In Love Again (9 page)

“Fuck.” It was as clear now in a rainy kitchen in northwestern Connecticut as it was under the French sun twenty years ago. It didn’t help that he could still taste her on his lips. That sweet light scent of lemon and fresh air and…

“Fuck.”

Ben stood up and decided to exhaust his body in an attempt to shut off his maudlin, pathetic mind. The stone wall at the far end of the backyard had been crumbling for the past hundred years. He decided that this particular cold, wet afternoon was the perfect time to remedy a century of slow decay.

Three hours later, his hands were scraped, his back was throbbing, his shoulders were numb, and he’d rebuilt about one linear foot of the wall. He walked down the sloping yard toward the back door, then stopped to turn and look at his accomplishment. It was pretty damned satisfying, that pathetic little architecture of rocks. Mostly because he had managed not to think of Claire Heyworth for three consecutive hours. Scotch would take care of erasing her from the remaining waking hours of the night.

Ben woke up Sunday morning with a headache and an urge to punch himself. What in the hell had he been thinking to treat Claire so abominably? He felt like a third grade boy who kicked the pretty girl right in the shin to let her know he liked her. He tried to envision some happy outcome, some scenario that would let him be friends with her or at least be able to be in the same room with her without wanting to whip her to the floor and crush her against him, beneath him.

The vision felt so real, and then he realized he had been dreaming of her moments before. The images flashed in his mind, the naked body he’d never seen all the way naked, but had imagined easily enough after all the hours of the two of them spread on beaches with her lithe, seventeen-year-old body stretched out next to him in nothing but a turquoise string bikini.

He closed his eyes and reached for his hard cock. He could picture her smiling at him, back when they were both young and free—or when he’d thought she was free. The wind along the Riviera whipping her hair around her face and the golden strands catching in her lips and her eyelashes. He increased the rhythm of his hand, remembering how he’d reached out to put a strand of her silky blond hair back behind her ear, and she’d kissed his palm instead, her eyes drifting shut at the pleasure of contact, as if she’d never been touched. He stroked himself harder, wanting those lips on him now. Wanting those lips against his skin, against his—

He groaned at the bittersweet release, breathing hard a few times, then letting his muscles relax. As his thoughts began to reassemble, Ben reminded himself that the blond, tender, loving, innocent girl on a rocky secluded cove in the Calanques was a figment of his imagination. He wasn’t sure she had ever existed in the past, but he knew for certain she did not exist in the present. She’d been dead and buried for years, replaced by the cool husk of a woman who’d come into his house yesterday.

“What do you mean it was
him
?” Sarah cried.

“Look, Sarah, if you’re going to call me at eight in the morning on a Sunday after a long week at work, I’m bound to be muddled.”

“What? You usually wake up at five every morning. I thought you would have been up for hours by now.”

Claire rolled over and stared at the rainy city morning outside Bronte’s window.

“Maybe it’s the time change.”

“You’ve been in the States for three weeks.”

“Okay, fine. It was the best-worst day of my life.”

Sarah laughed and then shushed Devon in the background when he tried to ask her a question. “Stop it,” she whispered. “I’m talking to Claire.”

“Sarah, just go be with Devon.”

“Are you kidding? I want to hear every detail! I can’t believe you haven’t called me sooner.”

“I’m so sorry. I always feel like I’m running late in the mornings, and then by the time I get home, it’s too late to call you in London. Boppy is so amazing, Sarah. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for introducing us.”

“You don’t think she’s too much of a hard-ass? My father can’t stand her. He always felt like she was looking down her nose at him.”

“Well, I don’t know about any of that. But I like her…confidence.”

“Very diplomatic, Claire.” Sarah laughed.

“Look, she’s my boss. What can I say? I kind of adore her. She doesn’t take anything from anyone.”

“Wow. Listen to you, with a boss.”

“Honestly, if I could work all seven days of the week, I would.” As long as being insulted by Ben Hayek was no longer on the docket.

“Wait. But go back to the client yesterday. The line was crackling. Who was he?”

“It was
him
!” Claire whispered.

“Why are you whispering? You’re alone!” Sarah laughed again, then gasped. “Wait! You mean the hot guy from your summer vacation before you married
Le Bâtard
?”

Claire smiled, loving her sister-in-law’s easy dismissal of her rat of a husband. “Yes. The summer fling.”

“Oh my. How awkward. What was his wife like?”

“Ex…wife,” Claire said softly.

“Ex-wife—” Sarah sounded like she was choking on a sip of something. “How perfect—a man on the rebound—how divine.”

“As you Americans like to say…not so much.”

Sarah took another sip of whatever she was drinking to clear her throat, then continued. “Uh-oh. That bad?”

Claire tried to hold back the tears, but given the fact that she was alone in the small apartment and wouldn’t have to deal with anyone actually seeing her horribly splotchy, tear-stained face, while still getting the sympathy she desperately craved, she began to bawl. “Oh. Sarah. It. Was. So. Awful.”

“Oh, sweet Claire! Don’t cry! I mean, cry your heart out! Was he just the worst? Hideous and jowly and rude? Some awful pushy jerk?”

Claire laughed as the tears flowed down her cheeks. She grabbed a few tissues from the bedside table and began to pat at her face. “Even worse. He looked amazing. I mean, it’s almost criminal that he should still look exactly like he did at nineteen and I look like this.”

“Like what? You look like you did when you were seventeen. You don’t have any wrinkles or freckles or gray hair. It’s as if you were hermetically sealed up there in Wick.”

“Oh, Sar. I’m like a ghost. I look around New York City and everyone is so
alive
. I feel like a shadow, kind of weaving my way invisibly down the sidewalks.”

“Enough. That’s just too depressing for words, and it’s totally not true. Boppy wouldn’t have hired a shadow!”

Claire laughed. “I guess you’re right. At work, I’m starting to feel like I might have something to offer. I feel alive there. I have a desk and Boppy is so—”

“Stop. Enough about Boppy. She’s great and all that, but back to Dr. Perfectly Preserved. Did you know you were going to meet him? Were you prepared?”

“Yes and no. The entire file is under the wife’s name, Alice Pinckney. She’s the only contact and everything is filed under her name. But I did see one of their canceled checks from when they were married. And it had his name on it…”

“And?”

“And I Googled him.”

Sarah burst out laughing. “I love how you say
Google
like a normal person would say
rape
. So, go on.”

“I just figured it was the wife’s project and he wasn’t supposed to be there, so I just put it out of my mind. I was just too stupid to even acknowledge the possibility that of course he might show up at some point—”

“Oh, stop it with the stupid self-insults. I forbid it. Go on—was he so excited to see you? He must have been gobsmacked!”

Claire felt it in her bones, how much she wished he had been happy to see her. How perfect that would have been. How impossible.

“He was gobsmacked all right. He looked like he wanted to smack me right in the gob.”

“I just don’t believe it. What were you wearing?”

It was Claire’s turn to laugh. “Sarah. What does that possibly have to do with anything?”

“Oh, come on! If you were all icy and beautiful, he was probably totally intimidated. Like we all used to be around you.”

Claire felt her heart begin to pound. “What in the world are you talking about?” she whispered.

“Oh, Claire. I guess I’m taking liberties or whatever, and Devon is rolling his eyes, but you must know how much you intimidate everyone with your perfect posture and your carefully chosen words, and I bet the handsome doctor was bowled over.”

Setting aside the larger issue of Claire’s external appearance of cool indifference being the polar opposite of her internal landscape of insecurity and doubt, she tried to imagine if such a thing were even possible. “I don’t know, Sarah. He was so…big…and strong.”

“Oh! How fabulous! He’s all hunky? Tell me every detail.”

Claire snuggled deeper into Bronte’s down pillows and duvet and told Sarah the details as best she could, from their strained first moments to his bitter farewell. She didn’t bother mentioning the kiss. What a travesty that had been.

There were a few seconds of transatlantic silence before Sarah declared, “He’s still in love with you! It’s so obvious. And you were so mean to him!”

“
I
was mean to
him
! Are you off your nut?”

“Well, you have your brother here to corroborate that I probably am—insane, that is—but seriously, how sweet was that of Ben to remember how you liked your tea—
exactly
the way you like it—and the way you described how he gave it to you with that sweet nod and how he was so obviously feeling like he was going out on a limb to let you know that he remembered after all these years, that he has been
thinking
about you
all these years
and then you say something typically…British…like
quite so
or
very well
and then he probably felt like a total jackass for pining for some cold…woman…who never gave him a second thought.”

“Sarah. He was so angry—”

“I bet he was. Like kind of stormy and bossy?”

“Well, yes, I guess, but he was so grumpy—”

“Like he wanted you to stop talking about baseboards and brass hinges and look at him instead?”

Claire’s heart began to pound again. It hadn’t really stopped pounding since that kiss.

Claire stayed quiet.

“Did he touch you?” Sarah asked.

“Well, I mean, we were working on documents for a couple of hours and we were sitting next to each other—”

“Claire?”

“Oh, Sarah, you’re terrible.”

“See? That is exactly what I am talking about. You use these little deflections to avoid having a real conversation. Why do you do that?”

Claire thought she might start crying again. Why did Sarah make everything sound so obvious? For Claire, even the seemingly simple act of retrieving her jacket had been an emotional minefield of Bosnian proportions.

The seconds ticked by. Claire finally gave in. “He kissed me. Quite soundly.”

Sarah actually squealed. For several long seconds. “I knew it! I knew it!”

Claire smiled into her pillow and allowed herself to contemplate the crazy possibility that Ben’s irrational behavior was as much a reaction to his lingering feelings for her as her cool rigidity had been a defense against acknowledging the same about him.

“You have to call him! Right now! Catch him totally off guard,” Sarah instructed. “Tell him how taken aback you were to finally see him after all these years and—did you tell him you are single?”

“Well, no. I think he thinks I am doing this as a little pastime or something. He was quite mean about it, now that you mention it.”

“Of course, because he’s trying to pretend that you’re some mean, cold—” Sarah stopped short. “Hey, wait a minute. What ever happened that summer? How did it end?”

“Oh, you know. It was the end of summer. The invitations had already gone out for Freddy and my wedding in September—”

“Oh my gosh, this all happened a month before you got married?”

“It sounds tawdry when you say it like that. But yes. But no. We were just a couple of kids. It felt innocent somehow.”

“I doubt it felt innocent to him.”

Claire sighed. “Well, I was honest at least. On our last night, I told him I was engaged. I mean, I didn’t tell him how soon I was going to be walking down the aisle, of course.”

“Of course,” Sarah said, her voice sounding dubious. “So you just said
have a nice life
and that was the end of it?”

Claire remembered those exact words. “Well, we both sort of acknowledged it was a one-off kind of thing.”

“Really? Why does it feel so unresolved, then? What do you mean by
sort of acknowledged
?”

“Has anyone ever mentioned you missed a very promising career in the law?” Claire hedged.