I’m sure other men used to touch me this way and I just can’t remember; but somehow the past is not here, the past isn’t even mine, the past can’t be reconciled to now, or with the future. For that matter, I don’t want to think about the future, can’t imagine the future, since I know Kai won’t be in it. But somehow Kai seems so important, seems like everything I ever wanted.

His palm covers my cheek, and his thumb strokes across my mouth. Little bits of fire and flame burst within me.

And then he kisses me—or I him? It doesn’t matter, only that I want him, want this kiss. Because I remember the last kiss, and the last kiss made everything young again, and beautiful, so beautiful, made my skin soft and my heart strong, my knees weak and my stomach a mass of butterflies ascending. I want this, and his lips cover mine, and there go the butterflies, all Amazon blues and greens, and I might as well be standing in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest as rain and sun compete and the earth is warmth and life is humid. Fragrant. Complete.

I move into his arms, arms that seem to be made just for me. With his arm around my waist, I feel secure. To be held securely again is even sweeter than I remembered, because I know what it’s like now to be dropped. To let go.

I don’t want to ever let go.

I don’t want him to let me go.

But he will, and I will. I’ve a plane to catch in the morning, just eight hours from now. Eight hours and I’ll be heading home, back to the children I love and the square shingle house with the hopeful dormer windows gazing out on a street of upwardly mobile people.

Finally the kiss ends. It had to. Kai looks at me for a long moment, and it’s sweet, nearly endless. This is so perfectly Hollywood, and it bites my heart, bites at the place that’s already broken and barely stitched together.

I look into his blue eyes and know I don’t know him, don’t know what I see from what I want him to be. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again, and I wonder if I came back, if he’d feel the same.

If I’d feel the same.

And looking at him, feeling his hips against mine, his arm still slung around my waist, his hand against my hip, I know I’d feel the same.

This is what I’ve wanted, even when married.

Someone different, possibly dangerous. A bad-boy rebel, flawed yet great. Someone who is waiting for someone like me.

Someone who has spent his whole life waiting for me.