She stood so fast her chair toppled onto the floor. She backed away with her hands in front of her to stop that terrible tide. She had to get away from it, had to run, had to hide where it couldn’t reach her, couldn’t drown her.
She had no memory of reaching the backyard or flying across it. Her sandaled feet clattering on the stairway to her apartment brought her to her senses.
Annabelle opened the door and nearly fell into the living room.
She pulled off her sandals with hands that were still shaking, then kicked the shoes all the way into the corner. Suddenly she felt terribly cold.
That’s when she heard the thud of footsteps up the stairs and Ben’s voice calling her. “Annabelle!” Then louder, “Damnation, Annabelle, answer me!” He shoved the door open so hard it bounced off the wall with a thwack that made her jump.
She stood, hunched, her back to him.
He took her by her arms and turned her to face him. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“What was that all about? Are you all right?”
“I warned you, Ben, I really did.” Her belly began to flutter as she fought to keep from crying. “I’m so sorry.” She gazed up into his face. “Don’t look at me like that. I really am sorry.”
In an instant he looked merely stunned and confused. “It’s okay. Come on back.”
“No!” She wrenched away from him and hugged her body as though she was shivering.
She glanced up to see Ben’s face over her shoulder as he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. She had a terrible desire to giggle. She’d seen him with that kind of look in high school, when the football team was down twenty points and it was up to Ben Jackson to save the day.
“Annabelle,” he said in a tone he must use to redress recalcitrant witnesses. “You’ve seen plenty of drunks before, and everybody spills the occasional glass of wine. It’s no big deal. Gene is devastated. He keeps staring around and asking what he said to upset you.”
“Oh, poor Gene. It’s not his fault.”
He held out his hand. “Please come back with me and tell him that. You’d relieve his mind.”
“No! I couldn’t.”
“Listen,” he said reasonably, as though he were trying to persuade a frightened puppy out from under a chair, “these people are my friends. They want to be your friends. Come back, and I promise you nobody will make an issue of it. Say you got a cramp in your leg, or the salmon mousse disagreed with you. They’ll be all over you with sympathy.”
“But it wasn’t that, Ben.”
“Then what was it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said in a very small voice. “Nobody would.”
“Try me.”
She shook her head.
“For Pete’s sake, Annabelle.”
That was too much. “I have just embarrassed the heck out of myself in front of a bunch of people I barely know, plus my employer, and I’m not going to go back and make another fool of myself.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off and stepped close to him. “And another thing. Didn’t it occur to you to mention to me in passing that this was a birthday party for your mother?”
“Huh?”
“Well, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal. Not like we were giving presents. It’s just another Thursday.”
“It is not. It is a birthday party, and there I am singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with a stupid grin on my face and trying to act as though I knew all along, and then that drunken buffoon spilled all that red wine, and…” At the memory of the wine on the lace tablecloth, her eyes closed, and she swayed.
“Annabelle?” She felt Ben’s hands pulling her against his chest, his strong arms encircling her, holding her close against him. “Belle?”
She could feel the dry heaves as she gulped convulsively. No tears. There were never any tears, just this gulping and hiccuping while her throat and eyes burned. Other people cried. What was so wrong with her that she couldn’t? Was that another symptom that she was a monster?
He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face up. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to quell the shivers in her stomach.
“God, you are so beautiful,” he whispered.
She felt his lips against hers, gentle, warm, moving back and forth across her lips, his tongue barely touching, teasing, tasting. She wanted to resist, to tell him this wasn’t the time or place, but the cascade of warmth within her wouldn’t allow her to do that. Instead, her own lips parted and her tongue darted out to meet his, to intermingle, to taste the remains of sorbet, the hint of sweetness on his lips.
His hands slid down her back and below her waist, holding her against him. His whole body felt rock-solid, so wonderfully, comfortingly male. Yet his erection wasn’t comforting at all, but disturbing, because she felt the heat in her own loins answering as she moved against him in a slow rhythm that she couldn’t seem to control.
No. It was up to her to control it, not to fall over backward at his touch, or to let herself feel all the conflicting emotions he evoked. She sucked in her breath and pulled back from him, her eyes wide. “Go away, Ben, please, right now.”
He pulled her into his arms again. “I don’t want to,” he whispered into her hair.
“You’ve got to go back to your party.” She slapped his hand away. “Stop that. You go tell them I succumbed to the vapors or something.”
“Come with me.”
“Ben!” This time she used enough force to overbalance him so that he had to step back a couple of paces. “Read my lips. I cannot, I will not go back over to that house tonight. I’ll write everybody notes tomorrow, including the caterers if that’s what you want…”
He sat on the sofa and took her hands. “It’s not what I want. It’s what you need. If you don’t come back now, the next time it’ll be harder to crawl out of that shell. How can you ever hope to feel at ease in social situations…”
“Who said I have to?”
“I do, dammit.”
She started to smart off back at him, then stopped, tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “What do you have to do with it?”
Amazingly, he blushed and stammered, “Because I—I want what’s best for you.”
“And the reason for that would be…?”
“That wasn’t exactly a friendly kiss we just exchanged. My ears are ringing.”
“Even in the South you no longer have to marry me because you kissed me, Ben.”
“What if I want to?”
This time she laughed. “Right. Like I’d be the perfect district attorney’s wife.” She walked to the corner and picked up her shoes. “Look, Ben, I’m tired, and I’m feeling like a nitwit. I’m not up to facing those people tonight. Please just make my apologies to your mother and her guests.”
“You won’t change your mind? Or even tell me what went on?”
“Nope.”
His shoulders sagged. “Fine. I can’t pick you up and carry you over there. Well, I could, but you’d probably kick and scream or something equally unattractive.”
“You got that right.”
He straightened. “However, Miss Annabelle, this is far from over. I intend to find out what’s causing this. And when I do, you