Page 9 of Boss of the Year

“Er, yes, but…” Daniel gave his collar one last pull, then seemed to make a decision and leaned close enough to give me another whiff of his cologne.

That hadn’t changed either. It was some custom scent that smelled of vanilla, citrus, and rain. When I was sixteen, I’d kept an old T-shirt of his under my pillow for two months until it lost the scent.

I didn’t say I was proud.

“Mom had the jet this weekend. She’s flying back from St. Bart’s, so I had to settle for commercial.”

“Oh,” I just managed, still reeling from his scent. “Have you been in Paris long, then?”

He shook his head, causing a few bits of hair to flop onto his forehead like a Disney prince. “God, no. It’s a sewer in August, just like New York, don’t you think? I’m off to the Hamptons when I get back. You?”

I shrugged. “I, um, might go there too.”

Too cook for him and his parents, I didn’t add, but only if Ondine wasn’t available. I also failed to mention that other than this last year training at the Culinary Institute of Paris, I had never spent any other August outside of New York’s admittedly swampy climate, so I didn’t know anything different.

“What were you doing in Paris?” I asked before he could press about the Hamptons.

“Oh, nothing major.” Daniel accepted his drink from the flight attendant with a wink. “Just messing around with a girl—a friend, I mean, after spending a few weeks on the yacht in St. Tropez. How about you?”

I should have told the truth. I hadn’t spent the year drinking champagne and having affairs like the girl he obviously thought I was, but instead had mastered julienne, paysanne, and brunoise knife cuts in a windowless kitchen.

But the plane hadn’t even left the gate, and we had an eight-and-a-half-hour flight ahead of us.

And Daniel Lyons was looking at me—really looking at me—for the first time ever.

Right now, I was his equal. Maybe even someone he was interested in.

That would change the moment I told the truth.

So, I didn’t lie, per se.

I just left some things out.

“I was studying for the last year,” I told him.

“Oh, a smarty-pants, eh? What’s your major?”

I bit my lip. I wasn’t a good liar. Joni called me “narc” until we were out of high school, and it wasn’t because I was a tattle. Our grandparents and teachers simply knew my face would tell them anything they needed to know.

“I get it.” Daniel flashed a knowing grin and a wink. “Student of life. Me too. I never made it through college, much to my family’s disappointment. But life is just too damn interesting.” He gave a heavy sigh filled with longing and memories. “I think I was eighteen the first time I traveled through Europe. Took the whole summer before I went to school.”

I nodded. I remembered this trip. I was fifteen at the time and had been working for the Lyons family for four months.While packing, Daniel said “thank you” when I took a water glass to the kitchen for him. By the time I reached the kitchen, I knew what kind of flowers I wanted at our wedding.

I cried for two days after he left and cried again with relief when he flunked out of Princeton after one semester and had to come home.

“My friends and I backpacked all over,” he continued after another sip of his drink. “Saw everything, had some real adventures. You know what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway when he winked again because the twist in my stomach would have made me stammer. I also knew that “backpacking” was a generous way of describing a summer spent on and off yachts belonging to other equally wealthy friends. Daniel had eventually demanded that his family buy their own.

“Sounds life-changing,” I managed.

When he looked like he was about to ask me another question, I took a cue from Joni: keep them talking. Just like my sister charming an extra chicken cutlet at the corner deli, I batted my eyelashes and pouted my lips. Just a little.

I was flirting.FlirtingwithDaniel Lyons.

And based on the way his eyes dropped to my mouth, it was working.

I offered the smile I’d practiced in the mirror over the last year. “Tell me more.”