Page 11

It’s nothing. Just nerves.

Michelle took the card. “Alright,” she said. “Give me your hand.”

I extended my hand to meet hers. When our fingers touched, that warmth from before ignited, sending a tingling down my arm. God fucking help me.

Michelle kept hold of my hand, leaning in toward me, her lips at my ear. “Kiss me,” she said.

A strip of heat ripped down my neck, curling in my stomach. “What?”

“On the cheek.”

I hesitated, then slid my hand up, gripping her jaw. I leaned in, pressing my lips to her cheek, as requested. She smelled like… Sweetness. Caramel. Vanilla.

“Will?” Michelle asked, our faces still close.

“Yeah?”

She whispered in my ear: “You owe me.”

Even as the sensation of her breath there did dangerous things to my nerve endings, I had to grin. When I looked back at the office building’s entrance, the woman was gone, the glass door swishing shut.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll ask Remy to give you a discount.”

She laughed, and this time, the sound curled down to my goddamned toes.

4

Michelle

It may have taken two whole weeks, but I think it was safe to say I’d put Will Archer completely out of my mind.

Mostly.

Sure, it had taken a little effort. And some deliberately applied focus on my blog. It didn’t hurt that the girls and I went home to Long Island for a weekend visit, either. My parents were the only thing I missed about New York City. Reese and I were close to them, and we mostly got along swimmingly.

That is if you left out the questions from Mom. And my own need to make every step of the dishes we were making for dinner look blog-worthy. It was a good thing Mom and I could make all of Nona’s recipes with our eyes closed, thanks to all the years we’d spent together in her kitchen.

Once I’d finished getting her up to date on how the girls were doing in school and how the blog was going behind the scenes—we slipped into dangerous conversational territory: me.

She started with the classic Mom questions: “Are you doing okay?” Mom asked. “Are you eating properly? You look skinny.”

Maybe to Mom I did.

Once sorted, she slipped into what my older brother Pietro used to call CEO mode. Mom had worked at a busy managerial job before she retired early to help me after Joe died. Her favorite question was “What do we need to figure out?” If you answered honestly—and needed the help—she was like a machine, drawing up lists and action items and timelines.

I liked figuring things out too, and, though I loved my mom to bits, I didn’t always like doing it her way. I needed to do things on my own. My therapist told me it was because I was the baby of the family. It was probably why I’d been the first one out of the three of us to settle down and start a family. But no matter how much I knew it was there, I still wasn’t always able to shake that need to do it all myself—even when it was clear I needed help. Even at the worst time of my life, pregnant and newly widowed, I tried to manage on my own. I pushed everyone away, needing to show them how strong I was. I knew it was because if I couldn’t show them, how could I believe it myself?

Now, Mom knew better than to press on the issue of how our lives were going. She knew I was competent, and six years on, an experienced single mom.

But on the topic of relationships she didn’t exercise the same restraint.

Today, Mom’s questions about my personal life weren’t incessant, but they were insistent, and I knew she wouldn’t give up this time. Steve and I had split last year, and I’d told Mom I was going to spend the year on my own, not jumping straight into something new. But that year was up, and any day now I’d have to tell her the truth—that the year on my own had galvanized my private decision that there would be no one, after Steve. That I planned on raising the girls as a strong and single woman.

The only problem was, if I told her, that made it official. And that meant it was official that I was ignoring Joe’s dying wish.

Guilt rolled hot and heavy in my chest. If only I could put this conversation on ice for life. But I could feel Mom’s eyes on me. I could practically hear her rolling the questions around to find the best way to crack me open.

But she let it go for now. “Shame Therese couldn’t come home with you this time,” Mom said. Mom and Dad were the only ones Reese let call her by her proper name. “First Pietro can’t make it home for any of the holidays. Now Therese is abandoning me, too?”