She was at the easel, her fingers already covered in charcoal as she used a small piece of the substance to draw the fine lines of a couple engaged in the most intimate of embraces. I cleared my throat a few times, but she didn’t turn. I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear me. So I sat in a low stool and watched, falling in love with the concentration in her eyes, the firm, but gentle movements of her hands, the beauty she produced on the canvas.
I was falling in love with her all over again as I watched her now, as I watched her guide her paintbrush over the smooth lines of a young man’s hands. It was like watching her dreams come to life in perfect color, right there on the wall. I wanted to move up behind and…like that night…
I watched her for hours and hours. But, finally, I just wanted to touch her. She was wearing nothing but the shirt I’d discarded, and that was enough to drive me out of my mind. But to couple it with the dim lights and the way she was moving, it was far too much to resist.
I moved up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, my hands sliding under the shirt.
“Just a few more minutes,” she said, as I pressed my lips to her throat. But I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t just walk away.
I let my lips burn a trail slowly down her throat, sliding the shirt out of the way as I created a trail over her shoulder, down one shoulder blade, slowly sliding down her back until I’d touched every inch from hip to shoulder. Somehow, she continued to work. But when I ran my tongue down over the swell of her ass and down to the top of her thigh…
“What do you think?”
I shook myself a little, sort of shaking off the cobwebs of the past, and focused on the mural.
“It’s perfect.”
“Not perfect,” she said, stepping back a little to assess it herself. “I’m not sure that’s what I intended to do originally, but it feels right to me.”
I jumped to my feet and brushed imaginary dust off the seat of my pants.
“Then that’s all that matters,” I said.
She looked at me like a child looking for approval in a parent’s eyes. Then she smiled as she turned back to the mural.
“You really like it?”
“I do. And Margaret does, too. She was raving about it when she called me a while ago.”
“Oh, God! I forgot about Margaret! Did I keep her from something important?”
“No one ever keeps Margaret from where she needs to be.” I walked over to her and touched her shoulder lightly. “But now that you’re done—”
She glanced at the clock on the wall, a little hiss of dismay slipping from her lips when she saw how late it was.
“You must be anxious to get home.”
“I actually thought it might be nice to go to dinner. There’s a place not far from here where we used to go sometimes. You liked their pasta.”
“Let me change and we’ll go.”
In the past, I might have offered to help. But she’d been out of the hospital for almost six weeks and we hadn’t touched—except for that moment on the couch that her parents interrupted. I was trying to be patient, but it was getting more and more difficult with each passing day.
She was my girl, my fiancée. She was the one I chose to spend the rest of my life with. Being around her, but not touching her, was like a starving man sitting in a well-stocked kitchen with his hands and feet cut off.
And when she came out of that storage room in the thinnest, curviest summer dress I’d ever seen, it only made things worse.
I buried my hands in the front pockets of my jeans as much to keep from touching her as to hide an excitement she might not be ready for.
***
“Mr. Boggs,” the maître d’ said, as we walked through the door.
“Hello, Johnson.”
The man’s eyes fell on Harley and his smile widened. “Ms. Alistair. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see you again.”
Harley blushed, but the pleased smile on her face hid any discomfort she might be feeling.
“Thank you,” she said.
The maître d’s smile widened, as he grabbed a couple of menus and led the way into the dining room, causing a few people who’d clearly been waiting for a table to groan. We were regulars here, and I’d arranged an upgrade on the security system my company provided for the restaurant, so we often were treated with preference. That sort of thing was a way of life in Los Angeles.
We were seated across from each other, and Harley studied the menu with an intensity that would have made me laugh if I hadn’t known about her memory problems. She’d done that in the past, too, but always ended up picking the same thing: chicken parmesan.
It amused me, as well, how oblivious she was to what was always happening around her. Even with her shorn hair that was now barely long enough to pass for a super-short butch style, men and women both were checking her out. I’d always been both proud and a little uneasy with the looks she got when we went out in public. But she’d never noticed them then, and she clearly didn’t notice them now.
I ordered a bottle of merlot and a bowl of chicken Alfredo as Harley continued to look at the menu. She blushed when she felt the waiter waiting on her.
“Can I have just a minute longer?”
“Of course. Take your time.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled up at the waiter, and I thought he might fall over himself as he backed away, so overwhelmed with that simple gesture.
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.
“What?”
I just shook my head, laughter continuing to spill out. Her eyes narrowed briefly, but then she began to laugh, too.
“I don’t know what we’re laughing at, but…”
And that just made me laugh harder.
She ended up ordering the chicken parmesan—what did I tell you?—and enjoying several glasses of the merlot. And I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. We actually had a conversation that didn’t center around the accident or the memories she was trying to get back, and that was incredibly refreshing. It felt almost as though none of the last six months or so had happened.
“Do you want to go to the party tomorrow night?”
I looked up from the cup of coffee the waiter had just brought. “Do you want to go?”
She shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.”
“It is. I thought so back when I found the building for her.”
“She mentioned that. It was kind thing to do.”
I shrugged. “It’s something my company tries to do every year. We like the idea of giving back to the community.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that it’s a friend running the whole thing and your fiancée is the artist decorating the gym.”
“That doesn’t hurt,” I agreed. “It probably also has a lot to do with the fact that Margaret is quite persistent with her requests.”
Harley studied me over the rim of her own coffee cup, the steam from the cappuccino blurring her face just slightly.
“You and Margaret are pretty close, aren’t you?”
Now we were moving on to dangerous ground. I stared down into my cup for a minute, trying to decide how much to say to her. We were having a good time. I didn’t want to screw that up.
“Is that a touchy subject?” she asked.
“No. I’m just…” I looked up at her and watched lines form between her eyes as she frowned. “It’s not.” I reached over and touched her hand lightly. “Margaret and I have a long and complicated history, that’s all.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Since I was a kid.” I sat back, an image of a far different Margaret crossing my mind. When I first met her, she was far from the sophisticated socialite that she was now. She was a tomboy with pigtails and scabs on her knees. The memory almost brought a laugh back to my lips. “My mom worked—still works, actually—for her father’s law firm.”
“Really?”
“Yes. She’s Grant Wallace’s personal assistant. He’s always cla
imed his firm would have failed years ago without her.”
She frowned softly. “I guess I should know that name.”
“Not necessarily. But Margaret’s father is pretty well known around here. And he’ll probably be at the party tomorrow night.”
She sipped the coffee thoughtfully. “So you and Margaret grew up together?”
“My mom would sometimes have to go to work odd hours, and she couldn’t always get a babysitter. Grant saw what was happening and told her to bring me along and he’d bring Margaret. After a while, we were kind of inseparable.”
“That’s kind of cool. I had a friend like that. Rachel. Her family owned the ranch next to ours, so we hung out a lot.”
“You’re still friends with her. She was supposed to be a bridesmaid in the wedding.”
She smiled, but she didn’t say anything. I got the impression she already knew that, and that gave me a little hope that her memories were coming back faster than she thought they were.
“You’ll need a dress.”
“I will. I was going to ask you about that.” She set her cup down and clasped her hands together. “Do you think we could go to my other house and get my things? I get the impression from the things in the bedroom back at your house that most of my stuff isn’t there.”
“It isn’t. A lot of your things are in boxes in the garage or…” Again I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what my motivation was this time. Perhaps it was selfish.
“Or?” she pushed.
“A lot of your things are still in the master bedroom of my house. You never really finished moving out.”
“Oh.” She blushed. “I thought I…”
She didn’t finish and her gaze kind of drifted. I wondered for a minute if she was having a flash of memory. I know I was.
I ran into the house as the taxi sped out of the driveway, the driver clearly uninterested in getting involved in some sort of domestic problem. I paused in the doorway, listening for her.
“Harley!”
Then I heard something fall upstairs. I ran up the steps, taking them two at a time. She was in the bedroom, tearing clothes out of the closet. I didn’t know what to do at first, fear slicing through me so completely that I was paralyzed for a moment. But then I was moving without realizing I had stepped into the room.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I withheld a little information, that’s all.”
“That’s all? You were married, Xander! That seems pretty significant to me.”
“It was years ago. We were teenagers, and it didn’t last very long.”
“It lasted long enough that the county can’t find any record of a divorce. Doesn’t that mean you’re still married? Doesn’t that mean that you and I have been living in some sort of sin?”
“Now you sound like your father.”
The color drained from her face, even as the most intense anger popped into her eyes. I thought briefly that she might slug me for that one. But she only turned, going back to the closet to grab more clothes.
“Harley, it’s a mistake. I’ll get it cleared up, and we’ll get our marriage license just like we planned.”
“I don’t think I want to marry a man who would lie to me.”
“It wasn’t a lie.”
“It was an omission. That’s the same thing.”
“You told me not to tell you. Do you remember that?”
She tossed a handful of clothes on the bed before she turned to me, her hands on her hips.
“You are not blaming this on me!”
“You didn’t want to know about my past; you didn’t want to know about the women in my life.”
“I wasn’t talking about marriages! You made me believe that I was the first woman in your life that you wanted to marry, but now I found out that you were married before—”
“To a friend! To someone who needed help escaping a bad situation. It was not a love match.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Yes. Because you love me and you trust me.”
“How can I trust you when you lied to me about something so important?”
There was no answer to that. There still wasn’t. But I convinced her to leave the bulk of her things, convinced her that leaving me was only temporary, that she would be coming back. But then weeks passed, then months, and I was beginning to worry. And then Jonnie went to her house and discovered she’d replaced so many of the things that were still in my house.
She was separating herself from me. She was moving on.
“Is there a dress in all that stuff that I might be able to wear tomorrow night?”
I’d almost forgotten the subject that brought us to this place. I nodded, picturing a black dress she’d bought months ago, but never wore.
“I think there is.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Of course not. My house is still yours as far as I’m concerned, Harley.”
And I meant every word of it.
Chapter 17
Harley
I waited until Xander went to work before I made my way—slowly—upstairs to the master bedroom. This was the first time I’d come up here, thanks to the cast I’d had on my leg for so long. I had to stop for a second at the top of the stairs to admire the layout of the second floor. There was so much light, most of it coming from a skylight that was centered over the stairway. I hadn’t realized just how high that ceiling was, or that there was, apparently, a room designed around the open skylights. It’d never occurred to me to wonder what was up here, or what might be above this, before. I mean, you could tell from the outside of the house that it had three floors. But I’d never thought to ask what was on the third floor.
What better time than now to find out?
There was another set of stairs tucked into the back wall at the end of the hallway. I’d already decided that the master bedroom was behind the double doors at the end of the hall—that much I remembered from the memory I’d had about the night Xander and I became engaged—and that all these other doors—four in all—were guest rooms and the hall bath. It was a large house for a single man, but I got the impression the house was meant for more than just a place for him to rest his head at the end of a busy day. He was the owner of a rising company. He must do a lot of entertaining.
My leg ached, but I imagined my physical therapist would applaud all this working out I was doing. I just wished I could take the boot off tonight and wear a stylish pair of pumps to the party instead of a boot on one foot and a flat on the other.
I made my way slowly up the stairs, my hand moving automatically to a light switch at the top that I couldn’t have known was there, but found just the same. There was a short landing and then the space just opened up. And it was incredibly familiar.
It was the art studio from my dreams.
It was huge, this great open space that was actually designed in a square that allowed for the open space over the stairs where the skylights lived. But it was situated in such a way that it didn’t feel square. It felt huge and open and there were windows everywhere and more skylights that weren’t visible from downstairs. And there were built-ins that held so many art supplies, things I wouldn’t even have dreamed of owning because they were so extravagant. But they were here, every paintbrush, every paint, every easel that I could ever dream of using. And there were canvases displayed here and there, or stacked carefully in special compartments, paintings I don’t remember doing, but that felt familiar just the same.
This was mine, my space. My studio.
I walked around the room, running my fingers over things that should have been so familiar but weren’t. I found myself wondering what kind of a man would provide such a space for me. Would Philip have done this?
It was funny. My memories ended my senior year of college. In my mind, Philip and I were still together. I had been so convinced that we were on the verge of getting enga
ged, that Philip was my future. But even since waking in the aftermath of my accident, I hadn’t thought of Philip all that much. Why was that? Could it be because a part of me remembered what had happened between us? Xander said that he became engaged to another woman and broke my heart. Was that true? Was Xander being honest with me?
Of course, he had to be. My parents admitted that Xander and I were engaged. We wouldn’t have been if I was still with Philip. There was no doubt in my mind that I was once in love with Xander Boggs. Why was that? Technically, I didn’t know him from Adam, yet I chose to stay in this house with him, chose not to return home to my family. Why had I done that?
I hadn’t let myself think about it too much these past few weeks. I was so focused on remembering that I didn’t focus much on what I already knew.
I pulled a painting out of a stack that was sitting in a specially made rack along one wall and studied it for a long minute. My art was usually focused on nature, on the interaction of the various elements of nature, rather than portraits. But I’ve been known to do the occasional portrait. This, apparently, was one. It was a fairly intricate painting of Xander and myself. But it wasn’t just a straight portrait. There were hidden elements in it, such as the combination lock that replaced an actual lock of Xander’s hair.
Why would I make his lips an actual bow, his eyes tiny airplanes, and place this house in the design on his tie? There was affection in this painting. But there was something else, too. Uncertainty, maybe? Fear? I don’t know, but it bothered me a little.
I continued to look through the paintings—my paintings—and came across another that was something of a deviation from my style. It was a charcoal drawing of two bodies intertwined in sexual pleasure. I’d never done anything like it before. I blushed so deeply during my nudes class in college that my professor had to take me out into the hallway and press a cool cloth to my forehead on several different occasions. For me to do something like this was inexplicable.
Yet, I instinctively understood that it was Xander and I. And that this painting came after the first.
There were others. Some even more risqué than the charcoal, some subtler than even the portrait. There were dates on the back, so I could put them in chronological order if I’d wanted to. But I could see by looking at them how they progressed. The paintings told a story that even Xander himself couldn’t have told me.
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