by BETH KERY
Copyright © 2018 Beth Kery
All Rights Reserved
Except for appropriate use in critical reviews or works of scholarship, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval systems, without express permission in writing from the author.
Requests or queries should be addressed to:
Robin Rue
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locations are entirely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
Chapter One
This is what comes from using a damn dating site.
The miserable thought came at the same time as a dull throb from an oncoming headache. I approached the maître d’ of the sleek Financial District restaurant.
“I’m meeting Evan Halifax,” I said.
His skeptical gaze dropped over my secondhand wool coat and my cheap flats. In a fit of rebellion, I’d changed at the last second before leaving my rented room located in Central Sunset. Not completely: I still wore the only decent black dress I owned. I’d take off the Cartier earrings Evan had given me, of course.
It was time to stop pretending that this thing between Evan and me was real.
The maître d’s stare finally met mine. A knowing, slimy smile spread on his thin face.
“Of course, mademoiselle. Mr. Halifax has been waiting,” he said, waving gracefully. I skewered him with my stare. I knew what he was thinking. A guy like Evan Halifax had enough money, looks, and charm to have as many hot, clueless young blondes in his bed as he wanted. You don’t know anything, you smug French snot, I thought bitterly. You don’t know anything at all.
His smirk wavered. He turned. I followed him through the crowded but subdued restaurant. True luxury was never boisterous. That was something I’d learned in the past eight weeks, dating Evan.
He stood when I approached the table, as he always did. My heart tightened in my chest at the vision of his tall form and his familiar rugged, strong face. He was dressed impeccably, as usual, in a black suit with a muted gold tie. Looking up at him, I tried to avoid his gray eyes. My gaze landed instead on his starched white collar. It made such an appealing contrast to his tanned skin and the crisply trimmed line of his dark hair.
I resisted a wild urge to cry. Or run like hell.
“Is everything all right?” His lips brushed my cheek. “You’re cold, Anna.”
I felt his warm breath on my skin, and experienced that inevitable draw… that predictable desire. Annoyance bubbled up in me. It wasn’t fair that an attraction could be so hideously one-sided.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I’m late. The bus was behind schedule, and I had to walk a ways to get here,” I said, pulling my hand away from his.
“Didn’t you have any cash for a cab?” he asked, taking his seat across from me.
“I did,” I told him, waiting until the waiter poured me a glass of sparkling water and walked away. “I actually have quite a bit of your money. It’s been accumulating,” I said, holding up my evening bag, a receptacle of my guilt. The sapphire earrings were in there as well. I faltered, thinking of the moment when he’d slipped that leather box into my hand the other night.
“I thought they’d match your eyes.”
I’d been flying.
“Anna?”
“I have it all here. I’ll give it back to you after dinner. I mean… if you still want to have dinner. Maybe you won’t,” I mused, distressed I hadn’t thought of this detail.
His dark brows scrunched together, but otherwise, his face remained stony. “Why wouldn’t I want to have dinner?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my already thin courage going completely transparent.
“I gave you that money to use for incidentals, like getting to our dates. I know you don’t have extra cash for things like that. I didn’t mean to offend by giving it to you. But I have, haven’t I?” he said slowly, his eyes narrowing on my face.
“There was nothing offensive about you offering it.”
“There was nothing offensive about you accepting it, either. Maybe it’s selfish on my part, but I don’t want to make things harder on you in order for us to see each other.”
“Evan—”
My evening bag buzzed. I pulled out my cell and clumsily knocked my bag onto the booth seat. When I saw who was calling, I swiped to ignore it.
“My sister. I’ll call her later,” I said, leaning over to retrieve the bag from the seat.
“You and your sister look alike?” he asked. I realized he’d seen my sister’s photo on the screen when she called—or at least he’d glimpsed a brief, upside-down version of it.
“Some people say we do. I don’t see it much,” I replied, both frustrated and relieved to be sidetracked from breaking up with him. I slipped my phone back in my purse and set it aside. The waiter arrived with a bottle of chardonnay.
“Jessica’s only a year and a half younger than I am,” I said after the waiter had poured and left. “We both have blonde hair. I think that’s where most of the similarity begins and ends, though. Everybody thinks young blondes look alike, right?” I muttered sarcastically under my breath. I took a healthy swallow of the chilled chardonnay. Evan pinned me in place with his stare, his eyebrows arched slightly. I felt my cheeks go warm and carefully placed the wine glass on the table.
“Go ahead. Get if off your chest. Tell me what’s bothering you, Anna.”
Unable to repress my anxiety anymore, I leaned toward him. “Evan, what are we doing, exactly?”
He blanched at my intensity. “Doing? What do you mean? We’re dating, aren’t we? Getting to know one another? Appreciating each other?”
“Yes, but… ”
“But what?”
“It’s not normal,” I declared heatedly under my breath. I hated the way his features stiffened. Despite his restrained quality, Evan had always been kind to me. I didn’t want to hurt him. Still, I stumbled on. “I mean… the sexual part. We’ve spent a lot of time together. You’ve only kissed me that one time. In eight weeks. And even then, you pulled back, like… “ I halted abruptly, instinctively afraid to put that ugly thought into words. I inhaled and commanded myself to continue in a more measured, adult tone. �
�I know I told you I’d be patient, that day we had the picnic at Half Moon Bay when we… you know. Kissed.” I closed my eyes briefly in humiliation, acutely aware that I was failing. I sounded like a heartbroken sixteen-year-old.
“I told you that I understood,” I continued in a low voice. “But to be honest, I don’t. I’m sorry if that makes me needy or naïve, but maybe that’s what I am. It doesn’t seem healthy. Us. I feel like you’re not ready for this. I like you, Evan. I like you so much.” You’re such a little liar. You more than like him. “But I don’t want to get hurt, and I feel like I will, if you’re constantly thinking about… ”
My mouth hesitated in forming her name, but I pushed on, fueled by my rising doubt. “If you’re thinking about your wife all the time.”
Elizabeth.
A silence stretched between us, strained and nearly unbearable.
“Why now?”
I blinked at his quiet question, confused.
“Why now?”
“Yes. What’s brought on this sudden rash of nerves? I saw no sign of them the other night when were together.”
I made a high-pitched, desperate sound and rolled my eyes. “Sudden? My doubts have always been there. Surely you get that. Why now? It’s just a basic law of emotional physics, I guess.” I reached for my wine and took another swallow, aware of his tight attention on me the whole time. “Things build until they reach a boiling point. And once that point is reached—boom. Everything changes.”
He said nothing, only watched me with that enigmatic, steady gaze that was either cool or hot. I could never decide which.
“I Googled her. Elizabeth,” I admitted impulsively, wild to break the silence, crazy to get past the finish line now that I’d started. Surely mentioning his dead wife would bring things to an abrupt end. “At first I tried Elizabeth Halifax, but then I remembered that Tommy had mentioned her father’s name. Noah Madaster. Tommy doesn’t seem to like your former father-in-law much.”
“A lot of people don’t,” Evan said evenly enough, but I saw the glint of curiosity in his eyes. “Tommy knows Noah?” We referred to my boss and mutual friend, Tommy Higoshi.
“Only briefly. He met him once at a medical technology conference,” I said, watching Evan’s reaction to my miniscule knowledge of his deceased wife’s family. I realized he wasn’t going to say anything else, so I continued on my suicide mission.
“So I Googled her maiden name: Elizabeth Madaster. I just thought you should know,” I said lamely. Was he angry at my admitted intrusion in his carefully guarded past? Mildly curious? Politely disinterested? I was flailing for a hold in this conversation. In this whole affair.
“And what did you find out about her?”
“Not much. Most references were to her father and his political career, and a few charities Elizabeth was involved in.” I hadn’t even been able to locate Elizabeth’s obituary or the circumstances of her death. The small amount of information I’d been able to find about Evan’s wife had only served to make my curiosity—not to mention Elizabeth’s invisible, suffocating presence—grow.
Evan didn’t speak. He gave nothing away. I was mad at him for making this so hard, and pissed at myself because I was pushing him. Was I ruining something special because of my own insecurities?
You’re taking care of yourself. Who else will?
“I just don’t think you’re ready. You’re still grieving for her.” And I’m not the Band-Aid to your grief.
“She’s been gone for more than seven years.”
I found myself studying his face closely, searching for some hint of how he felt about Elizabeth Madaster, right now in this very moment. I found nothing, which is what I really expected to find. The past eight weeks of being with him had taught me that.
“There isn’t a time limit on grief, Evan. I understand.”
“Do you? Would you mind explaining to me what it is you understand, precisely?”
“I understand you don’t want me,” I snapped.
His jaw tightened. I was doing this messily, but there was no going back. “Maybe you feel guilty, or maybe you just want some companionship because you’re lonely, but you aren’t interested in the physical side of things, so whatever the reason—”
“You think I don’t want you?”
I went still. His voice was a quiet, ominous rumble. I could tell by the sudden gleam in his gray eyes I’d seriously offended him.
“Don’t you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked bitterly. “Don’t you notice the stares you get when you walk into a room? You told me once that you used that dating site because men don’t approach you. Don’t you get why? They stay away because you intimidate them, Anna.”
“No,” I said, thrown off balance. “That’s not the point—”
I faded off when I noticed his furious expression. He was like a precision blowtorch in those seconds. I cringed under his stare. I’d never seen him like this. I didn’t know what to say or do. He abruptly rose from the table, towering over me. My stomach dropped. He was going to leave. I’d never see him again, all because I couldn’t go with the flow and keep my stupid mouth shut. He put out his hand.
“Let’s dance,” he said, tight-lipped.
Through the muted roar in my ears, I realized that a jazz quartet was playing across the room.
“I don’t think—”
“Let’s dance, Anna,” he repeated. He took my hand when I didn’t offer it. I rose and followed his tall, formidable form, swimming in confusion.
Through my distraction, I noticed a small dance floor overlooked the Bay Bridge and a magnificent sunset. To this day, I have no idea what song the musicians played. I’d been so anxious about the meeting, so overwhelmed by his presence, I’d never heard music. He turned and took me into his arms. He pulled me close, his hold on me firm and unrelenting. His body felt hard, yet fluid, moving next to mine.
We didn’t speak. There wasn’t any need to, I realized after a moment. His eyes said it all as he looked down at me. His body shouted it so loudly, the truth roared in my ears and stung in my veins.
Evan Halifax did want me. Badly. Here was undeniable proof. Our bodies subtly stroked one another until tears of frustration and wonder welled in my eyes.
“Why?” I whispered. I felt so close to him in that moment, I somehow knew he’d understand I asked him why he was holding back, when he felt so much.
He pressed his lips against my temple. He kissed my neck, pausing to inhale my scent. I shivered uncontrollably in his arms.
“Because I didn’t plan for this, Anna,” he said quietly near my ear. “I didn’t plan for you. Did you ever consider that I’m just as confused as you are? Because I am. I’m scared of how much I want you.”
His confession of uncertainty stunned me. It cast a whole new light on the shadowed, possibly dangerous landscape of Evan Halifax.
When the song had finished, he led me off the dance floor. At our booth, he picked up my evening bag and handed it to me. I could feel the Cartier box beneath the mesh material. As I looked up into his eyes I knew something with a sudden, swift adult certainty that I’d craved for so long.
I’d never return those earrings.
“Let’s forget dinner here. Maybe we can go and check out that Vietnamese street vendor you like and take it up to your room?”
“You’re sure that you want to? There? At my place?” I asked softly.
He nodded. “I’m sure. Except about the street vendor thing. Let’s skip dinner.”
“Yes,” I agreed breathlessly.
I realize that so much of the beginning of Evan’s and my story sounds cliché: a young, relatively inexperienced girl swept off her feet by a handsome, worldly, older man.
Well, here’s another cliché for you. It turns out the steady handhold I needed, that certainty at the eye of the storm, was sex. The p
hysicality of it. The heat. The liberation of emotion. The feeling of being needed, and needed hard.
It was that solidity I craved, the tangible reality of flesh. Desire binds us, sometimes flimsily and shortly, but the bond is there in the exchange. What Evan and I shared that night was something bigger, though. Passion isn’t necessarily the end result of love. But it sure as hell is a great start. A start to what, I couldn’t have envisioned at the time.
It wasn’t until later that I began to understand that our connection was more than that of intense desire. Ours was the bond of fellow prisoners, a tie that time or choice couldn’t dissolve.
Thankfully, we didn’t run into any of my nutjob roommates on the way to my rented room. Somehow, it didn’t match up in my mind, the idea of introducing Evan to vegan, pot-smoking performance artist Tarquin or aura-seeing jewelry maker Iris. It’d be like presenting beings from different worlds to each other. I conveniently forgot that I was one of the denizens of that fringe existence as I snuck him up the familiar squeaky wooden staircase. I listened to Evan’s solid tread behind me, and thought how impossible it all seemed. It was like sneaking Prince Charming into some kind of alternate, hippie universe.