REMEMBER US: A Billionaire Romance (Part Two) by Glenna Sinclair Page A

finish your obligation to that art project, and then you were coming home. Your mother already had your bedroom all fixed up back at the house.”
    I looked at my mom, and she nodded. “You were coming home at the end of the month.”
    “I don’t understand,” I said again. “Why did we break up?”
    I remembered our engagement, remembered lying in bed with him talking about the children we would have one day. He said a baseball team would be fine with him and I objected, insisting that two was a perfect number. I remembered that. And all the pictures he’d shown me…we seemed so happy in them all. We were always laughing, always smiling at each other. His arm was always around my shoulder, my waist, or his fingers intertwined with mine. I must have loved him.
    Why would I leave him?
    “He lied to you,” my mom said softly.
    “That’s not it,” Xander said, crossing the room. However, my father grabbed his arm before he could come within six feet of me.
    “Don’t touch her!”
    Xander shoved my father’s shoulder. “This is my house. How dare you come in here and tell me how to behave with my fiancée!”
    “She’s my daughter!”
    They were seconds from blows. Xander’s hands were both balled into fists, my father’s hand still clamped on his arm. They were doing that thing that guys do when they’re trying to prove which is the dominate one, standing nose to nose, glaring at each other and waiting for the other to make the first move.
    I could just see it. My father thought he was pretty tough, but Xander would flatten him with a single blow.
    “Stop it!”
    They both turned and looked at me, both looking a little ashamed of themselves. Xander stepped back, the anger immediately washing from his stance. He held up his hands to show that he meant no one any harm. My father, on the other hand, remained tense, his shoulders so tight I thought for a minute he might go after Xander and knock him out. But then my mother was at his side, whispering something in his ear.
    “We should go,” my father said a moment later. “I’d like to get to the hotel before things get too crowded at the front desk.”
    Xander backed away again. He buried his hands in the front of jeans again, standing back against the arch that led out into the entryway. He was watching me, his dark blue eyes intense. I was so confused; I wasn’t sure what to think. Yet, instinctively, I knew I couldn’t just go back to my life as if the last three years hadn’t happened. And if I was going to remember my life, I was going to have to stay with the one person who was a part of it every day for the last year.
    “I’m not going with you, Daddy,” I said quietly.
    You’d think I’d threatened to kill him the way my father spun on me.
    “Excuse me?” he asked, his voice low. Dangerous.
    People didn’t defy my father often. And when they did, they had better have a damn good reason for it. I knew that. Yet, I was doing it here and now.
    “Harley,” my mother said softly, “don’t you think it would be better for you to come home? To go where you’re safe?”
    “Why was I still in Los Angeles? Why wasn’t I at home before the accident?”
    “Because you didn’t want to leave,” Xander said.
    My father shot him a dark look, even as he came toward me with his hands extended.
    “You didn’t come home because you had obligations here. But those are over now.”
    I looked from my mother, to my father, to Xander, and back again. I didn’t know whom to trust. I mean, I remembered my parents, remembered leaving them when I went to college, remembered coming home frequently for visits—since I didn’t choose to go more than fifty miles from home for college. I remembered introducing them to Philip, my college boyfriend. I’d been excited that day, already looking into a future that clearly hadn’t happened, a life that should have unfolded with Xander instead, but didn’t for reasons I still didn’t understand. It was my