Read The One in My Heart for Free Online Page B

groupies.”
    He laughed softly. “Running into you, Professor, is the best belated Christmas present I could have asked for. Are you busy? Can I buy you a drink?”
    And then what? We go back to his Park Avenue apartment for sex?
    Part of me wanted that, a lot. But already I wished that I hadn’t run into him. Face-to-face it was impossible to discount the fact that he hadn’t reached out since August. That as much as I loved to romanticize our encounter, I’d been just an opportunistic bang for him.
    “Don’t tell me you aren’t the least bit curious about why I never showed up in Paris,” he said, as if he heard my intended refusal. “You know there had to be a terrific scandal involved.”
    “Is that what you’re going to divulge?”
    “Only if you let me buy you that drink. This is a special one-time-only offer that expires in the next few minutes.”
    He was also a lot more predatory than I remembered. It occurred to me that last time he’d handled me very carefully, a thought that was a blare of alarm in my head.
    “If it was a real scandal, I should be able to Google it.”
    “You can’t—not yet, as far as I know.” He studied me—this time not as a man looking at a woman he’d like to take to coffee—or to bed—but more like a physician inspecting a patient who presented puzzling symptoms. Or perhaps a DA considering a less-than-cooperative witness. “You know, it’s at the top of my to-do list to call Zelda after she comes back from her trip and invite the two of you to dinner. Her flight lands day after tomorrow, right?”
    I remembered that he’d been in touch with Zelda for a while. In hindsight it was clear that he had been laying the groundwork for something. But what?
    A few beats passed before I tilted my chin toward the grand Beaux Arts facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just steps away. “I was going to the Met. Would you like to come along?”
    WE DIDN ’ T SPEAK AS WE walked up the steps to the museum, then across the great hall to check our coats and get our tokens. I was upset, and unsettled by the fact that I couldn’t figure out why I was upset. Was it because he had been scheming behind my back? Was it because not texting him—or even turning down a drink with him—was no longer sufficient to keep him out of my life? Or was it because some part of me was breathlessly, extravagantly thrilled that the matter was out of my hands, that he was here to stay no matter what I did or didn’t do?
    “How was your Christmas?” he asked, as he secured his token to his charcoal jersey.
    “I worked most of the time. Yours?”
    “Taken up by a medical mission to Guatemala.”
    I almost stopped in the middle of the grand staircase. “Doctors Without Borders?”
    “No. There’s a Buddhist group that organizes missions to developing countries—and here in the States too. I’ve been going with them for years.”
    “What do you do? I don’t imagine you can perform heart transplants.”
    “No, but I can do heart valve repair. And I can serve as translator.”
    “Now you are actually impressing me,” I said, not without some reluctance.
    “I know. All that and a nice ass—it’s the pinnacle of modern manhood.”
    I laughed in spite of myself. “Watch it, God Complex.”
    He smiled back at me. The sight of those green eyes, their corners slightly crinkled, made my heart thud like a swooning Victorian debutante landing on the ballroom floor.
    “Okay, enough small talk,” I said sternly. “Let’s hear about your scandal, and make sure you give me all the salacious details.”
    “ All the salacious details? Suuure,” he drawled, his voice full of mischief. “Let’s see. It started when I was sixteen. I was in Spain for a semester as an exchange student. My host mom was a professor at the University of Salamanca, and one of her colleagues was a gentleman by the name of José Luis Dominguez Calderón.”
    “You say that name with a lot of relish,” I told him.