Seven Days on His Yacht, Three Years After Our Kiss

The yacht was called *Meridian*, and it was bigger than my entire office building.

I stood on the dock in Nice with my carry-on and my one good blazer, trying not to calculate how many months of rent were floating in front of me. Seven days. Twenty-eight thousand dollars. Enough to cover the loan payment due in three weeks, the one I'd been staring at every night since Corvel Logistics decided my invoices were optional.

"Ms. Ellis?" A crew member in a crisp white polo took my bag. "Welcome aboard. Mr. Ashford is on the aft deck."

Ashford. That was all the agency had ever given me. No first name, no company profile, just a surname and a schedule. Hotels in Cannes. A vineyard outside Saint-Tropez. Property meetings on the Ligurian coast. Normal work for a business interpreter, if you ignored the price tag.

I followed him up the stairs, rehearsing my professional smile.

Then the man at the railing turned around, and the smile died somewhere in my throat.

Julian Ashford.

Billionaire hotel investor. Owner of half the luxury properties I'd ever seen in magazines.

And the man who had kissed me on a hotel terrace in Geneva three years ago.

I'd been freelancing that night, interpreting for a Swiss firm at a charity gala. After dinner, I'd slipped outside for air, and he'd followed with two glasses of champagne. We talked for forty minutes about nothing and everything. Bad airport coffee. Whether Lake Geneva looked better at night. Why I'd learned Italian at fifteen.

Then he'd looked at me and asked, "Can I kiss you?"

I'd said yes.

I'd almost missed my five a.m. flight because of that yes.

In the end, I was the one who walked away. No number. No last name exchanged. Just an agency badge he'd probably never read. I'd told myself it was cleaner that way.

Now he was looking at me across a teak deck in the Mediterranean sun, gray eyes calm and unreadable, a folder in one hand.

"Ms. Ellis," he said.

Just that. Like I was a stranger whose résumé he'd skimmed.

"Mr. Ashford." My voice came out steadier than I deserved. "Nice to meet you."

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. It was gone before I could name it.

"Your first meeting is at two," he said, handing me the folder. "The Hôtel Belrive team. They'll try to renegotiate the management fee in French and assume I don't notice. I need you to notice."

"I will."

"Good."

And that was it. He walked away to take a call, and I stood there holding a folder I couldn't read because my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

---

The rest of the day was almost easy, which was somehow worse.

He was sharp in meetings. Patient. He never looked at me longer than necessary. When the Belrive director muttered in French that the American would sign anything if the view was pretty enough, I translated it word for word, and Julian simply smiled and cut the fee offer by two points.

Afterward, he said, "Thank you, Ms. Ellis," and went back to his laptop.

Fine. That was fine. That was exactly what I wanted.

By evening, the sky over the water had gone the color of a bruise. The captain announced that our stop in Saint-Tropez was canceled. A storm was rolling in fast, and everyone was to stay inside until morning.

By midnight, the *Meridian* was rocking hard enough that I'd given up on reading. I'd changed into my sleep shorts and an old Columbia T-shirt, my hair twisted into a messy knot, and was reaching for the light when someone knocked.

I opened the door expecting a crew member.

Julian stood in the narrow hallway. He'd lost the jacket and the tie, his white shirt rolled to the elbows. One shoulder rested against the doorframe like he'd been standing there a while, deciding.

"Is something wrong?" I asked. "Did the Belrive team send revisions?"

"No."

"Then what—"

"Do you remember that night?"

The ship groaned beneath us. Rain hammered the porthole behind me.

I held onto the door. "What night?"

He looked at me for a long moment. Not angry. Just patient, the way he'd been with the hotel director right before he took two points off the table.

"The one where you kissed me and disappeared."

Heat climbed up my neck. "You kissed me."

"You kissed back."

The hallway felt smaller suddenly. Warmer. I was very aware of my bare legs, of the fact that I wasn't wearing a bra, of how close his hand was to mine on the frame.

"You're paying me to work for you," I said quietly.

He nodded once. "I know."

He didn't move. Didn't lean in, didn't take a single step past the threshold. He just stayed exactly where he was, which somehow made it harder to breathe.

"So you do remember," he said.

I hated that he'd caught it. Hated more that he'd known all day and said nothing, let me sit across from him in three meetings pretending we were strangers.

"Good night, Mr. Ashford."

I started to close the door.

The yacht lurched hard to port. My bare feet slid on the polished floor, and the edge of the doorframe rushed toward my face.

His hand shot out.

Not to stop the door. To catch me.

His palm landed on my waist, warm through the thin cotton of my shirt, steadying me an inch from the wood. For a second, neither of us moved. I could feel each of his fingers. I could smell rain and cedar on his skin. His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up, and I knew he was remembering the terrace in Geneva as clearly as I was.

Then he let go.

He took his hand back like it had cost him something and stepped away into the hall.

"Careful," he said, his voice lower than before. "It's going to be a rough night."

I didn't trust myself to answer.

He studied me for one more beat, and that almost-smile finally made it all the way to his lips.

"Seven days, Nora."

It was the first time he'd said my first name. Three years, and he still said it like he'd been practicing.

"Try not to disappear before the contract ends."