A Kiss on the Cheek
CHAPTER 1
“Come,” he’d said.
“It will be romantic,” he’d said.
“Poland is great this time of year,” he’d said.
Bullshit.
Warsaw was hot, noisy, and boring, and the boat tour they’d taken on the Vistula river with Evan’s Dutch associate and his insufferably perky wife hadn’t really helped.
The champagne, at least, wasn’t bad. But by the third glass she couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d rather jump into the water than hear one more word about market penetration strategies.
That’s when she leaned into her husband’s ear, her lips brushing the shell of it, her voice dropping to that low purr that once used to make him drop everything and drag her to the nearest secluded space he could find.
“I can think of a few things that need penetrating just as badly as markets,” she murmured. “And they’re much more... receptive.”
She watched an awkward smile forming on his face. She felt the warm puff of his breath as he turned his head. She felt his lips on her cheek, right before he’d turned back to the Dutchman and his wife.
He’d kissed her cheek.
She finished her champagne in one swallow and spent the rest of the boat tour staring at the river, imagining the splash she’d make if she just… went over the railing.
Not to die. That would be too dramatic. She just wanted to feel something other than this bone-deep, soul-crushing boredom.
That was their first day in Warsaw.
By day three, she’d stopped counting the hours and started counting the ways she could justify leaving him and his meetings and get on a plane to anywhere she wouldn’t have to act as the happy executive consultant’s wife.
But she stayed.
Because that’s what forty-two-year-old wives did. They stayed. They smiled. They wore sensible linen dresses and sat through gala dinners and let their husbands kiss their cheeks.
They still loved each other, one way or the other, didn’t they?
Then Evan came back to their room at 10 PM that night, loosened his tie, took off his shoes, and collapsed onto the mattress with a groan that was equal parts exhaustion and relief.
Meredith stayed awake till 3 AM, watching Polish TV.
She didn’t know Polish.
Why would she?
—--
Evan was gone when she got up the next morning. Sweaty.
She’d been sweating all night.
Getting dragged to Europe to spend five days in a hotel room was one thing. That room’s A/C not working, however, made her furious in a way she couldn’t really explain.
She called reception, twice. The first time, they’d apologized and promised to send someone. The second time, they apologized again and said something about “high season” and maintenance “doing its best to provide a pleasant stay.”
She’d gone mad.
“I thought this was a five-star hotel,” she’d screamed, barely recognizing her own voice. “We’re paying for five stars, are we not? For how many stars are we paying? Tell me, for how many!”
“Of course, madam. So sorry, madam. We’ll send someone right away...”
She hung up before the receptionist could call her madam again. And that was an hour ago.
She went into the shower to cool down instead. It almost helped.
Then someone knocked.
She put on a bathrobe, hair still dripping, skin still flushed from the heat and her long lost patience, and opened the door without bothering to check the peephole.
It was a man.
A boy, not a man. About twenty. Tall and lean and wearing a tight tank top that clearly suggested he was one of those self-obsessed kids that ceaselessly showed off their shredded abs on Instagram, hoping they’d get noticed.
Only this one didn’t need to pull his shirt up to become noticeable. His dark blond hair, his sharp cheekbones, those blue eyes made sure you’d notice him, even without the effort he’d obviously put into making his body into something girls his age would text their besties about.
She took a step back, without knowing why.
“Hi, uhm… How may I help you?” she said.
“I am here to help you,” he said, his English accented with a Polish lilt.
She tried to stop staring.
“The front desk sent me,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the wall behind her. “The air conditioner. You complained.”
He was holding a toolbox. And he was looking at her like she was the one who’d shown up half-dressed.
“Yes,” she said. “The A/C. It’s not working.”
“Yes,” he echoed, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I know. That’s why I’m here.”
He was looking at her, looking back at him, anything but shy.
“Can I come in?” he finally said.
She blinked. She was still standing in the doorway, in her bathrobe, with her dripping hair and her bare feet, blocking the entrance like some kind of idiot.
“Of course,” she said, stepping aside as casually as she could.
He stepped past her, into the room, and she caught a whiff of him as he moved. Something clean and young and faintly like sweat under soap that somehow managed to smell better than it should.
He took a look around, and headed for the main unit.
She closed the door.
And watched him.
“May I?” he asked, already taking off his sneakers.
What the…
Then he pulled a chair under the A/C unit and got up on it.
She swallowed.
And ten minutes later he’d stepped down from the chair, and she’d memorised the way his tank top had ridden up when he stretched, the shift of muscle in his shoulders as he worked, the faint sheen of sweat that had appeared on his forearms, the way his shorts had stretched across his thighs when he’d balanced on the chair, the way his fingers…
Shit!
He’d caught her staring. He didn’t look surprised.
“It’s fixed,” he said. “It should cool down now.”
“Good,” she managed to say. “Yes, very good, thank you.”
He picked up his sneakers but didn’t put them back on. He just held them and said “the main units are new. The bedroom ones are older. They need more… care.”
He’d probably said that line a dozen times before, she thought.
He tilted his head, that small smile playing at his lips again.
“I should probably take a look at it too,” he continued. “See what it needs.”
“I…”
“Yes?”
“How old are you?” she asked, not believing she’d really asked that.
“Nineteen,” he said, like it was something he was proud of.
Well, maybe at nineteen you could be proud even about your age.
“Really?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I don’t know. You’re too young, I guess.”
“Not for Poland. I started at fifteen.”
“You started working at fifteen?”
He almost laughed.
“No, I started working at fourteen.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
Right…
“Nice, nice” she rushed to say, before she could say anything else she’d regret later.
“So, shall we?” he asked, already walking toward the bedroom.
“No, no,” she said, blocking his way with her palm, flat against his chest.
She hadn’t meant to touch him. Yet she did. Not that he seemed to mind.
She pulled her hand away.
“It’s okay,” she said. “That one is okay.”
“Are you certain?” he asked.
No, she wasn’t. Especially after feeling that chest against her fingers.
But she wasn’t gonna walk into her bedroom with an unhinged nineteen-year-old who smelled like sex either.
“That will be all,” she said, as dismissively as she could, going for her purse and taking out a hundred-dollar bill.
She held it out for him.
“We only accept zloty in Poland,” he said teasingly.
“I’m afraid I don’t have Polish money on me right now.”
He took it and folded it twice.
Then he reached for her wrist and pressed the folded bill into her palm, closing her fingers around it.
“Next time, then,” he said.
He put on his sneakers and walked to the door.
“12 A,” he said, with his hand on the handle. “First floor. Staff quarters. If you need anything.”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
“You never know,” he said. And left.
She stood there, the bill still in her palm, her heart pounding harder than it should.
She should have listened to Evan when he told her she should exchange some dollars for the local currency.
