Forgotten First Kiss

I brushed it aside. I can’t be feeling that. Instead, I mentally reverted to the contract. “You have a lot of nerve.”

“You’ve said that in the past.” His gaze was hard. “So why summon me? Just to rip me to shreds? Wouldn’t that be more satisfying if you did it publicly?”

“Jeremy.” I huffed in frustration. “Did you encourage me to sign this document?” I went over to the table and brought it to him.

“Rules of propriety dictate that you should invite me in.”

Glugh. “Fine. Come in. But not if you’re planning to accost me in any way.”

“You’re safe.” His words sizzled in my ears, a déjà vu of the most unsettling kind. “Now, what is this paperwork?”

Jeremy followed me into the living room—the scene of his former crime. His flowers sat on the front room coffee table, having held up amazingly well for all this time. I’d only needed to remove a couple of crumpled blooms so far. He eyed them briefly but said nothing. My face flushed hot, revealing my totally mixed-up emotions.

I took a fortifying breath against all those pheromones detonating my will power and said, “Tennille mailed me this. Apparently, I signed something that gives her and her husband my entire business.” Speaking the words aloud was like a cheese grater against my eardrum. “Dr. Chen said I will eventually be able to remember everything that happened between the time of my original accident and the time I regained my memory.” Not exactly true, but I decided to speak it as an act of faith. “However, I can’t imagine a scenario where I would have been persuaded”—I speared him with a look—“to sign away my life’s work.”

“And? Why are you asking me?”

“Because apparently while I was in a compromised state, someone took advantage of me.” I raised a brow. He knew what I was thinking of—his eyes slid toward the floor where I’d been lying the last time I saw him. “And you seem like the likely culprit.”

Culprit. There. I liked that word. I folded my arms over my chest as if to underscore it.

“Danica, I didn’t do anything inappropriate, either with you or to you.” His voice was firm, as if he were biting down on a leather strap while he spoke.

“Why was I wearing your shirt in a photograph, then?”

“Grease spattered on your own clothes while you were making homemade doughnuts, and you said it was a fire hazard. I had an extra in my truck. It was long enough that it hid your shorts.” His jaw worked. “Geez, Danica. I’m not that guy. I respect women. I respect you.”

The declaration resonated in the air between us, and I stared at him, gauging his sincerity while his words sank into my mind. He didn’t do anything inappropriate with or to me.

That photo of me in the man’s shirt, then, didn’t mean anything terrible had gone awry with my moral standards. A whoosh of relief left my lungs. “Thank you.”

My gaze met his, which was still edgy and stern. It disarmed me, put me on the defensive all of a sudden. “Look, I’m sorry for assuming the worst. It’s just that these photos in my phone showed …” I shook my head. “Yeah. Well, what about this contract?” I jabbed the paperwork he held with my fingertip. “Why did you encourage me to sign it? I ask because according to the photographic history on my camera, you seemed to have been a constant presence in my life while I was”—how to put it?—“incapacitated. And they tell me you’re a businessman. So I would have consulted with you.”

“No,” was all he said. He flipped to the back page. “Who are these people?” He peered at the names of the lawyers listed in the letterhead. “Have you and Tennille ever discussed anything of this type? To your knowledge, I mean?”

“There’s the salient phrase: to your knowledge. Honestly, Jeremy, very little in life has been reliably to my knowledge lately. Big gaps of reality are missing.” My eyes darted to his lips, which I’d apparently kissed on multiple occasions—without my knowledge.

How would they feel on mine in this reality? I pressed my hand to my cheek, willing myself not to slap it. He was Jeremy Hotston, Certified Buffoon. My life was too jammed with reality for sidetrack fantasies where I wasted time with someone as crackpot and careless as Jeremy Hotston. A prankster. Who’d ruined Angelica’s wedding.

“With your permission, I’ll send this to Mark.”

“Who’s Mark?”

“I forgot.” He grimaced, a look that communicated you forgot instead. “My attorney in Reedsville. He looked at some medical forms for you in the past. He’s aware of your situation.”

He was? An attorney in the city knew about my amnesia? How humiliating. “Why would he be interested in my medical documents?”

“Oh, just a little matter of rights the hospital network had tried to get you to sign away. Mark helped them see the error in the verbiage of the contract, and they quickly corrected it.”

My heart began to pound erratically—a bunny rabbit hopping among drunk crickets. “Really?” A warm cloak of protection wrapped around me. Jeremy arranged that? For me? “What are the details of that?”

He filled my eardrums with legal jargon that bounced right off, but which left me with the simple impression that indeed, he’d been looking out for me, and that his attorney had had my best interests in mind.

“Thanks.” What else could I say? I dropped some of my shields. This Jeremy Hotston didn’t have the air of a prankster at this point, or of someone who had to prove his worth to anyone. Confidence rolled off him in waves. I couldn’t deny that it affected me. “I’d be grateful if you could give this to your friend Mark. What will I owe him?”

Jeremy gave me a withering look that said, you can’t afford Mark. “I’ll take care of it. As a friend.”

A friend! Suddenly he’d put me in the friend zone? Or put himself into my friend zone? My body chemistry revolted, begging to be consulted in that definition. I just nodded. “A friend in a time of need, and all that. Thank you.”