Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

  Honeysuckle, Annie realizes, and a shiver goes through her.

  The scent of honeysuckle is overwhelming.

  Yes, and the night is no longer a warm cloak around her. There isn’t a breeze to stir the trees, yet she isn’t imagining the change in temperature; the air suddenly feels cool enough to make her wish she had a sweater.

  Nor is she imagining the voice on the other end of the phone, or that it belongs to Andre. Maybe she can’t hear him clearly enough to decipher his words, but she recognizes the pitch of the voice, recognizes the cadence and inflection.

  This is really happening, she tells herself again, opening her eyes. He’s really there, on the line.

  Annie strains to make out what he’s saying, decoding brief snatches of conversation. Something about the beach, and love . . .

  “I love you, too, Andre. I always will.”

  “ . . . love . . .” The word is more forceful this time, almost vehement, yet buried in an extended, garbled phrase.

  “I love you, you know that,” Annie says again, even as she senses that that isn’t it. That he’s trying to tell her something else, something she doesn’t already know. Something pressing.

  “ . . . Trixie . . .”

  “Trixie? I know you love her, and Milo, too, Andre. And they love you.”

  “ . . . sorry . . .”

  “Sorry? Sorry for what?” Annie asks on a sob. “You couldn’t help it, Andre. You were sick.”

  “ . . . know . . .”

  “You didn’t know, Andre. Of course you didn’t know. Don’t blame yourself. I don’t blame you. I know you didn’t want to leave us.”

  “ . . . know!”

  That time, the word is clear as the night sky, spoken so sharply Annie’s jaw drops.

  “You didn’t know,” she repeats slowly, wondering . . .

  Is he saying “know”? Or “no?”

  And if it’s no . . . then what does he mean? No, what?

  Sensing that his presence is waning, almost as if that one forceful phrase has depleted the fragile energy, Annie says almost frantically, “Andre, tell me, please.”

  Static. Nothing but static.

  And then, so distant that she can barely discern the word, she hears her name again.

  “ . . . Annie . . .”

  “Oh, Andre, no, don’t go. Please . . . please, tell me . . .”

  “ . . . love . . .”

  But she can feel him fading into oblivion even before the line goes silent, the receiver beeping twice with its familiar CALL LOST code.

  Chapter 14

  Craving a glimpse from another angle into Annie’s private world, Thom would have preferred to meet her at her friend’s apartment on Wednesday night. That way, he could say hello to Milo and Trixie . . . and yes, to Erika Bauer, the woman Annie described as her closest female friend in the world.

  But Annie shot down that suggestion as quickly as Thom brought it up, saying that she would meet him at the restaurant.

  All right, fine. So where is she?

  Thom checks his watch once again, and then the doorway of the small bistro on East Fifty-third Street, wondering if he’s being stood up.

  What is it about Annie that makes him so insecure?

  She matters far more to him than she should. That’s what it is.

  He’s spent the last twelve hours going through the motions at the office when all he could think about was tonight. Basically, he’s an insecure adolescent boy in a grown man’s custom-made suit.

  If Annie doesn’t show up tonight, he’ll . . . he’ll . . .

  What? What will you do?

  Nothing. Nothing, and you know it.

  You’ll chalk it up to experience and go back to your life. Back to working hard and playing harder.

  If the merger talks fail, you’ll make a hostile bid for Saltwater Treasures. Maybe you’ll swim with sharks or, or . . .

  Or climb Mount Everest.

  And sooner or later, you’ll find somebody else. You’ll forget all about Annie.

  Even as he tries to convince himself of that, he knows in his heart that nothing—not even climbing Mount Everest—could possibly be more exhilarating than being with Annie Harlowe.

  “You’re wearing that?”

  “What’s wrong with this?” Annie looks down at her trim khakis, sandals, and short-sleeved white top, then back up at Erika.

  “You can’t wear that to a dinner date in Manhattan, that’s what.”

  “‘A,’ it isn’t a date, and ‘B,’ it’s all I brought to wear,” Annie informs her.

  “Then you need to shop.”

  “I don’t have time.” Let alone money to squander on “date” clothes. “I’m late as it is,” she adds, checking her watch.

  “Then you need to borrow something from me.” Erika steps over Milo and Trixie, who are sprawled on the floor playing Old Maid, and heads across the room to her closet. “We’re the same size.”

  “You’re a foot taller than me.”

  “Yes, but we’re the same size, width-wise. I have a great dress for you to wear. Brand new, the tags still on.”

  “Erika—”

  “No arguments, Annie. I refuse to let you sabotage this date.”

  “I just told you, it isn’t a—”

  “Dinner with an attractive, eligible man is a date, okay, Annie? Call it whatever you want to, but I’m calling it what it is. Here.” She thrusts a dress-draped hanger into Annie’s hands. “Go change.”

  What is there to do but obey?

  All right, you could have said “no,” Annie informs her reflection in the bathroom mirror. But maybe Erika’s right. Maybe you are trying to sabotage this . . . so-called date.

  “My makeup is in the medicine cabinet,” Erika calls through the closed door. “Put some on.”

  “I don’t like my face feeling like it’s coated in batter, Erika.”

  “Just lipstick and mascara.”

  And that’s an order.

  Annie can’t help smiling at how easy it is to imagine Erika barking that unspoken last phrase. She knows her friend thinks she has Annie’s best interests at heart. She just refuses to accept that dating anyone—especially the tantalizing Thom Brannock—is definitely not in Annie’s best interests.

  “There’s perfume on the shelf above the sink,” Erika calls from the next room. “Put some on.”

  Annie sighs, shaking her head.

  There is, indeed, a row of perfume bottles directly in front of her. Their fancy labels read like a who’s who in the world of fashion design, aside from one small, partially obscured vial at the back of the shelf. Pulling it out, Annie sees that it’s an essence of honeysuckle aromatherapy oil.

  All right, that’s a little more her speed. She dabs a few drops on her pulse points, then reluctantly reaches for Erika’s lipstick and mascara, reminding herself that this still absolutely isn’t a date.

  “Hi, sorry I’m late,” Annie says breathlessly, appearing beside the table so abruptly that if he couldn’t smell her luscious floral perfume, he’d think he might be seeing things.

  Thom rises to embrace her, holding on a few seconds longer and far more fervently than he should in public. But he can’t help it. He seems to be channeling that adolescent boy again.

  Holding Annie close, inhaling her scent, he’s instantly transported back to that wondrous encounter on the blanket in her yard.

  When he finally, and reluctantly, lets her go, she looks up at him with a nervous laugh. “Talk about a warm welcome.”

  “I just . . . I really missed you.” He pulls out the chair opposite his at the small round table and drags it a few inches closer to his own in the process of seating her. “And I thought you might not show up, so when you did . . .” He shrugs and smiles at her, a ridiculously giddy smile.

  “I’m really sorry. We took the train into the city this afternoon and it was running late.” She sits and pulls in her chair, spreads her cloth napkin in her lap.

  Her voice is r
elaxed, but Thom notices that her hands are shaking a bit as she clasps them in front of her on the table.

  “The conductor said something about a squirrel chewing through a cable,” she chatters on. “Who’d guess one unfortunate little squirrel could be responsible for throwing thousands of people off schedule?”

  Who’d guess one little squirrel could have a man like Thom Brannock shaking in his polished Mezlan oxfords?

  “I’m just glad you’re here.” He leans close enough across the table to fill his lungs with her fragrance. “You smell great. What kind of perfume are you wearing?”

  She blushes, clears her throat, hesitates.

  Then she says, almost as a confession, “It’s . . . honeysuckle.”

  “Honeysuckle,” he echoes, wondering why she looks so embarrassed. “I love it. You should wear it all the time.”

  “I can’t.”

  Not “I don’t want to.”

  Just, “I can’t.”

  Intrigued as much by her odd response as he is charmed by how flustered she obviously is, Thom asks, “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “I don’t own it, I just borrowed a few drops from my friend.” She shrugs helplessly and wrinkles her freckled nose.

  Wow. She’s absolutely . . . adorable. She’s making him want to kiss her. Which he won’t do—at least, not here—since he is, after all, a grown man.

  Yes, and Annie, bare-legged and bare-toed in flat strappy sandals and a clingy black dress, is a grown woman. An irresistible grown woman.

  Blatant adoration isn’t your style, Thom reminds himself, forcing himself to take an emotional step back . . . until his eyes collide again with Annie’s and he realizes that she’s just as drawn to him as he is to her.

  Wow.

  Thom beams. To hell with being a grown-up. He’s a kid who’s just been handed a triple hot fudge sundae with extra sprinkles and a cherry. Two cherries.

  “I’m going to take you shopping after dinner and buy you that perfume,” Thom declares, looking around for the waiter to speed things along.

  “Take me shopping?” A potential smile seems to be nudging at the corners of Annie’s mouth. “So you’d be . . . what? Like Richard Gere treating Julia Roberts to a shopping spree in Pretty Woman?”

  If memory serves him correctly, Julia Roberts played a hooker with a heart of gold in that movie.

  “I never saw Pretty Woman, Annie, but—”

  “You never saw Pretty Woman?”

  “Nope. I take it you have?”

  “Many times, when I was a kid.”

  “Well, I guess I led a deprived childhood in more ways than you think, huh?” Thanks to years sequestered at boarding school or with parents who thought Hollywood feature films were frivolous.

  “But,” he goes on, “I know enough about the movie’s plot to tell you that all you have in common with her character is that you happen to be a pretty woman.”

  The smile bursts past the corners of her mouth to light her whole face. In Thom’s instantly formed opinion, Julia Roberts’s hundred-watt grin has nothing on Annie’s.

  “And from now on,” he continues, “you should wear that perfume every day, because I love the way it smells on you.”

  Just like that, her smile evaporates.

  “Thom—”

  Uh-oh. The way she says his name, the look on her face . . .

  His heart sinks. He knows what she’s going to say even before she says it.

  What are you, psychic? Haven’t you learned never to try to read a woman’s mind? Relax.

  Okay. Maybe he’s wrong, but . . .

  “I don’t think,” Annie says slowly, “that we can have a ‘from now on.’”

  Nope. He wasn’t wrong.

  He’s psychic. Next, she’ll tell him that it’s been nice knowing him, say good-bye, and sail off into the skyline alone.

  Well, he can’t let her go. Not without telling her how he feels about her.

  “Listen, Annie, before you say—”

  Naturally, the waiter chooses precisely that moment to appear with an obscenely cheery smile, an irritatingly profusive welcome, and a seemingly endless recitation of this evening’s specials.

  A reduction of this, a puree of that, blah, blah, blah . . .

  At last, the waiter winds down his spiel with a friendly, “Can I bring you a cocktail while you peruse the menu?”

  Annie orders a glass of the house white zinfandel.

  Thom orders an imported forty-year-old single-malt scotch, straight up. If his psychic abilities are to be trusted, a stiff drink is in order.

  I don’t think we can have a from now on.

  Wait a minute.

  I don’t think?

  Not, “We can’t” or “we won’t”?

  Hope springs eternal.

  After all, Annie said it herself: Where there’s an “I don’t think,” there’s a way.

  “Waiters in the restaurants I’m used to don’t usually use the word ‘peruse,’” Annie feels compelled to comment as soon as theirs makes his exit again.

  “No?” With a faraway look in his blue eyes, Thom doesn’t even seem to have heard her.

  “No. They’re more likely to say, ‘Do you want to supersize that?’” She laughs.

  He doesn’t.

  She stops.

  Hers was forced, anyway.

  “Look,” she begins, realizing it’s impossible to sidestep the gaping crater she just dug between them, “I wasn’t going to say anything until dinner was over, so that it wouldn’t be awkward between us. But now that it’s out there . . . I guess I should explain.”

  “Ya think?” he asks so curtly that for a moment, she assumes he’s peeved. But his expression betrays only a wary skepticism.

  Wishing the gushing waiter would pop back over with their drinks, Annie says lamely, “It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, Thom . . .”

  “Is that what we’ve been doing?” he asks with a salacious bob of his eyebrows. “Enjoying each other’s company?”

  Annie squirms, looking over her shoulder to see if anybody’s eavesdropping, lest they get the wrong idea.

  All right, not the wrong idea. The right idea. Which doesn’t make their relationship anything but wrong, Annie reminds herself firmly.

  Because she doesn’t want to be the kind of woman who meets her lover for a clandestine dinner in the city.

  Not that there’s anything particularly clandestine about this dinner. But she can’t help feeling almost daring, being here with him. Almost . . .

  Like a married woman having an affair?

  Erika’s voice cuts in wryly, just as it did earlier, in her apartment, when Annie emerged from the bathroom and explained exactly why she had resisted getting all fancied up for her dinner with Thom.

  “Whatever you choose to call it is fine with me,” he says now, leaning closer across the linen tablecloth, “as long as you don’t give me my walking papers without at least explaining your reasoning.”

  “Your life is so different from mine. I would never be able to deal with any of it.”

  “What? The city?”

  “No, I like the city . . . sometimes. I love the Village, and the museums, and the parks. But your lifestyle isn’t about any of that. It’s about society, and business, and making money.”

  “It’s more than just that,” Thom protests, though he doesn’t look entirely certain.

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s different than mine. And that’s fine. I just can’t imagine never having a moment to just . . . be.”

  “So what are you saying? That if I scale back on my business and stop going to charity fund-raisers and move to the Village, and . . . and learn how to just . . . be . . . then you’ll be willing to—”

  “No. It isn’t just that! I was just pointing out how my life and yours are worlds apart. There are other things, too.”

  “What? What else is there?”

  “My husband,” Annie finds herself saying.

 
Thom blinks. “Your husband?”

  He looks around, almost as though he expects to see a cuckolded spouse glaring from across the room.

  “Annie,” he says gently, turning back to her, “you are widowed . . . aren’t you?”

  Widowed. Lord, how she hates that description.

  “Yes,” the Widow Harlowe admits over a lump in her throat, reaching for her glass, wishing it contained something stronger than zinfandel.

  “Is it too soon after your husband passed away? Is that it?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “I can wait. We can take things more slowly—”

  “No. I don’t think time would make any difference in this case, Thom.”

  “Why not?”

  Why, oh why, does she have to explain? Why can’t she just say good-bye and turn her back on him?

  He’ll never understand.

  “Why not, Annie?” he presses.

  “Because Andre doesn’t want me to be with anybody else. Ever. Okay?”

  He seems to be letting that sink in for a minute.

  Annie braces herself for the accusations that are sure to follow. He’ll tell her that she’s making excuses. Or that she’s lost her mind.

  Maybe she has.

  “But Annie,” Thom tiptoes back into the conversation, “Andre isn’t here anymore. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to live the rest of your life alone . . . not that the rest of your life is what we’re talking about, here,” he adds hastily, so hastily that she realizes the rest of his life is definitely not up for grabs.

  It should make matters easier, knowing Thom isn’t thinking of their relationship as anything with long-term potential.

  So why doesn’t it?

  Why is she forced to tamp down a wave of regret as she says, “I understand that. But I’m not alone. I have my children. They’re always with me.”

  “They won’t be there forever, Annie.”

  She smiles faintly. “Trixie hasn’t even started kindergarten yet. I don’t think I’ll have empty-nest syndrome for at least a few decades.”

  “Even so . . . The kids can’t fill all your needs.”

  “No, but . . .”

  What makes you think you can?

  More importantly . . .

  What makes me think you can?