Baptiste reached for his champagne, trying to disguise some of his avid interest in Samira’s next move. He was far too invested in this one woman’s words, moods and reactions. He knew that. He also knew that the fierce longing he felt deep in his gut was unusual for him and probably unhealthy.

What had gotten into him?

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure it out.

Women came and women went, and the world still turned on its axis. So there was no need to ever get too worked up over one particular woman, especially one who claimed she didn’t want the drama. Hadn’t he learned that lesson early and vicariously through the heartbreak of the various “uncles” and stepfathers who had cycled through his flighty mother’s life through the years?

No, it was never wise to give a woman too much control over you. Women already had most of the power anyway, being the gatekeepers to sexual pleasure. A man had to keep his head.

A smart man never allowed himself to want too much.

Baptiste knew all this.

Yet desire for everything Samira burned inside him, and it was all he could do to keep the heat of it off his face when he looked at her.

She had done something extraordinary to him, this one.

Perhaps she was a sorceress. That would explain a great deal.

Memories of last night had spent the day darting into his mind at inopportune moments, a normal occurrence when one found an exciting new lover. The unusual part? The extent of his preoccupation had left him distracted and largely unproductive on an important workday.

Even worse, it wasn’t just sexual distraction he felt.

He’d wondered things about Samira.

Was she as excited to work with him as he was to work with her?

Why had her ex-fiancé visited her today? Did she want him back, despite what she said? Why had she worn the man’s ring?

What had her entire life been like up until this point?

The only thing Baptiste hadn’t wondered today?

Whether he’d imagined the way she’d responded to him last night or the way she’d looked at him this morning when he kissed her.

No. That much he knew, and his outsized ego was not to blame for the certainty.

She wanted to see more of him as much as he wanted more of her.

It was just that she was determined not to face this inconvenient truth when her romantic life was already complicated enough.

He sipped his champagne, watching her and waiting.

Christ.

She was beautiful in her confusion, with her brown eyes shadowed and her jaw tight. Wary, like an elegant cat with her back to the wall. She wanted him to coax her. Wanted him to convince her that her trust would not be misplaced. He felt it all the way to his bones.

His job was to show her the way, even if, as Melody suggested, being adopted had taught her to be wary of the people in her life.

The thing about cats?

You had to let them approach you. When they were ready. Not before.

So he poured them both more champagne and focused on his cheese plate.

“Sorry about that,” she finally said, cheeks stained with embarrassment. “No one ever accused Melody of being a good actress.”

“But she is a good best friend. Correct?”

“She’s a great best friend. Usually.”

Ah. As he’d suspected, Melody knew Samira inside and out and felt, as Baptiste did, that an affair with Baptiste would be good for Samira at this transitional moment in her life.

Perhaps the lovely and wise Melody was Baptiste’s new best friend as well?

“We met in high school,” Samira said, answering his next question.

“Great friends are priceless. But I will deny it if you tell Daniel I said so.”

She started to smile. Caught herself and stopped. Opened her mouth. Hesitated.

All this wariness made last night’s events all the more miraculous, Baptiste decided, watching her work through her turmoil.

Such a cautious soul.

He was profoundly lucky that she’d ever let him touch her.

And profoundly grateful.

“How did you meet Daniel?” she finally asked.

“In Napa. We worked at neighboring vineyards. We both came from winemaking families. Both went out in the world to do some learning elsewhere.”

“Did you like Napa?”

“I loved it. I love the U.S.”

“Yeah? What do you love about it?”

“The countryside. The big cities. The work ethic, which is more important than your birth status. The American Dream. Anything is possible here.” He paused. “And Target.”

“Target?”

“Yes. You have so many choices here. I’ll never forget the first time I went for some toiletries, and I couldn’t decide what to get. I didn’t know how deprived I’d been when it came to choosing deodorants.”

She laughed. “And have you supersized your royales with cheese when you’re here?”

“We call them royals, actually, but yes. I always supersize them. And I drink as much Sprite as I want here. From the machines. Because you get free refills with ice. At home, they give it to you in tiny bottles, and the ice is doled out like a precious commodity.”

“I don’t think I would like France,” she said, shuddering dramatically. “What kind of culture doesn’t believe in free refills on your Diet Cokes?”

“We are very backward in Europe, clearly. You’ve never been?”

“Not yet, sadly. I’ve always been more of a beach girl. We vacationed in Hilton Head, South Carolina, a couple times growing up. The farthest I’ve ever been is Toronto to visit a college friend. That’s the only reason I even have a passport. But I’m dying to go to Europe. I have a lot of art museums to see before I die.”

He blinked, his poor brain spinning off in several directions at once.

First came the image of her in a string bikini (white, to complement her beautiful dark skin) on some pristine beach with crystal blue waters and no one around to notice if they decided to, say, sunbathe nude or skinny dip. He would bring his camera, and she would pose for him with the straps dangling while she held the cups to her bosom, revealing more than she hid.

And where would they go?

Fiji, probably. Perhaps Tahiti. She would also love Cannes.

Yes, perhaps he should take her to Cannes first. Not so far to travel.

He wrenched his mind’s eye away from splashing with her on the beach only to be confronted with several images of her happy face if he took her to some of his most beloved art museums.

He would drown in her smile then, wouldn’t he?

They could start with the Louvre, where he would show her one of his favorite pieces, The Winged Victory of Samothrace. A stop in Florence to see Michelangelo’s David, of course, and she might also enjoy shopping for leather (did she like fine leather?) or jewelry on the Ponte Vecchio. Florence also had a lovely Cartier shop, where he could buy her a watch as a souvenir of their day together. Oh, but perhaps she’d prefer Rolex? No, she’d admired his Cartier. She seemed like a Cartier girl.

Then, with her new watch (and he would engrave it, of course—Pour Ma Reine seemed appropriate) firmly on her wrist, she would want to see the Nefertiti bust in Berlin. He would have to take her to Madrid to see the Picassos—especially Guernica, which took up an entire wall. In Spain, they’d take a siesta to make love every afternoon, then rise for dinner by nine or ten, when they would eat and drink all the local specialties.

They could have endless adventures together.

His heart thumped with excitement. Anticipation. Yearning.

He wanted to take her everywhere. Show her everything. See her reaction when she saw it.

The words danced on the tip of his tongue:

Come with me. Let me take you.

Somehow he wrestled them into something more appropriate:

“You must make it a priority to go. You’ll love everything in Europe.”

“If I can get over the lack of refills, you mean.”

“Refills are crucial—one moment, please.” He frowned up at the server, who’d chosen the exact wrong moment to reappear—just as he and Samira had started to really talk. Now the spell was broken. “I don’t think Samira has had the chance to look at the menu.”

“I’ll come back,” the server said, heading off again, but the damage had been done.

“Actually, I’m not going to stay,” Samira said firmly, reaching for her bag.

He nodded, trying to manage his disappointment as he gestured to his carryout containers.

“Why? Not enough food?”

Another of her semi-smiles whet his appetite to see the real thing.

“We already talked about this, Baptiste.”

“Perfectly true, but we talked about me taking you to dinner. This situation? It’s me running into you and you sparing me from having a lonely dinner in my hotel room. So it’s clearly not a date. If I put it into my calendar, it would not say date.”

Amusement lit her eyes. “What would it say?”

He thought it over. Shrugged. “For a meal this unimportant? Why bother to put it in the calendar at all?”

That got her. Her laughter was throaty and unabashed, exactly as sexy as he’d remembered. Every time he heard it was like a transfusion of fun and joy to his veins.

“You’re very hard on my ego,” she said. “You compared me to a muddy cat earlier.”

He stared at her, doing his best not to hang the balance of his life on her smile or the absence thereof.

“Since you are also very hard on my ego, I’d say we are even. And two even people can eat an unimportant meal together.”

She hesitated, her unfocused gaze drifting to the tabletop.

He held his breath. Sagged with relief when she put her bag down again and resettled in her seat.

He’d become pathetic overnight. Truly. Judging by the way his heart soared, one would think his business manager had called to tell him that his portfolio’s value had quadrupled.

The thing was, it didn’t matter to him in the slightest, and that seemed like an important detail.

Which was worse? Being pathetic, or not caring that you were pathetic?

He couldn’t care less in that heady moment.

He quickly signaled to the server before Samira could change her mind. “We’re ready to order.”

The server came back from the shadows where she’d been lingering, her mood distinctly cooler. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll have the grilled salmon with roast potatoes,” Samira told her. “Thanks.”

“Nothing else for me,” he said, passing back the menus. “I have plenty already.”

The server marched off, her back ramrod straight.

“Not sure I should eat anything she serves me,” Samira said, raising her brows. “She’s got her eye on you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Her eye on me?” As if he cared with Samira there. “Perhaps I should give her my number, since I don’t know any special women.”

“Be my guest,” Samira said without missing a beat, her gaze direct and unwavering.

She wouldn’t be so quick to taunt him if she knew how these subtle challenges made him want her all the more and amplified his determination to win her again.

If it was the last thing he ever did, he swore he’d quench his thirst for her.

“In a bit,” he said easily. “First, tell me about your life.”

“My life? That’s a big topic. Would you like the thrilling diaper-wearing years? The awkward and chubby preteen years? The partying college years?”

“Yes.” He rested his elbows on the table and leaned as close as he could to her. “You’d better get started so you can finish in a timely manner.”

“O-kay.” She laughed. “Well…I was born in Journey's End. Adopted when I was a day old.”

“Many people these days meet their birth parents.”

“I know.” Her face brightened with excitement. “My adoption records aren’t sealed, so I reached out to my birth mother a few weeks ago. I want to know where I come from and why she gave me up. And I was getting married, so I figured that was a good time to contact her.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“No.” Her smile wobbled, but she recovered it quickly. “Not yet. But I’m really hopeful. I have so many questions about her and my birth father, but I wanted to reach out to her first. Where did they come from? Why couldn’t they keep me? I’ve always wanted to have some sort of a relationship with her. Maybe I have siblings. Maybe we can be friends now. Anyway, that’s my wish.”

Something powerful, protective and unexpected rose up in him as he watched her. Baptiste didn’t know anything about Samira’s birth mother or her circumstances, but he knew he’d be the woman’s enemy for life if she did anything to hurt Samira.

“I hope you do hear from her,” he said fervently. “I hope she’s everything you want her to be.”

“Thank you.” She beamed at him. “I appreciate that.”

“And your adoptive family? They were good to you?”

“Absolutely. I couldn’t have built a better family from the ground up. I have a younger sister in Phoenix. She’s their, ah, biological child.” Once again, Samira’s smile showed signs of strain. “The late in life baby they’d been praying for.”

“Oh.”

“So, anyway…my parents just sold their house. They’re moving out there to be closer to the grandkids,” she added with determined enthusiasm. “And they’ve always wanted to retire out west.”

“What were their careers?”

“My father was a plumber and my mother was a dental hygienist.”

“They’re good people? What did they teach you?”

“They’re the best people. They taught us to study hard and work hard. To be kind and have fun. To tell the truth. They scrimped and saved and put us through college. Then they paid off their house. Lately they’ve been traveling with their RV—”

“RV?”

“Recreational vehicle. They’re huge. You can sleep in them and everything. Anyway, they’re planning on hitting all the national parks and Alaska.”

Baptiste thought of his late and unlamented father, whose honesty had extended only to immediately confessing to every attractive woman he met how much he wanted to fuck her, and his mother, whose hard work had consisted only of a willingness to shop until her high-heeled feet bled.

Their philosophy? Why work hard when you’d had the great good fortune to be born to wealth? Why not spend your life watching other people do all the work or, better yet, pretending that such nasty details about life did not exist?

In short, his parents had not been the best people. They had not even been nice. He thought hard, craning his mind’s eye, and tried to produce a single legitimate compliment for them. The only things that came to mind were that they were charming and stylish, neither of which made them candidates for parent of the year.

“And your parents are still married?” he asked, fighting the unwilling fascination he invariably felt when confronted with normal people and families.

“Yes. It’s been almost forty years.”

How was that possible? If his father had lived, Baptiste was quite certain that he would have eventually killed Baptiste’s mother in a domestic battlefield scenario straight out of that old movie, The War of the Roses.

“And they still like each other?” he persisted. “And they both like you and your sister?”

“Yes,” Samira said with a bemused grin. “They just invited me to go with them to the Halloween bonfire Saturday night.”

“A bonfire?”

“Yep. Big Journey’s End tradition. My father’s responsible for the ribs this year.”

Sounded wonderful.

Baptiste thought of the small town in Bordeaux where he’d grown up, a place utterly devoid of either children his age to play with or adults who cared that children needed friends. Then he thought of his childhood meals, which had consisted of chef-prepared extravaganzas far too sophisticated for young palates.

“Will there be soul food? With the macaroni and cheese? And potato salad?”

“Soul food?” She glowered. “What kind of question is that? You think that just because I’m black, my family eats soul food?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you in any way” he began quickly. “I was only thinking of—”

“Just kidding.” Samira laughed. “Of course we eat soul food. We’re black.”

Christ. And he’d been about to break out into a cold sweat.

He laughed, relieved. “You think you’re funny, do you?”

“The French are so gullible.”

More laughter on both sides of the table. At least until some of his yearning for her burned its way to the surface, probably brightening his face like one of the neon lights at the Moulin Rouge back in Paris.

She returned his stare, her smile fading into something as hot as what he felt for her.

Reining himself in with great difficulty, he pulled his hands off the table so they wouldn’t be tempted to reach for her and rubbed his thighs instead. All of his sexual energy seemed to have collected in one leg, which jiggled. He stopped it, but the effort took three years off his life.

Shit. At this rate, he was likely to break into a cold sweat.

Afraid to look at Samira again—God only knew what she’d see in his expression at this moment, and he would not blow this chance with her, especially not so early in the evening—he signaled for the server.

His frayed nerves needed something stronger than champagne if he hoped to keep his sanity tonight.

“Scotch,” he told the woman. “Neat. Anything else for you, Samira?”

He risked a glance at her, only to discover her lowered gaze and two bright patches of color over her cheeks as she shook her head.

“Just more champagne. Thanks.”

He refilled her glass.

She drank deeply.

The server brought his Scotch.

He drank deeply.

He and Samira didn’t look at each other.

He cleared his throat.

“So where did you go to college?” he asked. “Tell me about that.”

She took a deep breath and looked at him again, all sexual heat shuttered now.

“Syracuse.”

“Ah. You’re a big lover of winter, are you?”

She dimpled.

“I’m a big believer in scholarships. And that’s enough about me—”

“But I haven’t heard about the toddler years yet,” he protested.

“I have to maintain my air of mystery. Tell me about you.”

“Me?” He drained the last of his Scotch, not wanting to get into his sketchy past. What would she and her normal family say or think when they learned about his situation? “There’s nothing worth mentioning.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

He hesitated.

She waited patiently.

He opened his mouth, wondering whether he should reveal the number of his mother’s ex-husbands (four), the times she’d been hospitalized for “exhaustion” before her cardiac arrest death last year (eleven that he knew about) or the times he’d had a positive interaction with his biological father before his death in that boating accident when Baptiste was ten (three point five).

“Start with where you grew up,” she said softly. “That’s easy, isn’t it?”

“Not really.”

Shifting uncomfortably, he tried to decide where he should begin. He always hated these nasty reminders, which tended to crop up during what should be idle chitchat, that he was not normal.

His family had never been normal.

Wealthy? Yes. Normal? Absolutely not.

And he’d trade the one for the other in a heartbeat if he could.

He’d never gotten over the shock he’d felt when he’d been six or eight and had spent the winter watching episodes of Roseanne with his favorite nanny, Mrs. Smith, before bedtime. The idea that there were families out there where the house was small and unfashionable, but the parents liked their children. That there were mothers and fathers out there in the world who interacted in a meaningful way with their kids.

“Baptiste?”

“The family home is in Bordeaux,” he said dully. “There’s an apartment in Paris. A chalet in Gstaad for skiing. A home in St. Tropez for getting the sun.”

“Oh, my God,” she said.

Ah. There it was. That look of amazed disbelief he’d been dreading and hoping never to see on Samira’s face.

His heart sank.

“Which one was home?” she asked.

He wanted there to be a simple answer. He really did. Where had he spent the most time? Bordeaux? Voilà. Bordeaux was home. All he had to do was say that.

But when he opened his mouth, all he had to offer was a smile that felt lopsided.

“Define home.”

Her expression turned pitying around the edges as she watched him.

“The place where you’re happiest and most relaxed,” she said gently. “Where you feel the most like yourself.”

Ah. Easy.

“None of them.”

“None?”

He shrugged.

“Where do you spend the most time?”

“Paris these days.”

She shook her head.

“Baptiste. You have to have a home. You have to make it. Find it. Do something. That’s more important than business. How can you ever be happy if you don’t have a place to call home?”

He stared down at the table, the renewed pain of emptiness (it couldn’t be loss when you’d never had it) slicing closer to his bones than she probably realized.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “Didn’t mean to lecture you.”

“It’s okay.” It was an effort to meet her gaze again. Double that effort to manufacture an airy smile. “Really.”

“Sooo…I’ve been wondering how you learned English.”

Gratitude and memories made him grin. At last a topic he could entertain without embarrassment.

“My favorite nanny was an American. Mrs. Smith. She taught me a lot, mostly by reading to me. We read all the classics together in English. One of my earliest memories is of her reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream to me while I sat in her lap in the rocking chair. I didn’t understand it, but I loved the sound of the words. And then, of course, when you go to school, you learn English.”

“One of your nannies? And how many Mercier children were there?”

He hesitated and tried not to think of the echoing hallways or the aching loneliness that followed him wherever he went and always had. Tried not to remember the little boy he’d been. The one whose only friend was often a book because he didn’t make friends easily. The one whose crooked teeth, pre-braces, had made him the object of ridicule for years.

“I’m an only child.”

“Ah. So you were like one of the Von Trapp children from The Sound of Music, eh? Put frogs in the nannies’ pockets to scare them away?”

“I wasn’t the problem,” he said, unable to keep a good portion of the bitterness out of his voice. “Two of the older nannies were sacked after they had affairs with whoever the man was in my mother’s life at the moment. One of the younger ones was sacked when she chose not to have an affair with my father. He died when I was ten. Boating accident. Mrs. Smith was sacked because my mother woke up from her drunken haze long enough to notice how much Mrs. Smith meant to me. She was there when I went to summer camp, and gone when I came back. I never knew where she went or what happened to her. I probably should have tried to find her when I grew up, but I couldn’t deal with learning she’d died or didn’t remember who I was or anything like that.” He tried to smile, but his mood had turned sour. “Glad you asked?”

She watched him with eyes that were wide and shocked.

Until she shrugged and shot him a wry smile.

“It’s so hard to find good help, isn’t it? How did your family do with gardeners, chefs and housekeepers?”

That made him laugh. “Very well, now that you mention it.”

She gaped. “You’re serious? You grew up with all that help?”

“I’m serious.”

“How big was your house?”

Estate. “Big.”

“Were you spoiled?”

He took a moment to consider. “Rotten, yes.”

She paused.

“Were you neglected?” she asked quietly.

He thought of his parents, birth and step, none of whom had ever wanted to be bothered with him for more than ten-minute increments. He thought of his mother, who had drunk, shopped, partied and cheated her way through life. Her one great lesson for Baptiste? To be suspicious of every woman he met. He thought of some of the beloved servants, any of whom could have been fired on a whim and without notice, and the way he’d tried never to get too attached to them after the Mrs. Smith debacle.

Was he neglected growing up?

“Yes.” The quiet admission cost him a great deal of his pride, but it seemed important, especially now that he knew something personal and painful about Samira’s childhood. “My parents probably did their best with me, but their best was shit. They were both far too self-centered. They were the kind of people who should never have had children. They had no idea what to do with me.”

She nodded.

“You’ll have to do better with your own children one day, won’t you?”

The idea made him scoff. “I will never have children. It’s best to let my family name die out with me. I have no reason to believe I could successfully continue it.”

She looked stricken. “That seems like a shame. Don’t you like children?”

“I like children very well. That’s why I’m determined never to father one.”

They stared at each other, her gaze unblinking. For once, he didn’t want to look away or pretend that he was tougher or more impervious than he was. For reasons he chose not to explore, he wanted Samira to know him.

To understand him.

So he volunteered more information on a topic that he usually never talked about.

“My mother and her brother inherited my grandfather’s companies. Finance and fashion. My uncle ran them because my mother had no interest in anything other than shopping. My cousin—his son—runs those parts of the business now. I run the winery. Anyway… My uncle took me under his wing. Cut off my monthly breathing air allowance.”

“Breathing air allowance?”

He smiled humorlessly. “My mother never bothered with me or required anything from me. She was too busy partying, marrying and divorcing. As long as I woke up every morning, breathed air and left her alone, she was happy to throw money at me when I asked. But my uncle cut me off. Insisted on university when I finished boarding school. Insisted on putting me in charge of the family’s floundering winery to see if I could restore it to its former glory.” Baptiste slowed down, sudden emotion making his voice thick. “Insisted on dying when I was in Napa and never got to see how successful I made the winery.”

Her face fell. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” he said, shrugging it aside because what else could he do? Shrivel up every time he thought about his lost father figure, even though he was a grown man of thirty-five? “I’m grateful he saw something in me.”

“You sound surprised he saw something in you.”

This observation, stated quietly and without judgment, caught him by surprise. He was discovering, twenty-four hours into their relationship (and no matter what she said, there was a relationship), that surprises came fast and furious when Samira walked into the room.

“Maybe I am. No one else saw anything in me at the time.”

“Well, of course they didn’t. You’re not special at all. You’re like a muddy cat.”

He laughed, and the conversation’s wind shifted like magic. The morose mood that had drifted overhead, perhaps looking for an opening to settle onto his shoulders for the rest of the night, once again disappeared like the morning fog when the sun rises.

Did that make Samira his sun?

“Thank God you’re not feeling sorry for yourself anymore.” She used her napkin to wipe her forehead with exaggerated relief. “Thank God you’ve realized that you’re smart, funny, kind, generous and hardworking—”

“I didn’t hear handsome or sexy in there.”

“—because I didn’t want to have to give you a swift kick in the ass.”

“But you would?”

“If needed.”

“I’ll have to remember that. For future reference.”

“Good. Americans hate self-pity. For future reference.”

“And what do Americans love?”

In that delicious moment, he was happy to find, buy or create anything that made her happy. Whether it was an after-dinner gelato or a newborn unicorn, he wanted to provide this woman with her heart’s desire.

Anything to keep her eyes sparkling like that.

“Americans love…”

She caught herself and stopped, not caring that his entire body waited at attention. Took a deep breath and reeled back her excitement and enthusiasm until only the telltale hint of breathlessness indicated that whatever she loved, it had something to do with him and the magic—and it was magic; no other word came close to describing this sizzle in the air—they created together.

“Americans love a good slice of apple pie with ice cream,” she said firmly. “So I’m going to have one for dessert—will you kindly stop staring at me like that?”

If only he could.

He cleared his throat, trying to focus on something other than his hunger for everything about her. This couldn’t be normal, wanting a woman he’d just met this desperately. If he didn’t find a way to control his reactions to her, he’d send her running for the other side of the Hudson to get away from him.

Yet he couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of his mouth.

“That’s not what you were about to say, ma reine.” The husky note in his voice seemed to capture her attention, because she went very still. “I thought you were braver than this.”

She hesitated for several beats, holding his gaze across the table.

“I’m not sure what I am when you’re around, to tell you the truth, Baptiste.”

The quiet confession went a long way toward soothing the simmering impatience and anxiety inside him.

They would get there soon enough, he and Samira.

Maybe he couldn’t define there or quantify soon enough, but none of that mattered right now. The only thing that mattered was that they both wanted it equally.

He wasn’t in this alone.

Thus reassured, he redoubled his efforts to hold his desires in check.

It wasn’t easy.

Those sweet pangs of longing started up inside him again, reminding him that he was dangerously out of his depth with her.

Something about her inspired a sharp greed in him.

He wanted her physically, but he also wanted to meet her parents and discover if they were as delightful as she claimed. He wanted to see Melody again so he could thank her for her display of faith in him.

He wanted to see Samira’s house, to observe her in her natural habitat.

Before Samira, he was positive he’d never experienced this tightness in his chest and throat. Lust? Yes. Excitement? Of course.

This longing for an unidentifiable something more?

An entirely new experience for him.

“Good,” he said quietly. “Maybe if we both lose our heads together, it won’t feel so scary.”

Funny how the tiny flare of anxiety in her eyes exactly reflected what he felt inside.

“I have no intention of losing my head over you, Baptiste.”

“Can you control it?” he asked her, honestly puzzled and determined to understand what was happening between them. “Because I don’t think I can.”

Samira opened her mouth.

But she never managed an answer.