The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,95
were interested in a romantic entanglement—”
His lips twitch.
“—our temperaments are too different,” I add.
“And you should like to be with someone exactly like you?”
“I would like to be with someone who shares my view of the world, if I would like to be with anyone at all. I’m quite content on my own, though. Truly.”
“Content sounds awfully boring. As does your idea of the perfect relationship.”
“I didn’t say it was ‘perfect,’” I protest. “Simply that if I had to entangle myself with another, it would be nice to be with someone who shares my interests.”
“Interests like politics? Current affairs? And what was it you said about the word ‘nice’ when you complained of me using it to compliment you at the opera?”
“You delight in mocking me, don’t you?”
He laughs again, the sound having a little more bite than it did earlier. “Believe me, if anyone is the subject of mockery here, I believe it is me. Divine mockery, to be sure. Why wouldn’t you want to be with someone who challenges you? I’ve never known you to choose safety over adventure.”
He turns from me, walking on, and for a moment I am torn between the urge to stay exactly where I am and to follow him.
It is one thing to pursue professional advancement, to put it all on the line for my career, and another thing entirely to do so with my personal life.
I lengthen my strides to catch up with him.
Once we are side by side once more, Rafael slows a bit, matching his pace to mine, the knot in my chest loosening somewhat.
We walk in silence as the party carries on around us, and then I can’t help asking him the question that has filled my head many times since that night at the opera.
“That woman you were with. At the Metropolitan Opera House. She is very beautiful,” I say carefully.
“She is.”
I open my mouth to ask him more but close it again almost as quickly. It doesn’t feel as though I have a right to his answer, to ask him anything about his private affairs with women.
“Is there a question you’d like to ask me, Grace?” His tone becomes silky. “You can ask me anything.”
“No—I—Is she . . .”
I can’t make myself form the word.
“Are we lovers?”
I flush, tearing my gaze away from him, and nod.
“It’s none of my business,” I blurt out.
“Considering the conversation we just had, I’d disagree with you. We were lovers. Once.”
I can envision her in his arms, can see—
“We haven’t been for some time,” he adds. “But she’s a friend and she likes the opera so she uses my box occasionally.”
I’m afraid to acknowledge the emotion that accompanies his words, for it almost feels a lot like—
Relief.
The music around us changes to the familiar strands of “Auld Lang Syne.”
A lump forms in my throat.
“This song always makes me so sad,” I say, feeling a little silly for confessing such a thing to Rafael, even as tears fill my eyes, the lyrics swelling within me, the singers’ voices joining in unison.
“Why?”
“It always feels like the end of something.”
“Or the beginning.”
I stop walking and look up at him.
Behind us, the crowd is chanting now, the new year upon us. And still, even with Hearst’s amazing feat as an electrical impulse sends the flag of Greater New York up the staff of the flagpole on City Hall playing out for the crowd, the hundred-gun salute, the skyrockets, and cheers of one hundred thousand spectators, I don’t tear my gaze away from Rafael as he bends down, a question in his eyes, and I offer him a jerky nod, an answer I didn’t know I was going to give, and his lips swoop down on mine, ringing in the New Year with a kiss that stretches on longer than is proper, longer than the tradition calls for.
Instead, my mouth opens to his, my arms leaving my sides, moving as of their own volition, wrapping around his neck, pulling him down to me, my body coming alive with his touch. He groans against my mouth, leaving me no question of the force of his desire, his hands running over my curves, pulling me up against the hard length of his body.
When I finally pull back, I cannot speak, my heart racing, an ache settling in my bones, my first kiss nothing short of extraordinary.
We square off across from each other while all around us the city rejoices the new year.