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 from 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.