half-smiled, half-frowned at me. “You can say you don’t like it,” he said. “You can actually say, ‘Dylan, this cheese sucks.’ ”
I would never. Not ever.
“It’s good,” I said with a laugh. “Strong.”
He tipped his head toward me. “You can change your mind, you know.”
“About what?”
“About staying.”
“Why…why would you say that? I don’t want to change my mind.” I knocked back half the champagne in one long gulp. Did he want me to change my mind? The thought made me feel incredibly naked under the robe and I pulled the fabric up into my lap.
“You seem wound up.”
Wound up. Right. For some reason the voice in my head, the voice that kept wanting to remind me that I was married, would not shut up.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“I don’t turn out birthday girls on their birthdays.”
I thought of the brunette I saw in those pictures, that beautiful girl who clung to his side, the two of them looking like they were in the pages of a catalog. A catalog where you could buy a richer, more exciting life.
I handed him my now empty champagne flute.
“More?”
“Please.”
He filled my glass back up and handed it over to me, and then pulled a tray out of the oven. He tipped the tray onto a plate, and little pastries rolled off onto the plate. Two landed on the floor and he grabbed them with his bare hand, shoving one in his mouth.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s hot.”
He put the plate down by my hip and ate the other pastry. Watching him do all these small domestic things on my behalf, seeing the trouble and expense he’d gone to for me and my birthday, made me feel worse.
“Is this where you talked to me?” I asked, twirling the champagne glass in my hands. “At this house?”
“Yeah. I mean, usually. I have another building here. A bigger garage with an office. I talked to you a few times there.”
“This house, another garage, and Margaret’s house? All here?”
“I own the mountain, Annie.”
I glanced away, my breath skittering around my lungs. He owns the damn mountain.
“Truthfully,” he said, “I rarely leave this mountain.”
“You go to parties in tuxedos.”
“Yeah, I think that will be the last one I’m invited to. I pissed off one too many people.”
“Were you always like this?” I asked.
“A hermit?” He laughed.
“No.”
“Rich? No. Not at all,” he said.
“Alone.” He seemed intrinsically alone. Self-contained and solitary. Even surrounded by people, he would seem alone.
“I’m hardly alone,” he said. “I’ve got a crew of guys here every day. My business partner. Margaret’s here constantly.”
I wondered if he believed the lie, but I did not. I knew alone. I’d been painfully alone and I only realized it now, after a month at the Flowered Manor. It only took a few friendships of exceedingly shallow depths to show me how alone I’d been. And not by choice.
“Why me?” I asked. The question surprised us both.
“Why you, what?”
“Why’d you do all this with me?” His face was blank, like he didn’t understand what I was asking. “Was it a power thing? Was it like a…I don’t know…a test? A joke—”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Annie? A joke?” He sounded offended.
“I mean look at you, Dylan. Look at all that you have. You could get down off this mountain and have any woman you wanted and instead…you were having phone sex with some stranger who could barely make rent on her shitty trailer in a shitty trailer park. And my guess is you knew that. You knew I was living in that trailer from the very beginning, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew, but—”
“So was it some kind of game to play around with the poor girl?” What did he call it that night, virgin kink? Was this poverty kink?
“You think any of that matters to me? What I have and what you don’t?”
“I have no idea what matters to you,” I said, and he blinked.
“Well, that shit doesn’t.”
“So…why me?”
He finished what was left in his champagne glass and then filled it up. He gestured to me to finish my glass.
“A little liquid courage for the birthday girl,” he said, sounding…dark. Angry. As if my questions had wounded him. I drained my champagne and held my glass out for more. “That first phone call, I knew you were lying about living in that trailer. You are a shitty liar.”
Oh, I thought, you are so wrong. So impossibly wrong. You have no idea the lies I’m