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response to his wide smile, but inside, my
stomach felt like ice.
     
    Quality time with Uncle Andy for the rest of the summer was great,
but I still felt lonely for Mathis. Every day I thought that maybe he’d return,
but he never did. And I never saw him again.

Chapter 6
     
    “So how was your first training session?” Sharon asked me as we
sipped our lattes in a little café near my office. “How was the meeting with
the family friend?”
     
    “It was…uncomfortable,” I said, trying to find the right word. “It
was strange. I haven’t seen him since I was fifteen years old, but somehow,
something about him still feels very familiar to me. I got exactly the same
feeling meeting him today as I did the first time I met him.”
     
    “Hmm. A good feeling or a bad feeling?” Sharon asked, reaching for
a macaroon and surveying me thoughtfully.
     
    “A strange feeling, sort of like the entire atmosphere has
suddenly been ionized and everything I touch gives me a shock.”
     
    “As in he’s kind of scary?”
     
    “Oh, no,” I said and laughed. “No, not exactly.”
     
    “So how did you guys meet?”
     
    “Oh, it was a long time ago. He used to be my Uncle Andy’s
apprentice. He’d been training him to be a hedge fund manager. The first time I
met him was one summer when I went down to Uncle Andy’s country mansion.”
     
    “Did he stop working for your uncle?” Sharon asked with a frown.
     
    “No – he and my uncle have always worked very closely together.”
     
    “How did you and he lose touch, then?” Sharon raised one of her
eyebrows.
     
    “I guess Mathis was just too busy,” I shrugged.
     
    “Mathis?”
     
    “Yes, Mathis Côté,” I acknowledged. “We only met
for one summer when we were both at the mansion. I even had a silly teenage
crush on him. But then he left to work in the city and I never saw him again.”
     
    “What, never? Seriously?”
     
    “Nope. The last time I asked Uncle Andy about it, he told me that
Mathis didn’t have the time to spend with me or talk to me, he was too focused
on his studies.” Actually, I had asked Uncle Andy about him regularly until
Uncle Andy’s responses became shorter, and more curt, until I slowly just
stopped asking. We would spend the time talking about new books I’d read
instead.
     
    “We’d talk about books and go for picnics,” I told Sharon,
remembering the end of that summer, after Mathis had left, “but at the back of
my mind, I was always wondering why Mathis just up and left.”
     
    “Oh…that’s kind of sad.” Sharon frowned.
     
    I shook my head and looked out of the café window at the people
walking by. “It was only a brief crush. I was probably far too young and
immature about love and all that anyways.”
     
    “Well, I can see why you fell for him,” Sharon said. “He’s much
more dashing than any of the other men you’ve dated – the ones you’ve told me
about, at least.”
     
    I looked at her, confused for a moment, before she held up her
smart phone, a picture of Mathis open on the screen, his smile wide and his
eyes crinkling a little at the edges.
     
    I laughed as Sharon grinned wickedly at me.
     
    “I never said he wasn’t dashing,” I admitted. “But there’s nothing
between us now – he was downright cold to me when we met for my first training
session. I guess he’s long forgotten about that summer.”
     
    “Hmm,” mused Sharon, her eyes fixed on her phone. “There’s a lot
of gossip on this guy, Amanda.”
     
    Curiosity stirred within me as Sharon said this, but I tried to
keep my face neutral.
     
    “Yeah? What sort of gossip?” I asked in what I hoped was a casual
tone. “He’s rich – probably a millionaire, so I’m not surprised that there are
rumors around him.”
     
    “Well, that’s certainly true,” Sharon said. “Wow, Amanda – he’s
not just a millionaire, he’s worth almost 300 million!”
     
    I tried not to let my eyes grow to the size of