Read Make Me Forget for Free Online

influence of the flames, the strong drink . . . and her heightened awareness of him. For a few moments, neither of them spoke.
    “I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to live your life away from prying eyes, rumors, and misunderstandings,” she said at length. “But I’ll remind you that you were the one to ask me here tonight. I didn’t come with any underhanded motivations.”
    “So you definitely didn’t come because of interest in doing a story on Jacob Latimer or Lattice?” he murmured.
    “For the newspaper?”
    His small shrug caused his jacket to brush lightly against her bare arm. A shiver of awareness passed through her. She glanced sideways at him. She hadn’t been able to discern it on the beach when he was wet, but his hair was somewhere between a dark ash blond and light ash brown. It blended ideally with his arresting eyes—all those colored shards of amber and brown, the green only adding another layer of complexity. He was almost alarmingly handsome.
    “No,” she replied. “I always tell people when they say something along those lines: it’s like if you invited a food critic to your house for a dinner party, or a psychotherapist, or . . .
anything
, really. They aren’t going to publically critique your meal or waste time developing a personality assessment. I exist beyond my job, you know.”
    “So why
did
you come?” he asked.
    “I was interested. Who wouldn’t be curious? About this place. About you. I may not be planning on writing it, but I love a good story as much as anyone.”
    His brows slanted. “What are you so curious about, exactly?”
    “You’re awfully young,” she stated with blunt honesty.
    “Age is relative, isn’t it? You’re young, too, to have found so much success in your chosen field, to have been given so many awards in journalism.”
    A wave of warmth and relaxation went through her as she watched his mouth move. Her limbs tingled. The pleasant sensation somehow twined with his mellow, seductive voice.
What was in this drink
, she wondered, idly taking another sip.
Liquid Xanax?
    “Any success I’ve had is comprehensible,” she said after a short pause. “It followed a logical path. Your success is astronomical for someone so young and who, from what I understand, wasn’t born into wealth.” Despite her entrancement at his closeness, Ruth’s earlier references to his shrouded, possibly illegal rise to riches and power came to mind.
    “So you’ve decided my success in the business world is illogical?”
    “No,” she defended. “It’s just a glaring thing, isn’t it? You can’t be more than what . . . thirty-five?” she guesstimated. “And”—she waved around the spectacular surroundings. “Anyone would be curious about how you got here. And I’m more curious than most, by nature. It’s an annoying, but unchangeable characteristic.”
    “It’s what got you where you are today.”
    “As the news editor at a paper with a circulation of all of thirty-five thousand?” she countered wryly.
    He blinked. “I wouldn’t have thought the
Gazette
had
that
many.”
    She laughed. He smiled full-out for the first time, white teeth flashing in his tanned face. Something hitched in her chest. There it was again. That crack in his armor. He really did shine bright, when he wasn’t so busy being paranoid.
    “We all feel the need to hide away at times in our life. To forget the past. Surely you can understand that,” she said softly as their amusement faded.
    Her heart thumped very loud in her ears for a suspended moment when he didn’t immediately reply. She was so sure she’d made another misstep, saying something so personal to such an aloof, private man.
    “Where’s Charger?” she asked, referring to his energetic dog in a desperate attempt to change the subject when he continued not to speak.
    “In the house.”
    “Oh.”
    He glanced away distractedly. An awkward silence ensued. Like she had on the beach, she had the