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Xavier tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow, then escorted me to a crosswalk. “I think,” he said, “you’ll have time enough to see everything you want.”
“Easy for you to say,” I told him. “You’ve lived here your whole life. I only have a single summer. There’s too much!”
“Well, right now, there’s just this. Look.”
He turned me to face the opposite side of the busy street, and it was then I finally stopped jabbering when I realized just where we were.
King’s Cross was famous. Anyone who had watched any kind of modern movie about London would know its arched windows and the clock tower, not to mention the gothic spires and romantic arches of the St. Pancras Station alongside it. Down the street, I saw a sign waving for Platform 9 ¾; people shuffled by us, many carrying luggage on their way to catch a train, others finishing their commutes home via the Tube.
There was only one reason Xavier would have taken me to a train station. We were going somewhere—or at least he wanted to.
My heart deflated. Yet again, I was going to have to play the wet rag. But did he really think I would fly six hours to a strange country only to get on a train and leave Sofia? Elsie was nice, but she was still a relative stranger. There was no way I could go anywhere outside the city.
It was like the mishap with the car seat—meant in good faith, but horribly, disappointingly, wrong. And I had to be the one to spoil all the fun.
“No, Ces.” Xavier took my shoulder and rotated me gently away from the station. “This way.”
After we crossed Euston, he pulled me to the left, then turned briskly down a different, slightly quieter street curving north, lined with brick row houses on one side and an enormous building on the other that extended down the entire block.
My breath caught in my chest.
No. It couldn’t be.
Compared to the winding towers of St. Pancras or the relative grandeur of some of the other sites we’d seen on our way here, the building in front of me was staid and dull—a colossal box of red brick that extended for what seemed like miles. No fuss. No beauty. No decorations but the bright flag bearing its name, waving above us like a standard calling me to arms.
I couldn’t have been more impressed.
“You didn’t,” I breathed.
Xavier grinned down at me, the dimple on his left cheek making a rare appearance. “Didn’t what?”
I couldn’t stop staring. Not because anything I was looking at through the black iron gates was particularly interesting. The utterly normal set of steel-bound double doors wouldn’t have impressed anyone, nor would the basic steps or the blasé sidewalk out front.
But none of that mattered. It was the promise of what was inside that already had me spellbound.
“I thought a lot about where I’d want to take you on your first night in London,” Xavier said, standing behind me and placing his hands gently on my shoulders. “Buckingham Palace. Victoria and Albert. Maybe just dinner and a walk down St. Martin’s. But then it occurred to me there really isn’t anywhere else you’d rather see than this.”
“The British Library,” I whispered.
Xavier looked like he’d just won an Olympic medal. “The one and only.”
I turned, and without thinking, flung myself at him with utter joy. Xavier caught me with a laugh, his deep voice echoing off the brick as he lifted me by the waist and spun me in a circle on the cooling summer night. Several passersby looked at us curiously, but we only had eyes for each other.
“Like it?” he asked, lips just an inch from mine.
I clasped his face between my palms. “I love it. You couldn’t have done better.”
“Is that a challenge, then?”
His mouth found mine, daring me to resist a thorough, breath-stealing, mouth-plundering kiss, right there on one of the busiest streets of London. We had no real audience—yet. No press, no cameras, no intrusive questions. But it was clear that Xavier couldn’t have cared less if we had.
Seconds passed. Maybe minutes. But oh, I had missed this over the past several weeks. I spent most of my time hyper-aware of everything, tracking the children in my classroom, whether or not Sofia had forgotten her jacket, thinking about bills or work or family, or any of the other minutia I’d carried my whole life.
This man’s magic kiss, though, had always managed to make everything fade away.
Xavier kissed me until my breath was gone, and I barely remembered where we were. Only that I was in his arms, carried and desired. Wanted beyond measure.
“Welcome to London, my little bookworm,” Xavier whispered, brushing my cheeks with his broad thumbs as he gently deposited me back on the ground.
