Before I Melt Away

by Isabel Sharpe

  “Stefanie, after the main course is served, you go home. You look exhausted. I can handle salad, dessert and cleanup by myself.”

  Stefanie turned her back to the swinging door into the dining room and started to object.

  “No.” Annabel lifted her hand. “No argument.”

  “Oh, but—”

  Annabel shook her head quickly. “No buts.”

  “Okay.” Stefanie’s face softened into relief. “Thanks. That would be nice, I am kind of tired.”

  She pushed back through the door and into the dining room.

  Kind of tired? No, not just kind of tired. Something more that that. While Annabel respected Stefanie’s privacy, she was getting anxious about it. As Stefanie’s employer, she had a right to know why her employee looked ready to drop on her feet. When the next quiet moment came, Annabel was going to ask her what was wrong.

  She finished dishing out the last two bowls of soup, sprinkled the last sprinkle of chopped fennel fronds for color and put the cover back on the pot to stay warm, checking the burner temperature carefully to make sure the soup wouldn’t boil. Then she hurried out to the doorway into the living room and caught Linda’s eye, gave her the thumbs-up that they were ready for the guests to be seated.

  Linda beamed her approval, then waited until the laughter died down from a joke someone had just told, and invited her husband’s business associates to the table. Annabel stepped back from the doorway but lingered, watching the group file toward the dining room. The living room looked lovely, the tree especially. Linda had decorated it with tiny red papier-mâché apples, gold bells, glass icicles and white porcelain angels with elaborate corn-husk robes. Christmas music wafting from the CD player filled the room with warmth even now that the bodies had gone.

  For a strange moment, Annabel felt that same homesick longing she’d experienced standing in front of her childhood house in Hartland with Quinn. Homesick for what, she hadn’t a clue. Maybe she missed her parents, although she wasn’t thinking of them in particular.

  She had turned to go back into the kitchen when the sound of her name stopped her. Linda’s joy-filled voice came clearly around the corner, talking to her husband, Evan.

  “Yes, she throws a beautiful party.”

  “Just never goes to any.” Ice clattered against crystal; Evan must have come back to retrieve and guzzle the last of his Scotch. “I don’t know why you keep bothering to invite her for Christmas.”

  “Because she’s family. Because I adored her parents and because I can’t help doing whatever I can to try and break her out of that ice she’s got around herself.”

  “Ha! Submit her to the Winterfest competition as a sculpture and be done with it.”

  Linda gave that comment a lot more hilarity than Annabel thought it deserved. “Oh, Evan, stop.”

  “Well, this apple fell so far from her tree she probably can’t remember which one she grew on. Her mother was such a beautiful person. Gracious, kind, thoughtful…”

  “Yes. Well.” Linda sighed. “We can’t all be our mothers. Let’s go in. Soup’s on and it smells delicious.”

  Annabel hunched her shoulders. Oh, wow. She hadn’t had that much fun since high school when she found out George Borden’s apparently flirty nickname for her, AK, actually meant “Amateur Kisser.”

  So.

  Evan didn’t like her and Linda thought she was heartless. How nice.

  She stalked abruptly into the kitchen, her accomplish-things energy badly sapped.

  “What’s wrong, Annabel?”

  Annabel smiled reassuringly at Stefanie, feeling even lower. Oh, that was nice. The second Stefanie sensed a change in Annabel’s mood, she asked, while Annabel had gone weeks now noticing Stefanie radiated all the health and happiness of a death-row inmate, and Annabel had barely mentioned it.

  “I’m fine. But I really want to know what’s up with you, Stefanie. You’re losing weight, you’re pale, what is it?”

  “Oh, I—” Stefanie gestured randomly, obviously at a loss what to say.

  “Okay. Look, I don’t want to pry. I’m concerned about you, that’s all.”

  “Thanks.” Stefanie bit her lip, looking as if tears were about to burst forth.

  “You’re not…sick are you?”

  “No.” The tears spilled over. Annabel hurried for a tissue and thrust it at her. Okay, subject closed. She couldn’t afford to have Stefanie sniffling through the next course. The guests would think—

  Annabel stopped herself. Patted Stefanie awkwardly while she blew her nose. God, listen to herself. Worrying about what the guests would think when her friend was falling apart. “You’re not having trouble with Frank, are you?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “Okay. I’ll stop asking. But if you want to talk…I’m here.”

  Stefanie barely masked her surprise, then sniffed gratefully and blew her nose again. “Thanks. I’m fine. Really. I promise.”

  “Good.” Annabel grinned at her as cheerfully as she could, not at all convinced. “In that case, lay out the dinner plates and let’s start loading them up. Dinner’s coming.”

  The soup bowls came back in, the hens went out. Stefanie left after Annabel practically shoved her out the door to her car. The hens came back in, salad went out, salad came back in, the Bûche de Noël went out—to appreciative gasps Annabel was thrilled to hear—then espresso and brandy in the living room, after-dinner chocolate, crystallized ginger, dried apricots and dates, pecans and ribbon candy. Any excuse to keep the waist-lines expanding, blood alcohol levels rising. And for those driving, caffeine to combat the sleepiness of the overload and the hour.

  Then finally time to go home for the guests, and cleanup time for Annabel.

  Linda and Evan went upstairs to bed with effusive thanks that Annabel received as graciously as she hoped her mother-that-she-wasn’t-at-all-like would have received them.

  Back in the kitchen, the last dishwasher load done and the last crumpled cocktail napkin and pistachio shell rounded up and thrown away, Annabel wiped down the counter, wrung out the sponge and glanced at the bird clock on the back wall. Nearly one. Too late to see Quinn, though she hadn’t planned to anyway. But her nights had become defined by whether she’d be with him or not. And she found herself less and less willing to think past the night in question, to all the “nots” ahead of them when he left.

  A few trips to the van to load it with the things she’d brought over earlier, then she stood in the hallway, zipping her coat, putting on her gloves…and staring at the tree, still lit in the darkness of the house. She ought to turn it off.

  Ten steps into the middle of the room, she stopped and stared more, unable to pull the plug just yet. The tiny clear lights made the needles of the tree glow green in bright circles, and the glass ornaments sparkled rainbow colors. The angels had their perfect pink mouths open in song, hands wide as if to embrace humanity, corn-husk robes dyed in subtle earthy colors.

  A lump formed so hard in Annabel’s throat, she felt she was trying to swallow past a cement ball. She backed away into the hall and let herself out into the soft chill of the night. The serious cold snap was over—all day she’d heard the constant drip of snow melting in the direct sun, seen the icicles forming off of Linda’s roof through the kitchen window.

  Now, on the way back to Wauwatosa, she kept noticing Christmas—houses rimmed with icicle lights, crèches and Santas glowing in people’s front yards. The town seemed peaceful this late, holiday shoppers home in bed, kids probably already having trouble sleeping, with the big day coming so soon.

  All night and even now, she’d felt like a spectator, a disembodied ghost, watching the rest of the city celebrate a holiday that had touched only her pocketbook since her mother had died.

  She pulled into her driveway, her house plain and dark, into her garage, turned off the motor and rested her head on the steering wheel. A sudden fierce yearning for Quinn hit her with such force she nearly burst into tears.r />
  Then the implication of what she wanted from him hit her just as hard. Not sex, not fun. She wanted him because she felt sad and lonely, and she knew he’d understand and fill the emptiness in her. Where other people saw in her an ice sculpture, he saw warmth and beauty and kept trying to get at it in spite of her every effort to keep him away.

  She fumbled in her pocket for her cell, dialed his number, then shook her head and hung up before it rang, leaned back against the seat and blinked hard to keep tears from coming. It was nearly one-thirty. She had no business calling him this late just to whine. By tomorrow she’d be fine again, and this strange feeling would seem like a distant dream that had happened to someone else.

  Car door open, foot on the ground, one step then another all the way into her house, double-locking behind her, clogs off on the mat by the door, up the steps, checking for messages, then a glance into the living room to—

  “Oh!” Annabel gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Her living room. Transformed. A tree—the perfect size and shape—decorated with tinsel and bright ornaments; colored lights and strings of glass beads; a star glowing golden yellow on top. A red fabric Advent calendar hung on the wall next to it, with stuffed presents to take daily from numbered pockets and hang on the flat Velcro tree. A large stuffed Santa sat on her couch, grinning, sack on his back, which held tiny wrapped boxes. White frosted bells dangled from under the shade of her floor lamp.

  She leaned in the doorway, trying to take it all in. Quinn had done this. She knew it with utter certainty. What she couldn’t fathom was how he’d known this was so much what she needed today.

  He was the most amazing man she’d ever met.

  Her cell phone rang. She fumbled for it in a daze. “Hello?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Quinn. You…it’s so beautiful.” She put her hand to her head, not even bothering to ask how he knew she was home, then stared again at the tree. “Is this the one we cut at Clarke’s?”

  “Yes.” He chuckled and she managed a smile, loving that he laughed so much more easily now, and hoping she had something to do with that. “Were you surprised?”

  “Completely.” And overcome and dangerously warm and fuzzy at the thought of him doing this for her.

  “You like surprises?”

  “I like the ones you give me.”

  “Good. There’s one more.”

  “Oh?”

  “In your room.”

  She laughed. “Another tree?”

  “Go up now.”

  “Okay.” She took off her coat, tossed it onto the desk in her office and mounted the stairs. “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Bigger than a bread box?”

  “Much.”

  “Can I eat it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “The world’s biggest chocolate bar?” She reached the top landing and turned toward her room. Her lips formed an O of surprise.

  Candles everywhere, the room glowed with warm light; Christmas music played softly. A tiny tree on her dresser, decorated with white lights and red origami birds.

  “So?” His deep voice echoed in one ear on the phone…and, in the other, it resonated around her room. “What do you think?”

  Quinn. She shut off her cell and moved forward, turned the corner and gazed into his dark eyes, feeling more full of life and emotion than she could ever remember feeling.

  “I love it…” she whispered.

  And you.

  10

  ANNABEL STOOD hardly daring to breathe. She had always imagined falling in love with someone would feel either of two ways. Either a moment of passionate blinding realization, a joyous radiant announcement with trumpets and floating hearts glistening like soap bubbles, popping and reforming in an endless ecstatic display, where birdies sang and the sun came out—complete with rainbow, of course—even if it was the middle of the night or the dead of winter.

  Or an equally sudden and equally powerful but infinitely quiet moment. A gentle step marking the transition from knowing you weren’t in love yet to the blissful certainty that you were. Like crossing an unmarked border and finding yourself in the same surroundings, yes, but in an entirely new country.

  This was neither.

  The minute her heart announced its new finding to her brain, her brain started the doubt machine whirring. No, no, no, she was feeling unusually vulnerable and therefore prone to romantic fantasy. By decorating her house, by taking her back to Hartland, Quinn had tapped into her inner need and made her feel wonderful and made her good memories resurface. All about her.

  That wasn’t love, that was ego, that was neediness, that was what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Love went both ways. You took and you gave; you took to become a better, stronger person and you gave to make your partner better and stronger, too. She was mistaking infatuation for something deeper. And for crying out loud, she’d only been seeing him one week.

  Quinn moved forward, put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her the rest of the way to him and kissed her, a long, slow exploring kiss that made a burn of excitement start in her chest and travel south to the hot, moist tropics. No question he was exciting to her. Physically. And mentally. And emotionally. But excitement fell in the infatuation camp. Part of the thrills that wouldn’t last.

  Though, granted, she’d been with plenty of men and never once thrilled like this. Not even close.

  Quinn drew back, glowing candlelight reflected in his eyes, softening and romanticizing his features. He gave a tiny crooked smile and, without warning, the burn of excitement was lost to the painful swelling of her heart.

  Infatuation. Still infatuation.

  Okay, pretty damn serious infatuation. But she couldn’t get carried away by…whatever was hell-bent on carrying her away. She had her business to think of. She had no room in her life for a long-term man. Linda and Evan had been right, she wasn’t her mother; she couldn’t be half of someone else, couldn’t sacrifice herself and her goals for the sake of a man. She was whole and had to make her way alone, reach her goals by herself so she knew she could do it. Right? Right.

  Annabel gave herself a mental kick in the rear. And? So? What was her point? She was fine. She knew the rules, knew her boundaries. She was infatuated with Quinn. He was here in her bedroom and for once they’d be able to spend quality time in good old-fashioned sheets instead of cars, couches or up against the wall.

  These were good things. This was not time to panic and turn paranoid. When Quinn left, he left and she’d go on and conquer all that needed to be conquered.

  She smiled at him, feeling balanced again, stronger, in control. Put her hands to his shoulders and sauntered forward, pushing him back to sit on the edge of the bed. She knelt between his legs, drew her hands seductively down the muscled surface of his chest and began undoing his shirt buttons.

  One. Two. Three…oh, she liked what was emerging. The broad bulge of well-defined pectorals under soft cotton, mmm. One of her very favorite landscapes.

  The last button gave. She pushed the material off his shoulders, following the path with caressing palms, and dragged the shirt down and off his powerful arms, right then left. The candles flickered around them. The music switched from traditional carols to mellow jazz arrangements. Annabel reached for the hem of his undershirt. Next to pectorals under cotton, the sight of a man’s shoulder muscles bulging from a sleeveless undershirt came in a very close second, maybe even a dead heat. The combination was a total turn-on…as if she needed more of one than Quinn himself.

  She pulled the undershirt up and over his head. He let her undress him, watched her all the while, the dark energy in his eyes belying his passivity. He might be giving her control now, but that look told her it was only a matter of time before he took it back.

  Yes. Lots to look forward to.

  She leaned forward to kiss his magnificent chest, rub her face against the coarse tickling hair, surprise him with a gentle bite to his nipple. Then moved dow
nward, unsnapped his pants, unzipped, eased them and his briefs down while he lifted his lower body off the bed using the strength in his arms.

  Yum.

  The pants hit behind her where she tossed them; the snap made a metallic clank on her floor.

  And then he was gloriously and totally naked in front of her, sitting on her bed. And she was fully clothed and in charge. She liked this. A lot.

  See? If she still wanted to one-up him, it wasn’t true love. Just the cozy fun of infatuation.

  She tipped her head forward and let her hair caress his penis, slowly back and forth, moving in a dreamy rhythm. She wanted the night to build gradually. She wanted to give him so much pleasure, make him feel so wonderful that forever after in bed with other women, there would be no escaping thoughts of her.

  Her head stopped moving until she made it continue. She resented the surge of jealousy at the thought of him with someone else. Quinn didn’t belong to her. They were both here tonight because they chose to be. That was just right. That was enough.

  She lifted her head suddenly so her hair flipped back behind her and she sent him a parted-lips look to tell him that what was next on her agenda involved her mouth and some of his most treasured anatomy.

  His lips curved in a yes-please-go-ahead smile and she utterly ruined her fabulous sultry smoldering look of promise by smiling back in pure pleasure at the sight of him, so gorgeous and so glad to be here with her.

  Of course, what naked man wouldn’t be happy with a willing, openmouthed woman kneeling at his feet? But she couldn’t help smiling back at him because, well, just because. He had that effect on her. It didn’t mean anything.

  Infatuation.

  She lowered her lips to the head of his penis, felt it jump as she made the contact. Her lips opened wider, and she took him in bit by bit. Moistening him, warming him with her mouth, letting her tongue add to the pleasure her lips were giving by working it around his skin.