“That was a client,” I said, not exactly sure where I was going with this. “They, um, had a bit of an emergency with a project we’ve been working on.”

  “Did you get everything worked out? Is there anything I can do?”

  Maxim’s generosity only made me feel worse about myself. “You’re sweet. Thank you. But I think everything’s going to be all right. It just gave me a bit of a scare.”

  He pulled me in against him and squeezed my hand comfortingly. “I’m here for you,” he said, and I knew that he meant it.

  His touch sent a jolt through my body, making me long for him with every ounce of my being. He had a hold on me like no one else ever had.

  Maxim leaned in closer to me, clearly in an effort to pick up where we’d left off before the phone call, but it just didn’t feel right. This wasn’t my life. This was the life of some fictional Tia I’d created, and it wasn’t fair to get more mixed up with Maxim than I already had. My heart wanted to throw caution to the wind, to kiss him and stop worrying about what came next, but my mind took over and told me it was a bad idea.

  “I’m sorry, Maxim,” I said softly. I scooted far enough away that I wouldn’t be tempted to change my mind. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “But we just—”

  “I’m leaving in the morning.”

  Maxim looked down at the floor, avoiding my gaze. “I know that. But we still have tonight.”

  The look of disappointment on his face was like a knife to the heart. He’d gone from happy and flirtatious to upset in the snap of a finger.

  “A fling isn’t in either of our best interests,” I said, “so let’s not make more out of this than what it is. I don’t want to do anything that we’ll regret once the weekend is over. Besides, with the kids, that complicates things. I hope you can see where I’m coming from.”

  “Not really,” Maxim said meekly. “But if that’s what you think is best, I have to respect that.”

  “It is,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I believed it. “We should get going. We have a long day tomorrow.”

  Without waiting for a response from Maxim, I walked down the hall to the spare bedroom and gently nudged Ryan awake.

  He mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out, and I told him it was time to go back to the hotel. I looked down at my watch. The shuttle would be making its loop any minute.

  I knew I was doing the right thing, but why did the right thing hurt so badly? I couldn’t get Maxim’s wounded expression out of my head, and I wondered what would have happened had the lady from the bank not called. Would we have kissed? Or would I have come to my senses? I hoped that I’d made the right decision.

  I helped my sleepy son into his jacket and led him through the hallway to the front porch. There were no words to say to Maxim, no explanation that could suffice.

  Instead, I closed the door quietly behind me and waited until the shuttle came to take us back to the hotel. I’d known that this fairy tale wouldn’t last forever, but I had hoped it would at least last until the end of the trip.

  Chapter 15

  Maxim

  From the moment Tia and Ryan had left the cabin, I’d regretted offering to take them to the airport. I hadn’t slept all night, nervous about the awkwardness that would undoubtedly plague the end of our time together.

  I didn’t regret trying to take things a step further with Tia, but I regretted how it had ended up. Part of me considered sending my driver to take them instead of going myself, but the thought of not getting to see Tia’s face one more time stung more than any tension that was bound to fill the car ride.

  I pulled up to the front of the hotel right on time, an equally sad Lucie seated behind me. She’d grown so close with Ryan that I could tell she was devastated that he was leaving. I understood. My heart hurt. I wished desperately that there was something I could do to keep Tia and Ryan here longer, but I knew it was no use. Tia was devoted to her job and her son, and both of those things required her to go back home to West Virginia.

  The four of us sat in silence in the car, and I assumed that everyone was feeling the same way I was. I was sad to see them go, but, more than that, I felt completely dejected. Had I misread every signal Tia had sent? I’d never been a huge relationship expert, but I knew enough to tell if someone was interested in me or not. We’d been so close to kissing, to ending our time together with a bang. Instead, I was left feeling confused and alone and upset.

  “I had a lot of fun with you guys,” Ryan said, breaking the ice. “I’m really going to miss you. This was the best vacation ever.”

  “We’re going to miss you, too,” I said.

  “Both of you,” Lucie added. She looked diagonally toward Tia. “I think you’re my dad’s new favorite friend.”

  “Is that so?” Tia asked, in an obvious effort to appease Lucie.

  Lucie mumbled something about how much I’d been smiling lately. I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but she was only making things harder. Being reminded of how I’d felt on top of the world this time yesterday made it that much harder to face the reality of today.

  Still, I didn’t want to end things on a bad note, so I parked the car when we got to the airport and helped Tia and Ryan with their luggage. The four of us walked together just as we had to the art museum, and the carousel, and the arcade. This time, however, it felt like we were strangers who hardly knew each other.

  “Don’t forget me,” Lucie said to Ryan when we got inside.

  “Of course I won’t,” Ryan replied, as if it was common knowledge. “I’ll never forget you, Lucie.”

  Lucie lit up. “I can’t wait to tell all my friends about my new American friend. They’ll probably tease me and call you my boyfriend.”

  “Yuck!” Ryan squeaked. “Tell them I’m your secret American brother.”

  They carried on like this, back and forth, like two best friends. It broke my heart that they were being split apart.

  As for me, I was standing silent in front of Tia, without the faintest clue to how to begin saying goodbye to her. How exactly did you say goodbye to someone who had completely changed your life in a matter of a weekend?

  “Well, I guess this is it,” Tia said. She fidgeted with the coat in her hand as the kids continued to chatter beside us.

  “Do you think we should exchange phone numbers?” I asked. “Maybe, if the kids are keeping in touch…” My voice trailed off, and I made no effort to finish my sentence.

  Tears formed in the corners of Tia’s eyes. She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, just as I’d had a feeling she would. “I think it would just make things harder for us.”

  “I understand. I’m busy with work, as you know, so it’s probably for the best. I don’t really have time for a relationship, anyhow.” I could barely get the words out. It was likely the biggest lie I’d ever told. It wasn’t for the best. I wanted to keep in touch. But I didn’t want to make things any more difficult for Tia than they had to be.

  Tia leaned into me for a hug, and I pulled her into my arms. I never wanted to let her go. I was tempted to kiss her lips, but unsure if she would have appreciated it, I kissed her hand instead.

  “Thank you for everything,” Tia said.

  “The pleasure was all mine.”

  I hugged Ryan goodbye while Lucie hugged Tia, and we watched as they disappeared into the security line.

  The walk back to the car felt endless, probably because it felt as though my heart had just been ripped from my chest and stomped on.

  I really had felt something special with Tia. She was beautiful, inside and out, energetic and stubborn and fun to be around. All of her little quirks made her the wonderful person that she was. And that person wanted nothing to do with me.

  Maybe it had just been a weekend fling for Tia, but it had been real to me. She was one of the only people in the world I felt I could truly be myself with. She didn’t like me for my money or my house or my car. She liked me for me.

  “I’m really going to miss them,” Lucie said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  “Me too, sweetheart.”

  I opened Lucie’s car door and waited for her to get inside, hoping she didn’t notice the heartbroken look on my face. Then, I opened my own door, hopped inside, and put the car in drive. Back to the resort, back to reality, back to life without Tia.

  As we wound our way back up through the mountains, I kept my mind from wandering by asking Lucie about her schoolwork. She appeased me, answering each question with as much detail as she could muster.

  “We’re starting our work on the science fair when we get back from break,” she told me when I inquired as to what she was working on in school.

  “Do you know what project you’re going to do?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Ryan gave me some ideas because his school already had their science fair this year, but I haven’t decided which one I want to do yet.”

  When we’d covered math and science, Lucie told me about her language class. This year, on top of the required English, French and our native German, she was learning Spanish.

  Wise beyond her years, Lucie must have sensed that I needed to keep my mind busy, so she did her best to keep me occupied by teaching me snippets of Spanish and even some Portuguese.

  “Where did you learn Portuguese?” I found myself laughing for the first time all morning. “They don’t offer Portuguese classes at your school, do they?”

  “My friend Andreia is from Portugal,” Lucie explained. “She taught me.”

  Though I knew our conversation was rooted in mutual sorrow over the departure of our new friends, it was refreshing to have a real conversation with Lucie about what was happening in her life. I liked hearing about her school, and her classes, and her friends, and I regretted that it’d taken us until our second-to-last day of vacation to talk like this.

  When we got back to our cabin, Lucie and I retreated to our respective rooms without a peep. We were both sad, and we both knew it. While her loud television volume told me that was how she was passing the time, I decided to escape from my sadness the only way I knew how: by diving into my work.

  I grabbed my laptop and went through my emails, reading memos and replying to messages until my fingers grew numb. They weren’t the only part of me that felt numb. No matter how important of an email I came across, no matter how interesting the news article that popped up was, my mind kept flashing back to Tia.

  I told myself this was temporary, that, in a few weeks, she’d just be a blip in the grand scheme of my life. Right now, that time and place felt so far away.

  There was a knock on my door, which I presumed came from Lucie. “Come in.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Is everything all right, darling?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I was just wondering if you wanted to go to the fondue restaurant for lunch. You know, like we used to.”

  If there was one person I could always count on to cheer me up, it was Lucie. She sat across the booth from me looking every inch a preteen, and it hit me how fast she was growing up. The fact that she’d been the one to initiate our daddy-daughter lunch date meant more to me than the meal itself, though I had no doubt the meal was going to be spectacular.

  The moment Lucie had left my room, I’d called over to the restaurant and made a reservation. It was a bit earlier than our usual lunchtime, but we’d skipped breakfast to take Tia and Ryan to the airport, and fondue was always a good escape.

  Even though Tia and I hadn’t exchanged phone numbers or email addresses, a small part of me hoped each time my phone chimed or buzzed that it was her, letting me know that she hated how things had ended and wanted to see me again.

  But today wasn’t about Tia. I had to push her from my mind, as difficult as I knew that would be, so that I could enjoy my time with Lucie, who was looking gorgeous in her brand-new skirt and matching top. She had twisted her hair into tight curls using a trick one of the girls at school had taught her. She told me it involved pencils, but I’d decided I was better off not knowing the particulars.

  “What are we thinking today?” I asked Lucie. “The prix-fixe meal or some dishes to share?”

  “I’m in an extra cheesy mood,” Lucie said, and knowing that she didn’t know how silly she sounded made it that much more adorable. “Can you order like you usually do?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Moments like this were the ones I knew I’d treasure for the rest of my life. A few years from now, when Lucie was bound to throw a fit when I tried to order for her, I’d look back on this moment with a smile.

  We ordered our usual array of cheese and chocolate fondues. It was our special tradition that, on vacation, we ate our dessert fondue with our meal, instead of afterward.

  It had started when Lucie was five or six, when she’d decided she only wanted to order dessert. I’d ordered a typical lunch, and, like any child would do, Lucie took one look at my meal and decided she wanted some too. We’d ended up splitting both the meal and the dessert, eating them together since they’d been brought out at the same time. Now, that was our tradition.

  “Lucie, can I ask you something?”

  “You just did,” Lucie said, giggling.

  “Very funny.” I hesitated, searching for the words. “Do you miss home when you’re at school?”

  Lucie crinkled her nose. “What do you mean? I love my school, but I love home, too. And I always miss you when I’m at school.”

  I wasn’t completely certain what I’d been expecting or hoping for her to say. I just wanted to know that I was doing the best that I could to ensure my daughter’s happiness. Wasn’t that all any parent wanted?

  “Want to know something crazy?” Lucie said.

  “Sure.”

  “Ryan told me that this was the first time he’s ever been on an airplane. Isn’t that so silly? I’ve been on a million airplanes!”

  “You have. But you have to remember that most people don’t get to travel as much as we do,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Lucie had heard the lecture a good twenty or thirty times in her life, about how we were fortunate not to have to worry about money, but that not everyone got to do a lot of the things we did. I tried to always instill in her that it didn’t matter how much money anyone had, though I knew it seemed like hypocrisy for me to be the one telling her that. Luckily, Lucie seemed to understand the point I was trying to make.

  Of course, Tia presumably made a good living with her PR firm, so I was fairly certain that wasn’t the reason Ryan hadn’t been on an airplane. It did strike me as a bit odd, but Tia had told me how busy she always was with work. I supposed it made sense that she’d keep their family vacations within driving distance.

  It took two waiters to carry out all the food we had ordered, and Lucie’s eyes widened when she got a glimpse of the homemade bread, her favorite thing on the menu. By the time the waiters were done unloading their trays, our table was covered in fondue dishes, surrounded by breads and vegetables and fruits and sweets.

  “I don’t think we’re going to finish all this,” Lucie said.

  “Is that a challenge?”

  We munched on our lunches as Lucie shared more of her science fair project ideas with me. Having never actually participated in a science fair, I wasn’t sure how best to help her, so I let her bounce ideas off me and contributed feedback when it seemed warranted. I’d always been a math person, so Lucie’s science-mindedness completely puzzled me.

  As she continued chattering happily, I reflected that my daughter’s suggestion of a lunch date had come at just the perfect time. Lucie’s choice to go to the kids’ club over fondue our first night back had been the reason I’d met Tia, and for that I was thankful. But I had also been disappointed about missing out on one of our favorite restaurants in the mountains, and this lunch had made up for that.

  I’d arrived at the restaurant feeling lovesick, but a date with the number one girl in my life had been just what the doctor ordered.

  Chapter 16

  Tia

  “I’m going to miss Lucie,” Ryan said, watching the planes as they arrived and departed from the surrounding gates.

  “I know, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll miss you, too.”

  It took all of my self-restraint from saying what was really on my mind, from telling Ryan how much I understood his pain because I felt the same way about Maxim. I also felt overwhelming guilt that Ryan and Lucie would likely never see each other again, and it was all because of the tangle of lies I’d created.

  Everything that had gone wrong was because of that web of lies. If I’d been upfront with Maxim, assuming he’d still taken an interest in me, we could’ve stayed in touch. We could’ve exchanged phone numbers. Maybe we could have even tried to maintain a long-distance relationship.

  I’d ruined everything by pretending to be something I wasn’t. From what I knew of Maxim, it was possible he would’ve accepted me as average, taxi driver Tia. Now I’d never know.

  But maybe I was wrong. Maybe Maxim would’ve gotten one glimpse into the ordinary life I lived—the life of clipping coupons and balancing checkbooks—and run the other way. He was used to fancy dinners and the finest clothing. What were the odds he would have been interested in a taxi-driving, money-struggling mess?

  Even though I hadn’t known Maxim all that long, it was hard to remember what life was like before him. I hadn’t even considered the prospect of dating in years, but he’d changed that. It still puzzled me how I could feel so connected to someone who lived such a different life from what I was accustomed to, but maybe money wasn’t everything. I hadn’t really given Maxim a fair chance.

  Most of all, I regretted that I’d hurt him. I’d wanted our last night together to be perfect, and, instead, I’d destroyed everything we’d spent all weekend building. In my mind, I’d been trying to make it easier to say goodbye by not adding physicality into the relationship. In reality, I’d rejected him.