Tags:
Romance,
Literature & Fiction,
Contemporary,
Sagas,
Action & Adventure,
Mystery,
Short Stories,
Mystery; Thriller & Suspense,
Contemporary Fiction,
Contemporary Women,
Women's Fiction,
New Adult & College,
Thriller & Suspense,
Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages)
Chapter 1
Harley
My eyes popped open, and I stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out the images that were playing over and over again inside my head. It had to be my imagination trying to make sense of the flood of memories that suddenly came back to me tonight. It was the only thing it could be.
She couldn’t possibly be the one who ran me down with her car!
The last six months have been insane. One minute I was engaged to marry the man I loved, the next I was leaving him and calling off the wedding, telling everyone it was because he lied to me about a brief marriage to his friend—and my mentor—Margaret Wallace. But in truth, I left him because he was embroiled in a mess involving Margaret’s father, and we’d concocted a scheme to pull us both out of the fire before it was too late.
I had a friend, an ex-boyfriend really, whose father had connections. My friend, Philip, arranged to help us deliver proof of Grant Wallace’s business dealings with suspected terrorist groups to an undercover FBI agent who was already working on the case. It was slow coming together—painfully slow—leaving Xander and I estranged for months. But it was finally going to happen; I was finally going to talk to this agent—who was pretending to be a reporter—but that same day, I was mowed down by a car while jogging.
I broke my leg, my collarbone, and a couple of ribs. However, the worst injury was a cracked skull that caused swelling in my brain. I was in a medically induced coma for a little over two weeks. When I woke, I’d lost three years of memories. I had no idea who Xander was.
How hard that must have been for him!
I couldn’t remember our courtship. I couldn’t remember moving in with him or all the lovely moments we spent together. I remembered our engagement after he showed me pictures of us together, but I couldn’t remember planning a big, beautiful wedding that would have been perfect. Nor did I remember that during our estrangement, we managed to sneak away for a weekend, marrying on the day we chose—just without all the fanfare we’d originally planned.
I remember now. We went to a party last night, and when we came home…well, when I fell asleep hours later, my memories just came back as if some sort of wall had crumbled. The memories were still coming back, all the little details that make memories stick.
But there were still so many questions left unanswered. The biggest ones were, who ran me down and was it connected to what Xander and I were planning to do?
Philip, my college boyfriend and the friend who was helping us, told Xander that it was likely unconnected. But that didn’t sound right to me. I’d heard Xander’s mother, Bonnie, talking to Margaret in the bathroom at the party tonight. It hadn’t made sense at the time because I didn’t know what she was talking about. But now? Now, it scared the crap out of me because she basically admitted that she knew what I’d been planning on doing, which meant Grant knew. They didn’t appear to know that Xander was involved, which was why I insisted we had to separate while we worked everything out—to protect him. But they knew what I was doing, at least as far as talking to a reporter. Did that also mean they were involved in the hit and run that left me without my memories?
Bonnie denied it to Margaret, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. And my memories…
I couldn’t be remembering things right.
I looked over at Xander. He was sleeping soundly on his side, his breaths coming in slow, steady puffs of air. I touched his shoulder, my fingers tracing a pattern over his warm skin. He didn’t move; he didn’t respond at all. Poor man was exhausted. The last six months had been much more difficult than either of us could have imagined.
I pressed my lips to his shoulder and climbed out of bed, dressing in his discarded shirt—I loved having the scent of him surrounding me!—and a pair of sweats I’d left behind in the
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