by Amelia Wilde
I move my head to draw his attention. Does that make me an asshole? Maybe it makes me playful. But I’m rightfully pissed off that this phone call has interrupted us in the middle of the hottest kiss I’ve ever experienced in all my years of bouncing between cities, meeting men at bars, at jobs . . .
Beau looks at me with narrowed eyes, his jaw working. “I always make personal visits, Edgar, and I’m happy to do so again if you have concerns.” Then he rakes his gaze down every inch of me. I swear, my skin heats under his look, and he’s not even touching me.
He should be touching me.
That kiss was like jumping from the tallest diving board at the pool three towns over from Patriot. It was such a pain in the ass to go there that sometimes, when the weather was so hot that neither one of us could stand it, Mom would spring for a room at the Wagon Wheel Inn. Unlike the Pearl, you never knew what you were going to get when you opened the door. It didn’t matter. We’d spend every possible hour at the pool. That sensation of finally hitting the clear, sparkling surface of the water is what I felt when Beau finally kissed me.
I’m in it now.
Hesitation has never been my thing, and men like Beau—rich, he must be rich and tightly wound—have never been at the top of my list. Not that they would ever look at me, either. But all that is over. There’s no going back now, and my stomach turns over with giddy anticipation.
I step closer to him. Close enough to reach out and run my fingertips over the smooth fabric of his tie. It reminds me of costumes, of Bethany waiting downstairs in the costume shop. “Take your time,” she’d said when I asked her if she minded waiting. She’d given me a conspiratorial grin. “You know,” she’d murmured, “Beau Bennett isn’t exactly a mystery man.” I’ll have to ask her about that later.
“Hang up,” I whisper to Beau, but he lifts his eyes away from me when I say it.
“That’s fine,” he says into the phone. “I’ll have more for you tomorrow.” He keeps his lips pressed into a thin line until he’s made sure to disconnect the call. “I apologize,” he says, his voice dropping into a register that emits pure sex.
Bethany, I remind myself. I’m committed to my job, and that should come before Beau.
Should . . .
But he steps toward me and drapes his arm around my waist, and Jesus, he tastes good. Like mints and money. I can admit, secretly, that it’s totally intoxicating. We’ve never discussed how much money he makes—how awkward would that be?—but the fabric of his suits alone tells me it’s a lot.
I’m not thinking about the suit, except the way the fabric crushes in my fistfuls of his expensive lapels. His hands are on my waist and then running down my back, strong, commanding. There are advantages to the business type, I’m realizing now, and one of them is that it’s made Beau into a man. So what if he’s almost infuriatingly considerate? So what if he plans everything before he does it? He’s in the room with me right now, isn’t he?
I’m about to slide my hands under those lapels and tear his jacket away from him when the buzzing starts again. It’s not a fun buzz, either. It’s insistent. Obnoxious. Beau tenses under my grip. “Oh, for God’s sake—”
He yanks the phone from his pocket and answers it without looking. “Bennett,” he says, a sharp edge to his voice that’s barely tempered. Then he rolls his eyes. “West, what do you want? I’m—” He raises his eyes to the ceiling in what looks like a plea for deliverance. “Three weekends. Isn’t that nice. What are you going to do during the week? Right, yes, obviously.” There’s a pause. Beau runs his hand over the curve of my waist. He’s distracted, and honestly, that’s not the best way to start a sexy romp. “No. I’ll talk to you later.” He disconnects the call and sighs heavily.
“Let’s go,” I say into the pause.
“Go?” He looks at me like I might be crazy. “Go where?” So he’s forgotten about Bethany, too. A satisfied warmth spreads across my chest. Bethany is a gorgeous blonde girl with the perfect face to play Juliet. Or Julie. Whoever. The fact that he doesn’t remember her makes me feel oddly full of myself.
“Away from the Pearl,” I say. It’s the best thing for him. Every time I see him here, he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I heard the condensed version of his life’s story after our date. I know that the last few years have been one heavy deliberation after the next, though I don’t see why hotel chains warrant so much energy.
The man needs a shake-up, and I’m the perfect person to give it to him.
In what little time we have.
Chapter Sixteen
Beau
Annabel is an impulsive decision embodied. The way she’s smiling at me, a rosy pink tinging her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes, shuts down my mind completely.
“Where to?”
“Anywhere.” She reaches out and grabs my hand. “I bet you don’t take days off. I bet you spend most of your days debating the best course of action or whatever it is wealthy business owners say.” She shakes her head. “Let’s take these interruptions as a sign that we’re supposed to get together later, when it’s dark out and nobody’s blowing up your phone.”
“So your suggestion is to leave this private suite and . . . what? Take the subway?”
Annabel grins, wrinkling her nose. “The subway? Don’t kid, Beau. You must have cars.”
*****
Annabel is right.
It does feel good to go somewhere without planning, without agonizing over the details, without weighing the pros and cons and everything in between.
There’s an uneasy element, too, but I push it to the back of my mind. Edgar’s call can wait awhile, and West—whatever his plans are for a reunion can, too. He hasn’t been out of the country that long. I’m sure he has something up his sleeve, because it’s completely like him to plan something ridiculous without involving anyone else. Naturally, he’ll expect us all to attend. The show at the Pearl was his idea—he’s the one arranging most of those details and contracts, along with my contacts at Bennett, Inc., but there’s always more to the story with West.
Still, it feels good to drive. I don’t do much driving these days. Winston was frankly shocked when I gave him the afternoon off.
Annabel leans back in her seat while we cruise down the 202. We’ve been driving for almost two hours. This is the direction she said to go, and for once in my life I didn’t spend an hour considering the options. I agreed. Her smile was worth it.
“Let me in on the secret.”
She turns, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face. “What secret?”
“Where we’re going. That would be a good place to start.”
“A better place to start would be to throw your phone out the window,” she says with a laugh. “But don’t worry. I wouldn’t dare. I know you’re important.”
Is she fishing to learn more about what I do? Why would she be? It’s always possible. “How do you know I’m important?”
“People who aren’t important don’t wear suits like that.”
I’m not wearing the entire suit. I folded the jacket and put it on the backseat. “What do they wear then?”
She glances down at her jeans and T-shirt. “Exhibit A.”
“Oh please,” I tease her. “You’re the most important person here.”
“Flattery.”
“The truth.”
“The kiss was that hot, huh?”
Pleased satisfaction rises in my chest. “Not flattery. It’s the truth. Though you have a point. We could have burned that whole place down.” It feels odd to say things like this to her without couching them in layers of reserve. I’m not in the habit of doing this, but Annabel makes it easy. With her in the passenger seat, I can say anything.
Not that I’m going to. That would be too much for both of us, if I was to pour my heart out to her. I’m so out of practice with that kind of thing that I’m not even sure what I’d say.
“Do you miss your parents?”
God.
It’s like she senses my barriers and throws herself against them. For an instant I have the uncanny premonition that even though we’re only beginning to spend time together, it might already be running out.
Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, and then I consider my answer.
“Yes and no,” I say finally. Annabel waits, her patience a low current in the car. “I love them.” Jesus, that sounds strange, a declaration like that coming out of my mouth, and it seems vaguely wrong, but there’s nobody but Annabel, so I barrel onward. “But we were never very close after we moved to the US.”
An old memory resurfaces—being five, eating tea and a biscuit at the kitchen island, my feet hooked on the rungs of the stool. And shouting. Muffled shouting. I stared out over the lush green backyard, a fenced-in thing not large enough to run in for long, and pretended not to hear it.
Annabel is still watching me. Haven’t I said enough? “My father spent most of his time at work and on business trips in the beginning. By the time he scaled it back, I was in the upper grades and didn’t want much to do with them.”
“And then they went back to England?”
“After college, yes.”
There’s a pause.
“How often do you visit? Or do they visit you?”
“I go home for Christmas every year. If I can get there, I go every season, but some years are busier than others.” Some years there’s a woman standing on the sidewalk who changes everything by being alive. “What about you?”
Annabel smiles, big and bright. “Oh, you’ve heard most of it.”
“You talked about moving, not your family. Come on—it’s your turn.”
She smiles even wider, and it strikes me that this grin is a cover, somehow, for something she keeps hidden beneath the surface. “My mom is a wonderful woman,” she begins. “My dad—he was never in the picture, but she never let me feel that I was any lesser of a person because of it.” The next time I glance over at her, the smile has transformed into something warmer, less intense. “So it was the two of us. We went wherever her mood took her. She always left before things got boring or bad, and then it was on to the next thing. I liked it.”
This last thing doesn’t ring quite true, but I’m not going to press her. “And do you visit her often?”
“No.” Annabel frowns. “I begged her to stay in one place for the last two years of high school. That was in Chicago. But the minute I got my diploma, she wanted to hit the road. She had Brazil on her mind. I wanted to go to college, so I stayed.” Her voice is as upbeat as always, but as she finishes speaking, Annabel looks out the window.
“That must have been painful,” I offer. It’s not something I would say to anyone else.
“It’s important to leave before things go sour,” she says, like she’s repeating some ancient wisdom. “Oh, hey, there’s our exit.”
Chapter Seventeen
Annabel
“All right,” Beau says, standing against the open passenger door with his hand out. “How’d you find this place?”
I step out of the car and let him shut the door behind me. “Doesn’t everyone know New Hope?” It’s full-on evening, but the air is still warm. I tilt my face up and let the dwindling rays of sun have their way with my skin. When I open my eyes, Beau is grinning at me. As much of a grin as he’ll do, which is more of a half smile. “I take it you don’t know New Hope.”
“First time ever setting foot in the place.”
“I love a good first time.”
“Don’t tempt me,” he says as he leans down to kiss my temple. It’s so gentle, so couplelike, that my heart almost seizes up right then. “Do you have a plan for while we’re here? It’s another two hours back to the city, and I don’t want—”
“I know. You don’t want to get back too late.” There’s work waiting for both of us back in the city. I finished up quickly with Bethany, but lucky for me, a lot of the actors and actresses in the production like to schedule fittings at odd hours.
I thread my arm through his and tug him in the general direction of the main drag. To be technical, we’re already on Main Street. I had him park at one end so we’d have a reason to stroll. Yes, I’d rather be straddling him in the back of his car, but I’m not in the mood for that kind of anxiety. I might be a get-up-and-go kind of girl, but the idea of attracting police attention in a town as small as this one doesn’t thrill me. Plus, there are probably more than a few people here who remember me.
Beau’s smile grows bigger the farther we walk down Main Street.
“Do you like the looks of this place?”
“It’s old,” he says simply.
“The word you’re looking for is historic.”
He laughs. “It’s not as historic as Britain, but it has that same kind of charm, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Very charming. Very unlike Manhattan.”
“That’s why you wanted to come here?”
“That’s why I wanted you to come here.” I can’t quite put into words why it was so important to get out of the city. It’s the comfortable thing for me to do in the first place. I love the sensation of being on the move. Thanks, Mom. But today it was more about Beau. It was more about wanting to see the tension leave his shoulders.
He takes a big breath. He’s already starting to relax. I can feel it under my palms, wrapped around his arm. “I’m still waiting on an answer.”
“To which question?”
“How do you know about New Hope, Pennsylvania?” He looks down at me, eyes shining like he’s enjoying working out this puzzle. “I’ve legitimately never heard of this place.”
“I’m sure they don’t talk about small towns in Bucks County at the big corporation you’ve all got going.”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure what everyone talks about all day, so there’s always a possibility.”
So precise. So accurate.
“If you must know, my car broke down.” I sigh, remembering that car. It was a 1992 Subaru Legacy. “It was my first car, and my graduation money was all I had, so I bought it from a dealer outside Chicago.” God, that thing was a death trap.
“You didn’t want to stay?”
“Not once my mom flew out. All my friends were going to college, and I figured I’d go, too.”
Beau cracks a smile, but he doesn’t laugh. “So you drove off and went to college?”
“That was the plan.” I had been naive at the time, to say the least. “I hadn’t exactly . . . applied anywhere. I thought it would be more like moving. That was always easy for my mom. Pick up and go, and the pieces somehow all come together. I was a traveling virgin, okay?”
“I’m not laughing,” he says, but I can hear it in his voice.
“Anyway,” I press on. “It was a cheap car, and I didn’t quite make it all the way to the city. I made it here. That part went fine. I got a job at a pizza place, enrolled at the community college the next semester . . .” It had felt good to be in a place like this. Good right up until it got to be stifling, and then I headed out. “It was nice.”
“It seems very . . . relaxing.”
“That’s a lovely way to put it,” I say with a laugh. “You can admit it, Beau. New Hope might be relaxing, but I’m not.”
He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and gazes into my eyes. “No, you’re not,” he says, like he’s still mulling it over. “I don’t know how you live this life, going from one place to the next, never settling down.”
Heat flushes all the way through me. Beau transfers my hand from his arm to his hand and then curls his fingers through mine and lifts them to his lips. God, he is such a gentleman. Can anyone blame me for having a searing crush on him? “Never say never,” I blurt out.
He raises his eyebrows. “The more you tell me, the more you’ll always be on the move.”
I can’t help myself. “I’d like to be moving on you.”
He laughs, his face transformed, and then his hand is on the back of my head, pulling me in. It’s a d
eep kiss, totally not self-conscious, and nobody’s phone rings the entire time.
It lasts right up until someone on the other side of the street lets out a whoop. I break away from Beau with a laugh, then wrap my arm around his waist. “If we stay here too long, these people are going to expect a show.”
“I’ll give them a show,” he says, but he comes along with me to dinner, his arm around me all the way.
Chapter Eighteen
Beau
Kissing Annabel isn’t nearly enough.
It’s not nearly enough, though I couldn’t have hoped for anything more out of a woman than this time we’re having right now, in this funny little town that seems like it might be in another country from Manhattan.
She shows me the pizza restaurant where she used to work on Main Street but wrinkles her nose when I suggest going in. “Nah,” she says, tugging me along. “I’m assuming you haven’t taken me to dinner at the Pearl for the same reason.”
“The food at the Pearl is excellent.” What reason is she talking about?
“The audience, mystery man of mine. All those eyes on you? I don’t want to spend our getaway greeting people who will probably be morbidly curious about what happened to me.”
“Why would they be?”
Annabel puts the slightest pressure on my waist. We keep going another couple of blocks to an Italian place that’s more upscale than the pizza joint but not so high-class that her jeans and T-shirt will be out of place. She shrugs, her shoulder rising against my body. “I left right at the peak of the sweet spot.”
“The sweet spot?”
We’re interrupted by the hostess, who seats us near the front window. I ask her again.
“You know.” She flicks her eyes at me from across the table, away from the menu. “The sweet spot, when everything’s going really, really well. When everything’s great. That’s the perfect time to move on.”
A chill settles in the pit of my gut. “I disagree.”
“The bottom line,” she says, as if she’s thought a lot about this, “is that things tend to go sour after too long. I’d rather spend my life finding new adventures.” She breathes out the hint of a sigh. “It lasted a long time here. That’s why I still like to visit. It didn’t make sense to stay after I graduated.”
