The month and a half that followed was one of the most complicated periods of Annie’s life.
Professionally, things couldn’t have been better—or busier. In the space of just six weeks she landed two new accounts, won a major industry award and received both a promotion and a salary increase.
She also figured out a way to persuade the client from the Planet of the Morons that he was much too important to bother fussing with ad copy, thus averting the possibility of another “zombie cola”-type disaster. This achievement netted her a performance bonus from the owner of her agency and a job offer from the client in question. She accepted the first, which she believed she definitely deserved, and rejected that latter, which she wouldn’t have wished on her worst enemy, with equal aplomb.
As for personal matters...
Well, in many ways Annie was happier than she’d ever been. Happier than she’d ever imagined being, in fact. Nothing she’d experienced—nothing she’d fantasized—had prepared her for the potency of her involvement with Matt.
On the one hand, she and her best buddy continued to share a closeness borne of more than three decades of friendship. They were at ease with each other’s edges and idiosyncrasies. She knew Matt almost as well as he knew himself and vice versa.
On the other hand, becoming lovers had added the spice of the unexpected to their longtime involvement. Physical intimacy had transformed the familiar into something fresh. For all their mutual knowledge, they still had some vital lessons to learn about each other.
Annie found this combination of time-tempered understanding and newfound passion to be very heady stuff. Yet beneath the intoxication was a nagging sense of disappointment.
This disappointment was intermittent at first and relatively easy to ignore. It reminded Annie—once she finally allowed herself to face up to it—of her response to a pair of comments Matt had made after they’d come together in an ecstatic frenzy against the front of her refrigerator.
Oh, Annie, he’d whispered, nuzzling his mouth against her neck. You’re so good for me.
That wasn’t luck, he’d interrupted later, when she’d tried to express how fortunate they’d been to be able to work out their postcoital uncertainties. It was thirty-one years of shared history. We’re friends.
There’d been nothing wrong with either of these statements. Indeed, there’d been much about them that Annie had felt—and continued to feel—was wonderfully right. Nonetheless, she had to admit that they’d triggered an odd ache within her. Because as open as Matt’s acknowledgment of his appreciation of her had been, a part of her had hungered for something else. For something...more.
As the heated bliss of Indian summer gave way to the cool of early autumn, Annie’s intermittent, easily ignorable sense of disappointment deepened into a profound dissatisfaction.
It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize the preciousness of what she had. She did! Had Annie been asked to design her version of the perfect male-female relationship, the one she’d established with Matt would have been it. It was the intersection of two people who were complementary equals. And while it enriched her existence in more ways than she could articulate, it didn’t impinge on the independent life she’d worked so hard to make for herself.
It was everything she’d ever wanted.
But it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t enough because Hannah Elaine Martin had fallen in love with Matthew Douglas Powell.
She’d also discovered that her fondest desire was to become his wife.
* * *
“How about here?” Matt asked, indicating what seemed to him to be a primely located pair of unoccupied seats.
“Fine,” Annie responded. Her tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
“We can go closer if you want.” Matt scanned the rapidly filling movie theater. The audience looked like a fairly typical Saturday-night-at-the-multiplex crowd, he noted. There were lots of teenagers—some obviously paired off, many clustered in congenial packs. The twentysomething set was well represented, too. There was also a liberal sprinkling of older couples and a few sit-alone singles. “The sound is better back here, but the screen in this place is pretty small—”
“I said these seats are fine, Matt. Let’s just get settled, okay?”
“Okay,” he concurred, struggling against a surge of irritation. He was only trying to be considerate! “Do you want the aisle?”
“Whatever. I don’t care.”
Great, he thought. Just great. He consulted Annie about her preference and she claimed to be indifferent. But had he neglected to ask which seat she’d like, she undoubtedly would have accused him of attempting to have everything his way.
“Annie—”
“You sit on the aisle,” she snapped, brushing by him. The abruptness of her passage sent a flurry of kernels tumbling from the tub of popcorn he was holding in his left hand.
What the hell is wrong with her? Matt wondered.
It was a question he’d been asking himself with increasing frequency in recent days. His companion had been acting strangely for some time and he had no idea why.
He’d initially ascribed her moodiness to career-related stress. He’d been forced to abandon this diagnosis, however, when it had become obvious to him that far from faltering under the punishing burden of her post-Labor Day schedule, Annie was thriving on it. She loved her work. It plainly meant the world to her.
He’d then begun wondering whether her uncharacteristic behavior was a reaction to the fact that their affair was no longer a secret. Although his sister-in-law, Eden, had stopped short of sending news releases to the local media, she’d done a very effective job of spreading the word that he and her bouquet-catching former bridesmaid had—to borrow a phrase from Rudi the waiter—”started up with each other.”
While Matt didn’t object to family members and friends knowing that he and Annie were lovers, he was annoyed by the apparently common assumption that the two of them eventually would end up at the altar. And if this sort of bedding-to-wedding expectation rubbed him the wrong way, it seemed a sure bet to aggravate the heck out of his marriage-averse partner.
Except...it didn’t. Aggravate the heck out of Annie, that is. Although she certainly didn’t encourage inquiries about possible bridal plans or hints about the benefits of marital bliss, Matt didn’t sense that she was particularly troubled by them, either. Embarrassed, perhaps. Amused, quite probably. But troubled? Not that he could detect.
Which meant—what? he’d asked himself more times than he could count. That his best buddy’s attitude toward matrimony was changing and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do about it? That other people’s beliefs about where the two of them were heading were beginning to influence her own?
Dear Lord, he hoped not. Because as deeply as he cared for Annie, the notion of his trading “I do’s” with her was...was...well, it was preposterous. Plain and simple, absolutely and utterly preposterous! There was no way it could work. He knew how the fit between two made-to-be-married-for-life people should feel because he’d experienced it with Lisa. And wonderful though it might be, the fit he felt with Annie was a very different kind of connection.
As for the fit she felt with him...
Matt heard Annie give a huffy little sigh. She was squirming in the seat she’d claimed for herself, her gaze fixed on the blank movie screen. Her expression was part sad, part sour and part something he couldn’t identify.
God, he thought suddenly, his gut knotting. What if Annie was regretting their sexual involvement? What if she wanted to call it quits but couldn’t figure out how to do it? What if that was the reason she’d been behaving so oddly?
No, he told himself fiercely. It couldn’t be! No matter how difficult it was, Annie and he had always been truthful with each other. If—if—she’d decided that their becoming lovers was a mistake, she’d tell him.
Matt took a slow, steadying breath, still studying Annie’s profile.
“Popcorn?” he eventually offered. It wasn’t quite an olive branch, but he had to make do with what was available.
“No,” she refused brusquely. Then, after a moment, the taut line of her lips eased slightly. She slanted him a brief, sideward glance that had just a hint of apology in it. “Thank you.”
He let a few seconds tick by. He wondered fleetingly whether Annie might be in the grip of some sort of hormonal upheaval, but ruled out the notion of asking. Given her current mood, even the most diplomatic inquiry about whether this was her time of the month seemed likely to provoke an explosion.
“Annie...what’s wrong?” he finally asked, keeping his tone gentle.
Her features tightened again. Indeed, her entire body seemed to stiffen. “Nothing,” she responded.
“Oh, right,” he retorted, abandoning softness for sarcasm. While he was well aware that he was a long way from mastering the nuances of contemporary male-female relationships, he damned well knew the difference between a sincere “Nothing” and one that was shorthand for “If you’re so insensitive you can’t figure out what’s bothering me, I’m not going to tell you.” The “nothing” he’d just gotten definitely fell into the latter category.
This time Annie didn’t just glance at him. She actually turned her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “What makes you think there’s something wrong, Matt?”
What made him think—
Matt clenched his hands into fists. Was she asking for a list of reasons?
“Well?” Annie prodded, cocking her chin. Her silky, sable-colored hair rippled back from her face.
Yes, she apparently was, he decided. Which was just fine and dandy with him. Because he was ready to cite chapter and verse. If he’d unwittingly offended her, he wanted to know about it so he could try to make amends. But if she was going off the deep end for some bizarre reason that had nothing to do with him, he was not going to take the blame for it!
“You’ve been acting weird for days,” he told her bluntly.
Her chin racheted up another notch. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, really.” He nodded to emphasize the affirmation. “Very weird. Not like the Annie Martin I’ve known all my life.”
His companion’s brown eyes suddenly widened and sheened. Her throat began working convulsively. For one awful seemingly endless moment, Matt was afraid she was going to begin to cry. The possibility appalled him. A show of temper he could handle. But tears? From Annie?
No, he prayed. Please, God. No.
“Maybe the Annie Martin you’ve known all your life has been a figment of your imagination,” she said huskily, averting her face. “Did you ever think of that?”
A split second later the lights in the theater went down. As they dimmed, the movie screen filled with a notice that the following preview had been approved for all viewing audiences.
“Annie—” If she thought she could lob a verbal grenade like her last remark into the conversation and leave him to fall on it, she had another think coming!
“Shh,” she returned. “The movie’s starting.”
“It’s just a trailer!”
Someone nearby made a shushing sound.
Matt gritted his teeth and tried again. “Annie—”
“Be quiet!” another someone demanded loudly, prompting an angry chorus of shushes.
Annie gave him a look that would have blistered paint. See what you’ve done? it seemed to accuse.
Matt subsided into seething silence. It was either that or jump up and stalk out of the theater—preferably dragging Annie along behind him by the scruff of the neck.
Slumping in his seat, he grabbed a fistful of popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth. Up on the movie screen, an expensive sports car had just careened off a cliff and exploded in a great ball of fire. The trailer’s narrator was intoning something about somebody having a very bad day.
Matthew Douglas Powell could relate to that.
Maybe the Annie Martin you’ve known all your life has been a figment of your imagination, she’d said. Did you ever think of that?
What was that supposed to mean?
Up on the movie screen, the somebody who allegedly was having the very bad day was blowing up the headquarters of the people who apparently were responsible for his misfortunes.
Matthew Douglas Powell could relate to that, too.
* * *
“So you did manage to make up with him,” Zoe Alexandra Armitage concluded four days later.
“More or less,” Annie said, searching her meager stock of cooking supplies with an escalating sense of dismay. The recipe she intended to make called for cinnamon, mace and ginger. While she’d located a small cache of the first spice, the second and third were nowhere to be found. A quick glance at her wristwatch told her it was too late to make a run to the supermarket. Grocery stores closed up early on Thanksgiving eve. “But I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d stayed angry with me. I mean, I was really awful, Zoe. You have no idea.”
“I roomed with you at college,” came the dry reminder from the other end of the telephone line. “I think I have a vague notion of how bitchy you can be.”
Annie grimaced, slamming shut the cabinet she’d been rummaging through and yanking open the one next to it. “I’m not talking about P.M.S.”
“I know.” There was a soft, sympathetic sigh. Then came the quiet but unequivocal assertion, “You can’t let things go on like this, Annie. You have to tell Matt how you feel.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Back when you thought what was happening between the two of you was just physical, you mean.”
The choice of words flicked Annie on the raw. Knowing Zoe, she assumed this was intentional. Her mind jumped back to the conversation she and her friend had had on a Saturday morning many weeks ago.
Supposing...supposing I did tell him, she’d been goaded into hypothesizing. Supposing I said, “Matt, I’m attracted to you.” What if he didn’t say it back, Zoe? Even worse, what if I said it and he told me he wasn’t? Or what if...if— Oh, Lord! I sound like a fifteen-year-old in the throes of an unrequited crush!
How can you be sure it’s a crush? her all-too-perceptive friend had countered after a long silence. Or that it’s unrequited?
Annie stiffened, conscious of a sudden tightening in her chest. “Yes,” she concurred, forcing the word out. “That’s what I mean.”
“Well, if telling the truth’s worked in the past...”
“This is different!”
“How?”
“It just is.”
Still no mace or ginger. Disgusted, Annie jerked open a drawer and scowled at its jumbled contents. Somewhere in the back of her mind a nasty little voice offered the nasty little observation that the late Lisa Powell probably had never had to search her kitchen for anything. No doubt Lisa had always kept her pantry fully stocked and impeccably organized.
But Lisa didn’t have a full-time career, another—infinitely nicer—voice observed.
And Matt liked that, didn’t he? the nasty voice countered. He liked having an old-fashioned, stay-at-home wife who cooked and cleaned and cooed.
“You say you’ve fallen in love with him,” Zoe said.
Annie closed her eyes. A wave of longing surged through her. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And you want to be his wife.”
“Y-yes,” she whispered again. Oh, yes. She wanted that more than anything else in the world. If only...
“Then tell him.”
Annie opened her eyes. She banged the clutter-filled drawer shut. “Not yet. I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
Annie shook her head, wondering how she could explain to someone else the emotional confusion she couldn’t adequately explain to herself. Yes, she was in love with Matt, and yes, she wanted to be his wife. But to come right out and tell him?
There’d been a time when she could have told her best buddy anything. A time when she’d been able to bare her soul to him. By all rights, the intimacies they’d shared since the end of August should have enhanced the openness that existed between them. Only they hadn’t.
“Don’t you understand?” she asked, feeling more than a little bit desperate. “I’ve spent my entire adult life not wanting to get married!”
“So?” Zoe sounded impatient, as though doing an about-face on the issue of matrimony was no big deal. “You’ve finally met the right man and you’ve changed your mind. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re entitled.”
“I’ve finally met— Zoe, for heaven’s sake! I’ve known Matt Powell for more than thirty years!”
“Well, maybe he didn’t become the right man until recently.”
The assertion stopped Annie cold. It ran counter to what she’d always unthinkingly accepted as a fundamental romantic truth. Specifically, that the right person was the right person, at once and forever.
And yet...
People grew, she reminded herself. They adapted. They adjusted. They altered. Perhaps their “rightness” for other people did so, too.
“Then again,” Zoe went on reflectively, “maybe you needed those more than thirty years to become the right woman.”
The doubts Annie had been battling since the kiss Matt had given her at the end of their third practice date suddenly coalesced to assail her, full force. “Assuming I am,” she muttered.
“Assuming you are what?”
Annie hesitated for an instant, then laid it on the line. “The right woman.”
There was a long pause on the other end. Then, carefully, “For Matt, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Annie—”
“Think about it, Zoe.” The words came tumbling out. “There’s no question what kind of marriage partner Matt would be. He’s already been one. He was a wonderful husband to Lisa. And she...she was a wonderful wife to him. A perfect wife! But me? Can you imagine what kind of wife I’d be?”
There was another long pause.
“For a man you loved and who loved you back, I’d imagine you’d be the best wife you could,” Zoe finally replied. “And that means your husband would be one very lucky guy.”
The conviction in her friend’s musical voice nearly undid Annie. For a few moments she thought she might actually break down and weep.
“Oh, sure.” She gulped, blinking against the stinging threat of impending tears. “Unless...unless he happened to l-like ginger or m-mace.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Annie sniffed, bringing herself under control. “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Well, Matt and his parents and me and my parents—plus Rick and Eden and her parents—are having holiday dinner together. Peachy’s even flown up from New Orleans.”
“Don’t tell me you volunteered to cook the whole meal.”
“I’m not crazy, Zoe!”
“No, you’re in love, which may very well be worse. Especially when it comes to demonstrations of domesticity.”
Annie winced at her friend’s acuteness. While she wasn’t about to turn herself into a happy homemaker for anyone, including Matt, there was no denying that she felt an overwhelming need to prove that she knew her way around a kitchen. That her culinary skills could not match Lisa’s was not the point. Showing that she was capable of doing more than microwaving pizzas and making dinner reservations was.
“I said I’d fix something with sweet potatoes,” she confessed.
“Hence the reference to ginger and mace a few minutes ago?”
“Yes.”
“I gather you don’t have any.”
“I’d go out and buy some, but all the food shops have closed up early because of the holiday.”
“Mmm.” Annie sensed a shift into the social secretary mode. “The lack of spices aside, what’s this ‘something’ you’re planning to fix with sweet potatoes?”
“I found the recipe in the newspaper last week. It’s a casserole, with apples and chestnuts. Only...well, the list of ingredients included vacuum-packed roasted chestnuts and all I could find were marrons glacés. Since I didn’t think chestnuts in sugar syrup would work, I bought walnuts instead.”
“What about liquor?”
“You’re advising me to get drunk?”
A laugh rippled down the line. “Maybe later. I was asking whether there’s liquor in this casserole of yours.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you have any dark rum?”
Annie frowned, mentally reviewing her liquor supply. “Uh, yes. I brought back a bottle from the duty free shop at the airport a few years ago when I went to the Caribbean.”
“Terrific. All you have to do is pour a big shot of it into your casserole before you put it in to bake. I guarantee no one will miss the mace or ginger.”
Annie had to smile. “Is that the secret of Mrs. Ogden’s success as a hostess? Adding alcohol to the food?”
“One of them,” Zoe acknowledged. “Of course, having a five-star chef on staff doesn’t hurt.”
“I can imagine.”
“I, uh, don’t suppose you ever considered having someone help you with this sweet potato thing?”
“You mean, did I think about getting it prepared by some professional caterer, then passing it off as my own?”
“Exactly.”
“Of course I considered it.” Annie massaged the nape of her neck. “But...well, let’s just say that underspiced, overboozed and improvised-with-walnuts though this casserole may be, it’s important that it’s mine. Don’t ask me why—”
“I know why,” Zoe interrupted firmly. “And so do you. It’s Matt who deserves to be clued in.”
Resentment flared, fueled by a sense of insecurity that gnawed at the very core of Annie’s belief in herself. “He didn’t need to be clued in with Lisa.”
“Lisa was Lisa. You are you.” A sigh heaved through the line. “Look, Annie, I know you’re confused. It’s not easy dealing with the realization that what you want from life—what you need from other people—is subject to change. You’ve spent a lot of years viewing yourself as an independent, go-it-alone career woman. Discovering you have a yen for white lace and orange blossoms must be...unsettling.”
“There are moments when I’m afraid that wanting what I want with Matt might mean I’m betraying who I am,” Annie confessed painfully. “Or at least, who I’ve always thought I was.”
“You haven’t,” Zoe assured her. “You couldn’t! You’re one of the most honest people I’ve ever known. So...if you’ve got some cockeyed conviction that the way to Matt’s heart is through his stomach, go for it. But once he’s recovered from the indigestion, do what you’ve always done. Tell your best buddy the truth.”
* * *
It was shortly before dusk on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Matthew Douglas Powell was sitting at the table in Hannah Elaine Martin’s kitchen feasting on leftovers and feeling pretty good about his life.
The difficulties between him and Annie seemed to have been sorted out. This was not to imply that he completely understood what those difficulties had been. He didn’t. But given that the situation appeared to have resolved itself, he’d decided not to press for explanations. Deep in his heart of hearts—in that primitively masculine part of him that still regarded most members of the opposite sex with a mixture of testosterone-tainted awe and utter bewilderment—he’d chalked up Annie’s behavior to some sort of “female” thing.
He didn’t get it.
In point of fact, he suspected he’d probably never get it.
But as long as Annie was all right with whatever had been wrong, he wasn’t going to rock the boat.
“Matt?”
“Mmpf?” he responded through a mouthful of reheated sweet potato casserole. As good as the dish had been at the Powell-Martin-Keene holiday dinner, forty-eight hours of mellowing in the refrigerator had transmuted it into something close to ambrosia. And potent? Who’d have thought the yellowy gold tuber his mom usually served with a topping of minimarshmallows could pack such a flavorful punch!
Maybe it was the walnuts, he speculated.
There was no denying that he’d approached Annie’s contribution to the Thanksgiving table with a trace of trepidation. It wasn’t that he lacked confidence in her culinary competence. He wholeheartedly believed she could cook up a cordon bleu storm if she set her mind to it. But the fact was, she’d elected to direct her energies elsewhere. Which was fine with him, because it was his firm conviction that a woman’s place was in the kitchen only if that’s where she chose to be.
He hadn’t really tasted the first bite he’d taken. The incredibly anxious look he’d seen in Annie’s eyes had caused his throat to close up so tightly he’d had to choke it down. By the time he’d ferried a second forkful to his lips, several of the other diners had already delivered verdicts.
This is wonderful, Annie.
Absolutely delicious.
Dear, you must give me—
“Matt, there’s something I need to tell you.”
He blinked, focusing on the brown-haired, brown-eyed woman sitting opposite him. “So tell me,” he invited after a moment, giving her an easy smile.
She didn’t smile back. But she did lick her lips. For a split second Matt read the darting movement as provocation, then he realized it was prompted by nervousness.
His smile contracted.
“Annie?” he asked, leaning forward.
“I want to get married.”
Matt dropped his fork. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor. “To whom?”
It was an unforgivably stupid response. He understood that the instant the words left his lips. Hell, he understood it as he felt the words forming in his brain and flowing out of his mouth. But what was he supposed to say?
Annie didn’t answer his question. She just stared at him.
“All the years I’ve known you,” Matt said, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “You’ve never wanted marriage to...to anybody.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” Her lashes flicked down for a second, then lifted. “People do that, you know.”
“But...why?”
He saw her tremble then. After a moment she straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. “Because I’m in love with you, Matt.”
His heart seemed to stop. His breath seemed to clog at the top of his throat. He went cold then hot then cold again and his head started to swim. “You—you never said—” he began hoarsely.
“Maybe I was waiting for you to go first.”
There was a long pause. Sometime during the course of it, Matt’s heart started beating again and he recovered his ability to exhale.
“You must...you must know how I feel,” he faltered, his tone vacillating between an apology he wasn’t certain he owed and an accusation he recognized he had no right to make. But even as he spoke, he saw in his lover’s eyes that she didn’t know. That she wouldn’t know unless he said the words aloud.
And so, belatedly, he did.
There was another pause.
“But not enough to marry me, right?” Annie finally asked, pushing herself away from the table. There was an air of finality to the movement. Or maybe it was the calm before the storm.
Matt shook his head. “It’s not like that. Love isn’t something you can quantify—”
“You married Lisa.”
He flinched at the reference to his dead wife. “That’s...different.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Why is it different, Matt?”
“Because—”
“Why?” she goaded again. Then, suddenly, something seemed to snap. She surged to her feet, her eyes dangerously bright. “Is it because you don’t love me the same way you loved her?”
There was a disastrous silence.
Matt put an end to it by telling the truth. Whether this was an act of kindness or cruelty, he couldn’t say. He only knew that the characteristic directness of her question allowed for no evasion.
“Yes,” he said simply.
Annie turned away.
Compelled by emotions he didn’t comprehend, Matt rose and moved to where she was standing. He hesitated for a moment, then placed his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened at the contact, but didn’t try to pull away.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I didn’t mean—”
She pivoted back to face him. “Yes,” she countered evenly. “You did. And as much as it hurt, I’m glad you were honest.”
He gazed down at her for an aching interval of time, conscious of a gradual acceleration in his pulse and a deepening in the pattern of his breathing. Annie’s proximity was part of it. The tantalizing scent of her skin and hair. The warm temptation of her flesh. An undercurrent of volatile emotionalism contributed to his response, as well.
“Annie,” he said finally, his voice husky, his body beginning to throb. He stroked his hands up her arms. “Oh, Annie.”
She lifted her right hand, placing her palm against his chest. “No,” she said.
Although his fingers stilled against her flesh, he didn’t let go “But...”
“No,” she repeated, shaking her head. Her face had gone milky pale. Her eyes were huge and dark. “I can’t...be...with you anymore, Matt.”
It took him a few moments to understand what she was telling him. The fury he felt once he did, left him temporarily bereft of speech. “No marriage, no...” he finally rasped, summarizing her apparent ultimatum in the crudest possible terms.
For an instant he thought Annie would lash out at him. In an awful way, he wished she would. But then, with palpable effort, she controlled herself.
“I want you to leave,” she said.
“Fine by me,” he responded. “Because there sure as hell isn’t any reason for me to stay.”