Читать книгу One Unforgettable Weekend - Andrea Laurence - Страница 9

One

“Miss Niarchos will see you now.”

Aidan Murphy stood, buttoning his suit coat and smoothing his tie. Wearing a suit again felt a bit surreal after so long without it. At one time, it had been like a second skin to him. Then his world fell apart and the way he lived his life changed forever. A bartender had no need for fancy suits and silk ties. A bartender at Murphy’s Irish Pub would be looked at with suspicion by its regular clientele if they walked in wearing this monkey suit.

But today wasn’t about Murphy’s or the life Aidan lived now or five years ago. Today was about his deceased parents, a deathbed promise and the halfway house he needed to open to honor their memory.

Losing both his parents within a few years of each other had left him things he’d never anticipated—primarily a struggling Irish pub in Manhattan and a huge house in the East Bronx. As a former advertising executive with a degree in marketing, he had enough business savvy to get the bar back up and running, but he had no interest in a house that far away or frankly, that big. He just wasn’t ready to part with his childhood home quite so soon after losing them, too.

His parents had bought the place to house the large Irish Catholic family they’d hoped to someday have together and never did. The house itself was paid for, but even if he wanted to sell it, it wouldn’t be so easy. The neighborhood was declining and even the rental market there was soft. His mother had known that and urged him to keep it and use the property as a transitional home for alcoholics leaving in-house rehabilitation programs. After dealing with his father’s alcoholism, she’d known that a transitional home was the one thing he had always needed after his trips to rehab, but never had, usually sending him right back to the bottle within a few weeks.

That was where the Niarchos Foundation came in, as much as he hated the idea of asking anyone—especially entitled rich people—for help. Unfortunately Aidan needed money to make his mom’s dream a reality. Lots of money. And his personal cash reserves were long gone thanks to his drunken father’s poor business practices. So here he was, applying for a grant from the foundation against his better judgment. Somehow that sounded better than begging for money.

He opened the door to the foreboding office and held his breath. It was now or never. Hopefully Miss Niarchos would be susceptible to his charms. He’d found that a smile and a little light flirting could get him what he needed from most ladies. He tried not to abuse his powers, but today, it would make this whole process easier.

Aidan stepped across the threshold into the brightly decorated space and stopped short when his gaze narrowed in on the dark, exotic eyes of the woman who’d vanished from his life well over a year ago. All thoughts of charming the foundation administrator faded as he realized who she was.

Violet.

Violet Niarchos, apparently, although full names had never been a topic of conversation during the short time they were together. If they had, perhaps he would’ve been able to track down his elusive beauty after she disappeared without a trace.

Before Aidan could say hello, he stopped himself. The blank expression on Violet’s face was disconcerting. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition as she looked at him, like he was just another person coming to her for the support of her foundation, not a man she’d made love to. Obviously the experience had made a bigger impression on him than he had on her.

“Violet?” he asked, just to prove to himself that he was talking to the right woman. He would’ve sworn it was her, but time could distort the memory. The woman in front of him was more beautiful than even he recalled, and he wouldn’t have thought that possible.

“Yes,” she replied, standing up and rounding her desk to greet him in a stiff, formal way. She was wearing a lavender silk blouse with a gray pencil skirt, stockings and conservative but attractive gray pumps. There were gray pearls on her ears and a matching strand around her throat. This version of Violet was far more proper and dignified than the one that had stumbled into his bar that night.

“You don’t recognize me,” he said, stating the obvious. “I’m Aidan. We met at Murphy’s Pub about a year and a half ago.”

The delicate porcelain of her face suddenly cracked. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes widened and her dark pink lips parted with surprise. It seemed she’d finally pieced together who he was. “Oh my God,” she said, bringing her hands to cover her nose and mouth.

Aidan tried not to outwardly panic as tears started to glitter in her eyes, but inside, he was twisted into knots. In all the nights he’d lain in bed wondering what had happened to her, why she’d never come by the bar, imagining what it would be like to see her again...he’d never anticipated tears. He hadn’t done anything to her that would warrant tears.

Had he?

After all, she was the one who walked out of his life, vanishing in the early hours of the morning like a ghost he’d started to think he’d imagined. If he wasn’t a teetotaler he’d worry she had been a drunken delusion. She’d felt like one. No real woman could’ve affected him, touched him, the way Violet had.

If it hadn’t been for the taste of her still lingering on his lips and the torn lace panties left behind on his bedroom floor, he might have believed she wasn’t real.

“Aidan,” she said in a hushed whisper, almost as though she was speaking to someone other than him. A moment later, the tears started spilling onto her cheeks.

He fought the urge to rush over and wrap her delicate frame in his protective embrace. He didn’t want to see her cry, especially not at the mere sight of him. But something about the way she eyed Aidan gave him pause. It was probably regret. From the looks of her, Violet was a pretty posh lady. It was likely that she’d forgotten about her two-day tryst with the hot bartender and now that he was standing in her office, she was having to cope with the embarrassment she felt for stooping so low. Otherwise she wouldn’t be crying or looking as though she wanted to escape from her pleasant and comfortable office through the nearby window.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

His words seemed to snap her out of her emotional state. She quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks and turned away for a moment to compose herself. “Yes, of course,” she said, although he didn’t believe her. She turned back, all polite smiles. “I’m sorry. I just...”

She thrust out her hand to shake his. He accepted it, feeling the familiar tingle dance across his skin. Touching her that first night had set his nervous system ablaze and that hadn’t changed. The tension in her grip was new, though. It didn’t lessen as he touched her. In fact, her hand grew stiffer until she finally pulled away and gestured toward the nearby guest chair.

“Please sit down. We have a lot to discuss.”

Aidan took a seat across from her with the massive cherrywood desk separating them. The chair was more comfortable than he expected, the whole office being more an extension of the woman he remembered than the one fidgeting with her paperwork at the moment. It wasn’t the typical, sterile business office. There was a seating area with plush chairs and colorful fabrics. The walls had bright pieces of art and photographs of beautiful locations with white buildings against turquoise-blue waters. Where was the woman who decorated this office? The one who strolled into Murphy’s Pub looking for something and someone to help her forget her troubles?

“Before we discuss your grant application, I feel like I need to apologize,” Violet began. “I’m sure you think quite poorly of me for disappearing. At the moment, I feel awful for doing it.”

“I just want to know what happened to you,” Aidan replied and that was the truth.

She wasn’t the first woman in the world to sneak out of a hookup at dawn, but she never texted or came by the pub again. He practically lived at Murphy’s. She could’ve found him there any time she wanted to, but she hadn’t. Their time together had made a huge impact on him, so it had surprised him that she could just walk away from it without a glance back. He’d wanted to look for her a dozen times but had had no way to go about it.

“I was in an accident.” Violet frowned at the desk as she visibly strained to piece together her story. “I guess it must’ve been right after I left your apartment. My stupid taxi slammed into the back of a bus and I hit my head on the partition. I woke up in the hospital.”

Aidan’s heart started to sink. He’d never imagined that she hadn’t contacted him because she couldn’t. He’d been home grumbling into a bowl of cereal and she’d been in the hospital. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “I had a good knot on my head, but mostly just bruises. No lasting damage aside from some memory loss. I basically lost the week leading up to the accident. The last thing I remembered when I woke up was leaving my office after a big meeting the week before. I’ve tried everything over the past few months to recover those memories, but nothing worked. I didn’t contact you because I didn’t remember you, or the time we spent together, until you walked into my office and said your name just now.”

* * *

“Are you saying you’ve got amnesia?”

Violet wanted to cringe at the way Aidan said the word. It was the same way whenever someone said it. Amnesia sounded like something that only existed in a soap opera, not a real-life medical condition. And yet that was what it was. An entire week of her life had been erased from her brain as though it never happened.

The doctors told her that eventually, the memories would return, but they couldn’t predict when or how. She might get little flashes over time or a sense of déjà vu, or it might come back suddenly like a tidal wave washing over her.

It had been the latter. When he looked at her with those big, blue eyes and said his name, it was like the earth had shifted beneath her feet. In an instant, her mind was flooded with images of the two of them together. Naked and sweaty. Laughing. Eating takeout in bed and talking for hours. She fought the urge to blush in embarrassment having such intimate memories about a virtual stranger. But those thoughts were quickly wiped away by the realization of what it all meant for her.

That was what had caused the tears.

She’d spent fifteen months wondering what she’d forgotten when she’d lost that week of her life. Right after the accident, she’d been determined to recover her memories. Eventually she’d put those worries aside when she’d realized she was pregnant. From there on out, her attention turned to her engagement with her longtime boyfriend, Beau Rosso, and planning for the arrival of their first baby together.

Then the baby arrived and the missing week of her life became more important than ever before.

“I know,” she said, raising her hand to halt any argument he might have. “It sounds crazy. Until it happened to me, I would’ve said it was ridiculous, but that’s what the doctors told me. I’ve spent nearly a year and a half trying to get those memories back. But there was nothing, not a flicker of that week of my life, until just now.”

Aidan ran his hand through the shaggy ginger curls of his hair and arched his brow. “So, what exactly did you just remember about me?” He awaited her response with a smug curl of his lips.

This time, Violet couldn’t prevent the blush the memories brought to her cheeks. She didn’t like feeling as though she were at a disadvantage in any situation and knowing he had the ability to ruffle her was unsettling enough. “I, uh,” she began, “remember coming into the bar. You worked there?”

At that, he grinned. “Worse. I own it.”

Violet nodded, trying not to sigh in relief. She wasn’t one to make a habit of having flings with bartenders. She was a shipping heiress to one of the largest family fortunes in Europe and she’d been raised to act accordingly. Her grandfather would roll in his grave if he thought Violet was slumming with a bartender. Then again, she wasn’t prone to having flings with bar owners, either, but at least he was a business owner and not a hot guy who paid his rent with a seductive smile and tips.

Violet bit at her lip, trying to sort through all her new memories. She remembered going to the bar, although she didn’t know why. It wasn’t a place she’d ever visited before. She could recall the exact moment she’d laid eyes on Aidan. Laughing, talking, closing the bar down. “I remember going back to your place.”

Her cheeks were burning. There was no way her blush wasn’t obvious now. If the red-hot memories weren’t enough, the way Aidan looked at her from over the desk would do it. “I think we both know what happened after that,” she said.

Aidan nodded slowly. “I’ve relived that weekend with you in my mind dozens of times, trying to figure out what I did wrong.”

Violet pushed aside the stirring images, suppressing the heat that had started circling in her belly. “What do you mean? I may not remember everything yet, but I don’t remember you doing anything wrong.”

“Well, you left, didn’t you? I woke up Sunday morning with a cold stretch of mattress beside me. When did you even leave? I didn’t hear a thing.”

Violet tried to remember. She had left his apartment early in the morning, but why? Had she had something she’d needed to do? She felt like that was the answer, although she didn’t know what it could be. Whatever it was, she’d never made it since she’d ended up in the hospital instead. “I had somewhere I needed to be. I didn’t want to wake you up. I was going to call you later.”

“But you got amnesia,” Aidan interjected with a flat, disbelieving tone.

“Yes. My phone was crushed in the accident, so I lost any new data since my last backup, which probably included your number. Any memories or traces of our time together were erased from my life.” Well, most of them. One huge daily reminder remained—she just hadn’t realized the significance of it until now.

“That’s all very convenient.”

Violet didn’t like his tone. “Are you suggesting that I’m lying about all of this?”

Aidan just shrugged. “It’s just a pretty big pill to swallow, that’s all.”

“I assure you that if all I wanted was to discontinue our...” What was it, exactly? Relationship? Affair? Hookup? “Time together, I would’ve had no problem just saying so. There’s no need to make up a story about amnesia and broken phones just to get out of seeing you again.”

“So you did want to see me again.” It was a statement, not a question. His subdued grin was unnerving, making her muscles tense and her stomach flip. He seemed to like having that effect on her.

Violet wasn’t entirely sure she minded it, either. She couldn’t remember another man being able to make her stomach flutter with just a glance. Without a touch, with just the memory of a touch, she felt her resolve crumbling beneath her. She wouldn’t tell him the truth, but the nights they’d spent together had been the best she’d ever had. He’d mastered her body almost instantly, playing her like a violin until she nearly made herself hoarse screaming out his name. How could she ever have forgotten it?

“I did,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.

She followed his gaze as it flickered over to her bare left hand. For months, she’d worn Beau’s engagement ring. Now the tan line had faded and she’d lost the strange sensation that going without it caused.

“And what about now?”

That was a dangerous question. Spending a weekend with Aidan was one thing, but now...everything had changed. It just wasn’t that simple any longer.

“Now isn’t relevant,” she said, avoiding the answer.

“The hell it isn’t!” Aidan stood up from his seat and rounded her desk. He leaned over her, planting his hands on the arms of her chair. He was close without touching her, his warm scent invading her space even as he hovered at the edge of it.

Violet’s breath caught in her throat. The large, hulking figure of manhood was so close, tempting her to reach out and close the gap he’d left. The last few months had been scary and lonely. She was tempted to give in to her attraction to him again and let him remind her of everything she’d missed.

“I’ve spent almost a year and a half wondering what happened to you, Violet. Even when I didn’t want to think about you, when I wanted to just move on, the vision of your naked body writhing beneath mine would creep into my head and derail my thoughts.” He paused, his gaze flicking over her body then returning to her face. “Now you show back up in my life with this wild story and your big doe eyes and you tell me that your attraction to me isn’t relevant?”

How could she explain that things were more complicated than just whether or not she was attracted to him? There were more factors at play, things she needed to tell him, stuff that went beyond her work at the foundation.

Aidan leaned in farther, pausing when their lips were a fraction of an inch apart. Violet’s heart was pounding in her chest, her lungs burning with the rapid breaths she was taking. Each one drew his scent into her lungs, reminding her of burying her face in his neck and snuggling into the pillows that smelled like him. He was so close. If she moved, they would be kissing and if she was honest with herself, it took everything she had to stay still.

“Say it,” he demanded.

Violet couldn’t turn away from his commanding gaze. When he looked at her that way, she’d do anything he wanted. But this wouldn’t be just a simple admission of attraction. “Aidan...”

“Say it.”

She swallowed hard. “Okay, fine. Yes, I’m still attracted to you. Does that make you happy?”

He narrowed his gaze and eased back from her. “Not really. I’ve never met a woman who fought her desires so strongly. You don’t want to want me at all. Is it because I’m a bartender and not some flashy investment banker like your boyfriend?”

Violet flinched. That wasn’t the reason, but it certainly didn’t help their situation. She didn’t need a man’s money—she was a billionaire in her own right—but she had made a habit of dating wealthy men in the past. It made her feel less like a prize to be won, a lottery ticket to change a man’s fortune forever. Although they were rarely discussed, there were plenty of male gold-diggers in the world, too.

“No,” Violet argued. “It’s not about that. And anyway, he’s my ex-boyfriend. Listen, there’s something we need to talk about.” She pressed her hand to his chest, hoping to get some breathing room, but he didn’t budge. All she ended up doing was getting a handful of his hard muscles beneath his dress shirt. “Please have a seat so we can talk for a minute.”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t even move. She realized then that his attention had shifted to something over her shoulder.

“Aidan?” Was he even listening to her?

Violet turned and followed Aidan’s gaze to the framed photograph on her desk. It was the only picture of Knox she kept in the office, and now she regretted even having this one here. Everyone who saw it asked about the cherubic baby with the bright red curls and big blue eyes. Apparently it had caught his attention as well, but not just because her son was adorable. The similarities were impossible to ignore, a fact that had nearly blown her over when the memories of their time together hit her all at once. At last, the final, crucial puzzle piece had fallen into place.

The panic was evident by his big eyes and slack jaw. He knew what the photo meant. There was no need to do math or conduct a paternity test for him to understand the truth. Finally, he turned back to her and swallowed hard. “Is that your baby?”

She nodded and he stood upright, leaving her personal space and making her suddenly feel cold without him. “Yes. That’s Lennox, my son. He’s almost six months old.”

“Lennox,” he repeated, as though he were trying to get used to the sound of the name.

“I call him Knox for short. He’s amazing. So smart, so loving. I’ve truly been blessed as a mother.”

Aidan turned back to the photo, the unasked question hanging on his lips.

“And yes,” Violet began, with a mix of relief and apprehension climbing up the back of her throat. How long had she worried she would never get to say these words to someone? That she might never know the truth about Knox? Now in the moment, she wasn’t even sure she could get the words out. She gripped the arms of her chair to steady herself and looked up into the familiar sky-blue eyes of the near-stranger standing in front of her.

“I’m pretty sure that he’s...your son.”