by Lexie Ray
But when I opened the file, I recoiled as if I’d been physically slapped.
Inside were dozens of photos and news clippings of Jonathan and Violet together.
Jonathan and Violet, hand in hand at some red carpet event. Jonathan and Violet, embracing at a dinner. Jonathan and Violet, locking lips aboard a sailboat on what I could only assume was Lake Michigan.
My hands shaking, I flipped through the photos and papers, forcing myself to continue to look at all of the public displays of affection and wide travels they’d embarked on.
This was the man my fiancé used to be, and that was the woman who used to be his fiancée.
Chapter Twenty
The photos of Jonathan and Violet were hard to look at, but it was impossible for me to look away. I paged through them, numb, trying to decide if the way he looked at her was similar to the way he looked at me.
The Jonathan in all of these pictures dressed impeccably, his hair slicked back in just the way I’d seen it on the Wharton Group website. My Jonathan favored letting his hair fall naturally most of the time, which I thought was a better look on him.
The more I delved into the file, the more I wished I could stop. The photos became increasingly intimate—Jonathan and Violet on their travels, Jonathan and Violet on a date, Jonathan and Violet celebrating holidays together. If they weren’t clippings from the society sections of newspapers, the way the photos were taken indicated that Violet was responsible for most of them, holding the camera out at arm’s length and snapping proof of their love in various places. How long had they been engaged before Jonathan’s accident?
How could I think that being with him was the right thing for me to do?
“Miss Michelle?”
I jumped and looked up to the doorway. Lucy was standing there with a large wicker basket.
“Yes?” I whispered, not trusting my voice.
“The picnic lunch you requested is ready,” she said, holding out the basket.
The prospect of a picnic didn’t seem as sweet to me anymore, not with the nest of vipers I was sitting in. Did all of these boxes and the hundreds of files contain thousands more pictures like the ones I was holding? It soured my stomach to think about the possibility. I didn’t have any appetite.
“Thank you,” I said, slipping the file back into its box and closing the lid. “And thank you for the basket. I was thinking one of these boxes might serve as a basket, but they’re all … they’re all full.”
“Those are the boxes that Miss Violet sent over,” Lucy said as I stood up. “If you ask me, she has sort of an unnatural attraction to Mr. Jonathan.”
“What were they like together, before he lost his memories?” I asked, taking the basket.
Lucy looked off to the side, taking some time to frame her answer and making me think better of my question.
“No, never mind,” I said quickly. “I don’t want to know. It wasn’t my place to ask you. It was a different time.”
“It was a different time,” Lucy agreed. “But if you don’t mind me saying so, I think this time is a little better.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant, but I was pretty sure Lucy had already said too much. I knew it would just be hurtful if I tried to pick apart the memories of Jonathan’s past. I wasn’t a part of them, and I never would be. We just had to try to keep going forward, to keep looking for that time when we would be together and nothing else would matter.
“I’d better get this over to Jonathan,” I said, smiling shakily as I lifted the basket. “I’ll bet he’s wondering where I am.”
“Do you need any help?” Lucy asked.
“Oh, no. Thank you again.”
The blast of cold wind that hit me as soon as I opened the front door into the courtyard was cleansing in a way. It took my breath away and banished all of my thoughts. All I could focus on was getting across the courtyard—which was blissfully empty—and into the office building.
Once in the lobby, though, there were a surprising number of people milling around. I was glad I’d taken the time to make myself up a little bit instead of just coming over wearing whatever. It was Saturday. What were all these people doing here?
Feeling more than a little self-conscious in a crowd of strangers with my scar and a picnic basket, I tried to locate the elevator. With a flood of insecurity, I realized that I didn’t even know what floor Jonathan’s office was. Would the CEO be located on the top floor? I didn’t want to make a mistake of getting lost in this enormous building.
I sidled up to the front desk, trying my best to conceal both my scar and the picnic basket.
“Excuse me,” I said softly, hating the way the receptionist’s eyes trained immediately on my scar. “Could you tell me what floor Jonathan Wharton’s office is on?”
“May I ask what your business is with him?” she asked, eyeing the picnic basket a little dubiously.
“Um, I’m his fiancée, Michelle,” I said, adding my name so I wouldn’t get confused for his other fiancée, Violet. “I’m meeting him in his office for lunch.”
“Of course!” the receptionist chirped, lighting up. “I’ll show you there myself.”
“That’s really not necessary,” I said, but she was already up from her chair and around the desk, her heels clicking against the lobby floor as she bustled across. I had no choice but to follow her to a bank of elevators.
“We were all so worried about Jonathan—Mr. Wharton,” the receptionist said as we stepped into the elevator.
“I’m sure,” I said, stepping around her awkwardly to put her on my right side. I didn’t want to give her reason to gawk even more at my scar.
“He was gone for so long that we all feared the worst,” she continued, mashing the button for the twentieth floor. The elevators slid closed, a few people glancing inside at us, curious.
“I’m sorry everyone worried,” I said. “He was with me, and neither of us knew who he was.”
“It was just miraculous that he was found,” the receptionist continued to gush. I willed the elevator to hurry. I didn’t really like talking about Jonathan with a stranger.
“There were a lot of rumors,” the receptionist confided. “Plenty, believe me. We’re just all happy to have him back—well, as back as he can be.”
“That’s nice,” I said, hoping it was in a dismissive enough tone for the receptionist to take a hint. The private detectives had accused him of shirking his responsibilities to have a months-long love nest with me in the cottage. I didn’t need to know what Jonathan’s employees and coworkers thought about his absence.
Thankfully, I was spared any more vital information by the elevator doors rolling open at the twentieth floor.
“I don’t want to bother you anymore,” I said as sweetly as I could muster. “Just point me in the direction I need to go.”
“Oh, okay,” the receptionist said, her expression tinged with disappointment. “It’s the frosty glass wall there at the end of the room. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” I called over my shoulder, hurrying away.
The office space was clean and modern, open to large glass windows all around. There wasn’t a bad view from anywhere. Desks were divided into cubicles, but the walls were the same frosted glass that encased Jonathan’s office. I peered into one or two and was surprised to see some employees sitting at them, hard at work on a Saturday. Did the Wharton Group never really sleep?
“Hello,” one of the employees said, catching my eye before I could slip away.
“Oh, hello,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Not at all,” he said easily. “I haven’t seen you around. You new?”
“In a way,” I said haltingly. If it was this busy on a Saturday, I never wanted to be here on a weekday. I’d been so close to getting to Jonathan’s office. So close, and yet so far away.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to bow out of an awkward conversation before it got started. I resumed my walk toward Jonathan’s offi
ce when the employee hailed me again.
“Hey!” he called, rushing toward me. “You don’t want to go in there. Wharton’s in today, for whatever reason. He never used to bother coming in on Saturdays—or most any other day, for that matter. It’s made a lot of people really nervous. You’re new, so you don’t know.”
“Um, I’m hoping he’s in there,” I said. “I came to have lunch with him.”
That statement gave the man enough pause for me to get a couple of steps closer to Jonathan’s office. I could see his dark silhouette moving around.
“Wait a second,” the man said. “I know who you are. You’re Michelle, his new fiancée.”
The emphasis on “new” made me cringe, but I didn’t want to seem weak.
“That’s me,” I said cheerfully. “It was nice meeting you.”
“What did you do to him?” the employee asked. “I mean, he was a total dick before he disappeared, if you’ll excuse my frankness. None of us can get over it. Listen, you have my vote of confidence, Michelle. Ever since he’s been back, Wharton seems to actually care about the company he owns.”
It felt wrong listening to this, as wrong as going through those files in the boxes in Jonathan’s home office. I felt like I was sneaking around by gathering this kind of intelligence about Jonathan’s past behind his back. When I couldn’t even tell him about what I’d learned. Um, Jonathan, I think you used to be a total dick before you lost your memories? Not likely.
“Thank you, I guess,” I said finally. “If you’ll please excuse me, though, I have a lunch date.”
I didn’t know what to do with my new information about Jonathan. Should I just file it away, burying it deep inside me alongside the photos of him and Violet? I knocked on the door to his office, fighting the urge to cool my forehead against the frosted glass.
When Jonathan opened it, I immediately pasted a smile on my face, but his brow still knitted in concern.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking me by the elbow and drawing me inside. It was a relief when he shut the door behind him, shutting the world out, creating a personal refuge for us.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied, fighting to keep my voice light and cheerful. “Your office is beautiful.”
That much, at least, wasn’t a lie. Jonathan had an enormous desk pushed to one side of the room and an equally big boardroom table on the other side. There were four flat-screen televisions mounted on the glass wall behind the boardroom table so that Jonathan could watch four stations simultaneously from his vantage point behind the desk. The view was better than I could have hoped. Chicago’s glittering buildings rose and fell around us, and I could see a gorgeous blue slice of Lake Michigan, as rich as a sapphire.
“It’s beautiful now that you’re here,” Jonathan said, encircling me with his arms and kissing my neck gently. I wondered if I should just be honest with him, just spill the beans about everything—seeing the photos of him and Violet, the insights his employees had given me, the hateful way Amelia had stared at me inside the house, the fact that I would never, never, never fit in to this world, no matter how hard I tried.
But the way he cradled me made me want to forget about everything. If we loved each other, we could do anything, right? We could overcome his crisis of identity and his hostile family and my disfigurement. It sounded like the plot to some fairytale, but I was willing to let myself believe in it, if only for this moment.
“Wow, what a basket,” Jonathan remarked, breaking my reverie. “Where’d you find it?”
“Either the chef or Lucy,” I said, holding it out and really admiring it for the first time. “It’s a lot nicer than our five-gallon bucket, right?”
“I liked our five-gallon bucket,” Jonathan said, laughing and taking the basket from me.
“There might be sandwiches,” I warned as he opened the cover. “I tried to put the lunch together myself, but the chef looked at me like I was insane and basically shooed me out of the kitchen.”
“They probably find it shocking when one of us tries to do something for ourselves,” Jonathan remarked drily, unpacking the basket. Each food item had been wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with twine.
“This is kind of exciting,” I said, rubbing my hands together and grinning at him. “It’s like we have a bunch of presents to open.”
“I hope they’re delicious presents,” he said, tearing at a cylindrical package in glee.
It was so nice just to sit there on the carpeting of his office with him, oblivious to the challenges that surrounded us. I banished my recent discoveries firmly from my mind. I didn’t want any of them ruining the moments we could steal away and remember how much we loved each other.
The chef and his assistants had outdone themselves. The cylindrical packages were whole wheat wraps, stuffed to the brim with homemade ranch dressing, arugula, shredded cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and sliced chicken breast. Another lumpy package turned out to be a big bunch of juicy grapes, still damp from when they’d been washed. A wrapped container turned out to be pasta salad, and two wedges were individual slices of pie. It was as if we had our own summer right here in Jonathan’s office. It didn’t matter that it was the dead of winter, or that we were in the middle of downtown Chicago. Here, we had a little slice of heaven, spread out in the form of an impromptu picnic.
The chef (or his assistants) had even wrapped up two glass bottles of soda for us, including cute striped paper straws. I wondered if all the wrapping had been done by the assistant who thought the notion of a picnic was romantic.
“This is just what the doctor ordered,” Jonathan groaned, patting his stomach with obvious satisfaction. “I don’t know why we haven’t done this before.”
“We’ve been busy,” I said, threading my fingers through his and giving his hand a squeeze. “Well, you’ve been busier than I have.”
“I hate leaving you alone all the time,” he said, frowning and bringing our joined hands to his face. He planted a soft kiss on the back of my hand before letting them rest in his lap. “I wish I could just bring you here and keep you. We could have lunch picnics every day.”
“And what about your working lunches?” I asked him, raising my eyebrows. “Would your clients and partners and potential customers enjoy sitting on the carpet, unwrapping their lunches to eat? Would they take their shoes off, too?” Both of us had toed our shoes off at some point during the meal, and our sock feet were stretched out in front of us.
“It would be a requirement,” Jonathan said gravely before tickling me. I shrieked out a giggle before clapping my hand over my mouth.
“There are people out there,” I said. “Why is it so crowded for a Saturday?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan confessed, playing a little with my hair. I shrank inside as his fingers brushed my scar, hated myself for it, and tried to move past. As pointless as it was to continue to dwell on my disfigurement, it was my constant companion, digging at me with every new person I saw, every stare. Why didn’t it bother or fascinate Jonathan like it did other people?
“One guy said that ever since you started coming in on Saturdays, other people have felt the need,” I said casually, trying to forget about my stupid scar.
“He did, did he?” Jonathan asked, quirking a smile. “Well, Collier’s always telling me to lead by example. Maybe we’ll see some increases in productivity. What else are my employees telling you?”
I flushed. I hadn’t meant to tell Jonathan about the guy outside this office. I could imagine the workers just outside the frosted glass, trying to stretch and press their ears against the door to hear what we were talking about.
“Nothing—nothing important,” I stuttered, looking away from my fiancé and out the window. “Do you know what that area of green is down there? Is that a zoo?”
“Aha, the master of misdirection,” Jonathan teased, kissing me lightly. “It’s all right, Michelle. You don’t have to tell me what they’re saying if you don’t want to. I know that gossip runs p
retty rampant here. Well, they’ve told me so, at least.”
I bit my lip and weighed my options. Should I tell him? Would it ruin our lovely picnic lunch? I didn’t want to hold back. We were good together because we were strong, and secrets would only chip away at that.
Even as the thought crossed my mind, I felt like a hypocrite. I had secrets upon secrets, and whether Jonathan even suspected was doubtful. But my one relief was that if his past would forever remain a secret to me, mine could remain a secret to him. Perhaps I could shed my memories just as easily as he had—only without the head wound. I turned to look at him. It was just a faint white scar, now, but it was an ever-present reminder of just what Jonathan had lost.
Would I ever be enough for him? Would there come a day when he would stop trying to figure out who he’d been and simply start being the man he was today?
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, smiling at me. I wondered how long I had been staring at him like an idiot.
“That same guy?” I began. “The one who said everyone started coming in on Saturdays because you did? He kind of said that you never really bothered with coming in before—um, before the accident.”
“I’ve gotten that impression, too,” Jonathan said, his eyes lighting up in recognition. That made me sag in relief. At least I wasn’t breaking terrible news about the possible quality of his previous character. “It sounds stupid and terrible, but I’ll take every puzzle piece I can get, no matter what the shape of it. What else have you discovered?”
I hedged again, hemming and hawing for a few moments while trying to see my way out of this new game.
“Michelle, you can tell me anything,” he urged. “You don’t know how hard it is trying to get information out of people. Not even my parents are very forthcoming. You can be my eyes and ears, you know.”
“I know,” I said, filled with guilt. If the Jonathan before hadn’t been very savory compared to the Jonathan now, of course it would be difficult to the people who used to know him to tell him about it.
