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“You scared me a little there,” he says, smiling. He shows perfect white teeth that almost dazzle me. “I’ve ordered you some tea. It’s just the thing for shock, I’ve heard.”
As if on cue, a woman appears at my elbow with a tray. As she unloads the drink onto the table, and I look around, she can’t take her eyes off Jonas, I can’t help but notice. She spills a little of the tea because she isn’t looking at what she’s doing. Behind her, a table full of women in their thirties who look like they might be the wives of millionaires, or just here on a bachelorette party with considerably more class than I’m used to are also staring at Jonas. Some of them are whispering to each other as they transparently eye him up.
“Thank you,” I say automatically, both to the waitress and to Jonas. I obediently pick up the tea and sip it, immediately making a face at how hot and sweet it is.
“Not to your taste?” Jonas asks, grinning.
“It’s, um,” I say. “Well, I can see why it’s good for shock.”
“Drink it all, then,” he says. There is a sparkle in his deep dark eyes. “We can’t have you going around half-recovered.”
I give a chuckle and attempt another sip, even though I know it will still be too hot before I set it down in the saucer. “I can’t believe you were there just at the right time,” I say.
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m impressed. It’s like it was fated for us to meet again.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “If you believe in that kind of thing.”
“Oh, I think it’s nice to believe in it,” he says. “Kind of romantic, don’t you think?”
I have to stare at him for a moment to work out if he’s being serious. Not only did I not expect someone like Jonas – someone so solid and handsome and so much older than me – to talk openly about fate, but I also didn’t expect him to use the word romantic.
He doesn’t mean… with me, does he?
“Sure,” I say, laughing weakly because I’m far too confused and still far too fragile for all of this.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asks. He takes a sip from the black coffee that arrived for him, without so much as a grimace. He’s in control. He’s not going to let a thing like a hot or bitter drink phase him. Not like me.
“I’m just taking a little break,” I say. “I needed to get away for a bit, on my own. Vegas felt like a good place to come.”
He shoots me a knowing look. “You’re, what, twenty-one now?” he asks. “Makes sense. You’ve come to let loose, gamble, drink, have some fun?”
“Um,” I say, feeling myself flush. “I’m not really… into that kind of stuff. I just thought I’d come and see the place. Tick it off my bucket list, you know?”
Now he laughs. “You’re too young to have a bucket list.”
I smile, feeling myself relax. Okay, so he’s not going to mock me for being a funless nerd who doesn’t know how to let go. Good to know. “Alright, not a bucket list. A things to do before I’m thirty list. How’s that?”
He clutches his chest dramatically. “You’re making me feel old now,” he says, and I laugh.
I laugh not because his cheesy joke is funny, but because it really does seem like a joke. Jonas? Old? He doesn’t look it. He doesn’t act like it.
And my body must not know it, either, because my heart just keeps speeding up and beating harder. Every time he smiles at me, every time he laughs.
I still have a crush on him. Now that I’m seeing him in the flesh again, I think it might reasonably be described as something more than a crush.
And there’s just one thought I can’t get out of my mind.
It’s not just gambling or alcohol I’ve recently become old enough for since we last met.
I’m also legally old enough for…
For Jonas.
Chapter Five
Jonas
We sit and talk for what feels like hours. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I last saw Savannah, or that she’s grown up so much.
It feels strange to be sitting here talking to someone I last knew as my best friend’s teenage daughter. To find her an adult now, self-possessed. Gorgeous as hell.
But it also feels totally and utterly right.
I feel like I’m being enchanted by every glance of those sky-blue eyes, every flick of those long black lashes.
“So, how long are you here for?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation going. What I really mean is, how long do I have to get over the fact that you’re my best friend’s daughter and make a move?
Because I’m going to make a move. I can feel it. I want her to be mine, the way I haven’t wanted anything in a very long time.
