Seven Days on His Yacht, Three Years After Our Kiss

On the third day, the *Meridian* docked in Antibes, and for the first time since Nice, the floor stayed where I put my feet.

The dinner that night was private, held in a stone-walled room above a restaurant in the old town. Eight guests. Two Italian investors, a French family that owned three boutique hotels along the coast, and a Monaco banker who kept switching languages mid-sentence just to see if I'd trip.

I didn't.

For three hours, I lived in the space between voices. Italian to English. English to French. A joke about the Genoa property that only worked in one language, which I rebuilt so it landed in the other. Julian sat at the head of the table and never once looked at me for help, which I'd learned by now meant he trusted me to give it before he needed it.

When the last guest kissed the air beside Julian's cheek and disappeared down the stairs, my throat felt like sandpaper.

Two of Julian's assistants started stacking folders at the far end of the table. Someone from the restaurant cleared the plates. I kicked one heel off under the tablecloth and pulled the Genoa draft toward me to mark the changes before I forgot them.

A cork popped.

I looked up. Julian had taken a bottle from the sideboard, something dark and French with a label I couldn't afford to read. He poured one glass, then held the bottle over a second.

"Ms. Ellis?"

"No, thank you."

He raised an eyebrow.

"The last time I drank with you," I said, "I made questionable decisions."

He set the bottle down and took a slow sip from his own glass. "I thought the decision was excellent."

One of the assistants made a very small noise and suddenly became fascinated by a stapler.

I felt my face heat and bent over the Genoa draft like it held state secrets. By the time I'd initialed two pages, the assistants had gathered their boxes and murmured something about loading the car. The door closed behind them.

Just us now. The candles had burned low, and the window behind Julian showed the harbor lights wobbling on black water.

I put my pen down.

I'd told myself I wouldn't ask. I'd told myself that for three days, and for three years before that.

"Why didn't you look for me?"

He didn't pretend not to understand. He set his glass aside and leaned back in his chair.

"How?" he asked.

"What do you mean, how?"

"What was your last name that night, Nora?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and nothing came out.

Because he hadn't known it. I'd been on a three-day contract through an agency in Zurich, and my badge had said *LinguaPoint Services* in neat blue letters. No name. No number. The agency didn't give out personal contact information, and I'd liked it that way. It had made me feel safe. Invisible.

"The badge," I said slowly.

"The badge." He nodded. "I called the organizers the next morning. They gave me the agency. The agency told me their interpreter had already flown back to London and they don't share private details with clients."

I stared at him. "You called them?"

"I did."

Something tight shifted in my chest, and I didn't like how fast it moved. I covered it the only way I knew how. I laughed.

"Come on. You're Julian Ashford." I gestured at the room, the wine, the yacht waiting in the harbor. "You buy hotels before breakfast. You could've found me."

He looked at me for a long moment. Not offended. Just honest, in a way that made me want to look somewhere else.

"I could have," he said.

The candle beside him flickered.

"But a woman who leaves without giving me her last name is usually communicating something."

I didn't have an answer for that.

For three years, I'd carried a version of that night that I'd never said out loud, even to myself. That I'd been a pleasant forty minutes for a rich man at a party. That he'd gone back inside, found someone else to talk to, and forgotten my face by the time his car pulled up. That he didn't look for me because there was nothing to look for.

It had hurt, quietly, in a way I'd gotten used to.

And it wasn't true.

He hadn't forgotten me. He'd let me go because I'd asked him to, without ever saying the words.

"I thought it didn't matter to you," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"I know." He picked up a folder and squared its edges against the table. "You made that very clear in the meeting on Monday. 'Nice to meet you.'"

"That was self-defense."

"It was a little brutal."

"You called me Ms. Ellis for two days."

"You started it."

I opened my mouth to argue and realized he was right, which was annoying.

We started gathering the contracts, because it was that or keep looking at each other. Genoa in one pile. Cannes in another. The banker's revised term sheet, coffee-stained, which I set aside to reprint. He worked from one end of the table and I worked from the other, and we met in the middle without planning it.

The last folder sat between us. The Ligurian property file, blue cover, his handwriting on the tab.

We both reached for it.

His fingers landed on top of mine.

Neither of us moved.

His hand was warm, his thumb resting on the edge of my knuckle. Not holding. Not pulling. Just there, the way his palm had been on my waist two nights ago, as if he were waiting to see whether I'd step back first.

I didn't.

"You know what the worst part is?" he said quietly.

"What?"

He was close enough now that I could see the faint shadow along his jaw, the tiredness he'd hidden from eight people all night.

"You were supposed to become a memory."

His eyes met mine and stayed there.

"You're doing a terrible job."

My heart was going so hard I was sure he could feel it through my fingertips. I thought of the motion sickness patches on my nightstand. The crackers. The four feet he'd left between us on the bench, on purpose, because he'd understood something about me I hadn't said.

I pulled my hand back first. It took more effort than it should have.

"Four more days," I said.

He didn't reach after me. He just picked up the blue folder and tucked it under his arm.

"I'm aware."

I slid my foot back into my heel, gathered my bag and the coffee-stained term sheet, and walked toward the door. My legs felt steady. Nothing else did.

I had my hand on the frame when he spoke again.

"Nora."

I stopped. I didn't turn around.

Behind me, I heard him set the folder down. No footsteps. He wasn't coming closer. He never did unless I let him.

"If I kissed you now," he said, low and even, "would you regret it tomorrow?"

The harbor noise drifted up through the window. A scooter somewhere below. Glasses clinking in the restaurant downstairs. My own pulse, loud in my ears.

I stood in that doorway with my fingers pressed against the old wood, and I tried to find the answer I'd been so sure of three years ago.

Yes. Of course yes. He was my client. This was twenty-eight thousand dollars and a loan payment and the only job keeping my business alive.

But the word wouldn't come.

Neither would the other one.

I stayed exactly where I was, my back to him, the silence stretching so long it started to feel like an answer of its own.