Page 8 of Prelude To You

Leaving me to stare after him with unsaid words lingering on my lips. My stomach dropped, my mind raced. There would be no exchange of phone numbers. No more kisses. Confusion and anger welled up in me as I watched him leave. How dare he come in here, claim my soul—and then abandon me with no explanation?

I remembered the store bag and looked inside. I was stunned. It was the French pastry book. This man I didn’t know, and who I just kissed, bought me a five-thousand-dollar book. This stranger who created havoc inside of me only to vanish like mist in a breeze, as if none of it ever happened.

I looked up, hoping to catch a final glimpse of him. As if sensing my gaze, he stopped at the door and looked back. Our eyes met. And for no legitimate reason whatsoever, I brought the handkerchief I still clutched up to my nose and inhaled his scent.

I saw him react. There was the briefest moment when he seemed about to rush back and pick up where we left off. But he didn’t. He turned and left the store, disappearing into the night.

This could not be happening.

My body was still tingling from his kiss. I tried for deep breaths to calm my pounding heart. To no avail. He hadn’t even given me a chance to thank him for the book. And maybe ask him what the hell his problem was.

It was impossible to wrap my head around any of it. And suddenly a new thought came to me. He was married. Yes, that had to be it. He was one of those men who didn’t wear a ring. Deceptively available.

Well, what a wonderful way to round off an already horrible night. The only thing missing was getting hit by a bus. But the night was still young.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a voice called out. It was another store attendant, running up to hand me a black card. She was a mousy woman with the sweetest smile. “Your boyfriend seems to have dropped this,” she said, looking at me with curiosity and wonder. “If you could give it back to him and tell him Penny says hello. I always get his books for him."

“Oh,” I said, my thoughts rambling. “Okay. Thanks, Penny.” I checked the card, but his name wasn’t on it.

“You make such a beautiful couple, and I’m so happy he found someone. For a while there we thought he was going to be a bachelor for life.”

It was hard to keep my composure, and my mind was going a mile a minute. I wanted to ask Penny what my “boyfriend’s” name was, but that would completely blow my cover. She waved a friendly goodbye and was gone before I could utter another word.

So according to Penny, he wasn’t married. Somehow that made it even worse. Being available and still not interested in pursuing a hot affair with the woman he kissed like the world ended tomorrow, and for whom he bought a five-thousand-dollar book.

“You are simply exquisite.”

Yes, he said that, and said it with such sincerity that my insides melted.

I scanned the black card, desperate for some clue to Stranger’s identity. I really just wanted to thank him for the book, I told myself. But the card was an invitation to some auction, written in fancy gold letters. It said his presence at the Belmont Hotel would mean the world to them, blah blah blah. But his name was nowhere to be found.

I remembered something embroidered in a corner of the handkerchief he’d given me. I looked and there it was, an elegant three-letter monogram: R.H.B. I held the handkerchief to my face again and smelled him. I couldn’t help but close my eyes and relive that thrilling kiss.

And damned if it didn’t kill me that the one time I meet someone so goddamn wonderful, he vanishes into thin air.

Not that a fairytale ending would fit the reality called my life. If it did, I’d be a principal dancer in a ballet company and not a freshly-fired pastry chef trudging the wet streets at night. Unable to pay the rent but clutching a five-thousand-dollar book given to her by an imposter who hypnotizes women and makes them fall in lust with him only to toss them aside like yesterday’s trash.

There was no denying that in all of my twenty-five years, no man had ever affected me this way. Not even close. There was simply no other choice but to banish him from my thoughts, even though my lips were still burning from that kiss.

All I wanted to do now was get home. It was just a matter of mentally erasing the last thirty minutes of my life.

3

ROMAN

It was one of those rare occasions when I left the estate and went into town. There was an emergency board meeting, late afternoon, at the Belmont Hotel. Which turned out not to be an emergency after all, and nothing a simple online conference call couldn’t have taken care of, truth be told.

Stockholders were getting nervous about recent developments, and understandably so, but I assured them that all was well and their fortune-making machine was running like a racehorse. How much of my assurance they bought was open to interpretation.

The empire was my father’s legacy, and as I was the firstborn, he’d given me more control over the years. Four weeks ago, I took the reins entirely, all that power cradled in the palm of my hand. It was a grave responsibility, and I took it seriously.

The good sense, discipline and management skills hammered into me at the Swiss prep schools turned out to have a purpose after all, much as I hated the years I spent there. It had all been carefully designed to prepare me for taking over the family business and, eventually, becoming president and chairman of the board.

Over the past few years, I’d become more reclusive by the day. This was my choice. With the world at my fingertips, it became easier and easier to lock the office door behind me and focus solely on building the family empire into something bigger than it already was. My thirty-second birthday was fast approaching, and I had everything most men spent a lifetime pursuing.

And nothing I really wanted.

Which I realized sounded frivolous, coming from someone in my position. Nothing but good business sense had been pummeled into me since my formative years. And the line between what was good for the empire, and what I wanted, had become blurred.

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