Beautiful Stranger by Zoey Dean Page A

everything she could to continue the ruse. From the huge grin on her friend’s face as she talked, the deception was working.
    “I could still get on a plane and get to New York,” Anna heard Sam offer. “Oh. No, of course I understand. … Okay. I love you too. Talk to you tomorrow.”
    Sam clicked off. “Eduardo says hi.” Her voice was downbeat.
    “You’re bummed that he didn’t want you come here,” Anna observed.
    “At least he called me. I was getting worried. Well, maybe a little worried.” Then Sam brightened. “When I surprise him tomorrow, it’s going to be deeply satisfying. He’ll remember who it is he chose to marry.”
    “There’s no one like you, Sam.”
    Sam opened the door to Anna’s place. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Come on. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
    Seventy-eighth Street was exactly as Anna had left it at the end of the year. The sidewalk—scrubbed every day by employees of the block association—was as clean as the sand on the most private beaches at Malibu. There wasn’t a speck of litter or even an overflowing trash can. Brownstone abutted brownstone, each in immaculate condition.
    Anna and Sam hadn’t taken more than ten steps east on their trek to the Olympia Diner when Anna heard someone softly call her name.
    “Anna Percy? Is that you?”
    She turned around and saw a blond, preppy-looking guy with deep-set, serious eyes staring at her expectantly from the top step of the brownstone next door. He wore an open light blue shirt over a T-shirt, khakis, and black Gucci loafers without socks. He looked, Anna thought, like he could be Daniel Craig’s son. Same startling blue eyes. Same slightly sticky-out ears. Same sandy hair and jutting jaw.
    Anna mentally smiled at her own thought process. Before she’d moved to Los Angeles, she would never have made a what-famous-movie-star-does-he-look-like? comparison. Nor would she even have known who Daniel Craig was, because she never would have gone to see a James Bond movie. But she’d seen the latest one with Sam, and liked it. For a split second, she studied Daniel Craig Junior and tried to place him. He did look vaguely familiar.
    “Logan,” she said softly. Now that she took a good look at him, he didn’t look all that different from the boy she’d grown up with. She and Logan Cresswell had gone to preschool together at the Y. And following that, they’d sat next to each other in grade school. He was the first boy she’d ever kissed—on the cheek, in the cloakroom, in second grade—though she could no longer remember why. She hadn’t seen him in forever. He was one of those kids whose parents sent them to boarding school.
    “My parents still live here.” He cocked his head toward the brownstone. “But they’re in East Hampton for the summer. I’m here, though.”
    Memories flooded Anna. She remembered holding hands with him on a third-grade school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And also how smart he’d been back in grade school. One year they’d tied for first place in the school spelling bee, because the staff became too weary to go on any longer when the two of them continued to spell every word they were given correctly.
    “Logan, of course. Hi!”
    She started toward the stoop; he bounded down the stairs, and she found herself enveloped in a not-unwelcome hug under Sam’s curious gaze. He held her at arm’s length afterward, grinning wildly.
    “You know I went to St. Paul’s, right?”
    “Yes, I heard.” Anna did recall. St. Paul’s was a prep school in Concord, New Hampshire, about as exclusive as they came. He’d started there in fifth grade, and Anna tried to remember if she’d seen him since. She didn’t think so. That really wasn’t so surprising. On school vacations, her own family invariably went away on vacation. During the summer, they went to their retreat on Martha’s Vineyard.
    “You look great. Anyway, my parents bought a place in Ireland—on the Dingle