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The problem is that Iknowthat dress.

I know it because I bought it in a village market outside Bordeaux twenty-three years ago. Elena wore it the last summer we ever came here. She wore it picking grapes. She wore it dancing barefoot on the veranda.

She wore it the final time we were happy.

Rae stops in the entryway to the kitchen and smiles at me, nervous and lovely. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp from the shower. She fidgets with the strap of the dress.

Fucking hell, she has no idea what she’s wearing.

“I found this in the wardrobe,” she explains. She must see the way I gawk at it. “I hope you don’t mind.”

The coffee cup falls from my fingers and shatters on the tile. I can’t speak. My throat has closed up.

Her eyebrows fly up on her forehead and she takes a cautious step closer. Her bare feet pad across the tile, stepping around the broken cup and the spreading puddle of coffee.

“Lu—er, Mr. Lazarev, are you okay?” She frowns. “You look pale.”

I’m not okay in any way, shape, or form. I’m the polar goddamn opposite of okay.

My dick is so hard it hurts. Every ounce of blood in my body has rushed south, leaving my brain empty and my vision swimming. The dress clings to her hips the same way it clung to Elena’s. The neckline dips the same way. The hem sways thesame goddamn way.

But it’s not Elena wearing it.

It’s Rae.

And somehow, that makes it worse. And better. And so much more confusing than anything I’ve felt in eighteen long, cold years.

I thought the red dress was bad. This, though… this is a disaster.

“I’m fine,” I manage. “Don’t move. There are some sharp shards here.”

I start toward the mess, but Rae beats me there. She grabs a dish towel from the counter and drops to her knees on the terra cotta tile.

“Let me,” she insists. “You made dinner last night. I can clean up some coffee. It’s no trouble.”

I should stop her. Actually, what I should do is rip her off her knees, shove her upstairs, and order that she puts onliterally anything else.But I still can’t move or speak. I can only stand there like a mute statue while she kneels at my feet.

The dress rides up her thighs as she crawls forward to mop up the spill. Soft, pale skin. A glimpse, one tantalizing glimpse, of something white and cotton underneath.

She picks up the larger shards carefully, setting them aside on the towel. Her fingers are delicate and precise. “There,” she sayswith satisfaction, sitting back on her heels. She looks up at me with those big, brown eyes. “I think I got most of it. Do you have a broom somewhere?”

My jaw aches from clenching. “Cupboard,” I rasp out. “Over there.”

She rises gracefully and pads to the cupboard. The dress swirls around her legs. I watch the fabric move and try to calm my pulse before my skyrocketing blood pressure puts me in an early grave.

Get a grip. She’s just a woman in a dress. An old dress at that. It means nothing to her.

But it meanseverythingto me.

Rae finds the broom and dustpan, then sweeps up the remaining fragments with familiar strokes that say this isn’t her first time cleaning up other’s messes.

“You’re staring,” she remarks without looking up.

“Am I?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, you are.” She dumps the shards into the trash and sets the broom aside. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong? You’ve been weird since I came downstairs.”

“No, Ms. Everett. Nothing’s wrong.”