Free REMEMBER US: A Billionaire Romance (Part Two) by Glenna Sinclair

her back here where she belonged. It killed me to know she’d suffered because of me. When she was in the hospital and they said she had hit her head, I was terrified that the worse had happened. But she was here, she was safe, and everything was going to be okay.

Chapter 11
     
    Harley
    It was all a ruse.
    I remembered that now. I left him, told everyone it was because of his lies about Margaret, about their short-lived marriage when they were seventeen. As if something like that would convince me to walk away from the love of my life. I was angry all right. But not enough to do more than yell and scream for a while. I wanted to hurt him, I did. I wanted to hurt him the way it hurt me to find out the way I did. I mean, who wants to go to the county clerk to get their marriage license just to find out that their significant other had lied about his past?
    But I would have understood after he explained it to me.
    They were nineteen. Margaret was being pressured by her father to marry the son of a prominent businessman—a client—who would have brought millions into her father’s law firm. It was a business deal, and Margaret wasn’t about to be used as a pawn in her father’s games. So she went to Xander while he was attending Stanford and asked him to marry her. It was in name only. They never lived together and never shared as much as a kiss. But the marriage license protected her from her father’s plot almost in the same way it threatened our own marriage.
    It was nothing, just as he’d said.
    But it was also a symptom in the disease that was Grant Wallace.
    “The flowers were a nice touch.”
    Xander chuckled, his mouth against my head so that the heat of his breath spread and pressed against my skull.
    “I thought it would be something someone desperate to get a woman’s attention would do. Not me, of course…”
    “Because you know I hate flowers.”
    “But no one else knew that, except maybe your folks. But I guess all your dad saw was that I’d hurt you.”
    “He was trying to protect me.”
    He kissed the top of my head again. “I know.”
    “It was comforting, seeing you sitting in your car in front of the house though.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I thought about inviting you in a few times in the middle of the night. But I was afraid someone might see.”
    “They were clearly watching. Otherwise, I don’t think they would have gone after you like they did.”
    My thoughts darkened, turning to that morning. I’d been expecting something like that…it was like there were monsters hiding around every corner I turned. But I never expected it to come like that.
    “Do you remember?”
    “I remember getting out of bed that morning. Calling Philip before I got dressed.”
    Xander’s arms tightened slightly at the mention of my ex-boyfriend. He hadn’t thought that was a good idea, but Philip was the only person I could think of—the only person I knew—who might be able to help us. Philip was a high school history teacher in Dallas now. But his father was a politician. There were connections there that were incredibly helpful in our situation.
    I craned my neck to look at him. “He said to tell you hi. I remember that, too.”
    Xander kissed the tip of my nose. “Consider me told.”
    “I remember grabbing my fanny pack, fastening it around my waist. I grabbed my keys and my cellphone. Then I was on the sidewalk, half expecting to see you somewhere behind me.”
    “I had a meeting.”
    I closed my eyes, the morning playing out behind my eyelids. I could actually feel the sidewalk under my shoes, the earbuds in my ears. I remember thinking an inability to hear was probably a bad idea, but I couldn’t jog without music. But I couldn’t remember much beyond that.
    “Did they ever talk to the person who hit me?”
    “No. In fact, they kind of suggested it was a hit and run.”
    “Suggested?”
    Xander shook his head. “I called the police a couple of times, but they refused to give me much