There was too much emotion, she couldn’t take it anymore. She ran away, leaving John standing on the sidewalk stunned by what had just happened. This wasn’t how the night was supposed to end. He didn’t mean to push her away, he just wanted her to know that he wanted to be with her. He put himself out there like he had never done before. And now, just as quickly as she had come into his life, she was gone.
*****
Rayne ran all the way home. She was shaking so badly when she reached the garage that it took her a good five minutes to unlock the door to her suite. Finally, she was able to open the door. She rushed in and threw herself on the bed. Why? Why did she have to be so screwed up? Why did her parents have to die and make her incapable of loving another soul? Why did John have to come into her life? Why hadn’t she just said no when Mrs. Patterson asked her to go to coffee with him? None of this would be happening if she had just said, no.
She must have cried herself to sleep because she woke up about 3:00 a.m. in the same position she had been in and the door to her suite was still open. She closed the door, almost disappointed that he hadn’t followed her home to try to convince her to love him. It was for the best though. Living a life without love was burden she was going to have to learn to live with. She closed and locked the door and found her way back to her bed.
A week came and went and Rayne didn’t hear a word from John. She was relieved, she supposed, but she longed to hear his voice. But this was for the best for both of them. It was better this way. Ellie only had one more golfing lesson and Mr. Patterson said he would make sure he was available to pick her up so Rayne didn’t have to face John. After that, she doubted she would ever have an opportunity to see him again. He would be busy training and traveling and she would be in her suite with her nose in the books for the next several months. After that, she would be long gone. Yes, it was better this way.
She went on about her days the same as she had before John had come into her life. She fought hard to keep busy enough to keep him off her mind. After ten days of not seeing him, she woke up on Wednesday and thought that she might be over him. She didn’t wake up feeling sad that day. She went to her classes and actually paid attention to the instructors, which was something she hadn’t done in over a month. She had either had her head in the clouds or her mind in the dumps, but she was now alert and focused. She felt so good that she thought she would surprise the Patterson’s and cook them a special meal for dinner. She hadn’t eaten a meal with them in over a week. She simply hadn’t felt like eating or being around anyone, so the second one of the kids’ parents came home, she went to her suite to be alone. She was in the mood for some good food and good company. And she was sure they would enjoy the break from cooking and cleaning.
She was on her way to the grocery store after her last class to pick up the ingredients she would need for dinner when her phone rang. It was Mr. Patterson.
“Rayne. I hate to do this to you, but we had an emergency and I’m not going to be able to get away and pick up Ellie from golf lessons. I feel really bad about this, but I really need you to pick her up for me. Mrs. Patterson won’t be back in town for a few hours, so I really need this favor.”
Rayne’s heart stopped. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t face him.
“Rayne. Rayne, are you there?” Mr. Patterson asked repeatedly.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Okay, I’ll stop by and pick her up.”
“I owe you one. I’m really sorry. You can do this though. Maybe it will help you get some closure. See you at home.”
Rayne pulled up to the country club, but couldn’t bring herself to get out of her car. Just breathe, Rayne. Just wait by the door and she can come to you. ‘He’ll probably run in the other direction when he sees you anyway,’ she thought to herself. After a minute or two of deep breathes and pep talks, she got out of her car and swiftly walked up the steps to the entry of the club. She could see Ellie and John practicing on the practice greens through the large glass windows on the opposite side of the country club entrance. She stood there waiting for Ellie to look at her, but she didn’t. Finally Rayne had no choice but to get Ellie from the greens herself.
John saw her coming and took a few steps backward. His first instinct was to find a wall to hide behind, but he knew that she had already seen him. Plus, this couldn’t be easy for her either. If she was brave enough to face him, he was strong enough to face her. Besides, she looked so cute with her low pigtails swinging on each side of her head. She almost looked like a little girl walking toward him. Then it dawned on him. There was a reason she seemed so familiar to him. She was the little girl named Rain that he knew from his childhood. Sure, she was taller and lost the chubbiness in her face, but without a doubt, she was the little girl that was best friends with his neighbor growing up.
The closer she got to Ellie and John, the bigger the knot in her throat got. She wasn’t going to cry though. She wasn’t going to show him that she was sorry for what she had done on her last date. She wasn’t going to let him see how badly she wanted to throw herself into his arms and let him hold her and tell her that life was going to work out. She wasn’t going to tell him that she thought she loved him. She wasn’t going to tear down those walls that she had worked so hard to build around her heart.
“Rayne. You’re the girl.”
“Hi, John.”
“No. You don’t understand. You’re the girl. I know why you seem so familiar. You’re the girl.”
Rayne gave John a puzzled look. “What girl?”
John grabbed Rayne’s hand. “I need to talk to you. Please, just give me five minutes.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you okay? Do I need to call someone to help? You’re kind of scaring me.”
“Ellie, keep practicing your putting. Way and I are going to go sit right over there for a minute, okay?” John told Ellie as he pointed to the picnic table a few feet from the practice greens.
He sat Rayne down and put her hands in his. “When I was a kid, I lived in the same town as you. We lived on 7th street.”
Rayne sat quietly giving John a blank stare as he continued, “My neighbor was a girl name Amy Anderson.” He paused to see if anything he was saying was jogging Rayne’s memory, but she showed no emotion.
“Amy had a best friend who would come over to play with her a few times a week. Since we were all about the same age, I played at Amy’s house with her and her friend all the time.” He continued. “I’ll admit, I had a little crush on Amy’s friend. She smelled so pretty. She smelled like… like baby powder and bubble gum.”
Rayne’s eyes opened wide. “You can’t be serious.”
“And her name was Rain, probably spelled, R-A-Y-N-E.”
The blank stare had returned to Rayne’s face. Was this guy a stalker? He went to great lengths to figure out a way to try to connect them. It was kind of sick in a way. Had she been completely wrong about him the entire time? Had she dodged a bullet by breaking things off sooner than later? She had to wonder.
“Ellie, are you ready, sweetie? We need to get going.” Rayne insisted as she quickly walked toward the glass doors and away from John.
“Wait. Rayne, you have to believe me. Why would I make this up?” John pleaded as he chased behind her.
Rayne decided not to respond to him. She couldn’t be held responsible for what would come out of her mouth if she opened it. She grabbed Ellie’s hand and led her off of the practice greens, through the doors and to the car. John stopped following her at the door. She had made her point.
*****
Rayne marched straight to her suite when she got home and immediately called her grandmother. She had never let her grandma tell her any stories about her childhood. It was too painful for her to hear him. She preferred to live with the fact that she had very little memory of her family before the accident. It’ was easier that way. Her grandmother couldn’t bear to see her granddaughter hurt, so she had obliged Rayne and didn’t push the informatio
n on her. She figured Rayne would come to her when she was ready to face her past.
“Grandma. I have questions.” Rayne said when her grandmother answered the phone.
Instinctively, her grandma knew what she was talking about, so she sat down and got comfortable. She had a feeling they were going to be having a long conversation.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, honey. All you have to do is ask.” She assured.
“Do you remember the name of any of my friends when I was little?”
“That’s an interesting first question.”
“I have a reason for asking. Maybe this will open the doors for more, but for right now, I just want to know if you remember any of my friends.”
“I remember a couple. Mostly because your mom had grown up with their moms, so I kept up with their children. Jessica Adams was one of your best little friends. Your mom had been her mom’s roommate in college. And then there was Jim and Joan Anderson’s daughter. I think her name was Amy. They lived about a block from you guys and you two girls were always at one house or the other. I guess I can’t think of any others, but you had many friends. You’ve always been such a sweet girl. Everybody wanted to be your friend.”
Rayne had heard everything she needed to know. She broke into tears and told her the story that John had told her.
“His story makes sense, Rayne. All of his facts are correct. Your mother always wore a perfume called Sweet Dreams. I suspect you wear the same perfume as her. I think you recognize that scent from your mom and you subconsciously want to smell like her. She always smelled like baby powder and candy, just like you. As unbelievable as it may seem, I think he’s telling you the truth.” Her grandma said with a firm voice. “I don’t think he’s a stalker. He’s probably just as surprised by all of this as you are. I think you owe somebody an apology.”
Rayne agreed with her grandmother and hung up the phone. Was she ready to open this part of her life up? As scared as she was thinking about it, she knew that John was worth the risk. She wanted to love him. She wanted to set her heart free and let him in. She was ready.
She called his number, but he didn’t answer. She didn’t blame him. She had been horrible. She hadn’t even shown him enough respect to tell him to go to hell earlier, much less let him explain his story further. But, what he didn’t understand is that she was scared to consider the fact that he might be telling the truth. That would mean having to remember. It would mean having to have memories. To open mental pictures of that she refused to let her mind see. It was too sudden and too painful.
She left a message at the voicemail prompt. “John. I’m so sorry. I was scared to feel. I didn’t want to believe that I was face to face with my past. But, if you were in my past, then I want to learn about it. I want to remember. Please, call me.”
As soon as she hung up there was a knock at her door. John was standing on the other side with his phone in his hand. He grabbed her in his arms as soon as the door was open and kissed her with every ounce of passion in his body.
“You won’t go through this alone. We’ll relive your past together so we can start living our future together.” John whispered.
Rayne let herself melt into him. All of the stress of her life faded from her body. And as she exhaled all of her worries, she simply said, “I believe you.”
THE END
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Sample:
Alice was just having one of those weeks. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong and her frustration was just making things worse. It began when her stupid jerk of a boyfriend phoned her up at work to break up with her. Alice had gotten so angry with him over the phone that her boss had written her up for ‘unprofessionalism’ and suspended her from work for a week. Alice had been furious over the whole thing, but had decided to try and brush it off and use the suspension as a time to clear her head, get some spring cleaning done and get her life in order. Only, when she’d tried to clean the carpet, she’d somehow managed to bleach a great white patch in the middle of the blue and when she’d given up and decided to just watch a DVD, she’d found that her now ex boyfriend had been in the apartment at some point and taken all their favorites. So now she was at her wits’ end and had decided that there was nothing left to do but go out and get a sizeable tub of ice cream and maybe some new pajamas.
The young woman pulled on a pair of tight blue jeans and a vest that was just a little too small, but fine for a short trip to the store. She tied her long, sandy blonde hair up into a ponytail, gave herself a quick glance in her hallway mirror, picked up her car keys and headed to her car. It was a scrappy, run-down little thing, but so was everything she owned. Alice had yet to find her real passion in life and seemed to drift from one minimum-wage job to another as she searched for something that would get the fires burning in her. While on a deeper level, the beautiful young woman searched to get in touch with her innermost desires, today she was just searching for comfort food.
Alice got in her car and pulled away down the street. She sighed when she saw that there was construction work going on down the street and that the road was filled with heavy congestion and builders, making the traffic stop-start all the way to the store. Alice sighed again and resigned herself to a long wait for ice cream. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she turned her attention to her glove box. Her radio had packed up years ago, but her cassettes still worked and she was sure that she had a mix tape in there somewhere. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the line of traffic shifting a little and she raised her foot from the break, still sifting around for her tape, when suddenly her car came to a stop with a heavy thud and the grinding sound of metal-on-metal as she rear-ended the car in front of her.
The color drained from her face and Alice swore. She gripped her steering wheel in both hands and let her head loll back against the headrest as she let out a long, irritated moan. She opened her eyes to see that the car in front of her was a very expensive black BMW. She swore again. Now she’d have to deal with some forty-something year old man with a bad temper and a mid-life crisis, berating her for scratching his pride and joy. She could see the car door in front of her opening and a man stepped out dressed in the finest tailored suit.
Alice set her gaze on him and her eyes widened in amazement, her mouth falling open a little. This was no middle-aged grump with a scowl. No, in front of her now was the sexiest man she had ever seen and his eyes were set on her and a small smirk of amusement was starting to flicker at his lips as he took off an expensive pair of sunglasses and tucked them over the collar of his pristine white shirt and began to stride towards her.
He must have been in his mid-thirties and he looked just like those late-night fantasies of men that Alice conjured up when her snoring ex had failed to excite her and she’d let her mind wander. His suit stretched across broad, sculpted shoulders and a firm, slim abdomen. His hair was a honey-blonde, but his eyes a sharp green. As though she were lying in bed fantasizing again, Alice couldn’t help but imagine how his muscles looked under that shirt or how his hands would feel on her body...
She flushed at her own imagination and reminded herself that she already had too many points on her license from being caught on no less than three separate occasions speeding down the same stretch of road every time she was late for work. An insurance claim or report to the police could have her license suspended and then where would she be? Alice couldn’t afford to live centrally and there were no bus routes near her house. If she couldn’t drive, she could lose her job and everything would spiral out of control. She prepared to grovel, looking over her steering wheel at those ominous scratches in the paintwork of the BMW caused by her hood.
The driver of the BMW reached her car and tapped on her window with his knuckles to encourage her to roll it down. Like a naughty schoolchild outside the principal’s office, Alice reluctantly rolled down the window and looked guiltily at the driver.
The sexy man leaned forward and rested his elbow on the edge of the window. He cast his eyes around the interior of her car - the fluffy dice and multiple teddy bears on the backseats - and his amused smile widened.
“Well now,” he said in slow, entertained words, “it appears you’ve hit my car. That’s a problem.”
“I’m so sorry!” Alice gushed. “I know it was my fault. I was looking for my mix tape and I took my foot off the brake and I already have too many points on my license and if I get any more they’ll suspend it and I won’t be able to get to work and oh-my-God please don’t tell my insurance company.”
The driver let out a low, amused chuckle at her spiel and his sharp green eyes settled on her flushed, guilty face. He wasn’t staring at her as if he were trying to remember her face for a courtroom, but more like he couldn’t tear his eyes away. His eyes travelled over her sandy hair swept back and her deep, blue eyes and the way she bit down on her lip out of nerves. He drummed his fingers contemplatively against the window.
“Well now, maybe we can sort something out quietly.”
“Oh God, thank you,” Alice gasped. “I can transfer you some money online or send you a check or...”
The driver held up his hand to silence her and instead handed her a thick, expensive-looking business card through the window. “My receptionist will give you my address. Come by tonight. Say seven? We’ll figure something out then.” The sexy stranger looked over at his wrecked trunk and shook his head, letting out a slow, teasing tut. “You’d better keep your eyes on the road from now on.”
Alice let out a mute nod and watched as the driver returned to his car, got in and caught up with the traffic that had moved ahead. She looked down at the business card in her hand. Malcolm Wright - Aviation Executive. A series of irritated horns from behind her caused Alice to turn her eyes back to the road and pull away, but if she had been distracted driving before, she was even more so now. She couldn’t stop thinking about the delicious emerald eyes of the sexy stranger and wondering about just who he was with his fancy car and tailored suit.
Stepbrother: Instant Spark (Stepbrother Billionaire Romance) (Stepbrother Romantic Suspense) Page 15