***
She didn’t see him, or hear from him, for nearly three months. She ignored the media blitz surrounding the rise and fall of the MacCarrens, declined all requests for interviews, and eventually the furor died down. She turned down Stéphane’s dinner requests, put on her Fall Fashion Week show, hosted Luxe evenings with Tilda Davies showcasing her lingerie, Tilda’s stationery, and art from Sheba. By working a hundred hours a week she harnessed the buzz built during the summer of Ryan, found additional workroom space, hired more seamstresses and a junior designer with experience at Agent Provocateur, negotiated a deal with Barney’s, and another with Nordstrom. Fall arrived, and she rediscovered the pleasure of wearing silk under cashmere and denim.
But Ryan didn’t come back to Irresistible. One day in October Lorrie mentioned that he’d surfaced for a deposition, but disappeared just as quickly.
That evening Simone made chai tea and took it to the front steps. While she drank it, she wondered if her impetuous actions the night of the storm had cost her Ryan. He had clearly wanted to hold back. As he was the one who knew the whole story, perhaps she should have listened to him. Perhaps he’d wanted to keep her separate, untainted, so he would have something to come back to when the storm passed. Perhaps she was now forever associated with the worst summer of his life. Perhaps, with the passing of time, the memories were too painful, too ugly to revisit. She’d put herself in the same position as Jade and Daria, and even Lily, and had taken what she wanted from Ryan Hamilton.
Perhaps, in giving him what he needed, she’d destroyed any chance they had to be together.
The truth would set you free. In Ryan’s case, it set him free to move on, and put a terrible past behind him.
“C’est la vie,” she said to herself. Swallowing the dregs of her tea she pushed down the lump in her throat and went back inside.
***
One day in the middle of November, when a warm front moved up from the south and pushed back the cold winter air swinging down from Canada, she put on a lightweight down vest over her turtleneck and jeans, and went to sit on the stoop. She made herself some tea and put it into an insulated tumbler. The odds of being able to sit outside and enjoy the weather after today were very slim, and she intended to take full advantage of it.
She was sitting with her back to the railing, her face tipped to the sky to absorb the sunlight, when a figure rounded the corner at the end of her street. Her heart lifted with the recognition that her mind talked her out of almost immediately. The man had Ryan’s dishwater blond hair, but his shoulders were relaxed, and he moved with an easy confidence that didn’t match Ryan’s purposeful stride and squared-off shoulders. He wore jeans, running shoes, and a pullover sweater with a half zipper fastened under his chin. A plastic-wrapped bouquet of daisies swung easily from his left hand. Even as he drew close enough for her to see his face, even as he smiled slow and easy at her, it was the daisies that convinced her. She sat up straighter, swallowed the lump in her throat, and indulged in the sheer pleasure of watching him walk.
In her mental script he would stop at the foot of the stairs and hold out the daisies. She’d take them, smell them, blink away tears. They’d go inside and talk rationally about why he was back. In the two seconds it took Ryan to reach the stairs she ran through all those thoughts and a list of possible restaurants for a romantic candlelit dinner humming with sexual tension, but once again, Ryan refused to play to script. Instead he took the stairs in one bound, backed her into Irresistible’s door, caged her in with forearms and hips, and kissed her.
No mocking not-French kissing. No agonized fears holding him back. One hand burrowed under her sweater to find the skin over her ribs while the other slid through her hair to grip her nape. He layered kiss upon kiss, sharp nips and flickering licks until she opened to him. The tender, purposeful assault didn’t stop until he’d completely conquered her mouth. When he pulled back, they were both breathing hard.
“Oh,” she said rather nonsensically.