He smiles and laughs softly at me, but I take no offense. I sound like a parrot repeating him. “Yes. Figured we can watch a movie here.”
I look behind him at his big house. The picture-perfect house with two stories, a wraparound porch, and even a white picket fence. Flowers have sprouted under the windows, and the grass is neatly trimmed. There’s even a freaking tire swing on one of the two trees standing guard on either side of the house like sentinels.
“Your place?”
He keeps the smile but not the laughter as he steps closer to me. I’m still straddling his bike as I take in everything before me.
He unstraps my helmet and brushes my hair back. “We can go somewhere else if you want. I just figured you would be more comfortable here, on my couch, as opposed to a sticky movie theater seat.”
I blink again as I look at the house behind him. Memories must be hidden in the walls, and secrets are waiting to be told.
“Babygirl,” he whispers as he pushes hair behind my ear. He bends down to get closer to me and bring my eyes back to him rather than what’s behind him. “It’s just a house.”
“But it’syourhouse.”The house with your family in it. The one we don’t talk about because you don’t remember but everyone who knows you does. The one place that your daughter would probably skin me alive for even seeing, much less stepping inside.
“And I want you to come into it with me. Please.”
Thepleaseis what gets me, and I nod, even as my eyes trace back to the place beyond him.
“Good girl.” He kisses my lips, just a peck, but enough for me to remember that Karter likes me. He wouldn’t want me here if he didn’t. He wouldn’t be talking to me if he weren’t okay with this.
If he’s okay with me coming in, then I need to be okay with it too.
And if he somehow starts convulsing the second I step over the threshold because his dead wife’s ghost comesup and starts plotting my death and it triggers all his memories? Well, at least he’ll have remembered then.
I get off the bike, and he grabs my hand. I have half a thought that he’s making sure I don’t bolt. Which, to be fair, is an idea, but I was the stupid idiot who closed her eyes on the ride over and had no idea where she was. If this were a horror movie, I would be the first to go. I would be introduced as the nurse, and everyone would expect me to be one who lasts the longest to help the hero or heroine, then ends up dead at the end or maybe even lives through it all. But no. I’m the first-act death scene. Blindly trusting a hot older man and willingly going into what could be a house of torture. All because he called me nice names and his lips on me make my heart beat twice as fast.
“If you’re planning on killing me, can you at least feed me first?”
He opens the door and lets me in, then smacks my ass as he walks ahead of me. “No killing tonight unless it’s from the movie we watch. Promise. Now move your ass. I’ve got a roast to check.”
Shit.
This is horrible. He’s going to not only make me watch an action movie but feed me yummy food he’s cooked himself too?
Kill me now. Because if I don’t die, I might do something he’ll regret. Like jump him and force him to make love to me all night long.
Chapter 12 - Karter
Ican’t stop smiling. Not because I’m happy, which I am, but because watching Diana is hilarious. And warmhearted.
The instant she stepped into my home, she tried to keep all of herself contained. Wouldn’t even set down her purse till I pulled it from her hands. Having her take her shoes off was another small feat. Forcefully, at that. She’s not only trying to keep any essence of herself from getting on anything, she’s also trying hard not to touch anything. This is quite an achievement, particularly since she had to use a fork for the roast. The girl literally held it on the very end and only touched the food to her mouth. The fork barely went inside.
She’s so scared to either trigger a memory out of me or scar any memory I already have.
It’s adorable. And it does something to me.
And seeing her here, especially with how she’s acting, lets me know it’s therightchoice to have her here. Any other woman would come in and just take over, making themselves comfortable and not caring beyond how they feel. But not Diana. Not my Babygirl. She’s caring to a fault. To the point of being uncomfortable.
“If I have to tell you to relax again, I’m going to start taking offense.”
“I am relaxed,” she says as she sits perched on the far side of the couch as we watch some movie that I havezero clue about. She picked it, and I’m good with that, but my attention has been on her all night.
“Lie to me one more time and see what I do,” I growl.
I’m watching her closely enough that I can see the second my words register in her brain by the way she blinks a few times in quick succession.
“What would you do?” she says as she turns to me, her brows raised.
