Dare (28 page)

Harley

They removed my cast today. I wasn’t completely free of restraint because they replaced it with a removable boot to continue to support the section of the tibia that was broken the worst and continued to resist healing. My physical therapist said that I would be free of the boot in a few weeks if I kept working as hard as I’d been doing these last few weeks. I couldn’t wait to have my body back. This broken thing felt wrong, like it belonged to someone else. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know the woman looking back. My hair was growing, but it was still so short—like a little boy’s cut. But my collarbone was finally healed—though it still ached from time to time—and my ribs were good. If I could just get this leg to heal…

I stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom that had been my primary space since leaving the hospital and stared at the summer dress I was wearing. It flowed nicely from my shoulders, the thin, white material making my pale skin look healthier than it really was. I don’t know what was more exciting: that I’d gotten myself dressed without having to call for Xander to fix my buttons or zipper, or that I was looking at myself in the mirror without the wheelchair I’d grown to hate.

Independence was an amazing thing.

There was still pain when I walked, but not nearly as much as there had been weeks ago when I first left the hospital. And it was clunky. But it wasn’t as if I was going to a ball anytime soon.

I stepped out of the bedroom and slipped out a back door to the impressive porch that flowed from one end of the house to the other. I loved being outside. It probably came from growing up with a father who was a large animal vet. While my parents were caring for the horses and cows belonging to their clients, I was running around the ranches, dogs and horses some of my closest friends.

I curled up in a chair in a sunbeam, enjoying the late afternoon heat on my face. My mom used to say I was a cat in another life because I’d always enjoyed bathing in sunlight. She might be right.

My accident happened almost two months ago. Yet, I still had no memory of the last three years. There were little flashes here and there, but nothing concrete. My memories of the night Xander proposed were the closest I’d come to remembering anything substantial. And that had this fuzziness around the edges that suggested there was something still missing.

I was beginning to worry that I would never remember.

Xander was wonderful. He didn’t push me, but he was always ready with answers when I had questions. When I wanted time alone, he left me alone. When I wanted to hang out with him, he made himself available. I couldn’t imagine a man being any more considerate to a woman. And that confused the hell out of me.

Why had I called off the wedding? So what if he was married before?

I knew there had to be more to the story. However, I didn’t know how to figure out what that was.

“Harley? There you are!”

I turned and watched as Margaret Wallace walked around the side of the house toward me. She was wearing an expensive dress that was clearly not designed to be worn anywhere near nature, along with a pair of sunglasses that made her look vaguely like Jackie O. I wanted to laugh, as I watched her nearly trip over a low rose bush, but I bit it back. I didn’t know Margaret that well, but I knew her reputation. She was one of the hottest authorities on modern art in the country at the moment. At least, she was three years ago. And she owns the art gallery where every up-and-coming artist wants his or her stuff shown. I would have done just about anything, three years ago, to have my stuff shown in her gallery. So it was a little unreal for me to realize that I’d been working for her for months and that we’re actually friends of some sort.

“I’ve been knocking on the door,” Margaret said, as she fell into a chair beside me. “I thought you’d gone out or something.”

I patted my boot. “This is much easier, but I still can’t drive.”

“I’m surprised Xander hasn’t hired a driver for you.”

I smiled because he’d offered. However, I turned him down, not wanting to be a financial burden on him—even though it was pretty obvious he could afford it.

“So, we’re opening the community center this weekend.”

“The one where I was doing the mural?”

“Yes. Construction is finally done. I was beginning to think we were never going to finish.”

“Xander said the center is for low-income kids?”

Margaret glanced at me, then smiled a little wryly. “I keep forgetting you’ve lost your memory. Yes, it is. I started it almost a year ago when a friend of mine suggested that someone should do something about the kids running around the neighborhood with nothing to do. Xander found the space, and he donated the security system. Another friend ran several fundraisers to pay for the renovations, and you were providing the art.”

“The mural wasn’t finished?”

“No. But it’s close enough that only those with a good eye will be able to tell.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Margaret’s eyebrows rose. “Yes?”

Before I could nod, she was out of her chair and grabbing my hand.

“Let’s go!”

She drove a Jaguar that was complicated to get inside with my new boot, but it was so much easier than it might have been with the thigh-high cast I’d had before. Margaret chatted as we drove across town, but I didn’t hear much of it. I was busy staring out the window, waiting for the landscape to prompt a memory or two. However, none of it looked even vaguely familiar.

“Xander said I lived over here for a while.”

Margaret gestured vaguely toward the west. “You had a tiny house over there for a couple of months.” She glanced at me. “He told you about the called-off wedding, then.”

“He did.”

“Did he tell you everything?” She slowed the car at a stop light and looked at me, her eyes searching my face for a long moment. “Did he tell you about—?”

“The divorce that wasn’t on record? Yes.”

“Then you know it was my fault.”

I glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

“Paperwork has never really been my thing, you know. I thought it got to where it should have gone, but…well, you know.”

“No, I don’t.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

She eased the car forward, and we rounded a curve. The building on the left was instantly familiar to me, but I couldn’t tell anyone why. It just…well, it just was.

It was a long, low building made of concrete blocks. It was painted a soft brown on the outside, but I think that was a new addition. I felt that it was once white with the sheen of dirt and debris all over it. The brown was definitely an improvement. There were signs naming it
The Wilshire Community Center,
with another that had Margaret’s smiling face on it, marking her as the organizer of the project.

I was a little surprised to see my face adorning another of these signs. It was taken before the accident—obviously—my hair was long, almost to my waist, and I was smiling at the camera like one of those lawyers you see on the side of city buses. It was kind of creepy, looking at my own face and not really recognizing the woman who was staring back.

“When was that taken?”

Margaret pulled to a stop in the small parking lot besides the building. “I don’t know. You gave it to me a week or two before the accident. I never really had a chance to ask you about it.”

We got out and headed inside. The main doors opened into a lobby that was furnished the way a teenager would furnish his own room, complete with mushroom chairs and video games. Past the reception desk, there was a hallway that opened into various classroom-type areas where kids could read their favorite books, watch television, get help with their homework, or work on art projects.

“This room was your idea,” Margaret said, gesturing to the large room that was furnished only with easels and supply shelves. “You said the students didn’t get enough art instruction at school and would appreciate this sort of thing. We hired a young art teacher last week to oversee the project. She’s quite enthusiastic.”

“That’s good.”

Margaret just nodded, as she led the way further into the building. There were more rooms—a computer lab, a large library—all the things one might assume would be found inside a nice school. There was even a gym. Margaret pushed open double doors at the end of a long hallway, and we walked into a huge gym that had a full basketball court and room for full-sized bleachers. There were doors at the back of the room that led to locker rooms and a large storage room. I knew what the storage room looked like; I could even instruct someone on how to find the ladders and the painting supplies in there, even though I couldn’t remember a single day before this one in which I’d stepped into this room. It was so odd the way my head worked.

The mural was behind us on the wall where the scoreboard hung high over the floor. Margaret grabbed my hand and turned me around so that I could see it. My first impression was that it was incredibly massive. My second was that it was far more technical than anything I was capable of doing. The lines were beautiful, the design intricate. I walked up to it and ran my fingers over a perfectly drawn palm tree, unable to believe my fingers had done this. But even as I touched it, I could almost feel the brush strokes it would have taken to do it, as though my body remembered it even if I didn’t.

“It’s so much more than I’d imagined when I first suggested we have a mural put in,” Margaret said. “I interviewed dozens of artists and none of them seemed capable of creating the image I had in my head. And then Xander showed me your work, and I knew you would be perfect.”

I was only partially listening. I was so fascinated by the work that there didn’t seem to be anything else in the room. My memories were still in college. In my mind, I was still learning my craft, not doing work like this. This was so far beyond me, yet…

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is. You’re a very talented artist, Harley.”

Those words, coming from Margaret Wallace, were almost overwhelming. I glanced at her, a blush on my cheeks. Xander told me I know her, that we were all friends. But I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

I stepped back and studied the mural. I could see what was missing, what needed to be drawn out a little more, what needed to be finished.

“Would you let me finish it?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Really? Do you think you’re up to that?”

I nodded. “I’d like to give it a try.”

Margaret suddenly burst into enthusiastic movement. She turned completely around before gesturing toward the back of the room. “All your supplies should still be in the storage room. I’m not exactly sure where you kept them all, but we could probably find them without too much trouble.”

I was already halfway across the room. “I got it.”

In just a few minutes, I was dressed in overalls and I had a paintbrush in my hand. I studied the mural for a few minutes, trying to get it all straight in my head. I could see where I’d been going with it, but my memories kept trying to get in the way, telling my confidence that I was going to fuck the whole thing up. But once I put brush to concrete, those doubts disappeared. I might not remember planning this out and painting it this far, but whatever it was inside of me that created these things remembered. And I was lost in that creative mode for the next few hours.

It was the most normal I’d felt since all this began.

Xander

I couldn’t believe it. My Harley was back.

I stood just inside the door of the gym and watched her as I’d done so many times in the past. She was humming just under her breath, some pop song that I vaguely remembered being popular years ago. Harley was an amazing artist, but she wasn’t much of a singer. But I didn’t care. This was the Harley I’d known, the Harley I fell in love with.

When Margaret called and told me she was working on the mural again, I was livid. I couldn’t believe that Margaret would do this, that she would bring her here without talking to me first. But now…let’s just say I was a little less peeved than I was before.

“This is familiar,” I said.

Harley looked up and smiled widely. “Hey.”

“Hey to you, too. What are you doing?”

“Margaret came by the house to tell me about the opening here tomorrow night, and I thought seeing the building might help me remember something.”

“Did it?”

She bit her lower lip, a touch of sadness coming into her eyes. “Not really. I mean, I don’t specifically remember anything about this place or even this mural. But it’s like my hands remember creating this, like my creative side remembers it all.”

“That’s got to be a good sign.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s been fun working on it. I didn’t realize my skill level had grown this much.”

“You are incredibly talented, Harley. You were on the verge of signing a deal to show your stuff in a New York gallery the last time I talked to you.”

“I was?”

I wondered for a minute if that was something I should have told her. But I couldn’t see how it would hurt.

“You said you were talking to Peter Collins at the
Collins Gallery
in Manhattan. In fact, I think you were supposed to fly out there a few days before or after the accident. You weren’t very clear on that part of it.”

She concentrated on the mural for a minute. Then she stepped forward and applied her brush, losing complete track of our conversation. I was used to that. She could get lost for hours in her work. It was one of those things that was both a blessing and a curse. It kept her busy when I was out of town with work, but when I was around and wanted her to pay attention to me, sometimes it was quite the competition between me and the work.

I sat in the middle of the recently waxed floor and watched her. I remembered the first time I watched her work like this, the day I picked her up for our first date. She’d gotten so involved in what she was doing that she’d let the time get away from her. The next time I watched her work like this was after the first time we made love.

“I’m sorry, I’ve just got to get this image out of my head,” she said, as she scooted to the end of the bed and grabbed my shirt up off of the floor. When she didn’t come back right away, I followed her. I couldn’t find her in the small rooms off of the master bedroom, or the living room downstairs. But I saw the lights on in her little studio out in the backyard.

She was at the easel, her fingers already covered in charcoal as she used a small piece of the substance to draw the fine lines of a couple engaged in the most intimate of embraces. I cleared my throat a few times, but she didn’t turn. I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear me. So I sat in a low stool and watched, falling in love with the concentration in her eyes, the firm, but gentle movements of her hands, the beauty she produced on the canvas.

I was falling in love with her all over again as I watched her now, as I watched her guide her paintbrush over the smooth lines of a young man’s hands. It was like watching her dreams come to life in perfect color, right there on the wall. I wanted to move up behind and…like that night…

I watched her for hours and hours. But, finally, I just wanted to touch her. She was wearing nothing but the shirt I’d discarded, and that was enough to drive me out of my mind. But to couple it with the dim lights and the way she was moving, it was far too much to resist.

I moved up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, my hands sliding under the shirt.

“Just a few more minutes,” she said, as I pressed my lips to her throat. But I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t just walk away.

I let my lips burn a trail slowly down her throat, sliding the shirt out of the way as I created a trail over her shoulder, down one shoulder blade, slowly sliding down her back until I’d touched every inch from hip to shoulder. Somehow, she continued to work. But when I ran my tongue down over the swell of her ass and down to the top of her thigh…

“What do you think?”

I shook myself a little, sort of shaking off the cobwebs of the past, and focused on the mural.

“It’s perfect.”

“Not perfect,” she said, stepping back a little to assess it herself. “I’m not sure that’s what I intended to do originally, but it feels right to me.”

I jumped to my feet and brushed imaginary dust off the seat of my pants.

“Then that’s all that matters,” I said.

She looked at me like a child looking for approval in a parent’s eyes. Then she smiled as she turned back to the mural.

“You really like it?”

“I do. And Margaret does, too. She was raving about it when she called me a while ago.”

“Oh, God! I forgot about Margaret! Did I keep her from something important?”

“No one ever keeps Margaret from where she needs to be.” I walked over to her and touched her shoulder lightly. “But now that you’re done—”

She glanced at the clock on the wall, a little hiss of dismay slipping from her lips when she saw how late it was.

“You must be anxious to get home.”

“I actually thought it might be nice to go to dinner. There’s a place not far from here where we used to go sometimes. You liked their pasta.”

“Let me change and we’ll go.”

In the past, I might have offered to help. But she’d been out of the hospital for almost six weeks and we hadn’t touched—except for that moment on the couch that her parents interrupted. I was trying to be patient, but it was getting more and more difficult with each passing day.

She was my girl, my fiancée. She was the one I chose to spend the rest of my life with. Being around her, but not touching her, was like a starving man sitting in a well-stocked kitchen with his hands and feet cut off.

And when she came out of that storage room in the thinnest, curviest summer dress I’d ever seen, it only made things worse.

I buried my hands in the front pockets of my jeans as much to keep from touching her as to hide an excitement she might not be ready for.

***

“Mr. Boggs,” the maître d’ said, as we walked through the door.

“Hello, Johnson.”

The man’s eyes fell on Harley and his smile widened. “Ms. Alistair. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see you again.”

Harley blushed, but the pleased smile on her face hid any discomfort she might be feeling.

“Thank you,” she said.

The maître d’s smile widened, as he grabbed a couple of menus and led the way into the dining room, causing a few people who’d clearly been waiting for a table to groan. We were regulars here, and I’d arranged an upgrade on the security system my company provided for the restaurant, so we often were treated with preference. That sort of thing was a way of life in Los Angeles.

We were seated across from each other, and Harley studied the menu with an intensity that would have made me laugh if I hadn’t known about her memory problems. She’d done that in the past, too, but always ended up picking the same thing: chicken parmesan.

It amused me, as well, how oblivious she was to what was always happening around her. Even with her shorn hair that was now barely long enough to pass for a super-short butch style, men and women both were checking her out. I’d always been both proud and a little uneasy with the looks she got when we went out in public. But she’d never noticed them then, and she clearly didn’t notice them now.

I ordered a bottle of merlot and a bowl of chicken Alfredo as Harley continued to look at the menu. She blushed when she felt the waiter waiting on her.

“Can I have just a minute longer?”

“Of course. Take your time.”

“Thanks.”

She smiled up at the waiter, and I thought he might fall over himself as he backed away, so overwhelmed with that simple gesture.

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.

“What?”

I just shook my head, laughter continuing to spill out. Her eyes narrowed briefly, but then she began to laugh, too.

“I don’t know what we’re laughing at, but…”

And that just made me laugh harder.

She ended up ordering the chicken parmesan—what did I tell you?—and enjoying several glasses of the merlot. And I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. We actually had a conversation that didn’t center around the accident or the memories she was trying to get back, and that was incredibly refreshing. It felt almost as though none of the last six months or so had happened.

“Do you want to go to the party tomorrow night?”

I looked up from the cup of coffee the waiter had just brought. “Do you want to go?”

She shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.”

“It is. I thought so back when I found the building for her.”

“She mentioned that. It was kind thing to do.”

I shrugged.  “It’s something my company tries to do every year. We like the idea of giving back to the community.”

“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.