My Professor(39)

He sighs. “Good. Perhaps…it’d be best if you lie low tonight. There are so many journalists and photographers here…”

I nod to let him know I’m in total agreement. He’s not offending me in the least.

I’m not sure I’m ready for the repercussions if people here find out who I am. The limelight can be a finicky thing.

He looks behind me, his brows furrowed as if he’s formulating a plan. “Let me just get my friends situated, and then I should also probably make my way around the room or my father will have my head. Go to one of the bars inside and wait for me.” He shakes his head, unable to keep from smiling. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” Then his eyes widen in alarm. “Whatever you do, don’t leave before we can talk again.”

“Okay. I won’t,” I promise, unable to resist matching his smile with one of my own.

It feels ridiculous, but I wish I could hug him again before he walks away. Instead, I stay planted right where I am as he and his friends head into the ballroom.





Of the pair, Alexander has always seemed more outgoing than Emmett, and tonight confirms my suspicions about him. I sip a drink near one of the bars as I watch him work the room. He jumps from guest to guest, shaking hands, offering smiles, graciously taking photos with anyone who asks. His friends claim a table in the far corner of the room, drawing attention not for their rowdy behavior but for their beauty and intrigue. I wonder what it would be like to sit among them, to try to keep up with whatever conversation they’re having.

I’m on drink number two when Alexander finally breaks away to come find me. He nears, still talking to people he passes, but when his eyes meet mine, his expression changes. His public persona is replaced by someone much more approachable.

He waves to my drink. “What is that? Is it good?”

“Their signature cocktail for the night. It’s citrusy and sweet,” I tell him.

He nods and asks the bartender for one before leaning his arm on the bar and looking over at me. For a second, we don’t speak. He just takes me in, like he doesn’t quite believe his eyes.

I don’t know what I was expecting it to feel like to meet him. I grew up as an only child, lonely a lot of the time. I wonder how differently I would have turned out if Alexander had been by my side throughout my youth.

“You really do look like Kathleen.”

I smile. “And you take after your mother as well.”

“Have you met her?”

I shake my head. “I’ve only seen her in photographs. Is she still in France?”

He nods. “She refuses to leave Paris. She’s a snob about the city.”

I think I would be too if I lived there.

“Why are you in Boston?” I ask him.

“Work. You?”

“Work.”

His eyes narrow thoughtfully. “How old are you?”

“I just turned 25. You’re what? 30?”

“Yes, and Emmett’s 33.”

I can’t help but laugh at the way this is going. It’s like we’re speed dating, only without the potential for a love connection. “Is this weird?”

“A little.”

I trudge forward, excited to quench my curiosity. “Where do you live usually?”

“Paris mainly, but for the past few years I’ve been traveling so much for work I’m barely in any one place longer than a few months.”

I frown, only now realizing he doesn’t carry a heavy French accent like I thought he would. I tell him, and he shrugs.

“Emmett and I both studied at Saint John’s for over a decade, and I got my ass kicked for my accent a time or two. I was better off without it.”

Of course. I knew that’s where they went. Saint John’s is the upstate New York boarding school where elites from all over the world send their children ostensibly to learn, but in actuality it’s so they can rub elbows with children from other prominent families.

Still, it’s a shame about the accent.

“Yours isn’t how I imagined it either. But then Kathleen was American, so that explains it.”

I get hung up on the word was.

So he knows my mother passed away. I wasn’t sure.

A part of me needed to cling to the hope that Alexander and Emmett were oblivious. It was easier to think better of them that way. But if he knew, if they all knew, and none of them reached out to me over the years…

My thoughts have spun the evening into a bleak affair. I should let it go and enjoy this moment for what it is, but my pride won’t let the injustice go unchecked.

“Why have you never tried to reach out to me? To contact me in some way?”

His easygoing expression falls. I’ve gone and ruined our moment, darkened it with storm clouds. “You must know how complicated this entire situation is.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I say, sounding like a naive child.

He tugs a hand through his hair. “My father and Emmett—”

“Want nothing to do with me.”

He sighs heavily.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat it. I know the truth.”

He accepts his drink from the bartender and takes a heavy sip before answering. “You’re correct that the two of them would rather continue as we have. They see no use in rehashing old painful memories.”