Brazen & Burning

3

“YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT?”

Sydney searched Adam’s face for any sign of facetiousness, but the sharp planes of his stubble-roughened cheekbones and the kiss-swollen curve of his mouth didn’t show anything but dead seriousness. Even his irises, a unique light brown that reminded her of the fawn-beige paint on her father’s first Rolls Royce, reflected nothing but honesty. They didn’t twinkle with his notoriously wicked sense of humor. They didn’t dart to the side when she persisted in staring.

“Tell me you’re joking,” she pleaded.

He glanced appreciatively down the length of her body. “I wish I was. You seem like someone who’d be hard to forget.”

“Hard to forget? I’m impossible to forget!”

Sydney stepped back, teetering on her high heels, her toes straining against the razor-thin straps. Furious, she cursed and tore off the sandals. Her first instinct was to throw them long and hard across the lawn, but her second instinct—to throw them at his head—stopped her from throwing them at all. Ordinarily, she wasn’t a violent woman. Instead of inflicting physical harm she decided to hold tight to the potential lethal weapons until she figured out how the hell Adam Brody, the man who’d almost made her break the dating mantra she’d lived by, could have forgotten their brief, but awesome affair.

“You’re yanking my chain, aren’t you?” She shook the shoes at him, hoping one more chance would convince him to change his story. How could he forget her? Her? “This is payback for my dumping your sorry ass.”

Adam chuckled, and though the sound trickled through her like neat bourbon with a twist of lime, something sounded foreign to her. Un-Adam-like.

Her insides froze. She noticed a scar nestled in his thick eyebrows. She swallowed hard, her mind working furiously.

“What happened to you?”

“Accident, or so I’m told.”

She dropped her sandals on the ground. Moisture deserted her mouth and she struggled to swallow, wishing she had that bourbon he’d reminded her of a second ago. With a tentative step, she closed the distance between them and brushed a lock of chestnut hair away from his forehead.

“Oh, God…”

“That’s nothing.”

He turned around and gave her a full, unhampered view of the still-red-and-puckered scar slashing down his back.

She gasped. “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes. When it rains.”

Tentatively, she reached out, but stopped with her fingers only centimeters away.

“You can touch it,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Maybe not, but it sure as hell bothered her. Not because his once-perfect body had been marred by a deep, permanent mark, but because he’d been seriously hurt and she’d known absolutely nothing about it.

“When?” she asked.

“March twelfth, last year.”

Sydney sucked in a breath. March twelfth? She’d left him on the twelfth, then jetted off to Scotland on the thirteenth. She remembered because it had taken quite a bit of coaxing from her publicist and agent to get her on a plane on such an unlucky day. Superstition hadn’t been bred into Sydney, the daughter of pragmatic New England parents. But she’d somehow acquired the habit, most likely because she’d read mostly horror and paranormal fantasy books as a kid.

“That’s the day I left. I mean, that night—I left you that night. It must have happened after…”

He turned, stretching his shoulders and neck. Then, tilting his head toward the side of the house, he directed her to the tire swing and a snatch of shade. He dug his hands into his pockets, but she didn’t miss the way his arms tightened, as if he’d clenched his fists beyond her view.

“Renée thinks I went jogging, got hit from behind. I was wearing running clothes and shoes, though only one Nike Air was found at the scene.” He got quiet, pointing Sydney toward the swing. Yes, her legs felt weak as they walked, but having never had something so basic as a tire to dangle from as a kid—her parents preferred a custom-built playset with Naugahyde fabric seats—she didn’t feel compelled to indulge in that childhood pastime. Instead, she wrapped her hands around the chain and leaned for support.

“What time? I mean, I left pretty late.”

Adam’s eyes met hers and, for an instant, she recognized an expression of the man she used to know. His lids narrowed, slightly crinkling the taut skin at his temple. If she didn’t know that men like him kept their brains well oiled, she imagined she could hear the gears working overtime.

“Sometime before midnight, because that’s when the cops had a call about a body on the side of the road.”

A body? Jogging? Sydney searched her memory, trying to pinpoint what time she’d left Adam’s condominium, trying to figure out how the accident could have happened without her hearing about it, but she’d started shaking so hard, she could hardly breathe.

A body? Adam? God, he could have died. He could have been killed that night and buried and she never would have known. Something in her chest tore, and a hot wave of regret flooded her body. She glanced around, looking for a place to sit. The tire swing still looked gooey and black and forbidding, so she simply dropped down on the grass, knees first.

She’d barely settled onto her heels on the prickly lawn when Adam knelt beside her, wincing at the sudden downward movement.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Me?” She swallowed the lump of disbelief blocking her airway. He’d nearly died on the side of the road. That was why she couldn’t find him when she’d returned from her trip. That was why he didn’t remember her. “What happened to you?”

He looked down, causing a thick lock of hair to fall haphazardly over his eyes. He combed his fingers through the chestnut strands and Sydney’s heart pounded faster. Such a simple, sexy act. Such a simple, sexy man. And he’d almost died.

“Not sure. The police report and doctors concurred that I was hit from behind. I didn’t wake up from the coma for over a month, and when I did, I’d lost all memory of that night, as well as everything for about five years before.”

She forced a grin, managing to quirk only half her mouth. “So I shouldn’t take it personally that you don’t know who I am.”

He reached up and touched her cheek. The gesture might have cracked Sydney’s heart another inch wider, but she realized he was only swiping away a bug.

“It took a few days before I even remembered Renée.”

“But you remember her now,” Sydney asked hopefully.

He shrugged again. “She’s my sister. She’s been around longer than five years.”

Or six months.

“She’s really protective of you,” Sydney said, not wanting to dwell on the fact that despite his injury, it still hurt that he didn’t remember her.

“She’s the only person who thought I’d survive.”

“I would have thought so! I would have…if I’d known.”

Adam’s mouth curved into a frown. “Why didn’t you know? Why didn’t Renée know about you? What were these rules you talked about?”

Sydney smirked. She supposed she should feel embarrassed or remorseful at this point—and she did. But not about the rules they’d—rather, she’d—laid out at the start of their affair. Her dictates had kept things neat, clean and had allowed her the illusion of organization in her dating chaos. The only thing that truly cued her normally inactive mechanism for regret was that her rules had kept her from finding out about Adam’s accident. She’d created the rules to protect her heart from the distraction and inherent selflessness of love. She hadn’t meant them to cut her off from providing help or solace to a friend.

“We had an agreement to keep things between us. Only between us,” she answered.

“Why? Are you married?”