Turn The Page (Kissed by A Muse Book 2) (9 page)

‘Whoa!’ Leigh exclaimed, envious but also sort of sad. Ryan had a complete life that he’d apparently earned on his back in the space of three months. She tried to imagine what a woman like that had been like; to be strong enough to pull a grown man from perilous waters, sweet enough to take care of him, and manipulative enough to take advantage of his fine body... and came up with no comparison. ‘She just gave it all to you? Was she an heiress or something?’

‘No. She just had what anyone works toward, and no one else to leave it to, so she passed it all on to me. Shocked the hell out of me...’ He glanced at her, smiling sadly. ‘So if you think I don’t understand why you won’t take the iPad, well, trust me when I say you couldn’t possibly understand how bad it feels to get something for nothing, until you’ve received what I have.’

‘I’ll bet,’ Leigh agreed, thinking of her parents. ‘I don’t know why you’re feeling like you owed her one though,’ Leigh gripped the railing so that if her claws shot out, he wouldn’t see them. ‘Sounds to me like your presence was payment enough.’

‘Yeah well, we had fun, you know? Always messing around and stuff… I don’t think my company was worth a million bucks worth of happiness on her part but you were right… there must have been something in it for her, huh?’

Yeah, the view and a lot of sleepless nights...

Leigh snorted. ‘That’s too bad…’ she peeked over the side of the boat and muttered. ‘You look like you’d be good at it too…’

Keep your heroes separate from your amnesia patients, missy! The guy in the book might give multiple orgasms, but the amnesia patient with his name is as much of a fantasy, without the special, sexual powers that heroes in books are given!

‘Huh?’ Ryan leaned over and nudged her. ‘What? Good at what?’

‘Nothing…’ Leigh said idly, feigning interest in a bird flying overhead but feeling her girlie parts clench and betray her. She hadn’t expected him to hear THAT. ‘It just sounds like you were really good for her too, like I said before. Helping hands and all... under the sheets… even if you couldn’t quite get her there...’

Ryan’s laughter was so loud that she almost jumped. He turned her around, and flicked her nose. ‘It wasn’t like THAT!’

‘Sure it wasn’t,’ Leigh was hoping that the way her glasses were fogging up from the damp air and her breath, were concealing her scepticism. ‘I mean, the amount of times that I’ve injured myself in another man’s bed just because I was hanging out-’

‘Pfft!’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Leigh, the woman was like, seventy, okay?’

Leigh’s head snapped up, excited and appalled as the Imogen in her mind ceased to look like a supermodel and resembled one of her mother’s quilting buddies. ‘What? But you were in her bed!’

‘She couldn’t use her upstairs bedroom- she’d moved down to the main floor, smart arse!’ His eyes burned with accusation. ‘She was a retired nurse, which was the main reason why I went home with her. She was also a widow with a big ol’ place to look after, and very much alone because her only living relative, her older sister, had retired in Greece.’ He frowned. ‘And that was who she was visiting, when she passed away. She had cancer apparently, and knew her time was up so she re-wrote her will with her sister overseas and never came back.’

Leigh’s mouth popped open. ‘If she was so old, how did she get you out of the water?’

‘I’d washed up near the edge, so she just had to yank me out. Didn’t even get a cold, the tough old bat… but it’s not like she dove into the whirlpool wearing a cape and stilettos and lingerie!’

Leigh giggled, flooded with relief. This guy could never be ‘her’ Ryan, but it was nice to eliminate the male escort element from the already fading fantasy. ‘Ahhh…. Okay that makes sense. So it was like, pension funds that you inherited?’

‘Exactly.’ His eyes flashed. ‘I can’t believe you thought I was-’

‘I’m sorry, honestly,’ Leigh said. ‘But in my defence, you sort of steered me toward the toy-boy ledge, and I jumped.’ She waved to the fall. ‘In a barrel of contempt... but I’m back now.’

But Ryan scowled playfully at her. ‘I’m not shocked that you assumed that I slept with her- if she’d had two working hips, I don’t doubt that she would have tried to climb on board.’ He leaned down and whispered in her ear. ‘I’m insulted that you thought I was sub-par at it- and worth anything less than a million.’

He did NOT just say that!

To keep her eyes from rolling back, Leigh rolled them derisively. ‘Oh, all guys think that…’ But images of Ryan working to prove what a tremendous lover he was in a bed full of books had her panting thinly. Then, she recalled the scene in The Hardest Fall where her real Ryan had tied Kylie to his bed head and had gone down on her for hours until she fell asleep, exhausted- proving what a control freak he was, and she felt a delicious tingle at the junction of her thighs.

Fiction. Fiction, fiction FICTION! But he’s single, single, SINGLE! I’m not so undesirable, am I? Ry’s leered at me a few times, and Bruce seemed to… oh crap- Bruce! Date! Okay Leigh… your mama didn’t raise a whore… and this guy is way out of your league, further than the hotelier’s son even!

‘Perhaps they do,’ Ryan said nonchalantly. ‘But I have these dreams sometimes you know? And in them- I know what I’m doing and she seems twice as convinced…’

Leigh wished she hadn’t worn such tight jeans, but she forced herself to look up at him. ‘Wait… you’re basing your skills on your dream exploits? That’s not fair! What about your real ones?’

‘I don’t remember any,’ he said simply.

Leigh was stunned. ‘But… you hinted that you’re a player!’

‘I thought I must have been- until you told me the real reason why women have had odd reactions to me. Now that I know that, well, I have no idea what kind of history I have.’

‘But... but Bruce said that you do so well with the local women.’

‘Picking them up in bars is akin to shooting fish in a barrel,’ he agreed blithely. His eyes darted to hers. ‘And I’ve had a few fun evenings with some stunning fish over the last few months, don’t get me wrong. But I haven’t actually taken one home since I became Ryan Weaver. We kiss, clothes start to come off and cars fog up but… I haven’t…’ he squinted out at the water. ‘Doesn’t mean I haven’t got mad skills though. If I know what I’m doing in dreams, they have to be memories, right?’

‘And what do you remember?’ Leigh asked, her voice more breath than sound.

‘Screaming. Shaking… my name….’ He wet his lips and then ran his hands back through his hair. ‘Fuck. I need to jump in.’

Leigh tittered, even though she too, was on the brink of kicking off her boots and taking a dunk in the frigid waters to break her fever.  Maybe this Ryan didn’t know what he was like in bed, but Leigh knew what his likeness was like in bed and he would have been worth billions. ‘Do you remember lots of different faces? Houses?’

But Ryan shook his head, the shadow coming back to his eyes. ‘No. I have glimpse, darkness, a voice… and it’s always the same voice.’ He swallowed, and looked down at the water. ‘Fuck.’

‘What?’ Leigh asked, hoping that his sudden downshift in mood would act like a wet blanket for hers.

‘I um… the girl?’ He looked up at the falls, to the very top. They were nearing the place where the water was the roughest, streaming close enough to reach out and touch, and yet Ryan did not have to raise his voice for Leigh to hear his confession clearly: ‘I think she was my soul-mate.’ He raked his teeth over his lower lip and shook his head. ‘And I think I left her.’

Leigh sucked in a breath. ‘How could you possibly know that, but nothing else?’

‘Because I have one clear memory from before- just one. The dreams could be bullshit but this…’ he sighed. ‘I’ve never told anyone this okay? So it’s between you and me if I do now.’

Leigh swallowed, then nodded. ‘Of course.’

Ryan did not take his eyes from the top of Horseshoe Falls. ‘It wasn’t a kayaking accident, Leigh. I jumped. I don’t know why, but I think I jumped for her, and I was actually happy to do it. I remember falling all the way down, but when I woke up, I was happy like, I’d done what I needed to do, to make her happy.

The wet blanket descended over them both, and as the solitary tear slid down Ryan Weaver’s perfect cheek, Leigh understood that this man was as untouchable to her as the one between the pages had always been. She was shaken, jealous, shocked and awed, but through all that, she understood something else too… something that she’d suspected earlier when he’d quoted the book at her without having opened the cover. ‘Ryan?’

‘Yeah?’ his voice was as fractured as her heart felt.

‘I think you need to read that book, and then track down the author.’ She tapped the book. ‘Because that’s what he did.’

Ryan sagged over the railing and moaned into his folded arms. Leigh wanted to reach out and touch him and offer comfort, but she couldn’t. He wasn’t going to feel like paper to her touch, and she had to close the book on her desire to touch him because if he’d had a Kylie too, than Leigh would never be anything to him, but a fan who got paper cuts on her heart, for the love of a fantasy.

‘What’s going on?’ Ryan whispered.

Leigh had no idea. But she knew that she had to step out of the story, before she became as bound to him, as the fictional Ryan had been to Kylie and went over the edge herself.

Part Two

Falling Into You

Eight

Ryan

S
he was smart, sweet and almost eerily pretty- and she had her seatbelt unbuckled before Ryan had even pulled up onto the curb in front of her motel. The flurry of activity pulled him out of his dense thoughts about Imogen and freezing, thrashing waters and filled him with nonsensical alarm.

‘Well…’ Leigh exhaled the word as she bent over to stuff her iPad back into the handbag that was half the size as she was. ‘This has been… um…’ she paused like that, half hunched over the bag between her knees, and smiled sheepishly at him. ‘Erm… an adventure?’ She combed a loose piece of her dark blonde hair behind her ear and glanced up at the book on his dash, some of the mischievous sparkle fading from her golden green eyes before they shifted back to his to impart upon him a more sombre smile- a smile of pity. A smile you gave someone once you found out that they had suicidal tendencies. ‘I really hope reading that helps you, Ryan. I don’t know how it could… I’m still struggling to wrap my brain around it all and I’ve read it a gazillion times, but still…’ she straightened up, pulling her handbag to her chest and holding it close. She had a habit of doing that- of cuddling inanimate objects like she was squeezing some strength from them. The pity smile flashed again. ‘I hope it leads you to some answers at least…’

She’s saying good-bye? That’s it? ‘Hey- I’m Leigh! I wear bonnets to bed and have an incredible ass and gap between my thighs. Here’s why you suck- and here’s the book that’ll explain that in depth. Nice to meet you, but I’m nervous around you now that I know you’re a jumper, so Ciao!’ … What the fuck?!

Ryan’s stomach blistered with shame and regret- why had he told her that he’d jumped? What had been the point? What was it about this girl that had words spilling from him like the falls into the gorge- unstoppable and washing a wave of debris over them both? And what was it about this sliver of a human being that had his hand reaching for the central locking, suddenly desperate to keep her in the car now that he realised that this was the last stop for her, on her Ryan adventure?

Ryan opened his mouth to ask her what she was doing later or offer his phone number as he’d intended to since she’d first laughed with him rather than at him, but her eyes darted towards the door latch- the handle she already had her tiny little fingers wrapped around, and defeat escaped him in a soft exhalation. He’d already prolonged their time together by forcing himself onto the Maid Of The Mist at her side, and that had been humiliating enough. Did he really want to beg this strange girl for her continued company, when she was making it clear that she had tired of his?

Face it man, you dropped the suicide bomb and obliterated your façade, like you knew it would. Whatever interest you thought you sensed from her before is gone now, and even if it wasn’t- what are you hoping for here? A date that’ll go nowhere? A shoulder to cry on that’ll embarrass you further? She’s from Australia and she carries a pocket watch- this is NOT the beginning of a beautiful friendship or a wild fling!

‘I hope so too,’ he eventually stammered back, giving the book he had zero desire- but every reason- to read a loathing look, before smiling wanly back at her. ‘And thanks…’

Leigh snapped the handle on the door up. ‘For which part? Yelling at you? Hitting you? Embarrassing you?’ She chuckled and slid one foot out onto the curb, shaking her head. ‘I’m going to need to edit a LOT of these memories so I don’t cringe every time I recall my conduct during my first two days in Niagara Falls…’

Ryan cringed as she reminded him of all the squabbling they’d done- public squabbling- since he’d first met her, and he understood exactly what she meant about putting a positive spin on awkward memories. No, no way was he going to ask her for her number or whatever and add rejection to the list of injuries he’d suffered in her presence, along with a headache, a restless night, two seriously foul moods and utter astonishment. ‘I hear yah…’

But then she was climbing out of the car and her perfectly flared ass was in his face as her gentle giggle filled his head and suddenly, Ryan was more than willing to endure a little bit of humiliation, if that meant seeing her again. He swallowed hard, wrenched his eyes from her tight little butt and to the road, trying to arrange his wants and needs into some sort of smooth, coherent proposal.

‘Hey Leigh… I think you’re fucking gorgeous, but I don’t know if I can do anything with that… want to go out for Buffalo Wings so I can get to know you in a non-romantic atmosphere until I decide?’

‘Hey Leigh… you’re a complete nutter, but I like it, I think. Wanna hang out again before you leave so I can work out how much I like it?’

‘Hey Leigh… I’m desperately in love with a woman I can’t remember but your hot little temper and teeny, tiny little body had me violating myself for hours last night… care to come home with me so I can see if I can’t transfer some of those feelings onto you?

‘Hey Leigh… I’d actually love to find out if I’m as good in bed as I think but be warned- I spanked you in a lot of those dreams… do you think that means I’m into S & M? Are YOU into S & M? Wanna find out together?’

‘Hey Leigh… I don’t want you to get out of the car. Come for a drive with me? You’re the only person I’ve been able to truly talk to since Imogen died, and I’m afraid to be alone with this book…’

Yep that was the one. Honest, direct and more pathetic than creepy. He flexed his hand around the steering wheel and cleared his throat.

‘Hey, Ryan?’ Leigh piped up before he could. ‘This might sound a bit crazy, considering all we’ve um, gone through but… I can’t just leave this like this, you know? I’m too…’ she sighed. ‘I don’t even know what the word is…’

Ryan glanced back at her and saw that she’d ducked down to appraise him through her open door, and an alacritous grin spread across his face- the kind that warmed him on the inside. She was going to ask HIM to meet up again! The relief stunned him mute and he immediately began thinking of things they could do together that would take the typical, first-date romantic pressure off them both.

This is good! This’ll give me time to work out if I want to jump her, befriend her, become her pen pal or follow her home like the stray I am… perfect!

‘So anyway…’ Leigh reached into her purse and came up with a crumpled piece of paper, straightening it by rubbing it down on her slender thigh. ‘This is my e-mail address. When you’ve finished the book, or followed up on it or whatever… drop me a line and let me know how you go, okay?’ she handed the paper over to him and he took it with robotic fingers and a sinking stomach. ‘I won’t be able to stop thinking about it all until I know what’s going on, and that you’re okay. And hey…’ she was speaking rapidly. ‘If you ever make it back home…’

Home. Australia. After she flew away. She wasn’t asking him out on a date- she was keeping one foot in the door of the freak show so she could find out how the REAL story ended! Disappointment knocked the wind out of his sails. ‘Sure,’ he said, more crisply than he’d intended. ‘I’ll let you know… if I ever get an e-mail address, that is.’

‘You should,’ she said warmly, not sensing his tone. ‘Getting an online presence might help you find whatever loved ones you left behind.’

Ryan stared at her e-mail address, trying not to snort at the ridiculous name: ‘honeybee7926’ that preceded the rest of the address. She was a honeybee all right- one whose sting was as sharp as her sweetness was!

‘The loved ones who haven’t cared enough to contact any of the police departments in North America to put in a missing person call on me?’ he asked sourly, folding the paper and shoving it into his centre console before fixing her surprised green eyes with a cold stare. ‘Or the embassies? Or should I just concentrate my search on the girl who loved me so much that my death would have benefitted her more than grieve her?’

The colour drained from Leigh’s face. ‘Ryan, you don’t-’

‘I don’t know for sure, no,’ he interrupted her, before her hurt expression could soften him any more than she already had. He was furious with himself for having opened up to someone again, only to have them treat him like a name printed on paper and nothing else- AGAIN. ‘But I have the feeling that I was as much of a loner before I went over the edge of the falls, as I have been since Imogen dragged me out of the water.’ He put the car into drive. ‘So I think it’s safe to assume that my online presence will be overlooked as easily as my physical one has been.’

‘Overlooked?’ Leigh sighed. ‘Ryan I stared at you more today than I did the falls, and you damn well know it. That face is impossible to overlook, okay? Someone is going to recognize it and-’

‘Save the flattery,’ Ryan did not let his eyes stray from the road, which he was certain was about to blister beneath the heat of his glare. Oh, he was well aware of how often her eyes had molested him since they’d first met, but what did that fucking matter if she found the personality that went with the face lacking and easy to dismiss? He honestly thought that they’d connected! Okay so he didn’t know on what level or what that meant, but the fact that saying good-bye to her now was so difficult for him, but so easy for her, was devastating to his confidence, and adding to the flood of bitterness that had been rising inside him since he’d first woken up and remembered his fall. ‘If you want a photo to go with you blog entry honey, just ask.’

The door slammed in response. Ryan looked over in surprise, and felt his spirits sink further when he saw that Leigh was hurrying away from him towards the hotel lobby without a backwards glance. His heart skipped a beat, but he clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes. What kind of exit was that?

Third strike Weaver… now you’re out. You wanted to ask her out? Ha! She’s so done with you, that you can’t even piss her off into lingering long enough to insult you back!

Ryan cranked up the volume on the dash and Disturbed’s ‘Sons of Plunder’ filled the car where it had left off that morning, making the metal body of the Dodge throb. He pulled into the traffic, ceasing to be anyone but music lover with a heart full of anger, wishing that he had more memories now to hide the few painful memories he’d accumulated thanks to Imogen’s secrets, and now Leigh’s rejections, behind.

But he didn’t, and so the tears began to fall well before he made it to the first set of traffic lights. He swiped them away angrily and told himself to grow the fuck up, or to pull up his face- he had the book at least and maybe there really would be answers within the pages...

But it didn’t help. Ryan had spent three months trying to get to know himself all over again, and just when he began to think that maybe he was someone worth knowing- someone who probably shouldn’t have jumped- he’d cross paths with another woman who made it clear that his value was purely skin deep, ink-thin and at the end of the day, did not even rate an actual good bye. A blog entry, maybe. A one night stand, sure. A gig, definitely… and even an inheritance when there was no one else to inherit it… oh, he was apparently worthy of all of that, all right, pretty as he was...

But what Ryan wanted was a friend- not a book telling him why he didn’t have any.

Leigh

It took a while for Leigh to get the feeling back into her legs after Ryan had knee-capped her with his curt parting words, but she managed to stumble up to her room before the shock wore off and the shame kicked in.

I shouldn’t have run like that, but the way he snapped was just so… god! Even if I had the strength to smooth this over with him, I don’t have the guts to face him again, so now what?

Leigh closed her door behind her, putting the Do Not Disturb sign over the handle, and then did the same thing to the phone, knowing that if she heard her mother or father’s voice right now, she’d probably begin to wail like the pampered, yap-yapping lapdog that she was.

Poor Ryan! What was I thinking? This is his LIFE. Not my blog- his life! I was hesitant to ask him for a follow-up e-mail because I knew that it was a thoughtless inquiry… but I did it anyway! I can’t believe it!

Leigh pulled off her boots and lined them up next to her door, and then plugged her iPad into the wall to charge, making its edge line up perfectly with the edge of the desk before she turned to safely pack away the warranty, and the other bits and pieces that had come with the packaging that she would probably never use but always kept anyway. When that was done, she lined up her phone next to it and plugged its charger and adapter into the wall as well, for she’d flattened it completely with her frantic photo-snapping back at the falls.

But though she made swift progress of getting her things back in order, none of it was calming her mind or taking the edge out of the regret sloshing around in the pit of her stomach.

God, what must he think of me? I’m like an ambulance chaser, or someone who slows down to get a decent gander at a crash site… mum would be so ashamed if she knew that I was going to make the guy a story!

Leigh twisted away from whatever she’d been going to do as though she could leave her selfish consciousness in the centre of the room, and made her way to the window, pressing her face against the cool glass and struggling to inhale a calming breath. Her spectacles clinked against the glass and she knew that she was leaving smudges for some poor cleaner to Windex off, but the surface was cool and took the edge of her mortified hot-flush so she stayed there.

She was a terrible person- she knew that, and she didn’t know if it bothered her more to feel that way about herself, or if the fact that Ryan thought the same of her was the true source of her anxiety. She could see how she’d gotten from where she’d been to where she had just ended up, for Ryan had been a stranger to her the day before- a suspect one who could have been running one of the shadiest player schemes in the history of fiction. Of course, she’d been well within her right to make that a story, and if she’d been wrong- to even giggle about the coincidence and share a few photos and a blog entry for the benefit of her readers. If he’d been a schemer, he’d have been deserving of exposure and if it had all been a coincidence, then the story would have been harmless, cute and rather ironic.