“Forgot what?”

“I….” Her eyes lifted to mine then fluttered away to the table behind me. “I got you something.”

“What?”

She walked past me, giving me a little smile, then retrieved a black unmarked bag. “It’s not on the market yet, but it’s supposed to be much better than the latest model; and I noticed you don’t have a watch, so I just thought…here.” She shoved the bag into my hands.

I studied her. “You don’t need to buy me anything.”

“I know. I wanted to do it.”

“Why?”

“Because….” She shrugged, tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously. “Because, honestly, it felt good. It felt good to think about you and what you might want, what you might need….” Her voice trailed off, and she looked nervous and uncertain.

Her answer was alarming, and I wasn’t sure why it unsettled me. Nevertheless, I tried to give her a reassuring smile as I reached in the bag, pulling out a very sleek, high-tech watch in futuristic-looking packaging.

“It’s a watch,” I said. By the looks of it, it also appeared to be a very expensive watch.

“Yes. But it’s more than that. You can use it to track your calories—both intake and calories burned, and you can enter diet data directly—and distance is recorded via the GPS tracking. And it also lets you send and receive tweets and take pictures which you can upload immediately to social media. It’s 4G, and you’re already connected. So you can do it all anywhere, anytime.” She was smiling at me, a big, hopeful grin. “I thought it might make your online interactions a little easier, plus the fitness tracker….”

Being connected all the time sounded awful; but I saw that she’d put a lot of thought into the gift and was excited about it, so I did the only thing I could.

I said, “Wow, thank you, Annie. This is…really great.” I even sounded like I meant it, probably because I did mean it.

Just the fact that she’d bought me a present blew me away. I was on her mind; she was thinking of ways to make me happy. That was the real gift.

***

I held her hand as we made our way outside to hail a cab. I took her to Tom’s for dinner because she seemed to really like the food there. Thankfully, tonight was Tom’s night off, so I wouldn’t have to sit through Annie fangirling him again.

Instead of sitting opposite her at the booth, I sat right next to her. After what happened at her place, I felt the need to be as close as I could possibly get.

I hadn’t planned on drinking, but strangely, when the waitress came to take our order, I found myself asking for a beer. These feelings I had for Annie, the intensity of them, shit, it was no surprise I needed something to take the edge off. Annie ordered a glass of red wine, and I couldn’t stop staring when her full lips curved around the edge of the glass. I could see in her eyes that she knew exactly what I was thinking.

I asked her lots of questions about her life now, her childhood, the kinds of things she liked to do. She was a tough nut to crack for most of it, only giving me quick, close-ended answers. I wanted to know about the things she’d been through as a kid. Just call me a masochist because I knew hearing about it would piss me off, but I still had this fierce need to know it all, somehow exorcise those demons for her.

She turned the conversation back on me and seemed more than content to listen as I talked about myself. In fact, she ate it up. I saw genuine interest with each new story; it didn’t matter if I was talking about pranks during college or a particularly vicious rugby match, her eyes were bright, watchful, engrossed. She was enthralled, hung on my every word.

She made me feel like I was the king of fascinating blokes. It was a heady feeling, seductive, did wonders for my ego. It confirmed that she genuinely liked me.

“You’re a great storyteller.” Her words were a little slurred, and I smiled warmly. “This was nice,” she went on as she gazed up at me from beneath her thick lashes. She was on her third glass of wine, her cheeks growing rosy, and I’d just finished my second beer. The waitress came and set the bill on the table.

“It’s not over yet,” I replied, rubbing my thumb over her bottom lip. I felt her breath sweep over my skin in a rush.

“No?”

I shook my head, my lips curving in a smile. “I’m taking you dancing.”

Her eyes got big and round, and she seemed surprised. “You dance?”

I nodded. “Relatively well.”

It wasn’t long before we were being papped making our way inside a flashy nightclub in a stylish area of Manhattan. Truth be told, Tom had suggested the place. I knew no more about flashy Manhattan nightclubs than I did about open heart surgery. With my hand firmly on Annie’s lower back, I ushered her to the bar, where a tall, slim woman wearing a belly top took our drinks order.

“Oh, my God! You’re Ronan Fitzpatrick, aren’t you?” a female voice squealed from behind me. Annie got a hunted look on her face and focused intently on the glass she was holding. It was moments like these that I realized just how unused she was to being around people. Obviously, she wasn’t sheltered, but she’d kept herself away from social situations for so long that she was no longer equipped to handle them. I turned to find three women wearing tight little dresses and sky-high heels smiling at me like I’d just told them they’d won the Lotto.

“It is him!” another said. “Could you please sign something for us? We’ve been following your romance this week in all the magazines, and we are just obsessed with the both of you.” They all gave Annie encouraging smiles, but she just stood quietly next to me as though frozen. I signed some napkins for them and let them take some pictures, and they gushed a little more before finally leaving us alone. The barwoman tapped me on the shoulder then and handed me a card.