Second Time Around Read online

  Warm, firm lips. A whiff of something clean and woodsy from his aftershave. A tickle at her temple as his hair whispered against her skin. She was back at Brunell, longing for him to put his arms around her and pull her in so her breasts would be crushed against that well-muscled chest, her thighs intertwined with his, her fingers buried in the golden spill of his hair.

  And he had, just that once.

  She stepped away and swung her backpack over her shoulder. “Rah, Brunell!”

  Then she walked out of his restaurant—and his life—one more time.

  Chapter 2

  Will walked through heavy mahogany doors into the bar of the ultraexclusive Bellwether Club. He scanned the brass-topped tables and leather-upholstered chairs before spotting his host, Nathan Trainor. The CEO of Trainor Electronics stood as Will approached, a smile of welcome lighting his serious face.

  The men shook hands and sat as a waiter materialized beside their table.

  “Take your coat and tie off. Make yourself comfortable,” Nathan said after Will had ordered. The CEO had already shed his suit jacket and lounged in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. “There’s no dress code at the Bellwether.”

  Will shrugged out of his own jacket. “Just can’t resist rubbing my nose in it, can you?”

  Nathan’s gray eyes sparked with amusement. “It’s one of the few places where I can be a member and you can’t.”

  “Do you think Frankie would accept me if I told her my father had disinherited me?”

  “Too late. You’ve already made your fortune.”

  “Without a dime from my family.” Will took a swig of the Macallan single malt the waiter had placed in front of him.

  “Give it up, Chase. Your father paid for your fancy boarding school and Brunell U. You graduated with a solid-gold education and no debt. Those of us who belong to the Bellwether Club had to start with nothing.”

  Will held up a hand in defeat. “I hope to persuade Frankie to make an exception for me.” But he knew the tough Irishwoman who owned the Bellwether Club wasn’t prone to breaking her own rules.

  He liked the Bellwether Club’s members precisely because they had made their fortunes from the ground up, the way Frankie had . . . or as Kyra said, they had earned them. His old college friend’s name evoked a twinge of nostalgia.

  Although technically he had built his multinational corporation on his own, Will had indeed started with major advantages, his education being the least of them. He had benefited heavily from the connections he had access to, old family friends with the kind of money that they could afford to risk on an energetic young man’s start-up idea, a young man they saw as one of their own.

  His father might look down his nose at Will’s career choice, but he hadn’t prevented his son from using other people’s money to fund it. Will suspected that his father hoped Ceres would fail, and his shame at having lost the money of people he knew would drive him into the familial embrace of Chase, Banfield, and Trost.

  Nathan raised his glass. “To having a hard-ass as a father.”

  “At least yours came around in the long run.”

  “Thanks to my wife,” Nathan said, sipping his drink as a soft light glowed in his eyes.

  “You’re a lucky man, my friend.” Will leaned back in his chair. “So, are we here for business or pleasure?” He and Nathan had met when he decided to explore the installation of Trainor Electronics batteries as power backup for Ceres’s refrigerators. The technology was still experimental, so Will and Nathan had spent a lot of time together working out the issues.

  “Refuge,” Nathan said. “Tonight is Chloe’s baby shower at our place.” Nathan’s wife was pregnant with their first child.

  “I’ve been in your penthouse. You could hold four baby showers simultaneously without one overlapping the others.”

  “Chloe says I hover.”

  Will grinned. “Do you?”

  “I express a rational concern at times.” But the corners of Nathan’s mouth twitched into a smile of self-mockery.

  Will laughed outright. “You drive her crazy.”

  “That’s one man’s opinion.”

  “I’d trade you the baby shower for my mother’s Spring Fling in a New York minute,” Will said, grimacing into his glass at the prospect of attending his mother’s annual garden party for her friends and his father’s business colleagues. “Are you and Chloe coming?”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Since you’ve painted the event in such glowing colors, no. Actually, we’re flying to Florida that weekend to bring Chloe’s grandmother back up here for the summer.”

  “Damn. I was hoping for reinforcements.” Will took a sip of his drink, letting the smooth burn ease his dread of the upcoming event. His father would throw verbal barbs at him. His mother would throw eligible women at him. His sister, at least, would have the good sense to disappear to the stables after making a brief appearance. “So you’re leaving me to the wolves.”

  “It seems harsh to call your family ‘wolves.’”

  “You’re right. Sharks would be more accurate. Larger, sharper teeth.”

  Nathan snorted. “Take a date to throw out as chum.”

  “That gets complicated.” Especially since he had ended a relationship his parents approved of at that very party. On the surface, he and Petra had appeared to be a great match, but when he’d insisted on taking her away from the social scene to be alone together, it had been a disaster.

  “You must have a female friend who will go with you as camouflage.”

  He started to shrug, but Kyra’s face flashed in his mind again, her long-lashed brown eyes more guarded than they’d been in college, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders in carefully sophisticated waves, her curves more sculpted now. But she still remembered their quote wars and her slanting smile hadn’t changed at all.

  “Have you ever met someone who reminds you that you once were a different person?” Will asked.

  “Chloe. That’s why I married her.” Nathan stretched out his legs. “So who makes you feel that way?”

  “An old college friend. I ran into her today while I was inspecting one of my Ceres cafés.”

  “Ah.”

  Will raised his eyebrows at Nathan’s tone. “We were nothing but friends.” Except for one night when he had embarrassed himself. Now that he thought about it, Kyra had been there for two of his most humiliating moments in college. Which meant he should probably avoid her.

  “I don’t believe I said anything to the contrary.” Nathan flicked a cashew crumb off his trousers. “What aspect of the ‘old you’ did she remind you of?”

  Will shook his head. “She was my girlfriend’s suitemate, and it turned out my girlfriend didn’t consider our relationship exclusive. So I often ended up talking to Kyra while Babette was otherwise occupied.” He grimaced. “I was under the delusion that Babette took a great deal of time getting dressed and putting on her makeup when, in fact, she was, er, entertaining another man in her room. At any rate, I got to know and respect Kyra’s passion for soaking up knowledge. She used to audit extra courses just because she was interested in the subjects. No one else I knew did that.”

  “So now she’s a college professor or something?”

  “She’s a bartender at Stratus and a cook at an after-school care center. She dropped out of Brunell after two years.” Will shifted in his chair. “Her father got sick and died.”

  “It bothers you,” Nathan said.

  Will swirled his scotch in the cut crystal tumbler. “She had an amazing mind. She planned to be an editor and discover the next Jane Austen. I have no doubt she would do exactly that, if given the opportunity.” He met Nathan’s gaze. “She inspired me to use my time at Brunell to actually learn something instead of hanging out at the frat house. And now . . .” He shrugged.

  “So are you going to take her to the party?”

  Will made a dismissive gesture. “That would be unkind to Kyra.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe you
also remind her of the person she used to be.”

  Chapter 3

  Kyra picked up the scrub brush to work on one of the battered pots in the Carver After-School Care Center’s kitchen. Today’s so-called snack had been taco macaroni, a one-pot kid-friendly dish made from a recipe Felicia, one of the fifth graders, had brought in. That meant the child helped to prepare the meal, and Kyra posted her photo, in which Felicia was grinning with pride as she held a steaming plate heaped with the casserole, on the chef’s wall of honor. The kids had wolfed down the pasta, their eyes lit with appreciation, partly because sometimes the “snacks” were the only dinner they got.

  As Kyra scrubbed at the sticky remnants of the casserole, she recalled her meeting with Will . . . again. It had been a week and he kept striding into her mind—sometimes in his business suit, sometimes in his college jeans and polo shirt—at odd moments. She hadn’t thought of him in years—well, not very often—but now she couldn’t stop. It was like being back in college when he was the Big Man on Campus and she was the mousy girl from the boondocks with a giant crush on him.

  “Unfinished business,” she muttered to herself. That had to be it. For one brief, dreamlike moment, she had thought she would have the ultimate experience in Will’s arms . . . but then it hadn’t happened. She’d gone back to being the blue-collar girl from Nowhere, PA.

  “Hey, Ms. Kyra, could I ask you something?” Diego’s voice, soft as it was, made her drop the scrub brush as she spun away from the sink. The kid’s long dark hair hung to the shoulders of his gray Knicks sweatshirt, and his hands were shoved in the pockets of jeans so new they still had a crease down the leg. His recently appointed guardian, Violet Johnson, one of the center’s board members, took good care of him.

  Kyra used the back of her rubber-glove–covered wrist to shove a strand of hair away from her face. “Sure thing, sweetie. Ask away.”

  Diego was huge for his thirteen years—tall, broad, and muscular. Yet when he touched one of the motley array of rescue dogs that the kids took care of at the center, known as the K-9 Angelz, his hands moved as delicately as butterflies, and his chocolate-brown eyes were soft with concern. The local veterinarian had even given him an internship at her clinic because Diego was so good with animals.

  “One of the dogs, Shaq, keeps throwing up his food. He ain’t . . . isn’t sick that Doc Quillen can tell, so we think he’s got a sensitive stomach.”

  Kyra scanned her memory of the resident dogs. She didn’t interact with them much because they were banned from her domain of kitchen and dining room due to health department regulations. However, she’d seen how devoted the children were to their adopted pets and how much the dogs’ unconditional love meant to them.

  “Isn’t Shaq the giant pit-bull mix?” She was about to say that it seemed ridiculous for such a tough-looking dog to have a picky stomach when she remembered whom she was talking to. Diego was a huge, scary-looking kid—so scary, in fact, that his moneylender father had wanted to use him to intimidate his nonpaying customers, while the boy wanted to take care of every small creature he encountered.

  Diego nodded. “Yeah, he’s the biggest dog of the K-9 Angelz. And his kid is Felicia. Why that little girl picked such a big Angel . . .” He shook his head. “Anyways, I was wondering if you got an idea for food that might not upset his stomach so much.”

  “Don’t they make hypoallergenic dog food?” She stripped off her gloves as she headed for her laptop to look it up.

  “Yeah, but he can’t tolerate that neither and it ain’t . . . isn’t cheap. Doc says we need to figure out what ingredient bothers him, so we need to try foods that got just a few ingredients and we know what they all are. And fresh is better ’cause the premade stuff might have some preservative or something that makes him sick.”

  “Huh.” Kyra put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know anything about dog food. Let me do some research and I’ll come up with some recipes.”

  The worried furrows in Diego’s forehead eased. “Hey, you want me to clean that pot for you? I got more muscles than you.”

  “You’re the best, kiddo.” She ruffled his long hair, making him duck away from her with a grimace that covered a smile. The staff never discussed it, but she knew that Diego used to sleep at the center because his father had thrown him out and his mother was MIA. The boy had found a happy foster home with Violet, but Kyra still tried to give him the affection a family member would, kind of like a favorite aunt.

  She glanced at the clock over the kitchen door and grabbed her backpack and sweatshirt. “You saved my butt from being late to work, too. Thanks, Diego!”

  After racing home to change into her “sexy bartender” outfit, she stood on the subway platform, hoping the train would arrive soon so she’d have time to grab a lamb-and-yogurt wrap at Ceres. She hadn’t been back since she saw Will there, partly because she was afraid she’d run into him again, partly because she was afraid she wouldn’t.

  His business card lay on her dresser. Every now and then, she flipped it over to see his bold handwriting where he’d jotted down his cell number. Once she’d even run her finger over the ink, which was one of those stupid gestures people made in sappy movies.

  She’d wanted him with every fiber of her body back in college, even though she knew the handsome golden boy from an upper-class family in Connecticut would never consider her as a girlfriend. And the differences between them had only gotten greater in the present, so there was no point in reviving that pipe dream.

  But he had reminded her of her other dreams. The ones in which she got a master’s and became a brilliantly perceptive editor, carefully cultivating the budding literary talents she would rescue from the publisher’s slush pile. When she’d discovered all her mother’s debts—with Kyra’s name as the unwitting cosigner on the credit cards—she’d shoved those goals aside and focused on paying off the bills. Now those dreams had faded so far into the background she’d nearly forgotten them. Until yesterday.

  She still had significant debts to pay off, but she also had a reliable income now. The encounter with Will had made her wonder. Was she using the debt as an excuse? Was she afraid to try again?

  The thunder of the arriving subway train scattered her thoughts. When she walked into Ceres twenty minutes later and stepped into the line to order, she noticed some changes at the café.

  The tables were farther apart, not crammed in for maximum seating. It made the space more inviting and quieter. The lighting seemed brighter, although she hadn’t been conscious that it was dim before. The room had appeared a little dingy previously, but now it didn’t. There were additional staff members in tan shirts circulating around the floor, and they were smiling. For that matter, the cashiers had more pleasant attitudes, too.

  Will must have really chewed out the manager.

  When she sat down to eat her lamp wrap, she peeled it open to find the pureed avocado and yogurt spread evenly in a thin layer over the inside of the tortilla. The lamb was moist with just a tiny hint of pink, since they weren’t allowed to serve it rare without a warning about undercooked meat. And there were crunchy bits of carrot that had never been included before.

  It was delicious and bursting with freshness. She raised her water bottle in a silent toast to Will’s impressive results.

  The limousine eased to a stop in front of a white canopy with a silver lining. Will smiled at the sly reference to the saying about clouds, since the canopy hovered over the entrance to the Stratus Club. He swung open the car door, only to have a white-suited doorman catch and hold it, while he stepped out onto the gray carpet that stretched across the sidewalk.

  After Nathan had planted the idea of inviting Kyra to his parents’ garden party, Will hadn’t been able to shake it. She would be a breath of fresh air in the rarefied atmosphere of the Connecticut high-society gathering.

  Not to mention staving off his mother’s introductions of what she considered marriageable young women. When he went home, Will sometimes fe
lt as though he’d slipped through a time warp into Regency England, where eligible bachelors were expected to choose a suitable wife from the assortment at the soiree.

  Kyra would also provide a buffer against Petra. His ex-fiancée would be more likely to keep her distance if he had a date. He should have thought of that tactic sooner.

  Most tempting of all, Kyra would carry him back to the college days when he’d been able to shrug off the weight of the world’s expectations. Exhilarating days when he had studied just for the sake of knowledge. No balance sheets, no stockholders.

  His meeting with Kyra had forced him to admit to the restless dissatisfaction that grumbled through the back of his mind during every meeting, every restaurant opening, and every proposed acquisition these days. His partner Greg accused him of being a champion of the status quo every time Will shot down a new product idea. When Greg really wanted to piss Will off, he claimed Will was turning into his father.

  But Kyra had flooded his veins with the intoxicating elixir of carefree, potential-filled youth. He wanted to feel that again.

  So he walked through the stainless steel portal the doorman swept open.

  Bracing himself for a barrage of overloud music and headache-inducing strobe lights, he was pleasantly surprised by the restrained elegance of the entrance foyer’s blue floor and white columns, both of solid marble. Only the ceiling hinted at the club’s theme, with a painted sky that included a swath of indistinct white clouds—he assumed that was an authentic depiction of a stratus formation, since the word came from a Latin prefix meaning “layer.”

  “Welcome to the Stratus Club, sir.” A young blonde woman with exceedingly long legs shown off by a slit in her white skirt approached him. “Is this your first visit with us?”

  “It is.”

  “If you’ll come with me, we’ll make sure you are well taken care of.” She clicked across the floor in her high heels, leading him through another brushed stainless steel door.