One Blazing Night Read Free

his own.”
    After a brief silence that proved to Sam it was impossible to swallow with a dry mouth, Matt said, “I’m excited to see you, Sammy.”
    â€œI’m wearing a Black Widow sweatshirt and black tights I bought at a flea market in Cambridge.”
    â€œOkay. Wait. Didn’t you used to wear something like that back at MIT?”
    â€œYep. Same sweatshirt.”
    â€œThat’s my girl.” This time Matt’s laugh put her on edge. She felt like that socially inept teenager he’d befriended a lifetime ago. “Okay, I’ll let you get back to work,” he said. “Let me know about the apartment.”
    â€œWill do.”
    After they disconnected, she put her cell phone back where it belonged, picked up her iPod and changed the music to Led Zeppelin.
    The pounding drumbeat synced to her thudding heart. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t. God. But what if...?
    * * *
    M ATT DRANK IN the sight of the New York City skyline, and as always, he lingered on the Chrysler Building, his favorite. It was a clear fall night, and from his twenty-fourth-floor penthouse, everything looked the way it did in the movies. His trip to Asia had lasted two long months but was well worth it. He’d negotiated a nice purchase price for an international hotel chain, Voyager Hotels. It was a big win for Wilkinson Holdings and for him personally. He needed all the points he could get with the board meeting coming up. It was time for him to take the next step up the ladder, which meant taking charge of the London office. Since WH was a family business—his family’s—there were people on the board who believed every victory of his was somehow manipulated by his father and two uncles.
    Even with all the politics that came with being in-house counsel for a top-100 company, he wouldn’t change anything. Well, except for that London gig. He wanted that. Enough to play the game the way his father had taught him.
    But right now it felt great to be home. It also felt great to be alone. He needed to relax for the next couple of days, get over the jet lag before he went to Boston and made nice at the corporate office. The company’s annual gala for the Boston Children’s Hospital was coming up—a great cause but always a chore. Two days after the fund-raiser was the annual board meeting.
    He’d much rather think about his upcoming mini vacation. Although Boston was really home. He’d been born and raised in Beacon Hill. Gone to two universities in Cambridge, had a lot of friends who lived in the city.
    The only one he cared to see this time was Sam. She’d been on his mind since he’d heard from his buddy Logan McCabe. He and Logan both lived in New York but rarely saw each other, with Matt’s crazy travel schedule. But as soon as Logan had told him about the smart apartment and Sam, that was it. Matt had picked up the phone and she’d answered, and it was like going back in time.
    She was terrible on the phone. Always had been. But it had been great to hear her voice. Logan had said she’d stepped up her game when it came to the business and was still a workaholic. Matt had known from their first few conversations at MIT that she was going to play in the big leagues one day.
    He’d seen a couple of pictures of her online, neither of which had been very good. It seemed she was still camera shy, mainly because of her freckles, he imagined. She’d always hated them. There was just a spray of them across her nose, but she thought they made her look hideous. That and her copper penny–red hair.
    She’d tried dyeing it black once. What a nightmare that had been. Goth and Sam did not go together. She was far too earnest and far too sensible to fall in with a crowd that demanded such conformity. Eventually, her hair had grown out and the nose ring had disappeared. He wondered if she still had that row of piercings climbing up the