Page 127 of The Tryst

“You’d think we’d have met someplace else. Business school, or through a friend, or a mentor. Or Raven, even. But it was random.”

I set my tumbler down. “Was it though?”

Her brow knits. “What do you mean?”

“Was it random? Or was it kismet? Do you believe in kismet?” I ask, though I doubt she does. Understandably.

“I don’t think so,” she says slowly, a little carefully, like she doesn’t want to rain on my parade. “Do you?”

I shrug both wanting to admit it and not.

“You don’t seem like a kismet kind of guy,” she adds. “You’re Mister Logic and Theories, and you study the world for patterns.”

That is true. “I am that guy,” I say, but as the music shifts to “It Had to Be You,” that kismet feeling from earlier sharpens. As I picture the next few days and weeks and months, I’m pretty sure I’mthis guytoo. I offer her a hand. “Dance with me.”

It’s an order, but she likes orders, so she’s up in no time, heading to the tiny corner of the restaurant with hardwood floors.

“Nick Adams, you dancer, you,” she says with a sexy and sweet smile that I want to kiss off, that Icankiss off.

So I do, savoring the chance to touch her in public, in private, wherever and whenever we want at last.

No more hiding. No more need for secret trysts on dead-end streets.

As I brush my lips to hers, she shudders in my arms, pressing against me. I want her even more when she does that, so I break the kiss. “Don’t want this to turn into an R-rated show,” I say as we sway the slightest bit, slow dancing to the swoony song.

“That’s for later.”

“Absolutely. But for now,” I say, running my fingers along her hair, returning to a thought that’s got a hold of me in this moment, “I asked about kismet because I was thinking about fate and meeting you in the first place in Miami. Then about moving to New York. Then running into you.”

“And you think meeting me in Miami was kismet?” she asks, her lips curving up in obvious delight as well as curiosity.

“At first I thought it was a coincidence, but I think maybe meeting you was meant to be after all.”

“Yeah?” Her smile deepens, and that’s a sign to keep going.

“I do,” I say, and I feel uncorked. Completely free. It’s a fantastic feeling, so I give in to it completely.

“Why now?”

“Because here we are. Like this. First Miami, then New York,” I say, even more caught up in her. “I don’t mean I believe in kismet for everything. But I believe it now…for you.”

Her smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Because it’s all for me. “Are you a closet romantic?”

“Have I hidden it before?”

She lets go of my shoulder, holds up her hand to show a smidge of space between her thumb and forefinger. “You’ve never struck me that way.”

I lift my face to the ceiling where the music and lyrics drift from the speakers.I wandered around, and I finally found…the somebody who…could make me be true.“I took you to a romantic restaurant. I’m slow dancing with you. I’m telling you I believe you and I aren’t a coincidence, and you think I’mnotromantic?”

“Okay, maybe a little romantic,” she says, teasing me again.

“Good,” I say, then I inch back, wanting to look her in the eyes. Wanting her to see all of me as I say the next thing. “Because I love you, Layla. I just do. Maybe it’s soon, maybe it’s madness, maybe that makes me a total romantic—”

She shuts me up with a kiss, and it’s the most emotional kiss in the whole entire world. I can feel her love in the way she kisses, can hear it in her soft breath, can sense it in her hands on my face.

It’s there whether she says it or not.

But when she breaks the kiss, she says, “It’s not too soon. I love you too.”

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