Along for the Ride Read Online Free Page A

instead traced patterns with his fingertips on her back.
    “It is I who should thank you,” he finally said. “You are an incredible woman, Lauren. A woman of passion.”
    Lauren closed her eyes and let his words echo in her ears.
    But she knew she was no woman of passion. No, she was only a lonely middle-aged woman who had somehow had the incredible luck to share some stolen moments with the kind of gorgeous young lover most women only dream about.
    It couldn’t last, of course. He gently eased her from his embrace, and began gathering their things from where they’d been tossed. Self-consciously, Lauren busied herself with her clothes, aware that Rafi watched as he dressed. She wished he would look away. The car seemed suddenly public, dangerous even, and she forced herself to put aside the memory of what had just happened between them to focus on returning to her world.
    She glanced at her watch, as much to avoid looking at Rafi as anything; she didn’t even register the numbers on the dial.
    But Rafi took note.
    “And now,” he said, slipping into his place behind the wheel, “we must get you to the airport, so you can work well this week, Lauren, and be ready for me when I come for you next Monday.”
    As he eased the car out of their private bower, back toward the city, Lauren gazed out the window. They passed joggers, mothers pushing baby strollers, men and women in suits flagging down taxis.
    Astonishing, thought Lauren, that the city should be unchanged, when her own world had just turned upside down.
    #
    Thursday. One more day to get through until she could go home.
    Four more long days and even longer nights until she would see him again.
    Lauren groaned and rolled over, the knotted twist of sheets around her legs proof of her sleeplessness. She squinted at the red numerals on the bedside clock. One a.m. Well, there was still hope, then. As long as she could coax sleep soon, she might be able to get through tomorrow’s meetings.
    Monday night she’d been up until nearly dawn, replaying the morning’s loving in slow, exquisite detail in her mind. It had been like some crazy dream, a dream more real than her life felt now. She remembered each touch, each caress, and ran her fingers over her skin as though searching for some evidence that it had really happened. Tuesday she’d lost her place during a presentation, stumbling through her slide presentation while her face burned with thoughts of Rafi.
    Last night on the way back to the hotel she’d stopped in an all-night grocery for a carton of juice and a sandwich, tired of room service. As she paid, she idly scanned the rows of brightly-colored packs of cigarettes. And then she’d spotted it: the drab brown wrapper of his European brand, the pack that rested always on his console, though he never smoked in her presence.
    “I’ll take those,” she’d said, pointing, before she could change her mind.
    She hadn’t lit a cigarette since high school. But tonight, as Lauren watched the red numerals marching slowly through the misery of waiting, she rose and pulled back the heavy drapes, and the room was lit with the glow of middle-of-the-night Manhattan, dozens of floors below. She found her purse and dug out the pack of cigarettes, the book of matches. Fingers trembling, she broke the cellophane and tore the paper. The cigarette felt as foreign to her fingers as it looked, flecked and slim.
    She lit it closed her eyes and let the smoke rise to her nostrils, and instantly it was as though he was there in the room with her. The rich, earthy tobacco was only one note of his complex scent, but it was enough. She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, once, holding the smoke as long as she could. She stubbed the barely spent cigarette out and slipped gratefully back into her bed, suddenly exhausted beyond measure, but also at peace.
    The shred of a memory of Rafi was enough, and Lauren slept dreamlessly until morning.
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Rafi