Second Time Around

by Nancy Herkness

  ALSO BY NANCY HERKNESS

  Second Glances Series

  Second to None (novella)

  Wager of Hearts Series

  The CEO Buys In

  The All-Star Antes Up

  The VIP Doubles Down

  The Irishman’s Christmas Gamble (novella)

  Whisper Horse Novels

  Take Me Home

  Country Roads

  The Place I Belong

  A Down-Home Country Christmas (novella)

  Stand-Alone Novels

  A Bridge to Love

  Shower of Stars

  Music of the Night

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Nancy Herkness

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503902145

  ISBN-10: 1503902145

  Cover design by Letitia Hasser

  To Rebecca and Loukas, who follow their passions and make me proud every single day.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter 1

  Kyra Dixon scooped her tray off the counter and headed for the one empty chair . . . at a table already occupied by a businessman engrossed in his laptop. But this was New York City, so you sat with strangers when it was unavoidable. That made the vacant chair fair game as long as she didn’t attempt to converse with the man. She’d learned that when she first came to Manhattan from Macungie, Pennsylvania, eight long years ago.

  It was tough threading her way through the packed-in tables at Ceres, one of the wildly successful chain of cafés, where she splurged once every two weeks. The food might be fast, but it was also fresh, with surprising ingredients. Plunking her tray onto the table, she murmured a perfunctory “Hope you don’t mind” before slinging her backpack onto the floor and sitting down.

  The man nodded but didn’t raise his eyes from his computer, so she allowed herself a quick assessment. The waves of his blond hair appeared so natural that she knew his haircut had cost more than her week’s wages. His navy-blue suit fit his broad shoulders without a wrinkle—it must have been custom-tailored. If he’d walked into Stratus, the high-end club where Kyra worked as a bartender, she would expect a big tip from him. In fact, he looked out of place wedged into the cramped tables here.

  Shrugging, she picked up her lamb wrap, anticipating the creamy burst of avocado-and-yogurt spread when she bit into it. It was this combination that tempted her to spend her hard-earned money on eating out before she headed for her bartending job. She sank her teeth through the tomato-basil tortilla, relished the rich fattiness of the lamb, and then . . . no avocado, no yogurt.

  She put the wrap on the plate and peeled it open. One tiny smear of the creamy spread was positioned right in the center of the tortilla. “Of all the stingy . . . !”

  “Is there something wrong with your food?” A deep voice with a slight Connecticut intonation made her look up from her defective lamb wrap.

  She stared. Her companion had raised his head from his laptop, and she could see that his eyes were a deep jade green. She’d only seen eyes like that once before in her life. She tried to overlay the expensively dressed executive with the lanky classics major she’d known back in college. It could be him. With ten years, a serious haircut, and a lot of success in between.

  His eyes widened a fraction. “Kyra? Kyra Dixon?”

  It was him. The man she’d wanted never to face again.

  She flattened the palm of her hand against her chest in exaggerated shock. “Will Chase! Who’d have thought we’d run into each other in the seething masses of New York City?”

  For a moment he seemed stunned. Then a glint of amused challenge lit his eyes. “‘I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends.’”

  “Quote wars!” For a moment she was back at Brunell University, trading quotations with the gorgeous blond boy from upper-crust Connecticut. They’d pick a topic and trade quotes until one of them couldn’t think of another appropriate comeback. Will had been her suitemate’s boyfriend, but Babette hadn’t been very faithful. So Kyra was often pressed into entertaining him while Babette was getting rid of another guy. Kyra hadn’t found the duty a chore. “Shakespeare is too easy,” she scoffed.

  “Easy but true, in this case.”

  Kyra dug into the dusty corners of her memory and came back with: “‘There is flattery in friendship.’”

  Will nodded his approval. “Back at me with the Bard. Well done.”

  Kyra gave a little crow of triumph as she flashed back to the heady days of college when she drank in knowledge like wine. But those days were long gone. She pulled herself back to the present and the somewhat intimidating man across from her. “Do you work near here?” she asked.

  His lips twisted into a smile with an edge of irony. “I suppose you could say that I work right here.”

  Kyra glanced around the crowded café he claimed was his office. “Wait . . . what do you mean?”

  He swept his hand in a half circle. “I own this place. The whole chain and a few miscellaneous subsidiaries, in fact.”

  “Oh.” Surprise made her stomach flip. He’d always been out of her league, but she didn’t expect him to be that successful. Ceres had cafés all over the world. She also didn’t expect him to be in the food business. He had been headed for law school after Brunell.

  She’d had to drop out of college after her sophomore year, when he’d only been a junior, so his plans must have changed. Not to mention that Brunell didn’t send her alumni magazines, which contained class notes columns announcing their graduates’ impressive accomplishments. They only sent bills for her student-loan payments. “Wow! Congratulations on your success,” she finally managed.

  “Thank you, but I seem to have a quality-control problem.” He frowned at the defective lamb wrap on her tray. “Let me get you a replacement with the right amount of avocado-yogurt spread and then we’ll catch up.” He gave her one of those warm, dazzling smiles that highlighted the deep cleft in his chin and made her dream of things she couldn’t have.

  “Really, it’s fine,” she said.

  He was already standing up with her plate in his hand and an expression on his face that made her glad she wasn’t the manager on duty. He raised his eyebrows in a way that was pure CEO. “I heard you call it ‘stingy.’”

  “You’ve got me there.” She gave him a wave of permission and he turned to weave through the tables. As he approached the service counter, the cashiers cast him wary looks. He strode past them and into the food prep area, where she lost sight of him.


  Had he known she had a heart-stopping crush on him in college? Or had her we’re-just-friends banter been convincing enough for him to believe that she was merely being courteous by making conversation while he waited for Babette?

  He might have thought that, if it hadn’t been for the one awful night.

  Her hope had always been that he didn’t remember how that had ended. Or if he did, that he was too much of a gentleman to say so. Because William Peyton Chase III was definitely a gentleman.

  Still, embarrassment prickled over her skin with a hot flush. Amazing that she could feel the sting of her humiliation after all these years.

  Will was headed back toward her, his blond head and fluid stride snagging the approving glance of almost every woman he passed. A little spurt of triumph jetted through her when he sat down at her table, and she caught a few of those glances turning to envy. She’d felt the same way at Brunell when Will would catch sight of her between classes and call out for her to wait so he could walk with her. For those few moments, his golden attention made her feel like she belonged.

  “They’ll bring the wrap to the table as soon as it’s ready,” he said as he slid onto the seat, his gaze skimming over her. “You look terrific.”

  “Thanks, and I’ll return the compliment.” Truthfully, she looked better than usual because she’d just had her hair done, so its long, artfully highlighted brown waves flowed over her shoulders and down her back. It was an investment for work. When she’d started at Stratus, she’d noticed that the bartenders with long hair got bigger tips, so she’d let hers grow. And she’d invested in a couple of expensive black lace push-up bras that also added to her take for the evening.

  “No, I mean it about looking terrific,” he said, his gaze limpid with genuine admiration.

  Will’s sincerity was one of the things that had disarmed her back in college. “Why do you think I don’t mean it?”

  He made a dismissive movement, his long, elegant hand capturing her gaze. “I’ve just got a better haircut. Although I sometimes miss the ponytail.” He had always disregarded the power of his strong cheekbones and the indent in his chin, which had made him all the more magnetic. Unfortunately, she had a weakness for cleft chins.

  His gesture reminded her of how she’d always pictured him in a courtroom, swaying the jury with his sincerity and his flair for the dramatic. “Why aren’t you a lawyer?”

  “‘Two roads diverged in the wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by.’” His smile was tight.

  “‘And that has made all the difference.’” She finished the line of Robert Frost’s poem. “Also too easy.”

  She waited, a trick she’d learned when negotiating down her mother’s credit card debt.

  He met her gaze. “The law didn’t appeal to me.”

  “I remember you felt that way, but the family firm was there for you to claim your place in.” Late one night, he’d confided his distaste for the path that had been laid out for him almost from birth: Brunell, Harvard Law, a partnership at Chase, Banfield, and Trost.

  “A woman I knew back at Brunell gave me some wise advice,” he said. “She told me that our parents’ expectations belong to them. We need to run our lives by our own expectations.”

  “Did I say that? If I did, I was trying to convince myself.” She didn’t want him casting his mind back to college days.

  “You lived it,” he said. “As I remember, your parents didn’t want you to go to a liberal arts college, so you got yourself a scholarship and went anyway. That made a big impression on me.”

  She had admitted to him that neither of her parents understood why she wanted to go to a fancy college that taught nothing practical. “Yeah, that didn’t work out so well.” Her partial scholarship had required her to take out a pile of loans. Now she had plenty of debt and no degree to show for it. And she’d wanted so badly to be the first person in her family to graduate from college.

  “Why didn’t you come back?” he inquired. “I asked around when I didn’t see you the next fall, but no one seemed to know.”

  The disconcerting flush burned over her skin again. He was circling too close to her mortification.

  “My father got sick. My mother needed help taking care of him.”

  Her father had told her to go back to school. She’d been so tempted to leave the terrible sight of him wasting away in the hospital bed set up in their living room. Not because she didn’t love him, but because she wanted to remember him as the man with hands so strong that when he’d tossed her up in the air as a child, she never once doubted he’d catch her again. He’d worked in the nearby Mack Trucks factory, handling the inventory of heavy metal engine blocks and giant wheel rims. The job turned his wiry frame into pure tensile muscle.

  Forestalling the inevitable question, she continued. “He died late that year.”

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “You were close to him.”

  “He supported my dreams, even when he didn’t understand them.”

  “I know how rare that is,” Will said.

  She nodded, unable to force words through the clog of emotion in her throat.

  “But you became an editor?” he asked. He pointed to her backpack with a smile. “Is that filled with unpublished masterpieces?”

  That swept away her moment of weakness. She shook her head and gave him a wry smile. “Publishers tend to want editors with college degrees.” In fact, with her two jobs, she barely had time to read a book for pleasure these days.

  A server dressed in the Ceres uniform of tan polo shirt and green trousers arrived at their table, laden down with a tray and a large take-out bag. “Here you are, Mr. Chase.”

  “The sandwich is for my friend,” Will said, taking the bag from the young man.

  The tray held not just a wrap, but also a glass of lemonade, a bag of sweet-potato chips, an apple, and a giant chocolate chip cookie.

  Will waved at the unexpected bounty. “To make up for the inconvenience of having to wait.” He held up the take-out bag. “And some extra apology for later.”

  “Really, it wasn’t that big a deal,” she protested.

  “I disagree.” His tone was sharp.

  She picked up the wrap and bit into it, leaning over abruptly as a glob of avocado-yogurt spread gushed from the open end of the tortilla and plopped onto the plate.

  Will’s jaw tightened and his eyes turned the frigid green of a winter ocean. Kyra felt another pang of sympathy for the café’s unlucky, albeit incompetent, manager.

  “That is unacceptable,” he said, his fingers drumming an irritated beat on the tabletop.

  “It’s very generous,” she said, trying to tilt the rolled-up tortilla so it didn’t ooze spread from every crevice.

  “Too much is as bad as too little. The balance of ingredients is crucial,” he snapped. He flattened his palm on the table so his fingers were still. “Sorry. It’s not your fault they can’t get it right.”

  “Don’t be too hard on whoever you’re going to ream out. It’s got to be nerve-racking to have the CEO inspect your place, so he or she may have overreacted.”

  “He wouldn’t have anything to worry about if he hadn’t shortchanged a customer on an expensive ingredient. That’s not how Ceres generates profits.”

  “‘You make money the old-fashioned way. You earn it.’” She imitated a plummy British accent.

  His fine blond brows drew down in thought. “If that’s a quote, I can’t place it.”

  “It’s from an old commercial that my father used to repeat all the time. For some brokerage firm that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  His scary CEO look eased. “I like to think that’s true about Ceres.” He leaned back in the chair. “So tell me what you’re doing instead of editing.”

  She pointed to her mouth to indicate she was chewing.

  “Sorry. It’s not fair to ask you questions while you’re eating.” Something about his apologetic tone made her able to see past the CEO to the studen
t she used to know.

  “I took too big a bite because I have to go soon,” she said. “My night job is bartending at Stratus, and I need to change into my work clothes.”

  A fleeting look of surprise and perhaps disappointment crossed his face. “Stratus is very high-end. You must be an excellent bartender.”

  “Have you ever been there?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, if you decide to visit, your first drink is on me,” she said. “My day job is cooking for about fifty kids at an after-school care center in South Harlem. It’s a great gig.” Especially since it came with a rent-free apartment on the top floor of a townhouse owned by one of the center’s board members. In lieu of a salary, of course.

  “So you went into the food business, too.” He smiled. “You used to whip up amazing dishes in that tiny kitchen in your suite.”

  She’d always cooked after her mother’s phone calls. The meditative repetition of chopping and stirring and scrubbing the pots afterward offered an escape from the guilt and stress. The more complicated the dish, the more relaxing she found it.

  “You had a knack for dropping by just as the food came out of the oven,” she said.

  “‘After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.’”

  She had to think about that one. “Oscar Wilde?”

  “You’ve still got it,” he said.

  “Don’t ever doubt it.” But she doubted it herself. As time rolled on and she still hadn’t found a way to return to college, the knowledge she’d worked so hard to acquire seemed to leach away. She met his intense gaze squarely. “I’m afraid I need to say good-bye.”

  For good. He brought back too many yearnings that had no place in her life now.

  But Will reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a pen and a business card, and scrawled something on the back of it. “This is my personal cell number. Give me a call the next time you crave a lamb wrap. I’ll make sure you get a good one.”

  She zipped the card into a pocket in her backpack and stood, holding out her hand. “Great to see you, Will.”

  He stood as well. Instead of taking her hand, he walked around the table. “A handshake is too formal between old college friends.” He cupped his hands over her shoulders and bent to brush his lips against her cheek.