Beautiful Stranger by Zoey Dean

as simple as Anna’s room at her father’s place in Beverly Hills, furnished with an antique queen-size four-poster bed, an early American dresser that Sam suspected dated back to the original Ethan Allen, and a couple of expansive landscape paintings from the Hudson River school that were probably originals. There was a small bulletin board over the desk, to which was pinned a row of small photos of Anna and Cyn, taken in one of those el-cheapo photo booths, a program from an all-Bach New York Philharmonic program, and a small blue Yale pennant.
    “How long has the Yale pennant been up there?” Sam leaned toward it for inspection. The print on the pennant was old-fashioned, from the 1950s or even before.
    “Since I was eight,” Anna confessed. “It used to belong to my grandfather.”
    “Wow. So you always knew what you wanted.”
    “According to Ben, that means I’m living out a pre-programmed existence.”
    Sam raised eyebrows that had been shaped and trimmed by Valerie on Rodeo Drive. “He said that?”
    “More or less.”
    Sam wandered over to the built-in bookshelves—they were eight shelves high, made of teak, and covered two complete walls floor to ceiling. And they were jammed with hardbound books. Sam looked at some of the titles at random. Molière. Dostoyevsky. Willa Cather. Balzac. She considered herself a good reader, and she’d read at least one book by most of these authors. But she wasn’t allergic to James Patterson or Jennifer Weiner either. This? This was wall-to-wall highbrow. It was impressive.
    “Don’t tell me you’ve read all of these.”
    “Oh, you know …” Anna vaguely waved a hand.
    “You have,” Sam surmised. “Just admit it.”
    It was one thing to know how smart and well-read Anna was in theory, and quite another to be staring at the hundreds of books she’d obviously pored through—probably right there on that brown teak four-poster bed.
    “I have this thing about keeping the books I read. I suppose I collect them the way my mother collects art.”
    “Hardly the same, unless you’ve fooled around with all the authors.” Sam smirked. “And most of them are dead. Plus, you can reread a book anytime you want.” Her stomach growled. “Can we get some food? I’m starving.”
    “Up for Chinese? I’ll find a delivery menu,” Anna suggested. “Or if you want to go back out we could go for a walk. There’s a great all-night Greek place on Lexington and Seventy-second.”
    “How about a diner? I’m thinking burger and onion rings. Or a Reuben. This is New York, after all. I’m texting him again.” She fished her cell out of the back pocket of her dark Citizens jeans.
    Anna shook her head. “Maybe you shouldn’t. It’s after midnight, Sam.”
    Sam felt her stomach turn over with anxiety. What was going on with Eduardo, anyway?
    “All the more reason,” she finally decided. “It’s just a text. And if my new fiancé is otherwise engaged after midnight, he’s going to find himself unengaged to me pretty damn fast.”

Hello, Stranger
    A nna and Sam were just about to step out the front door when Sam’s Razr V3 sounded her familiar ring-tone—Blondie’s classic “One Way or Another.” Sam dug it out of her black hand-tooled leather purse.
    “Who’s calling at this hour?” Anna asked.
    “That’s what I want …” Sam’s voice trailed off as she checked the number. “Oh yeah. It’s him.”
    “Eduardo?”
    Sam nodded vigorously as she answered. “Hey! What’s going on?”
    “Tell him we’re here,” Anna hissed, but Sam shook her head no as Anna listened to Sam’s side of the conversation.
    “Uh-huh … Uh-huh … Well, it’s only a little after nine, so I’m not doing much of anything. … Anna and I are going to the movies later at the ArcLight. … I wish you could come too.”
    A little after nine? That’s right, Anna thought. Sam’s cell was a California number. For all Eduardo knew, she was still in Los Angeles. And Sam was doing