Last Summer(5)

Dr. Allington leaves and Damien closes the door behind him. He turns to Ella, taking up the doctor’s position at the end of her bed. He stares at her, his expression perplexed.

“You still don’t believe me.” It hurt more to say the words out loud than it did for Ella to think them. Why wouldn’t he trust her to tell the truth?

“I don’t know what to think. We discussed—” He stops, flattening his lips with a finger. He then looks at his watch. “I’m going to see if there’s any paperwork we need to complete before you’re released.”

“Damien.” Ella reaches for him. “Sit with me. Just for a moment, please.” She needs to feel his touch. She wants his reassurance.

Damien takes her hand and kisses her forehead.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“The kiss. I needed that.”

His face softens. He keeps his gaze locked on her mouth and runs his thumb along her lower lip. “Everything will be all right.”

Ella hopes so. She has always prided herself on having a sharp memory. Disconcerting doesn’t begin to describe what she’s experiencing inside her mind. To know the memories are there, just elusive, unattainable, floating downstream like a discarded flip-flop. It’s horribly unsettling.





CHAPTER 3

Ella stands at Damien’s side as he unlocks the door to their condo in Russian Hill, an upscale San Francisco district of steep hills and corner cafés.

The jangle of Damien’s keys reminds Ella of the first time they saw their place, two months after they’d met. Damien had proposed the week before. He was thirty-two and she was thirty. They weren’t twenty-year-olds interested in late nights at the bars and weekends at concert festivals. They didn’t want the pomp and circumstance that accompanied elaborate weddings at the Top of the Mark. Neither of them had parents to please. They knew what they wanted in a relationship and spouse, so why wait to get married?

Kate Wu, their Realtor, had met them on the street outside the building. Balancing on her four-inch Jimmy Choos, she took them up to the tenth floor, opened the condo’s front door, and with a grand gesture, stepped aside for Ella and Damien to enter first. Ella fell in love with the space the moment she took in the panoramic view outside the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. It stretched from the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridges, with the Marin Headlands between and city streets below. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, a welcome mat of blue sky and sunlit bay.

Kate trailed them into the flat with the click of her heels on the dark walnut-stained wood flooring. “The entire condo faces the bay. There are four bedrooms and two and a half baths. You can see the Golden Gate from the master, and Sausalito at night is gorgeous,” she explained, her arms flapping like she was a flight attendant pointing out the exits as she indicated each room down a wide hallway. “The entire unit has been remodeled and updated.”

As Kate ticked off the list of features, Ella wandered into the kitchen. Damien followed, his hand on her lower back. She traced her fingers along the veins of the marble countertop. The kitchen was three times the size of the nook she had in her Cole Valley apartment.

“What do you think?” Damien asked Ella when Kate took a breath.

“Can we afford this?” Ella earned a decent income, and Damien . . . well, she’d had to pick her jaw up from the floor after he disclosed his portfolio. Still, she worried. What if something happened to him? Ella had been able to financially handle the house she and her brother, Andrew, had inherited from their great-aunt Kathy, their dad’s aunt and the woman who’d raised him, and later Ella and Andrew, when she’d passed. The mortgage had long been paid off. Once Andrew graduated from high school, they’d sold off the house and used the income for their college tuitions. Andrew even used some of his inheritance to launch his first app.

But this condo on Russian Hill where real estate values were well above five million? It was way out of a journalist’s price range.

Damien cupped the back of her neck and pulled her in for a solid kiss on her lips. “Easily.”

Kate’s phone trilled. She glanced at the screen. “I have to take this call. Look around. I’ll be a few.” She excused herself and left through the front door. Damien crossed the flat and locked the bolt.

“What are you doing?”

“Buying us some time.” He grinned and took Ella’s hand, leading them back into the kitchen. She knew exactly what he was up to.

“We’re doing this now?” Her gaze darted back to the front door. Despite her nervousness, her blood thrummed with anticipation.

“Only way to tell if we like it here,” he said with a wink.

She giggled. “I’m sure there are other ways.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

He smiled, sly and sexy. His hands glided up the sides of her thighs, lifting the hem of her skirt over her hips and then lifting her, effortlessly, onto the island. Her skin tightened with goose bumps, and a chill scampered across her body when her bare ass met the cool stone.

He kissed her, wet and openmouthed. He tasted of watermelon and orange from the salad he’d eaten at lunch. His hand kneaded her breast.

“Oh, my god, we’re seriously doing this.”

Damien chuckled at Ella’s husky murmur against his lips, further spiking her arousal. Wasting no time, he pushed fully into her. They both gasped.