Dare (24 page)

Harley

I stared up at the beautiful brick exterior of the house and tried to grasp any memory of it that might be rattling around in my damaged mind. But I couldn’t. As far as I knew, I’d never seen this house before.

Xander came around the side of the car and opened my door.

“Just give me a second to get the wheelchair.”

He was so kind. The nurses all gushed about how he spent nearly every minute at my side while I was in the coma. The nurse called Alicia said that she had to practically shove food down his throat to get him to eat, he was so worried about me. Another nurse said that he slept in the room beside me every night, that he refused to even use the lounger they’d provided because he didn’t want to be even the half dozen feet away from me.

It was all very romantic, I suppose. I mean, he really sounded like a man in love. I just wish I could remember him.

They’d reduced the cast on my leg yesterday, so now I could bend my knee a little. But they didn’t want me walking on it and, with the broken collarbone still healing, I couldn’t use crutches. So I was relegated to a wheelchair for the time being.

Xander set the chair up on the driveway and took my arm, helping me balance on one leg as I stepped out of the car and into the chair. It was an awkward dance we’d only done together once, so the choreography was a little off. But he caught me when I began to slide sideways. That was good. At least I knew I could trust him.

“The house has been closed up for…well, since your accident. But I had Jonnie come over and air it out, so hopefully it’s not too bad.”

“Who’s Jonnie?”

Xander hesitated for a second, as he carefully pushed my chair up over the lip of the front walk.

“She’s my office manager, personal assistant, secretary. Basically, anything I need, Jonnie’s just a phone call away to get it for me.”

“I guess I knew her. Before.”

“You did. You and she were actually pretty good friends. I sometimes wondered if I should be worried about how much time you spent together.”

“Really?”

“You were planning the wedding together.”

My heart sank a little. It was odd to think about planning a wedding to marry a man I couldn’t even remember. I must have loved him, too. So why couldn’t I remember that?

Xander had to maneuver the chair a little to tug it up the two steps that led to the impressive front door—or doors. It was two doors with massive panels of leaded glass in the center. It really was an impressive house on the outside. I was almost afraid to see the inside.

Xander’s business must have been quite successful. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know much of anything about him. He knew all these things about me, but all I really knew was his name and what he did for a living, and I didn’t even fully understand that. And here I was, moving in with him.

Was there any wonder that I suddenly felt as though my life was spiraling out of control?

“You said my parents are on a cruise?”

“Yeah. In Europe for another couple of weeks.”

“And Philip?”

I asked the question before I had a chance to think about. I wanted to bite my tongue and take it back the moment it was out. But I couldn’t.

Xander had the doors open, and he didn’t answer as he pushed me through the threshold. The doors opened onto a massively impressive entryway of marble and dark wood and glass. The ceiling went all the way up, past two separate landings on the second and third floors of the house, the stairway an impressive, sprawling thing that was just off to the left. Xander pushed me through while I was still staring up the ceiling—there were skylights up there!—into an impressive sitting room that was decorated in light-colored fabrics, impressive paintings from a few artists I recognized right off the bat, and a wall of windows that looked out onto a brick patio and a beautifully landscaped garden.

“Is that a pool back there?”

“Yes.”

“I love to swim.”

“I know. When you weren’t jogging, you started every morning out there in the pool. It was quite a sight to wake up to.”

I blushed at the implication. I assumed we had a sexual relationship, but he’d never eluded to it until now. It was kind of…weird, but exciting in a strange sort of way.

“Philip’s in Dallas,” he said, answering the question I had unthinkingly asked. “He moved there the year after you graduated from college, you told me. Decided he was tired of following in his father’s footsteps and became a history teacher in some exclusive high school.”

None of that sounded familiar. I wanted to laugh; the image of Philip as a high school teacher was that humorous. He was so stuffy, always wearing a suit and tie, even to classes where the professors themselves were dressed in jeans and flip-flops. The image of him in a tie in front of a bunch of disrespectful teenagers was just that comical.

“I’m gonna go see what Jonnie left in the fridge for us to eat. Make yourself at home.”

“Xander?”

He paused in the archway between this room and the next. “Yeah?”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done. I guess I haven’t really said that yet.”

He studied my face for a long minute, his expression unreadable. I felt like I should know what he was thinking, that I should be able to read the emotion in his eyes. But I couldn’t.

“You would have done it for me.”

He turned and walked away before I could respond. I turned back to the windows, staring at the swimming pool that was barely visible through the shrubbery. I tried to remember swimming in that pool, but I couldn’t. The last distinct memory I had of swimming was when my college roommate and I went to the indoor pool on the university campus a couple of weeks…well, no, I guess it was a couple of years ago.

This wasn’t working for me. I didn’t like not remembering. It was like it was all just right there, but I simply couldn’t decipher it. It was frustrating.

***

We had lunch together, but the conversation was stilted and awkward. He would start to say something, but then he would stop, realizing that I didn’t know who or what he was talking about.

“Did you know Shelly and Charlie?”

A slow smile slipped over his full lips. It was a nice smile, the kind that could make a girl have thoughts that weren’t altogether Christian. I found myself wondering if it was the smile that made me go out with him in the first place.

“I know them well. You took me home with you for Christmas last year and we spent an entire week enduring their questions and crude jokes.”

“I think I can figure out which was which.”

He laughed, a nice, deep chuckle that came from somewhere deep in his chest.

“Shelly really is the complete opposite of you.”

I smiled, thinking of my kid sister—only twelve in my mind. She was obsessed with that new British boyband, One Direction. It was all she talked about when I went home over the summer.

“She would be in high school now,” I said as much to myself as to him.

“She is. She’ll start her senior year here in a few weeks.”

I shook my head, trying to imagine it. “Did she lose the braces?”

“And she has contact lenses now. She’s quite proud of them.”

“I bet she’s a real beauty.”

“Just like you.”

I blushed as I suddenly became focused on pushing the food around on my plate.

“Charlie’s going to be a senior at UT Austin this fall. And he’s been seeing the same girl for the last three years. You thought he might propose at his graduation if they’re still together then.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah. Apparently he came to you and asked if you thought that would be a good way to handle it.”

“That’s how I thought Philip was going to do it.”

Xander nodded. “Instead, you found out about his engagement a week before graduation.”

I looked up at him. “Does it bother you? Talking about my…” I started to call Philip my boyfriend, but—then again—he hadn’t been that for a long time. And that was so odd.

I was stuck in May of 2010. But Xander was in August of 2015.

Surreal.

“No. We talked about Philip on our first date.”

“We did?”

“Yeah. You were teasing me about the number of women you assumed I’d dated, so I made you tell me about your dating history. Philip was pretty much the whole sum of that experience.”

I blushed, the heat burning my cheeks so that I pressed my palm to them in an attempt to cool them slightly.

“You did that then, too.”

“I blush a lot. My father used to say it was because I was born under the Christmas star. Something about Christian shame, or something.”

“I always thought it was pretty cute.”

I felt the blush deepen. I had to admit, Xander was really good looking. He was not the kind of guy I’d ever imagined myself being with. I’d always been attracted to the class nerd, the kind of doughy guy who knew all the answers but had this sort of vulnerability about him. There didn’t seem to be anything vulnerable about Xander. In fact, he was the complete opposite. Confidence seeped from his pores. And that cocky smile was as gorgeous as it was infuriating. I felt like he was teasing me each time it came out. But it also made me feel like I’d suddenly become the star in some sort of drama…I don’t know, it was hard to explain even to myself.

“My parents still have their vet business?”

“Yes. Your father announced last Christmas that he never intends to retire and your mother rolled her eyes at him. But they’ve been training a young vet, David something or other. I think your mother’s hoping he’ll take over some of your father’s duties in the next few years.”

“David Garcia?”

“That might be it.”

“He used to hang around the house a lot when we were kids. He liked watching my dad work.”

“He seems like a nice guy. He got married last year to Rachel Thomas? You said she was your friend in high school.”

“Rachel?” I smiled. “Yeah. Good for her. She always had a crush on David.”

“She works with your mom in the office now, taking calls and scheduling patients.”

I nodded. “I guess that should make Charlie feel better about choosing human patients over the animal kind.”

Xander suddenly burst into laughter.

“What?”

He shook his head. “That just reminded me of an argument your father and you got into at Christmas. Your father was lamenting the fact that none of his children chose to walk in his footsteps and you said something about how a father should want his children to follow their own chosen path. You were so angry afterward…”

“And that’s funny?”

“No, not that part. It’s funny because afterward you and Charlie snuck a bottle of brandy out of your father’s stash and got drunk in the barn. I found the two of you curled up on a hay bale, snoring so loudly the horses were kicking restlessly at their stall doors.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You do, babe. When you’re drunk, you do.”

I couldn’t help the smile that jumped to my lips. I kind of liked when he teased me.

“But then you were so hungover the next day, your mother threatened to call the doctor because she thought you had food poisoning or something. You finally had to break down and tell her the truth. She wouldn’t speak to you for the rest of the day.”

“Sounds like my mom.”

“Your parents are a piece of work. When you told them you were moving here to live with me, I thought their heads were going to explode.”

“I really lived here with you before the wedding?”

Something about his expression changed, as his eyes moved slowly over me. It made my belly turn to liquid and my bones threaten to melt. And when he reached over and slid a finger over the back of my hand, it felt so familiar that I was pretty sure my body was remembering it—even if my mind couldn’t.

“It took a lot of discussion to convince you to do it. But once you agreed, you were ready to do it immediately. We couldn’t get your house packed quick enough.”

“I had a house?”

“A nice little cottage on the outskirts of town. It had a metallic building out back that you turned into a studio. You constantly complained that there wasn’t enough light inside of it despite the many windows you had put into the sides. You said you needed skylights to get the light just right and then your paintings would be as perfect as your skill could make them.”

“That’s sounds like me.”

“That’s where I found you, the night of our first date. I knocked on the front door for fifteen minutes before I made my way around back. And there you were, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a tank top that was covered in so much paint that it looked like you’d rolled in it.”

His voice deepened slightly as he talked. And the way he was looking at me…I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me quite like that. Not even Philip. It made my heart do something funny in my chest.

“Anyway,” he said, sitting back and clearing his throat a little, “we’d spent six months living in two different states. I think you were just anxious to begin a new life together.”