She blinked a few times. His gaze was strange, heavy. And the air between them was anything but light and loving.
“Morning,” she said, her voice early-morning groggy.
His nostrils flared, and he fisted his hands, covering his mouth. His eyes were hard as glass. “Hello.”
Her stomach shriveled to a dense nut. That word alone told her everything. Alistair knew. He fucking knew.
She blinked rapidly, grabbing the sheets to cover herself. She’d been sleeping nude next to him for almost two weeks, but she suddenly felt more exposed than if he were a stranger. “Did you sleep well?” It was the only thing she could think to say.
A puff of air escaped him, his gaze dropping to the ground. “Perhaps too well.” He paused, his jaw tensing as he ran his thumb over his knuckles. “I remember everything, Jess.”
She stared at him so long that the air between them shrank to nothingness, a painful stretching of time and space that tore her stomach right out of her body. She swallowed a sick taste in her mouth, unable to meet his gaze. Not with the simmering tension in the air. Not with the unspoken words that hung like swords between them.
“You, uh…” She finally found her voice, tracing a finger over the seam of the comforter, like she was somehow being casual and unaffected. “You got your memories back?” She attempted a weak laugh. “That’s amazing.”
“You lied to me.”
His words fell like an ax, and she drew a shaky breath, forcing herself to look at him. “Well…yes. In a sense.”
“In a sense?” The words burst out of him like fireworks, anger filling in the room. “Are you fucking mad?”
“Alistair, please,” she said, trying to keep her voice smooth, calm. “Let me explain.”
“There is nothing to explain,” he shouted, popping to his feet. “But if you insist on clarity, shall I recap? I was out here on a solo skiing trip and had an accident, so you were summoned and thought it would be wise to arrive as my fiancée!”
“Yes, that’s—”
“I don’t even want to get married!” His voice rang incredulous, like the concept of a fiancée was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of.
“Alistair,” she began.
“You made me think that we had this, this fucking relationship,” he spat, his eyes blazing as he looked at her. “What was I, just some stupid buffoon for you to laugh at every day?” He scoffed, pacing the room, raking a hand through his dark hair. It stuck up at angles into the air, a reflection of his mood. “Or worse yet, you thought that you could get your sick jollies with me just by swooping in and convincing me that we were together.”
Tears overcame her. There was no way she could remain composed and collected in front of all his anger. “No, it wasn’t like that,” she insisted.
“You wouldn’t have ever told me,” he said, smashing his palm against the bed post. She backed up in the bed, the first tears streaking her cheeks. “Would have just let me go on like a bumbling fool. Never the wiser.”
She covered her face with her hands, unable to stop the tears now. “I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan. I just thought it would be best to solve the company’s problem.”
“What problem?”
“The stocks,” she said, sniffing. She wiped at her eyes, looking up at him. “The stocks were falling, and I had been looking for a fake wife for so long. When you had the accident, it just seemed like the right move. I mean, you were going to pretend with them too, so why not—”
“It would have been pretend,” he spat, coming up to the side of the bed. He loomed over her, his anger seething off of him. “For both parties. This, what we were doing…” He drew a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “This wasn’t pretending.”
She choked back a sob. What could she even say? She hadn’t been pretending, not by a long shot. And acting the part of his doting fiancée only reinforced the longstanding feelings she’d harbored for him. It was like uncorking a bottle that had been shaken repeatedly for years. The love had come bubbling out, pouring over. But maybe only for her.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say.
“You should be.” He kicked at the dresser as he walked by, storming out of the room. “Get dressed. We’re going back. And then I’m flying home.”
Jess sobbed into her fist, pinching her eyes shut. “We can still keep up appearances when we’re back,” she said, the suggestion shriveling in the air. Was she insane to suggest such a thing, especially after so much backlash? “I understand if you want to break up, but we can convince your family—”
“Break up?” He appeared in the doorway, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you mad? How can we break up if we were never even together?”
He stormed away, and she collapsed back on the bed, exhausted by the onslaught of emotions, the surprise attack launched by his sudden memory, the crippling weight of regret. This had truly seemed like a good idea at one point. And maybe he could still be convinced. He just needed to be angry, get it out of his system.
Except she’d never seen him this pissed before. What was Alistair protocol for this level of anger? She rolled out of bed, dragging herself into the bathroom like she’d been beaten, hobbling and broken. She ran a hot shower, crying into the stream of water until it felt like all the tears were spent. When she entered the bedroom, Alistair was zipping up his backpack, his mouth a thin, frightening line.
“I’m packing,” she said, as though he’d asked.
“Hurry.” His tone left no room for questions. She dressed as quickly as possible once he’d left the room, the air of the cabin drawn tight, oppressive. She threw things into her backpack without really seeing, unable to do much beyond replay that horrible look of disgust on his face, the one that confirmed everything had been a painful, desperate ploy based in fantasy and delusion.
This is so much worse than you thought.
When she headed into the living room, Alistair was already by the door, dressed for the weather, his backpack on.
“We should take some breakfast,” she said quietly, heading for the kitchen.
“Take what you want. I’ll be out here.” He opened the door, stepping outside. A rush of cold air enveloped her, but it was less from the outdoors than the absence of his warmth. The lack of tenderness in his voice, the complete disregard for her wellbeing. Like she didn’t even matter to him anymore. Tears stung her vision again, and she fought to keep them at bay.
She suited up while she ate a banana, and she grabbed some snack bars and other fruits for the hike back. If the hike here had been miserable, their return trip would be like descending the bowels of hell. At least he thought to wait for her, instead of leaving her to the bears or snow panthers or whatever might lurk in those woods.
“I’m ready.” She squinted against the bright reflection of the sun against the snow, pushing a pair of sunglasses onto her face. Closing the door behind her, she sent a silent goodbye to the cabin, to this tiny getaway in the woods, to the brief moment in time in which they were in love and together and happier than she’d ever known. That bliss was a distant memory now; a painful and jagged scar that she might never rid herself of.
Alistair started the hike silently, footsteps crunching over hard snow as he led the way. She struggled to keep up with him, her snow poles stabbing into the snow. They fell into a quiet, tense pace. After a while, when her thoughts had grown too raucous, she dared to speak up.
“I was trying to help, you know,” she said.
He scoffed. “Help who? Yourself?”
“The company,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I did this for the company. For you.”
“Very well. Would you like your Employee of the Month award?”
She pinched her eyes shut and promptly tripped over something. She stumbled forward, righting herself after a few feet. “I don’t expect that.” She sniffed. “I just thought you might think it was clever. Ingenious. You’re always thinking out of the box. How isn’t this the same?”
/> “This isn’t out of the box, Jess. This is nowhere near the box. You burned the box—it went up in flames.”
She made a noise of protest. “So it’s only ingenious when you do it?”
“I never lied to you or anyone else about any aspect of the work we do together. I never made you believe we had a serious relationship. I never pretended to be on the verge of marrying you.”
She gripped her poles, as if they might help steady her thoughts. “You would have been doing something similar soon enough anyway.”
“She would have been in on the lie, remember?” His voice dripped with condescension.
Jess wiped away a tear that escaped. “I wasn’t sure I should explain so much to you when you were recovering,” she said. “It seemed like it would be too much, too soon. I mean, asking you to launch such an enormous pretense, on top of remembering the whole rest of your life?”
“Would have been a starting place,” he snapped.
“I swear to God, Alistair, I didn’t think it would turn into this. I had no idea what I was getting into—honestly.”
“Showing up to a man’s hospital room while he has amnesia and claiming to be his fiancée doesn’t leave much room for ambiguity,” he shot back.
“I mean, I didn’t have this all planned out. It wasn’t like I sat up dreaming about this.” She sighed, pressing her palm to her forehead. “I fucking swear to you, I didn’t think it would snowball like this.”
He stayed eerily quiet, so she went on.
“I didn’t think we would get so close, that I would actually…” She swallowed another knot of emotion. She wouldn’t use the L word. Not even if her life depended on it. “I didn’t expect for you to mean so much to me.”
Their footsteps crunched softly as they wound down the path, the cold air slicing through her lungs as she struggled to control her emotions and deal with the vigorous pace.
“It’s just not good enough,” he said finally, squinting out toward the ravine. “That’s all you need to know.”
13
Alistair’s insides contracted like an accordion, painful wheezes of emotion that nearly doubled him over as he hiked along. He’d woken up early that morning, far too early, beset with a sudden headache. But as soon as his feet touched the ground in the darkness of the early morning, the memories came flooding back. It was as if he could look around inside the vault of his mind and all the blank spots were suddenly filled. Whatever he thought back on, it was there.
Including his new memories.
Including the biggest betrayal of his life.
Shame lashed at him, sent heat into his cheeks as he wrestled with the embarrassment for what felt like the billionth time already. Whenever his mind circled back to the last two weeks, he didn’t know where to begin. So many different emotions battled to the forefront. And yet, somehow, part of him just wanted to forgive Jess and continue the sweet lie they’d been living.
And the fact that his deepest inclination was to just move on and forget it made him angrier than hell.
Have you fallen in love?
The mere thought was like drinking spoilt milk. Alistair never planned for love and took active measures to avoid it. Love was entrapment. Love was a jail. Love was the most limiting prison he could ever hope to impose on his life, and the past two weeks were as good a proof as any that he’d been right all along in avoiding it.
He clenched his fists as he trudged along, memories sweeping over him again. Watching Jess with that damned enamored look while she made grilled cheese for him. Their sweet, lazy cuddles post-orgasm, the complete and utter lack of desire to do anything other than hold her in his arms for an eternity. He rubbed at his face. She’d duped him into believing the biggest farce of his life, that he could still be Alistair while also being in love.
He knew better than anyone that it was one or the other. Career or a committed relationship—he couldn’t have both. And he’d made his choice a long time ago. His career would always win.
It was why he’d made it a habit of being a heartbreaker. Why the tabloids followed his exploits on occasion, why Jess had always raised eyebrows at the number of female names dotting his calendar. It was why he’d refrained from pursuing Jess for the past two years, even though every cell in his body had been desperate to get closer to her.
His throat tightened. Too many thoughts. Too much confusion. And still two hours left of the hike. There wasn’t anywhere to go but forward, through this maddening mess of tangled emotions. He would fire Jess, of course. She would have to find her own way home, have to figure out her own career path from here on out. There was no way he could continue to have her around, not after he’d admitted that he’d loved her no fewer than three hundred times over the past two weeks.
Jess was sniffling again behind him. He steeled himself to check on her. She was far behind, wiping at her eyes. The sight of her broke his heart. Stay firm. Stay distant.
“Come on.” He turned around, slowing his pace a little. They were the first words he’d spoken to her in a half hour.
“You know, I wasn’t the only one who thought this was a good idea,” she said suddenly, her voice bursting through the quiet air. “It wasn’t even my idea actually.”
Somehow, that made things worse. “Oh, do tell. Who was the evil arbiter of this sinister plan?”
“Your brother.”
Alistair stopped, turning to look at her. “Which one?”
“Gregor.” She sniffed, approaching him slowly. Her cheeks and nose were bright pink, her blue eyes watery. Despite it all, he just wanted to kiss her. To feel those juicy, impossibly soft lips against his one last time.
Alistair creased a brow. “Why would he suggest you do something this ridiculous?”
“Alistair, I’ve been searching for a pretend fiancée for you for months,” she said. “And none of them are ever good enough or quite right. I finally found one that I thought might fit the bill, but then you got into the accident. He didn’t think we could afford to wait. I don’t know, it just seemed…right…when he suggested it. This solved all the problems at once.”
He scoffed. “Except the problem of getting my memory back.”
“He said you’d be thrilled to find out I was the one,” she added softly, hurt clouding her eyes. His heart twisted, and he tore himself away from her, stomping forward along the path. Fuck Gregor and his meddling. He’d mentioned to Gregor plenty of times that Jessica was the hottest woman he’d ever seen, much less hired. Gregor knew firsthand Alistair’s simmering attraction for her. And maybe he’d let slip some affection once, too.
But this was almost as outrageous as discovering their grandfather had vowed to sell his stocks posthumously unless they all found true love. When Alistair first found out, he’d decided immediately that he’d hire the task out. But Gregor stepping in like this felt like his grandfather manhandling him into actually complying with the mandate from the grave.
You love Jess.
He shoved the thought from his mind.
“I guess your brother doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does,” Jess ventured a moment later.
“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Alistair snapped. “Which I’ll be finding out for myself.”
“But then again, I was your emergency contact,” Jess said. “Why was that?”
He didn’t even want to answer the question. Jess was the closest person in his life outside of his family. And he wouldn’t admit that fact even if it killed him. “I don’t even remember adding you as an emergency contact,” he lied. “Besides, you’re my assistant. Why wouldn’t I add you?”
And that was true. But it was also true that he’d added her as his contact because she knew him best. She was always at his side, could intuit his needs before he even became aware of them. She always knew how to get him back on track, how to pull him out of his creative stupors. Jess had been his work girlfriend for the past two years. He’d merely denied himself the physical dimension that he so deeply c
raved.
“Your brothers are just as important in the business, just as close to you as colleagues,” she reminded him. He gritted his teeth.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
They fell into tense silence once more. Occasionally the cawing of birds or the snapping of a tree limb would break the tension between them. Time melted away under the roar of his thoughts. He hated how much he wanted to stop and sweep her into his arms. How eager he was to continue the charade that he knew, deep down, hadn’t been a charade at all.
When they finally returned to the lodge, Jess was huffing and red, looking more distraught than he’d ever seen her. He crossed the reception area, stabbing his finger at the elevator up button. He turned away from Jess when she joined him at the doors. The ride up felt like an eternity, boxed into this closed space with her, suffocating under the proximity of her sadness. He just needed to get away from her, away from this whole situation.
Once he was by himself, alone in his penthouse in Seattle, he could begin to process this absurd humiliation. Process and wean himself off of Jess. Those heart wrenching kisses. The way her body would quake on top of him as she climaxed. That look of longing and love in her eyes.
When the elevator doors slid open, he stormed out, heading for the suite. Inside, Jess dropped her pack with a sigh.
“So what now?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What do we do from here?”
“There is no ‘we,’” he said, carrying his pack into the bedroom. He got out his small, reinforced suitcase, flipping it open on top of the bed. “I’m going back to the USA immediately. You can figure out your own next step.”
“And I assume I’m fired,” she said, coming into the doorway.
“Correct.” He emptied the dresser drawers where he’d been keeping his scant clothing. “Consider your time at B3 finished, effective immediately. We’ll send your things to your home; no need to show up to pack.”
She was quiet for so long it unnerved him, but he didn’t dare turn to look at her. Not when the strength of his conviction depended on not seeing her again.
The Beaumont Brothers: The Complete Series Page 18