“I’m alone. My parents still live in the same house off Harbor Avenue, but I came back for a surprise party for my dad, so I decided to stay here.”
For a long, awkward beat, they looked at each other through completely different eyes than the ones that met five minutes ago. Now, they had a history—or at least a shared past.
“Yeah, wow, Mandy.” He shifted from one foot to the other, still kind of shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at. And who could blame him? She was a maid. He was a guy who rented thousand-dollar-a-night villas when he came to his hometown.
“Well, I...” She gestured toward the stairs. “I better get to work.”
He gave her a slow smile, the kind that took long enough for a woman’s heart to rise to her throat and fall to her feet.
“I’ll be here for a week,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Great, she’d have to see him every damn day. Him in his custom shirt over granite muscles and she in her housekeeping uniform and mop.
“Yeah, I was able to combine this trip with some business on the mainland, so...”
So...what? She nodded, unsure if she could simply walk away. Not that he was magnetic or anything. It would have been rude. And, dang, he was magnetic.
“Any chance we can get together?” he asked.
Was he asking her on a date? “Oh, I don’t...” Date. Ever. Remember, Amanda? Ever. “I don’t know...”
His gaze dropped over her uniform, lingering on the lanyard hanging around her neck, zeroing in on her name. “Oh, of course, you work here. Sorry.” And no doubt her last name made him assume she was married.
“Yes, I work here,” she said, hoping that would be enough excuse and explanation.
“Ezekiel?” A woman’s voice interrupted Amanda, calling loudly from the patio. “I’ve got another one! Susan Fox confirmed for her and Jennifer. You remember Jennifer Fox, right? Really lovely and still single.” Her voice rose with the last word, and Zeke looked skyward with an eye roll of complete frustration.
“’Kay,” he called back. “Be right there.” He leaned on the newel of the banister. “My mother is on a mission.”
“Then you better go help her.”
He puffed out a breath. “She doesn’t need help, trust me. But...” He seemed entirely reluctant to move. “It’s nice to see you,” he finally said. “I always remembered you, Mandy.”
She couldn’t return the sentiment because, to be fair, she hadn’t thought about Ezekiel Nicholas since... No, she’d never actually given him a moment’s consideration. Ever. Until now, when she absolutely couldn’t and shouldn’t give him anything.
“I haven’t been Mandy Mitchell for a long, long time,” she said. That woman had died years ago, stomped out by a man not entirely unlike the one in front of her. “And, you know, judging from how I must have treated people in high school...” People like him. “That’s probably a good thing.”
His blue eyes widened in surprise. “How you treated people?”
“I was, you know, probably a little bit of an entitled bitch, but...” She made a self-deprecating gesture to her supplies. “What do they say? What goes around comes around?”
He gave her a look of sheer incredulity. “You weren’t a bitch. You were beautiful.”
The words nearly melted her. She opened her mouth to reply, but he lifted a hand and brushed his knuckles against her cheek. She almost shivered with the bolt of electricity that shot through her.
“Still are,” he said softly.
“Ezekiel!”
Her throat closed too much to even dream of saying a word as he walked away. Silently, she trudged up the stairs, a mop in one hand, a bucket in the other, and the most unwanted longing pressing on her heart.
Ezekiel Nicholas was a dream, but he’d never be hers. She’d learned the hard way that dream men brought nightmares.
Chapter Two
It took Zeke a minute to force his teenage pathetic self back into the hole where he’d shoved him somewhere between MIT and Harvard Business School. He took slow steps to the open French doors, still processing what had just happened.
Since Zeke had been living in New York and amassing his wealth through hedge funds, Ezekiel the Geekiel had rarely emerged. Zeke often forgot that deep inside him lived a kid who squirmed at the thought of eye contact with any girl and turned positively pitiable when breathing the same air as Mandy Mitchell.
Who now worked as…a maid? What the hell was that all about?
Didn’t matter what she was, because some things never changed. Holy hell, he was thirty years old, had a net worth that a small country would envy, and made speculative investments before his morning coffee that were so risky that failure meant professional—or real—suicide.
And then he morphed into a fucking schoolboy at the sight of an angel who’d once picked up his whole spilled backpack after some idiot tried to plow him down in the hall. That day freshman year, when he’d finally managed to look at her and choke out his awkward thanks, she’d smiled, and the sun came out and birds chirped and he fell head over heels in love.
He’d forgotten her, of course, over the years. But seeing her today brought back so many old feelings, he—
“Ezekiel, what is taking you so long?” On the pool patio, Mom stood with one hand on a narrow hip, tapping a cell phone impatiently against her cheek. She used the phone to point to the lists, notes, and papers she’d spread over the patio dining table. “I can’t plan this whole event alone. I need your help.”
“You’re doing fine, Mom.” He attempted to focus on his mother and her issues, not the housekeeper and her...grass-green eyes. “And the event’s planned.”
“We still have to round out the final table arrangements,” she said. “And I’m having some good luck getting more young ladies to attend.” She leaned to the side to peek around him through the French doors. She wore her sixty-eight years well, he had to admit, keeping trim and making sure not a single gray hair showed among the black . Her forehead crinkled mightily when she raised her brows in question. “Who were you talking to?”
“Just...” A memory. “The maid.”
Why was she a housekeeper? The incongruity of that hit him like a two-by-four.
“Well, you didn’t have to give her your life history.”
He bit back a laugh at the irony of the statement. For a time, Mandy was his life history. At least, she was the object of a boyhood crush that had sure come crashing back at the sight of her. “I was giving her instructions.”