, the way he gently touched my arm, as we followed the waitress.His touch startled me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.I jolted, not because I didn’t like it, but because I felt the scattering of electric sparks along my arms, and the memories of old came flooding back.
One touch and I was on edge.Too aware of him, and too aware of myself.He was dressed simply but impeccably.Nothing flashy.Just clean lines, black and white.Classic.He’s so striking anyway, but his height makes him even more impossible to ignore.And despite all of that, I don’t think he’s a player at all.Zach was never like that.He was soft, sincere and quietly kind, and somehow, against the odds, being in that family, he’s still grown up to be exactly that.
I set firm boundaries between us.I needed him to know that dinner wasn’t what he hoped it might be, and I think by the end of it he realized.Sort of.He hopes we’ll meet again, and while I find myself thinking about him more than I should, it can’t happen.
There’s no way I can tell him the truth without ruining every memory he has of the past.Every time he tried to be vulnerable, I put up my steel walls.Every time he leaned in emotionally, I stepped back.While he’s still as kind and as caring as ever, I have to stay away.
And yet, I wonder what he’s up to today.
A warm breeze lifts a strand of hair off my neck, sticky with humidity.It’s so hot out here.
“I don’t understand,” Fleur says.“Youdolike him.I saw the number of outfits on your bed.You wanted to impress him.”
I trace a slow circle in the ring of moisture my glass has left behind.“I wanted him to know I was doing okay.”
“He sounds so nice.What is it you haven’t told me?The real reason why you don’t want to give him a chance?”
She’s like a hungry dog with a juicy fat bone.She won’t let go of it.I take a big breath.“The reason I can’t be with him … I didn’t tell you this, but my mother used to be their housekeeper.”
“Their housekeeper?”Fleur asks weakly.Her eyes widen, like they’re about to pop right out of their sockets.“Whaddya mean she was theirhousekeeper?What is he, royalty?”
I take a deep breath.“I don’t know how much you know about the Knight family.”
“What Knight family—” She stops.“The ...Paul Knight?You meanhisfamily?Thosepeople?”
“Those people.”
“Holy smokes.That family!And Zach Knight is one of the heirs to that fortune?”
“I presume so.”
She gives me a cheeky grin.“Seriously, I’ll have him, if you don’t want him.”
I can’t help but smile.“Back then, they lived on a massive, sprawling estate.”
“An estate?Here in New York?”
“In Westchester.You had to see it to believe it.I still think of it sometimes.It was like a magical land in a faraway country.It sounds unbelievable,” I continue, “but it was so long ago.It feels like another time, another world.I don’t know what’s happened to it now, I don’t think they live there anymore, but it had a staff annex where my mom and I lived.”
