Right now.

  She kissed him.

  Julien didn’t seem the least surprised she kissed him. When their lips met he opened his mouth and let his tongue graze her tongue. She felt the kiss all the way from her lips to her toes and back up again.

  Remi pulled back before the kiss turned into more than a kiss. She’d been down that dangerous road before.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” Remi said.

  “You didn’t?” Julien asked, looking flushed and bright-eyed.

  “No. Really. I was thinking in my head all the reasons I shouldn’t kiss you and then…”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “Thinking that our parents’ worst nightmare would be you and I getting involved and so we should absolutely not get involved.”

  “You’re right. You’re completely right.”

  “But I’m going to kiss you anyway,” Julien said.

  “Thank God.”

  He cupped the back of her neck and brought his mouth to hers. The second kiss was even more passionate than the first.

  Julien kissed her like he’d die if he didn’t, like he hadn’t been kissed in a decade, like he had a gun to the back of his head and had been ordered to her kiss her like his life depended on it.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pushed her breasts against his chest. She dug her hand into the back of his hair and found it silky and soft. Julien’s hand was on her thigh over her skirt, creating a thousand wicked images in her head. He could lift her skirt, pull off her panties, and bury himself inside her right now. And they could do it and she wouldn’t feel at all guilty about it because he wasn’t in high school anymore and his parents were across an ocean.

  They paused in the kiss long enough to look at each other as if for confirmation that they could and would continue. In the distance, the lights on the Eiffel Tower turned to blue. And in the haze of blue light their lips met again.

  Julien ran his hand down the center of her back. Remi held him even closer, tighter to her body.

  This was crazy. This was wrong.

  Those words bounced about her brain but as they kissed but they stayed in her mind and touched neither her body nor her heart. Yes it was crazy. Yes it was wrong. And no, that wasn’t about to stop her.

  She stopped only long enough to take a breath.

  The Eiffel Tower turned red.

  “What on earth?”

  “Light show,” Julien said. “They do it every night. But we can pretend it’s just for us if you want.”

  “I want. God, I want.”

  She wanted to kiss him again and so she did. Or perhaps he kissed her this time. What did it matter who kissed whom as long as the kiss never ever ended? For four years they’d had this unfinished business hanging between them. Maybe they should finish it.

  “I missed you,” Julien said against her lips. “I kept trying to forget you, and I couldn’t.”

  “I think of you every Christmas,” she whispered back. “Christmas hasn’t been the same since that night. No matter what I get it’s never what I want.”

  “What do you want?” Julien asked and she knew he wasn’t asking about Christmas gifts.

  “Another Christmas with you,” she whispered.

  “You can have that,” he said. “And me if you want.”

  She rested her forehead against his. One minute. That’s all she needed was one minute of not kissing to clear her head so she could think straight.

  “Julien, if we get involved, our parents are going to kill us,” she said. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t get involved. I’m just saying there will be consequences.”

  “My mother thinks it’s shameful Arden Farms has a female manager. My father routinely calls you a slut. And your family and my family are somehow making millions of dollars off a staged horse rivalry. You think I care what they think?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Same way I care about what my parents think, because they love me and I love them even if they are pissing me the hell off right now.”

  “I care too,” he admitted. “But not enough to stop kissing you.”

  “No more kissing until we get back to your bedroom. You kiss me again like that, and we’ll never make it back.”

  “Kiss you like what?” he asked as he half-dragged her off of the bench.

  “Kiss me like you haven’t kissed anybody in a really long time and you need to make up for lost time.”

  “Would it completely freak you out if I told you that was true?”

  “No, of course not. We all have dry spells.”

  “This is a little more than a dry spell,” Julien said, looking sheepish. She knew that look. Julien had worn that same expression right before confessing he was only seventeen.

  “What is it, Julien? You can tell me.”

  “That’s kind of a long story.”

  “You have a lot of long stories. You ran away from Kentucky and moved to Paris to get away from your parents who were mean to me. You have an assistant who isn’t your assistant but who lives with you. And you’ve had more than a dry spell? What’s going on? Tell me.”

  “Dry spell is an understatement,” he said.

  “Oh shit.” Remi covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Don’t ask,” he said, a look of quiet desperation in his eyes. “Please.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I have a good excuse, I swear.”

  “You’re a virgin?” she asked, utterly astounded.

  “I asked you not to ask.” Julien crossed his arms over his chest and laughed nervously.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Does it really bother you?”

  “I’m just shocked,” Remi said, looking at Julien in a new light.

  “Shocked?”

  “You’re beautiful, Julien. I thought that the second I saw you four years ago. I thought that the second I saw you again tonight. And now you’re blushing and you’re even sexier than you were four seconds before.”

  “Let’s go talk in my room. There’s something I need to tell you. And show you.”

  “Your naked body?”

  “That too.”

  They left his office and paused in the now empty living room.

  “Wonder where Merrick and Salena went?” Julien whispered.

  “It’s Merrick. Five bucks says they’re in her bedroom.”

  “Salena’s really picky about the guys she dates.”

  “It’s Merrick. Trust me, this isn’t about dating.”

  Julien took her hand and they crept past a closed door. They heard a voice from within.

  “So how old are you?” they heard Merrick saying.

  “Thirty-three. You?” Salena asked.

  “Thirty-six. You put us together and you get sixty-nine.”

  ‘You’re very good at math.”

  “Who was doing math?” Merrick asked.

  “Mystery solved,” Julien whispered and rolled his eyes. He looked so cute with his amused disgust that Remi had to stop herself from grabbing his face and kissing him again. “Let’s go.”

  They quickly reached his room at the end of his hall. He pushed the door open and ripped a small folded piece of paper off the door. He glanced at the note, smiled, and shoved it into his pocket. As soon as they were in the room with the door locked behind them, Julien pulled her to him. Remi raised her hand and covered his mouth.

  “No kissing. You talk to me first,” she said.

  “My man’t malk wiff your mand on my mouth.”

  “What?” she asked, pulling her hand back.

  “I can’t talk with your hand on my mouth,” Julien said.

  “Okay, you talk. I’ll be sitting at a safe distance and listening.” Remi picked up a chair and sat it five feet from the bed where Julien now sat. She was impressed by his bedroom. The walls were an elegant jade green and the bedframe an antique brass. The walls were lined with beautiful, if bizarre art, and every surface was spotlessly clean.

  “Your room is really clean,” she said. “That’s not natural.”

  “Salena hired a housekeeper. Was not my idea. I’m not that spoiled.”

  “I want to know about Salena. She’s way too beautiful, she lives with you, but she’s not your assistant and yet she hired a housekeeper.”

  “And she’s seen me naked. A lot. Just making sure you know everything.”

  “I really hope there’s a good explanation for that.” Remi wasn’t the jealous type but she was quickly getting used to the idea of being the only woman got to see Julien naked.

  “There is. And it has everything to do with why, I’m, you know…”

  “Undefiled?”

  “That’s a diplomatic word for a guy who’s never gotten laid.”

  “I’m trying to be diplomatic. It’s better than ripping your clothes off,” Remi said, and sat on her hands to remind herself to let him talk before the clothes-ripping began.

  “I think I’d rather you just rip my clothes off.”

  “Talk,” she ordered.

  “Okay, I’m talking. It’s just…I don’t talk about this often. It sort of changes everything when I bring it up.”

  “Bring what up? What is it?”

  “The reason I’m a virgin and the reason Salena lives with me and the reason I have a housekeeper who keeps everything spotless and disinfected and the reason I lived with my parents until last year until I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and the reason I didn’t send you all the letters I wrote you...”

  “What’s the reason?”

  Julien took a deep breath. He seemed to be steeling himself.

  “Salena’s not my assistant, but she does work for us.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s my doctor. Dr. Salena Kar—internist.”

  Remi’s mouth fell open. She quickly closed it. Her desire for Julien turned instantly to pity, compassion, and fear.

  “You have a live-in doctor?” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  “What do you have?”

  Julien sighed again.

  “It’s not what I have. It’s what I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “Leukemia, Remi. Two weeks after you and I almost had sex, I was diagnosed with leukemia.”

  No Last Names

  “Leukemia,” Remi repeated. Her mouth formed the word but her tongue wanted to spit it back out, reject the word, the truth, the suffering Julien had experienced.

  “Acute myeloid leukemia, if you want to be specific.”

  “That sounds…bad.”

  Julien laughed a little. “There’s no good leukemia.”

  “No,” Remi breathed, her hands shaking from the shock of the news. “I wouldn’t think so. What happened?”

  Julien shrugged and sighed. She knew he didn’t want to tell the story but she had to hear it. Every word.

  “The night of the Christmas party, you thought I was older than I was. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You were almost six feet tall and had a glass of wine in your hand.”

  “I thought it was probably the wine that made you think I was older.”

  “That and how intelligent and funny you were. I’m surprised your parents let you drink wine.”

  “They usually didn’t. But I had a headache that day. It got worse at the party. Dad said I could have one glass of wine and if that didn’t help I should just go lie down in one of the guest bedrooms. They’d find me when it was time to go. That’s why Mom was looking for me.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a headache that night.”

  “I’d had a headache off and on for a week. When I saw you and we started talking, it disappeared. But it came back the next day. A week after Christmas, I started getting bruises. They wouldn’t heal. I finally told Mom I thought something was wrong with me, and I showed her the bruises on my stomach. Next day I’m in the doctor’s office getting blood drawn and my mom’s crying and the doctor’s looking at my blood in the tube and scowling.”

  “Scowling is not good,” Remi said, her hands shaking as if it had been her in that room next to Julien watching a doctor stick a needle in his arm.

  “The doctor said he was going to run some tests, and I should pray I got an A on the tests.”

  “An A?”

  “A for is for Anemia, which is easy to treat and would have explained the bruises and the headaches. I got a C on my test instead. Cancer. They admitted me into the hospital immediately. Then home for a few days. Then I was back in the hospital again. After the bone marrow transplant, I pretty much lived in the hospital.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Bad,” he said simply. “But it’s always bad. With cancer it’s either bad or worse. Mine was bad, so it could have been worse. That’s what you tell yourself to make it through the night. Mine was treatable, even curable. Not all of the big Cs are.”

  Her heart ground against the gears of her chest. Julien spoke of his years in death’s doorway so casually, too casually.

  “So you’re better? Completely?”

  “See that?” Julien pointed to a chart on the wall. “That’s a five-year calendar. Declared in total remission one year and eleven months ago. That’s when the countdown starts. At five years if I’m still clear, then I’m cured. But the likelihood of relapse is extremely low at this point.”

  “Good,” she said and exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  “But you should know, there are some lingering issues. I’d get Salena in here to tell you all the dirty details, but I think she’s a little busy right now.”

  Remi stood up and walked over to his bed. She touched the side of his face. “I want you to tell me, no one else.”

  He shrugged and rolled onto his back. Not able to stay away from him any longer, she stretched out on her side next to him. Julien stared up at the ceiling. She stared at Julien.

  “Okay, dirty details. Leukemia sucks. I lived in the hospital for months at a time. Radiation makes you skeletal. No teenage guy wants to weigh ninety pounds. Then you get chemo and steroids and you blow up like a balloon. There are literally zero pictures of me from age seventeen to nineteen in existence. Skeletal. Fat. Skeletal. Fat. I banned cameras.”

  “I was wondering why I never found any pictures of you. Your family’s in the news all the time.”

  “Even when I was having good days, feeling okay, Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house. All the treatments kill the immune system.”

  “House arrest?”

  “Basically,” Julien said. “Which was okay at first. Mom and Dad never talked about me being sick to anyone. I asked them not to, and they respected that.”

  “You were sick. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  “I know that now. Harder to accept when you’re seventeen and bald and there are days you can’t even go to the bathroom without help. I didn’t want visitors. I didn’t want people all over me. I just wanted to get through it and get on with my life.”

  “I can see that, but still…God, if I’d known you were sick, I would never have let my family say a word about your family even around our kitchen table. This stupid feud would have been over even if I had to tie up, gag, and chain every last relative and throw them in the basement.”

  “Kinky,” Julien said. Remi flicked him in the arm. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Remi said. “Just keep talking. I want to know everything.”

  “This next part is kind of embarrassing.”

  “Tell me, Julien. Please tell me everything.”

  “I’m sterile,” Julien said. He glanced her way before staring assiduously at the ceiling again.

  “You mean, sterile sterile?”

  “Chemotherapy plus bone marrow transplant means goodbye to your fertility forever. It’s possible I could have kids someday. They froze some of my sperm.”

  “That was smart.”

  “Smart and horrible. Talk about humiliating, sitting in front of your doctor with your mom next to you and discussing your sperm.”

  “Oh God, you poor thing.” Remi could have cried at the thought of what Julien had endured. She felt an ache, almost physical, to go back in time and somehow be there for him and with him while he’d gone through it all.

  “Yeah, that was a bad day.” He laughed softly and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think Mom’s ever recovered from the ‘Save Julien’s sperm’ conversation either. Anyway, thought you should know that part up front.”

  “As long as I have my horses and my horses have babies, I don’t need much else,” she said before realizing they were already talking about the future. Where had this come from? She didn’t know. Right now she didn’t care. “That doesn’t bother me.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Anything else I need to know?” she asked.

  “Nothing much more to tell. Oh, except this. Two years after diagnosis I’m finally in remission. After about six months after that I started to feel pretty normal. I looked normal too. My hair was back. It was short but at least I had some. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I was starting college and was so ready to have a girlfriend.”

  “And have sex?” she teased.

  “All the sex,” he said.

  “So what happened?”

  “My immune system still wasn’t one-hundred-percent. I caught a cold. The cold turned into pneumonia. I had to take a medical leave from school two months in. I’ve never been back to school. College drop-out. Thank God for trust funds, right?”

  “Why didn’t you go back to school when you were better?”

  “Mom took the pneumonia as a sign I should be in lockdown. Do you know how hard it is to meet women when your mother won’t let you out of your own house?”

  “Pretty damn hard, I’d guess,” Remi said as she laid her hand on his chest. They’d been making out in his office a half hour ago. Surely touching him wouldn’t be presumptuous. Clearly it wasn’t, as Julien placed his hand over her hand.

  “And it’s really hard to kiss someone when you’re under orders to wear a surgical mask.”

  “You had to wear surgical masks?”