I groggily felt for my phone on the nightstand, wondering who was calling me so early in the morning. But then, I worked with people based all over the world; just because it was early for me, it didn’t mean it was early for them. If there was some disaster that they were calling about, the hour didn’t matter.

I yawned and pushed myself into a sitting position against the copious amount of hotel pillows. “Hello?” I asked into the phone. Whoever it was, the caller ID showed they were from New York. I hoped it was someone from work and not someone like . . . Oliver, calling from a new number.

“Sophia?” the person asked. “You sound sleepy; did I wake you up?”

“Javier?” I asked in surprise, certain that I recognized the voice. “Is everything okay?”

Javier laughed. “Everything is great,” he said. “I just got all settled into my hotel in New York.”

“In New York?” I asked blankly. “What are you doing in New York?”

“Didn’t you read your email?” Javier asked. “I wrote to you a couple days ago to tell you that I was coming to New York!”

“I’ve been swamped at work,” I said faintly. I could barely imagine it: Javier there in New York. And yet, here I was . . .

“I’m in Hawaii right now,” I told him. “I was asked to give a talk about my career and some of the projects that I’ve been working on lately.” I paused. “I could finish everything up today, though, and fly back to New York tomorrow.” I had originally planned to stay in Hawaii for a couple extra days, reasoning that I deserved a vacation with all the hours I’d been putting in lately.

Really, it was just that I needed a break from the city and from the possibility of running into Oliver, who I still hadn’t spoken to since our argument over the phone.

“What are you doing in New York?” I asked Javier. “How long are you there for?”

“I’m not sure how long,” Javier said. “I was all set to finish things up in Argentina and head back to Asia, but I connected with some interesting people also working on the aid relief, and they asked me to come back to New York and give a couple talks.” He paused. “I have to admit, I jumped at the chance to see you again. Especially since, like I said, I’m still not sure about how the acquisition of our company will affect my position. I figure I can give it some time to shake out before I head back—if I head back.”

“Yeah,” I said faintly. “It would be really good to see you too.” I tried to piece together how I really felt about it. It would be strange to see Javier in New York, I knew. How would he look—how would we act—now that we weren’t dealing with disaster? It was always strange to see people outside of those sorts of aid projects, after they were all finished. People were more relaxed, more like their natural selves, rather than the focused, hard-working—and frequently dirty—people that you encountered during the projects.

I could only imagine what Javier would look like, cleaned up and clean-shaven, wandering around the streets of New York in jeans and a t-shirt. I knew he hadn’t fully come to New York to see me, but there was definitely something about the timing that was . . . auspicious.

I kicked myself for not having read my emails sooner. Although, it wasn’t as though I could have cancelled this talk—I had committed to it months before. And what was I going to use as my excuse: this guy that I could kind of see myself being with just happens to be in New York for a brief time and I want to be there to see him?

Not likely.

“So you’ll be back tomorrow?” Javier asked.

“Yeah,” I said, already moving over to my computer so that I could look at flights. If I needed a distraction from Oliver, this was it, I realized. In Hawaii, I found myself with too much time to think about him. I remembered going to the beach with him on that picnic. I remembered his hands on my body as I slathered myself with sunscreen.

But if I really wanted to get over Oliver, I had to go out with someone else, someone who was more interesting to me than Oliver could ever be. Someone who was more like the kind of guy that I could see myself ending up with. And Javier hit that nail on the head.

“Maybe we could get dinner tomorrow night,” Javier suggested. “I’m sure you know some of the best places around the city. And I’d like to see the city through your eyes.”

I smiled a little just thinking about it. “I wouldn’t say I know the best places around the city, but I do know some good ones,” I told him. “Is this your phone? I’ll call you back tomorrow once I get in and we can make a plan from there.”

“Sounds perfect,” Javier said. “Enjoy the talk, and see you tomorrow!”

I hung up and hurriedly changed my return flight to the following day, even though it cost me a couple hundred dollars in change fees. I was already planning where to take Javier the following night.

* * *

I met him at an Ethiopian restaurant near his hotel, a little hole-in-the-wall place with a lovely elderly owner who brewed the best coffee on the planet. “Have you ever had Ethiopian food before?” I asked Javier. “Is this okay?”

I was weirdly nervous, until I considered that this was kind of a “first date” for us. It was still hard to think of this as a date when he didn’t know how long he would actually be here in New York, but I decided it was time to start being optimistic. Maybe he was the kind of guy that I could do a long-distance relationship with. If you cared about the person enough, maybe that was possible.

And I already knew that I liked Javier, instinctively. We just clicked.

“This is great,” Javier said, looking around the place. “I’ve never had Ethiopian food before, though, so this will be an experiment.”

I smiled at him and we perused the menu, finally settling on a couple selections to share. “So how was your talk?” Javier asked.

I shook my head. “Honestly, one of the worst that I’ve ever had,” I sighed.

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Javier said, smiling at me. “What did you do, forget all your notecards?”

“They just wanted to gossip about Oliver,” I told him. “You know, because he donated so much money to Le Monde, and then donated so much money to the relief efforts in Argentina. There were a bunch of people speculating that it meant that Oliver and I were in a relationship, and they were just trying to trip me up, I guess.”

“That’s horrible,” Javier said sympathetically. “Even if the two of you were in a relationship, it wouldn’t be any of their business. And what a way to waste your time.” He paused. “You and Oliver aren’t in a relationship, are you?”

“Oliver doesn’t do relationships,” I said shortly.

Javier held up both hands. “Whoa, sorry, I meant that as a joke. My tone must have gotten lost on you.” He frowned and cocked his head to the side. “Are you sure that you’re up to dinner tonight? Maybe you should just take a night to relax and have a rest.”

“I’m fine,” I sighed, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

“It’s all right,” Javier said easily.

“So how have things been for you in the city?” I asked him.

“They get more and more interesting every day,” Javier said, grinning at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh really?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “Details?”

“Well, I’ve received a very interesting offer for my next project. You know my company was bought, and that’s meant that they’ve been able to tackle some new projects. They were wondering if I’d be interested in going to various parts of Africa to help build homes and improve the living conditions of some of the small tribes there.”

“What about Asia?” I asked in surprise.

“To be honest, the longer I’m away from Asia, the more sure I am that my crew there can manage without me. I called to check in and Zhyrgal, my second-in-command there, has basically taken over the project. Which is great, he’s one of the local men, and his leadership in the project will do his family a lot of good. Plus, it helps get more of the locals involved since he speaks the language. It’s the perfect transition step to the whole project being run by locals—just with the funding from this new parent company. Of course, it’s not always going to be easy for them, but I have faith that they’ll get things done.”

“That’s wonderful,” I told him.

“It is,” Javier agreed. “Although it kind of leaves me at loose ends, now that things are wrapping up in Argentina. We’ve done about all that we can do; the rest is just time. So the project in Africa . . .” He trailed off, but I could tell how excited he already was.

“You’re going to go,” I said in surprise. “You’ve already made up your mind.”

“I have,” Javier agreed, nodding his head. “But I did also wonder if you would be interested in going with me.”

I blinked at him in surprise. “You want me to go to Africa with you?” I asked.

Javier looked nervous. “I wouldn’t ask this except that you and I get along so well. And to be honest, I’ve been desperate to see you again, ever since you left.” He paused. “There were so many things that I wanted to say to you while you were still in Argentina, and when you had gone, I felt like I had missed my chance. Being asked to come to New York felt like I was being given a second opportunity.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked dumbly.

Javier’s gaze turned more serious than I had ever seen it. “You and I haven’t known one another for very long. But I’m intrigued by you. You interest me. Sometimes when we’re talking, it feels as though we are cut from the same cloth.”

“That’s a pretty big declaration,” I said faintly.

“It is,” Javier agreed. “But try to tell me that you don’t feel it too.”

I stared at him for a long moment. I remembered thinking in Argentina about how much I wished he and I could just have a little more time. I remembered thinking about how perfect he was for me, how Oliver could never come close to what I shared with Javier. And here Javier was in New York, asking me to go with him to Africa, showing me that he really wanted to make things work between us, in a way that Oliver never had.

Oliver had been all about bold, sexy moves. He had taken me out for dates and successfully gotten me to let him fuck me. But there was no future in it. There was no trust, a lack of communication—in short, everything was wrong with that relationship.

Javier and I had been given no choice but to trust one another. When you’re sweating out in the sun, doing hard manual labor, you get to know one another in a way that city life never affords to most relationships.

But all the same . . .

“I can’t come with you to Africa,” I sighed, shaking my head. “Javier, you know that I can’t.”

Javier looked sad but understanding. “Because of your work,” he surmised.

“Because of my work,” I agreed. “Javier, it’s taken me years to build Le Monde up into what it is today. It feels as though we’re finally making headway, as though we could be one of the major players in getting aid to the people who need it most, without having all those funds tied up in bureaucratic tape. I can’t just abandon all of that.”

“Your second-in-command is not as ready as Zhyrgal to take over for you?” Javier asked.

I thought back to Jeri, her fixation on Oliver. The way that she was playing with Jackson, who was such a nice, honest man. I thought about her motivations behind having fundraisers: because she saw them as a big party that she got to plan and attend. She definitely wasn’t ready to take over the company. She would never be the type of person who could guide a charity organization like Le Monde, for all that she excelled at the organizational aspects of the place.

“That’s unfortunate,” Javier said, before I even needed to say anything. He shrugged. “Well, it was worth asking.” He held up his Ethiopian beer and clinked his bottle against mine. “At least we know our paths may cross again in the future. This project in Africa won’t keep me there for years on end like the one in Asia did. Maybe I’ll see you again soon.”

I smiled at him distractedly. “Maybe,” I agreed.

Inside, I was wrestling with what I really wanted. To be honest, I wanted to choose Javier. I wanted to choose to go to Africa. I missed being elbows-deep in muck and aid projects. Sometimes, I actually wished that I had never started Le Monde Ensemble, that I was still just moving from one project to another, never staying in one place long enough to grow restless. It was a lonely and nomadic existence, but it was one that I had always appreciated.

But it was selfish for me to think that way. I could help so many more people—had helped so many more people—now that my charity organization was really off the ground. And I still got the opportunity to work on some of the projects firsthand. Just not as often as before.

I couldn’t just leave all those people in a lurch because I liked to be on the ground doing the work, rather than in the office doing the paperwork.

And I definitely couldn’t leave all those people in a lurch because I had met a guy who asked me to go to Africa with him. I just wasn’t that type of girl.

I could imagine a future with Javier, though. We would move from project to project together, getting to know one another more and more intimately as the years went on, until we were a total package deal, until people rarely saw one without the other. We would work hard together, and we would share in a sense of accomplishment at the end of every day.

But I knew that wasn’t the kind of life I really wanted to lead. Not when I really thought about it. I didn’t want to lose my independence. I didn’t want to lose everything that I had worked for. Some day, I might want to settle down and have a family, and it was impossible to do that when you were always moving from one disaster site to another, or one third-world country to another. Things would start to fall apart. Cracks would begin to form.

I smiled at Javier. “Besides, you remember how miserable I was at building houses with you,” I told him. “Surely there are other people that you’d rather have helping you out—ones who can actually read your chicken-scratch and get things done right!”

Javier laughed. “That, you’re right about,” he agreed, but I could see that same sadness still lurking in his gaze.

I didn’t know what he wanted me to say to him. For all that I could see falling in love with him, the future that he was asking me to sign on to wasn’t the one I had chosen for myself.

At least, that’s what I thought, until I saw the magazine spread a couple days later.

* * *

It was left on my desk before I got in to the office—or more likely, someone had left it there the previous afternoon, when I had left work early to take Javier to visit the Statue of Liberty, something that he claimed he had always wanted to do with a “real New Yorker” at his side. I tried to tell him that I didn’t exactly qualify as a real New Yorker since I’d grown up in California, but he’d ignored me.

I stared down at the magazine spread, absently reaching out a finger to trace Oliver’s strong jawline. He was at some gala event, dressed in a form-fitting, navy blue suit with a grey bow tie. He was laughing at whatever the blonde next to him had just said, and his arm was around her waist in a clearly possessive gesture.

Oli Lewin’s New Sweetheart? the caption read.

I wanted to be sick, staring down at him with her. Of course, I had known that he was with other people. If he had already slept with Jeri while I was away, then it was no surprise that he had already moved on with someone else.

I just felt . . . disappointed, really. I hadn’t expected him to give up so easily. He hadn’t tried calling or stopping by the office at all. It was as though he’d finally decided that I was too much work.

I swallowed hard and then grabbed the magazine, crumpled it up and dropped it into the trashcan. Then, I quickly dialed Javier’s number, before I could second-guess myself. “Javier?” I asked.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m at that café that you recommended, the one with the good croissants. They’re even better than I expected.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said distractedly. “Listen, about Africa—”

“I hope you’re not going to try to tell me all the reasons why I shouldn’t go,” Javier interrupted, sounding worried. “Because to be honest, I don’t think it would take many reasons from you to have me considering it. But for the same reason that you have to stay here in New York and keep doing your business—Sophia, I have to go work on this project. It means a lot to me, and I’m very interested in it. I hope you won’t try to persuade me not to.”

“That’s not what I’m calling for,” I said. I took a deep breath. “In fact, I was calling to see if that offer for me to join you was still valid.”

There was a long pause. “Seriously?” Javier asked, and I could already hear the hope in his voice. “Sophia, of course that offer is still valid. Do you really want to come with me?”

“I do,” I said firmly. “I don’t want to get into the reasons for it, but I think this could be a good for me.”

“I’ll let my contact know and have them give you a call to brief you,” Javier said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’ve changed your mind.”

We chatted for a little while, and then I hung up the phone. I didn’t feel half as elated as Javier did. In fact, I felt sort of hollow. And furious at Oliver. It seemed like he hadn’t learned anything from me. Like he hadn’t cared about me at all. He’d just . . . discarded me.

The idea of being away from everything and everyone certainly had its appeal.