REMEMBER US: A Billionaire Romance (Part One) by Glenna Sinclair Page B

in so much paint that it looked like you’d rolled in it.”
    His voice deepened slightly as he talked. And the way he was looking at me…I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me quite like that. Not even Philip. It made my heart do something funny in my chest.
    “Anyway,” he said, sitting back and clearing his throat a little, “we’d spent six months living in two different states. I think you were just anxious to begin a new life together.”
    “We’re we engaged when I moved here?”
    “No. I didn’t ask you until a couple of weeks later. I didn’t want you to think I’d done it just to get you to move out here.”
    “That was thoughtful.”
    He shrugged. “I wanted you here. I wanted you always in my life. That was my priority at the time.”
    “We dated six months?”
    “We met in June of last year. We dated long distance until the end of November. You moved here the first of December, and we got engaged right before we flew to your parents’ place for the holidays.”
    “Did they make us sleep in separate rooms even though we were living together already?”
    “They did.” He chuckled again. “But you snuck down the hall to my room every night after your parents went to bed.”
    I blushed again, as an image of the two of us curling up in the guest room of my parents’ house burst into my mind. It wasn’t really a memory, more of a figment of my imagination. But it was vivid enough it could have been a memory.
    Xander was watching me, concern coming into the lines on his face. “Maybe that’s enough for one day,” he said softly. “Why don’t I show you to your room?”
    He stood and pulled me away from the table, pushing my wheelchair back through the hallways that led to the main entryway. We crossed that and moved into a new hallway that led around to the back of the house. He pushed open a door at the very back that exposed a beautiful room that was filled with an amazing amount of natural light thanks to the sliding glass doors that led out into the back garden.
    “This was a sun room, but you thought it was so beautiful that you insisted we turn it into a guest bedroom for when your sister came to visit. You thought she would love it.”
    “Did she?”
    I could see him shrug in his reflection in the glass. “She hasn’t come to visit yet.”
    He pushed the wheelchair over to the bed and set the locks. “You should probably rest for a while. The doctor said you should take it easy the first couple of days, try not to do too much.”
    He touched my shoulder before he moved back toward the door. “If you need anything…”
    The way he was looking at me, the way the sun was glowing around him, it set off something in my head. I had a flash of him standing just like that, but there was something different about his expression. He was upset. Not angry. Sad.
    Why would he be sad?
    And then it was gone.

Chapter 9
     
    Xander
    I closed the door and left her alone. It was nice to talk to her like this again. I’d missed the back and forth we used to share so easily. Before everything changed, it’d always been so easy to be with her.
    I had to believe we were going to get back to that.
    I went back to the sitting room and poured myself a drink. I stood there and stared at it for a while, thinking about everything that had happened. Had I done everything I should have done? Should I have tried harder to contact her parents? I knew they’d be angry when they found out what had happened, that I didn’t try everything I could to get word to them. But they were the ones who insisted on taking these cruises without their cellphones. They made it clear they didn’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances.
    But I knew these were special circumstances and they would have come home immediately had they known. And then they would have taken Harley back to Texas with them.
    That was the last thing I wanted. It was bad enough that she couldn’t remember me. I didn’t want them making