Sean felt a twinge of nervousness, which amused him. This is trivia, dude. By its very definition, it doesn’t matter. But Annabelle mattered, and Sean knew that was the real reason for his nerves. He wanted to look good for her. To impress her.
“Pencils ready, and remember to write your team’s name at the top of your paper for every round.”
Annabelle was in charge of writing. She sat up straight with her pencil at the ready and smiled at Sean. “So now you know how geeks spend their Wednesday nights in Golden Falls. But tonight we’re finally going to kick some ass since we’ve got you as our secret weapon.”
Something about the scenario—sitting next to Annabelle, with a group, her pencil poised and ready to write—stirred up a feeling of familiarity yet again. Sean was unnerved, both by the odd sense of déjà vu and by the magnetic attraction he was feeling toward Annabelle. He was conscious of everything about her, the tender profile of her face, the line of her arm, the curve of her breasts beneath her fitted sweater.
The first question came: “The beaver is the national emblem of what country?”
“Canada,” Lottie said, and Annabelle wrote it down.
The next question was about the weather phenomenon named for the Spanish “little boy,” which everyone at the table, including Sean, identified as El Niño. After that came a question about coffee, the answer to which Annabelle knew. There was one minute between each question.
“You’re a coffee drinker, then?” Sean asked Annabelle.
“Coffee addict,” Annabelle said. “It keeps me going through long study sessions. I’m sure I drink way more than is good for me.”
“Probably better for you than meth.”
She laughed. “Probably.”
He was glad she got his joke. Not everyone appreciated firefighter and EMS humor.
After a question about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which everyone also knew, round one ended.
“We’re doing well so far,” Annabelle said, nodding at a group a few tables away. “As long as we beat E Equals MC Hammer. They’re from the physics department.”
“Are they your rivals?”
“The worst.” The way Annabelle said it, Sean could tell it was a good-natured rivalry.
“That’s how I feel about the ladder crew,” he said. “They’re always eating our ice cream.”
“Bastards!” Annabelle said.
“Right?”
“What crew are you on?” Annabelle asked. “I assumed all crews do the same thing.”
“We’ve got what’s called a dual company station. I’m on the engine crew, along with Cody, who you met on the glacier,” Sean said. “Josh and Tom, who you also met, are on the ladder crew. It’s a busy downtown station, so we take turns running the calls that come in and play pranks on each other in between.”
“Ooh, like what?”
The others were listening on the periphery of their conversation, except for Derrick, who had his arms crossed and eyes closed as if taking a quick nap.
“Not too long ago, we decorated the back of Cody’s turnout coat with glitter and crystal studs. We bedazzled the shit out of it.” Sean laughed, remembering. “And then he went out on a call and didn’t even notice. Remember Cassie, the reporter?” Annabelle nodded. “She showed up at a house fire we were on and got a nice long camera shot. Cody didn’t know about it until it aired!”
“I saw that!” Lottie said, and Cameron said he had, too.
“That’s our taxpayer dollars hard at work,” Derrick said.
“Taxpayer dollars saved your ass last weekend,” Sean said.
“They saved Annabelle’s ass,” Derrick corrected.
“Shut the fuck up.” Lottie elbowed Derrick. “We’d still be on that glacier if it wasn’t for those guys.”
Round two began, and Sean tried to contribute as much as he could, but in this group of brains, it was hard to stand out. The one question that stumped the group—“Which country was coined by Winston Churchill as ‘The Pearl of Africa’?”—made them all toss out random guesses. Sean watched them struggle, amused until he noticed Derrick looking down into his lap, surreptitiously checking his cell phone. Sean knew it not only because it was a universal sneaking-a-glance gesture, but because he saw the bluish glow of the screen.
Derrick looked up. “Uganda.”
Sean narrowed his eyes. He despised cheating, playing dirty, or any hint of deceitful behavior. It was why he didn’t get along with Troy Garrett and why he was such a stickler for rules as a coach to the hockey kids. News reports of people getting away with wrongdoing always disgusted him, even though he knew it was the way of the world. Honesty and decency counted for so much, and it pissed him off that Derrick was neither.
Sean decided to call him on it.
“Gotta love Google,” he said.
Derrick’s smile was sly. “Gotta love my photographic memory, you mean.”
“Dude, give it up. I saw you.” He nodded toward Derrick’s lap. “Your phone’s right there beneath the table.”
Quick as anything, Lottie dug into Derrick’s lap and came up with his cell phone, which had the Pearl of Africa search still on the screen.
“Are you kidding, Derrick?” Lottie said. “Do you not want to be on the trivia team anymore? Because this is a fast way to get all of us disqualified, or for us to kick you off the team. Annabelle, cross off that last answer. ”
Sean poured himself a second beer and raised his glass to Derrick. “To photographic memories.”
A bigger man would have apologized or left the table in embarrassed disgrace, but Derrick just shrugged like what he’d done was no big deal.
They launched into round three, the sports round. Sean knew eight of the ten questions and became the team’s hero.
“Get ready to lose!” Cameron called over to the E Equals MC Hammer team.
After a music round and a final general knowledge round, the scores were tallied. The announcer said, “In second place, E Equals MC Hammer!”
The MC Hammers cheered for themselves, although it seemed with a bit of disappointment.
“And the first prize goes to David Attenborough’s Pants!”
As their table exploded into cheers, everyone standing up, Sean held up a hand to high-five Annabelle. She missed and laughed.
“Sorry!” she said. “I’m the world’s biggest klutz, as you well know.”
Sean knew no such thing. “Falling into a crevasse doesn’t make you a klutz! It makes you a survivor. Do you want to know a trick to doing a high-five? Look at my elbow, not my hand. Here, try it again.”
He held up his hand, and this time she hit it dead-on.
“All right!” she said. “I’ve got skills.”
She lost her footing just the tiniest bit as she cheered her success, and as she tipped forward, he caught her.
“See?” She threw her head back and laughed. “I’m clumsy.”
She didn’t step away, and Sean took that as permission to wrap his arms around her and draw her close. As her cheek came to rest against his chest, he smelled that heady vanilla scent again. When she tipped her head up to meet his eyes, it was all he could do not to kiss her. It didn’t help that her lips were parted in a way that felt like an invitation.
Sean felt an erection pressing against his jeans, and what he wouldn’t give for her to stroke it. As her chest rose and fell in a way that spoke of arousal, he could tell this was a moment, a capital-m Moment, for her as well as for him. It was a moment of wanting, of lust.
A moment of yes, there must be more.
But a dive bar was the wrong place for a first kiss. Plus, Derrick was there, shooting daggers with his eyes from the other side of the table.
Annabelle murmured into Sean’s ear. “You make me incredibly nervous.”
“Why’s that?” he said.
She searched his eyes. “Do I feel at all familiar to you? In any way, shape, or form?”
He very much wanted to feel her curves, learn her
shape, and kiss her with a passion that would lead to everything else. But she didn’t feel familiar. Quite the opposite. She was unique. In a world of shallow women, Annabelle was deep.
“You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met before,” Sean said. “Have dinner with me.”
“Just the two of us? You mean like a date?”
He laughed. “Yes, Annabelle, I mean like a date.”
“Well,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “okay, then.”
15
Sean took pride in being on time to everything, and it was his custom to show up early for a date. The earlier he arrived, the more he cared about making a good impression.
For his dinner date with Annabelle that Saturday night, he arrived a full thirty minutes early to get the best table in a cozy corner of the casually elegant piano bar at the historic Pioneer Hotel, which was located on the city square next to the Moondance Theater. Stepping into the hotel’s foyer, he marveled as he always did at the intricate antler chandelier, the massive vase of fresh flowers, the grand staircase, and the quality of the mahogany that had held up so well since the hotel was built. Upscale and old-school.
Sean knew he’d have to wait for Annabelle, but the anticipation was delicious. He’d offered to pick her up, but she’d texted back that she’d be coming from the lab in her own car.
As he nursed a craft porter, he listened to the pianist, a slim man who must have been in his seventies but with an ageless face.
Sean’s phone, already on silent, lit up with new messages from his group chat with the guys from the station. They knew about the date and, as ballbusting firefighters liked to do, they’d been teasing him mercilessly about his new crush—except for Josh, who knew Sean felt differently about Annabelle than he did about most potential dates. Recent entries of their chat were full of wise-ass comments and kissy faces and reminders to wear a condom. When the firefighters weren’t running serious medical calls or putting out fires, they were a bunch of overgrown adolescents, and he loved them for it. Sean gave as good as he got, responding with inferences that he was actually on a date with several of their mothers.
At five minutes to eight, the air in the room changed. Sean looked up and saw Annabelle enter.
She wore black boots, black tights, a woolen skirt, and a sweater that was more form-fitting than what she’d worn for trivia night, but still modest. It wasn’t what women usually wore on first dates with Sean. More typically, they wore tight jeans, a glittery or slinky top, and heels—but then again, Annabelle wasn’t most women.
As she walked across the room toward him, her strawberry hair cascaded around her face and shoulders, gleaming beneath the amber lights. To run his fingers through it would be a wondrous thing.
He came around the table and extended a hand as she neared, not in a handshake sort of way but to draw her closer.
“Annabelle. You look fantastic.” As she slipped her hand into his, he pressed it gently. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Same.” There she went again with that adorable blush. “I mean, it’s good to see you again, too. And you look fantastic, too.”
He was wearing an expensive blazer his parents had bought him for Christmas; Sean tended toward the kind of preppy, sporty clothing he’d worn ever since high school.
He pulled out her chair for her. “Saved you a seat.”
She smiled as she sat and looked a little less nervous after his little joke. “Thank you.”
The pianist looked over at them with a cheeky grin and broke off the tune he was playing to launch into Nat King Cole’s famous tune, “Love.”
A waiter stopped at the table. “Anything to drink, miss?”
“Baileys on ice, please,” she said.
When the song ended, Annabelle clapped. “My grandfather used to sing that song to my grandmother,” she told Sean. “He’d sweep her into his arms and dance around the kitchen with her. She always pretended he was being silly or annoying, but you could tell she loved it.”
“That’s awesome,” Sean said, pleased to have collected this bit of trivia about Annabelle’s family. “How long were they married?”
“Fifty-something years,” Annabelle said. “They still are, but he’s in a wheelchair now. And she’s got dementia, but he still sings to her, and she seems to like it. It calms her down.”
“So she must be in a care facility?”
Annabelle nodded. “Down in Anchorage.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
Her blue eyes danced. “I am.”
“So am I!” he said, surprised, and a sudden familiarity nagged at him. “What part of town? Where’d you go to high school?”
There was a moment of awkward silence as Annabelle looked at him, biting her luscious bottom lip. He was confused because there was no way his questions could have been too personal, but that was his impression.
“I have a confession,” she finally said. She looked at her hands clasped in front of her on the table, her long lashes fluttering, glancing only briefly at Sean before looking back at her hands. Then she took a nervous sip of her drink. “We actually went to the same high school. We were even in the same grade.”
“What? That’s crazy! Why didn’t you say something right away?” Sean felt a frisson of surprised recognition, all of a sudden able to place her.
He was happy at first for the coincidence, but then he realized he couldn’t recall ever having talked to her. And the vibe she was sending across the table indicated she’d been reluctant for him to make the connection.
“Please tell me I wasn’t a jerk to you.” It wasn’t in Sean’s nature to be deliberately mean, but as a teenager, he’d probably been idiotic and clueless. He’d been a jock, popular, always surrounded with friends. And Annabelle? Try as he might, he couldn’t remember a single thing about her.
“Oh, no, you were always friendly to everyone,” she said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you right away. Did we know each other?”
“Well, everyone knew you.” She looked up at him, her eyes bright. “You were the homecoming king. Athlete of the year. Totally popular with guys and girls alike.”
Yes, that had been his experience. “And you? Who did you hang out with?”
“Other nerds,” she said. “I was pretty geeky back then. I still am, of course.”
“You? Geeky? Not at all,” Sean said, even though in truth she was and it was a trait he found adorable. “You’re like a science goddess.”
Smiling, she tucked a strand of her wavy hair behind an ear. “Is there such a thing?”
“There is,” Sean said. “And you’re it. You’re Annabelle, the goddess of glacial science.”
She dipped her head as if to hide in pleased embarrassment. “At least I’ve lost the glasses and braces I had in high school.”
“You would have been gorgeous even with glasses and braces,” he said.
She laughed. “Trust me, I wasn’t.”
“Why don’t I remember you? It wasn’t that big of a school.”
If memory served, their school had about twelve hundred students, so about three hundred per grade, a third of whom were Native Alaskan or minority, leaving her one of about one hundred white girls in their grade. It didn’t make sense that he couldn’t remember her.
“Because you were you, and I was me.” She shrugged, and it seemed she was forcing herself to go on. “We were in all the required science classes together. We actually sat next to each other in junior year chemistry—it was alphabetical seating.”
He was stunned. “I sat next to you for an entire year?” And I don’t remember you? What an idiot I am! Good going, Sean. Way to make the lady feel special. “I’m sorry. I must have been incredibly self-centered back then.”
“You weren’t,” she assured him. “I was a total wallflower.”
It might have been coincidence, or the pianist might have caught a bit of their conversation, but as he began to play the opening bars of “You Don’t Know Me�
�� by Ray Charles, Sean had the sudden solution to put an end to what seemed to be an embarrassing conversation for Annabelle.
He stood and extended his hand to her. “Dance with me.”
“Here?!” With her hand on her chest, she looked around. No one else was dancing. “That’s crazy.”
“Then let’s be crazy.”
Annabelle put her hand in Sean’s and let him lead her to an open spot. There was only a small area in front of the piano to dance, but they didn’t need much space. He drew her into a formal couples-dance pose, much like her grandfather might have done with her grandmother back in the day.
He leaned in and spoke softly in her ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you, but I want you to know that you’re unforgettable to me now. I hope you’ll give me a second chance.”
Annabelle looked up at him, a sensuous sparkle in her eyes. Her eyes were fringed with thick dark lashes. On any other woman, Sean would have wondered if they were false lashes, but he could tell by Annabelle’s lack of heavy makeup that they were real.
He pulled her closer. She tucked her head against his chest, and Sean thought how well she fit against him. It was as if their bodies were two puzzle pieces made to match. A deep emotion welled up inside him, a mix of exhilaration and terror and something he couldn’t quite describe but suspected might be the beginnings of love. Real, true love.
The bar around them faded away, and in his mind they could have been back in high school, dancing together under a disco ball at the prom, wearing their finest teenage clothing, him in a rented tux and her in a long sparkling dress. It was an alternate past where Sean had seen the treasure that was Annabelle from the very beginning.
Annabelle’s breath was quick, her breasts tantalizingly pressed into him. She had that faint, delicious smell that reminded him of vanilla and fresh snow, and Sean’s mind searched for a memory of the high school Annabelle who would grow into the flame-haired knockout in front of him.
She must have been hiding in plain sight, and he’d been too stupid to find her.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Forget Me Not (Golden Falls Fire Book 4) Page 10
