Never Forgotten: Second Chances (16 page)

She arched her eyebrows. "Foolishly, perhaps. He still loves you. I was never more than a stand in."

"I can't imagine that. Not from you."

"People in love do strange things."

"So why did you arrange this meeting? You could've told him you couldn't find me. He'd believe you. He trusts you. I can see that."

Carla looked toward the window, buying time. Then she turned back to face Megan squarely; her look said she was resolved and confronting the most unpleasant thing imaginable. "Because I don't want half of something or someone, especially not a man like Sal. It becomes a bad farce too quickly. Arranging this was my only chance—the only possible way I could have him was if you rejected him." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I tried. For a long time, I clutched onto a shadow of him thinking he'd forget about you. I tried to convince myself that was enough to be happy. But I'm greedy, and that greed double crossed me. I was jealous of you, and I couldn't compete with a memory. So I found the real woman, my physical competition." A wistful smile crossed her face. "I had the vain hope that you might run away from him in horror. I should've known that the man I loved and admired could never have been in love with someone that shallow."

Megan handed her the picture of them, her one photo. "He was gorgeous once." Megan heard the wistful sadness floating in her words and realized she was letting something go, and then she knew what it was—her attachment to that beauty.

Carla looked at the picture, shaking her head. "That's not the man I know at all. Odd, isn't it? The man I love was never so beautiful. I knew he had been, and my stupid hope was that your love was based on his beauty. It's my bad luck that you adore the man himself." She laughed again and put the photo down. "The odds were never in my favor." She turned away again. "He tried too, He pretended to himself that he loved me and that he could find the happiness with me he'd felt with you once. Just as you pretended, you could forget him. We've all been rather foolish."

"It's still unreal. I've dreamed about him constantly. He always comes to me when I need help, in my dreams."

"And now he's come while you are awake, and you have to deal with the idea that the Sal you've dreamed about isn't quite the same as he is now."

"I know. It's hard."

"I realized that we couldn't move forward without confronting the past. And I told him that. He needed to know how you'd react to him and how he'd react to you—decide if there was the possibility of a second chance."

Megan understood. She'd tried living shallow for too long. Experience told her it didn't work. Marrying Craig, loving other men, had been a way of quelling the hunger for a short time, but never satisfied. She and Sal had been like that, totally committed, and nothing but a total commitment would do. "What now?"

Carla shrugged. "Now I know that you still love him and probably never stopped. Why the hell you have to be as good as the woman he remembers I'll never know. It's hardly fair of you to live up to his fantasy. But it means you have a second chance if you want to take it."

Megan felt a tremor that threatened to shake her body violently. In one day, she'd been handed exactly what she'd asked for, but she had to choose among so many powerful draws. "I feel like my head and heart are both going to explode." She looked at Carla, saw her anxious look. "If I choose Sal, what will you do?"

"I'll leave. One thing I didn't take into account when I forced this meeting was my own reaction. I don't like myself a lot at the moment. And hearing your question I also realize that I didn't even think about what would happen to him if you didn't want him. It was incredibly stupid to think you turning away from him, not wanting him would make him finally love me. He isn't that shallow. He doesn't love me, and I won't stay."

"He might need you."

"I'd like to believe he'll miss me, but he wants you. Would you stay with him if he didn't love you?"

Megan smiled. "I see your point. You couldn't live that way."

"I've been offered an excellent job in England. I've decided to take it. I'll move there and start over, feeling all fucking noble and sorry for myself. Learning a new job in a new place will keep me occupied. I'll bury myself in and hope that one day I wake up and find I have a new life." She reached out and touched Megan's hand.

"I hate thinking that I've made you suffer."

Carla laughed. "Me too. I'd much rather you never existed, but we didn't create this situation. I hate losing him, but I never really had him and as wonderful as I think he is, and knowing that I'll always love him, we never really had a real chance at the kind of happiness I want."

"He'll never understand."

Carla shook her head. "If he has you, he'll barely notice. And he already knows. It isn't even something I need to tell him."

Then she stood. "Well, you have thinking to do and decisions to make so I'll leave you to them. I've arranged with the bank for the money you need." She handed Megan a card. "Here is the authorization codes and everything you need to transfer it to your account. Be careful with it. It's all he has."

"What?"

"We made enough to buy his family's company… and not all of it. Sal wanted to move now. Until he learned you needed it."

She felt a twinge of guilt. "So he's giving up his dream and going back to work for me."

"If that's what you choose." Carla came over and kissed her cheek. "I trust you. You will learn everything you need to know and make the right decisions for both of you."

"You are an amazing person."

"Unfortunately, so are you."

And she left.

That night, when Megan finally slept, she found herself transported to a lavish sitting room furnished in dark colors. Even the walls were dark, making it impossible to see the edges of the room. She hung in the air, suspended from a ring in the ceiling by wrist restraints. Her feet were tied to ends of a spreader bar. She was naked. And she wasn't alone.

A man sat in a chair upholstered in black leather looking at her. He wore nothing but a face mask and a white cloth tied around his waist. She stared at him, and finally he stood. She saw that he had a leather riding crop that brushed his leg as he walked to where Megan hung. Her heart pounded fiercely as he stopped in front of her, raised the crop and struck it across her breast. She cried out. Then she saw a line of red appear on the white flesh. He ran his finger over the mark, then abruptly struck the other one, leaving a matching bright red mark.

She heard another man laugh. The sound came from the shadows of the room. "Excellent."

The man in front of her let out a deep laugh that filled the room. It was Sal. Without seeing his face, she knew it by the way he moved, the powerful torso. "A few more times like that, and then we will fuck her in both holes." He moved behind her, running the crop over her body, then grabbing her short red hair and pulling her head back. He put his face near hers. "You'll like that, won't you, Megan? One cock in your pussy, and another in your ass?"

She felt weak. "Yes."

He reached around her and flicked her pussy with the crop, and she cried out again. "Maybe I should make you come this way first. You've been weak, Megan. You need to be punished so that you remember how to be strong. Maybe I should whip your pussy with this crop while you think about taking our cocks. Then, if you come, we'll fuck you until you can't walk."

"And then again," came the voice from the shadows. She woke with a start knowing that the man in shadows was Riley. Was this a dream of wishing, of wanting these two powerful men to share her? She didn't know. The dreams were starting to confuse her perceptions of the world she had to deal with.

She slowed her breathing. The bedding was damp around her, and she was wet with sweat. Her head spun with echoes of her dream of her two lovers tormenting her. What did it mean that they would hurt her, and even more that it aroused her? And why dream of them both? Did she desire them both? She had desired them both, each in their own time and place, but they were together in her dream. Was she comparing or contrasting them or blending them together? In a way perhaps each man, each dream man, represented part of what she wanted.

Another undeniable fact of the dream was that it had gotten her aroused, made her insane with desire. (
For which man?
She didn't know.
For them both?
She didn't know.) She fumbled in the drawer of the nightstand for her dildo. The sex toy was large, reminding her of Sal's cock, so beautiful when aroused, which was of course why she'd bought it. It was another way of not completely letting go of him even though common sense told her to. She wouldn't and couldn't forget. Now she used it to find relief and then a few restorative hours of sleep.

* * * *

Normally Megan was comfortable making decisions and accepted that she would make the best choice she could and then live with their consequences. In the business world, she had the skill and ability to judge situations and opportunities fairly accurately. She hadn't done as well with personal decisions, however. Marrying Craig, trusting Thom had not shown insight into who they were. And now she faced a choice that almost frightened her.

The unfortunate thing about decisions is that eventually they must be made, and even if you don't take them on actively, they are made, even if by default or neglect. Choosing not to choose doesn't prevent the choice from being made, regardless of how unpleasant or difficult that choice is. Life didn't care that you wanted more information or that you were too close to the choices to even catch your breath, much less make a rational selection. Life had momentum. It went on, climbing hills and careening down the other side whether you were clinging tightly or not. If you feel off, well that might hurt a lot more than making a wrong decision. Megan didn't want to make a choice, a wrong one anyway. She was tired of being hurt. Still, you couldn't get what you didn't go after with all your heart, and that meant sticking your neck out. Before she did that, she needed to know more.

* * * *

She knocked on the door to Sal's room with an impatient rap and repeated it before he could manage to get to the door. When he opened it, she pushed her way in, and he stepped aside, giving her a puzzled expression mixed with mild amusement. "Can I help you?"

Walking over to the bed she sat on it and looked at him. "Sal, the time to make decisions is coming fast. And they are big ones."

He nodded. "That's very true. Can I help?"

"I need to know something. Have you been honest with me Sal?"

He went to a chair by the window and sat. "I'm not entirely sure how to answer that. About what?"

"Why did you come here? Why did you decide to come here and get involved in my business?"

He shrugged. "Carla told me about your situation. She recognized your name from me telling her about you. Then she made sure it was the same person." He smiled. "Carla is incredibly thorough."

"No doubt." Looking at him, the way he sat in his chair, watching her intently was exactly right. This was Sal. Sometimes the fact that he was actually here, even though he looked different, was hard to grasp. It had been so many years that he didn't exist for her. But here he was, being Sal. "She knew about us?"

"Of course. I've talked about you often."

She looked around the room. "When did she leave?"

"This morning."

"And you knew that would happen."

"Carla has been unhappy for some time now. Not with me, exactly, but with the situation. She resented my love for what we'd had even though she also knew that memory and the hope it gave me got me through some bad times. I'm sure she expected that to fade as memories do, and it probably offended her, hurt her deeply when it didn't. It would be natural for me to let her take your place, but, of course, with a strong woman like Carla that wouldn't happen anyway. She is her own woman and wanted to make her own place in my life." He put his hands behind his head. "She is a gutsy person and brought it to a head. She found you, your company, and brought the information to me. She said: 'I found your ghost lover.' Then she put matters on my shoulders."

"Me or her."

His smile told her that she'd nailed it. "She said that you now that you were real, a tangible competitor, she could force me to choose between you. And I had to choose. Having both of you in my life, even if you and I were no longer lovers, made my life too crowded." He smiled. "I remember someone else telling me that once. Didn't you?"

"I told you I thought your dance card was too full."

"And you didn't join crowds. Well, Carla feels the same. We were good together, but I was incomplete and she wanted me to be whole. Being greedy, she insisted that we meet again face to face. She told me that if I couldn't let you go completely she would leave." He coughed. "I tried to let you go. I tried to be unemotional about seeing you. I knew that if I was involved in the business I couldn't be, and that's why I said to take the money and use it to make your dream happen. I thought that either something would blossom, or Carla and I could go off and do other things, but being an intelligent woman, she saw through that rather quickly. She said I hadn't let you go and probably wouldn't be able to even if I couldn't have you. So she packed up and left."

Megan caught sight of a wistfulness in his fleeting smile. "She meant a lot to you. Do you miss her?"

"Very much, but I also know she was right. The whole thing makes me feel like some sort of lovesick school kid." He touched his face. "Of course, my acne is worse than most, but here I am, back in the same world with you and unsure of what will happen next. I'm still reeling from having gotten this far, which I'd almost given up hope would happen."

He looked exhausted, and Megan knew that he'd said all he knew how to say about them. But she had questions about the business side of things. "Tell me what you were going to invest in." Sal turned to face her looking quizzical. "You said you'd pulled the money out of the current company to pursue something else."