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    Once: Love Forget Me Not, #3
    Once: Love Forget Me Not, #3
    Once: Love Forget Me Not, #3
    Ebook88 pages1 hourLove Forget Me Not

    Once: Love Forget Me Not, #3

    By Ashlyn Mathews

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    About this ebook

    There once was this boy I loved very much. He would leave a rose on my doorstep on my birthdays and the anniversary of our meeting.

     

    I don't know what happened to him. I lost my memory and my ability to speak after a horrendous hit-and-run accident.

     

    A different boy shows up like clockwork at the bar I bartend at, but he's not a boy. He is all man. Tall. Imposing. Brooding. Guns for arms. He doesn't speak a lick to me. He stares at me from his dark corner with this intensity, as though I should know him. Do I? What secret does he hold in that sinfully hot body of his?

     

    I am willing to give up on ever seeing the boy I once loved for time with the man who could have the answer for what's missing from my life. Where did the boy I loved go?

     

    All the books in the Love Forget Me Not series can be read as a standalone and in any order.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCommencement Bay Publishing
    Release dateApr 11, 2020
    ISBN9781393916543
    Once: Love Forget Me Not, #3
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    Author

    Ashlyn Mathews

    Ashlyn Mathews is a registered nurse with an overactive imagination. Her interests and activities include taking a lot of pictures of her golden retrievers and flowers and posting them on social media (occasionally she’ll post pictures of her kids and hubby), binge-watching funny and romantic Netflix shows, reading books and magazines of various genres, eating a lot of carbs, and drinking A LOT of coffee. Hot, iced, blended… it doesn’t matter as long as it has coffee. For more on her romance series, visit ashlynmathews.com.

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      Book preview

      Once - Ashlyn Mathews

      1

      ELIZA

      H ey man, your bartender serves mean drinks, but she talks for shit.

      I reach for my writing board, but my boss, Casey, shakes his head. I go back to dragging the cloth over the counter, grateful it’s ten minutes to closing. There are two customers left. This one and the guy brooding in the dimly lit corner.

      In my peripheral vision, Casey points at the signs posted behind and above me. You obviously can’t read worth a damn. She’s mute. Bad bicycle wreck.

      Are you telling me this piece of ass is a charity case?

      She’s my little sis, Casey says in a terse tone.

      On cue, three large men appear from the back room. If looks could kill. The man drops wads of bills on the table and hurries out the front door.

      Shaking my head, I tap out a group text to my brothers: stop scaring away customers.

      No point in sending it to just Casey.

      They stare at the screens of their cells. My brother Caleb glances up. His jaw is tight. No one talks about our sis like that.

      They turn their backs to me and rest up along the counter, an impenetrable wall of testosterone. Their overprotectiveness doesn’t shield me from his eyes, his curiosity, and the waft of desire that hits me deep in my core when he rises from his seat and stares in my direction.

      Tousled dark head of hair. His face is half in the light and half hidden by the dark corner. Stubble on the half of his face exposed by the light. Square jawline. Wide shoulders. Broad chest.

      He tugs his wallet from his back pocket and drops bills on the table, fanning them out in a half-moon design around his empty bottle of ale.

      A twinge starts in my chest. I’ve seen a man do that before. He is making certain the bills aren’t stuck together, and he’s doing math in his head, accounting for tips. He’s a generous tipper. He also has a thing for the feel and smell of new bills.

      I startle. Why do I know that? I don’t collect his money. Casey does. My brother gave me strict orders to avoid the man the instant he started showing up at the bar every Friday and Saturday night like clockwork for the last month.

      He stares at me for too long, and my brothers don’t like it. They cross their arms and grumble their dissatisfaction. I lower my head and concentrate on wiping the onyx counter until it shines beneath the canned lights.

      There’s this longing to look my fill, to study his face, and brand into memory the square angle of his jaw and the bulges and planes of his formidable body. He’d be soft curves and hard lines beneath my fingertips.

      But a niggling sensation in the back of my mind warns me not to. That I had once gone too far with a man in my astute observation of him and he took it the wrong way.

      My brothers go silent as he passes by them to get to the front door.

      The brooding stranger is as tall as my tallest brother, Collin, six feet two inches. His body is lean but strong, like Caleb’s. Caleb is Special Forces. There’s intelligence in the depths of his green eyes as our gaze locks when I look up. He could give Chris, a philosophy teacher at the local university, a run for his money.

      No words are said between him and my brothers, but again, I have this niggling feeling unspoken words are being spoken about me.

      After he leaves, Caleb shuts and locks the door. Collin and Chris disappear into the back room. Collin returns carrying a large package. In Chris’s hands is a plate with a birthday cake.

      Tears well up in my eyes.

      Happy twenty-fifth birthday, sis. May all your wishes come true.

      Caleb lights the candles. Through my tears, I see the happiness in their eyes, as well as a hint of hope. I’m alive, having survived a hit-and-run accident two years ago, but I haven’t spoken since. They’re hoping this is the year I speak again.

      They sing Happy Birthday, and my gaze lingers on my brothers’ faces. To be loved by such strong and kind-hearted men. I blow out the candles and pull each one in for a hug. They mean so much to me. They’re the only family I have left.

      Our parents lost their lives in a car accident five years ago, and our grandmother died from a massive stroke while I was in the hospital recovering from the accident that robbed me of my ability to speak.

      But what happened to the boy who had once loved me? Where did he go? Who is he? Collin sets the package on the table and waves me over. I shove thoughts of the tall, dark-haired boy with the hazy face aside.

      He’s not here, helping me celebrate the day of my birth and another year on this earth. My brothers are.

      I open the package, removing first the bow and then the pieces of tape holding the paper in place. Seeing a hint of what’s in the box, I hold back my smile and finish unwrapping the gift.

      When I’m done, Collin grabs the box and holds it up. I slide the blue and silver wrapping paper out and fold it until it’s the size of an index card. My brothers watch with infinite patience. I wonder which brother picked out the paper. Ocean waves. Half-moon. The two images are dispersed throughout. I skim my fingers over the design.

      A lingering image of the ocean and the moon high in the sky hangs in my peripheral vision and then disappears. A memory. I grasp for it, but a headache comes on. I stop fighting for that missing piece of my past life and tuck the paper in my back pocket. The paper is proof of my survival, of celebrating another birthday.

      But am I living the life I am meant to live when a piece of me is missing? That piece leaves a hole in my soul. At night, alone in my bed and staring

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