Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (105 page)

It was strange. I had been so completely sure that I had no interest in my past life; I even said so to Victor when I had failed to remember anything after the visit to the neurologist. But to have a chance to know my real family again? I was suddenly feeling torn. He had to be my brother; all signs pointed to it, and deep down I wanted it to be true.

Would Victor even care if I left? After all, he was only bound to me by contract.

“I’ll think about it.”

Obvious relief washed over Charles’s face. “Great, that’s great.”

“Would you like to have dinner with us?” I felt the need to reconcile Charles and Victor, and to get to know the man who might be my brother.

“Do you think that’ll be okay?”

“It’ll be fine, I just have to run to the gallery to finish up some work. Come back at six thirty?”

“Are you sure Victor won’t mind?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “There’s no way Victor would say no to having dinner with my brother.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The dash to and from work to deliver my selections for the curation of the art show went by in a blur. Before I knew it, I was meeting Charles at the front door of Victor’s mansion. Again.

It was a strange feeling to walk into the dining room and not be helping with chores.The smell of Betty’s cooking greeted us as we stepped into the room. Charles couldn’t help but gawk at the surroundings; I realized that the setting I had gotten used to so quickly over the past few months was really quite exceptional. I sniffed at the aroma coming from the kitchen and recognized the scent of lemon herb chicken, one of Betty’s very best dishes. My stomach growled. I realized through all the excitement that I had let myself become famished.

Charles breathed in the mouthwatering scent as well. “Do you get dinners like this every night?” he asked.

“More or less,” I said with a smile. “Just wait until we eat. It tastes even better than it smells, if you can believe it.”

Just then Victor appeared in the dining room entrance. He paused and gave us an inquiring look.

“I invited Charles to dinner tonight,” I said.

He looked at us cooly for a moment before smiling. I remembered that smile from the times I’d seen him use it at parties like the one in Paris. “Very well,” he said. “Please, sit. I’ll be down in a minute.”

I gave Charles an apologetic shrug and we sat down next to each other, leaving Victor’s customary spot at the head of the huge oak dining room table for him. Karen brought out an extra place setting for Charles and finished setting the rest of the table.

“You really get this service every day?” Charles asked.

“Just about.”

“Wow. He knows how to live.”

I nodded. A minute later, Victor swept into the room, paused to assess how we were seated, then sat down next to me at the head of the table.

We ate our first course in awkward silence. I stared down at my potato and basil soup, my mind filled with questions but not really knowing where to start. I was relieved when Victor finally spoke and broke the silence.

“Do you live around here, Charles?”

I wasn’t expecting Victor to question Charles at all, but I figured his upbringing made him socially responsible for asking general questions like that. Or maybe he
was
genuinely interested. Charles rested his spoon against the bowl. He looked over at me. “Caitlyn and I are originally from Sausalito. Our parents’ house is right near the harbor. Do you remember it at all?”

I shook my head and gave him a rueful look.

Charles gave me a lopsided smile. “Well, maybe you will. For the past two years I’ve been going to grad school in Massachusetts for mechanical engineering. I’m going to graduate this year and try to find a job in San Francisco, or maybe Los Angeles. I just know that I want to be back in California.”

“Very good,” Victor said. “So, mechanical engineering. What industry will you work in?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know a lot about it or something? You don’t really look like an engineer.”

Victor smiled a phony smile yet again. “No, I’m not. But I have my hands in a lot of different ventures.”

“Well, more than anything, now that I know she’s alive, I just want to be close to Caitlyn.”

“Please call her Dove when you’re in my house,” Victor said steadily.

Charles looked as if he’d been slapped. “You’re just establishing ownership over her! Caitlyn is not your slave!”

He kept glancing at me when he spoke, as though he were expecting me to jump out of my seat and proclaim to everyone that I suddenly remembered everything about my past. Instead I felt insulted.

“I’m not—”

“I’m asking for manners, Charles,” Victor interrupted, his voice steady as before. “This is my home, and I make the rules in my home.”

A heavy silence settled into the air as I watched Charles process how to respond. I realized I needed to jump in before things got more heated, so I decided to ask a question that had been lingering in my mind since that afternoon. “What happened to your—I guess I mean our—parents?” I asked him. “I mean, I know there was an accident, but what exactly happened?” I was afraid of the answer and suddenly wished I hadn’t asked when I saw the sad look on Charles’s face. It wasn’t going to be good. Of course it wasn’t going to be good.

“You guys were trying to find me before driving to your graduation,” he started.

“Find you? Graduation?” I asked.

“You went to art school in San Francisco after you graduated high school. You majored in art history and illustration.”

I looked at Victor. Despite the cool way he was trying to handle dinner, he looked interested in this aspect of my past.

I nodded, my heart suddenly growing excited as I began to make the connection. “I lost all of my other memories except for art. I know how to draw, paint, and I can talk about famous artists and paintings for days,” I told Charles. “I never understood why I knew so much. But this makes sense.”

Charles nodded. “You absolutely loved art. It was your life. You worked so hard in school, and you were going to work as an art teacher before going to graduate school for art theory. Then—” Charles paused, his voice getting choked up. He cleared his throat. “The day you graduated college was the day I came out as gay to Mom and Dad. I don’t know why I decided to tell them that day. Maybe I thought since it was such a happy time in everyone’s there was no way they would be upset with me.”

Charles took another bite of his food before continuing. When I looked at Victor, he wasn’t quite as enraptured as I was, but he had stopped eating to listen.

“It turned out I was wrong. I told them, and they both blew up at me.” He shook his head. “They apologized pretty quickly once they cooled down a bit, but by that time I was furious. I said some pretty nasty things to them and stormed off. You tried calling after me, but I ignored you.”

Charles picked up his spoon and twirled the contents of his soup. He sighed. “Worst decision of my life,” he said with a shrug. Unshed tears welled in his eyes, and my heart ached with sympathy. These are your parents he’s talking about, I thought. I felt guilty for not being sadder. Charles continued. “Your graduation ceremony was in San Francisco. The police found Mom and Dad’s car overturned on an embankment in the opposite direction. You guys must have been looking for me. I was told it was a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Mom and Dad were killed instantly.” Charles shook his head.

“But there was no trace of you, except for the purse you left behind. You were a ghost.”

“I must’ve found my way to San Francisco somehow,” I muttered.

“And after two years on the streets,” Victor said slowly, “you came here.”

That was true. Who knows how much longer I could have survived out there on my own. More than that, look at what I had become since Victor came into my life. Or I came into his. It was still confusing which one was more appropriate.

Charles seemed to have snapped out of the sadness brought on by the story of our parents. “Yeah, to be his sex slave,” he said, jabbing his finger in Victor’s direction.

I looked to Victor’s face and a chill took over my body. I had seen him angry before—as in Paris—but it was a wild anger. For the first time I saw the way he looked when he was in conflict with another man, and the focused hatred made me feel for my brother.

I had to speak before Victor did. “Charles, god damn it, that’s not what this is,” I said. “When—”

Charles interrupted me, and I could tell he was close to a rage. “Come on, Caitlyn, you have to realize what this looks like. This super rich guy rescues a girl off the streets and wines and dines her, takes her to Paris, for what?” Now he looked at Victor. “I mean did you actually pay for her? You can be honest.”

“Charles!” I screamed. I couldn’t believe he—or anyone—would ask that in front of me. It was disgusting.

“Enough!” Victor thundered. The entire house, from the dining room to the ambient noise coming from the activity in the kitchen, went quiet. The only sound to be heard was the ring of the chandelier overhead and the china cabinet reverberating from Victor’s outburst. I had never heard anyone yell that loudly. Both Charles and I turned to face him.

His hand was flexing into and out of a fist on the table, and he was looking down at it. In a measured tone, he spoke. “Charles, you have come into my home and disrupted what should have been a perfectly pleasant dinner. You need to leave.”

Charles sat up straighter to protest. “I can’t leave Caitlyn—”

“Her name is Dove, and if you do not leave this table immediately, everyone in this room will regret it.”

Silence. Finally, Charles pushed his bowl back and scooted his chair away from the table with a loud screech. “Fine,” he said. “I can’t stand being here any longer.” He turned to me before standing. “Let me know if you want to find out more about your family,” he said. I gave him a small nod, stunned at the sudden outburst.

“Wait,” I said. “How are you getting home?”

“I’ll call a cab,” he said, standing. He turned and walked out of the dining room. As I watched him leave in silence, I realized I had no way to contact him. I got up and ran, catching him in the foyer.

“How can I contact you?” I asked as I reached him.

He turned and thought, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small notebook and pen. He wrote something and tore the page out, then handed it to me. “Here’s my number. Call me when you decide.”

I nodded and watched him go before returning to the dining room.

Victor was staring at the same spot he had been when he had dismissed Charles. As I walked back to my place at the table, he looked up. The intensity in his eyes had died down a bit, but he had a puzzled, almost sad expression on his face.

“Did you get his phone number?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded. “Good. That makes things easier.” He got up from the table. “Let me know what you decide to do. I need to do some work before bed.”

I looked up at him from my half-finished soup. What would I do?

“Okay,” I said, barely above a whisper.

After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, turned, and left, his mouth a thin line.

Just what would I do?

Chapter Twenty-two

Later that evening, when I was alone in my room and the rest of the house was quiet and asleep, I took out my cell phone and the slip of paper Charles had handed me. There was no sense of running away from my past now that I knew it was there to be found. I dialed the numbers and pressed call.

“Hello?

“Hi, Charles?”

“Caitlyn, is that you? It’s strange hearing your voice over the phone.”

He still wouldn’t call me Dove. “Yeah, it’s me. I want to see the house in Sausalito. I’m hoping then things will start to makes sense for me.”

“Of course, you don’t even know how great that sounds. But what about Victor?”

I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying something nasty. “You don’t need to worry about him,” I said instead.

“Great. Things are going to change; I can feel it. Everything will go back to the way it used to be. Close enough, anyway.”

I wouldn’t be so sure, I thought.

“Can I pick you up Monday?” Charles asked.

He was so eager. I really didn’t want to disappoint him after all the time he had spent searching for me.  “I’ll let you know. I have to make some arrangements at work before I leave.”

“Work? You mean Victor?”

“No, I’ll explain later.”

“Of course. If you need to get a hold of me, just give me a call.”

“Thanks.” I hung up and dropped my phone next to my pillow before throwing myself onto my bed.

This was really happening. After years of having no past, I was on the verge of finding evidence of my existence prior to waking up on the streets of San Francisco. Was I ready? Did I really agree to meet with this man who claimed to be my brother and take a look at my childhood home? My life with Victor was a good one. He had nurtured my development as an artist and given me more pleasure than I could ever imagine possible. What would I find in this home that could make me want to leave everything I had?

I closed my eyes and draped my arm across my face.

There is more to a person than what meets the eye. That is, if you give them a chance.

I hoped I was doing the right thing.

***

I went to work at the Lotus Gallery the next day and told Marissa I would need some time off to visit my brother. She was shocked by the news but thrilled that I had the opportunity to find out something about my old life. When the day was over, Oscar picked me up, as he had been doing ever since I got the job.

“Thanks for the ride, Oscar,” I said. When I turned, I saw it was Victor in the driver’s seat.

“Oh, Victor. I didn’t realize you were going to pick me up.”

“I had some errands to do in the city. Besides, Oscar told me you mentioned that you want to learn how to drive.” I had told Oscar that I thought it was about time I learned to drive myself to work so he wouldn’t have to chauffeur me around anymore, but I didn’t realize he was going to tell Victor. I was embarrassed by how many basic skills I was lacking since having lost my memory.