Remember Me? (Book 1) COMPLETED

Vows

NICK

By the time I pulled into the garage, I knew Katherine and Erland were gone, house dark like a dragon's den. Two lights glittered on either side of the front door, and when I opened the door, I felt for all the world like I was creeping into a serpent's unforgiving mouth.

The door closed with a jaw-like snap.

What was I doing?

Is this what my life had become?

When Tori and I married, hadn't we made plans? We worked hard to dig ourselves out of the hole we dug when we fell in love. Almost-bankruptcy had humbled us, made me careful to manage our finances. If we had it bad, no doubt Katherine had it worse—the wedding debts, a lost honeymoon, and now her mother. Giving her the shares of Wayward Publishing was supposed to make up for that. Now I wondered if it would be the final straw to tear me and Tori apart.

Bright headlights cut through the twilight at the edge of the driveway. Keys jingled when the door opened, shut, and footsteps clicked their way up the stairs. The doorknob to the bedroom turned and in stepped my wife.

"Victoria," I breathed, standing from the window.

"We need to talk," we said in unison.

If my heart wasn't drumming hard enough to crack a rib, I might have laughed. But Tori's forlorn expression, her eyes so bright they seemed to be full of tears, sobered me real quick.

"You first," she said.

I obliged.

Starting from when I left her at the airport last week, I explained my chance encounter with Katherine. Then Camille's accident, Erland's flight to Alabama, and my offer for Katherine to stay.

The dim bedroom light cast shadows over Victoria's face. She'd sank down on the edge of the bed as I spoke, and she'd dropped her bags at the door. At last, I told her about my dinner with Katherine last night. How I told her the truth.

"It would've been better if she had never known, Nicolas," she said, catching me with her bright gaze. "We would've been rid of her in our lives."

I swallowed, a lump in my throat. "I think it would be a lot harder for us to ignore Katherine than you let on," I said. How can we ignore where we started? How stupid we were?

Tori took a breath and let it out. "I've forgotten already," she said. "Have you?"

Her words coiled around my throat and, for a moment, I couldn't speak. Before I saw Katherine at the airport, I would have agreed. But for a few words on a legal document that sits in my office at Wayward, I would've forgotten that Katherine existed. Or Erland. Or, for that matter, Tori. My heart, when I left to Alabama, had been set on forgetting my year-long hiatus from running the company, throwing away the plans I made to start a life with Tori. And then life—and fate—had shoved my past back in my face.

"How can I?" I croaked. "How can we forget how we left everything in pieces? Seeing Katherine now, and her brother, only showed me how selfish we were."

She stiffened and seemed to straighten. "Do you regret us?"

I raked a hand through my hair. "Of course not, Tori. I don't regret you for one minute...."

"Then forget Katherine. Forget the little brat with her." She stood, stepping into the light. Her sea-glass eyes peered up at me with such hope, it almost took my breath away. "Get her out of the company, Nick." Her fingers wrapped around my own, and she bent forward to kiss my jaw. "So we can have peace."

"Peace?" I whispered. How could we have that coming face-to-face with what we did?

She nodded, her auburn hair brushing my cheek. Her perfume wrapped around me like an embrace. "I know you stepped down from CEO for us," she said. "I know the picture you have for our future, a family to fill the house, and I think I can get there."

My breath hitched, and I pressed her against me with my free arm. I could feel her heart beating—fast and hard. "Do you want to?"

The surprise in her eyes shifted to something I hadn't seen in a while. Desire.

"Let's work on us," she said, brushing her lips across mine. "And see where we go from there."

* * *

Later, as we lay in bed, I propped up on my elbow to look at my wife's beautiful face. She smiled sleepily, face bathed in a green glow from the clock on the wall: 3:30am. I kissed her face, her cheeks, her neck, tickling her until she giggled and half-heartedly pushed me away.

"Stop, Nick," she gasped, "we have to go to bed."

I grinned as I scooped her into my arms. "I can take the day off. And now that you're back from your work, so can you."

All at once, her giggles vanished and she wriggled in my grasp. "Seriously," she snapped, "go to sleep."

My lightheaded mood vanished, but I tried to keep the smile on my face. "All right," I said, settling back down on the mattress. "We'll go to work tomorrow." I pressed kiss to her nose.

In the darkness, the only part of her I could make out was the curve of her eyelashes, her cheeks, her chin, as she stared at the ceiling.

"What's on your mind?" I asked.

She met my gaze and smiled, though the smile didn't quite seem to reach her eyes. "Nothing," she said. "It's been a long week."

"How was your trip?"

Octavia, the official CEO of Wayward Publishing, had sent her to scour art exhibitions and art schools for rising talent to design novel covers. Since she was here, no doubt she finished early.

All at once, Tori's words from the meeting shot back into my head: Richard Chase wants to buy out Katherine's shares... He's put me in charge of the negotiations...

"It was fine," she said, turning on her side, her back to me. "I'm tired, Nick. We can talk more tomorrow."

Soon, her breathing was soft and level. She was asleep, but my mind whirred. Her warmth radiated, filling the gaping hole in my arms that had been there for so many months.

Something had changed on this trip. Before I left, I worried that she was pregnant—cheating even—but how could I forget the jealousy radiating off her when we spoke on the phone last week, or the poisonous look in her eye when she faced Katherine in front of the Committee? Do you regret us? Her voice, almost cracking, at the question. I had felt her desperation, her fire, when we were together. Tears that salted our kisses like the ocean breeze. Words whispered that fizzled across our skin. Now, peace that settled like a blanket of fog over the lake at dawn.

But as the sun rose and my wife stirred in my arms, turning to smile and pull me into a kiss, I wondered if this peace would last beyond the morning dew. Or if it would evaporate, leaving us scorched and bitter.