“If by sweet, you mean meddlesome.”
Layla glared at him. “By sweet, I mean she did what you were unwilling to do—help me get answers.”
“Well, make sure to send her a thank you note after you leave town,” he said. He knew he was being mean, but this was the exact scenario he’d been trying to avoid when he manipulated her into signing the contract. Now Jessica had ruined everything. Andrew knew about Layla, had served his wife with divorce papers, and was probably already plotting how to get his ex-girlfriend back.
As if reading his mind, Andrew’s eyes gentled on Layla. “Jessica also told me you’d lost a year worth of memories after the accident. She said you were trying to find out what happened during that time. I wasn’t sure how to approach you, and that’s why I didn’t tell you who I was right off the bat. I didn’t want to upset you or scare you.” His face turned red and he looked away. “I was trying to figure out how to tell you I wasn’t Nathan, when you took your shirt off, and I got…distracted.”
He stepped closer to her and rubbed her arms in a soothing manner. “I’m sorry for kissing you without your permission. But I can help you. And unlike Nathan, I actually want to help you remember.”
It was a great speech, illustrating perfectly why Andrew had a reputation for being such a good guy. And it made Nathan want to punch him again, knock out teeth this time. “Take your hands off of her,” he said, his voice low and menacing.
Andrew ignored him. “I was about to leave for the party. Come with me. We can talk, and I’ll answer any questions you have.”
“Won’t your wife have a problem with that?” Nathan asked.
Andrew glared at him over Layla’s shoulder. “My soon-to-be ex-wife you mean, and obviously she won’t be attending the ball this year.”
“Then who’s going to handle hosting duties?”
“The party planner,” he answered. “And, of course, I’ll do my part to fill in any gaps left by Diana’s absence.”
“About time you finally decided to start doing your part. And what’s this about a ranch. Is that where you were hiding?”
Andrew let go of Layla and turned to confront Nathan. “I’ve always done my part for Sinclair Industries. I’m the one who found us that deal and got Matsuda to the table. I had a few personal issues this summer, so yes, I stayed at a ranch in Montana for a while. And it was great, the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, which is why I ended up buying it. But at least I didn’t spend the summer deceiving your ex-girlfriend, just so she’d sleep with me.”
Andrew shook his head, his face filled with disgust. “You know, you’ve always had a bad reputation when it comes to women, but this is low, even for you.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Nathan shot back. “I’m not a paragon of virtue like you, who hid out on a ranch all summer, then served his wife with divorce papers after which he immediately came looking for his ex-girlfriend.”
“Diana and I were over long before I officially asked for a divorce. We never should have gotten married in the first place. I never would have taken her back, if she hadn’t been there for me when…”
He caught himself and trailed off, but Nathan finished the sentence for him. “If she hadn’t been there for you after you abandoned Layla, then you never would have married Diana. That’s what you’re saying.”
“I didn’t abandon Layla,” Andrew answered. “I honestly thought she was trying to sue our family. If I had known her father had been acting on his own, I never would have left her side.”
But Nathan just shook his head. “You’re a weak coward, and you don’t deserve her.”
Andrew’s face turned red with fury. “And you think you do? The only reason she’s with you is because she doesn’t remember me. I’m the one she dated for a year. I’m the one who fell in love with her first ten years ago. You’re just a parasite, preying on her head injury. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d rather help Layla get the answers she came to Pittsburgh for than stand here arguing with my good-for-nothing brother.”
He turned back to the spot where he’d left Layla standing, but to both their surprise, she was no longer there.
“Layla,” they said together.
“I’m over here,” she said from behind the retractable wall that hid the bedroom.
Nathan and Andrew had been so consumed with their argument, they hadn’t even noticed her pull the wall out, much less disappear behind it. But she now emerged from the hidden bedroom, dressed in a diaphanous purple sheath dress. She put Nathan in mind of a goddess as she walked toward them.
However, this goddess was positively radiating with anger. “I picked the purple one on my own while you two were fighting over me like two dogs with a bone.”
Nathan folded his arms. Considering their history, he saw no reason to pretend he was sorry for his behavior.
But of course, Andrew had to rush in with an apology, once again painting himself as the more upstanding brother. “I’m sorry. I came here to give you answers, and instead I ended up fighting with my brother. I guess not much hasn’t changed since you saw us both last.”
“Oh, it’s changed,” Nathan said. “Layla is mine now, and you don’t have any business with her.”
Andrew stiffened. “I don’t want to upset Layla any further, so I’m going to ignore you.” He turned his gaze back to her. “Does this mean you’re driving to the ball with me?”
“No,” Nathan said.
“Yes,” Layla answered at the same time.
Nathan turned to regard Layla for the first time since he caught her kissing Andrew. “No,” he said again, the command in his voice unmistakable.
“Yes,” she repeated, her eyes steeled with resolution. “You don’t own me, Nathan.”
His entire body went stiff. It felt like she’d thrown a bucket of ice water at him. “And you asked why I don’t trust you?”
He could see the steel in her eyes falter as guilt overrode her need for answers. “I’ll see you at the ball,” she said. “I promise.”
“You also promised you’d attend the ball with me. If you go with Andrew then you’re breaking that promise.”
Again a falter. She looked from him to Andrew and back to him. And for a moment, he thought she’d give in, but then she drew herself up straight. “I guess I am breaking my promise then.”
She turned to Andrew and said, “Lets go.” Then she walked toward the still open door without a backwards glance.
Andrew followed her, but as he closed the door behind them, he met Nathan’s eyes. And smirked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“I STILL can’t believe Nathan did this,” Andrew said, his hands tight on the steering wheel of his Mercedes S-class, as they coasted through town on their way to Fox Chapel. “He’s always been an irredeemable asshole, but this goes beyond his usual behavior. I could seriously maim him.”
Layla peered at him sideways from the passenger seat. He’d been ranting about Nathan for the last ten minutes. “Are you done being angry with your brother yet?”
He threw her an apologetic look and covered her hand with his. The gesture was so automatic and familiar, she could easily imagine them driving in this exact same manner as younger versions of themselves. “I’m sorry. This is not the way I wanted our reunion to go. Nathan ruined that, too,” he said.
Layla opened her mouth to answer, but he ended up correcting himself. “I’m doing it again.” He squeezed her hand. “Okay, no more talk about that evil piece of shit I call a brother. Let’s start answering your questions. I’m ready and willing. Ask me anything?”
“Really? Anything?” she said.
“Yes, really. You have to understand, Layla, I’m not usually like this. The Andrew you used to date was laidback and easygoing. I still am, but Nathan gets under my skin and brings out the worse parts of me.”
She half-smiled. “Yeah, he has a way of doing that.”
“But like I said, ‘Enough about him.’ Where do you want to start? With the fall?”
Layla nodded. “Yes, we could start there. Can you tell me what happened that night?”
“Well, I don’t actually know much. You’d come to visit me, but I was out to dinner with my parents. Apparently you asked one of the maids if it was okay to slip a note under my bedroom door. According to her you insisted on doing it yourself, and she liked you—” he broke off with a wry smile. “Everybody liked you. I’m sure the same is still true.”
She demurred. “Not everybody,” she insisted, thinking of whoever had spray painted her locker at work and the front door of her apartment.
“And still humble, too, I see.” He gave her a teasing glance before continuing on. “In any case, she let you go up. Five minutes later she heard you scream, then she found you at the bottom of the staircase. From what the police could determine, you were distracted, missed the first step, and couldn’t correct yourself once you started falling.”
“So I wasn’t pushed,” Layla said.
“No, Nathan was in Ibiza, and it was night time, so there weren’t any servants upstairs. But we paid your father off, because we knew how hard it would be to prove if you actually decided to take us to court. Also, at Sinclair Industries, we pride ourselves on our good community standing. My father didn’t want a scandal.”
Layla squeezed his hand. “Thank you for telling me. I really needed to hear what happened. And I’m sorry for any distress my father caused your family.”
“No, I’m sorry for not coming to the hospital. If I’d known you were suffering from amnesia, it wouldn’t have mattered that…” he trailed off with a shake of his head. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have stayed away.”
Layla gave his hand another squeeze. “I believe you. I think when you’re not dealing with Nathan, you’re a very upstanding and kind man. I can tell that.”
Andrew let out a pent up breath. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear you say that until you just did. I know Nathan made it seem like I was an uncaring pig for serving Diana and then seeking you out, but believe me, I struggled with the decision to ask Diana for a divorce. I keep my promises, and I made a vow to her, but we’re just not good together. I like the outdoors, she prefers spa vacations. I want at least three children, she wants one, because she says she doesn’t want to ruin her body. Hailing from two wealthy Pittsburgh families, it looked like we had enough things in common on paper to get along, but when it came down to who we really were as people, we were exact opposites. We would have made ourselves miserable keeping our promises if I hadn’t ended it.”
Layla thought of the look of disappointment on Nathan’s face after she informed him she would be attending the ball with Andrew. “Yes, I understand we can’t always keep our promises, even when we want to. I’m sure it must have been hard for you to take that step.”
“It was,” Andrew said. He stared ahead at the road. “But at the same time, it felt inevitable. You know why we went on our first date? Because our mothers were tennis partners and basically commanded us to go to the homecoming dance together. The entire time we’ve been together has felt like playacting to me. Of course we should date, we’re perfectly matched. Of course we should get married, that’s what our families expected from us. It’s like I’ve been living this other man’s life this entire time, except for when I dated you. I chose you. What we had was real, unlike the puppet show Diana and I were putting on.”
Layla clamped her lips, her heart going out to both Andrew and Diana. “What a difficult situation,” she said, rubbing his forearm with her other hand, much in the same way he had soothed her earlier.
She could see why Jessica had thought she and Andrew were such a great couple. Even though she didn’t remember him, she could already feel the camaraderie they must have shared back in the day. Away from his brother, he was easy to talk to, and she could tell he shared many of her basic morals, unlike Nathan, who had to put effort into even being polite.
“Yes, I can tell you’re a genuinely thoughtful and caring human being who takes his promises seriously,” she said. “But I’m just confused about one thing.”
“What?” he said. “Ask me anything. I’ll answer it.”
“Why didn’t you tell your brother the truth after I fell?”
Andrew glanced over at her, confused. “What do you mean?”
“You see, he says I told him I loved him, had sex with him, and then went right back to you, but I don’t think that’s the way it went down. So I’d like to hear the real story now.”
Silence and Andrew took his hand back, his formerly warm demeanor going as cold as a winter’s day. But Layla refused to let him retreat behind the hard Sinclair wall.
“You’re a good man, Andrew. I can see that clearly. And no matter what led you to keep the real story from Nathan, I’m sure you realize now that I deserve to know the truth.”
More silence, but eventually Andrew said, “I didn’t lie to him.”
“I know you didn’t,” she said. “You’re not the kind of person who lies. But maybe you let Nathan believe something that wasn’t true and then I fell, and so you never bothered to set the record straight.”
Andrew slammed his hand against the wheel. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “After you spent the night with him, I caught you sneaking out through the house. You immediately burst into tears and said we needed to talk, so I took you up to my room, where you confessed everything. Then you said we needed to break up. I couldn’t believe it, we’d been such a great couple, but you were just going to throw away everything we had after a one-night stand with Nathan. I pointed out to you that we hadn’t even slept together. For all you knew, we already had what you thought you had with Nathan. So I kissed you, and you let me.”
He shook his head at the memory. “Maybe you thought you owed me at least that much since you were dumping me for my twin brother, but when you didn’t respond to my kiss, I broke it off. That’s when we saw Nathan standing in the door. He walked away and you were about to go after him, but I held on to your arm and kept you there, trying to convince you that you were better off with me. By the time I let you go, it was too late, Nathan had already left for Ibiza.”
His lips thinned. “The note you left under my door was actually one asking for forgiveness. You said you didn’t want to come between Nathan and me and you felt so bad about the entire situation, you wouldn’t be seeing either of us anymore. But I didn’t find the note until after you fell, and a week later Nathan came back from Ibiza even more of an asshole than before he slept with my girlfriend. I figured he didn’t deserve to know the truth. And then your father tried to blackmail us, and Diana showed up, and somewhere along the way I just lost my moral compass. I’m sorry.”