Chapter Three
“SERIOUSLY, MOTHER,” SOPHIA SAID, “We don’t have to go over this again. I told you—I am going back to university this autumn to finish my last two courses no matter what you say.” She slammed down her glass and sloshed ice water onto the marble kitchen counter.
“I just wanted to talk about your future, dear.” Katherine Montel remained calm through her daughter’s rant. Her pen was perfectly poised over her ever-present date book, her expression smooth and solemn. Always the put-together perfect countess, wife of wealth and privilege.
Sophia snorted. “You have a pretty good idea what you want me to do with my future, don’t you, Mother?”
“Why, yes, I do.” She jotted something down and flipped the page. “Same as every other person who came before you.”
“I’m sorry, but you know I don’t want the life you have. Why is it so hard for you to see that?” Sophia groaned.
“I didn’t say I don’t see it.” Her mother’s gaze flitted to the herbs growing on the window sill. She drifted over to them, spraying their wilted leaves and dried roots with water. When done, she perched herself back on the chair, focusing again on her day-planner. “I’m saying I don’t agree. Does what I think not matter to you?”
“What about what I think? What about what matters to me?”
To Sophia’s shock, her mother set down her pen, folded her arms across the counter, and narrowed her eyes. “All right, then, what matters to you?”
Sophia rolled her eyes. Childish, yes, but they’d had this conversation numerous times, and Sophia was tired of telling her mother what she truly wanted. “My memory.”
Katherine’s hand waved absentmindedly in the air. It took her all of two seconds to focus back on the planner like her life depended on it. “Dear, you know the doctors said you may never get all of your memory back.”
“I know what they said. What I don’t understand is why you haven’t been willing to help me.”
Katherine’s head snapped up. “That’s a bold statement, young lady.”
Sophia straightened her shoulders. “How would you feel if you were in my shoes?” Sophia picked up the glass and took another long drink; it was cold as ice, same as the stare she shot her mother. “Would you do what everyone told you to do and act like a puppet, or would you do what you wanted to? Wait—don’t answer that. I’m afraid I already know the answer.”
“Do you? Is that what you think?”
Sophia’s jaw clenched.
“No matter what you think, dear,” Katherine said calmly, “I’ve never been a puppet. My decisions have mainly been my own. And your father’s, of course.”
“Then why are you treating me like one?”
Katherine smiled softly. “I’m not. You only think that because you are always fighting my suggestions. Why have you always been fighting me?”
“Because I feel like you’re blowing off my memory questions.”
“I’m not blowing anything off, whatever that means. I’m steering you in the proper direction. Isn’t that a mother’s job?”
Sophia dropped her empty glass in the sink, surprised it didn’t shatter on impact. “Would you have been like this with Connor?”
Katherine’s perfectly arched brow drew together. “I don’t think your brother has anything to do with this.”
“Yes, he does. If he was alive and lost his memory, would you be pushy like this with him, or would you give him what he wanted?”
“Boys are different—”
“No, they aren’t.” Sophia balled her hands into fists at her sides. “Father never treated us differently, but you did. I don’t need to be coddled and primed and shielded. Don’t—” Sophia held up her hand when Katherine inhaled, about to interrupt. “Don’t you think I can’t see it? You are protecting me, Mother. From what, I don’t know. But I’m not stupid.”
“No, what I do is a matter of love and the basics of raising a child to achieve her fullest potential. That’s what all parents do. And no matter what you claim, I’ve tried to help—”
“You’ve never tried to help me understand the bareness. You’ve never gone out of your way to help me recover. You’ve spent the last third of my life preening me to be just like you.”
“Listen, dear,” Katherine said as she crossed the kitchen to Sophia. “I really am trying to help you.” She touched Sophia’s arm.
“I only want to be me. To know who I was.”
“Dear, you are you. I’m trying to make you a better you by helping you build your future.”
“I shall figure out what to do with my life on my time,” Sophia said as she wiggled her arm from her mother’s touch. “The last thing I need is you pushing me further into a future I don’t want.”
“I’m your mother,” Katherine said, sounding upset herself. “It’s my job—”
“No,” Sophia said, trying to calm down. “Your job has been to gallivant around to charity events and parties in order to keep a good, upstanding name. Your job has been to berate me about what you think is best for my future. Your job has been to forget about my past when I so desperately want to remember it!”
“I’m sorry.” Katherine reached out to Sophia again. “It’s just that I have certain duties and responsibilities…” She paused as she wrapped her arms around Sophia. “Believe it or not, I do want you to be happy.”
Sophia tugged away from her mother and rubbed her eyes, fighting to keep tears at bay.
“You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “You’ll never understand.”
Without sparing her mother a glance, Sophia hurried out of the kitchen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Anne Marie asked as she walked into Sophia’s bedroom closet. Sophia had her luggage strewn about the floor and was desperately yanking things from the racks, tossing them haphazardly into the waiting suitcases.
“Holiday,” Sophia grumbled as she pushed the hair from her face. “Sometimes one just needs to get away.” America sounded like a good place all of a sudden. Maybe she could track down Xavier and have her way with him. One-night stands weren’t her kind of thing, but, then again, she’d never quivered from the inside-out just being in a man’s arms before either. She wanted him. Her body was certainly trying to tell her something about him, and she admitted that finding out what it was wouldn’t be a laborious thing. Actually, it would be quite fun.
She shook her head. Too much wishful thinking and not enough serious planning. Bad idea.
Anne Marie took Sophia’s hand and drew her from the walk-in. “Did you fight with your mum again?”
Sophia stopped midstride. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes,” Anne Marie replied. “These arguments seem to be never-ending. I’m sorry she keeps trying to shove a fairy tale down your throat. I know that’s not you.”
Sophia turned back to the closet and snatched up some shoes from the floor. She dumped them with the rest of her things. “Then why is that so difficult for Mother to see?”
“I don’t know. What has she done now?”
“Well,” Sophia huffed as she leaned against the doorway, “she wants me to quit uni to date and, no doubt, marry some rich son of a friend of hers. Then she said I don’t get out enough and don’t attend enough ‘functions’ important to the family name and that I don’t seem to recall what my ‘duties’ are.” Sophia rolled her eyes as she walked to her bed and dropped down on silk golden duvet. “This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, for heaven’s sake. Mother makes it seem like being a countess is such a big deal. It’s her whole life, but that’s not me.” She raised her voice as she rose up. “I am not now, nor shall I ever be, like her.”
Anne Marie sat beside Sophia and reached out for her friend’s hand.
“Listen,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “I’m sorry you fought with your mum again. I’m sorry she makes you feel this way. But remember what I have always told you.” Anne Marie touched the end of Sophia’s nose with her fingertip. “You can
only do what makes you happy and no one else. And I shall always be here if you need me.”
Sophia cocked her head and looked at the woman who had been her friend since her first year at university. Sophia had been twenty-one at the time, and Anne Marie had been barely eighteen. While Sophia had struggled her way through one class at a time, Anne Marie had always been there, supporting and encouraging. A true friend who always remained by Sophia’s side.
“It’s just been getting more and more difficult with Mother the older I get. I don’t know what the deal is: her or me?”
“Both, I think,” Anne Marie said matter-of-factly. “Don’t be angry; it’s just what I see. You just want to find the missing pieces of your life. There is no way easy way to do that. Your mum, on the other hand—” Anne Marie waved her hand in the air and rolled her eyes “—is…special. Just be true to yourself, Sophia. That’s all you can do.”
Sophia’s face twisted with sadness. “You’re right, of course. You always are.” She gave a hesitant smile. “But these last few years have been the most difficult.”
Anne Marie slid an arm around her. “You’re the only one she has left, Sophia.”
Tears pricked the back of Sophia’s eyes at the thought of her younger brother, Connor. “Do you think it would be different if he was alive?” Her voice cracked.
“Oh, darling.” Anne Marie tugged her close. “You can’t think about that. Connor was taken from this world far too soon, but it didn’t change what your mum always wanted for you. It’s only now he’s gone that she fights harder for it. That’s all.”
“Yeah. I only wish…” Sophia exhaled roughly. She wished for a lot of things. An understanding mother. To see her brother’s beaming smile. To not feel so constricted in her life. There had to be something in her past—in her forgotten memory—that would help her fill the strange void in her chest that left her so restless and agitated. And unhappy. She was losing the battle to live the life she wanted and didn’t even know what life that was.
“Wishes can come true, you know,” Anne Marie whispered.
Sophia laughed. “Only in fairy tales.”
Her friend’s green eyes twinkled. “Fairy tales are what you make them. No matter what, remember what I said: just be true to yourself, Sophia.”
Sophia smiled as she moved off the bed and glanced into her closet…and the heaping pile of clothes and shoes cascading from the mound hiding her luggage. “I suppose you’re right. I have certainly made a mess in there whilst I let off steam, haven’t I?”
“No worries about that now.” Anne Marie scurried to Sophia’s side. “I have a question for you.”
Sophia gave an uneasy nod.
“Right. Now, I’m not quite sure what happened with you at the party last night, because when we left you looked a little beside yourself.” Anne Marie paused, and Sophia’s cheeks went hot.
Everything about the previous night had put Sophia on edge, keeping her tangled the next day. And dreaming about some to-die-for man, who was also probably crazy, at the same time her mother picked away at her future was just not a good combination.
Anne Marie leveled a stare at Sophia. “Anything you want to mention?”
Sophia attempted to hide both the embarrassment and excitement on her face. She failed.
“You snogged him, didn’t you? I knew it; I just knew it. Tell me all about it.”
Sophia’s cheeks grew even hotter. When had the universe flipped upside down and decided to give Sophia her fantasy man on a platter? Who was he, really? Sophia had been with men before, but no one—absolutely no one—made her feel like he had in such a short amount of time. She chided herself for her forward behavior yet still relished in the way it made her body grow with enticement.
“I knew it! Was it good?” Anne Marie asked when Sophia didn’t answer.
Sophia shrugged and paced the room. “It wasn’t like that. Well…it, um…” How could she explain this to her best friend without sounding like a hormone-driven teenager? Goodness, how could she even explain it to herself? “Yes, I kissed him. Well, really, he kissed me.” Sophia couldn’t help the sly smile that crept across her face.
“And?”
“I let the kiss go further than I should have.”
“Did you—”
“Heavens, no! Oh! I made a bloody mess of myself. I practically threw myself on him once it started, and had I not come back down to reality, it would have been just like that.”
“Really? The kiss was that good?”
Sophia nodded, still ashamed and yet oddly satisfied. Well, not satisfied in the way she wanted to be, but satisfied he had wanted her—though she still couldn’t fathom why.
“Well then—” Anne Marie took Sophia’s hand “—what in the devil stopped you?”
“What?”
“What stopped you? Why didn’t you let the feelings take you?”
Sophia sighed.
Take me.
Oh, Sophia had wanted Xavier to take her, all right. On the balcony, in the dark, on a gleaming summer night. A bed would have been fine, too.
What had stopped her? Anne Marie had always told Sophia that she didn’t reach out or risk enough to find some of the things she was missing. Maybe she’d missed her chance with Xavier because she’d been too afraid. Afraid of her response to him and afraid he might have actually known her.
“Quite frankly,” Sophia said, “I’m concerned where my feelings would have led. Actually, I know exactly where they would have, and I honestly think I would have liked it. Maybe even loved it.” Sophia shook her head in dismay. “Plus,” she said as her voice dropped to a whisper, “I think he knows me.”
“What do you mean, ‘knows’ you?”
“He knew my name.”
Anne Marie rocked back. “And?”
Sophia huffed. “And what? I’d spent all of five minutes in his presence and he knows my name? Is he bloody psychic?”
Anne Marie waved off Sophia’s comment. “Dear, did you forget that you and I were talking outside at the show before he came out?”
Her face crinkled. “So?”
“Who’s to say he didn’t overhear me say your name?”
Sophia’s body tensed. Had Anne Marie called her by her name that night? At that moment outside? Possibly. Her lip curled downward, and her eyes slid back to Anne Marie’s. “I’ll go with you on that one. But he said other things to make me think the contrary.”
“Like what?”
“Well, he said something about the dress I was wearing being made with me in mind. And then he said something about waiting too long to have me in his arms.”
Anne Marie’s eyebrow shot up. “So?”
“What do you mean, ‘so’?”
“Those are called pick-up lines, Sophia. He was hitting on you, darling.”
Sophia frowned. She hadn’t considered that. Instead, she’d had a ridiculous thought for just a brief moment that maybe Xavier was a part of the past she’d been searching for.
“You’re probably right,” Sophia said. “I’ve never been to America.”
Anna Marie flashed a smile. “That doesn’t mean he’s never been here, Sophia.”
She hadn’t thought of that either. She hadn’t seemed to think about many things since last night; her mind got so muddy when she thought of Xavier.
“True,” Sophia said. “But I think I’d remember him.” His face. His smell. His presence.
“What if it was before the accident?”
Sophia’s insides churned. She should’ve thought of that, too. Part of her held out hope that was true. The same part that warmed at the mere thought him. She shook her head. “I wish it was the case. But I’m certain he would have said something, right?”
“Yes, you’re probably right. So then, it’s just as I said; he was simply hitting on you.”
Sophia sighed in relief—or was it regret? “It doesn’t matter anyway. He’s probably halfway around the world right now.”
“So that’
s it, then? You won’t see him again?”
“See who again?” Katherine asked as she walked into Sophia’s room without so much as a knock.
“Oh, no one, Mother,” Sophia said. “You could knock, you know.”
Katherine’s lips formed a thin line. “If you want privacy, close the door all the way. Now, who are you seeing again?”
Sophia crossed her arms. “I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Then who is this gentleman you’re discussing?”
Arguing would do no good, so Sophia just said his name, hoping that alone would quell her mother’s curiosity.
The color slowly drained from Katherine’s face. “Xavier Cain, you said?”
“Mother?” Sophia asked as she grabbed Katherine’s arm. “Are you okay?”
Katherine shook her head and put on weak smile. “Yes, dear. Just fine. Um…” She paused, seemingly uneasy with her words. “Where did you meet this Mr. Cain?”
“Last night at the fashion show.”
“Is he…American, by chance?”
Sophia arched her brow in confusion. “Yes, he is. Why?”
“Nothing, dear, nothing. Xavier isn’t a common British name, that’s all. He sounds foreign. Are you going to see him again?”
“Doubtful. He’s the designer for XS and was only here for the fashion show—”
“He’s the XS designer?” Her hand fluttered to her mouth. “But that’s your favorite line.”
Sophia nodded slowly. “Of course. Why do you sound surprised?”
Katherine stared blankly at Sophia.
After several beats of silence, Sophia continued, “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m sure he’s on his way back to the States as we speak.” That thought put a weight on her heart. A heavy one.
Katherine cleared her throat. “All right then. That’s probably best. Fashion designers surely aren’t easy keepers. Trouncing all over the world with beautiful girls and such.”
Sophia snorted. “That’s a fine thing to say. You don’t even know him.”
“And after less than twenty-four hours you do?” her mother retorted. “Besides, I don’t need to know him. I know the type.”
Recaptured Dreams Page 3