Page 3 of Moonlighter

It didn’t help. Now we’re home again, with no parade to plan and no cup to carry down the Brooklyn Promenade.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not a busy man. I need to work out like a beast this summer. I’ve already drawn up my cardio and gym schedules. I need to reach peak performance just as training camp starts again in August.

My dad is still talking, though. “This client is a lovely young woman,” he’s saying. “Her only crime was to date a man who isn’t as nice as he seemed.”

“Bummer,” I say carefully. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“She broke up with him, and he didn’t take it well.”

“That’s a dick move,” I empathize. “But I’m sure you guys can keep her safe.”

“No, you will,” says Max from the doorway. And when I look up, he’s smirking at me.

“No, I won’t,” I push back from the table. “Let’s go, okay? I’m starved.”

“We’re staying right here,” Dad says. “Scout is bringing in the food from some food cart she loves. She says the flavors are outta this world.”

Something tells me they’d need to be the best tacos in the galaxy to make up for whatever Max and my father are trying to railroad me into right now. “I’m just here for lunch. You guys know that, right?”

“Ah, there’s our client now.”

I look up to see a beautiful woman striding toward the conference room in shiny high heels. For a second I get a little stuck staring at the lower half of her, because there are legs fordays. But because I’ve learned to be subtle in my thirty-four years, I lift my gaze—past the mango-colored designer suit, and the sweep of long shiny hair—to take in her pristine face.

Oh, hell. It’s a familiar face. A very beautiful one, but not one I wanted to see today. Alex Engels and I have history—but not the simple, sexual kind.

Nothing about Alex is simple, in fact. She’s the most successful female CEO in America. Her father was one of my dad’s first corporate clients. The first time I met her, I was thirteen and she was eleven. We were friends. Briefly, anyway.

It was the summer just after my mother left the family for good. My father was trying to get his private security business off the ground. He was scrambling for childcare, so he brought me to stay at the Engels mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, while my father flew around the world protecting Alex’s father.

I was a very angry boy back then. Not the best company. But Alex was lonely, too. She was an only child who’d also lost her mother. So she put up with me. We became the kind of reluctant friends that lonely middle-schoolers can still be when their hormones haven’t kicked in yet.

Which is to say that she badgered me into all kinds of activities that summer, and I let her. We biked. We swam. We spied on the entire staff of the Engels estate, and invented secret machinations for everyone coming and going. We eluded our fathers, her summertime nanny, the tennis instructor and anyone else who might have tried to rein us in.

It was probably just what my wounded little soul needed.

But after that, I didn’t see her for years. Twenty-one years, to be exact. I found myself doing this math just three months ago when a chance event brought us face to face at a black tie party in Bal Harbor, Florida.

That moment went poorly. And now I am inwardly cringing as Alex draws near. My father gallantly sweeps open the door to the conference room and beckons her inside. “Alex! You lovely thing. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Hey, Alex,” Max says, reaching out to shake her hand. “Thanks for coming downtown.”

“No, thankyoufor handling my crisis on short notice,” she says in that silky voice of hers. This lady was born with poise. I’ve only seen her flustered once in my life.

Unfortunately, that one instance was last time we met.

“…And you remember my younger son, Eric,” my father says.

I see Alex stiffen. Then her gaze swings toward me, where I’m staying out of the way in the corner, trying to guess how to play this.

“Eric,” she says quietly. “OfcourseI remember Eric.” But then two bright spots appear on her cheekbones. And if this were a Disney movie, her nose would start to grow right now from that lie she just told. Because when Alex and I saw each other in April, she did not, in fact, remember me.

Kids, it was awkward.

2

Alex

Oh boy.This is all my fault. I deserve Eric Bayer’s scowl. And I owe him an apology.