“I’m busy.” She glanced down at the mess at her feet—the broken bottle and her board clip. “I—” She stopped. There was still glass and brown sauce all over her list, blotting out her daily tasks. “Fiddlesticks!”
He glanced down, his eyes falling on the debris. “Oh, no. Chloe, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d start like that.” His mouth twitched. “Or that you’d be carrying glass, for that matter.”
“Not that you’d know what I’m doing now—” Chloe started to say, but before she could properly upbraid him, he knelt in front of her, pulling out a handkerchief, picking up the broken shards of glass.
The sight of him on his knees before her… It brought to mind wicked things, things she’d only allowed herself to imagine years before. Even then, she’d known it was foolish.
She’d always known that what they had was flirtation, nothing but flirtation. She’d liked him anyway, knowing the whole time that holding him in any degree of affection was a bad idea. She’d liked his jokes. She’d liked the way he teased her—relentless and yet gentle the entire time. She’d liked him so much, and knowing that she was being a fool hadn’t helped her stop.
She had always known that one day he would go away and never come back. She had accepted that. But here he was, against all expectations: back and looking at her the way he always had, as if she were the center of his considerable attention.
“Oh, give that to me,” she said crossly.
She leaned down, reaching out a hand and snatching her board clip from his grip before straightening. The paper was definitely stained; three items weren’t even visible, and half the right side of her list had been spattered with sauce. She could smell it now, salt and sweet and sour and savory all at once, the taste of her childhood in liquid form.
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s ruined.” She had to get him to go away. She had feelings, and they were going to come out, and she didn’t want him to see them. “Stop pretending to be considerate; I know you too well for that. Just pretend I don’t exist. You did it for years; you ought to be good at it by now.”
“I beg your pardon.” He was still squatting on the ground, looking up at her with a faint smile. “I will accept all of that except the last. I have never had any particular talent at ignoring you, and I definitely did not develop it.”
She glared at him straight on. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to look at him in more than glances since he arrived, and it was a mistake. He rose to stand as she watched, and she felt her throat contract involuntarily.
He had always been handsome, but his effortless good looks used to have a boyish quality to them, enough that she’d always been able to remind herself that he was two years her junior.
He had grown up. His shoulders were just a little broader, his jaw just a little more square. His expression seemed so sincere, but like everything about him, his looks were always deceiving. He was dressed in a dark navy suit that highlighted the brightness of his smile, wearing a shirt that seemed impossibly snow white. There was more than a hint of muscle in the thickness of his thighs…and her perusal of his person had officially become ridiculous. She was not thinking about his damnable thighs. She was not supposed to be thinking of any part of him at all.
She turned to look at her spoiled list, face burning.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, “for the untimely demise of your list. But there is one small bright side.”
Her entire plan for the afternoon had been blotted out by the spill. “There isn’t. Not one. You have no idea how deathly busy I am today.”
“No, there is this,” he told her with a lazy smile. “When you rewrite it, you can put me on it.”
It had been three years since Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, had last come to Wedgeford, and in that time he’d thought about Chloe Fong and her lists. He’d thought about her a lot.
He’d imagined telling her to put him on her list about four hundred times and had constructed a dozen separate responses from her, ranging from welcoming (not likely) (incredibly not likely) to downright devastating. Now he was here and she was glaring at him.
It had been a long time, and yet he recognized her plain gown of ecru muslin from a prior visit. He’d thought about her in this gown—or, to be honest, out of it—often enough, thought about untying the big brown bow of her sash or undoing the buttons down her front.
She looked at him with angry, sparking eyes through her spectacles. He had thought his memory of her was crystal clear, but faced with her in the flesh, he could see every point where his recollection had failed. He had forgotten about the silk tassel earrings she wore. Today little golden fringes dangled from her lobes halfway to her shoulders. He had forgotten about the dimple in her left cheek, the precise black of her hair—so much richer in the first rays of sunlight than his memory could reconstruct—the brown beauty spot three-quarters of the way down her neck. God, how had he forgotten that spot? It had once figured so heavily in his imagination.
He’d missed her. He’d missed everything about her.
She straightened her spine and glared up at him. “You are not going on my list. It is my list; I get to make it.”
Ah, that was good. Just a little minor repudiation. There was hope. He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.
“I genuflect to the sovereignty of your list, of course,” Jeremy said. “Your list is sacred.”
She turned away from him in one sharp movement and strode back to her house.
Chloe had fascinated him from the moment he’d met her. She was a bit more than two years his elder and had sported such a continual air of perfect competence that he’d wondered how it was possible for her to exist.
If he had any talent for plain speech, he might have confessed the depths of his feelings by now and obtained her understanding in return. Unfortunately, Jeremy had none. He’d told her how he felt; but somehow whenever he looked at her, his thoughts never came out as something sober and intellectual like I respect the things that matter to you. No. Instead, everything he felt got tied up and turned around into I genuflect to the sovereignty of your list.
His words were honestly meant, yes, but the delivery was far less believable. He wished he had a plan for his stupid mouth, but plans were her talent. His? Not so much. For now, he followed behind her.
After three steps, she turned back to him, waving a hand in the air. “It’s like you’ve forgotten everything I have ever said to you. Have you made any progress at all? Or are you still—you?”
It was as if she’d heard his thoughts. “No progress at all,” he admitted. “I regret to inform you that I will always be me.”
She exhaled loudly. “Have you considered a steady course of continual self-improvement?”
“Tried it.” He shrugged. “It went about as you’d expect. Don’t worry; there’s no need to remind me of the charges you laid on me. My memory is, like the rest of me, extraordinary.”
She glared at him. “I told you to be serious. And yet here you are.”
It had been a moonlit night three years ago, after the Trials had ended. They had both spent the day unsuccessfully attempting to keep another team from crossing a bridge, and then unsuccessfully trying to foil the subsequent victory. Jeremy and Chloe had both been exhausted and frustrated in their team’s defeat. Perhaps it had been a mistake, what happened in that particular moment.