by Leanne Banks
Alisa couldn’t withhold a gasp. He deepened the kiss again, grinding himself against her, then pulling his mouth from hers. “Damn you, you’re supposed to be taking naps and lying by the pool, not driving me nuts.”
Alisa drew in a shaky breath, wishing for more starch in her knees and oxygen in her brain. She bit her lip at the power of her arousal and struggled for her equilibrium. “Well, the doctor did warn you I might be difficult,” she finally managed in a voice husky to her own ears.
Dylan stared at her in disbelief, then dipped his head and swore.
“I can’t help wondering,” she said. “Have you and I ever kissed before?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what?”
“It’s been a long time,” he said, moving away from her.
Inexplicably bereft, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, well then, I guess that blows my first theory.”
He met her gaze. “First theory?”
She shrugged. “Well, it was a pretty intense kiss. Spontaneous combustion,” she said. Or nuclear fusion. “I thought that it was maybe a monstrous buildup of curiosity and tension over a lot of years. Like, say twenty. But if we’ve kissed before…” She frowned. “If we’ve kissed before, why did we stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Kissing before?”
He raked his hand through his hair. “Because you were fifteen, your mother got married and you moved away.”
Alisa searched her memory for one tantalizing crumb and came up empty. “I don’t remember,” she said, and wished with all her heart that she did.
He met her gaze, and she saw a sweet nostalgia come and go in his eyes. He gently chucked her chin. “That’s okay. Some things are best forgotten.” He dropped his hand, and his eyes grew serious. “In the meantime if you get bored while you’re trying to recover, read a book or turn on the TV instead of pushing my buttons.” He cocked his head to one side as if listening. “Sounds like most of the storm’s gone. Maybe we can go back to the house now.”
Still thinking about the heat of their kiss and the fact that she and Dylan had been teenage sweethearts, she watched him open the door.
“Looks safe to me,” he said, waving her toward him. “Come on.”
Alisa left the barn with him and walked silently. As they drew close to the house, she looked at him curiously. “Are you saying you didn’t like it?” she asked.
He glanced at her in confusion. “Like what?”
“Kissing me,” she said, coming to a stop. “Are you saying you didn’t like kissing me?”
He stopped and shot her an impatient glance. “No, but you’re recovering from a serious accident, and even though you may not realize it,” he said in a dark voice, “you’re vulnerable. I’m not going to take advantage of you.”
“This is so confusing. One minute you’re the materialistic millionaire, the next you’re allowing handicapped kids to have horseback riding lessons on your property. One minute you’re kissing me like—” She faltered, unable to find a sufficient description.
His gaze was dark with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. “Like what?”
She lifted her chin. “Like you wanted to be doing a lot more than kissing. The next minute you’re brushing me off because of some sense of honor. Which one is the real Dylan Barrows?”
“All of the above,” he said, and led the way into the house.
Alisa stared after him, filled with frustration and questions. Damn her lack of memory. There was so much she wanted to know about herself and Dylan. The more she was around him, the more questions she had. She couldn’t help feeling like a shell of a woman, a faux human. Her skin, hair and body were pure human, but inside she felt empty. She might as well be missing a limb. More than anything she wanted this lost feeling to go away. More than anything she wanted to remember everything about her, about Dylan.
Dylan left the house soon after dinner. He could rest easy that Alisa wouldn’t find any more trouble today. She’d nearly fallen asleep at the table. As he strode into O’Malley’s Bar to meet Michael and Justin, he tried to leave his concerns for her behind.
“How’s life in chicken pox land?” he asked Justin.
Justin made a face. “The twins are getting over it, but Emily came down with it today. The kids are hot and itchy, and the summer heat is just making it worse. But Amy’s great. She lets them swim in the little plastic pool in the backyard for half the day. I’m trying to talk her into a weekend away after the scourge has left us.”
“You’re welcome to my condo in Belize,” Dylan said.
“You bought one?” Justin said. “I thought you would choose one of the flashier spots.”
Dylan shook his head, thinking he’d grown weary of frantic nightlife. What he craved more than anything now was peace. “I’m turning into a crusty old bachelor. I like an island breeze, Beliken beer and a nice sunset.”
“Sounds good,” Justin said. “Add Amy to that picture and it would work for me.”
“Speaking of women,” Michael said, looking at Dylan curiously. “How’s it going with Alisa?”
“She still doesn’t remember much, and she’s very frustrated. We visited her apartment today, and that seemed to help a little.” He paused, leaning against the bar. “She’s more of a handful than I expected.”
“Alisa? She’s the sweetest girl in Virginia,” Michael said. “Aside from Kate, of course,” he added, referring to his wife.
Dylan shook his head, thinking of her sensual bedroom and the way she’d taunted him this afternoon. “She’s not the little cookie girl anymore.”
“What do you mean? She can’t make chocolate chip cookies anymore?” Justin asked in an appalled voice.
“I don’t know if she remembers how to make the cookies or not. I’m just saying she is more than I expected.”
“Is that good or bad?” Justin asked.
Dylan thought about the passionate way she’d responded to him and the way he’d wanted to take her right there in the barn. “Both.”
As the bartender delivered their beers, Michael and Justin looked at each other in confusion. “I can’t tell whether she’s coming on to you or spitting in your face.”
“Try both,” Dylan said, and took a long swallow of beer. “I can’t take advantage of her, because she’s still recovering.”
“Plus she’s gonna hate you when she remembers,” Justin reminded him. He shook his head in commiseration. “I don’t envy you.”
“Yeah, well it’s not my job to seduce her or be seduced by her. It’s my job to provide a place for her to recover and that’s what I’m doing,” Dylan said. Even if it kills me. “But enough about that. I wanted to let you know I’ll be negotiating with Grant Remington soon about the bioengineering project.”
“Grant Remington,” Michael said. “Your half brother.”
Dylan gave a dirty chuckle. “He’d probably punch you for saying that.”
Michael lifted an eyebrow. “I’d say he’s damn lucky.”
“How?” Dylan asked. “For having his inheritance whittled down to accommodate his father’s slipup?”
“For getting you as his brother. He’s got money to burn.”
He tasted the familiar bitterness and shrugged. “I really don’t give a damn as long as I get what I want.”
The three men fell silent, but the noise of the bar lessened the impact. Michael cleared his throat. “In the meantime Kate told me to invite all of you to the house for a barbecue next Friday.”
“Works for me,” Justin said. “All the chicken pox should be gone by then.”
“Good,” Michael said, then glanced at Dylan. “Alisa’s invited, too.”
Dylan struggled with mixed feelings. Despite the fact that Alisa was a handful, he liked having her to himself. It gave him a false sense of security, he realized wryly and nodded at Michael. Alisa would learn the truth sometime. Nothing was forever. “I’ll bring her if she’s still speaking to me,” he said, and lifted h
is beer in a salute.
Alisa turned her attention to regaining as much of her memory as she could. She tried her best not to think about Dylan, at least while she was awake. She’d started dreaming about him while she slept. Sensual dreams where he kissed her endlessly and aroused her to the brink of pleasure, but she always awakened before he thrust inside her and took them both over the edge. She also always awakened fully aroused. Alisa couldn’t decide which was worse—the nightmares or the erotic dreams.
She hitched a ride to her apartment with Dylan in the mornings while he went into work, then he gave her a return ride home at lunchtime. The past few days she’d eaten her lunch late, so she wouldn’t spend extra time with him. He was like a hot stove to her, his heat drew her, but she knew she could get burned. She had the sense that a woman could become fascinated with Dylan and forget that the man had a lot of closed doors. Although she found herself both emotionally and sexually seduced by him, Alisa didn’t want to fall into a trap.
After an endless weekend of looking through photo albums, listening to CDs she’d found at her apartment and putting together small fragments of her history, she returned and crossed paths with Dylan as he was sorting his mail. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m down to thirty-minute naps in the afternoon.”
“No more nightmares?”
She shook her head, wishing she could shake the other dreams that made it too hot for her to sleep. Spotting an ivory invitation of some sort on the floor, she bent to pick it up. “You dropped it,” she said, scanning the invitation. “Cocktail party inviting the board of Remington Pharmaceuticals. Are you going?”
“Probably not,” he said, and tossed her a careless smile. “It’s on Thursday night. I think there’s a Braves game.”
Alisa rolled her eyes. “There’s always a Braves game. Will some of your half siblings be there?”
“Probably. Why?” he asked, looking at her.
“Just curious,” she said. “Have you ever met your half family in a social setting?”
“Not unless you consider the official reading of the will,” he said with a chuckle.
Alisa couldn’t help laughing with him. “Aren’t you curious how they’d act in a less formal setting?”
“No.”
“I am.”
“Then maybe you should go.”
“Okay,” she said without missing a beat. “What time should we leave?”
“What’s this ‘we,’ Tonto?”
A memory flashed through her. She stared at him. “You’ve said that to me before.”
He paused. “Yeah. About a hundred times.”
“Reruns of The Lone Ranger television series,” she said, the vague recollection strengthening. “That’s how I got you to teach me to catch.”
“You would sneak me into your house to watch the reruns while your mom was taking care of dinner at the cafeteria. The Granger boys had one television in the community room that was always breaking.”
“But my mother had a nice television. It was small but it always worked.” She shook her head. “I was so scared my mother would catch us. When she finally did—”
“I had to peel a zillion potatoes and take out the cafeteria trash for a month,” he said. “It could have been worse if the headmaster had found out.”
“I begged her not to tell him,” Alisa said, recalling pleading with her mother. “You didn’t stop teaching me to catch,” she remembered. “Why? I had lost my bribe appeal.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You always had this combination of being determined as hell but nice. Tough on yourself, but kind to others. You were a loyal little thing.”
Just when she was ready to give up on Dylan, he provided her with a glimpse of herself that filled up some of her emptiness and gave her hope that she could recapture her past. Every day she struggled with how someone without a past could make a future.
Realizing she’d been distracted from their original conversation, she switched gears with a smile. “What time do I need to be ready for the cocktail party?” she asked.
“Never o’clock,” he said, turning back to the mail.
“Hmm,” she said, thinking. “Are you afraid of your half brothers and sister?”
He looked up at her with more firepower in his eyes than a twenty-one-gun salute. “You have to care about something to fear it,” he told her in a too-calm voice.
“So there’s nothing you want from them?” she asked, unable to fathom the possibility. She would have given her eyeteeth for a brother or sister. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing,” he said definitively, then paused and frowned. “Except…”
“Except what?”
He closed down. “It’s business,” he said.
Frustrated by the walls Dylan put up around himself, she sighed. Another childhood memory floated through her mind. He had always dared her to step a little further. “Well there’s only one thing I can say at this point. I triple dare you to go to the cocktail party,” she told him, drawing on the saying they’d used as children.
Dylan stared after her, taking in the sight of her backside as her taunting words reverberated in his mind. Irritated, vaguely seduced, he dismissed her dare. When they’d been kids, he had always been the one to dare her. Had the accident made her more adventurous? he wondered. Or perhaps she had become more adventurous since they’d parted company in college. For all the time he’d known Alisa, he’d lost a lot of growing time with her. The loss gnawed at him.
She wasn’t nearly as acquiescent to him as she’d once been. She didn’t look at him with hero worship in her eyes anymore. She looked at him with a woman’s curiosity and fascination, and the change both unsettled and drew him. He was accustomed to women who were intent on his comfort and satisfaction. Alisa seemed more intent on knowing him and challenging him. Despite her current vulnerability, she’d grown much stronger during their years apart.
He thought about her dare again and swore under his breath. The notion of spending more than thirty seconds in the presence of his half siblings turned his stomach. However, the blond witch who’d invaded his house and thoughts had a point. He did want something from the Remingtons, and if showing up at a cocktail party could help him get what he wanted, he would do it.
Six-thirty, he’d told her, Alisa thought as she fanned through the closet in her apartment. Her mind was humming with thoughts of Dylan. He was important to her. No way around that fact. She didn’t understand it, and didn’t have all the facts, but she had a lot of feelings and intuition. She didn’t know why it was so important to her for him to gain some sort of connection with his half brothers and sister. Some might say it was none of her business, but she had this strong gut feeling and she couldn’t ignore it. Alisa had learned that not having all her memories and facts in place meant she needed to rely on her gut.
She’d also figured out part of the reason he irritated her. With the exception of the time he’d kissed her, when Dylan looked at her, she felt as if he were seeing her as the little girl she’d once been. He was protective of her, and while she appreciated the sentiment, she didn’t like the idea of being seen as the goofy little girl who’d followed him around. The image didn’t suit her at all. Alisa may not have a handle on her past, but she believed she’d been a strong person, and if she hadn’t been as strong as she wanted to be before, she was darn well going to start now.
She found three black cocktail dresses and arranged them on the bed to make a selection. None of them wowed her. Returning to her closet, she fanned through again, this time finding a dress wrapped in plastic with the tag still attached. She lifted the plastic and took a second and third look. She suspected the dress was an impulse purchase and she’d been torn as to whether to return it or not.
The white dress was a fitted, above-the-knee chemise in classic white. The only thing that prevented it from being a nice, regular dress, were the two horizontal slits in the material covering the chest
, clearly designed to expose a hint of skin and cleavage. Wearing this dress, Alisa concluded, would require guts. It was not a little-girl dress.
She glanced at her choices and wondered why the clothing choice mirrored her dilemma with Dylan. The prudent choice would be one of the black dresses. The prudent choice with Dylan would be to let him continue to look at her as the little girl.
Alisa picked up the white dress and tossed prudence out the window.
Four
This was a bad idea, Dylan said to himself as he waited for Alisa in the foyer. He had a feeling Alisa saw the potential for a fairy-tale ending with his unfamily, and she was in for a rude awakening. He wouldn’t have agreed to go if her sexy little dare hadn’t gotten under his skin.
He shook his head. No matter. They wouldn’t stay long. He heard her footsteps on the stairs. “We’re only going to be there fifteen minutes, tops,” he warned as he turned around. “Most of the board members prefer quiet wine and quiet conversation, so don’t expect—”
He broke off when he saw her. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he hadn’t expected this. Her hair was pulled up in an unstructured bun and she wore very little makeup, just enough to make him keep looking at her mouth and eyes. Pearl earrings dangled from her earlobes, and what her dress didn’t show was going to keep him up nights for the next month.
The slivers of golden skin the white dress revealed could have caused a riot. He’d never been tongue-tied with a woman, but he was close to it now.
She met his gaze. “Don’t expect what?” she prompted him.
He adjusted his tie. “So don’t expect too much excitement.”
She paused for a long moment, still holding his gaze. “There’s more than one kind of excitement.”
Her eyes held a combination of daring and amusement that affected him like an intimate stroke. He walked behind her as she headed for the front door, his mind filled with sexual possibilities. He bit back an oath. This was going to be an even longer night than he’d anticipated.