Although Nate hadn’t specifically said it, Annie’s brain immediately went to being on that beach with him. Being here with Nate had been an eye-opening experience, to say the least. She’d been given a glimpse, however small, of what life with him could be like. Life away from the casino. Just him and her living their lives together the way they’d first envisioned.
Annie had expected their time together to be uncomfortable. Nate had made it perfectly clear that he’d wanted her to suffer. Adding sex to the mix had changed their dynamic, but she still anticipated the panic to come eventually. The urge to run. Now she was envisioning herself in a hammock swinging in the breeze on the beach with him. She didn’t feel oppressed. She didn’t feel tied down. She actually felt...great. Which was terrible.
“There isn’t much money to be made on a beach.” She rolled onto her back and smiled at him. “I follow the tournaments. If there’s not a casino to host one, I probably won’t go there.”
Nate frowned at her. “So you never just take a vacation for the sake of vacation? No break from cards and casinos?”
Annie shrugged and closed her eyes. “Not really. I travel so much as it is that I don’t exactly relish the idea of traveling just to spend money instead of making it.”
“What about as a kid? Didn’t your family ever go on trips to Florida or the Grand Canyon?”
“As a child, I saw almost every corner of this country, but not to vacation. We just moved all the time. My mother was on this constant journey, looking for something that she never found. To this day, I still don’t know what it was.”
“What about your father?”
Annie tried to shrug dismissively, but it wasn’t convincing. “She left him behind. Apparently I wasn’t important enough for him to chase after. And even if he’d wanted to, she would’ve vanished again.”
“So that’s where you get it?”
Annie frowned. She hated her childhood. Hated growing up never keeping friends or a real home. Being compared to her mother wasn’t exactly the highest compliment in her eyes.
“I suppose so,” she admitted. She knew what he meant. Through someone else’s eyes, she supposed she looked flighty. And part of her was. When she was of age, her inner nomad had immediately taken over and she’d nearly become as bad as her mother. She fought it, maintaining a home in Miami and finding a line of work where she filled the urge by traveling a lot. But there was a difference. She was alone, doing what she pleased. She’d never subject a child to her lifestyle. Or a husband.
“Why did I have to marry a woman with a long family history of nomadic male abandonment?”
“You should never fall for a gypsy, Nate. It always ends badly.”
“I’ll take that under consideration, though I might suggest that in the future you throw that line out on the first date.”
Annie rolled her eyes and lay back into the chair. “It sounds like you’re the one that needs a vacation. You’ve been killing yourself at that casino for years.”
“I was thinking about it. My family owns a house on St. Thomas. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but it might be time. Where are you off to after this?”
“I have another tournament in a few weeks, so I’ll be heading up to Vancouver, then Monte Carlo a month after that. Not quite a vacation, but it’s my first chance to see Monaco.”
Nate perked up in his chair. “Monte Carlo? I’ve always wanted to see the Formula One race. It’s in early May, around when you’re going, but I’m always too busy to get away.”
He hadn’t said he wanted to go with her, but Annie sensed an interest she didn’t expect. She never imagined that Nate would follow her anywhere, especially for something as insignificant as a poker tournament. She’d always envisioned their marriage inside the sphere of the Sapphire, as though they were both trapped within a snow globe. That was the way he’d seemed to like it back then. He didn’t want to leave and he certainly didn’t want Annie leaving without him. It definitely changed her outlook on things to know he was branching out.
Annie sighed, shifting the uncomfortable subjects from her mind. It was easy to do. The warmth of the sun was so soothing, soaking into her bones. “I don’t want to go back to the hotel. Can’t we just stay here?”
Nate chuckled beside her, a low rumble on the breeze. “That does sound tempting, but it’s hard to win a tournament that way. Even for someone as talented as you are.”