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“Oh, shit! Mackenzie! Are you all right?” I rushed over to her, torn between laughter and horror.
Red colored her cheeks, and she pushed a few flyaway strands of hair from her face as she wriggled her ass uselessly.
Damn. Am I actually a little jealous of a cleaning cart right now?
Yes. Yes, I am.
“I’d be better if you’d give me a hand,” she pointed out, her full lips pulling back in a grimace as she flailed her limbs. “Dickbags!”
Shit. If I didn’t get her out of there soon, she was liable to get hurt. Or hurt me when she finally got out.
Suppressing a smile at her familiar colorful language, I knelt down, sliding one arm under her shoulders and one under her knees, then plucked her up and out of the tiny metal prison. My heart thudded at the feel of her wrapped in my arms. It was so familiar, yet entirely different from my memories.
As soon as I set her down, she scrambled away from me, dropping to her knees to pick up her scattered supplies.
“Damn it. I’m so sorry,” she blustered, moving quickly and refusing to meet my gaze. “I’m not usually that clumsy, I was just—really surprised—”
I crouched down beside her and started picking things up as well. “It’s fine. It happens.”
She gave me a strange, almost confused look, but said nothing more. I wondered if she felt the same as I did, as if she’d come in and seen a ghost. We were quiet as we picked up the mess her overturned cart had made, and I tried hard not to stare at her, not to get caught up in the proximity and presence of her.
I tried to ignore the scent that clung to her skin. It was sweet and fruity—because of course it would be. Mackenzie had always liked fruit-scented, fruit-flavored, fruit-everything things. I tried not to let my eyes linger on the elegant curve of her neck as it craned when we pulled the toppled cart up together. I tried to ignore the slight sheen of nervous sweat that beaded at her collarbone, peeking under the accidentally popped button of her otherwise modest dress.
First love always hit the hardest, they said.
It only serves logic that having her come strolling into my office after all these years would take my sanity away.
We stood on either side of the cart in awkward silence. I could usually think quickly on my feet, but this was something I’d been utterly unprepared for. I didn’t know what to say. Was there anything I could say?
“Wow it’s…” I shook my head. “It’s actually you.”
“Yeah. And you—I didn’t realize.” She breathed out a little laugh, the sound just as lovely as I remembered. “I didn’t realize when I took this job that Royal Tech was… well, was you. Your father—” Realization dawned. “Oh my God, your father—”
I held up my hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do the whole condolences shebang. I’m fine.”
She nodded, fidgeting with the hem of her dress. I hated to see her nervous, like she was out of her element. I stood up straight, putting on my best serious face.
“Well, are you just going to stand there all slack jawed, Macks, like this is the first time we’ve ever met?”
I stared down at her sternly, and maybe it could have been taken seriously if the corners of my mouth hadn’t twitched.
The tension melted off her face when she realized I was teasing her. The nervous little frown that tugged her lips downward reversed, and for the first time, I saw the smile that I’d fallen head over heels for all that time ago. Mackenzie—Macks between us, my old nickname for her—looked like the girl I used to know when she smiled like that, and she loosened up instantly, holding herself less stiffly as her face relaxed and her hip jutted out.
“That’s better.” I grinned.
I itched to touch her, to pull her close and hug her, if for no other reason than to confirm that she truly was real. Instead, I kept it professional… well, mostly, anyway. I sat on the edge of my desk, feeling myself lose some of the stuffiness that I’d become accustomed to over the last several years. When I was a kid, my father had hated when I’d sat on his desk. It wasn’t becoming of a young man of my stature, according to the old man.
Well, just like then, to hell with my father. This was Mackenzie that stood across from me. And I’d never gotten hung up on bullshit formalities or posturing with her.
And as that thought sank in… I couldn’t help but wonder if her sudden reappearance in my life was some kind of sign.
Could she be the solution to my pressing problem?
2
Mackenzie
I hadn’t seen Walker Prince in over seven years.
