“I don’t have much time,” Samira said brusquely. “I have work and a luncheon.”

“Yeah, I saw the caterers setting up. What’s all the commotion about?”

“Harper Rose is merging with a French winery, so they’re having a getting-to-know-you luncheon. Baptiste is the owner. Meanwhile, I need to get busy drafting press releases.”

Terrance snapped his fingers. “That’s it. That’s where I know that guy from. He’s Jean-Baptiste Mercier.”

“I know,” Samira said, frowning. “He just told you that.”

“No. He was on the cover of Wine Snob magazine awhile back. He owns some huge vineyard, but that’s not even his main business. His family comes from old money. Lot of old money. Fashion and finance, I think. Shouldn’t you know all this?”

“Well, I would, but I haven’t had the chance to look him up online yet,” Samira said, feeling off-balance and vaguely disgruntled. Baptiste was rich? Really rich? She’d realized he had money, of course, what with the watch, designer luggage and luxury suite and all. And if he owned the vineyard that was going to bail out Harper Rose, then he had a few coins in the bank. But…fashion and finance? Old money? “We just found out about the merger today.”

“You should check him out.”

“I plan to. But you didn’t come here to talk about Baptiste.”

“No.” Awkward laugh from Terrance, who rubbed the back of his neck. “Thanks for seeing me. I didn’t think you would.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not happy about it,” she said sourly. “What’s up?”

“I miss you,” he said. “I miss my best friend.”

The quiet confession got her, locking her lingering hostility down tight.

She stared at his handsome and clean-shaven brown-skinned face, with the granite facial structure and sparkling brown eyes. He wore his hair in a skull trim, just this side of baldness, and his faded jeans and plaid lumberjack shirt were items they'd picked out together, on a day trip to the city.

He was achingly familiar, exactly the man she’d thought she’d marry even if it turned out she didn’t know much about him at all. Even if he was yet another important person in her life who ultimately didn’t want her.

“I miss you, too,” she admitted reluctantly.

Hope brightened his face.

“Can we go outside and talk? Maybe sit on the bench for a minute?”

She checked her watch and wished her heart were a little harder.

“Sure. For a quick minute.”

He smiled, a quick flash of dimples, then reached for her hand.

Much to her surprise, she couldn’t deny him that, either.

He led her down the hallway, past the retail shop—oh, God, was that Baptiste, lingering over the tasting bar with Daniel? —and outside, where they walked down one of the cobblestone pathways and found a seat on the bench under the wisteria trellis that overlooked the vines and the river.

They got settled. She pulled her hand free and stared down at the water.

“So why are we here?” she asked after a while.

“Is there any way you can answer my texts when I check in with you? I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Men, she thought, rolling her eyes before turning to face him. Gay or straight, they loved to assume you just shriveled up and died when they weren't in the room, didn’t they?

“I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”

“You look great.” His voice sounded thick with emotion. “I hope you believe how sorry I am. And that none of this is your fault. I should never have let things get this far. I just wasn’t…I don’t know. I wasn’t ready to be who I am yet.”

“Have you told your parents the real reason we called off the wedding? It’s kind of hard for me to keep floating this excuse that we weren’t on the same page about our relationship.”

“No.” He shrank inside his skin a little. “My mother might understand—”

“She probably already knows on some level, Terrance.”

“But my dad will flip out. And my church…”

He broke off, shrugging.

Wounded as she felt, she couldn’t stand the idea of this proud man doing anything other than walking in his own truth.

“You have to tell them,” she said. “It’s the twenty-first century. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to live your life and be who you are. If they don’t understand that, then screw them. I’m sorry if they’re your parents, but that’s how I feel.”

“You don’t understand either,” he said, staring off at the horizon.

“It’s not that I don’t understand,” she said helplessly.

“What is it, then?”

She struggled to identify all the simmering emotions inside her. Worked hard to strap her words down and make them behave.

“You’re you. So go do you. But who am I? A woman you don’t want? A woman who’s so clueless that she doesn’t even know when she’s sleeping with a gay guy? For over a year? What am I supposed to think about my people skills? What about my judgment? Was I so eager to get married that I ignored all kinds of warning signs?”

He stared her dead in the face. “How are you supposed to see warning signs if I’m careful to make sure there are none?”

The constricted muscles in her chest loosened a little, letting her breathe more easily.

“So you never cheated on me? I couldn’t force myself to ask before.”

“I’m not a cheater.” Long pause. “But I wanted to. There’s this guy at work—”

“Oh, my God. Jeremy?”

His eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“You talked about him all the time. Is he gay?”

“That’s something I need to figure out,” he said wryly. “I think I saw him checking out a guy when we were walking down the street to lunch one time. So… maybe.”

She thought that over—Terrance possibly hooking up with Jeremy—and searched deep inside her heart. She discovered that she didn’t feel jealousy or anything other than the sincere desire for him to be happy. If Jeremy made him happy, then so be it.

“I hope that works out for you,” she said. “I really do.”

He watched her, his expression glowing with unmistakable admiration. Then he pressed his lips together, quickly turned away and ran the back of his hand over his eyes.

“This is why, if I ever married a woman, it had to be you, Samira. This is why I love you so much. This is why I miss you and still text you every day. Because you’re the greatest woman I know. The greatest person.”

“No, I’m not,” she said, ducking her head to dab at her own wet eyes.

“And I don’t want you to ever think that something you did or didn’t do made things turn out this way. I was selfish. I wasn’t ready to face who I am. My life would be so much easier if I could be a straight man with you as my wife. My parents worship you. You think they’re going to worship Jeremy if I bring him home one day?”

She laughed with surprise at that unlikely image.

“If I could have figured out a way to marry you and never have to deal with sexual desires, I’d have done that in a minute.” He hesitated, eyeing her closely. “Is this helping at all? Or do you want me to shut the hell up?”

She thought it over. So he did want her. Sort of.

“It is helping, actually. I always wondered why our sex life was a little, ah…”

“Lukewarm? Blah? Meh? Boring?”

“Okay,” she said, her face burning. “Now I do want you to shut the hell up.”

They laughed together for a wonderful moment, the kind they used to share all the time, and she realized she was right to let go of her hard feelings and disappointment. Was she supposed to be angry that this man had had the courage to stand up and be who he was in a world where so many people were still homophobic? Was she supposed to be disappointed that he’d stopped her from marrying a man who didn’t—and could never—love her the way a wife deserved to be loved?

Maybe she was a little slow at times, but she wasn’t foolish.

Maybe she also wasn’t as unlovable as she feared.

He sobered at last, his smile slipping away. “I mailed the last of the notes yesterday, by the way. And I’ve returned my half of the gifts.”

“Good.” Thank God he’d handled his end of the housekeeping details. “I wasn’t really worried.”

“Did you get the AmEx bill?”

She shrugged.

“I want you to take this and sell it. Use it to pay the bill. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out…her engagement ring.

Funny to see it now. Two and a half carats of the finest that Tiffany and Company had to offer, her dreams flashing in his palm. She’d wanted that ring. Prayed for it. Loved it. Taken it as a symbol of the family they’d build and the children they’d produce and love the way her birth mother had never loved her.

She’d also thrown this ring at his feet when he broke off the engagement.

Ambivalence made her hesitate for some perverse reason she couldn’t begin to understand.

Stubborn pride? A tiny remnant of bitterness, despite what she’d just told him?

All she knew was that she hated it when people thought she couldn’t manage things on her own.

“You keep it. You have bills to pay, too. It’s only mine to keep if we get married.”

“It’s yours to keep if I give it to you,” he said firmly. “Here. Take it.”

“But—”

“I insist.”

She reluctantly took it, slipping it onto her finger only because her slacks didn’t have pockets and she had nowhere else to put it. But she put it on her right hand this time.

“Thanks,” she said with a grateful smile, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Selling the ring would make all the difference to her financial bottom line right now. “I’m finding it increasingly difficult to hate you.”

He grinned. “All part of my master plan.”

“That does not surprise me.”

He gave her a long and measured look, then smoothed her hair away from her temples the way he always used to do. “I like the curls better. You should stick to the curls.”

Baptiste’s image flashed through her mind. She stiffened and quickly looked away before Terrance read something in her face she didn’t want him to see, but it was already too late.

“Too soon?” He removed his hand. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to push it.”

“It’s okay,” she said, not wanting to ruin their newly signed truce before the ink even dried. “Someone else said the same thing earlier.”

Terrance shot her a speculative look. “Who? Baptiste?”

“What?” She tried to scoff but wound up sounding extraordinarily shifty, even to her own ears. “Where would you get that idea?”

“I got a distinct vibe from him.”

“A vibe? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Thoughtful look from Terrance, the kind that made her feel hot under the collar. “You’re doing a lot of protesting. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Yeah,” she said, standing. “Let’s.”

He also stood and put a hand on her arm. The next thing she knew, they were bear-hugging it out, swaying together in the kind of comforting grip that made pretty much everything right with the world.

“We good?” he asked gruffly when he pulled back.

“We’re good.”

“I’m going to put that to the test tomorrow, when I see you at the Halloween bonfire. You’ll be there, right? Good.”

“You just make sure you tell your parents what’s going on. They deserve the truth. Maybe they’ll surprise you.”

His expression turned guarded. “From your lips to God’s ear.”

“Have a little faith.”

He waved and headed for his car in the parking lot.

She checked her watch and hurried inside, eyeballing the luncheon, which was now in full swing inside the conference room, and deciding against it. She’d grab something later. For now? Time to get some work done.

But she wasn’t three minutes into typing up some ideas in her office when a shadow fell across her desk. Stifling most of her impatient sigh—why could people not let her get some work done today? —she tacked on a smile of pleasant anticipation and looked up.

To discover Baptiste standing in front of her desk, loaded plate in hand.

Her pulse rate, predictably, ramped up.

There was something different about his eyes, she noticed right away. The green was muted now, headed toward brown rather than the bright emerald she’d seen earlier, and his jaw was tight.

“Hey,” she said lightly. “What’s up?”

“Here.” Scowling, he thrust the plate at her. “You’ll starve if you go around skipping luncheons. And you have a lot of work to do for our new vineyard. So keep your strength up.”

“You didn’t poison it, did you?” she asked warily. “You look like you’re in the mood for a good poisoning.”

“My mood has become quite variable since I met you. Do you want it or not?”

“Thank you,” she said, taking it. “You’re just in time. I haven’t had my four thousand calories for the day yet.”

The plate was a two-inch-high conglomeration that you might find at one of those all-you-can-eat buffet places. She saw, at a glance, pasta, sliders, blackened chicken, cheeses, crackers and salad.

“I wasn’t sure what you like. I wasn’t quick enough to get to the shrimp. People around here are like the snarling wolverines.”

“That’s a very accurate assessment,” she said, laughing. “You should see them on Doughnut Day.”

“I shudder to think.”

“Thanks for bringing me lunch. You’re very thoughtful.”

Much as she wanted to be a polite person and look him in the eye, it just didn’t seem safe at the moment. She had that same charged feeling she’d had when they danced together, and look how that had turned out. What was it about this one man’s effect on her, anyway? It was as though an electrical current surged between and around them, creating a glittering web ready to ensnare her if she didn’t watch herself.

“Thoughtful? Not at all,” he said grudgingly. “I treat you the same way I would treat any starving and muddy cat on the street. There is nothing special about you whatsoever.”

Nothing special.

In her turbulent teens, the words would have set her off. Would her birth mother have given her away if Samira were special enough? Of course not.

But now? With Baptiste looking at her with the light of admiration gleaming so brightly in his eyes?

Samira felt very special indeed.

Laughing and blushing, Samira smoothed her hair with a hand that felt fluttery and nervous. “Don’t even try it—”

He gasped. “What is that?” he demanded, pointing.

“What?” she asked, startled by his sudden sharp tone.

Her only warning before he reached for her right hand? A repressive glare. Then he examined her engagement ring from all angles.

“This is a high-quality diamond. At least two carats. Tiffany, no?”

“Well, yeah.” She gaped at him. “Who are you? Harry Winston?”

Irritable shrug as he dropped her hand. “I know something about jewels. From my family’s business interests and my mother’s, ah, personal ones. Don’t dodge the question.”

She blinked. Thought back through their conversation.

“There’s no question on the table.”

“The question is, why are you wearing this now? Is there a reconciliation in the works?”

“None of your business.”

His expression darkened.

“I was considerate enough of your feelings—even though you deny them—to tell you there is no Daphne. I am wearing my feelings on my sleeve for you to see. Please give me the same courtesy.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against her desk, waiting.

She worked on regulating her breath and tried to think, terrified of the way his open vulnerability made her heart pound and her thoughts scatter.

This one got under her skin in a way Terrance never had. That was for damn sure.

She needed to be very, very careful here. Every time she was with him, the word no dropped out of her vocabulary.

“There’s no reconciliation,” she reluctantly admitted. “Now, if we’re done here…? I have lunch to eat and work to do.”

Some of the tension eased from his body. “But he wants you back?”

“No.”

“Ah.” He walked away, turning back at the door. “But you want him back.”

“No.”

“Good.” His searching gaze covered every inch of her face. His expression softened, as did his tone. “Don’t be so sad. You looked sad earlier. I was afraid I would have to punch his lamp out—”

“Lights.”

“—and I would hate to do that. I don’t want to see the inside of an American jail cell, and he seemed like a nice man.”

She tried to hide her smile by pivoting to face her computer.

“Violence is never the answer. Unless I’m dealing with drunk Julius Caesar. And Terrance is a nice man.”

“So you do want him back.”

“Oh, my God. What did I just tell you? We broke up for a reason. It’s for the best.”

“Of course it’s for the best,” he said, unsmiling. “I don’t plan to share you.”

He what?

She squawked with outrage.

“News flash: you don’t own me. I’m not some bag of chips you can share or not share.”

“Of course, now that you’ve been with me, you would never want to go back to him, but still.” He nodded with clear satisfaction. “It’s good to get everyone on the same page.”

She could not be hearing this.

“Funny you should say that, O Arrogant One, because you and I are clearly not on the same page,” she cried.

He shrugged. “We will be. Meanwhile, don’t be sad about your breakup. No one likes a sour cat.”

“Sourpuss.”

“That’s what I said. Now get to work. You have so much to do, and you’ve been socializing.”

He walked off, the corners of his mouth curling with a repressed smile.

She choked off a laugh.

“What, four thousand calories’ worth of food and no dessert?” she called after him, sliding her plate closer and picking up the fork.

He laughed, the sound trailing away as he disappeared around a corner.

And when she returned from a bathroom break a few minutes later, she found a dessert plate piled high with pastries—and one pitiful corner of a brownie—sitting on her desk.