by Amelia Wilde
“There is. My behavior last night was atrocious. If this entire setup is making you not want to forgive me, then I am willing to do whatever it takes.”
She sighs, putting on another smile. “Did you get everything handled at the office today?”
The tone of her voice makes the cold in my chest splinter and freeze again. She’s pulling away from me. I simply will not have it. I’ll rearrange my entire life if that’s what it takes. Head over heels. That’s how anyone would describe this.
I take a deep breath. I find it mortally rude to push this far in conversation, but it’s Annabel.
“We should be honest with each other.”
This gets her attention. She swivels her head back to me, her blue eyes filled with wariness. I hate it. I don’t ever want her to feel even the slightest bit uneasy around me. What is wrong with me? All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and, God forbid, go to bed with her. “I am honest with you.” She sounds tired.
I take her other hand in mine and rest it on the white linen. “Don’t pretend what I did is all right. I know it wasn’t.”
She hesitates. “What’s done is done, Beau.”
This isn’t what I want to hear. “Don’t do this, Annabel. Don’t pull away from me because I made a mistake.” I look into her eyes as if looking can save me. “Don’t.” It’s not nearly as eloquent as I’d imagined in my mind, but talking to her about this is making my chest hurt. It’s not splitting apart, but it’s a near thing.
Her jaw works, and in the candlelight I can see that she’s trying her best not to get drawn in.
It doesn’t work.
“I’m not pulling away,” she says, then laughs. “That’s a lie. Maybe I’m being distant because I don’t want you to get pissed off about, you know, the cornerstone of my personality. I can’t help wanting to get out of town.”
“We’ll do that,” I promise. “As soon as this project is wrapped up, you and I will be free.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Annabel
Beau kisses me awake in the morning. His eyes catch the golden sunlight of early fall. All the worry there is illuminated in those green pools. “Have you still forgiven me?” he says, his voice gruff.
I stretch. My muscles feel tight, heavy, and all I can do is fold my face back into the side of his neck. It was an excellent dinner. “Who can remember? That was days ago.” Two nights, but who’s counting?
“There was no excuse for it,” he says, bending to kiss me again. “I’m sorry, and I want you to know it.”
I curl my arms around his neck. Somehow he’s already showered, and he smells fresh and clean, like a new beginning. My heart still feels achy and tender from what he said, bruised in a way I haven’t felt since high school. It seems ridiculous to admit it now that it’s behind us.
He’s solid in my arms, here for me. So what if he said one thing in the middle of the night? We all make mistakes. “I forgive you,” I whisper into his ear, then flick out my tongue to lick his earlobe.
He catches my mouth with his on a low groan. “You’re an insufferable tease.”
Is it so wrong that I like this? That I like feeling powerful? Beau climbs onto the bed next to me. He’s dressed for the day, his suit pants and shirt meticulously pressed, but when he kisses me again, its hungry and wild. He’s hard. I can feel him through his clothes and mine. “I’m not teasing,” I say, then bite at his lower lip.
Beau is off the bed and stripping down in an instant. He’s back in seconds to kneel on the bed next to me, his hands on the hem of my tank top to pull it over my head. “Late again,” he says, and then he goes for my panties, and it’s all over.
*****
In the quiet of his bedroom after he’s gone, the feeling pricks at the back of my neck.
I didn’t like what happened last night. He hit me where it hurt. I’ve forgiven him, but when he’s not touching me, that grace-giving feeling fades away.
It’s not the sweet spot. How could it be, when we’re still working out the kinks? He’s trying so hard to make it up to me. I take the leave, now sensation and shove it all the way down to the bottom of my gut, where it won’t bother me.
Work. I have work to do.
I get into the shower. He keeps a small caddy of my everyday makeup and a hairbrush for me on his bathroom counter, and I rush through my routine. Next to the caddy is a note that Winston will be waiting when I’m ready to go.
In the car on the way to the Pearl, I check my messages.
Cynthia likes it at her sister’s house. That’s the vibe I get from the three she’s sent this morning. She likes it at her sister’s, and repairs won’t be completed on our place for another ten days. That puts us squarely in opening-night territory and awfully close to renewing the lease for another year. I swallow hard. Cynthia might not want to come back. She might want to stay at her sister’s and use the time to hunt for another place—one that doesn’t have a ceiling about to cave in.
It’s like New York City is trying to push me out. Beau would let me stay here for as long as I want, but a suite in a hotel isn’t an anchor the way a yearlong lease is.
Keep me updated. That’s all I send to Cynthia, and then we’re at the Pearl. I’m looking forward to getting down to the costume shop. Bethany might have a funny story to tell me.
I know something is off when I get down to the landing.
It’s the sound.
There’s a low hum of voices echoing into the hallway. Did Marilee schedule a meeting with multiple cast members this morning? She would have mentioned it if she had, right? I rack my brain. Do I have sex-induced amnesia about whatever it is she set up today? Over the top of the noise, I hear Bethany’s laugh, high and sweet. I’m going to be finishing up her gown today so dress rehearsals can begin. Lucky for me she’s already here. It’ll be done before lunch.
I move down the hall, walking fast, walking with a purpose. Beau woke me up so early that I’m ahead of schedule, despite the I’m sorry romp in bed. Perfect. This way I can make up for all the breaks I’ve been taking in that closet lately.
I stop dead at the door to the costume shop.
It’s filled with people. Not filled to capacity, but the six people in there now, plus Bethany and Lance, who’s playing Romeo—name unchanged, don’t ask me why—make it seem like Grand Central Station. Bethany is up on the pedestal, two people kneeling at her feet, and Marilee stands in the corner talking to two more.
Oh shit.
Creeping in doorways isn’t my thing, so I make my entrance like I’d jump into a lake—with both feet, all at once. “Good morning,” I say, heading for Marilee and her crowd.
She looks up at me, eyebrows raised, and then her cheeks go pink. “Annabel!” It’s very singsong, the way she says my name, and it makes my blood run cold. “Hold on a minute,” she says to the two others standing near her, and then she rushes over and takes my arm. “Everybody,” she calls out, silencing the conversation. “Everybody, this is Annabel. She bailed me out when the rest of you didn’t show up.”
Everybody else chuckles, but then one of them cries out, “Thank you,” and there’s a cute little round of applause.
They turn away, back to what they were doing, and the conversation resumes. Now I’m on the outside of it.
“Here—come with me, Annabel.” Marilee leads me out into the hallway, where she straightens up and looks me in the eye. “I got the call late last night. I should have sent you a text. I’m mortified, Annabel.”
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
I missed the sweet spot.
Choking shame tightens my throat.
Cover it up, and get out.
I put the biggest smile I can muster on my face. “Oh, Marilee,” I say. I hate that my voice wavers. “It’s all right. I always knew this was a temporary thing.” It seems so stupid now—the hope that this could turn into something more. I give a shrug. “It was amazing, though. If you ever need anybody in a pinch, you’ve got my number.”
>
Marilee smiles. “I’m so glad you understand,” she says. It seems like she’s going to say something else, but someone calls to her from inside the costume shop. She settles for a quick hug, then disappears inside, her curls bouncing atop her head.
There’s no need for a last look inside the room. I turn and go, my footsteps heavy on the staircase.
A new adventure. That’s all this is.
So why does it feel so wrong?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Beau
Setting my guilt aside isn’t easy, but it must be done. All the last-minute trips to see Annabel have taken a toll on my attendance at meetings—even the ones I scheduled—and it’s clear that I need to focus on work during the day. If I can do that, scenes from the other night at the Pearl won’t happen anymore. God, I was such a jackass.
Contracts are the first thing on my agenda in the morning, so I turn off my phone and focus on the paperwork. Opening night at the Pearl is in a week and a half. I need everything squared away at Bennett Inc. and for Edgar Sykes so that when the show is over, I can whisk Annabel off to somewhere private and warm and gorgeous. I’ve already set Linda on narrowing down some possibilities. It’s hurricane season; we’ll take that into account, but I have properties or connections to properties all over the globe.
She’ll love it, no matter where I take her. I know it. Annabel will get off on the travel alone. My heart beats faster imagining her eyes lit up with anticipation.
I put the last contract—signed, squared away, done—off to the side and send a quick email to Linda. Make sure the schedule calls for flying at night. That’ll be perfect. I’ll frame it as a surprise. I’ll wake her up in the most pleasant way possible, and then we’ll flee through the night like she wanted.
Around noon I turn my phone on, giving myself fifteen minutes to catch up.
There’s one message from West. Don’t forget about opening night! Do you have it on your calendar? I roll my eyes. Yes, I’ve been fast and loose with scheduling since Annabel came on the scene, but I haven’t given up my old ways entirely. I won’t miss it.
As I’m scrolling through, a new one appears from Annabel. Hey, Mystery Man. Busy day at the office?
Horrible, I send back. But I’ll see you for dinner, and then this will seem like nothing at all.
My place or yours? :P
Which is your favorite?
There’s a long silence. Linda knocks on the door to my office and comes in carrying my lunch on a tray. My stomach growls at the sight of it all plated up and ready to eat. I had a taste for steak when I woke up this morning. There’s no time to waste sitting down at the steakhouse on the corner. This is the next best option.
“You’re an angel,” I tell her.
Linda nods, the hint of a smile crossing her face. “Anything else, Mr. Bennett?”
“Not now.”
“I have more on your vacation for you whenever you’re finished eating,” Linda says. She heads back to her desk without another word. A woman after my own heart. She doesn’t want to waste time, either.
Yours.
That’s Annabel’s entire reply. I smile down at my phone like an idiot. It’s probably meaningless that she prefers the penthouse, but if she can grow to love it, asking her to move in will be an easy sell. Opening night is in ten days. How much longer can she possibly work for the production? Unless they offer her something long-term, that is. Still, if she lives with me, Winston can drop her off every morning. She can focus entirely on her work and on our adventures together. Perhaps I undid some of her enthusiasm for me the other night, but if that’s the case, it didn’t show this morning.
I’ll meet you outside the Pearl at seven.
I can’t wait . . .
Lunch tastes a thousand times better now that I know a night with her is all but guaranteed.
It sharpens my focus. For the rest of the afternoon, I’m all in on work. I hold five separate meetings in the space of two hours. Eventually I call for Linda.
“Is there any other paperwork waiting in the wings?”
She looks at my desk with raised eyebrows. I long since sent out the other folders to her for delivery to my department heads. “Not a scrap,” she answers. “Did you have a chance to look at the options for your trip?”
True to her word, she’d put a slim portfolio on my desk when she’d come back for the tray. “I’ll look at them now.”
“I’ll be at my desk as usual,” she says with an incredulous laugh. “Though I’m sure you’ll have made a decision by the time I get there.”
“We’ll see,” I say and reach for the portfolio.
It’ll be meticulously arranged, as is all of Linda’s work. Sure enough, I open the cover to a first page graced with a gorgeous photograph of one of my properties in the Virgin Islands. It’s a favorite of mine, and Linda knows it. There’s a note on the first page: Travel may be interrupted by weather.
There’s a knock at the door.
Linda stands in the frame, her lips pressed into a thin line. She answers my questioning look with a terse tone. “Mr. Sykes is here to see you.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. What is Edgar doing in New York City? I was in DC not long ago to hash things out. There should be no reason to come here, unless something has gone wrong with the project. Something on my end. I don’t have time to go through my emails and messages. Nothing tipped me off that he was going to be in town.
I stand up behind my desk. “Send him right in, Linda.”
Before she says anything, Edgar is stepping around her into the office. He surveys me standing at the desk. “Good,” he says. “You’re ready to go. Come with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Annabel
A day of wallowing turns out to be far too much.
By three o’clock I’ve binged everything possible on the hotel’s cable stations. My decision not to pay for cable in the apartment is reaffirmed a hundred reality shows over. I’m restless, but I don’t want to go down to the lobby. I have zero interest in running into Marilee or, even worse, Bethany, who will feel sorry for me.
There’s nothing to feel sorry about. This is my entire life. Things shook out a bit differently this time, is all.
Does this count as being fired?
I consider the question while I stretch in the living room. My other concession to wallowing was having a pint of ice cream sent up from the shop in the lobby, but I finished that hours ago.
Four hours to seven.
I could do it. I could call Beau and tell him I need him to come now. I could spill the entire story to him, and he’d do it—he’d leave his office and be at the curb within forty minutes.
No. It’s too pathetic.
My phone rings on the end table next to the sofa, and my heart soars. Is telepathy a thing? If Beau is calling me right now, I’ll believe telepathy is a thing.
As if I am a yoga princess, Zen and calm, I turn and pick up the phone, preparing my sigh of happiness.
It’s an unknown number.
I swipe across the screen to answer the call. Why not? I have nothing else to do for the next four hours.
“Hello?”
“Annie, it’s me!”
The connection is a little unclear, like she’s calling from one of those Internet chat programs that makes it free to call internationally. It doesn’t matter. Her voice is unmistakable.
“Mom?”
“I said it was me,” she says with a huge, hearty laugh. “How are you, my girl? Are you still in New Hope?”
“I’ve—” I shake my head, trying to wrap my mind around this absurd question. “I’ve been in New York City for three years, Mom. Are you still in Brazil?”
“Not a chance on this earth!” She laughs again. “Oh, Brazil was fine, it was fine. I loved it, actually. There were some gorgeous sights, but . . .” My mother lets out a sigh. “I had to move on. I got that itch.”
Boy, do I know. “So . . . where are you?
Where are you calling from?”
“Morocco,” she purrs, rolling her Rs.
Morocco? What?
“Mom, that is not anywhere near South America.”
“What did you expect, Annie? The whole continental United States wasn’t big enough for me. Neither was South America!”
I look out over Manhattan. We’re about to swing into mid-September, which is my favorite time of the year for moving on. You always get a nice change of weather. But I’m hardly seeing the skyline. A bitter taste is in my mouth. Is it from the ice cream? No. It’s from this phone call.
“So you went to Brazil seven years ago, and now you’re in Morocco, and you’ve never had a reason to pay a visit to the United States?” I try furiously to remember when she last called. Four months? Six? It was from the old workhorse cell phone she bought herself when I was in college. There was no mention of Morocco then.
“Annabel, that’s not fair,” she says. It’s the same as the summer after I graduated. I can hear her now, saying those same words over the kitchen table shoved into the corner of our cramped apartment in Chicago. “It’s not as if you make a great effort to call me.”
“That’s not true.” I thought I was finished wallowing over the seamstress job, but the shock of that has stripped away all the boundaries I put up since my mother left. This hurts, damn it. It hurts. “I called two weeks ago. It went to voice mail.”
“Which number did you call?”
I rattle off the same number she called me from six months ago. That’s when it was—in the spring. March. It was still cold.
“Oh, honey, that’s not my number anymore. I changed it when I stopped over in Patriot in July.”
A sharp disappointment stabs through my gut. On instinct I take a deep breath and try to exhale it, try to take it in stride. “You went back to Patriot?”
“Loose ends to wrap up,” she says. “Do you remember old Mr. Lowell? He died last year and left me a parcel from his farm.” She laughs indulgently. “I don’t want any land in Patriot, but it’s hard to arrange things with those folks from across the planet. I wasn’t there more than two weeks.”
