Her Amish Christmas Gift. Rebecca Kertz

there, silent, obligating her to speak first.

      Questions began to throb across Cassidy’s mind. Why are you here? Why, after all this time? Why couldn’t you just let go? Why are you making me face you now?

      But she finally chose to say only one word, and it came out of her throat in a ragged whisper. “Why?”

      Eric recoiled. Not physically, but something in his expression pulled back for a moment. Cassidy was unsettled by it; she’d never surprised him before.

      “‘Why?’” he repeated in a voice that was a bit lower, a bit harsher, than she’d ever heard it. “Did you just ask me, ‘Why’? Why in hell are you asking me why? It should be me asking you. Why, Cassidy?”

      Hearing her name in his voice again almost made her break down in sobs, but she fought hard against herself.

      She wondered if he really thought she would answer him. Didn’t he realize that if she could tell him why, years ago, she wouldn’t have run? Couldn’t he guess the betrayal she was hiding was more than he could bear?

      She parted her lips, sticky with the remains of unrefreshed Chanel lipstick.

      Maybe she would have said something. Probably not.

      But she’d never find out for sure. Because at that moment, Eric reached out one hand, put it on the back of her head, pulled her close and covered her mouth with his.

      It was as though he’d been in prison for ten years, for a crime he didn’t realize he’d committed, and was finally tasting the sun again.

      Cassidy’s mouth was rigid and her glittering amber eyes were in a wide-open stare. Eric closed his eyes and brought both hands to her face, relaxing the smooth skin beneath his fingers, caressing her small earlobes.

      He felt her resolve soften, along with her mouth. He nibbled gently with his teeth, and when her lips opened, he touched just the tip of her tongue with his. Someone made a moaning sound, and he couldn’t tell who.

      He leaned her against the wall, pressing his lower body against hers.

      Then he felt another pressure. On his shoulders. Two hands. Pushing him roughly away.

      He let go of her and stumbled three steps back.

      Cassidy’s face blazed as red as the highlights in her long, thick hair. She was breathing hard, her nostrils flaring like a prodded bull.

      Another woman would have cried, “What are you doing, kissing me at the main door of the U.S. embassy, for crying out loud! I work here! And who do you think you are, kissing me like that, touching me like that? Get the hell away from me!”

      But this was Cassidy, whose wordless emotions were always written all over her face. Eric flinched as if she had actually spoken.

      He also flinched from the strength of his memory. Those three memories he never let himself remember?

      Well, the first one smashed into him now. Hard.

      Cassidy, glowing with new beauty at her Sweet Sixteen party. She coaxed him into the hall, away from her giggly girlfriends and clearly hopeful male friends. “It’s my birthday,” she said. “But I have a present for you. Happy birthday to me.” Then she kissed him. An immature, inexperienced kiss. She looped her arms around his shoulders, touched his neck, and he felt her fingers trembling.

      Their first kiss. And their last kiss.

      Until now. His mouth still felt hers.

      “Cassidy,” Eric said. “I—”

      She turned to walk away from him.

      “Cassidy, please,” Eric said. “I didn’t come here for that. I didn’t mean for that to happen. It just—I saw you and it just—it did. I’m sorry.”

      She looked at her arm where he grasped it. He let go and she looked into his face.

      “I didn’t even come here for me,” Eric said.

      Cassidy raised one thin, arched brow. He remembered when she learned how to do that in fifth grade. She’d given raised-brow questioning looks to people for three days, thrilled at her new form of expression.

      “I came here for Professor Gilbert Harrison.”

      Cassidy did look genuinely confused then. She probably hadn’t heard the teacher’s name in ten years, Eric thought. She’d not only left him behind, she’d left everyone.

      “I know you’re at work,” Eric said. “And I’m sorry to track you down here. I didn’t know where you live and I needed to find you. Will you talk to me later? There’s things I have to fill you in on.”

      Cassidy appeared to really want to shake her head no.

      “Please,” Eric said. “I came all this way. Gilbert really needs your help. He called a bunch of your old friends, and they want you to help, too.”

      “He didn’t call me.”

      “No,” Eric conceded. He had wondered why Gilbert hadn’t called Cassidy, his former work-study student, who’d spent so much time with him and admired him so much. But Gilbert had said on the phone that he didn’t want Cassidy to have to make the long journey back to the United States. On the other hand, a bunch of Saunders grads—particularly Ella Gardner, were positive Cassidy would drop everything and run back. Eric had run into Ella recently in Boston. She was the one who told him about Gilbert’s predicament, and suggested Eric fetch Cassidy. She also asked him about the “crush” she’d suspected he’d had on Cassidy at Saunders. Eric would have laughed at the gross understatement if it hadn’t been his own tragedy.

      “No,” Eric repeated. “But your friends insisted you should be found. And I guess I really had to agree.”

      Cassidy glanced behind her at the main door, either concerned she should be working—or searching for a place to flee.

      “What time do you finish for the day?”

      Cassidy glanced behind again.

      “What time, Cassidy? I’ll meet you here.”

      He wasn’t going to let her leave without responding. She figured that out, because she said, “Seven.”

      “Seven?”

      “Usually—but tonight, I have—”

      “I’ll meet you right here at seven.”

      She nodded.

      A part of him longed to just stand in awe of her, gaping at the beauty she’d matured into. The girl he’d remembered wasn’t even as beautiful.

      But the other part of him, the part that had kept him awake for days and weeks and months on end, that distrustful part of him, made him say, “You won’t be here at seven, will you? You’re going to make me chase you, which is the only thing my pride has managed to stop me from doing.”

      Cassidy blinked very slowly, translucent lids covering and uncovering two golden lights.

      Then she turned on her heel, yanked on the main door and disappeared into the building.

      Eric stared at the spot she’d just vacated. A whiff of unfamiliar perfume lingered in her wake, a scent he’d already begun to miss.

      His heart ached with emptiness. “That went well,” he said to the wall.