Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86799 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
She smiles. “Maybe we are.” Then she waggles an eyebrow. “And I get to see you in a suit tonight.”
I roll my eyes. “You do love a man in a suit.”
“Correction—I love you in a suit.”
“How do you know? You’ve never seen me in a suit.”
It’s her turn to roll her eyes. “Some things you just know.”
J. Hudson Bettencourt
I wasn’t supposed to be on the train the day I met Amy Chandler six months ago. But that’s how it goes with so many of life’s moments.
They were never supposed to be on the schedule. Your flight is canceled, your car won’t start, the snow keeps you in a cabin.
At the time, these beats certainly don’t seem like moments. They seem like inconveniences. Annoying flat tires that threaten to ruin your day.
That was how I felt that evening in Nice. I’d been in the French city, meeting with a new green energy company I’d invested in, and I was slated to catch a flight to London. I had a meeting the next day with the JHB executive board, based in London, where I’d lived for the last few years as my holdings expanded in Europe.
But as I checked out of the hotel in Nice, my flight alert flashed on my phone. There was rain in London.
Well, what else was new? That city was always home to a gray storm.
This time, though, there was so much goddamn rain, so much infernal thunder and lightning, that the airport shut down.
All flights were canceled.
But man can’t rely on one mode of transportation, one source of fuel. That’s the foundation my business was built on. I’d simply go to London another way.
I headed to the train station in Nice instead, planning to catch the midnight train to Paris, then transfer to a London railway. But when I walked into the station and stood under the departure board checking the times, my attention strayed to a woman with chestnut hair.
She walked past me, chatting amiably with a group of tourists, perhaps. Three other women wearing T-shirts that said Book Besties. My gaze stayed on the brunette. She was tall, with lush hair cinched back in a ponytail, and the most inviting smile I’d ever seen.
Her smile was warm, real, and also…intriguing.
When the three women excused themselves for the restroom, the brunette headed toward the departure board and craned her neck to check the times.
“I’ve only double-checked the departure twenty times, but I can’t seem to stop,” she said, then shrugged. “You never know when they might switch times.”
“A train line that switches departures capriciously? I might have something to say about that,” I said, and I had a lot to say about it in fact. Efficiency was the cornerstone of my clean energy business.
She turned to me, her brown eyes curious and friendly. “I trust you don’t like capricious train lines?”
“In fact, I forbid them,” I said, and that was the truth, though of course she probably had no idea.
She laughed. “Well, glad you have your priorities straight.”
Then she walked away.
That was that.
She was gone. I had no idea what train she was taking. Would she be on one of my trains to London? To Barcelona? Or one of the many others departing in the next hour, fanning out all over Europe?
What did it matter, though? She was simply a woman I had exchanged a few lines with in front of the departure board.
Except as I waited in the station for my train to leave, I replayed that brief exchange too many goddamn times for my own good. We’d barely talked and yet I couldn’t get her out of my head.
There was something about her. Something about that moment.
She could be married.
Uninterested.
Unavailable in a million ways.
Shoving her out of my mind as best I could, I answered a few emails from the board and took a call from my vice chairman.
Then it was time to go—I had a meeting to attend. A job to do. I was headed for the platform to catch the train when someone with a Book Besties shirt scurried past me then darted onto the train on the other side of the tracks.
My pulse raced unexpectedly.
My woman could be on that train. She’d been traveling with the Book Besties.
I gazed at the long line of blue and cream-colored cars.
My skin warmed. Possibilities flickered through my mind.
This was annoying, this reaction to a woman. This reaction to anything that wasn’t business.
But there it was, insistent, under my skin.
This was a moment. Because that was my train. My line. My choice.
And goddamn it, I was making it.
Purposefully, I crossed the platform and boarded the train to Barcelona.
Was I a stalker?
No, I wasn’t a fucking stalker. I was a man who’d spotted an opportunity. And while I could be patient, I also didn’t let a tantalizing chance pass me by. I said hello to the JHB Travel Manager, followed the blonde in the T-shirt, then scanned the car for the brunette I’d exchanged words with in the station.