Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(38)

As she took her first sip of coffee, the door to the restroom at the back opened and a familiar figure emerged. Annabelle’s heart sank. The woman would have been tall even without her high-heeled woven slides. She was broad shouldered and well dressed in crisp white slacks and a short-sleeved coral blouse that complemented her shoulder-length light brown hair. Her makeup was well applied with subtle eye shadow that emphasized her familiar dark eyes.

The café was too small to hide in, and Rosemary Kimble spotted Annabelle right away. She clutched her straw purse more tightly. Her big, broad hands had long, toffee-painted nails and a trio of gold bracelets encircling one wrist. It had been nearly six months since Annabelle had last seen her. Rosemary’s face was thinner, her hips rounder. She approached the table, and Annabelle experienced an all-too-familiar barrage of emotions: anger and betrayal, compassion and repulsion …a painful tenderness.

Rosemary shifted her purse from one hand to the other and spoke in her low, melodious voice. “I just finished breakfast, but…Would you mind some company?”

Yes, I’d mind, Annabelle wanted to say, but she’d only feel guilty afterward, so she tilted her head in the general direction of the opposite chair. Rosemary tucked her purse in her lap and ordered an iced chai, then began fiddling with a bracelet. “I hear through the grapevine that you landed a big client.”

“Grapevine Molly.”

Rosemary gave her a wry smile. “You don’t call, you don’t write. Molly’s my only source of information. She’s been a good friend.”

Unlike Annabelle, who hadn’t. She concentrated on her coffee. Rosemary finally broke the awkward silence. “So how’s Hurricane Kate these days?”

“Her usual interfering self. She wants me to get an accounting degree.”

“She worries about you.”

Annabelle set her cup down too hard, and coffee sloshed over the brim. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Don’t try to blame all your troubles with Kate on me. She’s always driven you crazy.”

“Yes, well, our situation sure didn’t help.”

“No, it didn’t,” Rosemary said.

Annabelle had waited nearly a week after her world had crashed to call her mother, hoping by then she could manage her announcement without crying.

“Rob and I’ve called off our engagement, Mom.”

She still remembered Kate’s screech. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re not getting married.”

“But the wedding’s only two months away. And we love Rob. Everybody does. He’s the only man you’ve dated who has a head on his shoulders. You complement each other perfectly.”

“Turns out too perfectly. Get ready to laugh.” Her voice had caught on a snag. “Turns out Rob is a woman trapped in a man’s body.”

“Annabelle, have you been drinking?”

Annabelle had explained it to her mother just as Rob had explained it to her—how he’d felt wrong in his body for as long as he could remember; the nervous breakdown he’d suffered the year before they’d met but never quite gotten around to mentioning; his belief that loving her would cure him; and his final realization that he couldn’t keep on living if he had to do it as a man.

Kate had started to cry and Annabelle had cried right along with her.

She’d felt so stupid for not suspecting the truth, but Rob had been a decent lover, and they’d had an okay sex life. He was nice looking, funny, and sensitive, but she hadn’t considered him effeminate. She never caught him trying on her clothes or using her makeup, and until that awful night when he’d started to cry and told her he couldn’t go on any longer trying to be someone he wasn’t, she’d assumed he was the love of her life.

Looking back, there’d been hints: his moodiness, frequent references to an unhappy childhood, odd questions about Annabelle’s experiences growing up as a girl. She’d been flattered by the attention he’d paid to her opinions, and she’d told her friends how lucky she was to have a fiancé who was so interested in her as a person. Never once had she suspected he was gathering information, weighing her experiences against his own so he could make his final decision. After he’d broken the devastating news, he’d told her he still loved her as much as ever. She’d cried and asked him exactly what he expected her to do about that?

Her broken dreams had been painful enough, but she’d also had to face the humiliation of telling her friends and relatives.

“You remember my ex-fiancé Rob. Funniest thing…”

Try as she might, she couldn’t get past what she’d come to think of as the “ick factor.” She’d made love with a man who wanted to be a woman. She found no comfort in his explanation that gender identity and sexuality were two different issues. He’d known this monster hung over them when they’d fallen in love, but he hadn’t said a word about it until the afternoon she’d had her bridal gown fitted. That evening, he’d taken his first dose of estrogen and begun his transition from Rob into Rosemary.

Nearly two years had passed since then, and Annabelle still hadn’t overcome her sense of betrayal. At the same time, she couldn’t pretend not to care. “How’s the job?” Rosemary was the longtime marketing director at Molly’s publishing company, Birdcage Press. She and Molly had worked closely together to grow the market for Molly’s award-winning Daphne the Bunny children’s books.