by Amelia Wilde
“Do you actually own this hotel?”
It’s not the question I expected from her, and it makes me laugh. “Yes, of course I do. Do you actually work for the production here?”
“Yes. The morning you saved my life”—she grimaces—“was my first day on the job.”
“That bad?”
Annabel laughs. “The job is great. I don’t love being rescued like some damsel in distress, though.”
“Better rescued than flattened.”
“I’d have seen it coming in time.”
“Confident,” I tell her. “Very confident.”
Annabel shrugs. “I live in the city. But I know Marilee flew out from LA. I don’t know about the bike situation there, but—”
“Marilee . . .”
“Marilee North. The costume designer for the show.” She narrows her eyes. “Are you sure you own this hotel?”
I’m sure I want to take her somewhere for breakfast. Somewhere quiet, away from the traffic. My veins pulse with the urgent need to know more about her, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. I’ve been suffering for a week. It makes no sense. Annabel Forester, she of the pink hair and blue eyes, is not the kind of elegant woman I need by my side. I shouldn’t bother.
And yet . . . here I am.
“I’m sure,” I tell her, and then I clear my throat. “I’m afraid I’ve been very rude.”
Annabel grins at me. “You didn’t bring flowers, for one thing.”
“Flowers?”
She laughs. “For rejecting my coffee date.”
The emptiness of my hands has never felt more palpable than right now. Something about being near Annabel throws me completely and utterly off-kilter. I’ve built my life on careful planning, careful consideration. I don’t show up with nothing. That’s not me. Worse still, on the plane back to New York, I realized I never told her my name. I’d walked away like some common asshole on the street.
Someone honks a car horn in the closest lane, and it grates on my nerves. I haven’t planned for this. I haven’t planned for any of this. She’s right. I’ve got to wipe the slate clean somehow. “Would you like to get some breakfast with me?”
Annabel’s grin grows wider. “I don’t go off with mystery men, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“I’m not a mystery man, I’m—” I steady myself. Then I extend my hand like a gentleman would do and not like the douchebag I was pretending to be the other day. “My name is Beau Bennett.”
Annabel takes my hand and shakes it firmly. “You remember who I am, clearly.”
“Yes, clearly I do.” I can’t help smiling at her. I’m not a giddy kind of man, but the energy in the air around her is contagious. “I should have taken you up on your offer.” I don’t want to, but I let go of her hand. “Come for breakfast with me, and let me make it up to you.”
“I would love to,” Annabel says, and then she does something with her face that I rarely see on anyone’s face. Not these days. “But I can’t. I’ve got work.” She waves a hand dismissively in the air. “No need to make it up to me, though. I never get too attached.”
She whirls around and flies up the steps of the Pearl.
What. Just. Happened?
Was I rejected out of hand by a woman who, if I’m not mistaken, is wearing the same outfit I first saw her in a week ago? How can she possibly say no to me? She’s working in my hotel.
“Wait!” I shout the word after her as if she’ll disappear completely once she’s through the front doors. My heart pounds wildly. She’s a whirlwind, a tempest, an imp, and I should want absolutely nothing to do with her. I should take this as a sign that we are not meant to be. Not even for breakfast, much less the things I want to do with her behind closed doors. I’ve never come across a woman like her, and in the bedroom, where I can truly be in control . . .
Annabel turns to face me, and for a split second I see what she’ll look like when I take her. “Yeah?” She calls down to the bottom of the steps, and the tenor of her voice makes me hard. I ignore it and cross the sidewalk. That’s as far as I’m willing to go. I’m not going to follow her to the top of the steps—not a chance.
“If you won’t go for breakfast, how about dinner? When is your shift over?”
She shrugs one shoulder, cheeks a deepening pink. “It depends on when Marilee’s done for the day. Sometimes I work late. I don’t know if I can—”
“Eat,” I tell her in as firm a tone as I’d use at the office. “Marilee can spare you for an hour. I’ll meet you here at five.”
She opens her mouth—I picture those lips yielding to mine—and closes it again, giving me another little grin, eyes alight. For one charged instant, I think she might say no, might grab the door handle and run away from me. Her blue eyes dance in the sunlight, and I see the hesitation in the way she shifts her weight from side to side the slightest bit. I want to put my hands on her hips. I put them in my pockets instead.
“It’s a date,” she says finally, and then she’s gone.
Chapter Seven
Annabel
It’s a date. It’s a date. Could I have been any cheesier? Not unless I was literally covered in queso. No. I could not have.
And Beau Bennett . . . it’s all in the name, isn’t it? He’s not the kind of guy who goes for cheesy. I don’t even know why he came to the Pearl this morning in the first place.
I suppose if you own a hotel, you can show up there whenever you want.
I bury myself in work, in following Marilee’s instructions, all day long, hardly daring to think about this date. I set up appointments to fit dresses and costumes. I push the date out of my mind.
Where’s Beau going to take me? Please, let it not be the lobby of the hotel. No. That would never happen. He would not stoop to taking me to dinner in the lobby restaurant.
Or would he?
That’s my debate, standing here on the front steps of the Pearl. Beau didn’t say that I should meet him here specifically, but I have a feeling it’s a good guess. This is, after all, where he practically chased me down for the chance at . . .
At what?
How far am I willing to go? He doesn’t strike me as the one-night stand type. He strikes me as the sit-down-with-my-parents, put-a-ring-on-it first type. I don’t want a ring on it. I’ll never want a ring on it. A ring is like an anchor—it’s wonderful until the storm sets in, and you can’t haul it off the bottom of the ocean to set your boat free.
At least, that’s what I imagine. I’ve never been much for boating.
I’m still in the same clothes—all black. There was no time to go home and change. Honestly? I might not have changed. This is dinner, not the opening night of The Lovers, and I’m not going onstage.
It feels like it, though.
Bethany sends me a text while I wait on the sidewalk, rescheduling our evening session for the morning. Score.
The sweet spot of excitement is upon me now, in the hazy evening light, and the longer I wait, the more the sweetness seeps away. I shift my weight uneasily from one foot to the other. If he doesn’t show up in the next minute, I’m going to—
A black Town Car, gleaming like it’s been polished to a high shine, smoothly pulls up to the curb right in front of the Pearl. My heart beats faster at the sight of it. There are a thousand cars like this in New York City. I don’t want to get my hopes up if I’m going to be disappointed.
The back door opens. Beau unfolds himself from the car and stands up tall on the curb. When he sees me, his mouth curves upward in a smile tinged with the same relief I feel.
“Hungry?” he calls out across the space between us.
With the golden light on his face, the fine cut of his suit, the way his confidence overrules even that little flicker of doubt, I’m hungry for more than dinner. If I had any excuse to tackle him right now, I would. My muscles tense in anticipation.
I hold myself back. Beau is not that kind of man.
“Starving,” I answer
him and bound down the steps toward the car.
*****
“Tell me about yourself, Annabel Forester.”
We’re sitting in an intimate dining room of a restaurant that is a thousand times too fancy for what I’m wearing, but Beau Bennett didn’t blink an eye and neither did the hostess. She gave him a subdued smile and asked him if he wanted his usual table. His usual table, at a place like this. It struck me when we sat down in front of the immaculate white tablecloth that Beau probably owns more than the Pearl. He probably owns half the city. My heart leaps into my throat. He’s somebody. I’m just the woman he pushed out of the way of a speeding bicycle.
“I’m nervous,” I tell him. Honesty is my default policy. When you move around as much as I do, it’s the one thing that can make you some easy friends.
He grins. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.” He spreads his hands, the gesture encompassing everything on the table. The gleaming silverware. The one-of-a-kind china. The basket of bread, still warm from the oven. “It’s the least I could do.”
“You leaped out in front of a speeding bike to save a complete stranger. You don’t need to take me to dinner.”
“I did.” Beau sweeps his napkin from the table and drops it into his lap with a graceful fluency that must have come from an etiquette class of some kind. “Walking away from you was a mistake. So I see your coffee, and I raise you dinner.”
“A mistake?”
He gives me a look of guarded heat. “A mistake.”
I catch my breath. “Where did you go to school?” It’s a neutral question, one that won’t stoke the desire already building between my legs. Needlessly, I realize, because this is a friendly dinner. Nothing is going to happen here. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“I don’t think so,” he says, another smile flitting across his face. “I asked first.”
“What do you want to know? I’m an open book.”
“What made you want to work at the Pearl?”
“I saw Marilee North on the sidewalk. She was shouting into her phone about needing a seamstress.”
“So, not only can you sew, but also the idea of a frazzled costume director appealed to you?”
I shimmy my shoulders. “It seemed like the best idea at the time. Plus, it led directly to . . . a nice thing happening.” It’s a lame cop-out, but there’s no way I can describe how it felt to be held in his arms, even for that brief moment. Embarrassing . . . and hot.
He leans back in his seat, considering me from across the table. “It’s not my usual approach to women.”
“Desperate times . . .”
Beau leans forward again, a sudden intensity in his eyes. “Start at the beginning. I want to understand how all of this came together.”
I laugh, dispelling some of the tension. “The beginning beginning? That’s a long-ass time ago.”
The spotlight is focused on me again, with all its heat, leaving no shadow to hide behind. It’s an odd feeling to be held in someone’s gaze like this. For years, for years, I’ve been bobbing in and out of people’s notice, getting in, getting out, moving on. This time I feel caught.
Is it so bad that I like it?
What was it that my mother used to say? Always jump in with both feet. You can always jump back out.
“The very beginning,” Beau says, the slightest note of command in his voice.
I clear my throat. “Here’s the beginning. I was born in a town called Patriot. That’s where it all started.”
Chapter Eight
Beau
She tells me everything.
Everything.
The words pour out of Annabel like nobody’s ever asked for her life story before, though that can’t possibly be true. She tells me about Patriot, the desert town a half-hour drive from the nearest grocery store. She tells me about moving to Montana in the middle of winter. She tells me about the way her mother used to sew, and that’s how she got that job at the Pearl, by the way.
She’s an open book. The floodgates are open, and she doesn’t hold back.
How can she live that way?
I could never spill an unedited version of my life to a near stranger across a dinner table. Not like she’s doing right now. The way she speaks is the same way she moved outside the Pearl, lighting on one topic, then the next, hardly stopping to breathe.
I try to make a rough sketch of how I’ll answer her when she poses the same question. The only problem? I can’t tear myself away from her blue eyes long enough to do it. The sensation of being unprepared creeps down my spine. I hate it, but Annabel draws me in, and before I know what’s happened, the bread bowl is empty, and she’s looking at me in the candlelight, that ridiculous hair of hers pulled neatly away from her face. Her hair is neat. Her life isn’t.
But when there’s a pause, the question doesn’t come. “You don’t sound American,” she says simply. It’s not a question at all, but I have an answer for it nonetheless.
“I was born in England,” I offer. Then I press my lips closed.
Annabel leans back to let the waiter slide a plate of steak onto the tablecloth in front of her. She gives him shy nod and a smile. He delivers my plate—pork—and hovers near the edge of the table, checking the wineglasses.
Annabel shoots me a look, then flicks her eyes back to him.
Finally the man breaks the silence as gracefully as he can. “Would you like to cut in, miss?”
Confusion flashes through her eyes, followed by a rush of pink to her cheeks. “Oh, of—of course.” She takes the steak knife in her hand and cuts into the center of the filet, peeling the two halves apart with her fork. “This is perfect.” She sighs, almost a moan, and it’s all I can do not to leap across the table and kiss her right now.
Which would be stupid. Unbelievably stupid.
When the waiter is gone, she digs in, her back straight in her chair. “You probably think I’m a small-town girl,” she says before putting a forkful in her mouth. I glance down at my own food. I can’t bear the sight of those lips a second longer.
“Aren’t you?” My pork is so tender that it falls away at the first touch of the knife. I lift a piece to my mouth, stifling the urge to hold out my fork and watch Annabel wrap her lips around it.
Stop.
“In a way,” she says, dropping her eyes back to her plate. “But you heard that little story of mine. We never stayed in one place for long.” She grins up at me. “But Britain? That makes you exotic.”
“Hardly. I didn’t even keep the accent. We moved to the States when I was six.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “Why?”
“My father’s job.”
Annabel raises her eyebrows. “His job?” she prompts.
“He did some government work.”
“Yikes. Should I be talking to you right now, or will you have to kill me?”
I’ll have to do something if you keep sitting across from me with your shirt stretched across your curves like that. “No. He had more of a . . . consultant role.” It was exactly how I’d describe my job to her if we were ever going to be intimate.
Which we’re not. This is a way to make up for the nagging guilt I felt about turning her down. With eyes like hers, how could I have done that?
“Does he still do that?” Annabel takes another bite of steak and lets out an actual little moan.
This is still torture.
What was the question?
“Consulting? No. He retired a few years ago. My grandmother’s health started to decline around that time, and my parents went back to England. Bakewell, actually, is where they live.” If she looks it up, she’ll find a charming little town in the countryside. I don’t tell her that, due to the fortune my father made while they were in the States, my parents now live in a sprawling manor that rivals most of the mansions I’ve seen here.
Annabel puts down her fork. “And you? What do you do?” She smiles, her eyes twinkling. “Aside from owning hotels and saving poor women like me fr
om mad bicyclists, that is.” The way she says poor women makes me think she’s harboring the slightest bit of irritation over being saved. She needed it. Nobody can deny that.
“I run a real estate development company.” I give her the truth—as much of the truth as I can offer. I’ve atoned for my asshole-ish behavior. Only . . . I can’t quite stop myself. “It’s actually part of a larger corporation. I’m a partner with a group of my friends from school.”
Annabel’s mouth drops open. “Like from college?”
“From high school.”
Her eyes go wide, and she picks up her fork from the table. “That’s . . . kind of amazing. Do you know that? Going into business with friends from high school?” She laughs. It sounds genuine enough, but I swear I hear a hint of pain. “I got my mom to stay put for the last two years of school. It doesn’t make for lifelong friendships, if you know what I mean.” A flicker of a pained smile. “Tell me about your friends. A group of friends like that—to me, that’s almost more exotic than being from England.”
It’s contagious, her enthusiasm, and I find myself buying in. “There was West, to start with. He was—”
“Not nearly as much fun as I was.”
The voice that breaks in, shattering my lovely mood, is the last one I want to hear.
Chapter Nine
Annabel
The entire time the statuesque blonde is slinking toward the table, I am praying to any god who will listen that she isn’t heading for this table. Not here. Not now. Not when stone-faced Beau Bennett is about to tell me something I couldn’t find on Google if I’d had time to look. His entire face lit up when I asked him about his friends.
The smile melts away when the blonde utters those words, cutting him off midsentence. I don’t know who to look at—the stunning runway model who has graced us with her presence or Beau, with his sandy hair and blue eyes. My heart does a flip. If anyone belongs together, it’s these two. I feel every inch of my black work clothes, the very same outfit I was wearing the first time I saw Beau, without the blazer. What does my hair even look like?