Page 1 of The Spy Who Ghosted Me

Sabrina

“I’D HOPED HE WAS DEAD,” I whispered while steeling myself not to turn around and look at him. The him who I’d almost convinced myself never existed, as though I’d imagined the best two months of my life in a summer apprenticeship three years ago at a pastry school in France under the tutelage of one of the world’s greatest chefs.

“Did you just say you wanted someone dead?” my best friend and cousin, Mia, questioned me as we strolled toward our airport gate during the hustle and bustle of a chaotic Friday, trailing our carry-on bags behind us. It was as if the freshly brewed coffee and jet fuel smell lingering in the air was pumping through the veins of our fellow travelers as they rushed through the terminal.

“Please forget I said anything,” I begged. The last thing I needed today was for Mia to make a scene. Not that she normally would—she knew I hated drama of any sort. But to Mia, the ghost from my recent past showing up out of nowhere might be worth making a scene. Especially since until this moment, I’d never been able to give her actual proof he existed. The man was a mystery.

The strangest things used to happen when I was with him. For one, he didn’t like to be photographed, which was odd, seeing as he might be one of the best-looking men on the planet. Not that it mattered. My phone glitched every time I snapped a picture of him and tried to send it to Mia for proof of his existence. Once, it totally shut down and I lost several photos in my camera roll. Beautiful Man and I would laugh about it, and he’d just tell me to live in the moment and let our memories, not photos, be our treasure. But the more I thought about it over the past three years, the more it supported the theory that he’d only been a figment of my imagination, brought on by what I could only guess were hallucinogens in French flour.

Yet ... I was sure that was him standing in the long line at Starbucks. Either that, or I was hallucinating due to the stress of my baby sister’s wedding, the reason Mia and I were on our way to Tennessee. Lexi, my only sibling, loved all the drama and was proudly in her Bridezilla era. She even had a T-shirt boasting the title: Bridezilla, beautiful but terrifying. Never had truer words been spoken.

Mia strung her arm through mine as we did our best to avoid our fellow travelers at the crowded Salt Lake City International Airport. We were living off adrenaline and caffeine, seeing as we had a seven a.m. flight and we lived a good hour away in Park City, the home of our catering company, A Little Sugar and Spice. “What’s going on, Sabrina? And who do you want dead? I’m up for the challenge,” she teased.

Despite feeling like vomiting, I still giggled. I loved that she always had my back, even if it meant assassination attempts or attending what I could only describe lovingly as the insane asylum, otherwise known as a family event. As cousin of Bridezilla, she could have faked an illness. I didn’t have that luxury.

Against my better judgment, I paused and slightly craned my neck to see if he was still in line. Maybe if Mia saw him too, I could put to rest the question of his existence and prove I wasn’t crazy.

Sure enough, there he was, standing powerfully confident in a blue dress shirt that matched his eyes and hid the most delicious muscles you would ever see. We are talking carved-out lines for days. But it was more than his ridiculous good looks and strong, stubbled jawline that drew you in. There was always an aura of purpose surrounding him, as if at a moment’s notice he could take on the world. Everyone around him seemed to pale in comparison, even the gorgeous pilot behind him who had some major Chris Hemsworth vibes going for him. There was just something about ... Cash Denton. Even now, when I hated him, my stomach erupted in butterflies just from looking at him.

“Don’t point or say anything,” I pleaded with Mia before whispering, “See the man standing in line at Starbucks with the dark Ivy League haircut?”

“The guy in front of the pilot?” Mia asked.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “That’s Cash.”

Mia’s gorgeous brown eyes tripled in size. “Cash as in France Cash? The man who ghosted you?”

“Shhh. Yes.” I turned back around and dragged Mia down the terminal with me, silently begging her not to try assassinating anyone. The TSA seemed to frown on that, and the last thing I needed was to see Cash—even a dead Cash. Although, seeing his corpse might have given me some satisfaction and closure.

Mia reluctantly followed me, looking back often. “Oh, good heavens, dear child. No wonder you wore black and listened to Paramore on repeat for weeks on end when you got back from France.” She sounded more like our nana Rose and exhibited more of our Southern roots than usual. Something about going back home always seemed to bring out our accents in full force. To our family’s chagrin, once we ventured out West several years ago to start our own catering business in Park City, we weren’t as “Southern” as they would like us to be. Not exactly sure what that meant. We still cheered for the Tennessee Titans and Nashville Predators. And Mia would fight anyone who said Disneyland was better than Dollywood, even though we both secretly agreed that Disneyland was superior.

But Mia wasn’t wrong about me mourning Cash—I’d mourned him hard-core. However, now that I had confirmation that he’d truly ghosted me and not died some tragic death in a foreign country, I felt hot shame. Initially, I’d tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was ludicrous, I know, but when the man you love vanishes without a trace, it does things to you. And when I say vanish, I’m talking no ringing at all when I called his phone. Not to mention that when I went to check on him, worried something horrific had happened to him, the owner of the flat he’d been living in told me he’d never heard of Cash. It made my brain go to crazy places, like calling every hospital in Bordeaux to see if he was a patient. It did me no good, seeing as my French is mostly limited to pastry ingredients. And the whole patient confidentiality thing put a big damper on my search.

“I just can’t believe he’s here.” My only consolation was that he hadn’t seen me, and there was very little chance he’d be flying to Nashville. He was a big-time business analyst who traveled the world to exotic places, helping companies maximize their profits. Or at least that’s the story he’d told me. He’d also made me believe he cared about me, which turned out to be another one of his stories. So basically, anything he’d ever said to me was subject to scrutiny. And it’s not like he would acknowledge me, anyway, since he clearly hadn’t cared about me. You don’t tell someone one day that being with them has been the best time of your life and then the next day fall off the face of the earth.

“Well, maybe it’s not him. Perhaps it’s his good twin or doppelgänger.” Mia wagged her perfectly arched brows she prided herself on. “If that’s the case, I’m going back there to get his number. My, my, my, he is fine.”

That was an understatement. It also explained why, when he literally ran into me on the streets of Bordeaux three summers ago and took me in his arms to prevent me from falling, I let him push me up against a brick wall and kiss me. You heard me right—I made out with a stranger. In my defense, he asked first before he kissed me. He was so beautiful and had me so mesmerized, I think I mumbled incoherently, “Yes please, and don’t wake me up when you’re done.” He laughed from deep in his chest before his soft lips moved gently over mine, sending a heat wave from the tip of my head to my toes. It was a rush like no other. The best serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin cocktail around. Oh, did the man know how to accelerate all the chemicals in my body. He was an expert cocktail mixer, and I was completely hooked on him like I was on phonics when I was five.

The next two months had been very much like a dream as Cash introduced me to everything Bordeaux had to offer. To fall in love in one of the most romantic cities in the world was incredible and surreal. But then reality had called, and I had to wake up. I’d done my best to get over him and had almost convinced myself it hadn’t really happened, so to see him now was jarring. Even still, the tiny optimist in me wondered if he’d gotten amnesia and had forgotten me. It was utterly ridiculous.

I couldn’t respond to Mia. All I wanted was to put as much distance as I could between Cash and me, so I hustled toward the gate.

“Sabrina, you know I’m teasing you, right?” Mia kept pace with me despite being in heels. The former beauty pageant queen believed heels were the essential part of every outfit, even though we were both pretty tall at five foot nine.

“I know,” I said, flustered. “I just hoped I would never see him again.” Despite that, I knew exactly what I would say to him; I’d been practicing my tirade for three years now. Of course, when I say tirade, I mean calmly telling him off and then walking away with no drama. But all this showed was that I still thought about him and maybe hadn’t exactly gotten over him. Falling in love in France is some deep magic, and I think some of the cocktails he’d mixed in my body still ran through my veins.

Mia pulled me off to the side by the moving walkway and gave me that look of hers, the one that said she understood all the things I wasn’t saying. “Hey, I know that you really cared for this guy, even if you never said it out loud. I mean, all the black outfits and Paramore songs were big clues,” she laughed.

Ugh. I felt pathetic, even though that wasn’t Mia’s intention. But she spoke the truth about it all. I’d only ever braved saying that I’d met this attractive guy who I was having a lot of fun with. But it went much deeper than that. I hadn’t wanted to say anything until I knew for sure how he felt. And I hadn’t wanted to be the cliché girl who just lost her head in France, even though I obviously had. In my heart, what I really wanted was to come home from that glorious trip and tell everyone about the cutest meet-cute ever that had led me to falling for the love of my life. Because that’s exactly how being with Cash had felt. Thinking about that now made me cringe.

“But I know you.” Mia patted my arm. “Whatever happened between the two of you rocked your world. And you hate that—for good reason,” she added. “No one likes to have their world upended. But now you can right it. You have total confirmation that he’s a jerk and you can move on with your life without ever having to question that again.”

This is why we’d been best friends since she was old enough to talk. “You’re right.” I stood a little taller, acknowledging the truth of it all. He hadn’t died, and he probably didn’t have a case of amnesia. The painful truth was that he just wasn’t into me. Ouch. But this was a good ouch. Like ripping-the-bandage-off-for-good kind of good.

Mia nudged me with her hip. “I bet there will be some very fine man staying at the resort who would love to help nurse your heart back to health.” The resort she spoke of was the Belle Resort that my parents owned deep in the Smoky Mountains. It was where my sister was getting married and would probably vow to start having lots of grandbabies, cementing her position as Mama’s favorite child. Daddy never picked favorites, but if he did, I think it would be me. We were both more level headed than Mama or Lexi.

I smiled and shook my head at Mia. As nice as it sounded to meet someone new, it would mean my mama getting involved. And I made it a point to never let Mama interfere in my love life. As much as I loved her, I knew she didn’t care who I married as long as I got married. Being thirty-two and single in our family was a crime against nature.

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