Secrets Of A Good Girl

“We intended a sexy, suggestive effect, not something offensive,” another man in the business delegation added.

“Oh…” Cassidy said, willing herself to focus on her job. Pretend he’s not there, she told herself. He’s probably not there. You forgot lunch, after all. It’s probably a hallucination brought on by hunger.

“What I meant to, ah, say, was…” Cassidy began.

It’s not him. It can’t be him. It must be someone who looks like him. The world has no shortage of tall, dark and handsome. Just a look-alike, that’s all.

“What I meant to say,” Cassidy repeated firmly, “was that Europeans will be shocked and stunned—that it’s not even more racy.” She pushed out a laugh.

Luckily, the company reps laughed, also, letting Cassidy off the hook.

Off the hook in here, at least, Cassidy thought. But I have to leave this room eventually. And even though she warned herself not to, she peered out the glass one more time.

Eric Barnes still stood, with a patience she knew full well he had.

Cassidy looked away from him again. She would not allow this.

Her cell jingled. “Maxwell,” she answered, willing her voice not to shake. She turned to face the wall behind her.

The voice on the other end sounded very close, because it was—the front desk was only steps from the room. “There’s a man here to see you. Eric Barnes. He says he doesn’t have an appointment but insists he see you. He says he knows you personally. I told him you were very busy, and I’d see what I could do.”

Run, was her first instinct. Run out the back door. Keep running…

Cassidy sighed and rubbed her left temple. She had a roomful of people behind her and one of the most respected politicians in all of Europe counting on her. Running was not an option right now.

“I don’t know when I’ll be finished here,” she said into the phone. “I’m waiting on the ambassador. But tell Mr.—Mr. Barnes that he can wait if he wants.”

She clicked off and suddenly felt like Dead Woman Walking.

She turned to the group and talked some more, laughed a bit, and checked her watch often because every time she did, she forgot. She rolled her chair back a couple of inches, putting a blond man directly between her and her view of the lobby. By the time the ambassador strode in and the group rose in greeting, there were hot, damp patches under her arms and a thin rivulet of perspiration was snaking its way along her hairline.

“I apologize for my delay,” the ambassador said. “But I am sure Cassidy kept you all as busy as she keeps me.”

As the people in the room happily chimed in about Cassidy’s helpfulness, the ambassador smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but felt an ugly grimace distort her cheek muscles instead. Before her boss could catch on, she stepped with great reluctance from the room, took a deep breath and took several heel-clacking strides to the lobby.

Eric had taken a seat, but he glanced up when she walked in and rose to his feet. Cassidy nodded at the reception desk, then walked right up to him and angled her head toward the door. He followed her outside and when she stopped and turned, he was suddenly so close that she had to tilt her head up a few inches to look at him.

A deep crease bisected the space between his thick, dark eyebrows—something that wasn’t there before. His hair was different, and she realized with a start that it was shot through with gray. When had that begun? Gray hair seemed like something reserved for older men, much older men, who’d seen—but then, how could she presume to know what Eric had or hadn’t seen?

He just kept standing there, silent, obligating her to speak first.

Questions began to throb across Cassidy’s mind. Why are you here? Why, after all this time? Why couldn’t you just let go? Why are you making me face you now?

But she finally chose to say only one word, and it came out of her throat in a ragged whisper. “Why?”

Eric recoiled. Not physically, but something in his expression pulled back for a moment. Cassidy was unsettled by it; she’d never surprised him before.

“‘Why?’” he repeated in a voice that was a bit lower, a bit harsher, than she’d ever heard it. “Did you just ask me, ‘Why’? Why in hell are you asking me why? It should be me asking you. Why, Cassidy?”

Hearing her name in his voice again almost made her break down in sobs, but she fought hard against herself.

She wondered if he really thought she would answer him. Didn’t he realize that if she could tell him why, years ago, she wouldn’t have run? Couldn’t he guess the betrayal she was hiding was more than he could bear?

She parted her lips, sticky with the remains of unrefreshed Chanel lipstick.

Maybe she would have said something. Probably not.

But she’d never find out for sure. Because at that moment, Eric reached out one hand, put it on the back of her head, pulled her close and covered her mouth with his.

It was as though he’d been in prison for ten years, for a crime he didn’t realize he’d committed, and was finally tasting the sun again.

Cassidy’s mouth was rigid and her glittering amber eyes were in a wide-open stare. Eric closed his eyes and brought both hands to her face, relaxing the smooth skin beneath his fingers, caressing her small earlobes.

He felt her resolve soften, along with her mouth. He nibbled gently with his teeth, and when her lips opened, he touched just the tip of her tongue with his. Someone made a moaning sound, and he couldn’t tell who.

He leaned her against the wall, pressing his lower body against hers.

Then he felt another pressure. On his shoulders. Two hands. Pushing him roughly away.

He let go of her and stumbled three steps back.

Cassidy’s face blazed as red as the highlights in her long, thick hair. She was breathing hard, her nostrils flaring like a prodded bull.

Another woman would have cried, “What are you doing, kissing me at the main door of the U.S. embassy, for crying out loud! I work here! And who do you think you are, kissing me like that, touching me like that? Get the hell away from me!”

But this was Cassidy, whose wordless emotions were always written all over her face. Eric flinched as if she had actually spoken.

He also flinched from the strength of his memory. Those three memories he never let himself remember?

Well, the first one smashed into him now. Hard.

Cassidy, glowing with new beauty at her Sweet Sixteen party. She coaxed him into the hall, away from her giggly girlfriends and clearly hopeful male friends. “It’s my birthday,” she said. “But I have a present for you. Happy birthday to me.” Then she kissed him. An immature, inexperienced kiss. She looped her arms around his shoulders, touched his neck, and he felt her fingers trembling.

Their first kiss. And their last kiss.

Until now. His mouth still felt hers.

“Cassidy,” Eric said. “I—”

She turned to walk away from him.

“Cassidy, please,” Eric said. “I didn’t come here for that. I didn’t mean for that to happen. It just—I saw you and it just—it did. I’m sorry.”

She looked at her arm where he grasped it. He let go and she looked into his face.

“I didn’t even come here for me,” Eric said.

Cassidy raised one thin, arched brow. He remembered when she learned how to do that in fifth grade. She’d given raised-brow questioning looks to people for three days, thrilled at her new form of expression.