A Hippogriff for Christmas - Zoe Chant Page 0,28
about how close I am to my family. But… there’s more to it than that. Things that, listening to you now, I wish I’d found a way to explain to you – or that I could find a way to explain to you now.”
Beau paused, his lips tightening. Annie blinked at him, not quite certain she understood what he was saying.
“Something you want to tell me?” she asked, frowning. “You mean something about you? About your family?”
Beau nodded. “Yes.” He hesitated, pulling in a deep breath. “Annie, you asked me how often I do this kind of thing – the sweeping girls off their feet thing, I mean. I told you the truth when I said you were the first. And there’s a reason for that.”
Annie could barely bring herself to breathe in the slight pause that followed. The skin of her fingers was tingling where the warmth of Beau’s hand was seeping through her glove.
“Like you said, it’s to do with my family. We’re not like other people,” Beau said, slowly and carefully. “It’s not the only thing that’s different, but the important one right now is that when we meet someone – I mean someone special –”
Annie leaned in. She found herself hanging on his every word, desperate to hear what he was going to say next. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage, as if it was trying to leap straight out of her chest.
“Annie,” Beau said, his voice serious, his eyes gazing into hers, dark and intense. “I have to tell you that I –”
Annie couldn’t stop the soft, startled cry that left her lips as a sudden, piercing sound rent the air between them, accompanied by a low, growling buzzing noise.
Wide-eyed, Annie whipped her head left then right, wondering what on earth could be happening – what kind of emergency alarm could be –
“Oh.” Beau’s deep voice cut through the fog of her confused near-panic. He held up the electronic token in one massive hand, a small, ironic smile on his lips. “I guess our chowder is ready. I’ll just – I’ll just go get that.”
Annie could only bring herself to nod, her heart still halfway up her throat. She stared after Beau as he stood and made his way back to the soup stall, and not just because she was being treated to an amazing view of his ass in his dark blue jeans.
What – what was that?!
She wasn’t usually this flighty. Even if she had been, she would’ve had to get over it, working in a busy bakery. But Beau had been about to tell her – well, what, exactly?
Why had she been so drawn in by his words? It was almost as if she’d been waiting for him to tell her something she already knew, but had somehow forgotten –
She shook her head.
No, he was talking about his family, Annie told herself. He was going to tell me about the Christmas spirit or something, about how it brings them closer together.
But no matter how hard she tried to tell herself otherwise, Annie simply couldn’t shake the feeling Beau had been a moment away from telling her something far more important than that.
Taking a deep breath, Annie tried to pull herself together. She wanted to have as clear a head as possible when Beau came back, so she could ask him – smoothly, suavely, definitely not desperately – what he’d been about to say.
She was pulled out of her swirling thoughts by a buzzing sound, though a less dramatic one than the electronic token. Glancing down, Annie realized it was Beau’s phone where he’d left it on the table.
A green text bubble had popped up. Annie blinked as she looked down at it, still startled and lost in her thoughts.
She honestly didn’t mean to read the message – her eyes just flickered over the words automatically, the same way they did whenever she got a text.
From: Court
Hey – since you’re not here, I’m sending you a photo! Guess who’s shifting! And flying!
Guilt immediately flooded through her – she definitely didn’t consider herself the kind of person who’d invade someone else’s privacy by reading their texts! It was a good thing it hadn’t made any sense to her, Annie thought. It must’ve been some kind of family in-joke, or something –
The next thing that popped up on the screen, though… that definitely made her look twice, and this time it was completely on purpose.
At a first glance, Annie just assumed someone in Beau’s family