Page 68 of Beau and the Beast

It left things like his relationship with his father as an adult, the death of his mother, and the type of deplorable professional behavior on Wall Street that had made him into the right sort of target for a curse.

"Didn’t youdate, Wolfram?" Beau asked, a bemused smile on his face. "Those magazines you gave me were full of pictures of you with all sorts of women."

Wolfram snorted.

"I did date, of course. It was expected of me—everyone around me did it," Wolfram said. "It was just that nothing long term ever came of it. I've never even lived with someone. I guess I had always planned on meeting someone in my forties and settling down."

Beau considered that, writing down a few notes.

"I didn't plan on becoming a monster, after all."

Beau rolled his eyes. "What were the people you dated like? The women in the magazines were uniformly beautiful."

Wolfram nodded. "That was expected. When one of our colleagues found someone that he loved but didn't look like a Hollywood starlet, he was usually the butt of jokes. Behind closed doors though, we were all jealous when it happened. With the type of wealth we had access to, it was easy enough to meet someone beautiful and almost impossible to meet anyone we had something in common with."

"So there were no marriage plans? No one you wanted to hang onto?"

"I didn't let the men and women I dated get very close to me, and I think most of them preferred it that way."

Wolfram hadn't been keeping close tabs on Beau with all of his senses, but he couldn't miss the way Beau's pulse quickened at that statement.

"Men?"

Wolfram chuckled. "The magazines didn't prepare you for that, I suppose. When I was with a man, nobody but the paparazzi wanted pictures. Business journals weren't exactly clamoring to talk about Wall Street's openly bisexual rising star. They wanted to preserve the image of the all-American playboy type—which didn't include taking men home at the end of the night."

Beau swallowed and Wolfram realized he’d stopped taking notes.

"I'm sorry. Maybe I should've brought that up sooner," Wolfram said. "Is it a problem?"

"Jesus, no," Beau said, the trance apparently broken. "I just wouldn't have guessed."

His pupils were dilated, blown wider as he looked at Wolfram.

"So, you see, I haven't brought it up because there isn't much to tell," Wolfram said with a sweep of his hand. "All of my dating had dead ends with very little drama. I simply assumed that a connection, were I ever to make one with someone, would come later in my life. Dating was more about amusing myself, spending some time that wasn't alone."

Beau shook his head.

"I can't imagine that," he said. "I guess I'm old fashioned."

Wolfram snorted and smiled. Had he judged Beau correctly? Was he too good a soul to date casually?

"What do you mean?" Wolfram asked.

"I've just never been able to date someone if I didn't feel like we had a future together, long-term," Beau said.

"Does that mean there's someone waiting for you out in New Whitby, wondering where you are?"

Beau shook his head. "Therewas—there would've been, if I'd come here a few days earlier."

"And what happened to them?"

"I broke up with him two days before I showed up at your door," Beau said.

Wolfram didn't miss the pronoun. He was pleased with himself that he'd guessed right—that he and Beau had this thing in common.

God, if only we'd met in different circumstances,he thought—but immediately Wolfram chided himself. He knew that if he had never been cursed, he would've continued on being the smug asshole that he'd been a decade ago, and even if hehadmet Beau, he would've been soundly rejected on the spot.

"So you didn't see a future with him?" Wolfram guessed.

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