Kismet

“Well? Are you going to tell her?” Kate asked. “It’s Trevor Dane!” she said, blurting out the news before Lissa could do it herself.

April’s eyes opened wide. “Trevor Dane. Your ... I mean ...”

“My high school sweetheart,” Lissa said. The only man she’d ever truly loved and the one she’d hurt beyond reason.

The News Journal’s list of interviewees was set in stone. She had no choice but to face Trevor again for the first time since telling him she was pregnant with Bradley Banks’s baby, ten years before. Although Faith Harrington had been given a second chance with Ethan Barron, another man Lissa would be interviewing, she already knew she had royally screwed up any shot with Trevor Dane a decade earlier.

She didn’t deserve another.

And to put an exclamation point on that old statement, Trevor had gone away to college; he lived in Manhattan; and though he’d visited Serendipity and his family over the years, when it came to Lissa, he’d never looked back.

*

“News Journal magazine wants to interview you,” Alexander Wittman, president and CEO of Wittman Financial Management and the son of the firm’s founder, said as he walked into Trevor Dane’s corner office.

Trevor didn’t turn. Instead he stared out at the streets of Manhattan from the luxury high-rise office building on Broad Street, wondering how a kid from the wrong side of the tracks had arrived at this point. Brains, hard work, and a helluva lot of luck. That and a burning desire to get out of his hometown of Serendipity, New York, and rarely go back. It’d be never if not for his family, Trevor thought wryly.

“Did you hear me?” Alex asked.

Trevor pivoted to face his boss and mentor. “I was just taking it in. News Journal, huh?” Like Forbes, the magazine was a must-read in the business world.

“You’re an up-and-comer,” the man said proudly.

“Thanks. I owe it to you.” A decade older than Trevor, Alex had been his mentor since he’d interned with him one summer. “My secretary gave me a schedule of events the reporter will be attending with me. Apparently she wants to follow me around even in my off hours,” he muttered.

She was even supposed to attend the annual charity gala the firm was sponsoring on Friday night at the Waldorf. Though Trevor wasn’t pleased, it did save him the hassle of finding a date, the need for which he’d been ignoring.

“The price we pay,” Alex said on a laugh. “Maybe she’ll be a beauty.”

Trevor raised an eyebrow. “I’m not about to get us slapped with a sexual harassment suit by coming on to the reporter.”

“You know what your problem is?” Alex asked.

“Wasn’t aware I had one.” Trevor folded his arms across his chest. “Care to enlighten me?”

“You’re all work and no play. You don’t want to end up old and alone, not when the alternative is so much better.” Alex ran a hand through his thick black hair and eyed Trevor with a knowing look that meant he wouldn’t drop the subject easily. The man was always after Trevor to look harder at the women he dated, give them more than a couple of chances before deciding to break things off.

But Alex had married his college sweetheart and hadn’t looked at another woman since. Trevor wished he’d been so lucky. Every woman he dated left him cold because no one could live up to the memory of the one who got away—breaking his heart and ruining him for anyone who came after her.

“Give me a break. You like how much money I bring in and that takes up all my time.” Trevor walked around his desk and placed a hand on the other man’s back. “So it’s time for you to let me do my thing before the reporter arrives.” In fact, she was due any minute.

“Fine. Subject dropped. For now. But Emma insists you come to dinner Saturday night at our penthouse. She said she won’t take no for an answer.”

“As long as she’s not trying to set me up with one of her friends,” Trevor said, accepting. He loved Alex’s wife and wouldn’t deny her a thing.

“The fact that you’re free on such short notice just backs up my point. You need—”

“—to get to work,” Trevor said. “Tell Emma I’ll see her on Saturday.”

Before Alex could depart, a knock sounded on Trevor’s office door. “Come in.”

His secretary, Collette, opened the door. “Mr. Dane, your nine-thirty appointment is here.”

Trevor nodded. “Show her in, please.”

“I’ll just stay and say hello to the reporter,” Alex said, puffing out his chest a bit.

Trevor grinned. The man did love publicity.