Billionaires In Love (Vol. 2): 5 Books Billionaire Romance Bundle by Glenna Sinclair Page B

who was a part of it every day for the last year.
    “I’m not going with you, Daddy,” I said quietly.
    You’d think I’d threatened to kill him the way my father spun on me.
    “Excuse me?” he asked, his voice low. Dangerous.
    People didn’t defy my father often. And when they did, they had better have a damn good reason for it. I knew that. Yet, I was doing it here and now.
    “Harley,” my mother said softly, “don’t you think it would be better for you to come home? To go where you’re safe?”
    “Why was I still in Los Angeles? Why wasn’t I at home before the accident?”
    “Because you didn’t want to leave,” Xander said.
    My father shot him a dark look, even as he came toward me with his hands extended.
    “You didn’t come home because you had obligations here. But those are over now.”
    I looked from my mother, to my father, to Xander, and back again. I didn’t know whom to trust. I mean, I remembered my parents, remembered leaving them when I went to college, remembered coming home frequently for visits—since I didn’t choose to go more than fifty miles from home for college. I remembered introducing them to Philip, my college boyfriend. I’d been excited that day, already looking into a future that clearly hadn’t happened, a life that should have unfolded with Xander instead, but didn’t for reasons I still didn’t understand. It was my life, yet I was so lost in it.
    “If I’d wanted to go home, I’m sure I would have,” I said softly. “There’s a reason why I stayed, and I want to find out what that is.”
    “Harley—”
    My father began to object, but my mother took his arm and he stopped immediately. They stared at each other and shared some sort of communication that the rest of us couldn’t hear. It was that kind of closeness I had always wanted and that I must have thought I could find with Xander. I was engaged to him, right? I was going to marry him. I just couldn’t remember it. Staying here seemed to be a better option than leaving. If I left, I would likely never remember what happened these last few years.
    And I wouldn’t know if breaking off the engagement to Xander was the right choice, or the wrong one.
    This one time, I really hoped I was wrong.
     

Chapter 14
     
     
    Xander
    I stood in the doorway and watched them leave, a part of me still unable to wrap my mind around the fact that she’d chosen me over her parents. Over her father. Harley had never stood up to her father, at least not in front of me. To see her do it now was like seeing a side of Harley I’d never known before.
    She was changing, this Harley. She was no longer the girl I once knew. She was different. The jury was still out on whether it was a good different or a bad one.
    I turned and found her back in her wheelchair, watching me from just inside the foyer.
    “I suppose you have questions,” I said, as I slowly closed the door.
    “And I’m hoping you have answers.”
    I inclined my head slightly. “I hope so, too.”
    I gestured for her to go back into the living room. She was getting around quite well in the wheelchair. Independent as ever, she wouldn’t let me help her much. That was a side of Harley to which I was very well accustomed. I followed her, wondering how much longer it would be before she was walking out the door, especially after physical therapy started.
    “Where do you want to start?” I asked, as I slowly lowered myself to the couch.
    Harley didn’t answer right away. She’d rolled herself to the back of the room and was staring out at the backyard. She’d always liked the view. I remembered when I first brought her to my house, she made a beeline for that back door and stood out on the patio, studying the lines of the garden and the pool as if she’d never seen a suburban backyard before. She didn’t even want to see the rest of the house. It was the artist in her, always looking for the perfect lines, the perfect vision. It was the first thing I fell