Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 10

ANNABELLEShe had worn the earrings his mother once called pretty at a Christmas dinner, the gold ones she'd been saving for an event that deserved them, and she sat across from Jack Mensah, her boyfriend who hopefully after tonight would be her fiancée.Annabelle couldn't wait to say YES. They had been in the restaurant for the past hour, eating food she couldn't taste, and she had felt like a woman on the edge of something wonderful. Annabelle had to give Jack his credit; he knew how to keep the suspense."I'll be right back," Jack said, standing, patting his jacket pocket the way men do when they're checking for a ring box, and Annabelle Wade smiled into her wineglass and thought, so it's really happening tonight. She'd suspected for weeks that Jack was going to propose. He had been carrying a careful energy that she'd found suspicious.The dinner had been exactly what she'd wanted it to be, which made her further believe her theory.Jack had made the reservation himself, and that'

ENOCHEnoch Wade ran on six hours of sleep and had done so since university, a discipline he had developed not from necessity but from the understanding that the hours between midnight and six belonged to no one and were therefore the most productive ones available. Tonight, he had used them well: two reports reviewed, one board memo drafted, a contract flagged for legalities that would have sat until Monday if he hadn't caught it.His phone lit up at 2:17 in the morning and he looked at it the way he barely spared it a glance. He had trained himself never to react before he processed.The name on the screen was one he had assigned a ringtone to, so when he heard it, he reached for the phone before his brain caught up with his hands.Anna.He picked up on the third ring because he was a man with some discipline left."Anna," he said carefully, worried about her and excited to hear her voice all at onceWhat followed was "Cousiiiiin," stretched and warm. He sat back in his chair and l

ANNAThe ice had worked its magic on her puffy eyes.She had spent Sunday night doing two things: crying and pressing zip lock bags of ice against her eyes with a methodical focus. She had decided that puffy eyes were the one indignity she was not walking into Monday morning with. By six AM the damage was manageable. By seven, with concealer and the specific determination of someone who has something to prove, it was gone.She stood at her mirror and looked at herself.Then she went to her wardrobe and reached past everything sensible and pulled out her structured emerald green dress. She had bought it four months ago on impulse, she was glad she did. The dress hugged her figure and complimented her skin so nicely.The heels came last. Six inches, nude, reserved. She had worn them twice in five years. Once to a pitch meeting, once to a gala where Jack wanted her on his arm and she wanted to feel like someone worth looking at. Today they were purely for herself. She put them on, stood

ANNAAnna had been awake for hours before the sun finally appeared. She'd lain in the dark listening to Maya's steady breathing from the couch and had taken in every sound of the apartment. The refrigerator's hum. The faint traffic from the street below. The way the floorboards creaked near the door.She was saying goodbye to it before she'd even gotten out of bed.She gave up on sleep and made coffee. She showered and by eight A.M. She stood in the center of the living room with her single suitcase and her carry-on and looked at what remained. The boxes for storage, the leaving pile would go to donation, and the furniture that belonged to the apartment would stay exactly where it was for the next person.Maya appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her hair spiked up in different directions. She looked at Anna standing in the middle of the room and said nothing for a long moment."That's it?" she finally asked."Yeah." Anna looked at the suitca

ANNAThe first thought that surfaced through the fog of sleep was that she was lying on something so soft and so expensive that it felt illegal to exist here without a signed contract and a credit check.She stretched both arms out, then rolled over and screamed into the pillow. Not a dignified twenty-five-year-old woman scream. A little kid scream.She was here. Actually here. In London. In Enoch's apartment.Anna kicked her legs under the duvet, grinning like an idiot. Then she rolled the other way because the sheets felt too good not to. She gave herself sixty seconds of pure, stupid happiness. When she finished, she sat up and looked around.The guest room with cream walls and dark wood furniture was bigger than her entire old apartment. Everything was in the right place. Through the gap in the curtains, she could see buildings climbing toward a grey sky.She padded to the window and pulled the curtains open."Oh," she breathed.The grand city spread out before her full of poss