Page 59 of Every Rose

“Dropped your title again, I see,” she said.

He was completely unrepentant. “Americans are so impressed by a title. Next to being a film star, it’s the best way to get a good table.”

“You are shameless.”

“And you are as beautiful as I remember.”

A bottle of champagne appeared. Dom, probably vintage. “Are we celebrating?” she asked as the sommelier poured them each a glass of the golden, bubbling wine.

“Seeing you again is definitely cause for celebration.”

He was exactly the same, she realized as they began to chat. Easily, because they’d always been easy around each other. He was still the slightly round-cheeked but very attractive man. Like a devilish cherub, she’d always thought. He was dressed, as was his habit on business, in a handmade Savile Row suit, this one a camel color. Like hers, his shoes were Prada.

He twinkled engagingly at her. “Tell me everything,” he said.

No. No. She wasn’t going to play that game. “Why did you send me flowers and invite me to lunch?”

He sighed and settled back in his chair. A waiter discretely placed plates of smoked salmon in front of them. The fish so thin you could see the plate beneath. When he’d withdrawn, Peter said, “It always takes me a day or two to adjust to how direct Americans are.”

“Saves time and misunderstandings,” she said, sticking a fork into her salmon.

“I ordered ahead. But if you prefer to peruse a menu, it’s easily done.”

“No. This is fine.”

He remembered how much she liked smoked salmon. She bet this meal was going to be amazing.

“Why did I get hold of you again?” He put down his wine and leaned closer to her. “The simple truth is that I haven’t been able to forget you.”

Once more she felt that odd sensation, like a brush of silk against her ankles, a dash of head spinning as though she were waltzing. “You didn’t try very hard to keep me.” Maybe that sounded as though she cared more than she wished to, or that he’d broken her heart. But she found she didn’t want to be coy or play games any more than she wanted him to. She wanted to deal plainly, talk openly.

“Were you always this blunt?”

“Probably not.” She’d fallen into the habit of speaking whatever she thought to Matt and knowing he spoke to her the same way.

“I regret not keeping in touch very much.” He ate a bit of his salmon and so did she. Oh, and she might have had a small orgasm in her mouth from the burst of flavor. The salmon was served with some kind of fancy cream and, well, she had no idea what they’d done to the salmon but it was amazing. “This will sound arrogant, I suppose. But I want to be completely honest with you. I enjoyed our time together more than I realized at the time. I did want to continue, but the logistics were a nightmare. We live on different continents, in opposite time zones, you have a career, community, family here. As I do in England. How could I ask you to give all that up?”

It occurred to her that it would have been her decision to give those things up for him or not. But he hadn’t given her the option. “I suppose it was easier to let things fizzle out.”

Which they did pretty rapidly once he stopped putting any effort into the long-distance relationship. One phone call stuck in her mind. It was toward the end and she’d suggested they both take a week’s vacation and meet somewhere. She’d suggested the Caribbean, not that it was exactly half way between them, but it would have been a sort of compromise. He’d waffled and finally said he couldn’t find the time, but he’d sounded odd and she concluded he had another interest. “I got the feeling you were seeing someone else.”

“Damn it, Rose. You see too much. It’s absolutely uncanny.”

“So you were dating someone.”

“I was. A lovely woman in her way. And she lives in London which made things much easier.” He paused and sighed, as though what he was about to say was bad news. “But she wasn’t you. I don’t know. You never make a scene, you don’t ever ask the question a man dreads most, ‘does this look good on me?’” She had to grin at his terrible falsetto impersonation of a woman having a wardrobe dilemma. “You say the right things, can converse on any subject. You’re beautiful, desirable, and frankly, I was a fool to let you go.”

The salmon had been succeeded by tiny portions of something on tiny squares of something else that seemed too pretty to eat. Besides, it was difficult to concentrate on food while her stomach was full of extremely acrobatic butterflies.

She might be an educated professional too old to be a romantic fool, but she’d literally dreamed of this moment. Sometimes, to her shame, she’d even been awake when she’d dreamed that Peter told her she was the most amazing woman in the world and he wanted her to be his forever.

Whoa there, Nellie, he hadn’t said anything like that. Maybe all he wanted was to get her back into bed now that he was in the neighborhood. So, she said, “I think so too.”

He chuckled. “I forgot to mention your sense of humor.”

She had a moment, a flash of knowledge, where she absolutely knew he’d written a pro and con list about her.

“What are my negatives?” she asked, going with her instinct.

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