Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Her signature.
Her presence.
Her life.
Gratitude washes over me, along with joy. I can’t stop looking at her. And I don’t have to. I don’t have to hide a goddamn thing anymore.
Confidently, with a wonderful kind of certainty, I walk over to her, curl a hand over the daisy on her left shoulder, then brush a kiss to her soft cheek as I rub my thumb along the petals. “You are maddeningly gorgeous and all mine.”
She leans into my hand, seeking me out. Like she always has. She’s been so bold all along, and I’m so damn grateful for who she is and how she is.
After a few seconds we separate, and she says, “I am yours, so take me out.”
“Always,” I say, then set a hand on her back and leave the building with her, like we did months ago in Miami, like we’ll do now here in New York.
I can picture it perfectly. And I wonder if all my theories about coincidence are wrong.
I take her to a new restaurant in the Village. Finn told me about The Standards on Christopher Street, but there’s nothing standard about the menu. The meal is sumptuous, a butternut squash ravioli with white wine sauce for her and Chilean sea bass for me.
Old standards play overhead. Yeah, I like them. Nobody has a thing on Frank and Ella, or Harry Connick Jr. for that matter.
As we dine and drink, our conversation meanders through friends and moments, then she tells me about her business partner, Geeta, how she met her in a thrift shop when they both reached for the same purple blouse.
“It’s odd because we don’t have the same taste. She’s more punk rock,” Layla explains, then runs a hand down her hair, her rings glinting in the soft candlelight as she goes. “She has this magenta streak in her hair, and a lip piercing.”
“What’s your style then?” I ask, eyeing her dress, her skull rings, her ink. She’s a lovely hodgepodge all her own.
Layla gives a coquettish shrug. “Sometimes I’m pinup, sometimes I’m nighttime, sometimes I’m super-casual girl. And sometimes I’m whatever I want.”
“You know yourself well,” I say.
“I guess I had to figure some things out,” she says, and that makes all the sense in the world.
“So, who got the top? The purple one?” I ask.
“She did,” Layla says with a smile. “I could tell she wanted it, so I told her to take it. I grabbed something else.”
And I fall a little harder. “That’s so you.”
“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’m this guy too. 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 I can kiss 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.