I lived in New York City for years, so you’d think I’d remember how to dress in the spring.
Wrong.
My cute little jacket advertised as water resistant cinches around my waist and does nothing to protect me from the bone-chilling cold. The new suede platform shoes I bought because they were blue and reminded me of Elvis are completely ruined, and the swishing of them makes me wish I were barefoot. Even my skinny leggings leave me feeling naked and cursing myself for not adding the tights I’d considered and then rejected for fear I would be too hot.
I heard pregnancy does that to a woman.
As if to punctuate the thought that I can’t get back to California soon enough, a cab barrels through a yellow light and blares its horn at me just as I’m about to cross the street to hit up the donut vendor outside the park.
Pregnancy has obviously removed all of my filters, and I don’t hold back when I give the taxi driver my middle finger right in the heart of Manhattan.
Forget the donuts.
I’ll grab something later.
Considering the height of my platform heels, I make decent progress for the next two blocks. Sixth Avenue, Seventh Avenue . . . it isn’t that much farther now to my meeting; then, once it is over, I can call Keen and we can talk about all of this.
My thoughts are interrupted by the distinctive tone of my iPhone.
Walking fast, I stop to huddle under the protective confines of a building’s entryway and pull my phone from my bag. My screen flashes Makayla’s name and for a moment I consider hitting Ignore. Not that I don’t want to talk to her, but I can’t be late, and I shouldn’t tell her about the baby until Keen and I have talked about it.
“Hey, I’ll be back tonight—can we talk then?” I answer over the rain and wind.
“No, wait, Maggie, don’t hang up.”
“What is it?” I ask as a nasty gust of wind propels me forward, causing me to lose my balance and step right into a black, slushy puddle of mud on Fifty-ninth Street that I really, truly hope is mud.
No.
No.
No!
“I have been trying to reach you for over twelve hours. Is everything okay?” Makayla asks.
Standing like a flamingo perched not so gracefully on one submerged foot, I consider my options as I answer her. “I was really tired last night and went to bed early, and now I’m late. Can we please talk tonight?”
“Yes, sure. I was just worried about you. It’s not like you to not answer your phone.”
Dropping my foot in the pool of hell, I stand utterly still and stare at the Time Warner Center. My destination is so close. “Don’t be. I’m fine. I love you.”
She’s still talking but I can’t hear her over the rain and the traffic, and my toes are screaming from my shoes to get the hell out of the foulness I’m standing in.
“Maggie!”
I know that voice.
I push the phone even closer to my ear. “Is someone with you, Makayla?”
“No, why?” she asks.
“Maggie!”
Okay, the voice is not coming from the phone. I turn, and search for the voice I’d know anywhere.
And then I spot him. Keen, with his thick dark hair and sparkling blue eyes and drop-dead-gorgeous looks, sitting in the front of a carriage on the perimeter of Central Park.
With a white horse.
A white horse.
“I have to call you back, Makayla.”
Staring at Keen in shock, I drop my phone in my purse, and I’m not even sure it makes it in there.
I don’t care.
All I care about is this man—brilliant and wild and crazy, and coming for me like some Prince Charming out of a fairy tale.
In five long strides Keen is standing in front of me. “Maggie.”
My whole body is shaking. “Keen. What are you doing here?”
Acting more like a knight than the naughty boyfriend I know him to be, he bends and kisses my hand tenderly. “I need to talk to you and it couldn’t wait.”
All I can do is stand in shock.
Him.
Here.
And the white horse.
The.
White.
Horse.
Straightening to his full height, he places his hands on my face and pulls me to him for one earth-shattering kiss.
“Keen,” I say around his lips.
As he stares at me with those bright blue eyes that make me feel like today is the warmest day of the year, he puts a finger over my lips and continues staring at me for a long, long time.
I swear he is covered in sunshine on this dreary day, and all I can do is stare back as I try to comprehend exactly what this is. I told him about the baby. Told him I couldn’t talk—that we’d talk today. Rather than wait, he flew out from California last night. He came to see me. He’s here in New York. And this is not a dream. I don’t dream that way, or didn’t . . . until him.