an early night of it.
She’d kissed Bill and headed for the stairs, and just as I was thinking about following her, Bill had refilled both our glasses without asking me.
“Oh,” I said, half-heartedly. “I was . . . I mean I shouldn’t . . .”
“Come on.” He pushed the glass towards me. “Just one more. This is my only chance to get to know you before I entrust my kids to your care, after all! You could be anyone for all I know.”
He gave me a grin, his tanned cheeks wrinkling, and I wondered how old he was. He could have been anything from forty to sixty; it was hard to tell. He wore rimless glasses and had one of those tanned, slightly weather-beaten faces, and his cropped hair gave him an almost ageless quality, slightly Bruce Willis–esque.
I was very tired—the long journey and the stress of packing had finally hit me like a ton of bricks. But there was enough truth in his remark for me to sigh inwardly and draw the glass towards me. He was right, after all. This was our one chance to get to know each other before he left. It would seem strange and evasive to refuse him that.
He rested his chin on one hand and watched as I picked up the glass and put it to my lips—his head tilted, his eyes following the movement of the wine to my lips and staying there.
“So, who are you, Rowan Caine?” he asked. His voice was a little slurred, and I wondered how much he’d had to drink.
Something, something in his tone, in the directness of the question, in the uncomfortably intense intimacy of his gaze, made my stomach shift uneasily.
“What do you want to know?” I said, with an attempt at lightness.
“You remind me of someone . . . but I can’t think who. A film star, maybe. You don’t have any famous relatives, do you? A sister in Hollywood?”
I gave a smile at this rather tired line.
“No, definitely not. I’m an only child, and anyway, my family’s about as ordinary as you can get.”
“Maybe it’s work . . . anyone in the family work in architecture?”
I thought of my stepfather’s insurance sales business and only just stopped myself from rolling my eyes. Instead, I shook my head, firmly, and he looked at me over his wineglass, frowning so that a deep furrow appeared at the bridge of his nose.
“Maybe it’s that . . . what’s her name. That Devil Wears Prada woman.”
“What, Meryl Streep?” I said, startled out of my nervousness enough to give a short laugh. He shook his head impatiently.
“No, the other one. The young one. Anne Hathaway, that’s it. You’ve got a look of her.”
“Anne Hathaway?” I tried not to look as skeptical as I felt. Anne Hathaway maybe if she gained forty to sixty pounds and had acne scars and a haircut by the salon trainee. “I have to say, Bill, you’re very kind, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that comparison.”
“It’s not that though.” He got up and came around the breakfast bar to my side of it, sitting on the gleaming chrome stool facing me, his legs spread wide so that I couldn’t easily move without rubbing his thigh. “No, it’s not that. I definitely feel like we’ve met. Who did you say you worked for before this?”
I rattled off the list again, and he shook his head, dissatisfied.
“I don’t know any of them. Maybe I’m imagining it. I feel like I’d remember a face . . . well, a face like yours.”
Fuck. Something twisted in the pit of my stomach. I had been in this situation too often not to recognize where this was heading. My first job out of school, a young waitress with a boss who dangled a pay raise and complimented me on my fuchsia-pink bra. Countless creeps on countless nights out, putting themselves between me and the door. Randy dads at the nursery, angling for sympathy about their postpartum wives who didn’t understand them . . .
Bill was one of them.
He was my employer. He was my boss’s husband. And worst of all, he was . . .
Jesus. I can’t bring myself to say it.
My hands had begun to shake, and I clenched my fingers more tightly around the stem of my wineglass to try to hide it.
I cleared my throat and tried to push my stool back, but it was wedged against the edge of the breakfast bar. Bill’s