Using the heel of his shoe, he rolled his chair closer to Addy’s. His left kneecap brushed her right one. She moved it quickly away.
“The BSLS didn’t just cover career plans,” Baxter continued. “I charted my future personal life, too, in a logical, sensible fashion. No serious dating until after business school graduation. No living with a woman until marriage. And no thought of matrimony, or even falling in love for that matter, until somewhere past my thirty-first birthday.”
Addy could think of nothing to say, though for the first time he seemed a little more human. Because only a man would come up with a prescribed system like that one.
“Oh, and that falling-in-love part? It would take six months, minimum, of dating before I’d even think of spilling those words.” Baxter slid his hand down his tie again. “So you see, what happened that night was just so...so antithetical to those plans of mine.”
“Off the Baxter Smith Life Schedule.”
He spread his hands. “Yes. And I’ve felt lousy about the way I handled things ever since I impetuously made those promises. I woke up the next morning, panicked, and for what it’s worth, I guessed and second-guessed myself over not calling you after promising I would. It’s eaten at me for the last six years.”
Addy turned back to her computer screen. “Well, don’t worry about it. I didn’t take you seriously. Like I said before, I didn’t pencil you into my life schedule then, not even for a moment. So we’re clear.”
An odd sound echoed in the small room. From Baxter? She turned her head, stunned at the frustrated expression on his face and the tufts of hair sticking up on his head. As she watched, his fingers speared through the golden stuff again, creating more disorder. Baxter was never disordered.
“What’s the matter now?” she asked.
“I want to see you, Addy. You know, go out with you. Date you.”
“No—”
“We could take our time. As a matter of fact, that’s best, right? Get to know each other, figure things out...”
Break her heart, when he finally opened his eyes and figured out an Addy March was not a proper match for a Baxter Smith. “No,” she said again.
He shoved out of the chair and started pacing the small room. Slightly alarmed, Addy watched his quick strides, his lean figure moving past the movie posters for Country Caroline and The Ghost and the Girl and then the wall of framed movie stills of Edith Essex as an intrepid explorer, a rising nightclub star, a heartbroken lover. He stopped in front of this last, staring at it, she thought, without really seeing it.
“Look, Addy, I can explore long-term relationships now.”
“But I can’t.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. Then he spun to face her. “We deserve a chance to see where this could go, don’t you think? Look, you know I’ve never forgotten you. And we’re great together in bed.”
“Baxter—”
“I’ve got a business trip coming up the first week of August. Seattle. Come with me and we’ll make a weekend of it.”
“Baxter, I can’t.” When he made to protest again, she held up her hand. “I’m leaving the country—I’ll be spending the next year in Paris studying at the Sorbonne. I leave the first week in August, which means it’s better we say goodbye now.”
“Paris. For a year.” He looked staggered by the news. She supposed the Baxter Smiths of the world were rarely stymied.
But she knew well how to handle giving up her heart’s desire, so she merely said, “Yes,” then turned away from him and focused back on her laptop. Still, she was hyperaware of him as he started moving again. His sandalwood scent reached her and she suppressed the desperate urge to turn toward it, ignoring the yearning she had to bury her nose against his neck and warm her suddenly cold face against the heat at his throat.
Goodbye, she whispered in her mind. Live well. Be happy.
“This box of ledgers,” he said at length. “Can I take it with me? Page through them?”
“Sure,” she replied absently, hardly aware of the question as her own misery closed in on her. Think of the Seine, she told herself. Of studying in the City of Light. Of some future French lover, dark-haired and seductive, who would whisper to her, demanding a kiss. “Donne-moi un bisou.”
Except all seductive men in Addy’s fantasies were golden-haired Americans who whispered, “Dance with me.”
Desolate, she glanced over just as Baxter breached the exit. She’d wanted him gone, she reminded herself. Out