“Thank you, Cassidy.”
He clicked off and Cassidy faced the small group. “That was the ambassador. He’s running a bit behind. If you spend more than two days in London, you’ll know that isn’t an unusual scenario.”
The guests chuckled.
“Right,” Cassidy said. “I’ll arrange for tea service, and while we wait for the ambassador, you can ask me anything you like about London. I’ve been working here at the embassy for just about ten years, so I should be able to answer just about any question you might have while we wait.”
One phone call and ten minutes later, Cassidy’s fellow Americans were pouring tea and looking delighted about it. Cassidy remembered when she first arrived in London and how she thought tea was so refined and classy and relaxed. Now she was lucky to gulp down two sips from a takeaway thermos on the way to a meeting.
The businesspeople asked Cassidy many questions about many topics, from London’s shopping areas to the weather to the hot-button political issues. They seemed pleased with Cassidy’s straightforward, knowledgeable answers, and the more information she supplied, the more questions they asked.
Cassidy loved her job, but often felt tired at the end of the day, and not from running around. She often grew weary from all her talking. She’d never talked much, as a child, as a teenager. She’d chosen not to. She supposed she’d always liked to watch life, and listen.
At the embassy, she had to be an effective communicator, and she believed she was, but sometimes she secretly longed for the time when she could say nothing and have her feelings be understood anyway. The person who never failed at that understanding was—
Not in her life now.
Cassidy shook her head with a tiny motion and kept talking so she didn’t have to think about him, about anything. When it came to suppressing unthinkable thoughts, she was a professional with a decade of experience.
“Ms. Maxwell,” said one of the men. She looked at him. He was easily the youngest one in the room, perhaps the most eager to show his bosses that he meant business. He reached into a large portfolio at his feet and pulled out a posterboard featuring a black-and-white photo of a scantily clad couple in a heated embrace. “You’ve been so helpful, that I think we can use your personal opinion. Tell us, how do you think Brits would feel about this poster on a Piccadilly Circus billboard?”
Cassidy looked at the poster, but a flash of movement caught her gaze and coaxed it over the man’s shoulder. She could see through the glass wall of the meeting room, straight to the embassy lobby.
Straight into a pair of eyes.
Cassidy sucked in a breath so hard she almost choked.
Bottomless black eyes.
From here, a stranger might think the distance made those eyes look black. But Cassidy was no stranger, and she knew if she walked out of the meeting room, walked closer and closer until she was an inch away, they would still be an almost-impossible ink-black.
Those eyes—Cassidy remembered how as a smitten child, as a teenager with a crush, as a young woman in love, she would do anything to make those eyes look her way. Then, after her mistakes, she feared she could never look into those eyes again. So she’d run away.
There was nowhere to run now.
Every memory she’d banished to the far corners of her mind now leaped out like monsters in a haunted house. Every single thought she’d outrun now clawed at her back.
The only man she ever loved was standing right in front of her again, and there was no escape.
Eric didn’t smile. He didn’t wave or nod. He just held her gaze, and Cassidy was forced to face the hurt she’d inflicted.
“Ms. Maxwell?” she heard, and snapped her attention back to the poster. “Ms. Maxwell? How do you think people in London will feel about this ad?”
Cassidy parted her lips, intending to give a professional response, but her mind tricked her into honesty. “Stunned,” she mumbled. She looked over the man’s shoulder. Eric hadn’t moved. “Shocked,” she whispered.
The uncomfortable rustling in the room brought her back once again. “Excuse me?” the one woman asked. “I rather thought Europeans were less reserved than Americans.”
“We intended a sexy, suggestive effect, not something offensive,” another man in the business delegation added.
“Oh…” Cassidy said, willing herself to focus on her job. Pretend he’s not there, she told herself. He’s probably not there. You forgot lunch, after all. It’s probably a hallucination brought on by hunger.
“What I meant to, ah, say, was…” Cassidy began.
It’s not him. It can’t be him. It must be someone who looks like him. The world has no shortage of tall, dark and handsome. Just a look-alike, that’s all.
“What I meant to say,” Cassidy repeated firmly, “was that Europeans will be shocked and stunned—that it’s not even more racy.” She pushed out a laugh.
Luckily, the company reps laughed, also, letting Cassidy off the hook.
Off the hook in here, at least, Cassidy thought. But I have to leave this room eventually. And even though she warned herself not to, she peered out the glass one more time.
Eric Barnes still stood, with a patience she knew full well he had.
Cassidy looked away from him again. She would not allow this.
Her cell jingled. “Maxwell,” she answered, willing her voice not to shake. She turned to face the wall behind her.
The voice on the other end sounded very close, because it was—the front desk was only steps from the room. “There’s a man here to see you. Eric Barnes. He says he doesn’t have an appointment but insists he see you. He says he knows you personally. I told him you were very busy, and I’d see what I could do.”
Run, was her first instinct. Run out the back door. Keep running…
Cassidy sighed and rubbed her left temple. She had a roomful of people behind her and one of the most respected politicians in all of Europe counting on her. Running was not an option right now.
“I don’t know when I’ll be finished here,” she said into the phone. “I’m waiting on the ambassador. But tell Mr.—Mr. Barnes that he can wait if he wants.”
She clicked off and suddenly felt like Dead Woman Walking.
She turned to the group and talked some more, laughed a bit, and checked her watch often because every time she did, she forgot. She rolled her chair back a couple of inches, putting a blond man directly between her and her view of the lobby. By the time the ambassador strode in and the group rose in greeting, there were hot, damp patches under her arms and a thin rivulet of perspiration was snaking its way along her hairline.
“I apologize for my delay,” the ambassador said. “But I am sure Cassidy kept you all as busy as she keeps me.”
As the people in the room happily chimed in about Cassidy’s helpfulness, the ambassador smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but felt an ugly grimace distort her cheek muscles instead. Before her boss could catch on, she stepped with great reluctance from the room, took a deep breath and took several heel-clacking strides to the lobby.
Eric had taken a seat, but he glanced up when she walked in and rose to his feet. Cassidy nodded at the reception desk, then walked right up to him and angled her head toward the door. He followed her outside and when she stopped and turned, he was suddenly so close that she had to tilt her head up a few inches to look at him.
A deep crease bisected the space between his thick, dark eyebrows—something