by Amelia Wilde
“With a business degree. Isn’t that what you said?” I know she mentioned this during that first date, but I want to make sure I don’t have my information wrong. That wouldn’t inspire much confidence. The more I’m with her, the more confidence I want her to have in me. It’s entirely possible that I’m falling for her, falling harder than I thought. All this talk about getting out before things go bad doesn’t thrill me. But Annabel was working on old information. She hadn’t met me yet.
“A two-year business program and then marketing.”
“But you work as a seamstress.” It doesn’t add up.
Annabel grins. “It’s definitely not the next logical step.” She puts down the menu, laying it flat against the tablecloth. “I wanted to try out a few places before I committed to anything. Try out the city. I guess I’ve been trying it out for longer than I thought.”
“There are hundreds of marketing firms in Manhattan.”
“It’s such a process, though. All those interviews, and then they want the five-year plan . . .” She shudders. “Look, I’ve got an apartment. I had an apartment. And I’ve met a lot of exciting people, doing what I do. I can always get into marketing. My mom always said the main thing is to have a degree—it doesn’t matter which one.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“Hey—you never said what your degree is in.”
“I double majored in psychology and English literature.”
Annabel’s jaw drops. “But, Beau, you’re not a psychologist or an English professor. You don’t even have—what are those things called?” She circles her eye with a thumb and forefinger.
“A monocle?” I laugh out loud. “Who says I don’t have one? You’ve never been to my apartment.”
“Tell me you do not have a monocle.”
“I don’t. But I still think you should come to my apartment.”
Her eyes light up. “Tonight?”
“Soon.”
“Riiiight,” she says slowly. “We’ve got work.”
“We’ve got work.” I repeat the phrase as solemnly as I can, even though the tasks seem insignificant now. What do I have on my agenda? I know I’ve got emails to return—more notes from Edgar Sykes—but couldn’t those wait another day or two? Couldn’t I sweep her off her feet at some bed-and-breakfast in New Hope? This place must be a regular den of bed-and-breakfasts.
But she doesn’t press me, and soon the waitress is at the edge of the table.
By the time our plates are cleared away, the act of looking at her has me aching to be somewhere alone with her where we can continue what we started in her suite. I could rent out an entire bed-and-breakfast right now, if I wanted. I could do it.
I can’t pull the trigger.
I’ve been with plenty of women. With guys like West—and Declan and Liam—in my immediate circle in school, we were always surrounded by beautiful girls. I had more than a few relationships with those kinds of girls—wealthy, poised, and out for blood. Like Kinsey. They moved fast, and as an idiot teenager, I didn’t mind it. Now I’m a grown man, and bloody hell, I’m hesitating. The last thing I want, I realize as I look at Annabel across the table, is to get to that sweet spot ahead of schedule and lose out on even a second of time with her.
It’s best if we go back to the city.
She’s quiet as we drive away from New Hope. I keep my eyes on the road, so I can’t be certain, but I think she’s got tears in her eyes.
It’s a long time before she speaks. “Did you have a nice time?”
I take her hand over the center console. “Lovely, Annabel. I’d go back with you again, if you wanted.”
She smiles, then asks me about what it was like going to boarding school.
All the pleasant chatter in the world can’t stifle my need for her, though. When I pull up at the Pearl, I’m about to climb out of my skin, and she can sense it. She bites her lip, hesitating with her hand on the door handle. “Beau, are you—”
I open my mouth to tell her I’ll park the car and be right in. Before I can say a word, my phone rings in my pocket. It’s connected to the car’s hands-free system, so the screen lights up with a name: Edgar Sykes.
Shit.
“Soon,” I promise her. She doesn’t ask what I mean.
Chapter Nineteen
Annabel
Beau’s face falls when he sees the name on the screen, and for one long heartbeat, I wish furiously that we lived in an era when there were no phones. Of course, in that kind of time, Beau would have been upper-crust, and I never would have crossed paths with him. Those kinds of people had manors and castles. My kind of people had hovels by the side of the road. They didn’t get jobs in theaters at the drop of a hat.
“Soon,” he says to me, his voice thick with disappointment. He digs in his pocket for his phone. It must be an important call, if he’s not even willing to let the man’s voice come over the car’s speakers. Edgar Sykes. The name sounds familiar, but now’s not the time to ask.
I lean over and plant a kiss on his cheek. I don’t linger on the sidewalk. I know he took a risk by taking a day trip with me—I knew something like this might happen.
No, I don’t linger on the sidewalk, but from inside the lobby, I can see his car parked by the curb. My heart thuds in my chest. Is he going to get out?
He doesn’t get out. After a few minutes, the valet whose job it is to stand out there moves closer to the building. A few more minutes pass, and Beau pulls away.
“I wanted you to stay,” I say sadly under my breath. That’s the only time I let myself complain. Expecting him to drop everything for me is beyond ridiculous, so I don’t.
I go up to my suite and sit on the sofa in the living area. The lights of Manhattan twinkle against the night sky. He’d appreciate the view.
*****
It’s an hour later when the first text comes in.
I’m so sorry, Annabel. It’s a business matter—I’m on the plane now.
My heart leaps when his name appears on the screen. I swallow down the ache of disappointment, which is still making my throat tight. It makes no sense—I have no reason to expect anything like this from Beau—but I’ve been stewing about it since I sat down on the sofa.
I type out a joke about a hotel emergency, but it’s not funny, and I don’t send it. I settle for Is everything okay? instead.
A bit more complicated.
Three dots flash along the bottom of the message. He’s got more to say, so I wait. It’s hard to be patient. Somehow I manage.
Hotel management isn’t my only endeavor. I would tell you more details, but I can’t. I hope you understand.
The curiosity almost takes my breath away. Tell me immediately! I type it twice before I finally delete it and take in a deep breath. I’m looking for a very good reason that he didn’t come up to my suite tonight. I don’t need to know what else he does—this isn’t going to be forever, this thing with Beau.
A wash of regret comes over me at the thought. The thought. My hands tremble around my phone. That’s not the kind of thing I should be dwelling on now—not when things between Beau and me could get so much better.
And then so much worse, nags the voice in the back of my head. It sounds curiously like my mother, who hasn’t called me in months. I dial her number every few weeks. She never picks up. Brazil must be treating her well.
Be honest. Be honest, Annabel, I tell myself.
I understand. I miss you.
I send it quickly, then drop the phone to the cushions by my side. I snatch it up again. Who am I kidding? I want to see his reply the instant it arrives. Will he say something like that to me, or am I pressing his buttons for nothing? He looked wildly uncomfortable after he said he loved his parents, and they are his own parents. I’m a woman who wasn’t paying attention to the sidewalk traffic.
I miss you, too.
Three dots flashing. There’s more.
Every minute with you today was more than I could have hoped f
or.
More than he could have hoped for? I laugh out loud. Unbelievable. No, seriously. A man like Beau Bennett can have any woman he wants. More than he could have hoped for?
Are you trying to win me over? :P
What, you don’t believe me?
You have everything a person could want. A trip to New Hope can’t have been that amazing.
There’s a long pause, and then another message comes in.
I don’t have you.
My breath hitches. His words make me feel a strange kind of nice. When I was younger, when we moved all over everywhere following my mother’s whims, I used to imagine how it would feel to live in a house she’d bought. A house she intended to stay in. This is that feeling times a thousand. Times a million.
I brush aside the warning piping up from the darkest corner of my mind. It’s screeching that if this goes any further, I might lose that stretch of pleasant days. I might be making it ugly at the end. Hard to get out. Hard to move on.
I don’t care.
I type out three responses laced with humor, but in the end, it’s two words.
Who says?
His reply comes right on the heels of that message.
Are you willing to wait for me, Annabel Forester?
It’s a delicious nervousness that pounds in my chest. I’m not in the habit of waiting for anyone. I’m the one who decides when to go. But right now, I’m willing to wait.
Not for too long . . . ;)
Don’t worry, he writes back. It won’t be. I can hardly stand to be away.
Chapter Twenty
Beau
Annabel might be the end of me, but at least I’ll die a happy man.
The plane can’t leave DC any faster after what turned out to be a five-day meeting marathon. Edgar Sykes greeted me at the airport and hustled me into a car that turned out to be under Secret Service protection.
“The situation has become more complex since my last phone call,” he said, and that was all he’d say until we got to the secure meeting room.
It turned out to be more than one person from a war-torn nation in the Middle East. More than one person by far—an entire family, all in danger, all needing to be housed somewhere away from the pressure cooker of Washington, DC. Edgar wouldn’t give me all the details, and during every meeting I had to step outside more than once.
Exhausting to say the least, and every time my attention flagged, my mind went straight to Annabel. Her firm waist underneath her T-shirt. The way her lips opened to let me in. The way she said—oh God, what was I doing in DC instead of her suite—that she would wait for me.
“Are you ready for takeoff, Mr. Bennett?” The attendant is the reserved type, and it makes me feel right at home.
“Yes.” I lift my glass—whiskey straight—to my lips, trying not to grip it too hard. It puts me on edge to be this impatient, but I can’t help myself.
Once on the ground in New York City, I get in the car as casually as I can, and I tell Winston to do whatever is necessary to get me to the Pearl. It’s after five, so even if Annabel’s not finished in the costume shop for the day, she can step away.
I need her.
At least, I need to be with her. We’ll start with that.
*****
I take the steps down to the wide hallway leading to the shop two at a time, my jacket long abandoned in the backseat of the car and my heart pounding out of my chest.
If this is love, if this is obsession, then I’ve spent far too long holding back. When my feet hit the floor, I slow down and take a breath. I can’t be seen sprinting through the hallway like a madman, and it’s a cavernous place. The echoing would be unbelievable.
A peal of laughter rings out into the hallway, and it fills my entire soul with such a powerful pleasant feeling that it almost hurts.
Annabel.
There’s an answering laugh from someone else—a woman—and then Annabel shrieks. “You have got to be kidding me,” she says, more giggles bubbling up. “Onstage?”
Whatever the other person is saying gets lost among the echoes—perhaps she’s facing away from the door, but I can still hear Annabel.
“Whaaaaaat? I would die.”
More mumbling.
“It’s nicer if you really like the guy.”
I don’t want to creep up to the door as if I’m eavesdropping. She sounds so natural, so in her element, that I can’t help wanting to listen. I force myself to move down the hallway at a regular speed. She’s dropped her voice.
When I get to the door, the woman on the pedestal turns halfway. It’s the same actress who was here last week. Has it been only a week? It seems like a year. She’s not quite facing me. She’s wearing a completely different gown. It looks heavier, but she pulls it off excellently.
Still, nothing captures my attention more than Annabel. All I can see is her back and her hair pulled into a low bun that somehow manages to look elegant despite its haphazard style. She tips her head back and laughs, never letting go of the gown. “Bethany, that is legitimately insane.”
Bethany turns another few inches toward the door and spots me there, leaning against the frame with the world’s silliest grin on my face. “Annabel,” she sings. “You have a visitor.”
Annabel spins on her knee. When her eyes meet mine, her entire face lights up like the sunrise. “You’re back!” she shouts, pitching a handful of pins and a cloth ruler to the ground. Somehow she makes the act of scrambling to her feet look graceful, and then she’s running full speed across the room.
Two feet away from me, she skids to a stop, her face scarlet. She clears her throat, her body swaying toward me an inch. “Mr. Bennett,” she says. “How was your trip?”
Bethany bursts out laughing. She doubles over in the gown, hands on her knees. It’s such an all-consuming laugh that we both turn to stare at her. “I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m so sorry.” She steps off the pedestal and wipes away a tear. “Annabel. It’s nice to be in love. Don’t hide it from me, for God’s sake.”
Annabel’s jaw drops, but no words come out.
Bethany is still laughing. “Go.” She waves a hand in the air. “Go. I can come back later. Or . . . tomorrow.” She tries for a knowing expression but dissolves into another fit of giggles. “Get out of here. I can’t even look at the two of you. If I think of this onstage—” She shakes her head. “Lovebirds.”
Annabel grabs my arm and pulls me into the hallway. When we’re out of sight, she presses me against the wall and rises on tiptoe, and our lips crash together like I’ve been gone for a decade instead of a workweek. When she pulls away, she’s laughing again. “Lovebirds?” she says, her voice catching, eyes searching mine.
“Accurate, I’d say.”
A slow smile spreads across her face. “Let’s take her advice and go.”
I have Winston waiting at the curb. Up the stairs and across the lobby we fly, and then I’m pushing the doors open. I have Annabel’s hand in mine, and soon we’ll be at the car. Sweet freedom.
Only not quite.
Because Kinsey is standing on the steps to the Pearl, eyebrows practically at her hairline. “Hello, sweetie. Why are you in such a rush?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Annabel
I’m not much for tearing other women down. Let me say that first, before you get the wrong idea.
Now let me say that I am never going to be interested in seeing Kinsey.
Bethany? She’s like a blonde princess. The cool kind. The kind who will laugh with you for forty-five minutes before the man you’re pretending not to be involved with shows up and whisks you away. The kind who doesn’t look down her nose at you, even though she’s literally standing on a pedestal.
Kinsey’s a bitch.
She bitchily purses her lips and looks down her nose at me, judgment radiating from her too-perfect face, and then snaps her eyes back to Beau. “You’re not meeting with West?”
“No,” he says bluntly. “I’m actually o
n my way out.”
Kinsey cocks her head to the side. “That’s strange. You never miss a meeting.” Then her expression morphs into as fake an uh-oh as I’ve ever seen. “Oh my goodness, silly me. I wasn’t supposed to say a thing about this little event to you.” She smiles, tight-lipped, her eyes glittering like a cat about to pounce.
“No harm, no foul,” Beau says, squeezing my hand. “If you’ll excuse us—”
Kinsey pretends to be surprised that she’s blocking our path at all. “Oh, of course, of course.”
Beau doesn’t let go of my hand as he walks beside me down the steps. I get a full-body chill when I pass Kinsey. She could be a ghost or an evil spirit. It would make sense.
Beau’s driver pulls open the back door for us, and as I slide in, I hear Kinsey call out to Beau. “But we’ll be seeing you at dinner?”
He hesitates at the door. One more step, and he’ll be inside the car. Ignore her, I think at him with all my might. Ignore her. I can see from here how he’s struggling, his hands tensed into fists. But Beau Bennett is the last person on earth to tell anyone to bugger off or whatever you say when you’re from England. When he finally speaks, it’s far more diplomatic than I could ever have been. “Change of plans. Another time, Kinsey.”
Then he steps inside and lets Winston close the door behind him.
I can’t help myself. I crane my neck forward to see Kinsey. She’s standing on the steps, her mouth slightly open, gaping at the car.
Winston slides into the front seat, checks the mirrors, and shifts the car into Drive.
“Let’s get out of here,” Beau says and takes my hand in his.
*****
I work to tone down the giddy laughter still caught in my chest, and it takes two blocks before I can speak. “Beau.”
“Annabel.”
I pretend to survey the vendors and their carts on the sidewalk. “Tell me about you and Kinsey. I feel like we’re at that point now, because that was weird.”
