Page 124 of The Stranger

“I’m sorry.”

I say nothing.

“She was beautiful inside and out. I suspect, just like you.”

“You don’t have to say that,” she whispers as her gaze drops.

“It’s not just my observation, Primrose. Children have an uncanny knack of seeing to the heart of a person. Also.” I suck in a breath. “I think you might be even more beautiful than Allegra. She wouldn’t mind me saying so.” Not when she complained ceaselessly about the gap between her front teeth that I made her swear she wouldn’t change, and her ever-woeful lament over being pigeon-toed. God, I loved her.

“You must miss her.”

“Sadness wasn’t our whole story,” I reply. “Though for a long time, I believed grief meant I’d stopped wanting anything that might matter.” I turn to look at her and contemplate taking her hand. “But then you arrived.”

She moves her hand from my reach. “I’m not the first woman…”

“You’re the first woman I’ve cared to know to any degree. And that has infuriated me. You have infuriated me.”

“Same,” she mutters as her gaze slides away, but not before I see the corner of her mouth curl.

“And you intrigue me.”

“Same. Again.” She glances down at her hands, as though not happy with the admission.

“I’d almost forgotten I still could.”

“Could what?”

“Feel.” The whole world in those eyes of hers. “Primrose, I’ve never been attracted to any woman like I am to you.” Not even Allegra in those early days. I don’t remember suffering this fervor of fascination. “But I must be honest with you. While I know it might be possible to have two loves in one life, I won’t risk loss again.”

“You loved her very much.”

“I did.” And I could love you just as easily, I fear. Words I cannot admit and a risk I will not take. “I can’t promise you a future,” I add, daring to press my hand to her face. “But I won’t pretend I don’t long for what’s before us. No one can make you feel like I can.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to because I see the truth of it there on her face.

“We could have a summer.” My thumb traces the shape of her mouth, everything tightening inside me at the heat of her breath. “A handful of weeks before life demands something different from both of us. Don’t refuse to bloom because autumn is coming.”

“Poetic.” She makes a small huff of the word. “Euphemistic.” Her brow furrows.

“I’m asking you not to sacrifice these weeks to fear.”

“Who says I’m afraid?”

“I think we’re both afraid, in our own ways. We’re afraid of what might happen. Afraid of what we might miss. But I want you. I want to be the man who gives you all that you’ve missed.” I lower my head so slowly and, when she doesn’t resist, slant my lips over hers. One sweet, tremorous slide before I pull back and drown in the blue of her eyes again. What a way to go, I think as I turn back to the piano.

“Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment, chagrin d’amour toute la vie,” I whisper over the melancholy tune. The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, but the grief of love lasts a lifetime.

30

PRIMROSE

“Primrose, put on your swimsuit and join us!”

“Maybe later,” I call back, though my words are wasted on a little girl busy twirling in the swimming pool like a water nymph. Her delight is compounded with a scream as her father’s dark head breaks the surface of the water beside her. He grabs her immediately by the waist, throwing her effortlessly into the air. She lands in a tangle of legs and arms and sizable splash for someone so slight.

I smile at the sight of them, at her infectious laugh, and how she swims immediately back to reach him, “Again, Papa. Again!”

His white smile gleams then, across the water, our gazes catch. His expression sharpens and something low inside me knots. Probably my ovaries.