Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (110 page)

I nodded and turned away. “I’m going to go up to my room until then.” I got to the stairs before I started to cry.

Chapter Twenty-six

The warm water of the shower felt good on my skin and through my hair, washing away the morning. I thought about what awaited me that afternoon. Justin. Justin Breck. I tried again to remember anything about him; what he smelled like, how he smiled, the sound of his voice. Nothing came to me, and I was starting to feel a tightness building in my chest from the frustration.

Justin Breck.

Victor Draper.

I wondered what Victor was doing for the day. Probably work. He’d been working a lot lately on this deal with Mr. Monaghan. I was sure it was stressful. It probably didn’t give him enough time to think about me. Or our relationship. I knew he was conflicted too, though what his conflict came from I couldn’t be sure. It didn’t really matter.

When I was done in the shower, I got out and went to my closet to change, deciding on a red long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. The outfit reminded me vaguely of something indistinct; I knew it had significance, but I couldn’t remember from what. Anyway, I thought to myself that I definitely had good fashion sense before my accident. The accident. After tying my wet hair back in a ponytail, I laid down in bed to rest a bit before Justin came.

***

At exactly one o’clock, I heard the front door open and close. A moment later, Charles appeared at my door, an enormous smile on his face. It was time.

“Caitlyn, he’s here.”

I managed a weak smile. “I’ll be right down.”

What could I say? I didn’t remember him at all, and I was sure that seeing him wasn’t going to change that. At least not immediately. He was going to be so disappointed; he had loved me enough to propose to me, to keep searching for me for years after I’d disappeared. I was already feeling sorry for how anticlimactic this was going to be for him.

I had to get it over with, though. With a deep sigh, I got out of my comfy bed and walked down the stairs. Sitting on the couch—my couch—was a slightly older version of the boy in the picture I had found in my room.

His brown hair was still short and he had the same pretty green eyes. He was definitely shorter than Victor, but still significantly taller than me. The red polo shirt and dark blue shorts he had on were simple and fashionable. I had to say, the me before my accident had definitely been no dummy.

His mouth hung slightly open as I came down the last few steps. I could see by his rapid blinking that he was trying to avoid crying. After the last step, I stopped and stood at the foot of the stairs, curling my toes on the hardwood floor, looking at him carefully, trying to stir some memory inside of me, some impression of how I felt around him. There was nothing.

We stood in silence for a moment: me, Charles, and Justin. Finally, Justin spoke. “Oh my god.. Caitlyn. You’re really alive!”

I nodded, not wanting to speak lest my own tears start forming. Even though I didn’t know him, the emotion my presence elicited couldn’t help but make me feel something. I wanted desperately to be able to give him more.

He got up and shuffled toward me before giving me a hug. I hugged him back gently, still not sure what to say. But I had to say something.

“Hi,” I tried.

We parted, and stood awkwardly. He was clearly at a loss for words.

Charles jumped in. “I was just telling Justin how your memories were coming back slowly, and it might take some time for you to remember everything.”

I nodded.

“So you don’t remember me at all? Us?” Justin asked.

I looked at him and blinked several times. How could he ever really understand? I shook my head. “No,” I said softly.

Justin nodded, thin-lipped.  

“Let’s all sit down,” Charles said. “Maybe talking will help. Besides, we have a lot to catch up on.”

We all took our seats around the living room, Charles and Justin on the couch, while I nestled awkwardly into a chair. Justin was the first to break the silence.

“So, Charles hasn’t really told me what you’ve been doing these past two years. He just said that you had amnesia.”

Thankfully, he was sitting down. “Well, until recently I was homeless.”

“…homeless?” Justin repeated, his eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“Yeah. On the streets of San Francisco. For two years.”

It sounded foreign even to me, and didn’t begin to tell the story. Those years had been a blur of survival. Struggling day to day like that didn’t even feel real as it was happening, but up until a few months ago that had been my life. I prayed the natural follow-up question wouldn’t come, but I knew it would.

“So,” Justin began.  He had to feel so awkward. “Did Charles find you on the streets? Is that what happened?”

“You know what,” Charles cut in, before I could answer. “I’m forgetting my manners. I’ll leave you two alone while I run out and get some food to cook for lunch. You two have a lot to catch up on.”

My stomach dropped as I realized the conversation ahead of me. There was no escape from this, awkward as it would be. Justin nodded to Charles and watched him go.

When we were alone, he repeated himself. “What happened? How did you get off the streets? I take it Charles didn’t find you there.”

I gave him a sweet smile. There was no way around it. “No, it wasn’t Charles. I ended up being saved by one of the richest men in America. I lived in his mansion and worked as his maid, accompanied him to social events, went on trips with him, that kind of thing.”

“I see. So are you seeing him now?”

I bit my lip. “You know what, why don’t we take a walk? I want to see the neighborhood. Maybe it will help my memory.”

Justin looked confused, but he shrugged. “Sure, that’s fine.”

I went upstairs to my room to grab the black designer purse Victor had given me. It was a chilly day outside, so I decided to bring my cashmere scarf and fur-lined coat  Victor had given me on our trip to Paris before descending down the stairs.

I appeared back in the living room a few minutes later. “Wow, it looks like you’re about ready for a stroll in Paris or Milan or something with that getup. How much does your job pay you?” he asked, staring at my attire. “Or is this from that billionaire guy? What’s his name, anyway?”

“Victor.”

Justin nodded. “Victor, then.”

I smiled.

Once we were outside, Justin led the way toward town. “I can’t even begin to describe what it feels like to have you back again.”

I nodded wordlessly at his remark, not really sure how to reply. Luckily, he continued.

“This must be really weird for you, recovering from amnesia.”

I nodded again. “Weird is an understatement.”

“I mean, it’s really strange for me too. You’re next to me but you’re not really there. I just kind of hope you’ll come back. I thought you were dead, and now it’s like you’re a ghost. If I know there’s hope that you might come back, I can wait.”

“I know this has to be hard for you. It’s been hard for Charles, I think.”

This time it was Justin’s turn to nod. “So, this billionaire. Victor. Are you seeing him?”

I took a deep breath. Was I? Up to this point, nobody had really cared how I characterized our relationship. I decided to be truthful. “I don’t know. We had... a relationship, but right now things are really up in the air.”

“Does he love you?”

What I would give to know the answer to that question,
I thought. “I don’t know, honestly.”

“Well,” Justin said. “I still love you, Caitlyn. Or I love the girl you were. I’ve thought about you every day, whether you were alive, just in case. I just had to know. Now that you’re here, I have to tell you that. I have loved you every day since your accident. I loved you before then, I have loved you since then, and I love you now. If your memories of me—of us—ever come back, I need you to know that.”

I shook my head sadly because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t even know this man and he was telling me he loved me. What’s more, I knew by his tone that he meant it.

“Or—I don’t know. This is all so confusing. I just look at you and you’re there and you’re not and it’s crazy. But here I am. I’m still in love with you.”

I turned and looked at him. “Look, this is all really fast. I appreciate that you need to get this off your chest, but it’s hard for me to process. I really don’t remember if—”

“Do you still have the ring I gave you?”

I reached in my pocket, pulled it out, and held it up. “You mean this?”

“Yes. Can I see it?”

Well, he bought it. It belonged to him as much as it belonged to anyone. I handed it to him. He turned it over in his fingers for a few moments as we walked. After a moment of silence, we stopped.

“I know you’re going to think this is weird, but give me your left hand.”

I couldn’t keep doing this. It wasn’t getting into his head that I was not the girl he remembered. He thought I could come back, but I knew at that moment that he was wrong. Even if I regained my memories, I wasn’t coming back. I knew it.

“Please don’t do this.”

“Caitlyn, for two years I thought that you were probably dead, and I didn’t give up hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d get to see your hand with this ring on it again. Please, just let me see how it fits. I know it’s weird. Just please.”

I gave him my hand, and as he slipped the ring on, it came.

***

We were walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in the evening, something we often did in the spring. It was romantic and almost intoxicating to be on the bridge during that hour, one of the most beautiful cities in the world at our back. It was a cool day in May, and even though I was wearing long sleeves, I was shivering and pulled closer to Justin. Walking there with him, I wanted to soak the world into every pore, to capture the feeling I had with him at that moment, the day before my graduation.

Justin took a deep breath. “Let’s stop here.”

We turned and looked back. I traced the outline of the building tops with my eyes, like I was coloring in the sky around them. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Justin duck his head down. No. He was on one knee, reaching into his pocket.

“Caitlyn Pamela Ray, will you marry me?”

I looked down and saw an engagement ring with a huge diamond on it. This was really happening. My heart flew up into my throat. I was overwhelmed with excitement, and also a little fear. More than anything though, I looked into those eyes and realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with that man.

“Yes,” I said tearfully.

***

It was my senior prom. We had gotten a limo with a dozen friends, and everyone was sweaty from the dance. The limo was driving us to a friend’s after party. Half the couples in the limo were making out, while the others were gossiping excitedly about what would go down at our friend’s beach house.

Justin squeezed me tighter to him, and I put my head on his shoulder. We had danced pretty hard, and the dampness under his neck proved it. I liked that smell.

He picked my face up toward his and gave me a wet, slow kiss, sucking on my tongue.

“I love you,” he said quietly.

I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d been waiting for him to say it for months, and I had thought that maybe tonight would be the night, but to actually hear it brought a huge smile to my face.

“I love you too.”

***

The movie hadn’t been very good, but cuddling with Justin had been exciting. We were in his car; he already had his license even though I had to wait another two months. It was late spring, and he’d just gotten the courage to ask me out the previous day.

We arrived back in front of my parents’ light blue two-story house.  It was nine o’clock, and I was sure my dad was still waiting up—as was my mom, probably. Justin stopped the car and looked over at me, his green eyes open a little extra wide.

“Well, I had fun,” I said.

“Me too.”

I waited. Was he going to kiss me?

He leaned over and did just that, depositing a chaste peck right on my lips. At least he didn’t miss.

“We should go out again some time,” he said.

“Yeah, I’d really like that.” I could see a lot more of him, actually.

***

All of the memories of the things we had done and the things we had felt were coming back to me. We had done so much together, and grown up too.

As I thought about the person who remembered those things, it still didn’t feel like me. That had been years ago, in a different time, before I had been homeless, before I had been to Paris, met Victor, met Oscar and Karen and Betty, been rescued by that sweet old woman from sleeping under a cardboard box in the rain in an alley so I could sleep in a house and eat warm food.

“Caitlyn, are you all right? You’re looking at me strange. Do you remember?”

I had changed so much. I had reset and I had changed: on the streets, in Victor’s house, in Paris, at the art gallery. What had previously been a happy girl from a good family that went to art school and had experienced a relatively trouble free life had turned into something else. That girl was never going to come back; it was more than my memories that were assuring that. Too much time and too much experience had intervened.

And yet Charles and Justin were being so kind to me. My life before the accident had been a good one, definitely less confusing than my life with Victor. Maybe I could fall in love with the same man again; it would be a different relationship, but he obviously loved me, and he was pretty cute too.

“Caitlyn? Hey, can you hear me? Say something.”

But then I would never see Victor again. Confused as I was, I didn’t want that.

Someone was shaking me. I shook my head and focused my eyes. It was Justin. His green eyes looked worried. I wondered how long it had been since he put the ring on my hand.