“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 claimed 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 o
ne 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 engaged, 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.
It was the story of our love—right there in front of me—told just as clearly as a hidden diary might have told it.
I was reluctant to love him, but when I did fall, I fell quick and hard.
I loved him. There was no doubt in my mind.
So what went wrong? If I loved him this much, why did I walk away from him? What was so bad about learning of his previous marriage? Was it because he didn’t tell me about it before? Was it simply a case of cold feet? Or was it something else?
I was beginning to wonder if it even mattered anymore. Things had clearly changed. So I was angry, but I didn’t take all my things. I was clearly planning in returning. Did it really matter anymore? I wanted so desperately to remember my past so that I could get on with my life. But maybe remembering wasn’t that important. Maybe what was important was the here and now. Maybe all I needed to remember was that I have this great guy who clearly loves me very much. He sat by my hospital bed for more than two weeks, waiting for me to wake up. Then he brought me here, waited on me hand and foot until I could get around on my own. What guy would do that, other than one who’d made a serious commitment and intended to make good on that commitment? And I clearly loved him. Why shouldn’t we stop looking back and start looking forward again?
Just thinking it seemed to take this weight from my shoulders.
Chapter 18
Xander
I walked into the house after arguing with Jonnie over the phone all the way home. She was unhappy with a new client I’d elected to take on, telling me that we should be choosier now that the company was on steadier feet. But I figured that, as long as the client had the money, we had the service. It was our clients that made our reputation. We could both use that argument until we were blue in the face and both be right. And I was the boss.
But you’d think that it was Jonnie’s name in the door, the way she hammered at me over these things. And she had been in charge so much lately, what with the attention I was giving to Harley. I was grateful to her, but I was going to take on the clients of my choosing.
I just wanted to see Harley’s face. I was so exhausted. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to this party tonight, no matter how many times I’d promised Margaret I would. But Harley wasn’t in the sitting room. She wasn’t on the porch, either.
I went through the maze of rooms at the back of the house and stepped up to the open door of her bedroom, but she wasn’t there either.
Where the hell was she?
I called her name as I retreated through the house, even peeking inside the kitchen before heading upstairs. It didn’t even register that my bedroom door was open until I approached it. And then I was enveloped in a scent I thought I would never smell again: Harley’s perfume, the one she always saved for special occasions.
“Harley?”
“Sorry,” she said, stepping out of the bathroom as I pushed through the double doors. “I was looking for shoes and I just couldn’t resist.” She held up the bottle of perfume I’d bought her not long after our first date, a blush on her cheeks. “It’s really nice.”
“It’s your favorite.”
“Is it? I guess that’s why I was so drawn to it.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She looked like my Harley again. The dress was red, one of those with a full sleeve on one side and nothing on the other, a soft linen that hugged every curve of her incredible body. She was a little leaner after the accident, but she filled it out exactly as she’d done eight months ago when she wore it to a client dinner. And, that night, the dress wasn’t on for long once we walked out of that restaurant.
She cleared her throat, and I realized I was staring.
“You’re welcome to anything in here. Most of it’s yours, anyway.”
“Yeah, I was a little curious about that. Were you living in this house long before I came along?”
“Jonnie, my office manager, insisted I needed a house to throw parties and such for the business. She picked out three or four options, I chose this one, and she furnished it for me. I hardly spent any time in it until you moved in.”
She cocked her head as she looked around. “I can see that.”
“Hey, it’s not tha
t bad. I have my game room downstairs. And that armchair over there is mine.”
“I can tell. Have you had it since college? Because it kind of smells.”
I laughed, caught a little off guard by her joke. She smiled, that little dimple making an appearance in her cheek. And it was like, once again, nothing had happened between us. I wanted to tug her into my arms and hold her, to feel her laughter vibrating against my skin. I wanted to kiss her until my breath was her last breath. I wanted back that freedom to touch her whenever the mood struck, to hold her for hours, to love her the way we did before everything fell apart. And there was something in her eyes that told me that might not be as far out of the realm as possibility as it had been this morning.
But then she cleared her throat. “I should go, let you get changed.”
I nodded only because it seemed expected. It took everything I had not to grab her as she walked past me.
***
If there was one thing Margaret could do, it was throw a party. She sent a limo for Harley and me, even though it wasn’t a terribly long drive. But, again, I hadn’t anticipated the line we would be forced to sit in before we got to the main entrance of the community center.
“She must have invited everyone in the city,” Harley said, as she stared out the window.
“She probably did. At least everyone in the city with the right number on their bank statement.”
“You’re awfully cynical.”
“No, I just know Margaret. She likes to surround herself with people like her father, people who make it their life’s mission to out-make and out-spend one another.”
Harley settled back down in the seat beside me. “Well, it can only be good for the kids of this neighborhood.”
“True. Margaret does tend to do good things every once in a while, even by accident.”
She punched my shoulder. “Be nice.”
I groaned, even as I took her hand and kissed her palm lightly. “Okay. If you say so.”
She flashed a smile like the one back in the bedroom that again made me feel as though something had changed between us. I touched her cheek lightly, seriously considering a kiss, when the door suddenly burst open. We’d finally reached the coveted red carpet.
KYLE: A Mafia Romance (The Callahans Book 4) Page 25