Dare (31 page)

Harley

He carried me upstairs, and we undressed each other, taking our time this time. The way he looked at me, like he was unwrapping a gift he’d waited all his life to receive, made me feel like a queen, like the most adored starlet that ever existed. I’d never enjoyed being the center of attention, never played the role of a drama queen. But I loved this, loved the way it felt to be the center of his world.

I loved him. There was no doubt in my mind.

We moved together on the bed, our bodies fit together like they were made for one another. When he was inside of me this time, the pleasure was muted, but still just as exciting. I could have lain there all night, my hands moving over his warm skin, my body aware of every movement of his, his aware of every movement of mine. I touched his face and tilted his head so I could see the hooded look of his eyes; I could see my own thoughts mirrored there.

“I love you, Harley,” he whispered. “I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

I wished I could say the same. I couldn’t remember our first meeting, but something inside of me screamed that it was the same, that I knew the first time he looked at me this way that he was the only man I would ever love again.

“I love you,” I said.

The joy that jumped into his eyes in that moment, the passion in the kiss he offered me, told me everything was going to be okay. Whatever happened in the past no longer mattered. He was my future—and that was all.

It was a long time before sleep came. When our bodies were exhausted, we lay together, talking about everything and nothing all at once. We watched the sun come up through the French doors to the balcony, curled up together there in the bed. I sensed we’d done this before, and it was a comforting idea. Normalcy. It seemed like nothing had been normal these last months. But this was.

When I did fall asleep, it was a deep, contented sleep. And, for a while, it was good. But then the dreams began.

It was a jumble at first. Different locations, different people all mixed up into a mish mosh of details. There was emotion, a lot of emotion. Anger. Fear. Betrayal. Love. Always underneath it all was love, and that seemed to make it all so much worse. And the pain. It was so much more than the physical pain of my accident.

And then there were clear images. Moments that I instinctively knew were memories.

Standing in the middle of a gallery, dressed in shorts, my hair a mess. Xander watching me from his position against the wall. He was dressed in a suit and tie, but he didn’t seem to be feeling the heat. I was annoyed that he didn’t offer to help, but when he did offer, I wanted him to disappear. I didn’t need help from someone like him. I didn’t know who I thought he was, but I instinctively knew he was trouble.

A few days later, I walked out of the gallery and found him loitering around my car, trying to look casual, but clearly waiting for me. At first, I was annoyed. But then I thought it was kind of cute, how uncomfortable he looked in his uncertainty. Not enough to accept his offer of coffee, but cute just the same.

And then he kept showing up, once with a bouquet of roses. I told him I hated flowers, so he came the next day with chocolates. I accused him of trying to blow my diet, so then he brought a gold keychain with my initials in it because he’d seen that my keychain was broken.

So considerate. How could I say no then?

And then the first date. He showed up when I lost track of time and caught me still in my studio. I took a quick shower, all too aware of him waiting, alone, downstairs in my tiny house. Wondering what he thought of my house, of my possessions, if he’d see anything that would scare him off. As uncertain as I was about this man—this stranger I barely knew who just came off as the love-‘em-and-leave-‘em type—I didn’t want him to give up on me. I wanted to know where this might go.

And then…
God, it was a perfect first date! He could kiss like a god!
I was so close to letting him inside.

If he’d known how lost I was that first night, he might not have waited three months to invite himself into my bed. But I was glad he did. He showed that he wasn’t just in it for the sex…and that was so amazing! I’d never known how great sex could be. I mean, when Philip James is your only experience…yet, I couldn’t imagine it would have been that great with anyone but Xander.

The night we lay in his hotel room bed and he asked me to move in with him…I would have gone home right then and there to pack my bags. But then, adding the stuff about Margaret Wallace wanting me to paint a mural for her…it was just the icing on the cake.

It was all coming back, every incredible minute of it. And not just Xander. I remembered my brother, Charlie, and his argument with Daddy over his decision to go premed instead of the veterinarian route. I remembered the Christmas I took Xander home with me, how I snuck a good bottle of brandy out of Daddy’s liquor cabinet and drank it out in the barn with Charlie, trying to convince him that adulthood wasn’t all defiance and struggle. I remembered waking up sometime before dawn, Xander laughing as he held my hair out of the way while all that brandy made a second appearance.

I remembered it all.

I sat up in the darkness, my head pounding as the memories continued to pour forth.

I remembered it all.

I climbed out of bed and grabbed a bathrobe off the back of the bathroom door, still hanging there even though I moved out of this room six months ago. I rushed upstairs to my studio, pushing aside a rollaway shelf that concealed the little safe I’d had put in there a few weeks after moving into the house. Xander knew about it. It’d been his idea.

“Everyone has valuables, Harley. You should have the safe just in case.”

I never imagined I would use it for anything more important than a life insurance policy, maybe a copy of our marriage certificate. But we never got it, did we?

Why did it take me so long to put it together? I saw them together; I knew there was something more going on there than he ever told me. But I never stopped long enough to wonder just how much more because I never wanted to believe that Xander would lie to me.

How naive could I be?

It was still there. Thank God. I knew he didn’t have the combination, but there were other ways to get into a safe. All those weeks, I had to bide my time. I had to plan the perfect moment to get back into the house and take this out. Show it to that reporter.

What were the chances that he would be there tonight? Was that what brought my memory back? Or was it seeing Jonnie? Seeing Xander’s mother, Bonnie, probably helped, too.

They were all involved.

I was so stupid to not see it all so much sooner. I wanted to believe in Xander so much; I wanted to hide in our relationship so desperately that I ignored the proof that was right there in front of my face.

I couldn’t ignore it forever.

“Harley? Are you up here?”

I quickly replaced it in the safe and slammed it closed, and then I moved the shelf back into place. I was turning as Xander came up the last few stairs, naked except for a pair of thin sleep pants that did little to hide the impressive length of his handsome body.

I reached up to run my fingers through my hair, but, of course, it wasn’t there.

“Are you okay?”

I backed up instinctively.

“I remember.”

That was all I had to say.

Xander

I never meant to get involved. I knew what Grant was up to, but I kept my distance. When he offered me money, I refused to take it. When he tried to buy me a house, I told him I’d rather do things on my own. He didn’t understand it. My mom, Margaret, they were both eager to share in the wealth. But not me. I wanted to keep my hands clean, to be the good man my mom had always told me I could be.

Even if she wasn’t the angel I’d always believed her to be.

And when I met Harley, I thought she was my chance for a new start. I thought I could put all this behind me. I never expected her to learn the truth.

“You remember?”

She didn’t have to answer. I could see it in her face. The weariness that had come that day, the day she found out about me and Margaret…

“You were married to Margaret?”

The disbelief in her voice as the county clerk stared at us through the dirty Plexiglas shield around her little cage was enough to strip me bare. I tried to touch her, but she pulled away, turned, and stormed out of the building.

“If you could just get that divorce decree,” the clerk said.

“Yes, thank you very fucking much!”

I chased her out onto the front steps of the county building. She was standing on the sidewalk, staring at the passing traffic as though she didn’t really see any of it. I walked up behind her and laid my hands on her shoulders. She jerked away and turned, slapping me hard enough to make the inside of my lip bleed.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me? Why would you let me find out like this?”

“I wanted to tell you, Harley. But you always cut me off whenever I started to explain…”

“Margaret. It’s bad enough that you married once and didn’t bother to tell me. But to Margaret? To the woman I work with? The woman who spends almost as much time in our house as we do?”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew it was wrong; I knew I should have tried harder to tell her. But with everything else going on, it seemed almost trivial.

A taxi pulled up then to discard its passenger. Harley climbed in before I realized what she was doing, the car pulling away from the curb almost instantly.

“I remember everything,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, her back pressed against the rollaway shelf that hid her safe.

Was she looking in the safe when I called out to her? What was she hiding in there?

Did it matter anymore?

“Then you remember our plans. You remember how we feel about each other.”

“I remember you lied to me.”

“I was protecting you.”

“You were protecting yourself.”

She might be right about that. I thought I was doing the right thing for us both, but maybe I was only thinking of myself. Maybe I was selfish in the way I went about it. But I still believed my intentions were right.

“I had to do something. If I didn’t—”

“You put us both in danger, Xander.”

Her face crumbled, and she sank to her knees, sobs vibrating through her body. I went to her, not sure she would welcome my touch, but grateful when she didn’t push me away.

“I love you,” I whispered, as I sank to the floor beside her and pulled her into my arms. “I just wanted to make this right for us, for our future.”

“You should have trusted me.”

“I thought I was protecting you.”

She curled into me. I kissed away her tears, our lips meeting on a long, lingering touch that I wished could last forever. I had my Harley back. And, for the moment, I was going to celebrate that.

She crawled into my lap, her lips sliding over my throat.

“It was so hard, being away from you.”

I groaned. “I know, baby. That restraining order just about killed me.”

“That was my dad.”

“I know.”

She ran her hands over my face. “You’re okay. That’s what matters.”

“But you…when they called…”

She kissed me again, and it was impossible to think of anything else. I wanted to be so close to her, so much closer. I couldn’t get close enough. So many things…

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?”

“You’ve got to stop, Harley,” I said, grabbing her arms and pulling her over to the bed. I only wanted to force her to sit but she fought back and tried to pull away. She ripped at my arms, tore at my shirt. The papers fell out in a shower of insanity. I’d forgotten about them, forgotten the most dangerous thing I’d ever done because of the threat of losing the only thing that had ever mattered to me.

She went still as she watched the last of them fall.

“What the…?”

I bent to grab them, but she’d already knelt, grabbing a few incriminating pieces of paper before I could stop her.

“Where did you get these?”

I tried to take them from her, but she held them so tightly that they would have torn if I’d continued to fight her. So I picked up the others and stood, crossing the room as I tried to figure out what to say.

“This one has Grant’s signature on it.”

I knew that. That’s why I took it.

“And this one…is that your mom’s signature? Xander? What’s going on?”

I could hear the shock and disbelief in her voice. I wished I’d felt the same when I realized just how deeply involved they were. But I couldn’t because I really wasn’t surprised.

I slid the folder out from under my shirt where I’d thought sticking it into the top of my pants would keep it secure—like I was some sort of spy from the 1950s. I had the same information on a flash drive in my pocket, but those didn’t have signatures on them. They said they needed signatures. The one time in this automated society when an electronic signature wouldn’t do.

I tossed it all onto the low table in front of the television and sat heavily on the loveseat.

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

We sat there for a long time, just holding each other. I was so glad not to be alone in this anymore, so glad to have her back here where she belonged. It killed me to know she’d suffered because of me. When she was in the hospital and they said she had hit her head, I was terrified that the worse had happened. But she was here, she was safe, and everything was going to be okay.