Revealing Annie - Freya Barker Page 0,32
you changed your hair and eyes? So people wouldn’t recognize you?” I glance over at Bryce who asked the question. “Why you’re hiding?”
“Pretty much. It got to be too much. Some fans can get…invasive.”
Sumo slides the platter of ribs on the table and sits down beside Bryce, across from me. I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed, especially after the welcome I received earlier. It feels like a cold shoulder.
“Let’s eat,” Sumo orders. The boy doesn’t have to be told twice and I chuckle at the amount of food he piles up on his plate. “Leave some for Annie, will ya?”
“Sorry,” he mumbles, his jaw already clamped around a rib as he shoves the plate to me.
“This is amazing, Sumo.”
The meat just falls off the bone and the sweet and spicy flavor is to die for. The pot stickers are filled with finely chopped leek in a chickpea paste and the coleslaw fresh and crunchy. Everything is unbelievably delicious.
“Good.”
“Why do they call you Sumo?” Bryce suddenly asks his father.
“The guys at the fire station started calling me that. Short for Matsumoto. Now everyone does.”
“What do you like better, Kyle or Sumo?” I want to know.
“I’m used to it. It’s just my family that still calls me Kyle.”
So noted.
Sumo
“I should go.”
“Stay,” I find myself saying when Annie starts getting up. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
I wait for her to sit back down before going inside after Bryce. I’d just sent him in to put away the new clothes we bought today. He hadn’t said a thing when I marched him into a store earlier and had him pick out a few things, and the bags were left sitting at the bottom of the stairs when we got home.
He still doesn’t talk much. At least not to me, he doesn’t seem to have a problem talking to Annie. I swear the boy’s already half in love with her, especially after that dessert. He’d had two helpings of it.
Busying myself with coffee, I think about the revelations of the past hour or so. My first emotion had been anger. It felt like I’d been played for a fool—used—but then she corrected me when I tried to call her Annabel. The way she looked at me when she said Annie is who she is, something in me believed her. There is nothing about her that’s ever struck me as disingenuous. There is nothing fake about the way she is with the animals at the shelter, the care she showed for her neighbor, the warm acceptance she’s shown Bryce, and certainly not in the way she’s responded to my kisses. No guise there, I’d bet my life on it.
Still, she may be hiding from the spotlight now, thinking she wants a simpler, more anonymous life, but how long before she misses it?
“Is everything okay?”
My head snaps around as she steps into the kitchen, Daisy slipping in with her before she closes the sliding door.
“Why do you live in a trailer?” I hadn’t realized the question was on my lips until the words formed.
She walks over to the island and pulls out a stool, sitting down as she aims her unwavering blue eyes on me.
“Because it’s a good place to disappear.”
“No one would expect you to live in a trailer,” I conclude and she nods.
“Exactly.”
“Is that also why you’re working at the City Market?”
She suddenly smiles and shakes her head.
“No, that’s by choice. I found an ad in the paper for help in the bakery and I jumped on it. I’d like to think if I hadn’t ended up where I did, I might’ve been a baker.”
“Let me guess, the shelter because you love dogs?”
The coffee maker gurgles and I grab a few mugs from the cupboard.
“Yes, and also for a little companionship.”
My hand holding the coffeepot hovers in the air as the vulnerability seeping through those few words suddenly puts things in a clearer perspective. I may not be able to imagine what her life was like before she decided to disappear, but one thing I do know: she was lonely.
I finish pouring and set a cup and some creamer in front of her. Then I reach out and pluck the glasses off her nose.
“What are you doing?”
“You don’t really need those, right?”
She blushes. “Just for driving,” she admits, as I lean my elbows on the island and lean close.
“Let’s agree on something. When you’re here, when we’re alone, you’re just Annie. No hiding, no disguises, just you.”
Her beautiful eyes shimmer as she tries to