You can do this. You can do this. Be polite. Don’t let him get under your skin. Think of Noelle.
He stood still, facing her, waiting for her to make her way to him, looking as delicious as ever. Worn jeans fit him perfectly, molded to his body like a comfortable second skin, and on top he wore a blue-and-white gingham long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his muscular midforearms. His sunglasses hid his eyes, but the lips she dreamed about for months were still as sensual as fuck, tilted up into a small grin that made her insides clench with longing. His hair had grown a little since the wedding—it was wavy and dark, tamed into submission with some sort of gel, but a thick lock had escaped and hung over his forehead. Libitz rolled her eyes behind her glasses. Beside the word “sexy” in the dictionary, no doubt there was a picture of J.C. Rousseau.
“Hi,” he said as she approached. “How was your trip?”
“Fine,” she answered, stopping about five feet away from him. “Almost missed my connection in Philly but managed to run for it.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Can I help you with your bag?”
“It rolls.”
“Okay,” he said, reaching for it.
She jerked the handle back. “It rolls. I don’t need help with it.”
He raised his hands, palms up. “I wasn’t going to steal it, Elsa. I was just going to put it in my trunk for you, but suit yourself.”
Elsa. The ice princess.
It was bad luck that HBO Family had been showing Frozen for most of July and August this summer, and while flipping channels, Libitz had caught it at least twenty-eight (million) times. And of course, every time she saw it, her mind would return swiftly to thoughts of Jean-Christian.
The thing is? She liked the character of Elsa. She related to her. Because Elsa had special control over water, able to turn it to snow and ice, she felt different—knew she was different from everyone else around her…much like dark-haired, brown-eyed, Jewish Libitz, who had attended prep schools mostly populated by blonde, blue-eyed Christian girls like Kate English. Being a little different had often made Libitz feel separate from her peers, the same way Elsa felt separate from her people in the movie.
Feeling different was one thing, but it had been a long time since Libitz had felt inferior to someone else just because of her ethnicity. She refused to let anyone make her feel less-than when she was actually quite proud to be of European-Jewish descent. Not many of her direct ancestors had survived the brutality of World War II. Casting his comment in this light made her feel stronger, and she raised her chin, eyeballing him.
“You can call me Elsa all you want,” she said. “I don’t mind it. In fact, I take it as a compliment.”
“Is that right? Chilly appeals to you, does it?”
She shrugged. “I’m not chilly. But I’m different, and I won’t be ashamed of that.”
“Different from what?”
“From you and all your WASPy friends.”
“WASPy?” he scoffed. “I’m not Anglo-Saxon or Protestant, ice princess. More like Norman and Catholic.”
“Oh,” she said, lowering her glasses just a touch. “Okay. That makes you a W-N-C. A WaNC. Do you call yourselves ‘Wankers’ for fun?”
“You know what?” He lowered his glasses just as she had, staring into her eyes as his danced with something that looked a little like amusement mixed with admiration. Finally, with a bit of gravel in his tone, he said, “It’s good to see you again, Libitz.”
The unexpected emotion she heard in his voice set her a little off kilter when she was primed for a quarrel. And the way his dark-green eyes searched her face as though caressing it, remembering it, and finding pleasure in its recovery made her want to sigh.
“Oh. Well, okay then,” she mumbled.
He chuckled softly, reaching for her suitcase again, and this time she yielded it to him, but not before his fingers brushed hers, sending a jolt of awareness throughout her body. For a moment, they both froze, his fingers mingling with hers, barely moving, warm and welcome against her skin. When she pulled her hand away and turned toward the steps behind him, she damned the heat that was flushing her cheeks.
“So, um, how far is it to Kate’s?”
“Not very,” he answered from behind her. “Their new house is in the same general neighborhood as Blueberry Lane.”
She stepped down the stairs before him, careful to hold onto the railing so she wouldn’t totter in her five-inch Louboutins. At the bottom, he passed her, walking over to a darling red vintage convertible.
“A Citroen!” she exclaimed with a gasp.
“You know them?” he asked, looking up from the trunk, where he’d placed her suitcase.
“Of course! My dad’s a car nut.”
“What does he drive?”