He Said He Loved Me When He Forgot Me

Four years ago, I pulled a man with no memory out of the freezing sea. I took him back to my motor inn and named him Jay. He carried himself with effortless grace, and he spoke fluent French.

The lobstermen on the peninsula warned me: “He isn't one of us. Don't go falling for him.”

I asked him whether he would leave me once his memory came back.

He stroked my hair and said, gently:

“Everything I want is in this inn. All of it is in you. I will never leave.”

Then, one day, six black SUVs came up the drive.

Standing in the hallway, I heard a bodyguard address him with deference: “The board has voted unanimously for your return.”

Jadon Phillips — the true heir to the Phillips Global Properties empire — did not even lift his eyes as he gave the order:

“Give her ten million. Make sure she doesn't go out and make a scene.”

So he had never really lost his memory.

To keep me from disrupting his engagement to a shipping heiress, he handed me over to Arthur Garner — a widowed, small-time coastal freight operator on the brink of bankruptcy.

When I refused outright and tried to run, he let his bodyguards drag me across the docks. But he never knew I was already carrying his child.

Not until I lay in a pool of blood, watching our unborn baby slip away, did he try to hold me back.

I left his millions on the table and got on a plane to Seattle with sixty dollars in my pocket, and I swore I would build a business empire of my own with my own two hands.