Lost In Me (Here and Now) (15 page)

“Want to come with me? Mom wouldn’t mind you crashing her dinner.”

“I wish I could, but I have a late client again.”

A late client.
The same woman as last night?
I bite back the question. I have no right to be suspicious of Max. Quite the opposite.

“The bride can enter from the stairs,” Mom’s saying. “Guests right there where you two are standing. It would be small but intimate.”

“What are you thinking?” Max asks me quietly. “You seem distracted.”

I force a smile. We’re supposed to be deciding where we’re going to exchange vows, and I’m too busy trying to figure out what I’ve done to pay any attention. “I’m just wondering when you can come by my place so we can pick up where we left off last night?”

“What do
you
think, Max?” Mom asks from the back. “Should we try to do this in October? Imagine the colorful leaves floating past on the river.”

He never takes his eyes from mine. “The sooner the better.”

“Great!” She claps her hands gleefully. “Maggie, pull out the calendar for October. Let’s set a date!”

“L
ISTEN.”
M
AX
squeezes my hand and tugs me toward the side room and away from Mom and Granny, who are chattering with Maggie over the calendar.

It’s done. We set a date. I have six weeks before I marry Max.

This is the room William uses for special collections. The first collection shown in here was of some shockingly intimate portraits of Maggie, but the artist kept it under wraps, so no one knew what he was showing until the opening. Asher bought them all that night, and rumor has it he burned them in a bonfire behind his house.

I don’t know what happened between Maggie and the painter, but it sure looked like he’d put her secrets on display. As I scan the walls, now covered with a collection of Maggie’s mosaics, I wonder what that would be like—your biggest secrets, your biggest shame on display to the world. Would it be painful, the shock of it? Or would there be an element of relief to know you didn’t have to work so hard to hide anymore?

“We need to talk,” Max says softly behind me.

I spin around and my stomach pitches at the worry written across his expression. Does he know about Nate? About Sunday night? Does he suspect that another man’s been touching me? Kissing me? Sliding his fingers inside me?

The memory sends a shudder through me that’s equal parts arousal and fear. I’ve wanted Max my entire adult life, and I’m terrified I might have ruined my chance.

“What’s going on?”

He draws me into his heat and nuzzles his smoothly shaved cheek against my neck. “You smell delicious. It feels so right to have you in my arms again.”

“Who’s the one with the faulty memory now?” I ask, trying for humor. “I believe you had me in your arms just last night.”

He cups my face in his hand. “This is all happening so fast—the wedding date, the venue—”

“Oh my God. You want to call it off?” The words slip from my mouth on a squeak at the same moment my stomach releases from its panicked clench and takes a free fall to the floor.

“No. That’s not it.” His lips meet mine—firm and sure. It’s not a kiss of seduction but one of demand. “I want to marry you. I wouldn’t have given you that ring if I hadn’t wanted that. But…” His hands fall from my face, and he drags one through his hair. “I know everyone thinks I just proposed last week, but they’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I proposed months ago.”

Laughter carries from the hallway back to us, and I hear Granny say, “—young, lusty love. Let them have their moment!”

“I don’t understand. Then why does everyone think we just got engaged?”

“I gave you the ring, and you…” He turns away, his broad chest lifting on a deep inhale.

Nate.
I was going to throw away a life with Max for a fling with some rocker? Was he the reason I told Max I wasn’t ready? How stupid could I be?

“I didn’t accept,” I whisper.

“I don’t think you believed I was in love with you.” He runs his fingertips lightly over the swirls of yellow glass pieces making up a mosaic interpretation of
Starry Night.

I’m such an idiot. Because that’s something I would do—I’d deny a proposal from a man like Max, a man I’ve wanted my whole life, just because I didn’t believe he really loved me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

He turns back to me and tilts my chin up until he’s looking in my eyes. “But I was in love with you, Hanna. And I am. Desperately, hopelessly, helplessly in love.”

“Max.” I put my hand on his arm. “I was an idiot. I—”

“I told you to keep the ring, that I would wait until you were ready. I was beginning to think you didn’t want a future with me. You’d pulled away. We barely spent any time together. We were just in this hellish limbo while I waited for you to decide.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat.

“Don’t be. Because then I got to the hospital and you were wearing the ring. You were confused and beat up and it was terrifying, but every time I saw that ring on your finger, I believed everything was going to be okay. It had to be.”

“Sounds like I’d finally come to my senses.” But what damage had I done in the weeks between?

“You needed to know. No one else does. We kept it quiet. I wanted the decision to be yours. All that matters is that you decided to put on the ring. And when I saw you in that hospital bed, my ring on your finger…” He shakes his head. Swallows. “God, it’s such a cliché, but you’ve truly made me the happiest man in the world. You owe me no apologies.”

“What I did hurt you.” I glance over my shoulder to make sure our private conversation stays that way. “I owe you every apology for that.” And maybe more than an apology. Maybe an explanation. Maybe the truth.

He draws me against him and crushes me to his chest, and I breathe him in and swallow back my tears. I could tell him. Maybe I should, but the idea of losing this…

I look up at him. “When
did
you propose?” I ask quietly.

“Three months ago.”

“I brought the booze,” Granny says when my mom leaves her dining room to retrieve dessert. She pulls a flask from her skirt, unscrews the cap, and takes a gulp before passing it to me.

I grin and take a swig myself before passing it on to Lizzy.

“Oh, Hanna, I’ve been dying to do something about this.” She grabs at the air around my head, flicking away invisible pieces of God-knows-what.

“Granny, what are you
doing
?” Liz asks.

“Apparently Hanna neglected to keep her aura clean while in the hospital,” Maggie grouses as she takes her turn with the flask.

“No, it’s been like this for months.” Granny shudders, flicking away more invisible aura ugliness. “Come to my office for a thorough cleansing. No bride should go into her wedding day with so much darkness in her aura.”

“I’ll think about it,” I lie.

I have the world’s coolest grandmother—as evidenced by the fact that she cashed in one of her investments to buy each of her granddaughters her own muscle car a couple of years back. But she’s also the world’s kookiest grandmother. I squirm under her assessing gaze, relaxing only when she shifts it to Maggie.

“Yours looks better than it has since you were fourteen,” Granny tells Maggie. “I told your mother she shouldn’t stop you from shacking up with that rocker. Best thing that ever happened to you.”

Maggie blushes—a rare sight. “Thanks. I think so too.” Then Mom’s coming back into the room, and Maggie has to hide the flask under the table.

“Where is the Sexy Beast anyway, Maggie?” Granny asks, using Asher’s music-world nickname.

“He has a concert in Chicago tonight,” Maggie says. “It’s sweet of you to ask.”

Lizzy snorts. “Granny’s only asking because she wants her eye candy back.”

Granny winks. “Damn straight.”

“Nanci!” Mom protests.

Granny shrugs. “What? I might be old but my eyes work just fine, thank you very much. And your daughters are doing a mighty fine job of giving me nice views as I go into old age.”

“Well, it doesn’t bother me at all if you want to check out my man,” Maggie says. “But he and Nate are touring together for the next week and a half, so you’ll have to wait.”

“Will he be home a week from Saturday?” Mom asks. “I’m throwing a casual engagement party for your sister.”

Casual.
I’m sure. Mom doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Case in point, the crystal goblet holding my water.

“When he comes back into town, he’ll have Nate with him. They’re trying to get a project finished up by the end of the month, so he’ll be busy, but I’m sure he can get away for a couple of hours.”

Lizzy and I exchange a look, and I force myself to relax as Lizzy leans across the table toward Maggie, an interrogator going in for the kill. “So Nate’s coming back to town? Will he be staying at your house?”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “I think it’s in Nate’s best interest that I not tell you where he’s sleeping, Liz. No offense.”

“They’ll probably have to work late into the night though, huh?” Liz asks.

Laughter bursts from Maggie’s lips. “You’re pathetic. If the guys emerge from their music-making cave long enough to have a beer, I promise to invite you over.”

Lizzy squeaks, and I elbow her under the table. “Calm down,” I say between my teeth.

“Thanks for dinner, Mom.” She pushes her plate away and looks at me pointedly. “Hanna, were you going to come back to the bakery with me tonight? To work on the calla lilies for Saturday’s wedding cake?”

“Sure.” I’m halfway through the three dozen gum-paste lilies I need to decorate Saturday’s monstrosity of a cake order.

“I’ll see you later,” Maggie calls.

As we head out the front door, I can hear Mom talking. “You could learn a thing or two from Hanna, Maggie. Instead of giving it up to Max the first chance she got, she’s waiting until marriage. Maybe if you weren’t living with Asher, you’d be wearing his ring by now. You know what they say about the cow and the milk.”

I turn to Lizzy, wide-eyed, and she throws a hand over her mouth. I open the door just as Maggie says, “Mom, if you think sex is like milk, you’re doing it wrong.”

Lizzy and I are laughing by the time we climb into Lizzy’s car, and I have to lean my head back against the seat and catch my breath.

“Here’s the plan,” Lizzy says when we’re on the road and headed to the bakery. “We’re going over there when Nate comes back into town. You’ll corner him. Get some answers.”

The smile falls from my face. “What if I don’t want the answers?” I whisper. “I mean, I do. Of course I do. But I’m scared, Liz.”

She pulls into a spot in front of the building and puts the car in park before reaching over to squeeze my hand. “You could just wait and see if your memories come back.”

“They’re starting to. I remember more every day, but it’s all stuff from fall semester and the beginning of my relationship with Max. None of my memories are answering my questions yet.”

We go inside the bakery and head to the back, working together to pull out supplies for Saturday’s calla lily explosion.

“Today, Max told me something
.
” I run my fingers along the prepared flowers, searching for imperfections. “He didn’t propose right before my accident like everyone assumed.”

Lizzy frowns. “Then where’d the ring come from?”

“He proposed before that. A
long time
before that. And I told him I wasn’t ready.”

She covers her lips with her fingers and studies me. “You’ve always wanted Max.”

“I know.”

“When did he propose?”

“Three months ago.” I drop the flower I was inspecting and walk to the back door and push it open. I can’t breathe. I need fresh air. “I didn’t give him an answer and held on to the ring all this time.”

“Three months ago?” She arches a brow. “As in,
after
you met a sexy rocker?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.

“I think we’re still missing something,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“That night you came home from the hospital and Nate climbed in bed with you in the middle of the night… Did you lock the door?”