Gray’s phone went off again. Mandy had replied. ‘Does that extend to taking a beautiful woman out for a drink? Tonight’s my night off’

He actually smiled. Widely. Her courage knew no bounds. He would bite. If it was terribly boring he would abandon ship like usual.

‘Sure. There’s a pub a block from your steakhouse. Meet me there in an hour?’

‘It’s a bit of a commute for me so make it two’ she responded before sending a second text. ‘See you then, handsome’

Ah, it was gratifying to be praised no matter who the praise came from. His other dates had been more interested in his money than his looks. Of the two, he tended to prefer the latter because it was fractionally less shallow.

Two hours later Gray found himself sitting at the bar waiting for her to show up. She was ten minutes late. A bit of a commute indeed.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, I missed my connecting train,” Mandy said breathlessly as she blew in the door.

Her subtly highlighted dark brown hair was windblown and she was wearing a slightly frayed gray wool coat over a pair of navy blue slacks. Her appearance was neat and pretty but it was obvious her clothes were bought cheap. 

“That’s alright,” Gray said. Somehow he found himself speaking in a more subdued, natural tone than usual.

Why would he bother with that when he was so firmly entrenched in his false persona that nobody had heard his real voice in years? For some reason he didn’t want to do that where this woman was concerned.

Maybe that was the trick. He needed to act like his real self in front of his dates and see if they still liked him when he wasn’t acting like Graydon Meyer. If he even still knew what that real self entailed anymore.

Mandy smiled at him. It was a nice, warm smile. And somehow familiar. But who would he have ever met who smiled at him so genuinely? That wasn’t the kind of life he led.

“So,” she began. “Do you normally go by Mike or Michael?”

Gray was startled by the question. Though he had been using his real name again after getting out of prison, the only people he really interacted with were his underworld associates helping him rebuild and Aaron. Both called him Gray.

When he was very little he went by Mikey. After that it was Michael until he went off to college and became Graydon. Not one person in this world had ever called him Mike, which was probably why he was so thrown off by this.

“Actually, I normally go by Gray,” he found himself admitting. “But please call me whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

Mandy tilted her head, taking that information in. “Gray, huh? I’ve never met someone who goes by their last name only before. But who am I to judge? My name is Amanda and I’ve always gone by Mandy. It’s a bit sad to never be called by your first name. I think I’ll call you Michael.”

Gray couldn’t get a read on this woman. No one had ever talked to him like this. What on earth was she thinking, conversing with him so easily? The people he interacted with didn’t act like this!

“This is pretty random,” she began. “But by chance did you go off to MIT on a full-ride scholarship in 2002?”

If he was startled before, that was nothing on what he felt now. This person knew him. Actually knew him. From before he became Graydon Meyer. Michael Gray had been a nobody, unwanted by all. Who on earth would remember him from his senior year of high school?

The look on his face must have given him away because Mandy clapped her hands together in delight. That confused him even more. Who was this strange woman?!

“I knew it!” she exclaimed gleefully. “You are my Mikey!”

“You’re the kid from my last foster home,” Gray said faintly.

His head was reeling from the shock. He had been thinking about this woman during that dinner with Aaron and she happened to be their waitress? The odds of that happening were impossibly low.

That foster home had been in Queens. Gray had bounced back and forth between all five boroughs back then since no one wanted him. And apparently that little girl—he had forgotten her name was Mandy—had stayed somewhere in New York City after he left. Or maybe she came back like he did.

It was astounding that she had remembered him enough to recognize him by the name on his credit card. Was it possible that the only reason she left her number was because she remembered him?

If that was truly the case…Mandy wasn’t a gold-digger trying to pick up a rich man in a restaurant. She was someone who actually cared enough about Michael Gray the abandoned foster kid to try and meet him again.

Gray didn’t understand that at all. Sure, she had said he was nice a million years ago, but she was the one who pulled away before he left. Why would she bother to meet him now?

“I don’t understand,” he confessed with a frown. “You remembered me and still wanted to meet up? Was that why you left your number?”

Mandy nodded with bright, shining eyes. “Of course! I always wondered what happened to you. It broke my little heart when you went off to college.”

She was serious. How could she be serious? His leaving actually broke her heart? That wasn’t possible; nobody cared about him that much. At least not since his mother died. This woman…he would kill to know what was going on inside her head.

If she really had always wondered what happened to him, that meant all those years he thought he was completely alone there was someone who cared. All those fake relationships, all those insignificant flings as he tried to fill the void in his heart and there was someone who hadn’t wanted Michael Gray to disappear the whole time.

Gray narrowed his eyes suspiciously. This was too good to be true. He had been lonely and wishing for a relationship like Aaron’s and someone who had once cared about him happened to fall from the sky?

“Then why did you stop clinging to me after I got my acceptance letter?” he asked accusingly.

She coughed, slightly embarrassed. “Well you had just told me you were leaving and never coming back. I was mad at you. In my five-year-old mind, I figured you would give into my tantrum eventually and not go. Obviously I was wrong but I was devastated for a while.

“Actually…those foster parents tried to kick me out about six months later and I put up a big fuss because if I moved you wouldn’t know where to find me if you ever came back. Silly, huh? I really loved you back then.”

He may as well have been stabbed in the heart since he couldn’t feel it beating anymore. Mandy had loved him. Gray never had a clue, since he had forgotten what being loved felt like at that point.

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