“Champagne?”

“Only the best.”

I almost told him I’d never had champagne before, but I thought maybe there’d been enough revealing how little I knew of the world.

I sat down at the table while he opened the champagne.

“What is all this?” I asked, looking at the food he’d set out.

“That,” he pointed with the champagne bottle toward a plate, “is some kind of cheese that you are supposed to eat with those kinds of crackers. I don’t really know, to tell you the truth. Margaret did this.”

There was a bowl of olives on the table and I ate one. There was a pit in it. The pit must make it fancy. As discreetly as I could I took it out of my mouth and placed it in a little bowl that must be there for just that reason.

“Margaret came back while I was in the shower?”

“No, I imagine she came back hours ago. She lives in another house on the property. I called her when you were in the shower.”

“This is quite a compound you’ve got here,” I said, eating the cheese with the appropriate cracker. It tasted expensive. I was used to Velveeta and stale Ritz.

The champagne cork popped and he handed me a flute. And I sat in a mountain home in a silk robe, drinking champagne, and truthfully, I didn’t know how I got there.

Do not, I thought again, ruin this.

Dylan had put on a shirt while I was in the shower. A dark plaid button-up shirt, with most of the buttons undone. The sleeves were rolled up revealing his forearms, and somehow that was even sexier than his bare chest.

I put the cracker and cheese down on a plate and took a sip of my champagne. The champagne was amazing. Like sweet-and-sour sunlight. I took another sip.

“You don’t like it?” he asked, glancing down at the cheese.

“It’s good,” I lied.

He 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 telling.

“You kept doing this thing, every time we talked. You’d get scared and be about to hang up, but then…it was like you forced yourself not to be scared anymore. To keep talking to me. And every conversation I’d push a little harder, ask you to do more, and you’d…keep coming back for more. Over and over again and…Fuck, Annie. Watching that, being a part of that kind of bravery. It was exciting. Addictive.”

“You didn’t laugh?” I asked. “You didn’t hang up and laugh at me.”

“Never.” It was a solemn vow from him and my nipples got hard. My body wet. “Every time you called me I felt so damn lucky.”

He finished his glass of champagne and stepped over toward me. His hands on his hips. “Now, why me?”

I stared at him blankly. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. Why’d you do that with me?”

I took a sip of champagne and it fizzed through me, so I took another. And then one more. “I like your voice. And…” I held out my glass. “I like your champagne.”

Silent, he poured more champagne into my glass.

“Tell me, Annie. The truth.”

Oh, the truth. Wouldn’t that be something? What would happen if I just opened my mouth and told him the truth?

“You asked me if I was okay. Every time,” I said, watching the bubbles explode in my glass instead of watching him. “And you apologized. And you seemed to…care about me and I was a total stranger to you. I felt safe,” I said.

“You are safe.”

I gave him an arch look. That was not the song he was singing earlier, urging me to leave the trailer park.

“With me,” he clarified. “You are safe. I won’t hurt you, Annie.”