The Miss Mirren Mission (Regency Reformers Book 1)

by Jenny Holiday

  He didn’t let go when the handshake would normally have ended, just hitched his head toward the door. “Want to go for a walk?”

  Of course she did.

  “Aha!” Evan said, pushing his shoulder against the heavy metal door at the top of the stairwell. “Unlocked!” He held it for a laughing Emmy to precede him onto the roof of the banquet hall. She had her voluminous skirts gathered in one hand and her high heels dangling from the fingers of the other. “Be careful of your feet. Who knows what’s up here.”

  She paused at the threshold and peered out. He looked over her shoulder. Yeah, the gravel that lined the ground was going to require shoes. Or…

  “Eeee!” she shrieked, laughing as he swung her into his arms. “What are you doing?”

  What was he doing? He was acting like the hero of some lame made-for-TV romantic comedy. Not his style at all. But there was something about being in limbo, teetering on the precipice between one life and another, that made every decision this evening seem less important, every action less imbued with its potential future consequences.

  “If I’d known that ‘go for a walk’ was code for ‘break onto the roof,’” she said, “I might have thought twice about accompanying you.”

  The roof had been the only place he could think to escape, where he could be sure there would be no photographers. But he didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, so he paused, wondering if he should turn around.

  But then she craned her neck to get a better view and said, “It’s gorgeous up here!”

  So he crossed the roof and deposited her on some kind of ventilation structure that would do as a bench.

  “Beautiful,” she said, still talking about the view.

  It was. The buildings of the Miami skyline he knew so well were jewels against the otherworldly pink sky of dusk. But so were the shining sapphires of her eyes.

  And that was another made-for-TV thing he didn’t do: compare women’s eyes to gemstones. What the hell? There was limbo, and there was losing control of himself.

  “Give me that,” she said, grabbing the stolen bottle of champagne he had tucked under his arm and setting to work on the cork. When it popped, she squealed and held the fizzing bottle away from her for a moment before tipping her head back and drinking directly from it. The slanted pink light caught tendrils of blond hair escaping the pins that anchored an elaborate updo. He watched her throat undulate as she drank. Then she lifted her head, used her forearm to wipe her mouth, and grinned as she handed him the bottle, perfectly framed by the blazing sunset.

  He was cursed with a painter’s eye. He saw things other people didn’t. He was never going to get over not painting her.

  “What’s your last name?” he asked, thinking, irrationally, that if he knew it, he could somehow find her later. Put a bookmark in this meeting and come back to it, even though he knew that he was going to have to draw a sharp line between what he was already starting to think of as his “old” life and whatever was going to come next.

  “I’m moving to Los Angeles in two months,” she said.

  “So it’s Emmy I’mMovingToLosAngelesInTwoMonths?” He couldn’t help teasing. “That must have been a mouthful when you were a kid.”

  “No.” She laughed. “I’m moving in two months, and I’m going to change my name when I do, I think. I haven’t decided to what. So it’s just Emmy for now.”

  Ah, so he wasn’t the only one on the verge of reinventing himself. Perhaps that’s why he felt this strangely, strongly compelled by her. They were of a kind. “If that’s how you’re going to be, I won’t tell you my last name, either.” She likely already knew it, but she hadn’t brought it up, so he wouldn’t either.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Let’s just be Emmy and Evan. E and E.” She took another swig of the champagne. “Like e.e. cummings.”

  “I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers,” he said. He wasn’t sure how his brain had produced that obscure line, but he knew now how he would have painted her.

  She’d been looking at the skyline, but the cummings snippet snagged her attention, and she turned, eyes suddenly glazed with moisture.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m a songwriter,” she said. “Or at least I’m trying to be.”

  Ah. The impending move to L.A., the name change—the pieces were coming together.

  “Sometimes when I hear a line like that, it makes me despair of ever writing anything worthwhile,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Don’t despair. You can do it.”

  “How do you know? You don’t even know me.”

  He shrugged. She had intelligent eyes that looked intently at the world. That’s what storytellers needed. That’s probably what he had seen in her, why he had picked her out from the row of identical puffy pink dresses. “I have a feeling you’re going to make it.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks so,” she whispered.

  “I have a good eye,” he said, struck with the urge to reassure her. “I see things other people don’t.” He turned so they were side by side, both facing the now rapidly darkening city—which was why he didn’t have any warning when she leaned over, grabbed his cheeks, and kissed him.

  Her lips were soft, and pressed so lightly against his it almost tickled. His first instinct was to push her away, because what could come of it? They were both headed for new lives, both making a break with the present.

  But he couldn’t make himself do it. What was so wrong with kissing a pretty girl on a rooftop? It was the perfect coda, actually, to his Miami life. So he surrendered, letting his whole body relax into the soft hunger of their kiss, forcing himself to attend to every nuance of the experience, to savor the bittersweet finale, as if he could file it away somehow, and take it out and examine it again later, like he would a memento from his past.

  And, oh, he hadn’t felt this alive for months. It was like she was filling him with energy he thought had been drained permanently by the police raids, the meetings with lawyers and PR people, the endless court proceedings. He sipped at her lips, letting his hands frame her face, wanting to anchor her there forever. As he deepened the kiss, testing the seam of her lips, she opened for him, but there was a tentativeness there, a hesitation.

  It was like she didn’t really know what she was doing.

  The rogue thought entered his mind as her tongue slid along his, ripping an involuntary groan from his throat as he gently pushed her away.

  “How old are you?” God, how could he have missed that? Hadn’t he just been bragging about how good he was at seeing things?

  Her brow furrowed. “Does it matter?” She was flushed, her pupils dilated, her breath short.

  She was gorgeous.

  It didn’t matter how old she was, not in any elemental way. But it did matter here on this roof, in the clumsy corporeal world. It meant the difference between continuing this spectacular goodbye-to-his-old-life kiss and not continuing it.

  “Tell me.”

  She pulled back and scooted farther away from him on the bench, confirming his fears even before she spoke. “I’m nineteen.”

  Right. It might be perfectly clear that this was merely a casual kiss, but he wasn’t going to be that guy. He eyed the nearly empty champagne bottle on the ground at their feet. That was all he needed—the story of Evan Winslow, Jr. getting a nineteen-year-old drunk and seducing her.

  So much for enjoying his bittersweet Miami coda.

  “How old are you?” she countered, a challenge in her voice.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “That’s not so bad,” she said.

  “Not so bad for what?” He was teasing her, but only because teasing was all he could do now. “You’re right,” he said. “A seven-year age difference is not bad at all for sitting on the roof talking about everything under the sun until someone notices we’re gone and sends out a search party.” He patted the seat beside him, shrugged out of his suit jacket, and held it out t
o her.

  He wasn’t a total saint, though. He liked the disappointment that washed across the striking angular face he wanted to paint so badly his fingers ached.

  “Talking,” she said, pouting a little but sliding back over to sit next to him and letting him slip the jacket over her shoulders.

  “Talking,” he confirmed, emphasizing the word for himself as much as for her.

  “Okay, uh, what’s your favorite TV show?”

  “I don’t really watch TV.” He didn’t tell her that he didn’t even own one. Or that the glimpses of his family’s sordid drama that he’d caught on CNN at his brother’s house had been enough to reinforce his desire to never get one.

  “Last concert you saw?”

  He thought—hard—and came up with nothing. He had been to a few shows on the last cruise he took with his parents. His mother dragged Evan and his brother and their father on an annual luxury cruise and made them dress for dinner and generally fulfill her fantasy of the perfect Ralph Lauren family. But probably cruise ship bands playing Neil Diamond covers weren’t what Emmy had in mind. “I’m not really one for live music,” he finally said.

  “Okaaay,” she said, screwing up her face like she was trying to think of a new topic.

  “It’s no good,” he said laughingly. “I’m completely pop-culturally illiterate.”

  “How come you don’t paint anymore?”

  Whoa. If her previous questions had been rubber-tipped darts that pinged easily off their targets, this one was a razor-sharp axe that sliced right through him.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, which was the absolute truth, even if it didn’t answer her question.

  “Okay,” she said, and he was surprised that she was going to accept his evasive answer. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to upend his life after all. Maybe he could get used to being not-a-painter. “So what should we talk about?”

  “You. We should talk about you.” She was the most compelling person he’d met in a long time. And she was the only person he’d met recently who hadn’t said a word about his father. “I want to know everything there is to know about you, Emmy NoLastName. Tell me about moving to L.A. Sing me a song.” He turned to face her head-on. He would listen to her for as long as he could get away with it. He would listen and watch. Then he would say goodbye.

  To her, and to himself.