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their fathers’ shoulders—and wished Zelda were already back.
    On the other side of the park was Fifth Avenue. The moment I set foot on it, someone called my name. “Dr. Canterbury!”
    I looked across the street and couldn’t speak for a moment. It was none other than Bennett, in a beautifully cut grey overcoat worn over jeans, a blue scarf around his neck, too stylish and gorgeous for someone not fronting an advertising campaign for a major Italian fashion house.
    “Hey!” I found my voice somewhere.
    It wasn’t Munich. But I’d take it. I’d totally take it.
    He crossed to my side and kissed me on my cheek. “You look almost too pretty.”
    I had on head-to-toe black and no makeup. His compliment stoked my vanity in all the best ways. I couldn’t help smiling. “You, on the other hand, look only regular pretty.”
    “Medical school sucked all the hot out of me.”
    I laughed. “How are you? And what are you doing here?”
    “Out for a walk. I live around the corner.”
    From where we stood, Park Avenue was only two blocks away. I raised a brow. “Don’t tell me you’ve succeeded in becoming a Park Avenue trophy husband.”
    “No, I had to buy my own apartment on Park Avenue. But the maintenance fees are atrocious, so I’m still looking for a sugar mommy.”
    I’d figured he probably had independent wealth of some sort—the house in Cos Cob couldn’t have come cheap—but an apartment on this stretch of Park Avenue too? A teasing question was on my lips about whether he worked at a mob hospital and knew where all the bodies were buried, when gears started turning in the back of my head.
    The boy came back in grand style, bought an apartment on Park Avenue and all that.
    Park Avenue apartment. Check.
    According to Frances, he made an absolute fortune out west.
    The area code of Bennett’s cell phone number was 510. Berkeley, California—I’d looked it up.
    And there were whispers of a most unsuitable older woman.
    What had Bennett said to me when I told him that my age in binary was exactly one hundred thousand? I have been known to like an older woman.
    I goggled at him, thunderstruck. Could it be? “Bennett, what’s your last name?”
    “Somerset.”
    He was the one who didn’t show up, the one whose absence set off—
    I stopped. That was and had always been an irrational chain of thoughts. Nothing would have been any different had he come to the ball. And he didn’t have to account for a misstep from almost half his lifetime ago.
    He did, however, have to answer for his more recent actions. “What were you doing e-mailing and having lunch with Zelda?”
    “You were my only score since I came back to New York,” he replied cheekily. “I figured it would be easier to get you to put out again than to convince someone else from scratch.”
    I was taken aback—I hadn’t expected him to be up-front about it. “You should have told her that was all you wanted.”
    “Right. Next time I see her, I’ll tell her that I have the biggest hard-on for you.”
    He said it with a smile, his tone perfectly casual. My reaction, however, was anything but casual. Now that the shock of his identity was beginning to wear off, all the sexual fantasies I’d woven about his raging hard-on for me flashed across my mind’s eye, a highlight reel of ferocious kisses and frantic disrobing.
    I inhaled, a shaky, shaky breath. “You could have just told me . Zelda heard wedding bells.”
    He was unchastened. “Come to think of it, I’ll marry you any day of the week.”
    Even though it was abundantly clear that he couldn’t be less serious, the playfulness of his tone, peppered with affection, somehow made my heart turn over, a sensation at once delightful and terrifying.
    This man was more dangerous than I’d remembered.
    “Your patents on electroceramics are going to be worth a mint,” he added. “I’ll make sure to refuse to sign any prenups.”
    “Huh,” I said. “I don’t date gold-digging