This whole thing was like a dream.
Still, this wasmarriagewe were talking about. I was standing in front of the man I might spend the rest of my life with, and he was practically a stranger.
Not practically: literally. I didn’t know anything about him.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-six,” he offered with a small quirk of his mouth.
He didn’t ask my age. It seemed he’d been given plenty of information about me already. I bet he’d even been forewarned about my tendency to spout awkward, unexpected facts about the history of certain words and languages. But even if he’d been given tips or advice on how to talk to me, how to flirt with me, we seemed to have a chemistry that couldn’t be faked.
“You mentioned you had a sister?” I prompted. “Emzee?”
“Yes. She’s a photographer—Mara Zoric. She works closely with our agency.”
“Oh, of course! I’ve seen her stuff before. Not just in fashion. I think it was National Geographic—the mosaic tombs in Marrakech?”
He looks surprised. “Yes. She was so proud of that assignment.”
I grin. “You’re all so accomplished. Are you the oldest of your siblings?”
Stefan nodded, and told me about his younger brother Luka, who was living the dream of all 25-year-olds by draining his trust fund and getting a little too close to KZM’s models. But, I was assured, he was a smart boy who had an MBA and a good heart. He just had some growing up to do.
As we both warmed to the conversation, my nerves eased, and little tidbits of information started coming back to me.
KZ Modeling was in the news enough that I could recall some of the articles that had been written about the company, its models, and Stefan’s family. Their names were just as likely to appear in the headlines ofBuzzfeedas they were inThe Wall Street Journal.
“And what does your mother do?” I asked, but the moment I did, I remembered what I had read. I also remembered how I’d felt reading it. As if we shared a sort of kinship.
“She died,” Stefan said. “When I was six.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “Mine too. I was two.”
“She was beautiful,” he mused. “She used to paint.”
I smiled. “All I have are photographs. I wish I could remember her.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. At least, in this, we understood each other.
“I noticed your surname has Slavic roots,” I finally said, trying to steer the conversation toward something easier. “Where is your family from, originally?”
“Serbia. But I was born and raised here,” he said. “My grandmother always made the best paštete, but that’s the extent of my ancestral knowledge. Are you a fan of pastries?”
“I adore them,” I admitted. “I’ve always wanted to travel to the Balkans. Mainly to hear the spoken languages. The Cyrillic alphabet is so cool.”
“I’m sure a trip could be arranged,” he said. He slid his hand upward, coming to rest on my spine just below my shoulder blades. “Perhaps in the near future.”
“I’d be amenable to that,” I told him.
He tilted his head. “Amenable.” He smiled. “Not a word I hear often.”
“It’s a great word,” I said. “From the 1590s. A combination of the French wordmener, to lead, and the Latinminare, which meant to drive cattle with shouts. Funny how specific some words are, isn’t it? Who would have imagined that someone would need a word to describe getting cows out of the way?”
Stefan went silent. I couldn’t blame him.
My father was right. Men weren’t interested in smart women—especially ones who babble on about the historic roots of words when they should be flirting and waltzing.
“Ah, there I go again.” I could feel my cheeks burning. “Not to worry though. I don’t always go off on these tangents about words and their meanings…”
