Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)

“Yeah. We finally did,” he echoed.

It had only taken eighteen years, an ocean, countless letters, two broken hearts, and a lengthy online search for him, which had taken time and research, since he’d changed his name and was absent from social media. The Bellagio was the symbol of all their promises. Young, foolish, and wildly in love, they’d been together when this hotel was under construction nearly two decades ago. They’d said they would check it out when it opened, even though they’d both known at the time it was an empty promise.

The hotel was slated to be finished months after she left town. By the time the doors finally opened, Michael’s life had shattered, and she’d been thousands of miles away.

But the promise had been made anyway. It was a promise to reunite. One of many promises they’d made.

Some kept.

Some impossible to keep.

“Join me. S’il vous plait.” She patted the back of the sofa as she sat down again.

“Merci.” He took a seat next to her, and at last she felt like she could breathe. Her warring emotions settled, and now she was simply out with this man. Someone she’d been thinking about more and more lately.

“So,” she said.

“So…” He rubbed his palms against his thighs.

“How are you?” she asked, stepping into the shallow end. “Are you well?”

“Good, good,” he answered quickly. “And you?”

“Great. Everything is great,” she said, as chipper as she could be, even though she’d hardly use great to describe the tundra that her heart had become during the last two years. “I’m glad you made it,” she said to keep going, lest any silence turn this reunion more awkward.

“And I’m glad you asked me to meet you,” he said, as if he were waiting for her to tell him why she’d wanted to meet. She didn’t, though, because when he looked at her like that, the breath fled her lungs. He was so handsome, and his eyes were soulful, something she’d rarely use to describe blue eyes. His seemed to reveal a depth, forged by years of heartache and tragedy.

She parted her lips to speak, but she wasn’t even sure what to say next. Did she go for lightness? For more catching-up-with-you chit-chat? Or plunge straight into the heart of why she’d wanted to see him? She was so accustomed to charging into situations fearlessly, to chasing after what she wanted, but all those skills escaped her in this moment, and she was a teabag steeping in a pot of awkward.

Fortunately, the waitress arrived and asked Michael if he wanted anything. “Club soda,” he said, and when the woman left Annalise tilted her head.

“So, you still detest coffee?” she asked, because that was a far easier conversation entrée than all the other things they could talk about.

“Evidently, I still do.”

“I never understood that about you,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. Funny that she and Michael had gotten on so well when they were younger—except on this. Their one bone of contention was over her passionate love of the deliciously addictive substance, and his disdain of it.

“It vexed you, I know.”

“I tried to get you to like coffee. I even tried to make espresso for you.”

“You were relentless,” he said, and the corners of his lips quirked up. That smile, that lopsided grin she’d loved... Okay, this was better. This was a slow and steady slide back into the zone.

“Remember when I hunted all over Vegas trying to find something like what they’d serve in a café in Paris?” she said, reminiscing, slipping back into the time they were together years ago.

Like it was yesterday, he picked up the conversational baton. “You even used your babysitting money to buy an old espresso machine at a garage sale,” he said, and the memory of her determination and his resistance made her laugh. “Remember that?”

Her eyes widened. “I do! It was a Saturday morning. I scoured the papers for garage sales, and hunted all around the neighborhood till I located the only one I could afford.”

“Found one for ten dollars.”

Annalise held up an index finger. “Ten dollars and twenty-five cents.”

“Ah, well. The quarter made all the difference,” he said, as the waitress brought his drink and he thanked her.

“I took it back to Becky and Sanders’s home that afternoon, and I thought I’d win you over. That if you had a proper coffee, made like we do back home, you’d be converted.” It was only coffee, but it was a thread that connected them to the distant past, when their lives were so much simpler. It was a far easier topic than the present, and certainly less painful than the words said the last time they saw each other, on that heartbreaking day in Marseilles after he’d sent her that letter that had torn her to pieces.

“Alas, I was non-convertible.” He took a swallow of the club soda. “So what brings you to town?”

“Work.”