Heidi Rice - So Now You're Back

She entered the darkened café interior, to be greeted by the comforting scent of roasting coffee, sautéed garlic and fresh baking. High-backed leather booths and stained-glass panels coupled with the low lighting from the handblown chandeliers made the bustling inside of the restaurant seem more intimate but no less elegant than the outside.

Her stomach did another uncomfortable flip-flop.

Terrific, intimacy, just the ambience I want for this meeting.

The maître d’ stood by a lectern talking to a tall man wearing a long dark blue mac with his back to her.

The spike of recognition at the man’s hipshot pose sprinted up her spine just before he looked round and a pair of painfully familiar sky-blue eyes located her standing behind him like a muppet.

‘Luke!’ The name popped out on a shocked whisper.

How can he have gotten better looking? The sneaky bastard.

She studied the high angles of his cheekbones, the heavy-lidded eyes, which always looked as if he’d just climbed out of bed, the flat place on the bridge of his nose where he’d broken it in a fight and the deadly dimple in his chin, which had made her the envy of every girl in class 10C when they’d started dating. Then did a quick survey of long legs encased in black jeans, and the navy blue cotton polo neck hugging a chest that looked much broader than she remembered it, too.

Why didn’t you give in to your curiosity yesterday and Google him?

If only she had, she would have been much better prepared for her first eyeful of this new, annoyingly even more buff Luke.

‘Haley,’ he said, murmuring the name she’d had as a girl. The name that had always felt boring and unoriginal until she’d heard him say it. The name she’d changed a year after he’d left.

‘It’s Halle. I don’t answer to that name any more.’

Any more than I intend to answer to you, she thought defiantly, even if hearing that name again on his lips had given her an uncomfortable jolt.

‘You mind if I call you Hal?’ he replied, the once familiar nickname giving her another unpleasant jolt. ‘Halle sounds kind of intimidating,’ he said as his gaze drifted up to her hair with a leisurely sense of entitlement.

If that’s your intimidated look, I’m not buying it.

She bit down on her frustration.

‘Call me whatever you like,’ she countered with deliberate nonchalance, knowing when she was being played. If he thought he could get a rise out of her that easily, he’d miscalculated.

Unpleasant jolts be damned.

‘Hal it is, then. I’m glad we got that settled.’ He swept his hair off his brow. She stared resentfully at the thick, casually styled waves of tawny sun-streaked bronze, long enough now to touch the collar of his mac.

Couldn’t he have lost some of that hair? Surely male-pattern baldness is the least he deserves after the shoddy way he treated me?

He planted one hand in his back pocket, as she frowned at his non-receding hairline, and cocked his head to one side. The infuriatingly leisurely gaze dropped down to her kitten heels.

All the muscles in her face and jaw had clenched—in direct counterpoint to his relaxed body language—by the time his eyes finally met hers again.

‘You haven’t changed.’ The rusty tone, rich with appreciation, shimmered over the skin of her nape and made tension scream across her collarbone.

Back off, buster, that’s one familiarity too far.

She adjusted the strap of her briefcase to loosen her shoulder blades before she dislocated something.

‘If that’s supposed to be flattering, it’s not.’ She laid on as much snark as she could manage while struggling to draw an even breath. ‘This happens to be new season Carolina Herrera, not a supermarket own brand.’

His wide lips curved on one side, the half-smile equal parts confidence and rueful amusement—suggesting her attempt at a slap-down had missed its target by a few thousand miles. But then again, she hadn’t expected a direct hit so soon. Luke’s ego had always been robust. Given how good he looked, she’d hazard a guess it was virtually indestructible now.

‘I don’t have a fucking clue who Carolina Herrera is,’ he said, the casual use of the F-word a prosaic reminder of how she’d once found his genial swearing so sexy.

God, what a clueless muppet I once was.

‘But whoever she is,’ he added, ‘she looks great on you.’

He took a step forward, coming perilously close to her personal space and forcing her to tilt her head back to meet his gaze.

I do not believe it. Has he actually gotten taller, too?

While he was definitely more muscular than he’d been at twenty-one, how could he have also gained an extra inch in height? At five foot four, she had always felt petite standing next to him, but she certainly didn’t remember having to look this far up to see his face.

Sod the kitten heels. I should have worn stilts. It’s going to be next to impossible to kick ass as a midget.

He rattled something off in fluent French to the maître d’, who laughed and then grabbed a couple of menus, before directing them into the restaurant.

‘Jean-François has saved us the best booth,’ Luke said.

‘Fine.’ She refused to worry about what he’d said to put that knowing smile on Jean-François’s lips. She had enough crap to process already. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ she added pointedly as she followed the maître d’.

But as she stepped in front of Luke, his palm touched her lower back and sensation rippled across the upper slope of her bum. She stiffened and jerked round.

He held up the offending hand, then tucked it back into his pocket, but the crinkle of humour around his eyes made his easy surrender a decidedly pyrrhic victory.

Swallowing the renewed spike of temper, and the latest unpleasant jolt, she picked up the pace, her kitten heels clicking decisively on the marble tiles. Directed to a booth at the back of the restaurant, she shrugged off her coat and slid onto the well-worn leather seat.

Luke took the seat opposite, nudging her knee as he folded his long legs under the table. She shifted back. Not because she was scared of touching him, but because she did not want him to crowd her.

Lifting her briefcase onto the table, she opened the locks as Luke addressed the maître d’ in fluid French.

‘Un espresso, un café crème et une sélection de patisseries. Et puis, dire au garçon qu’il devrait nous laisser seul.’

Leaving their menus on the table, Jean-François nodded to Luke, said ‘Bon appetite, madame,’ to her, then flashed that knowing smile again and left.

‘What did you say to him?’ she asked, fervently wishing she hadn’t managed to daydream through five whole years of French in school.

‘I ordered an espresso for me, a coffee with cream for you and a selection of pastries for the both of us,’ he replied drily. ‘I assume you still like your coffee milky—and you’ll love the pastries here, they’re a speciality of the place, they have an amazing pastry chef.’

‘I ate on the train,’ she lied, just as drily, aggravated that he remembered how she liked her coffee—and suspicious of the pastry order. Was that why he’d suggested this place? Did he think he could charm her into offering him more money? ‘And even with my rudimentary French, I know what café crème is,’ she continued. ‘I meant what you said to him after that.’

He rested his forearms on the table, the smug almost-smile finally flatlining.

‘I told him to tell the waiter to leave us alone so we could have some privacy for this conversation.’ He stretched out his legs, bumping her knee again. She shifted back further, then wished she hadn’t when the half-smile returned.