One Unforgettable Weekend
One Unforgettable Weekend
Andrea Laurence
An accident stole her memory. A chance encounter brings it back.Violet Niarchos can’t recall the affair that gave her a child. But when she runs into Aidan Murphy, she knows the sexy bar owner is no stranger and soon a romance rekindles…
An accident stole her memory.
A chance encounter brings it crashing back.
Violet Niarchos can’t recall the affair that gave her a child. But when she runs into Aidan Murphy, she knows the sexy bar owner is no stranger. He was her lover over one amazing weekend. He’s her baby’s father. But will Aidan believe she truly forgot all they shared? Or that the high-class heiress is faking it to save her reputation?
ANDREA LAURENCE is an award-winning author of contemporary romances filled with seduction and sass. She has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she was young. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she is thrilled to share her special blend of sensuality and dry, sarcastic humor with readers.
Also by Andrea Laurence (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
Snowed In with Her Ex
Thirty Days to Win His Wife
One Week with the Best Man
A White Wedding Christmas
What Lies Beneath
More Than He Expected
His Lover’s Little Secret
The CEO’s Unexpected Child
Little Secrets: Secretly Pregnant
Rags to Riches Baby
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
One Unforgettable Weekend
Andrea Laurence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07652-4
ONE UNFORGETTABLE WEEKEND
© 2018 Andrea Laurence
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Eric—
I was lost when you found me.
Thank you for helping me believe again.
Contents
Cover (#u10f1d16e-a588-5995-bae0-3258b525009c)
Back Cover Text (#uefdf9646-ce0e-5884-b1c0-83512d04cc66)
About the Author (#u1c1f0854-307f-5aaa-8307-192a869283f1)
Booklist (#u860bf8c9-202f-5e1b-a0ff-6eea9133f92b)
Title Page (#u217e99bd-dec5-525f-80c8-4874c67192f0)
Copyright (#ucd3814f5-de03-5279-8ab6-4eb855b3eed1)
Dedication (#u1d1a09a7-4306-5120-973f-22c76db64ab8)
One (#uacf0c5cf-fa2a-5aad-93b3-4f5559d876c1)
Two (#ucbaa755f-1fbd-566d-bcb2-49e275abc781)
Three (#u2d18ef7b-8742-5661-8fbf-0bdd834d2eb6)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
“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.”
Two (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
“My son?”
Her words were like a swift kick to his gut. Aidan had known—known from the moment he’d laid eyes on the baby in the picture—that it was his, but hearing it aloud carried an impact he didn’t expect.
“Yes. I’m sorry this is how you had to find out. Please sit down so we can talk about this.”
Aidan reluctantly pulled away and returned to his seat. It was better that he sit, anyway, before his legs failed him and he had no choice. His mind was spinning with thoughts he couldn’t grab ahold of. He’d come here to apply for money to start a halfway house and had managed, instead, to get a son. A son named Knox. A son he’d never met before.
The thought made his stomach twist into knots. He’d always wanted a family of his own when the time came. He’d wanted a chance to be a better father than his own had been, to prove that he was better than his alcoholic, waste-of-space dad. He knew that when he decided to get married and start a family, he would dedicate his world to them, because that was the way it should be.
But instead, he’d just found out his son was six months old and he’d missed everything so far. He would remedy that, and soon. He wasn’t sure what Violet had in mind, but he would be a father to Knox. He would take him to Yankees games, be there for every T-ball tryout and parent-teacher conference.
“Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?” He was surprised at how cold his own voice sounded, but he was choking back a sea of emotions. It was better to show none at all than to let them rush out of him all at once.
Violet’s expression twisted in irritation. “You’re really asking me that?”
Apparently she was going to stick fast to her amnesia story. He didn’t really buy it, but he’d go along with it for now. “So I guess you’re saying since you forgot we slept together, you forgot I was the father?”
She slid her chair closer to the desk and folded her neatly manicured hands over the leather and parchment blotter. Her brow furrowed as she seemed to search for her words. “The way you say it sounds so convenient, as though I haven’t spent the last six months of my life agonizing over the fact that I had no idea who my baby’s father was.”
“Who did you think it belonged to for the months before that?”
Her gaze dropped down to her desk, avoiding him. “I thought it was Beau’s child—my ex you mentioned before. Since I had no memory of our time together, I had no reason to think otherwise. We got engaged. We planned a wedding and future together. And then the doctor in the delivery room handed him a baby with a full head of curly red hair and the whole room just went into shock.”
Aidan tried not to laugh. He could just picture the scene with everyone wondering where this pasty Irish kid had come from. It would be funny if it hadn’t meant that he’d missed the birth of his first child in the process. “How’d he take that? Not well I’d imagine.”
Violet sighed and looked up at him. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re not together anymore and we know he isn’t Knox’s father. I’ve got the lab results to prove it.”
“What did your parents say?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Did we discuss my parents before?”
It seemed as though Violet didn’t remember their conversation. That probably had more to do with the tequila than her head injury. She’d been pretty upset when she’d strolled into his bar and demanded a shot with tears in her eyes. He’d listened to her story and made it his mission to make her smile again, never imagining that decision would lead them to this point. To a child.
“Not at length,” he explained. “Only that they were pushing you to be with this guy even though he was a grade-A jerk. I can imagine having another man’s baby was a disappointment for them after thinking you two were going to get married and they’d get their way.”
“Well, yes, but not as much of a disappointment as having an unknown man’s baby. They certainly can’t have their fancy friends and family finding out the truth. They’d be much happier if I just took Beau back and pretended like Knox belonged to him. I think they’re still telling people that Beau is the father and we’re just having a rough patch. My mother tried to convince me that we had a recessive pale, redheaded gene in our Greek and Israeli heritage.” She shook her head. “I’ve never met one. They’re just grasping at straws.”
“I suppose that means they’re not going to be too happy to find out his real father is a broke Irishman who owns a bar.”
Violet looked at him with an expression of grave seriousness. He could tell the past year had weighed heavily on her mind. If she was telling the truth about forgetting everything, he imagined it would be difficult. The one week you forget ending up being the most important week of your life.
“I’m not worried about them. In the past few months, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and one of the things I’ve discovered is that I’m no longer concerned with what makes my parents happy. My whole life has been about what makes them happy. Now my focus is on myself and my son, where it should be.”
Needing to see it again, Aidan reached out and took the framed portrait from her desk. He ran his finger across the rosy cheeks and bright smile of the child he’d never met. Knox definitely had his coloring, but he had Violet’s almond-shaped eyes and full lips. He had her smile, even though his was toothless at the moment. He imagined their son had an infectious giggle the way babies did. He hoped to hear it in person as soon as possible.
“I would’ve told you,” Violet said in a small voice. He looked up from the photo and searched her dark eyes for the truth of her words. “This isn’t about other people’s opinions or whether or not I wanted you in Knox’s life. If I had known, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you, or to find you again. But I truly didn’t remember until now. That’s why I cried when it all came back at once. It was an overwhelming sense of relief, finally knowing the truth after all these months.”
Aidan sighed and looked back at his son. He wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth, but at the moment it didn’t really matter. If he wanted to see his child, he’d take her at her word and hope for the best. “So now what?” he asked.
Violet tapped her fingers anxiously at the edge of her desk. “Well, I suppose I should start by calling my attorney. He can get the ball rolling on setting up a paternity test, just to be certain, then we can start working on arrangements for visitation and such.”
Only a rich person would start off this process with calling their attorney instead of going for the obvious choice of allowing him to meet his son. Aidan didn’t even have an attorney, much less one on retainer who took his calls whenever he needed him.
Of course, Aidan didn’t have anywhere near the amount of the money he suspected Violet had. The Niarchos Foundation gave away millions of dollars every year to worthy causes, and that was just a small fraction of the family’s fortune. He’d done a little reading about the family when he was looking for places to help with his project. Her grandfather had made a fortune in Greece shipping steel to the United States. When the family came to America, their wealth only grew by leaps and bounds.
Aidan couldn’t imagine how many billions of dollars the Niarchos family empire controlled. They probably just started this foundation so the IRS didn’t eat them alive. He didn’t really like or trust the rich as a rule, but if they were handing out money, he certainly could use some. All he wanted was a small piece to help him kick off his halfway house since every penny he’d saved went into Murphy’s.
He never dreamed the daughter and chair of the foundation would be the woman he remembered from all those nights ago. Or that coming here today would put him on a path to meeting the son he never knew about.
“That’s all well and good,” he said, “and I’m sure it needs to be done, but I was thinking something a little less legally binding to start off with.”
“Like what?” Violet asked.
“Like a playdate with my son.”
* * *
Violet couldn’t shake the anxiety that curled up in her belly. It was one thing to agree to Aidan coming over to her apartment so he could meet Knox; it was another to know he’d arrive any moment.
It had been two days since he’d walked into her office and turned her world upside down. Two days of memories circling in her mind at the most inopportune of times. Memories of the nights she’d spent with Aidan. How he’d held her, how he’d touched her. How he’d made her feel things, both physically and emotionally, that she’d never experienced before.
Losing her memory had at first been an annoyance. When Knox was born, it became an unfortunate complication. Now, knowing how much she’d missed out from her time with Aidan, it had become downright tragic.
How many months had she settled with Beau because she didn’t remember how amazing it was with Aidan? All that time, in the back of her mind, she’d had a nagging worry. It wasn’t ever something she could put her finger on. Just a feeling that things weren’t right. That Beau was the wrong man for her, despite her having no reason to think otherwise.
Now she knew what her subconscious was trying to tell her all this time. Aidan was the man who had been missing from her life. From Knox’s life. One look into those sky-blue eyes and she’d nearly been knocked off her feet by the power of that realization. How could she have forgotten that hard, stubble-covered jaw, those skilled lips and those strong hands? Even now, she could easily bring to mind the feel of the coarse, auburn chest hair that spread across his firm pecs. The beat of his heart beneath her palm.
The days and nights they’d spent together had been about more than just sex. It was not at all what she expected, going home with a bartender after last call, but they had really connected. He’d been right about that. Knowing he was back in her life both thrilled and scared her. They’d come together on a level she’d never felt with a man before. It had been as though they’d always known each other after just a few short hours. Like her heart would break if she had to be away from him.
Violet craved that connection again after the tumultuous relationship with Beau ending and the months of emotional upheaval and loneliness that followed. And yet, it frightened her. No matter what happened between them, she hoped that Aidan would be in Knox’s life. That was as it should be. But the two of them? Could something that intense maintain itself? Would it eventually consume them?
Even if he was still interested in her—and she wasn’t entirely sure that he was—the attraction would eventually die out. They might be drawn to each other just because they’d had their chance taken away. If it ended poorly, she didn’t want it to impact his relationship with her son. And if she were honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if she could bear the intensity, the passion, and then the crippling grief.
In this situation, it might be better if she kept her distance. Polite. Cordial. Businesslike. After all, they were going to be working together on his grant in addition to raising a child together.
When all the drama had been hashed out, they’d finally sat down to discuss the proposal he’d come for. If the board accepted it, there would be several weeks of working side by side on the project. Her foundation didn’t just cut checks, they gave charities the tools they needed to learn how to keep themselves afloat in the future. It was an important key to the success of the Niarchos Foundation, and one that would keep her and Aidan working together no matter what happened between the two of them personally.
Violet heard footsteps coming down the stairs and turned in time to see Tara with Knox in her arms. He was wearing a white onesie with blue and green cartoon dinosaurs on it and little matching blue shorts. It was one of her favorite outfits, a gift from her friend Lucy, whose twins were due any day now. The nanny handed over the baby to his mother and she held him close, breathing in the unexpected scent of his baby soap.
“We had an unscheduled bath just now,” Tara said with a chuckle. “We tried a little applesauce with our breakfast and we got it everywhere. I’m not even sure how much got in our tummy.” She reached out and tickled at the infant’s belly, making him laugh and squirm in Violet’s arms. “He’s ready to go, though. All dressed and clean. Do you need me to stay and wrangle him while your company is here?”
Violet bit at her lip, but shook her head no. She’d told the live-in nanny that someone was coming over, but she hadn’t said who it was. Good news traveled fast and scandalous news traveled even faster. For now, she wanted to keep Aidan and his relationship with her to herself. “We’ll be okay. It’s your day off. Enjoy yourself.”
Tara smiled and grabbed her jacket from the closet. “Okay. You guys have fun. Text me if you need me.”
Tara disappeared down the hallway and Violet breathed a sigh of relief. At least they hadn’t run into each other as she left. Aidan was taller than most men, with a solid build that demanded the attention of every woman he passed. Tara would notice him for sure. And with that fiery red hair and those icy blue eyes, there was no way anyone would look at Aidan and not know exactly who he was.
That wasn’t to say that Violet didn’t trust Tara. She loved her. Any doubts or concerns she’d had about hiring a nanny had gone out the window when Tara interviewed for the position. Violet had basically been raised by nannies. Her parents were always on the move, touring the world, securing business deals back in Greece and a dozen other countries. Their private jet had more miles on it than most jumbo airliners. But that meant that Violet had grown up alone with no one but her hired caretakers.
They had all been lovely women. Not horribly strict or harsh, but they hadn’t been suitable replacements for her parents, either. When Knox came along, she knew she needed help doing this all on her own. She had a job and since it was a family business, she could take him in with her if she had to, but he really needed someone during the day. Tara had been the perfect someone. A helping hand, but not a substitute like her own had been.
But the situation with Aidan was a precarious one. She wasn’t ready to trust anyone with it yet, even Tara. She hadn’t even told her best friends from college—Emma, Lucy and Harper—about Aidan’s arrival. That would come in time, she was sure, but on her own terms, not because of out-of-control gossip.
Violet looked down at her son. He was chewing intently on his fist with slobber running down his arms. He might be clean, but her little monkey was never perfect for long. She walked over to the Pack ’n Play that was set up in her home office and grabbed a clean burp cloth to wipe away the drool. “We don’t want you drooling all over Daddy first thing, now, do we?”
Knox just grinned, shoving his fist back into his mouth the moment she released it. The books said he was teething and any moment now, the first few would start to break through. She anticipated quite a few long nights with a cranky baby in her future.
The phone rang. Violet eyed the number, knowing it should be the bellman calling about her guest. A “Mr. Murphy” was waiting for her in the lobby. She told them to send him up and tried to prepare herself for his arrival.
It seemed to take ten minutes for the elevator to crawl the five stories to her apartment. She wasn’t in the penthouse, but she was fairly high up in the building with her apartment taking up the west side of the fifth and sixth floors. It gave her nice treetop views of Park Avenue. She’d had the apartment—a graduation present from her parents—since she’d graduated from Yale and moved back to Manhattan. It almost made up for the fact that they hadn’t been able to attend her commencement in New Haven. They’d been stuck in Istanbul. She wasn’t surprised. That had been their MO her whole life—lavish gifts in exchange for the emotional and physical distance between them.
Soon, though, Violet wanted to make a change. The apartment was spacious when Violet was alone, but a little too small for her, Knox and Tara. Baby things seemed to fill every corner. She wanted more room and to be closer to a park where Knox could run around. Central Park was a little too chaotic for her to keep up with him there. She got a feeling that this little monkey would be on the move the minute he learned to walk.
The doorbell rang. Violet took a deep breath to prepare herself. It should be easy. Today wasn’t about her. It was about Aidan and his son. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a heart-wrenching moment for everyone involved.
Violet walked to the front door and opened it, stepping back far enough to allow Aidan a full view of her standing there with Knox in her arms. “Hello, Aidan. Come in.”
She might as well not have spoken because the instant his eyes connected to his son, the whole world faded away for a moment. He didn’t move. He didn’t even appear to breathe. Aidan was frozen to the spot as he studied his child for the first time.
Knox, however, was oblivious to their visitor. He’d become fascinated with the scalloped edge of Violet’s collar, pinching it between his clumsy, chubby fingers.
She turned a bit so Aidan had a better view, then tugged Knox’s hand from her shirt. “Lennox, we have a visitor. Can you say hi?” He couldn’t, of course, but Aidan had finally caught his attention. Knox’s big eyes locked in on him and he grinned wide.
“It’s amazing how much you two look alike,” Violet chattered nervously in the silence. “I bet in your baby pictures you couldn’t tell you two apart.”
Aidan just shook his head, apparently ignoring everything but Knox. “A part of me didn’t really believe all this until now, but it’s true. He’s my son.”
Violet winced and glanced over his shoulder into the hall beyond him. The neighbor she shared a vestibule with was incredibly nosey. “He is. Come in and you two can spend some quality bonding time together.”
He finally took a few steps into the apartment, allowing Violet to shut the door. He studied the child in her arms like an exhibit at an art gallery, trying to absorb and process every detail from a distance.
Violet looked down and noticed he had a gift bag in his hand. He’d need to put that down to hold Knox, which she was certain would come next if he could work up the nerve. He seemed both anxious and terrified about the prospect. “Why don’t you follow me into the living room where you can set your things down and get more comfortable?”
She turned, and he followed her until the hall opened up to a large contemporary space filled with light from the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows along two sides of her corner unit. In the center of the room, she’d put a grouping of comfortable white couches, the only splash of color being some blue throw pillows in the mostly white and gray space.
“Have you been around many babies before?” she asked. She wasn’t sure what his level of skill or comfort was with an infant. He could’ve raised his siblings or have another child she didn’t know about, unlike herself who had almost never even held a baby before Emma’s daughter, Georgette, arrived. For some reason, the thought of Aidan having another child made her jealous on Knox’s behalf.
“No, not really,” he said at last. “I was an only child. I don’t have any kids of my own—I mean, I don’t have any other kids. He’s my first. Basically, I’m clueless.”
Violet smiled. It seemed like a big admission for a man like him. She could tell that coming to the foundation for a grant had bothered him. His initial posture as he’d come through her office door had been defensive. He read like the kind of man who was used to being able to handle anything thrown his way without assistance from anyone. The fact that he’d come to her anyway because his project was important was something she appreciated. Knox was obviously important to him as well, or he likely wouldn’t have admitted his inexperience there, either.
“You’ll do fine. I didn’t know much when I started either. He’s not a small and fragile newborn anymore, so you won’t have trouble. He’s a sturdy boy, at the top of his percentile of weight and height for his age.”
At that, Aidan beamed with paternal pride. “I’ve always been pretty solid. I would’ve made a decent football player if I’d wanted to, but baseball was always my sport.” He held up the bag to show it to Violet before setting it on the coffee table. “That’s actually some Yankees outfits for him to wear and baby’s first baseball mitt. Now that I’m involved, I’ve got to make sure you’re raising him right.”
Violet chuckled. “We’re not Mets fans in my family, so no worries there. The foundation actually has a box suite at the new Yankees stadium if you’d like to take him to a game.” She shifted Knox in her arms until he was facing out. “Here,” she said. “Why don’t you go ahead and hold him? You’ll get over your nerves faster that way.”
She watched as all the muscles in his body tensed. Memories of touching each and every inch of them flashed through her mind as they flexed beneath his skin. She missed touching a man—the hard muscles, coarse hair and heated skin against her own. So different and yet so comforting. Now wasn’t the time to reminisce about what she’d lost. She pushed the thoughts aside and focused on easing their son into his arms for the first time.
Aidan appeared nervous for a moment, but Knox snuggled comfortably against his chest and the tension lessened in him. He cradled him easily, instinctively bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet. “Hey there, little guy,” he said.
Violet took a step back to give them some space and shield him from the tears that were forming in her eyes. She watched through blurry vision as Knox put his hand against Aidan’s cheek and giggled at the feel of his stubble. He hadn’t been around very many men, but he seemed to instantly take to Aidan. Perhaps he knew his father instinctually. Or perhaps Knox was just as drawn to Aidan as his mother was.
Watching the two together was such a touching moment for Violet. After everything she’d experienced over the past year, she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever get to witness a moment like this...if Knox would ever get to know the protective embrace of his real father. She’d been racked with guilt after Knox was born. Guilt for misleading Beau, although unintentionally. Guilt for not being able to remember something as important as who her baby’s father was. Guilt of knowing he might grow up never knowing his father, and his father never knowing he had a son, just because a taxi driver got impatient and wiped the memories from her mind.
Then Aidan had walked into her office and the opportunity suddenly appeared to put everything to rights. They’d all been given a chance to start again and do things the way they should’ve been done to begin with. Now she couldn’t understand why she’d been so anxious about Aidan’s visit. She couldn’t be more grateful to witness this touching moment between father and son. She’d cherish this memory forever.
It was special. Perfect.
And then Knox puked applesauce down the front of Aidan’s polo shirt.
Three (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
If you’d told Aidan six months ago that he’d be half-naked in Violet’s apartment today, he would’ve laughed. Then again, back then he hadn’t known about his new son or factored in how far the boy could projectile vomit applesauce.
“I just put your shirt in the dryer, so you should be able to wear it home,” Violet said as she came back into the room with Knox on her hip.
After the applesauce incident, Aidan and Knox had played while Violet cleaned up and threw their clothes in the washer. She’d quickly changed the baby into a little outfit with a train embroidered on the chest.
“I don’t really have anything in the house that would fit you.” Violet’s gaze ran over his bare chest, then shifted quickly to the art on the wall over his shoulder. “I’m sorry about the mess. Having an infant has been hard on my drive for perfection.”
“It’s my fault,” Aidan admitted. “I should know better than to bounce a baby if I’m not sure how long it’s been since he’s eaten last.”
“I suppose you’ll always remember the first time you held your son, now,” she said with a chuckle.
“How could I forget? Even without the spit up it’s a pretty momentous event.”
Aidan noted that his words brought a shadow across Violet’s face, stealing the light humor from her words. Her gaze dropped to the floor in contemplation. Suddenly she seemed sad, although he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d missed out on the first few months of his son’s life, or because he’d finally caught up with her. His unexpected arrival had to be a complication to her life.
Aidan took the moment to study Violet. He hadn’t really had the chance to do that in a long time. When she’d shared his bed, he’d lain beside her and tried to memorize every line and curve of her face. The delicate arch of her dark eyebrows, the thick fringe of her lashes against her cheeks as she slept...
Today she looked different than before. Like that night at Murphy’s, she was still dressed flawlessly from head to toe with styled hair and a full face of makeup. This time, she had on impeccably tailored plum slacks and a silk blouse with a collar embroidered with tiny flowers. But something wasn’t quite right. She looked less peaceful than she’d been sleeping in his arms all those months ago. More at the mercy of life’s stresses, with lines around the edges of her eyes and etched into her forehead. Despite having been pregnant, she seemed thinner than before the baby. Almost hollow. Drained. The last year and a half had clearly been hard on Violet.
Although you wouldn’t know it to look at him, it had been hard on Aidan, too. Losing his father three years ago had turned his life upside down, but it hadn’t been unexpected. He’d bounced back. Murphy’s was doing good business again and although he wasn’t a hotshot advertising executive anymore, he’d been happy with where he was in life.
Then his mother got sick.
Owning their own business, they’d never had medical insurance growing up and health care reform had done little to help where she was concerned. She’d had the cheapest catastrophic plan, all she could afford, but it hadn’t been enough once she got sick. The best treatments, the latest and greatest advancements in Europe, were well out of their reach. The big pharmaceutical industries were charging thousands of dollars for a single dose of medication that could’ve worked wonders for his mother. They had to recoup what they spent on research and development, they argued. But that argument couldn’t keep his mother from succumbing to her illness.
Aidan had never felt more helpless in his life as he had watching her waste away in a state-run hospital. His father had killed himself with alcohol, but his mother hadn’t done anything but be too poor to afford the treatment that could have saved her.
Before she passed, his mother did leave him with one task he could control—the halfway house. It had been her idea, one she couldn’t see through to the end. But Aidan could, and he would do it with the help of Violet’s foundation. Life had come full circle in a strange way.
Violet turned to look at Knox as he yawned. “I think it’s naptime for this little guy. Would you like to help me put him down?”
He looked up at Violet and Knox and smiled. “Sure,” he said and accepted the baby into his arms.
The clean, babbling ginger baby went contentedly to Aidan. He hadn’t been around many babies but those he had tried to hold had never been too happy about it. He was thankful his son felt differently. He liked holding his son just as much as Knox liked being held. He smelled like baby shampoo and talc, a combination Aidan wasn’t used to but found soothing somehow. Knox curled contentedly against Aidan’s bare chest and shoved his fist into his mouth.
“Be careful he doesn’t get ahold of that chest hair,” Violet warned. “Come this way and I’ll show you his nursery.”
Looking anxiously at the chest hair he wanted to keep, Aidan fell in step behind Violet. He followed her upstairs and down a hallway to a door that opened up to a spacious and beautiful room for a baby. It was decorated in a gray-and-white chevron pattern with pops of bright yellow and dark blue. There were elephants on the curtains and a large stuffed elephant in the corner of the room. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect nursery.
Violet stopped in front of the large white crib with elephants on the bedding. Aidan watched as she turned the switch on the mobile overhead, making the matching menagerie of elephants in different colors and sizes dance around in a circle to soft music.
“You can just lay him down there,” she said. “He’ll be out cold in minutes.”
Aidan eased his son into the crib, knowing he needed his nap and yet not ready to let go just yet. He had to remind himself that he would see Knox again.
The baby squirmed for a moment, then reached out to snatch a pacifier from Violet. He sucked contentedly as his eyes fluttered closed.
“Told you,” she said. “He loves his naps.”
“Like father, like son,” Aidan replied with a smile.
Violet grinned. “Let’s go.”
They crept quietly out of the nursery, and Violet shut the door behind him. Instead of heading into the living room again, however, Violet crossed the hall to the door opposite Knox’s. When she opened it, Aidan was taken aback to find it was her bedroom.
Why were they going into her bedroom?
She went inside without hesitation or so much as giving him a second glance. He stayed in the hallway, not quite sure what the right course of action was. When they were at her office, before he’d known about Knox, he’d pressed Violet about her attraction to him. He didn’t really need to ask. Aidan could tell by the flush of her cheeks and the way she nervously chewed at her bottom lip that she still wanted him. He just needed her to say it out loud so she would admit it to herself.
Violet had finally broken down and confessed that she still wanted him, but that conversation had gotten sidetracked not long after and they’d never returned to the topic. Was this her way of circling back to where they’d left off?
He didn’t know Violet well. At all, really. But he couldn’t believe for a second that the beautiful, rich perfectionist he’d come to know was leading him into her room to seduce him while their son napped across the hall. He’d like it if she did, of course, but he doubted it would happen.
“Aidan, you can come in,” she said from the far side of her bedroom. She was standing in front of a large oak dresser with a mirror. Between them was a queen-size bed with a plush floral comforter, an upholstered headboard and about a dozen different fancy pillows. Apparently rich people liked to spend their money on pillows.
He gripped the door frame and held his ground. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could refrain from touching her once he set foot into her bedroom. It was too personal somehow, like she was opening up to him. He could already smell her familiar and enticing scent as it lingered there. It called to him. Another touch, another taste, another aspect of his missing fantasy woman was all he’d craved these past lonely months.
“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea.”
Violet frowned at him, her gaze traveling to his bare chest again and staying there a moment too long. When her eyes met his, he could tell she’d been admiring his physique and thinking the kind of thoughts that could get them both into trouble. The blush had returned to her cheeks as she licked her dry lips. He understood how she felt. He’d been having enough of those thoughts about her since he’d arrived and she’d been fully dressed the whole time.
“I’m grabbing something out of my dresser. I’m not trying to seduce you, Aidan.”
He crossed his arms over his chest in a thoughtful posture. He wasn’t so certain of that. “Are you sure? You were just looking at me like I was a tall, cool glass of water you were dying to drink. And to be honest, I’m pretty thirsty myself.”
“I may have been looking, but that’s all I was doing.” She turned back to the dresser and pulled out something folded. “I can’t help but look when you’re half-naked like that. Here. It’s the largest, manliest shirt I own and I need you to put it on, please.”
Violet tossed the shirt to Aidan. He caught the wad of fabric and shook it out to investigate what she’d offered him. If this was the largest, manliest thing she had, he couldn’t imagine what the rest was like—lace and bows and glitter? For one thing, the shirt was too small. He had broad shoulders and a wide chest that demanded an XL top even when his waistline was on the narrow side. The top was a medium, and a woman’s medium at that. It was also a purply sort of color. Its only redeeming attribute was the black logo on the front for a local rock band that he’d heard play a time or two.
“This is too small.”
“Please put it on.”
“I’m going to tear it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to wear it until your shirt dries. It’s that or a pink silk robe. Your choice, but you’ve got to wear something.”
There was a pleading in her eyes that he couldn’t ignore. She was desperate not to want him. There were lots of reasons she could feel that way. Perhaps she didn’t want to complicate the issue with sharing custody of their son. Maybe she was in a relationship with someone else. Or she could be embarrassed that she had little self-control when it came to her attraction to a lowly barkeep. That was one reason to fight your feelings. Not a good one, but still a reason.
With a shrug, he attempted to pull the T-shirt over his head. It wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, but after some tugging and grunting, he was able to pull it down to cover most of his stomach. “Okay, it’s on.”
She didn’t respond right away. He looked up at Violet and found the stunned expression on her face unexpected. Despite the fact that he was wearing a ridiculously small purple shirt that belonged on a woman, she looked at him as though she could eat him with a spoon. She was actually gripping the footboard of her bed with white-knuckled intensity.
“What?” he said, looking down at himself. It was easy to see the issue. The shirt was tight. Painted-on tight. Every twitch of his muscles, every line of his six-pack abs, was magnified by the clingy top she’d forced him to put on. Her plan had backfired spectacularly.
“Oh, dear. We should’ve gone with the robe.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Just take it off. It didn’t help.”
“The pants, too?” Aidan asked with a sly grin.
Violet swallowed hard before shaking her head. “Uh, no. Just the shirt.”
For now at least, he thought with a wry smile as he tugged the purple fabric over his shoulders.
* * *
“You’ve been quiet this week, Violet,” Harper noted over her traditional girls’ night glass of dry merlot.
“Is Knox teething yet?” Emma asked. “When Georgie started teething, she hardly slept a wink at night, so neither did I. I was a zombie for weeks and that was with a nanny helping during the day.”
“Is that what I have to look forward to?” Lucy asked with concern lining her brow.
“Times two,” Harper pointed out with a smug grin. She was the only single one in the group without a baby on the way, so she was well-rested, thin and living a fabulous life from all outward appearances. “So expect it to be exponentially worse than Emma and Violet have had it.”
“I appreciate you pointing that out, dear sister-in-law,” Lucy grumbled into her glass of Perrier and lemon instead of her usual sweet rosé. She was thirty-five weeks pregnant with Harper’s niece and nephew. She and Harper’s brother, Oliver, had gotten married a few months ago and had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the twins.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Harper quipped. “So seriously, what’s going on with you, Vi?”
Violet had much preferred her friends continue with the banter so she didn’t have to answer Harper’s pointed question. Unfortunately, she could tell her friend wasn’t going to let it go. She knew that girls’ night would be the night she’d have to come clean to them. They could sniff out a secret like a bloodhound.
Knowing it was time to spill the truth to her best friends, she took a deep breath and began. “Knox is starting to teethe, but that isn’t it. Something else has happened.”
“Oh, really?” Emma said, leaning in curiously to hear the latest news. “Do tell.”
“Beau hasn’t started sniffing around again, has he?” Lucy asked in a worried tone.
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that, and for good reason. Violet’s ex-boyfriend had tried to reconcile with her a few times in the six months since Knox was born. He’d actually been all too happy to continue their engagement and marry knowing Knox wasn’t his son. He insisted that he loved her and he didn’t care about Knox’s parentage. It had been Violet who’d demanded the paternity test, and Violet who had returned the ring and ended things when the results came back the way her gut had anticipated them to. Beau hadn’t been any happier about the breakup than her parents had been, but she knew she had to do it.
“No, thankfully I haven’t heard from Beau in several weeks. This is actually good news. I had a major breakthrough with my amnesia.”
“You remembered something?” Lucy asked with wide brown eyes.
Violet nodded. “Not everything,” she admitted. “But the most important parts, I think.”
“Knox’s father?” Emma asked with a breathy voice.
“Yes.”
Violet’s three best friends in the world whooped with excitement, drawing stares from others around the restaurant. They quickly started a rapid fire of questions, hardly leaving Violet time to answer.
“Just relax for a minute and I’ll tell you everything,” Violet said, holding up her hand to slow their words. She shook her head and steeled her own nerves with a large sip of her chardonnay. “Last Monday, a man came into the foundation.”
“Did he have red hair?” Lucy asked.
“Let her tell it,” Harper complained.
“I am letting her tell it,” Lucy snapped.
“Yes, he had red hair,” Violet interjected into their argument. “And blue eyes just like Knox, but even then I didn’t recognize him at first. He knew me, though. Apparently he thought I had run out on him the morning of my accident and he didn’t know how to find me.”
“When did you get your memories back?” Emma prompted.
“When he said his name. I didn’t have the slightest idea who he was and then all of a sudden, it was like a bucket of memories was dumped on my head. I remembered nearly every second of the two amazing days we spent together. And at that point, there was no doubt in my mind that Aidan was Knox’s father.”
“Ohmigosh,” Lucy gasped and clutched her huge belly. “This is so exciting I just might go into labor.”
“Please don’t!” Harper said with panicked eyes. “The twins need to stay in there as long as they can. If you go into labor on girls’ night, my brother will blame me. I don’t want to have to hear him complain.”
“That has to be a relief for you,” Emma said, ignoring the others and reaching out to clasp Violet’s hand. “Now you finally know who your baby’s father is. I only went a couple months when I first got pregnant before I tracked down Jonah. I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with the uncertainty for all these months.”
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Andrea Laurence
An accident stole her memory. A chance encounter brings it back.Violet Niarchos can’t recall the affair that gave her a child. But when she runs into Aidan Murphy, she knows the sexy bar owner is no stranger and soon a romance rekindles…
An accident stole her memory.
A chance encounter brings it crashing back.
Violet Niarchos can’t recall the affair that gave her a child. But when she runs into Aidan Murphy, she knows the sexy bar owner is no stranger. He was her lover over one amazing weekend. He’s her baby’s father. But will Aidan believe she truly forgot all they shared? Or that the high-class heiress is faking it to save her reputation?
ANDREA LAURENCE is an award-winning author of contemporary romances filled with seduction and sass. She has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she was young. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she is thrilled to share her special blend of sensuality and dry, sarcastic humor with readers.
Also by Andrea Laurence (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
Snowed In with Her Ex
Thirty Days to Win His Wife
One Week with the Best Man
A White Wedding Christmas
What Lies Beneath
More Than He Expected
His Lover’s Little Secret
The CEO’s Unexpected Child
Little Secrets: Secretly Pregnant
Rags to Riches Baby
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
One Unforgettable Weekend
Andrea Laurence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07652-4
ONE UNFORGETTABLE WEEKEND
© 2018 Andrea Laurence
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Eric—
I was lost when you found me.
Thank you for helping me believe again.
Contents
Cover (#u10f1d16e-a588-5995-bae0-3258b525009c)
Back Cover Text (#uefdf9646-ce0e-5884-b1c0-83512d04cc66)
About the Author (#u1c1f0854-307f-5aaa-8307-192a869283f1)
Booklist (#u860bf8c9-202f-5e1b-a0ff-6eea9133f92b)
Title Page (#u217e99bd-dec5-525f-80c8-4874c67192f0)
Copyright (#ucd3814f5-de03-5279-8ab6-4eb855b3eed1)
Dedication (#u1d1a09a7-4306-5120-973f-22c76db64ab8)
One (#uacf0c5cf-fa2a-5aad-93b3-4f5559d876c1)
Two (#ucbaa755f-1fbd-566d-bcb2-49e275abc781)
Three (#u2d18ef7b-8742-5661-8fbf-0bdd834d2eb6)
Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
“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.”
Two (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
“My son?”
Her words were like a swift kick to his gut. Aidan had known—known from the moment he’d laid eyes on the baby in the picture—that it was his, but hearing it aloud carried an impact he didn’t expect.
“Yes. I’m sorry this is how you had to find out. Please sit down so we can talk about this.”
Aidan reluctantly pulled away and returned to his seat. It was better that he sit, anyway, before his legs failed him and he had no choice. His mind was spinning with thoughts he couldn’t grab ahold of. He’d come here to apply for money to start a halfway house and had managed, instead, to get a son. A son named Knox. A son he’d never met before.
The thought made his stomach twist into knots. He’d always wanted a family of his own when the time came. He’d wanted a chance to be a better father than his own had been, to prove that he was better than his alcoholic, waste-of-space dad. He knew that when he decided to get married and start a family, he would dedicate his world to them, because that was the way it should be.
But instead, he’d just found out his son was six months old and he’d missed everything so far. He would remedy that, and soon. He wasn’t sure what Violet had in mind, but he would be a father to Knox. He would take him to Yankees games, be there for every T-ball tryout and parent-teacher conference.
“Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?” He was surprised at how cold his own voice sounded, but he was choking back a sea of emotions. It was better to show none at all than to let them rush out of him all at once.
Violet’s expression twisted in irritation. “You’re really asking me that?”
Apparently she was going to stick fast to her amnesia story. He didn’t really buy it, but he’d go along with it for now. “So I guess you’re saying since you forgot we slept together, you forgot I was the father?”
She slid her chair closer to the desk and folded her neatly manicured hands over the leather and parchment blotter. Her brow furrowed as she seemed to search for her words. “The way you say it sounds so convenient, as though I haven’t spent the last six months of my life agonizing over the fact that I had no idea who my baby’s father was.”
“Who did you think it belonged to for the months before that?”
Her gaze dropped down to her desk, avoiding him. “I thought it was Beau’s child—my ex you mentioned before. Since I had no memory of our time together, I had no reason to think otherwise. We got engaged. We planned a wedding and future together. And then the doctor in the delivery room handed him a baby with a full head of curly red hair and the whole room just went into shock.”
Aidan tried not to laugh. He could just picture the scene with everyone wondering where this pasty Irish kid had come from. It would be funny if it hadn’t meant that he’d missed the birth of his first child in the process. “How’d he take that? Not well I’d imagine.”
Violet sighed and looked up at him. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re not together anymore and we know he isn’t Knox’s father. I’ve got the lab results to prove it.”
“What did your parents say?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Did we discuss my parents before?”
It seemed as though Violet didn’t remember their conversation. That probably had more to do with the tequila than her head injury. She’d been pretty upset when she’d strolled into his bar and demanded a shot with tears in her eyes. He’d listened to her story and made it his mission to make her smile again, never imagining that decision would lead them to this point. To a child.
“Not at length,” he explained. “Only that they were pushing you to be with this guy even though he was a grade-A jerk. I can imagine having another man’s baby was a disappointment for them after thinking you two were going to get married and they’d get their way.”
“Well, yes, but not as much of a disappointment as having an unknown man’s baby. They certainly can’t have their fancy friends and family finding out the truth. They’d be much happier if I just took Beau back and pretended like Knox belonged to him. I think they’re still telling people that Beau is the father and we’re just having a rough patch. My mother tried to convince me that we had a recessive pale, redheaded gene in our Greek and Israeli heritage.” She shook her head. “I’ve never met one. They’re just grasping at straws.”
“I suppose that means they’re not going to be too happy to find out his real father is a broke Irishman who owns a bar.”
Violet looked at him with an expression of grave seriousness. He could tell the past year had weighed heavily on her mind. If she was telling the truth about forgetting everything, he imagined it would be difficult. The one week you forget ending up being the most important week of your life.
“I’m not worried about them. In the past few months, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching and one of the things I’ve discovered is that I’m no longer concerned with what makes my parents happy. My whole life has been about what makes them happy. Now my focus is on myself and my son, where it should be.”
Needing to see it again, Aidan reached out and took the framed portrait from her desk. He ran his finger across the rosy cheeks and bright smile of the child he’d never met. Knox definitely had his coloring, but he had Violet’s almond-shaped eyes and full lips. He had her smile, even though his was toothless at the moment. He imagined their son had an infectious giggle the way babies did. He hoped to hear it in person as soon as possible.
“I would’ve told you,” Violet said in a small voice. He looked up from the photo and searched her dark eyes for the truth of her words. “This isn’t about other people’s opinions or whether or not I wanted you in Knox’s life. If I had known, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you, or to find you again. But I truly didn’t remember until now. That’s why I cried when it all came back at once. It was an overwhelming sense of relief, finally knowing the truth after all these months.”
Aidan sighed and looked back at his son. He wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth, but at the moment it didn’t really matter. If he wanted to see his child, he’d take her at her word and hope for the best. “So now what?” he asked.
Violet tapped her fingers anxiously at the edge of her desk. “Well, I suppose I should start by calling my attorney. He can get the ball rolling on setting up a paternity test, just to be certain, then we can start working on arrangements for visitation and such.”
Only a rich person would start off this process with calling their attorney instead of going for the obvious choice of allowing him to meet his son. Aidan didn’t even have an attorney, much less one on retainer who took his calls whenever he needed him.
Of course, Aidan didn’t have anywhere near the amount of the money he suspected Violet had. The Niarchos Foundation gave away millions of dollars every year to worthy causes, and that was just a small fraction of the family’s fortune. He’d done a little reading about the family when he was looking for places to help with his project. Her grandfather had made a fortune in Greece shipping steel to the United States. When the family came to America, their wealth only grew by leaps and bounds.
Aidan couldn’t imagine how many billions of dollars the Niarchos family empire controlled. They probably just started this foundation so the IRS didn’t eat them alive. He didn’t really like or trust the rich as a rule, but if they were handing out money, he certainly could use some. All he wanted was a small piece to help him kick off his halfway house since every penny he’d saved went into Murphy’s.
He never dreamed the daughter and chair of the foundation would be the woman he remembered from all those nights ago. Or that coming here today would put him on a path to meeting the son he never knew about.
“That’s all well and good,” he said, “and I’m sure it needs to be done, but I was thinking something a little less legally binding to start off with.”
“Like what?” Violet asked.
“Like a playdate with my son.”
* * *
Violet couldn’t shake the anxiety that curled up in her belly. It was one thing to agree to Aidan coming over to her apartment so he could meet Knox; it was another to know he’d arrive any moment.
It had been two days since he’d walked into her office and turned her world upside down. Two days of memories circling in her mind at the most inopportune of times. Memories of the nights she’d spent with Aidan. How he’d held her, how he’d touched her. How he’d made her feel things, both physically and emotionally, that she’d never experienced before.
Losing her memory had at first been an annoyance. When Knox was born, it became an unfortunate complication. Now, knowing how much she’d missed out from her time with Aidan, it had become downright tragic.
How many months had she settled with Beau because she didn’t remember how amazing it was with Aidan? All that time, in the back of her mind, she’d had a nagging worry. It wasn’t ever something she could put her finger on. Just a feeling that things weren’t right. That Beau was the wrong man for her, despite her having no reason to think otherwise.
Now she knew what her subconscious was trying to tell her all this time. Aidan was the man who had been missing from her life. From Knox’s life. One look into those sky-blue eyes and she’d nearly been knocked off her feet by the power of that realization. How could she have forgotten that hard, stubble-covered jaw, those skilled lips and those strong hands? Even now, she could easily bring to mind the feel of the coarse, auburn chest hair that spread across his firm pecs. The beat of his heart beneath her palm.
The days and nights they’d spent together had been about more than just sex. It was not at all what she expected, going home with a bartender after last call, but they had really connected. He’d been right about that. Knowing he was back in her life both thrilled and scared her. They’d come together on a level she’d never felt with a man before. It had been as though they’d always known each other after just a few short hours. Like her heart would break if she had to be away from him.
Violet craved that connection again after the tumultuous relationship with Beau ending and the months of emotional upheaval and loneliness that followed. And yet, it frightened her. No matter what happened between them, she hoped that Aidan would be in Knox’s life. That was as it should be. But the two of them? Could something that intense maintain itself? Would it eventually consume them?
Even if he was still interested in her—and she wasn’t entirely sure that he was—the attraction would eventually die out. They might be drawn to each other just because they’d had their chance taken away. If it ended poorly, she didn’t want it to impact his relationship with her son. And if she were honest with herself, she wasn’t sure if she could bear the intensity, the passion, and then the crippling grief.
In this situation, it might be better if she kept her distance. Polite. Cordial. Businesslike. After all, they were going to be working together on his grant in addition to raising a child together.
When all the drama had been hashed out, they’d finally sat down to discuss the proposal he’d come for. If the board accepted it, there would be several weeks of working side by side on the project. Her foundation didn’t just cut checks, they gave charities the tools they needed to learn how to keep themselves afloat in the future. It was an important key to the success of the Niarchos Foundation, and one that would keep her and Aidan working together no matter what happened between the two of them personally.
Violet heard footsteps coming down the stairs and turned in time to see Tara with Knox in her arms. He was wearing a white onesie with blue and green cartoon dinosaurs on it and little matching blue shorts. It was one of her favorite outfits, a gift from her friend Lucy, whose twins were due any day now. The nanny handed over the baby to his mother and she held him close, breathing in the unexpected scent of his baby soap.
“We had an unscheduled bath just now,” Tara said with a chuckle. “We tried a little applesauce with our breakfast and we got it everywhere. I’m not even sure how much got in our tummy.” She reached out and tickled at the infant’s belly, making him laugh and squirm in Violet’s arms. “He’s ready to go, though. All dressed and clean. Do you need me to stay and wrangle him while your company is here?”
Violet bit at her lip, but shook her head no. She’d told the live-in nanny that someone was coming over, but she hadn’t said who it was. Good news traveled fast and scandalous news traveled even faster. For now, she wanted to keep Aidan and his relationship with her to herself. “We’ll be okay. It’s your day off. Enjoy yourself.”
Tara smiled and grabbed her jacket from the closet. “Okay. You guys have fun. Text me if you need me.”
Tara disappeared down the hallway and Violet breathed a sigh of relief. At least they hadn’t run into each other as she left. Aidan was taller than most men, with a solid build that demanded the attention of every woman he passed. Tara would notice him for sure. And with that fiery red hair and those icy blue eyes, there was no way anyone would look at Aidan and not know exactly who he was.
That wasn’t to say that Violet didn’t trust Tara. She loved her. Any doubts or concerns she’d had about hiring a nanny had gone out the window when Tara interviewed for the position. Violet had basically been raised by nannies. Her parents were always on the move, touring the world, securing business deals back in Greece and a dozen other countries. Their private jet had more miles on it than most jumbo airliners. But that meant that Violet had grown up alone with no one but her hired caretakers.
They had all been lovely women. Not horribly strict or harsh, but they hadn’t been suitable replacements for her parents, either. When Knox came along, she knew she needed help doing this all on her own. She had a job and since it was a family business, she could take him in with her if she had to, but he really needed someone during the day. Tara had been the perfect someone. A helping hand, but not a substitute like her own had been.
But the situation with Aidan was a precarious one. She wasn’t ready to trust anyone with it yet, even Tara. She hadn’t even told her best friends from college—Emma, Lucy and Harper—about Aidan’s arrival. That would come in time, she was sure, but on her own terms, not because of out-of-control gossip.
Violet looked down at her son. He was chewing intently on his fist with slobber running down his arms. He might be clean, but her little monkey was never perfect for long. She walked over to the Pack ’n Play that was set up in her home office and grabbed a clean burp cloth to wipe away the drool. “We don’t want you drooling all over Daddy first thing, now, do we?”
Knox just grinned, shoving his fist back into his mouth the moment she released it. The books said he was teething and any moment now, the first few would start to break through. She anticipated quite a few long nights with a cranky baby in her future.
The phone rang. Violet eyed the number, knowing it should be the bellman calling about her guest. A “Mr. Murphy” was waiting for her in the lobby. She told them to send him up and tried to prepare herself for his arrival.
It seemed to take ten minutes for the elevator to crawl the five stories to her apartment. She wasn’t in the penthouse, but she was fairly high up in the building with her apartment taking up the west side of the fifth and sixth floors. It gave her nice treetop views of Park Avenue. She’d had the apartment—a graduation present from her parents—since she’d graduated from Yale and moved back to Manhattan. It almost made up for the fact that they hadn’t been able to attend her commencement in New Haven. They’d been stuck in Istanbul. She wasn’t surprised. That had been their MO her whole life—lavish gifts in exchange for the emotional and physical distance between them.
Soon, though, Violet wanted to make a change. The apartment was spacious when Violet was alone, but a little too small for her, Knox and Tara. Baby things seemed to fill every corner. She wanted more room and to be closer to a park where Knox could run around. Central Park was a little too chaotic for her to keep up with him there. She got a feeling that this little monkey would be on the move the minute he learned to walk.
The doorbell rang. Violet took a deep breath to prepare herself. It should be easy. Today wasn’t about her. It was about Aidan and his son. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be a heart-wrenching moment for everyone involved.
Violet walked to the front door and opened it, stepping back far enough to allow Aidan a full view of her standing there with Knox in her arms. “Hello, Aidan. Come in.”
She might as well not have spoken because the instant his eyes connected to his son, the whole world faded away for a moment. He didn’t move. He didn’t even appear to breathe. Aidan was frozen to the spot as he studied his child for the first time.
Knox, however, was oblivious to their visitor. He’d become fascinated with the scalloped edge of Violet’s collar, pinching it between his clumsy, chubby fingers.
She turned a bit so Aidan had a better view, then tugged Knox’s hand from her shirt. “Lennox, we have a visitor. Can you say hi?” He couldn’t, of course, but Aidan had finally caught his attention. Knox’s big eyes locked in on him and he grinned wide.
“It’s amazing how much you two look alike,” Violet chattered nervously in the silence. “I bet in your baby pictures you couldn’t tell you two apart.”
Aidan just shook his head, apparently ignoring everything but Knox. “A part of me didn’t really believe all this until now, but it’s true. He’s my son.”
Violet winced and glanced over his shoulder into the hall beyond him. The neighbor she shared a vestibule with was incredibly nosey. “He is. Come in and you two can spend some quality bonding time together.”
He finally took a few steps into the apartment, allowing Violet to shut the door. He studied the child in her arms like an exhibit at an art gallery, trying to absorb and process every detail from a distance.
Violet looked down and noticed he had a gift bag in his hand. He’d need to put that down to hold Knox, which she was certain would come next if he could work up the nerve. He seemed both anxious and terrified about the prospect. “Why don’t you follow me into the living room where you can set your things down and get more comfortable?”
She turned, and he followed her until the hall opened up to a large contemporary space filled with light from the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows along two sides of her corner unit. In the center of the room, she’d put a grouping of comfortable white couches, the only splash of color being some blue throw pillows in the mostly white and gray space.
“Have you been around many babies before?” she asked. She wasn’t sure what his level of skill or comfort was with an infant. He could’ve raised his siblings or have another child she didn’t know about, unlike herself who had almost never even held a baby before Emma’s daughter, Georgette, arrived. For some reason, the thought of Aidan having another child made her jealous on Knox’s behalf.
“No, not really,” he said at last. “I was an only child. I don’t have any kids of my own—I mean, I don’t have any other kids. He’s my first. Basically, I’m clueless.”
Violet smiled. It seemed like a big admission for a man like him. She could tell that coming to the foundation for a grant had bothered him. His initial posture as he’d come through her office door had been defensive. He read like the kind of man who was used to being able to handle anything thrown his way without assistance from anyone. The fact that he’d come to her anyway because his project was important was something she appreciated. Knox was obviously important to him as well, or he likely wouldn’t have admitted his inexperience there, either.
“You’ll do fine. I didn’t know much when I started either. He’s not a small and fragile newborn anymore, so you won’t have trouble. He’s a sturdy boy, at the top of his percentile of weight and height for his age.”
At that, Aidan beamed with paternal pride. “I’ve always been pretty solid. I would’ve made a decent football player if I’d wanted to, but baseball was always my sport.” He held up the bag to show it to Violet before setting it on the coffee table. “That’s actually some Yankees outfits for him to wear and baby’s first baseball mitt. Now that I’m involved, I’ve got to make sure you’re raising him right.”
Violet chuckled. “We’re not Mets fans in my family, so no worries there. The foundation actually has a box suite at the new Yankees stadium if you’d like to take him to a game.” She shifted Knox in her arms until he was facing out. “Here,” she said. “Why don’t you go ahead and hold him? You’ll get over your nerves faster that way.”
She watched as all the muscles in his body tensed. Memories of touching each and every inch of them flashed through her mind as they flexed beneath his skin. She missed touching a man—the hard muscles, coarse hair and heated skin against her own. So different and yet so comforting. Now wasn’t the time to reminisce about what she’d lost. She pushed the thoughts aside and focused on easing their son into his arms for the first time.
Aidan appeared nervous for a moment, but Knox snuggled comfortably against his chest and the tension lessened in him. He cradled him easily, instinctively bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet. “Hey there, little guy,” he said.
Violet took a step back to give them some space and shield him from the tears that were forming in her eyes. She watched through blurry vision as Knox put his hand against Aidan’s cheek and giggled at the feel of his stubble. He hadn’t been around very many men, but he seemed to instantly take to Aidan. Perhaps he knew his father instinctually. Or perhaps Knox was just as drawn to Aidan as his mother was.
Watching the two together was such a touching moment for Violet. After everything she’d experienced over the past year, she’d begun to wonder if she’d ever get to witness a moment like this...if Knox would ever get to know the protective embrace of his real father. She’d been racked with guilt after Knox was born. Guilt for misleading Beau, although unintentionally. Guilt for not being able to remember something as important as who her baby’s father was. Guilt of knowing he might grow up never knowing his father, and his father never knowing he had a son, just because a taxi driver got impatient and wiped the memories from her mind.
Then Aidan had walked into her office and the opportunity suddenly appeared to put everything to rights. They’d all been given a chance to start again and do things the way they should’ve been done to begin with. Now she couldn’t understand why she’d been so anxious about Aidan’s visit. She couldn’t be more grateful to witness this touching moment between father and son. She’d cherish this memory forever.
It was special. Perfect.
And then Knox puked applesauce down the front of Aidan’s polo shirt.
Three (#ufd13df88-c207-5328-b0a7-6db82aabd88c)
If you’d told Aidan six months ago that he’d be half-naked in Violet’s apartment today, he would’ve laughed. Then again, back then he hadn’t known about his new son or factored in how far the boy could projectile vomit applesauce.
“I just put your shirt in the dryer, so you should be able to wear it home,” Violet said as she came back into the room with Knox on her hip.
After the applesauce incident, Aidan and Knox had played while Violet cleaned up and threw their clothes in the washer. She’d quickly changed the baby into a little outfit with a train embroidered on the chest.
“I don’t really have anything in the house that would fit you.” Violet’s gaze ran over his bare chest, then shifted quickly to the art on the wall over his shoulder. “I’m sorry about the mess. Having an infant has been hard on my drive for perfection.”
“It’s my fault,” Aidan admitted. “I should know better than to bounce a baby if I’m not sure how long it’s been since he’s eaten last.”
“I suppose you’ll always remember the first time you held your son, now,” she said with a chuckle.
“How could I forget? Even without the spit up it’s a pretty momentous event.”
Aidan noted that his words brought a shadow across Violet’s face, stealing the light humor from her words. Her gaze dropped to the floor in contemplation. Suddenly she seemed sad, although he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d missed out on the first few months of his son’s life, or because he’d finally caught up with her. His unexpected arrival had to be a complication to her life.
Aidan took the moment to study Violet. He hadn’t really had the chance to do that in a long time. When she’d shared his bed, he’d lain beside her and tried to memorize every line and curve of her face. The delicate arch of her dark eyebrows, the thick fringe of her lashes against her cheeks as she slept...
Today she looked different than before. Like that night at Murphy’s, she was still dressed flawlessly from head to toe with styled hair and a full face of makeup. This time, she had on impeccably tailored plum slacks and a silk blouse with a collar embroidered with tiny flowers. But something wasn’t quite right. She looked less peaceful than she’d been sleeping in his arms all those months ago. More at the mercy of life’s stresses, with lines around the edges of her eyes and etched into her forehead. Despite having been pregnant, she seemed thinner than before the baby. Almost hollow. Drained. The last year and a half had clearly been hard on Violet.
Although you wouldn’t know it to look at him, it had been hard on Aidan, too. Losing his father three years ago had turned his life upside down, but it hadn’t been unexpected. He’d bounced back. Murphy’s was doing good business again and although he wasn’t a hotshot advertising executive anymore, he’d been happy with where he was in life.
Then his mother got sick.
Owning their own business, they’d never had medical insurance growing up and health care reform had done little to help where she was concerned. She’d had the cheapest catastrophic plan, all she could afford, but it hadn’t been enough once she got sick. The best treatments, the latest and greatest advancements in Europe, were well out of their reach. The big pharmaceutical industries were charging thousands of dollars for a single dose of medication that could’ve worked wonders for his mother. They had to recoup what they spent on research and development, they argued. But that argument couldn’t keep his mother from succumbing to her illness.
Aidan had never felt more helpless in his life as he had watching her waste away in a state-run hospital. His father had killed himself with alcohol, but his mother hadn’t done anything but be too poor to afford the treatment that could have saved her.
Before she passed, his mother did leave him with one task he could control—the halfway house. It had been her idea, one she couldn’t see through to the end. But Aidan could, and he would do it with the help of Violet’s foundation. Life had come full circle in a strange way.
Violet turned to look at Knox as he yawned. “I think it’s naptime for this little guy. Would you like to help me put him down?”
He looked up at Violet and Knox and smiled. “Sure,” he said and accepted the baby into his arms.
The clean, babbling ginger baby went contentedly to Aidan. He hadn’t been around many babies but those he had tried to hold had never been too happy about it. He was thankful his son felt differently. He liked holding his son just as much as Knox liked being held. He smelled like baby shampoo and talc, a combination Aidan wasn’t used to but found soothing somehow. Knox curled contentedly against Aidan’s bare chest and shoved his fist into his mouth.
“Be careful he doesn’t get ahold of that chest hair,” Violet warned. “Come this way and I’ll show you his nursery.”
Looking anxiously at the chest hair he wanted to keep, Aidan fell in step behind Violet. He followed her upstairs and down a hallway to a door that opened up to a spacious and beautiful room for a baby. It was decorated in a gray-and-white chevron pattern with pops of bright yellow and dark blue. There were elephants on the curtains and a large stuffed elephant in the corner of the room. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect nursery.
Violet stopped in front of the large white crib with elephants on the bedding. Aidan watched as she turned the switch on the mobile overhead, making the matching menagerie of elephants in different colors and sizes dance around in a circle to soft music.
“You can just lay him down there,” she said. “He’ll be out cold in minutes.”
Aidan eased his son into the crib, knowing he needed his nap and yet not ready to let go just yet. He had to remind himself that he would see Knox again.
The baby squirmed for a moment, then reached out to snatch a pacifier from Violet. He sucked contentedly as his eyes fluttered closed.
“Told you,” she said. “He loves his naps.”
“Like father, like son,” Aidan replied with a smile.
Violet grinned. “Let’s go.”
They crept quietly out of the nursery, and Violet shut the door behind him. Instead of heading into the living room again, however, Violet crossed the hall to the door opposite Knox’s. When she opened it, Aidan was taken aback to find it was her bedroom.
Why were they going into her bedroom?
She went inside without hesitation or so much as giving him a second glance. He stayed in the hallway, not quite sure what the right course of action was. When they were at her office, before he’d known about Knox, he’d pressed Violet about her attraction to him. He didn’t really need to ask. Aidan could tell by the flush of her cheeks and the way she nervously chewed at her bottom lip that she still wanted him. He just needed her to say it out loud so she would admit it to herself.
Violet had finally broken down and confessed that she still wanted him, but that conversation had gotten sidetracked not long after and they’d never returned to the topic. Was this her way of circling back to where they’d left off?
He didn’t know Violet well. At all, really. But he couldn’t believe for a second that the beautiful, rich perfectionist he’d come to know was leading him into her room to seduce him while their son napped across the hall. He’d like it if she did, of course, but he doubted it would happen.
“Aidan, you can come in,” she said from the far side of her bedroom. She was standing in front of a large oak dresser with a mirror. Between them was a queen-size bed with a plush floral comforter, an upholstered headboard and about a dozen different fancy pillows. Apparently rich people liked to spend their money on pillows.
He gripped the door frame and held his ground. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could refrain from touching her once he set foot into her bedroom. It was too personal somehow, like she was opening up to him. He could already smell her familiar and enticing scent as it lingered there. It called to him. Another touch, another taste, another aspect of his missing fantasy woman was all he’d craved these past lonely months.
“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea.”
Violet frowned at him, her gaze traveling to his bare chest again and staying there a moment too long. When her eyes met his, he could tell she’d been admiring his physique and thinking the kind of thoughts that could get them both into trouble. The blush had returned to her cheeks as she licked her dry lips. He understood how she felt. He’d been having enough of those thoughts about her since he’d arrived and she’d been fully dressed the whole time.
“I’m grabbing something out of my dresser. I’m not trying to seduce you, Aidan.”
He crossed his arms over his chest in a thoughtful posture. He wasn’t so certain of that. “Are you sure? You were just looking at me like I was a tall, cool glass of water you were dying to drink. And to be honest, I’m pretty thirsty myself.”
“I may have been looking, but that’s all I was doing.” She turned back to the dresser and pulled out something folded. “I can’t help but look when you’re half-naked like that. Here. It’s the largest, manliest shirt I own and I need you to put it on, please.”
Violet tossed the shirt to Aidan. He caught the wad of fabric and shook it out to investigate what she’d offered him. If this was the largest, manliest thing she had, he couldn’t imagine what the rest was like—lace and bows and glitter? For one thing, the shirt was too small. He had broad shoulders and a wide chest that demanded an XL top even when his waistline was on the narrow side. The top was a medium, and a woman’s medium at that. It was also a purply sort of color. Its only redeeming attribute was the black logo on the front for a local rock band that he’d heard play a time or two.
“This is too small.”
“Please put it on.”
“I’m going to tear it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to wear it until your shirt dries. It’s that or a pink silk robe. Your choice, but you’ve got to wear something.”
There was a pleading in her eyes that he couldn’t ignore. She was desperate not to want him. There were lots of reasons she could feel that way. Perhaps she didn’t want to complicate the issue with sharing custody of their son. Maybe she was in a relationship with someone else. Or she could be embarrassed that she had little self-control when it came to her attraction to a lowly barkeep. That was one reason to fight your feelings. Not a good one, but still a reason.
With a shrug, he attempted to pull the T-shirt over his head. It wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, but after some tugging and grunting, he was able to pull it down to cover most of his stomach. “Okay, it’s on.”
She didn’t respond right away. He looked up at Violet and found the stunned expression on her face unexpected. Despite the fact that he was wearing a ridiculously small purple shirt that belonged on a woman, she looked at him as though she could eat him with a spoon. She was actually gripping the footboard of her bed with white-knuckled intensity.
“What?” he said, looking down at himself. It was easy to see the issue. The shirt was tight. Painted-on tight. Every twitch of his muscles, every line of his six-pack abs, was magnified by the clingy top she’d forced him to put on. Her plan had backfired spectacularly.
“Oh, dear. We should’ve gone with the robe.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Just take it off. It didn’t help.”
“The pants, too?” Aidan asked with a sly grin.
Violet swallowed hard before shaking her head. “Uh, no. Just the shirt.”
For now at least, he thought with a wry smile as he tugged the purple fabric over his shoulders.
* * *
“You’ve been quiet this week, Violet,” Harper noted over her traditional girls’ night glass of dry merlot.
“Is Knox teething yet?” Emma asked. “When Georgie started teething, she hardly slept a wink at night, so neither did I. I was a zombie for weeks and that was with a nanny helping during the day.”
“Is that what I have to look forward to?” Lucy asked with concern lining her brow.
“Times two,” Harper pointed out with a smug grin. She was the only single one in the group without a baby on the way, so she was well-rested, thin and living a fabulous life from all outward appearances. “So expect it to be exponentially worse than Emma and Violet have had it.”
“I appreciate you pointing that out, dear sister-in-law,” Lucy grumbled into her glass of Perrier and lemon instead of her usual sweet rosé. She was thirty-five weeks pregnant with Harper’s niece and nephew. She and Harper’s brother, Oliver, had gotten married a few months ago and had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the twins.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Harper quipped. “So seriously, what’s going on with you, Vi?”
Violet had much preferred her friends continue with the banter so she didn’t have to answer Harper’s pointed question. Unfortunately, she could tell her friend wasn’t going to let it go. She knew that girls’ night would be the night she’d have to come clean to them. They could sniff out a secret like a bloodhound.
Knowing it was time to spill the truth to her best friends, she took a deep breath and began. “Knox is starting to teethe, but that isn’t it. Something else has happened.”
“Oh, really?” Emma said, leaning in curiously to hear the latest news. “Do tell.”
“Beau hasn’t started sniffing around again, has he?” Lucy asked in a worried tone.
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that, and for good reason. Violet’s ex-boyfriend had tried to reconcile with her a few times in the six months since Knox was born. He’d actually been all too happy to continue their engagement and marry knowing Knox wasn’t his son. He insisted that he loved her and he didn’t care about Knox’s parentage. It had been Violet who’d demanded the paternity test, and Violet who had returned the ring and ended things when the results came back the way her gut had anticipated them to. Beau hadn’t been any happier about the breakup than her parents had been, but she knew she had to do it.
“No, thankfully I haven’t heard from Beau in several weeks. This is actually good news. I had a major breakthrough with my amnesia.”
“You remembered something?” Lucy asked with wide brown eyes.
Violet nodded. “Not everything,” she admitted. “But the most important parts, I think.”
“Knox’s father?” Emma asked with a breathy voice.
“Yes.”
Violet’s three best friends in the world whooped with excitement, drawing stares from others around the restaurant. They quickly started a rapid fire of questions, hardly leaving Violet time to answer.
“Just relax for a minute and I’ll tell you everything,” Violet said, holding up her hand to slow their words. She shook her head and steeled her own nerves with a large sip of her chardonnay. “Last Monday, a man came into the foundation.”
“Did he have red hair?” Lucy asked.
“Let her tell it,” Harper complained.
“I am letting her tell it,” Lucy snapped.
“Yes, he had red hair,” Violet interjected into their argument. “And blue eyes just like Knox, but even then I didn’t recognize him at first. He knew me, though. Apparently he thought I had run out on him the morning of my accident and he didn’t know how to find me.”
“When did you get your memories back?” Emma prompted.
“When he said his name. I didn’t have the slightest idea who he was and then all of a sudden, it was like a bucket of memories was dumped on my head. I remembered nearly every second of the two amazing days we spent together. And at that point, there was no doubt in my mind that Aidan was Knox’s father.”
“Ohmigosh,” Lucy gasped and clutched her huge belly. “This is so exciting I just might go into labor.”
“Please don’t!” Harper said with panicked eyes. “The twins need to stay in there as long as they can. If you go into labor on girls’ night, my brother will blame me. I don’t want to have to hear him complain.”
“That has to be a relief for you,” Emma said, ignoring the others and reaching out to clasp Violet’s hand. “Now you finally know who your baby’s father is. I only went a couple months when I first got pregnant before I tracked down Jonah. I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with the uncertainty for all these months.”
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Andrea Laurence
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: An accident stole her memory. A chance encounter brings it back.Violet Niarchos can’t recall the affair that gave her a child. But when she runs into Aidan Murphy, she knows the sexy bar owner is no stranger and soon a romance rekindles…