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.