Free Twice in a Lifetime (Carina) by Kierney Scott Page A

from right. She could conjugate verbs in Latin and differentiate an equation faster than anyone he knew, but she still could not remember her left hand made an L when she held it up. It was just one of the many quirks he had loved about her.
    He led her down the stairs and into the electric-blue-lit underground.
    “Wow,” she said as she looked around the pristine building. “Where are the homeless people and the buskers and the graffiti?”
    “Not in Dubai.”
    She slowly turned around three hundred and sixty degrees. “I am going to have to take a picture. No one back home will believe how clean it is. Look, Liam,” she whispered, pointing to a cleaner. “She is using a feather duster to clean the chandelier. They have a chandelier in the tube station!” Sarah took out her phone and started snapping pictures. “Here, I need one of you too.” She snapped a picture before he had a chance to think about smiling. “The ladies in the office will appreciate the eye candy. I hope you don’t mind being objectified.”
    “No, objectify away,” he said.
    “Well, in that case, when we get back I’m going to need to take a picture of you hoovering topless for my friend Leslie.”
    “Why?” he couldn’t resist asking.
    “Come on, a hot man doing housework. It doesn’t get any better than that. It is like lady porn. You can have your
Maxim
and page three, just give me a strong man, doing the washing-up.”
    “I thought you said the picture was for Leslie.”
    A pink cast crept up her neck and settled on her cheeks. “All right, I might be keeping a copy for myself.”
    For the next ten stops, Sarah did not speak. She studied the people on the carriage and took pictures of the building once the train was overland. “It is like a clean version of New York,” she said eventually.
    “Have you been to New York?” he asked.
    She nodded. “Yeah, I presented a paper there on harm reduction a few years ago. Did my granny not mention that? That surprises me—she told everyone else on her stair. I am sure they are sick of hearing her go on about me.”
    “Nope, it didn’t come up. I lived in New York for a year after I graduated.”
    “I know,” she said.
    “How?” It was his turn to question.
    “It’s on your company’s website. British-born McPherson received a first at Cambridge, before moving to New York to head up the global desk at Dean and Strachan.” She parroted his bio.
    When his eyes narrowed in question she said, “Of course I looked you up. Your nana is dead. I had no one to call to keep tabs.”
    “Fair enough.”
    “And while we are on the subject, you are Scottish-born. Whenever I read that part, I want to score it out and change it. You are from Scotland. You are Scottish. Edinburgh born and bred.”
    “How often do you read my bio?”
    Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak several times before she muttered, “Oh, shut up, Liam.” Her cheeks now looked sunburnt.
    God, he wanted to kiss her, right here, right now. Thank Christ for Dubai’s decency laws, because they were the only thing keeping him from pulling her onto his lap. She was as sweet and irresistible as she had been a decade ago. He would have thought her job would have taken away some of her wide-eyed optimism, but it was still there, strong as ever. He admired that about her as much as it annoyed him. He knew people would eventually disillusion her but he was still impressed that she remained hopeful in everything.
    “I’ll print you out a copy. You can read it to your heart’s content.” He was more pleased than he should be that Sarah had taken such a keen interest in his life.
    “This is our stop,” she said, ignoring him.
    He looked down at her hands, soft, feminine, perfect, He wanted to lace his fingers through hers. There must be another woman that could fascinate him as much as she did. He needed to start looking harder.
    “I think Marks & Spencer is this way.” She pointed with her left hand as her