The Penance of Black Betty Read Online Free PDF

front of him. I hope he doesn’t throw it all away.”
                  Ingram and Winston’s very public break-up due to his infidelity with Stavars almost cost him being cast as the lead in Hues of Black And Blue. Now that he’s in the driver’s seat on the film, he’s once again been derailed by Stavars. With this latest domestic problem, she might be a permanent road block to his career if he’s not back in Seattle filming by the end of next week.”
                  Bethany felt like she was reading about someone else’s life. This couldn’t be hers. She’d been dominatrix at a place called Dolls & Doms? She couldn’t even perceive how that could’ve come about. She probed and prodded her memory for one single shred of evidence that she was the Bethany Stavars in the article. She had to be—she knew—but how?
                  Then there was the fact that Alistair had risked—and was still risking—his career for her. Losing fans for her. His story about how he’d been in need when they met…she understood, but couldn’t quite make the dots connect. Nobody had ever sacrificed anything for her. Not her parents growing up, not Trent—that she could recall— nobody. Why on earth would Alistair Ingram, the movie star, put his career on the line to be with her?
                  “She’s right in there,” Bethany heard her nurse, Barb, say from the nurses’ station outside her door. “Room five oh three.”
                  “Thank you,” Alistair said. She heard his footsteps approaching and tossed the Hollywood Harpy on the floor between her bed and the side table just as he stopped in her doorway. “You’re awake,” he said, smiling brightly.
                  She smiled back. Inside her chest, her heart crashed. Her emotions were all over the map. Who was this man? She had no idea. No real-life memory of him at all. Not his eyes, his voice, nothing that wasn’t from a movie or T.V. show—something—ten years earlier. Wait. Were her memories of him from ten years ago?
                  “You were a waiter,” she blurted. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he eased into the room. “It was a movie about a rich older woman you seduced.”
                  “Serving Jane,” he said, tilting his head. His brow creased. “You remember that? That was only four years ago. Are memories coming back?”
                  She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. That’s the only way I know you.”
                  His face fell. He licked his lips. “Oh. Right.” The smile was back, but didn’t seem as sincere, more a forced show of faith for her. “Well, everything will come back in time, I’m sure.”
                  For a moment, she wanted to reach for him, hold him, protect him from feeling abandoned by her faulty memory. “I’m sorry,” she said.
                  He took her hand. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. You’ll remember. If you don’t, we’ll simply start over. Reliving the best days of my life would be a pleasure with you.”
                  His eyes held hers as he leaned over and kissed her hand. Her heart knew even if her head did not. There was something very big, very strong between them. She had to find it again.
                   
     
                   
     
                   
     
                  EIGHT
     
                   
                  Alistair knew he should want Bethany to get her memory back—and he did, but only certain pieces. He didn’t want her to remember what it was like to be closed off and locked behind that wall she’d put up between herself and men. Between her and him . It took him a while to get that wall knocked down and if she remembered then there was a chance she’d put it back up again.