I Know You, You Know
I STOOD UNDERNEATH IT A long time, smack-dab in the middle of the vast, populated space, my head tilted way back, my back arched, looking up. So long, people probably thought I was crazy. So long, I got dizzy. But I did it. And while I did it, I memorized what I saw.
Then I righted my head, turned, and walked down the avenue.
I took my time.
This was because I had all the time in the world.
When I got a fair ways away, I pulled my camera out of my purse, did the head-tilting back-arched thing, aimed, and shot once—an adjustment—twice—another adjustment—then a third time.
I looked at the display and moved through the photos I took of a nighttime, lit up, cool-as-freaking-shit Eiffel Tower.
I grinned and muttered, “Memphis, baby, you’re gonna like that one.”
Then I turned off my camera, tucked it in my purse, and gave the Tower one last, lingering look before I moved back down the avenue to saunter the streets of Paris.
I stood in front of the full-length, freestanding mirror. It was oval. It had a lot of carving in the wood around it and black marks on the mirror, which meant it was old and the silver was fading, but it was fading in a supremely cool way.
Studying the wood, I was pretty impressed with the cleaning staff at this hotel, considering there wasn’t any dust in all those grooves of the mirror. It was all glossy and gleaming. Someone had spent a serious amount of time polishing it.
My eyes moved from the wood to me.
It was summer. My reflection showed me what I knew: I was tan. This was because, for the last three weeks, I’d spent a lot of time outside wandering the streets of Paris, Rome, and Florence.
I’d also bought myself the new sundress I had on and I’d never owned anything so expensive or so exquisite.
A long time ago, Cooter decreed that all my apparel come from Target or Walmart, explaining that this was all we could afford within our budget and he kind of wasn’t wrong. Except he didn’t get all his clothing from those places. I really didn’t mind. Target, especially, had some nice stuff.
What I minded was that Cooter also decreed anytime I bought something for me he would come along, and he didn’t have a good eye to what suited me, style, fit, or color. Cooter had a taste for skank so he dressed his wife like one.
I hated it.
My sundress did not say skank. Not even close.
It was kind of a salmony-peach. It had a flimsy, flippy skirt that was not short, but it was also not long. Loads of pin-tuck pleats around the waistline. And at the bodice, thin straps led into a halter neck. It was really kind of simple, but the filmy fabric, unusual color (that went freaking great with my golden skin), and attention to detail made it superhot.
I loved it.
But I was wearing flip-flops.
They were cute flip-flops, with big, floppy flowers at the toes, and they matched the dress nearly perfectly. But as my eyes slid up and down my body in the mirror, I just didn’t think they’d do.
My gaze shifted to the windows. I’d pulled open the wooden shutters practically upon waking and all you could see was the beauty of Lake Como.
Seriously. Did you wear flip-flops with an expensive sundress in a fancy hotel on Lake Como in Italy?
It was morning. I was heading to the dining room. In my world, breakfast was flip-flop territory.
But the dress wasn’t.
In fact, inspecting myself top to toe, the whole gig was wrong.
I went to my cosmetics case and back to the mirror.
A dusting of face powder. Good.
A bit of shimmery, peach cream blusher. Better.
A bit of eye shadow, filling in my brows with pencil. A thin line of eyeliner pencil, softened with the tip of a brush. A swipe of mascara. And a touch of shimmery, peach lip gloss.
Much, much better.
I moved to the wardrobe, opened it, and pulled out the shoebox.
Then I pulled out the strappy sandals that cost way, way more than the dress.
I’d bought them in Paris. The straps were super thin. The heel was super high. It was also super thin. And they were bronze.
They would kick ass with this dress.
The women I’d seen in Paris, Rome, and Florence—attractive, even stunning beauties and very fashionable—would not blink at wearing those sandals with that dress to breakfast.
I strapped them on and walked to the mirror.
Yes. Perfect.
I stood in front of the mirror, put on three more coats of mascara at the very outside edges of my lashes, and kapow! My eyes looked awesome.
I pulled out the ponytail holder, fluffed out my hair, and stared at myself.
Yep, this was it. This said Lake Como. This said Europe. This said jet-setter.
I blinked.
Tears began to fill my eyes so I blinked again, quickly turned away, grabbed my cute, little, Italian leather purse I got in Florence and my room key, and I went to the dining room.
I knew very little Italian. My Italian language arsenal included pizza, grazie, ciao, and capisce, and I actually wasn’t really certain what capisce meant, just that gangsters in the movies said it. Even though I’d been in Italy for two weeks, I wasn’t picking much up, mostly because I was too shy to try.
So I did my communication with a lot of smiling and hand gestures. Which was how I greeted and thanked the maître d’ when he saw me, smiled, and started babbling, nodding his head, snatching up a menu, and throwing out his arm to show me through the dining room.
It was packed and I could see why. This hotel cost a freaking fortune, but it was in an awesome location with spectacular views.
Looking around, I did the right thing with the dress and sandals. If I’d thrown on a tee and shorts with this crowd, I would be way underdressed.
I was so busy studying those around me and patting myself on the back for my wardrobe decisions, at the same time trying to look cool and aloof, like this was an everyday occurrence for me, I didn’t pay attention to where the maître d’ was taking me.
I paid attention and nearly passed out.
Seriously. I nearly passed out.
This was because every table was taken except one, which was in front of two doors opened to the elements, the view of the lake, the sun shining in. And at the table in the corner next to it, his back to the wall, sat Sampson Cooper.
Sampson Cooper!
Oh.
My.
Freaking.
God!
I couldn’t sit one table over from Sampson Freaking Cooper!
What was he doing in Italy?
What was he doing sitting alone at a table in a beautiful, expensive hotel in Italy?
Where was the supermodel-esque hot chick that had to be his woman?
Perhaps she was in their room finishing up her makeup, seeing as, when I finally tore my eyes from him, I saw he didn’t have any dirty dishes on his table, only a coffee cup and cafetière half full of coffee. Perhaps he was tired of waiting for her, he needed caffeine, he was a man on the go and didn’t wait around for chicks, even hot ones that looked like supermodels, so off he went, telling her to meet him downstairs.
Yes, that made sense. That had to be it.
While we approached and I tried not to hyperventilate, my eyes went from his cafetière to his face to see he was still looking out his set of opened doors. In profile, his strong jaw was stronger in real life than in pictures or on TV. His high cheekbones were also higher and more defined. His straight nose was straighter and more attractive. His thick, black hair, clipped short to his head, had a healthy sheen to it that was healthier in real life. And the appealing dark tone to his skin he got from being half white, a quarter black, and a quarter Hispanic was far more appealing in person.
Oh man, I was not going to be able to do this.
Sure, I had about ten thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two fantastical, intense, and long-running fantasies about this guy—how we would meet, how he would fall in love with me instantly and sweep me away from the hell that was my life and make me blissfully happy forever. But now, faced with the possibility of sharing his air space, I wanted not one thing to do with him.
The maître d’ stopped and said something in Italian to me, and when I stopped and turned dazedly to him, it hit me.
I knew how I would handle this.
Sampson Cooper didn’t exist.
Not across the table. Only in a dreamworld.
I would ignore him, his hot chick would show, my fantasy would be crushed, but I’d get on with my day, my vacation, and then use him as a totally killer travel story when I got home.
Paula and Teri would eat this up. They loved him as much as I did.
Teri even had a life-size cardboard-standing thingy of him in his Indianapolis Colts uniform. She kept it in her bedroom. She also asked me once if I thought that was putting off the real life men she invited there (and there were a fair few), because many of them, more than seemed appropriate, found it difficult to perform.
I did not have within my mental hard drive statistics about how often or what percentage of men could not go the distance. I was also not a man and, therefore, could not know if a life-size cardboard cutout of a hot guy wearing football pads would affect performance. What I did know was that if there was a life-size cardboard cutout of Pamela Anderson in her Baywatch suit in the same room as me and a guy doing the nasty, I’d definitely find it, at the very least, distracting.
So I decided I’d use him as a cool-ass story, and they would never know I spent the entire breakfast ignoring his existence and staring at a lake.
I communicated in the universal language of smiling to the maître d’. His already big smile got enormous for some bizarre reason, which made me fear he was going to hug me and declare in Italian that I was his long-lost daughter, something I wouldn’t understand since I didn’t speak Italian, and thus, I’d probably freak out and do this in front of Sampson Cooper.
No, no. Repeat after me: Sampson Cooper did not exist.
It would be fine. Everything would be fine.
Still smiling weirdly maniacally, the maître d’ went on the move. I had wanted to sit with my back to Cooper’s table, but the maître d’ was scooting me in on the side facing him in a way that was strangely paternal at the same time it was aggressive. I had no choice but to go with it or maybe end up in a smackdown with a maître d’hotel in an exclusive hotel on Lake Como with Sampson Cooper as one of my audience, and for obvious reasons, that wouldn’t do. It would be harder to avoid Cooper when he was sitting in my direct line of sight, but I’d survived a very bad marriage, my husband had cheated on me, and with his girlfriend, he had plotted my demise.
If I could live through that, I could sit across from Sampson Cooper.
So I sat across from Sampson Cooper.
With a dramatic flourish that startled me so much I jumped a little, though it was kind of cool, but I couldn’t exactly explain why, the maître d’ flipped open my menu and plopped it in my upturned hands.
Then he spoke swiftly to me in Italian all the while my head was tipped back and I glued my eyes with fierce determination at his face, my lips curved in a small smile that I hoped didn’t look stupid in the very unlikely event that Sampson Cooper was actually looking at me. He kept talking for some time and if he was describing the specials (did they do breakfast specials?), they had a lot of them.
He clapped his hands, fluttered them in the air for a second, and turned toward Sampson Cooper. I caught his wink at Cooper, something else I thought was weird, before he scurried away.
I turned my attention directly to the menu.
Perusing it, I did what I’d been doing the last two weeks in Italy; I called up my very limited (but increasingly less so) experience of looking at menus in Italian restaurants. Cooter was not one to take his wife on the town, and when he did, it was for pizza and not in the kind of pizza joints that printed their options in Italian.
Mozzarella I knew, but I didn’t see that anywhere on the menu (alas). I saw something that ended with di funghi, which I was pretty certain meant mushrooms because other stuff I’d ordered with those words in it also had mushrooms. I hoped it was a mushroom omelet because that sounded really good, and I had hope since the word before it was omelette and I figured an omelette was an omelet the world over.
I’d made this decision when a cafetière was plonked on my table with a small, elegant pitcher of cream and matching sugar bowl and another Italian man, my waiter, started talking to me. He didn’t talk long, but he did clap when he was done and move away without taking my order.
I watched him go, and as best I could without looking like a freak, I turned my attention to the lake without my eyes once hitting Sampson Cooper.
At this moment, it struck me I needed coffee and I needed it STAT.
So, as casually as I could muster, I turned my attention to the cafetière, did the press thing, upended the coffee cup at my place setting, and prepared my coffee.
Sipping carefully so as not to burn my tongue or choke, I turned my attention back to the lake.
Seriously, it was pretty. I’d never seen anything like it. It kind of sucked that Cooter and Vanessa wanting me dead was the reason why I had this gift but . . . whatever. It was a gift. I’d lived through hell; now it was my turn in heaven, and Lake Como not only looked but felt just like what heaven had to be.
The waiter came back, shot some Italian at me, and I made a stab in the dark and decided he was asking for my order. I didn’t bother speaking, just did a lot of smiling and pointed to what I wanted on the menu. He nodded, snatched the menu out of my hand, did a dramatic flourish with it in the air that took slightly less space than the maître d’s flourish (but even more compact, it was no less theatrical), before tucking it smartly under his armpit and he hurried away.
I was looking after him in preparation for the taxing effort of once again turning my head and not acknowledging Sampson Cooper’s presence when I heard a deep, low, masculine chuckle, and it was so attractive, without my permission, my eyes went to him.
My heart stopped beating. Total stall. It would take paddles to get it pumping again.
He was no longer chuckling, but he was smiling.
At me.
“Do you speak English?” he asked, and I blinked.
Holy cow! He was talking to me!
“Yes,” my mouth, fortunately, answered for me.
“These guys got it goin’ on,” he informed me, and I blinked again.
“What guys?” my mouth, luckily, kept speaking.
He tipped his head in the direction of where my waiter was last seen and my heart started beating again, hard and fast. I could feel it in my neck, my wrists, even at my temples.
“You think they train them in that shit?” he asked, and I blinked again.
Sampson Cooper just used a curse word in a swanky Italian hotel on Lake Como!
Why did I think that was so . . . freaking . . . cool?
“What . . .” I hesitated, then cautiously went on, “shit?”
He smiled again.
My heart stopped beating again.
Then he answered, “The menus.” He shook his head and immediately proceeded to blaspheme in a swanky Italian hotel on Lake Como. “Jesus. The first time the head guy did it, thought he was gonna clock me.”
“That would have been unfortunate,” I observed and sucked in a sharp breath when he threw his beautiful head back and burst into deep, rough-like-velvet laughter.
I’d never heard him laugh. I’d never even seen him laugh. Smile? Lots. Chuckle? Sure. Grin? More than occasionally.
Full-on laughter?
Never.
He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. By far. And that was before I saw him in real life, and in real life, he was more beautiful than ever.
But that deep, rough-like-velvet laughter glided right across every inch of my skin, leaving beauty in its wake that soaked through, and I swear to God, it felt like it settled into my soul.
He sobered, but his dark brown eyes were still dancing when he focused on me and agreed, “Yeah, that would have been unfortunate.”
It was at this point I jumped at least six inches because the maître d’ was suddenly there, talking fast, gesturing broadly, his head going back and forth between Sampson Cooper and me.
Then my waiter was there.
I had no idea what was going on, and further, I had no hope of finding out because he not once used the words mozzarella, ciao, grazie, capisce, or pizza, and if he did, that probably wouldn’t have explained what was happening.
But before I could form any conclusions or, say, react at all, my entire body went rigid when I watched in sheer, unadulterated terror as the waiter moved my cafetière, creamer, sugar bowl, and coffee cup to Sampson Cooper’s table.
What were they doing?
Cooper’s deep, rough-like-velvet voice came to me, and my eyes shot to him when he asked, “Do you speak Italian?”
“Uh . . .” I was able to get out before . . .
No joke.
Seriously.
The maître d’ grasped my elbow, forcibly yanked me out of my chair in that aggressive but paternal way he had, then guided me around the table, shuffling me between my old table and Sampson Cooper’s definitely current table at the same time the waiter scooched with me. The waiter pulled out the chair across from Cooper and the maître d’ plonked my booty in it.
I was deep breathing and feeling acutely like I was in the preliminary stages of my first ever seizure when my head tipped back for some reason and I saw Sampson Cooper had stood. Not fully, just up a little from his seat, his eyes on me. I thought it was to protest, but when the waiter shoved my chair (with me in it, incidentally) under the table, he sat again and I realized it was because he was a man, I was a woman but mostly he was a gentleman who stood when a woman was seated at his table, and I was a woman who found herself, for inexplicable reasons, seated at his freaking table.
No man had ever done that when I’d been seated at his table, and there was a beauty to it that seemed to seep into my soul too.
My heart stopped again, and fortunately, because I didn’t want Sampson Cooper to see me panting, so did my breath.
The maître d’ and waiter whisked themselves away.
“You figure they needed your table?” Sampson Cooper asked dryly, and considering my present circumstances, I had no idea how I managed to loosen up enough to do it. Maybe because the situation was so bizarre, so extreme, so frightening, I had to let some tension go. But at his comment, it was my turn to burst out laughing.
And, God’s honest truth, since Cooter died, I’d smiled more than I had in years, which might not say good things, but there it was.
But I hadn’t laughed like that in so long I forgot how good it felt.
When I quit laughing, I focused on him to see him grinning at me, but there was a look on his face, a warmth in his eyes, an intensity, it almost felt—no kidding—like he found me fascinating.
Me.
Kia Clementine.
And seeing that look in his eyes aimed at me, no one but me, a look I had seen in . . . never (never had I seen a look like that directed at me), I wanted to run. And I wanted to run because I wanted that to be it, my last memory of Sampson Cooper. I wanted to go somewhere and burn it into my brain. I wanted to keep it with me forever.
But I couldn’t do that so I forced myself to reply, “They are pretty busy.”
His grin faded, but his lips still twitched when he agreed, “Yeah.” He sat back, snagging his coffee cup as he did, and he asked, “Do you mind?”
“Mind?”
“Sitting with me,” he explained before taking a sip.
Uh. Yes! I was pretty certain my body needed my blood to flow through its veins, and my heart was constantly stopping so I didn’t figure that was good.
But obviously I couldn’t tell him that, so instead, I said, “Not if you don’t mind.”
His eyes changed again. They dropped quickly down my torso then up, and he murmured, “Oh, I don’t mind,” in a sexy way that I was pretty certain made my nipples go hard.
Oh.
My.
God!
Did he just do that?
And if he did, what did it mean when a man did that? The last man to flirt with me was Cooter, and he did it by buying me extra Tater Tots at the local burger joint.
Did it mean what I thought it meant?
Oh.
My.
GOD!
He took another sip from his coffee, put it down, and extended his big hand my way. I stared at it, luckily not jumping ten feet. It was not my first time seeing his masculine, long-fingered, well-veined, strong-looking hand that I thought was immensely attractive in a way that, if I was just a shade on the sick side, I could create a religion based on it.
It was just the first time I saw it in real person.
“I’m Sam Cooper,” he introduced, and I forced myself to lift my hand and put it in his. His fingers curled around instantly, warm and strong.
“Kia,” I told him, my voice softer because I was freaking out because he was holding my hand! “Kia Clementine.”
That got me another grin.
“Kia Clementine?” he asked.
I nodded.
He held my eyes.
He also kept hold of my hand.
My heart stopped again.
Then he murmured again in that sexy way, “Clementine.”
“Yep,” I said.
His head tipped to the side and he remarked, “Great name.”
“It’s my husband’s,” I told him stupid, stupid, stupidly.
His hand tightened in mine for a half a second before he released it.
Oh yes.
Stupid!
His face was still friendly but now somehow a shade remote when he noted, “You’re married.”
“Not anymore.”
Luckily, this came out calmly, not quickly or desperately.
Thank God.
“Divorced?”
“He’s dead.”
His back straightened and his eyes again grew intense, this time in a different way. There was emotion there—compassion—and it, too, was knock your socks off beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
And that was when, no joke, I blurted, “Four months ago, half his head was shot off in a motel room while he was boinking my high school arch-nemesis, who remained my arch-nemesis long after high school. Though I didn’t know that until her husband burst in on them in the local motel with a shotgun he was prepared to use. My husband got dead. Her husband got five to ten for involuntary manslaughter.”
Sampson Cooper blinked.
Okay, uh . . . what was that? Why did I tell him that?
Not only was I in imminent danger of having a heart attack, I was also clearly temporarily insane.
I needed to get out of there, like, yesterday.
“No shit?” he asked into my mental strategizing on how to beat my retreat.
I shook my head.
“Christ,” he muttered.
“That about says it all,” I muttered back, looking from him to the table and wondering if I should pretend to have a crying jag at the passing of my husband and ask to be excused, then promptly get the first taxi, rental car, bus, train, or plane out of Lake Como and go back to Heartmeadow, Indiana. A place Sampson Cooper had never been and one where he’d more than likely never go. Upon arrival, I would immediately enter what would probably be years of therapy to deal with this encounter.
But before I could fake tears, his deep, rough-like-velvet voice came back at me.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up at him and, again, there was intensity. This was curious, cautious, but also still warm.
So my mouth whispered for me, “Yeah.”
“What happened to the arch-nemesis?”
“She got clocked with the butt of her hubby’s shotgun,” I answered, leaving out the fact that she was now awaiting trial for plotting my murder. I’d already instituted a major overshare. I didn’t need to make the same mistake again.
“Off easy,” he murmured.
“Kind of,” I said softly. “She’s the town pariah. No one liked her much before, but they openly don’t like her now, and we live in a small town so you feel that kind of dislike in a small town, you know?”
“Not really,” he replied. “I’ve never fucked another man’s wife, setting him on a murdering rampage, or even fucked another man’s wife and not setting that man on a murdering rampage. So I have no fuckin’ clue.”
At his honest, blunt, and, weirdly somewhat harsh, words, he became real to me like any normal person. Not a famous ex-football star national hero who had a past filled with doing dangerous things. And, suddenly, I relaxed. Not completely, but a little. Enough to smile before I recommended, “Well, my advice is, don’t.”
He smiled back and said, “Good advice.”
“And also,” I kept going, “I think in Lake Como, surrounded by swanky rich people, you’re not allowed to drop the f-bomb or probably the s-bomb, for that matter.”
He lifted his coffee cup, and before taking a sip, his eyes on me over the rim, he asked, “You read that somewhere?”
“Uh . . . no,” I answered.
He sipped, dropped the cup, and noted, “So it’s not a law.”
“I wouldn’t know. Maybe.”
“If it is, then you wouldn’t be able to do it in Italian. Since I don’t know Italian, I think I’m good.”
“Well, if you’re wrong and they arrest you, I promise to post bond,” I assured him.
He grinned. “Good to know you’ve got my back.”
I shrugged. “We Americans have to look out for each other.”
His grin got bigger and he murmured, “Right.”
It was then our food was served. There were some flourishes whilst the waiter served it, which made Sampson Cooper catch my eyes, his smiling. When they did, I felt my mouth twitch and my heart flutter because I was sharing an in-joke with Sampson Freaking Cooper.
The waiter moved away, Sam picked up his cutlery, and so did I.
He tucked in.
I wondered if I could watch him consuming food across a table from me without having an orgasm.
And it was then I decided to come clean.
“I know you, you know,” I whispered, and his eyes went from his plate to me.
Then, to my shock, my delight, my horror, and totally messing with my peace of mind and understanding of the world, he whispered back, “Baby, for ten minutes you made me invisible. Women who know who I am do one of three things: they get in my space, they do anything they can to get my attention but do it pretending badly that they don’t know I exist, or I flat out cease to exist. I know you know who I am.”
“I wasn’t being rude,” I quickly told him.
“I get that,” he replied just as quickly. “For you, it’s about bein’ shy. But for me, it gives me privacy and I don’t get that much. It also allows me to be the one to make the play. And in my life, serious as shit, Kia, that’s rare and it’s really fucking valued.”
That was when I panicked and assured him, “Well, I wasn’t making some whacked-out play either.”
He put his fork on his plate, reached across the table, and took my hand.
My heart stopped again.
He squeezed my hand and looked in my eyes.
Then he whispered, “Relax, Kia, and just enjoy breakfast.”
“Okay,” I whispered back. It was breathy, but at least I didn’t wheeze.
He let me go and focused back on his food.
It took some effort, and not a small amount of it, but I did too.
And there it was on my plate—proof an omelette was an omelet the world over.
Thus commenced me eating breakfast with Sampson Cooper, and I didn’t think I could relax, but I didn’t take into account how much he wanted me to.
So for the next forty-five minutes, we ate. We sipped coffee. We sometimes looked out the windows at the beauty of the lake. But mostly, we looked at each other and Sam asked me questions that weren’t invasive or taxing, chiefly about what I was doing in Lake Como and how long I was staying. So I told him about my vacation, which started in Paris and would end in two weeks at a beach on Crete. And with his guiding questions, I went into some detail that was probably embarrassingly enthusiastic about what’d I’d done, what I’d seen, and what I was looking forward to doing and seeing.
For his part, when I asked, he told me vaguely he was in Italy “on business.” He didn’t elucidate and I didn’t pry.
When we were done, the last drops of coffee consumed, our plates long since whisked away, Sam Cooper stood and rounded the table like the gentleman he was, helping me out of my chair.
No man had ever done this for me either. It was considerate and attentive in a way I liked a lot and it settled in my soul too.
He walked me through the dining room, the tips of his long fingers barely touching the small of my back to guide me through the room, another chivalrous gesture that also felt like something else, something I didn’t quite get.
Outside the dining room in the lobby, with its beautiful tiled floors and sweeping staircase, his fingers moved to my elbow, curling around, and he stopped me. He turned to stand in front of me, a foot away.
I tipped my head back to look up at him.
It was over. I survived. I had breakfast with Sampson Cooper. I enjoyed it, and the knowledge that he was truly in real life what he was in my fantasy life—a decent, good, kind man as well as a gentleman—also settled in my soul.
Looking up at him, I memorized our morning like I’d been memorizing many of the gifts I’d received the last three weeks, but this one I burned deep in my brain in the hopes of never forgetting even a second.
“I need to go,” he told me, his fingers still curled on my elbow.
“Okay,” I replied and smiled. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
My breath caught as his fingers on my elbow tightened and pulled me slightly toward him. I went forward three inches as he bent from his height of what I knew was six foot three, and in a barely there touch, he swept his lips against my cheek.
I closed my eyes and experienced the beautiful tingle.
In my ear, he whispered, “You’ll see me around.”
My heart stopped again, and his fingers gave me a squeeze then let me go. He straightened, smiled in my eyes, and then he was gone.
And, staring across the foyer that no longer held the tall, built, powerful body of Sampson Cooper, it belatedly hit me that he’d said, It also allows me to be the one to make the play.
That was when my heart stopped beating.
Again.