Chapter Four
Her blood fizzed, and she felt alive, even amused at the turn of events, though there was nothing funny about the panic and grief and confusion she’d seen swirling in his eyes.
His distress had felt visceral. His energy had dimmed and gone snap-crackly chaotic.
She’d dealt with her sister Alissa’s panic attacks during her all too short fifteen years.
So today, instinct had kicked in, and she’d felt compelled to take charge.
The need to help him had been intense, and that should worry her.
This thousand-dollar suit had aloof arrogance and confidence in his standing in the world stamped into his bones.
He was the last person she’d have predicted would have needed her help.
And the incongruity fascinated her. He was rich.
Thought he and his business partner could order up a bride and kids and legacy like takeout.
She should despise him. But there was something.
Did that make her a fool? Weak? Alissa had not been cut out to live the life they’d been born into, nor had she been prepared to run with her.
Ayana shook off the doubt and remembered from her ChatGPT search that there was a river park near the downtown business core. Cam had mentioned water kayaking at sunset. Water soothed her. Maybe it would help him recollect himself.
Ayana had a twist in her tummy that there might be a grim reason Cam hadn’t texted Vesna back or sent a car to the airport as promised, though the hotel suite had been ready with a fruit and chocolate basket. And a bottle of champagne chilling. But no Cam.
Survival depended on her ability to pivot.
And reading a room. And the people in it.
She walked like she knew where she was going and never looked like she was puzzling over her next step.
A paid-for weekend at a high-end hotel in Denver while she considered her future options was only a gift if it didn’t have any sticky expectations along with it.
Paying for the lunch she didn’t have a chance to eat—her growling tummy reminded her that—was enough of a blow.
She wasn’t going to pay for the hotel as well.
She came to the end of the street and stared at the unexpected site—rapids. She laughed.
“Serendipity,” she murmured. “I was just thinking about getting my feet wet.”
She dropped his arm and hurried across the street and a ribbon of grass to the wide path and quickly untied her white Docs and peeled off her socks.
“Now this is a city.” She smiled, tossing her shawl and vest over her leather tote-style purse that held her crochet work in progress, phone, and wallet.
Eyeing him as he stood a few feet away. She tilted the bottle of champagne to her mouth. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
“Cork won’t fit back in the bottle. Shame to waste it.
” Still holding the bottle, she spun in a circle, and then, barefoot, picked her way across a couple of boulders to a flat rock that allowed her to dip her toes in the rushing water.
“Hope you’re willing to spot me some bail money if Denver has a puritanical law that ignores its wild west roots. Whoa. The water’s ice.”
She turned back and grinned at him, tilting the bottle back and forth—inviting him to join her.
“Wildly invigorating.” She laughed. “Didn’t figure you for a man who stood on the sidelines weighing and rejecting all options.
” She goaded him because she had read him that way, but she hoped to snap him out of whatever fugue state he was in.
“I’m only here for the weekend. We might as well have a little fun, or do you leave all the fun to Cam while you stand on the sidelines, the loyal guard dog, waiting for your next command? ”
Yeah, she’d jerked his chain. She’d done some research.
Cam was the face of Saunders Crow. The company had been featured in several local business profiles and forty under forty and mover and shaker lists over the past few years.
Telford couldn’t have earned all that something from nothing by playing it safe.
A frown chased across his perfect features. She couldn’t read his expression with the sunglasses. She wondered if her own Chanel knock-off pair, which made her feel like a starlet at the Cannes Film Festival, was equally disconcerting.
He shook his head as if he was waking up and stepped off the path, agilely joining her.
“Fancy a swim?”
“In Confluence Park on the kayak run? No thanks. Don’t have my fishing pole to pluck you out downstream. I prefer you unbruised and unbattered.”
“Me too,” she said quickly turning away so he wouldn’t see how the image disturbed her. Nearly nine years, and a careless word or phrase could still drag her back to hell.
“And I don’t believe you have a fishing pole.
You have the patience for it, but not the time.
And even if Cam had some River Runs Through It, Montana fly fishing fantasy, he doesn’t seem like a man who’d be interested in wading into glacier-fed water, standing in ugly waders silently, perfecting his overhead cast.”
“You discern a lot from a matchmaker’s profile.”
Direct hit. He had his footing again. She’d need to be careful now.
“Barely glanced at it. Couldn’t be bothered.”
“You accepted the ticket and the suite, offering yourself up on the altar of alternate mail-order bride and didn’t do the research?” Disbelief was thick in his deep voice.
“No.”
“Yes. Otherwise, why be here?” he demanded. “I smell deception in your … fairy in a field of wildflowers appearance. You are a woman who thinks things through. You hide it well, but you are wary and definitely would do your research before meeting Cam.”
She tried to hide her flinch. She’d been right. He was observant.
Careful.
But excitement skittered down her spine. She couldn’t remember a man who’d intrigued her.
“The way you walked into the office—your eyes, your awareness. The way you held still, pretended a casualness you didn’t feel gives you away. You’re smart and calculated.”
“Fairy in a field,” she repeated.
That was new. And insulting. Fairies sounded cute and playful, easily dismissed. The stray she’d felt she’d rescued now had teeth and a sharp bite.
“Ordering the champagne was a test,” he surmised.
“I’m not offering myself up as a bride.” She was offended to her core. She’d run from that as a teen. She had to stifle the urge to push him into the surging river.
“What then?” he challenged.
The water wasn’t as startlingly chilly now, but soothing as it tugged and rushed past and around her foot.
Kinda like life.
You could get used to every discomfort if you let yourself. She was always on the lookout for signs of the compliance that had been drilled into her. She looked up at him, as he stood on the boulder above, clearly not wanting to get his expensive-looking footwear wet.
“Still deciding. Leaning toward leaving.”
A frown kissed his spectacular, thick, dark brows as if he was unaccustomed to not being in possession of all the facts. “You boarded a flight from Atlanta and flew to Denver to meet a rich man you don’t want to marry.” Skepticism coated his reply like oil.
She wasn’t the only one who’d done some research.
“Cut the sarcasm. Thousands of women board flights daily not expecting to meet their future husband. I’ve never been to Denver.
Vesna gave me a ticket and a paid weekend away because she was heading out with her carpenter Mr. Right.
” She could feel the way her face scrunched in distaste.
Not that Ryan hadn’t been hot and sweet, but still … marriage, moving, giving up a solid job and changing your life for a man.
“What I did with it was up to me.” She was firm on that. “I debated not even meeting Cam. Just enjoying the city on my own. I’m not on the hunt for Mr. Right to complete me.”
Or boss her. She knew she shouldn’t feel desperate. She had savings. She wasn’t a scared, fleeing teen, thrust into a modern world she hadn’t understood, but losing her job, compounded by Vesna giving up the lease, had forced another pivot when Ayana hadn’t been prepared for either.
Fear shouldn’t choke her. She’d struck out on her own before. She had resources, knowledge and skills. Choices. Agency. She’d made herself strong.
“Not a believer in fairy tales, then?” She could totally relate to the sneer in his voice.
“I don’t live my life in once upon a time. I make my own magic.” She dipped her toe further in the rapids just as two kayakers bobbed and furiously paddled by, and she kicked an arc of droplets that caught the sun back toward him. “How about you?”
*
The droplets prismed and rainbowed before falling around him.
He’d been prepared for the move—she seemed like a playful woman, but he wasn’t expecting her to lose her balance.
She’d moved so gracefully—like a dancer—during lunch and their walk.
It was a particularly tricky section of the confluence.
He’d navigated it hundreds of times, though he preferred mountain rivers or the ocean.
He hopped down, lunged across the distance to catch the waistband of her faded pink, flared jeans, pulling her flush with his body and angling back, hoping he didn’t have to sit on his ass to break her forward momentum.
“Oops,” she said breathily, and he felt her heart slam.
Her glasses had dislodged, and he caught them before they fell. He saw her pupils flare with alarm, so she hadn’t been testing him for a role as knight in shining armor—leaning into the fairy tale theme they both distrusted.
“Looks like you’re ably playing the part of prince today.” She sounded breathless, not as cool as she was pretending.
“Cam’s more suitable in that role. I’d be wildly miscast.”
The loss hit him again. But so did her scent—spice and citrus and something that felt familiar, but he couldn’t place it. The feel of her body woke up something he didn’t know slumbered.
“Same. I’m no princess and would make a lousy fairy.”
He looked down into her spectacular eyes. Felt like he stood on a figurative precipice now that they were both out of the river’s touch.
Jump.
Cam’s voice urged Telford to an action he didn’t want to take, though he knew eventually he’d have to.
He couldn’t stop living because Cam had.
That wouldn’t serve his friend, and though he hadn’t had time to promise anything to Cam as he lay dying, Cam had stared up at him, trusting him until his last breath.
His next steps might feel impossible, but this woman might just be the catalyst.
Like nitroglycerin.
But playing it safe hadn’t earned him a partnership with Cam, who’d been brilliant but reckless, and sometimes self-destructive. Always wanting to chase something new. Nothing held his interest for long. Would a wife have changed that?
“So not a fairy tale, for us,” he mused.
“There is no us,” she said definitively.
Yet hovered on his lips. He managed to bite it back.
Where the hell did that come from?
“If we continue to play two truths and a lie …”
“We weren’t playing really.” She raised that one brow again. “I hijacked and instead asked you questions.”
“My turn. What do you want to happen next?”
That seemed to catch her off guard. He relaxed into the moment, feeling more in control, and experiencing that … buzz when he knew he was about to close a deal.
“Tell me your name.” He’d thought about this since they’d sat down to lunch that they’d barely had a chance to eat. He definitely owed her a meal, which meant more time together.
“Ayana.”
Beautiful. Unusual like her.
“The origin is Swahili and means wildflower.”
Never had a name suited a woman more.
“It has other meanings, other cultural origins. In Sanskrit it means innocent.” She lowered her gaze to her bare feet.
Sparkly pink polish winked in the mid-October sun. Distaste rippled across her face, but when she looked up at him, her gaze was clear, probing.
“Wildflower.” He tasted possibility. “It may be time for a different story for both of us.”
Curiosity. Desire. Amusement all played in her bourbon-colored eyes, and he wondered if the multitude of blonde in her hair was natural, and if she’d be around long enough for him to find out.
Something about her felt inevitable.
And temporary.
And a dichotomy. Irony was his weakness.
“You fancy yourself a storyteller.”
“No. But I want to be,” he said, slowly, testing the words.
Cam had driven so much, but now he needed to be the narrator of his life.
“What about Cam?”
He felt like his air was gone, but he forced himself to continue. “Cam can no longer be a part of any story. He … he was struck by an SUV. Died at the scene late last week.”
He sounded like the cops who’d converged.
She turned toward him. He liked that she was tallish, so he didn’t have to stoop.
She cupped his cheeks with her hands that were warm despite the afternoon leaning into autumn chilly. “Cam was so much more than your business partner and the man about to take a life leap you didn’t approve of. Your friend and business partner and perhaps a mentor?”
He barely nodded. Her hands were delicate. Elegant, but they held strength. He’d noticed them at lunch as she’d fussed a little with the champagne glass, the menu, one of her scarves, twirled a finger in her hair. Hands of an artist. Maybe a musician, he’d thought.
But now they anchored him to her. To now. To life when he’d been unraveling.
She said nothing. Just pressed against him on the sun-warmed rock with people paddling by in the river, walking or jogging by on the popular path.
She pressed her forehead against his, and he breathed her in, having a wild moment where he felt like she could read his thoughts. Read his heart. Soothe him. And his brain rebelled. Danger letting someone in. Cam had been the closest. And this woman was a stranger and not easily categorized.
“You asked what comes next.” Her breath feathered over his face. “Why not show me the Cam you knew and loved. We have the time.”
“I don’t understand.” Of course he didn’t.
He was literal. Cam did the interpretations, the social navigating.
“You don’t need to now,” she said softly. “But he lives on in here.” One hand rested on his chest through his suit jacket, and he wondered if they stood here long enough, would her warmth, her heat, her energy seep through to him where he felt so cold and dead?
“Your next steps, your adventures, your quest for your own legacy will carry him along any new path you strike.”