But he just keeps going with this torturous, slow pace for minutes that feel like hours, until he finally breaks free.

“Was the cherry that bad?” I whisper, my head swimming in a heady fog.

His golden eyes burn with heat as he smiles at me. “Actually, I think you’ve made me a huge fan of all things cherry.” With a deep—shaky, I note—exhale, he eases himself off the rock and holds out his hand. “Come on. Don’t want to get you into trouble on your first day.”

Chapter 7

 

NOW

“How was it?” Christa settles onto the bar stool beside me, a stack of paperwork within her grasp.

“Delectable, as usual.” I’ve never had a bad meal at Christa’s restaurant, and I’ve eaten here enough times that odds say I should have had at least one overcooked steak or crusty pasta. I shove aside my dirty dishes, the small pool of red meat juices unappealing now that my stomach is stretching the seams of my dress. “You done for the night?”

“Just need to finalize this kitchen order, if I can translate Ian’s notes.” She shakes her head as her finger drags along the margin. “The man is forty-eight years old. It’s time he learned how to spell. I mean, seriously . . . green peepers? Baycan?”

I lean over to read off the supply list that the kitchen manager pulled together. “Whatever you do, don’t forget to order the chivs and sore kreem. Can’t have the baked potato without the chivs and sore kreem.”

She sighs, accepting the club soda that Sam the bartender swoops in to set in front of her. “I gave two of my managers the weekend off and now I have no bar manager, so I’m basically chained to this place. I may as well sleep here.” She says that like it’s a punishment, but I know Christa—bossing people around is the fuel to her engine.

“I guess I have the condo to myself, then.” Ashley took the five o’clock train to her parents’, where she’ll be staying until Sunday.

“Can you feed Elton his dinner tomorrow?”

“If he’s nice to me.” I sniff.

“Can you feed him anyway?”

“Fine.”

“He won’t bother you.”

“No, you’re right. He’ll pretend I don’t exist.” That cat has mastered the art of snubbing in a way few humans can match.

“So? What happened today to make you show up here looking like your dog got hit by a car?”

I slide my empty wineglass forward and Sam fills it wordlessly, with an extra heavy hand. I guess my dour face says I need it. I take a greedy gulp, feeding the warm buzz that’s finally beginning to temper my mood. “Besides my dad telling me that I need to earn Tripp the Prick’s respect?”

Her face twists with disgust. “The guy’s a misogynist. By definition, he’s incapable of respecting a woman. How are you supposed to do that?”

“Well, probably not by telling him to shove his golf stick up his ass,” I mutter. The dick called at twelve fifteen—as predicted—and was momentarily speechless when I interrupted my lunch meeting at The Port Room to answer the call.

It started out well enough. He declared confidently that all necessary permit approvals for the Marquee would be in our hands by Monday, latest. I swallowed my pride and commended him for a job well done, and then requested that he send me the revised timelines and budgets by Monday, noon. That’s when he had the nerve to flat-out refuse to request that amount of work of his team on a Friday afternoon, especially when the work would no doubt bleed into the summer weekend. Oddly enough, for a man who doesn’t care to win my approval, he certainly cares about theirs.

So I snapped, in the most unprofessional way.

Frankly, it’s nothing my father wouldn’t have demanded, and probably not in terms any nicer, but for some reason I feel like I’m going to hear about it.

“He deserved it. Your dad should fire him.” Christa clinks her glass against mine. “What about Kyle Miller?” Her eyebrows rise in question. “Did you have a chance to talk to security about him?”

I take a big mouthful. “Kyle is security. And he’s now Kyle Stewart.”

Christa’s blue eyes are bulging by the time I’m done explaining today’s run-in.

“Kyle is in security?” she says, her voice dripping with disbelief. “Do they give those guards guns?”

“No.”

“Tasers?”

“No.”

“I guess he can’t cause too many problems, then,” she murmurs with grim satisfaction.

“Can we please focus on how he didn’t even remember my name?” Even admitting it to Christa is embarrassing. “I mean, I could maybe understand Penny or Pepper. But Sarah?”

She shrugs through a sip of her drink. “He was, like, sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“Fine. Seventeen. And he’s a guy. And it was one summer, thirteen years ago,” she rationalizes. “It happens.”

I give her a flat look.

“Fine. You’re right. Kyle should at the very least remember your name,” she concedes reluctantly. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

“Exactly. So then it’s impossible, isn’t it? That he’d forget me completely?”

Because, even after all these years, with college and boyfriends, and my career and my engagement to David, Kyle Miller has always been a sliver in my heart, a shadow in my thoughts. A lingering “what if” that I have never been able to truly shake.

“I’d say so, given you guys got fired from Wawa together,” Christa mutters. “Plus that whole thing with Eric ending up in the hospital.”

“Exactly! So . . . Sarah?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got into drugs. Like, heavy stuff. Maybe he’s a raging crack addict,” Christa offers through a draw of her soda.

I let out a derisive snort. “Yeah, I don’t think so.” I just don’t see Kyle—the version I knew, anyway—touching that stuff.

“Okay, fine. Head injury?”

“That made him lose his memory of that entire summer? It’d have to be a serious head injury. I don’t think so. He seemed . . . perfect.”

I feel Christa’s hawkish gaze on me as I sip my wine and mull over the possibilities.

“So what if he doesn’t remember you?” she finally says. “You were always too good for him. You’re smart and beautiful and ambitious. Your family is corporate royalty. You’re up here.” Her arm stretches above us, as high as she can go. “He’s down here.” She grinds her toe into the hardwood floor, like she’s squashing a bug. “He knew it back then, too. And now look at you both. You’re going to be running the world one day and he’s basically a mall cop.”

I roll my eyes. “That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

“But that’s my point! Why would you want to be? He disappeared and never called you! Why give that jerk another second’s thought?” Her face twists with a look of disgust at the very idea.

“I don’t know. Maybe I need closure?” I toy with the cocktail list, unable to summon the same level of anger. “At least he seems to have turned out okay. He has a decent job.”