A Husband She Couldn't Forget

by Christine Rimmer

  For a while, she just watched them, spying on them as they fooled around on their bodyboards. The water never got much above sixty degrees and they didn’t have wetsuits, so they couldn’t stay in for long. They spent more time showing off for giggling groups of girls than catching waves.

  Bitter, that was pretty much her attitude that day. As always, her brother and the boy she wanted so desperately to impress had called her a kid. They’d mocked her for wanting to go with them.

  Well, screw them. Especially Connor. She already had breasts and she looked really good in her red string bikini—a little pale, maybe. She had her mom’s Irish coloring. But still. She definitely looked old enough to be Connor Bravo’s girl.

  Too bad he absolutely refused to see that they were meant to be together.

  The sun was warm. In the dunes, she spread her towel, slathered on sunscreen and stretched out under the sun. It seemed she closed her eyes for only a minute.

  But when she opened them again, Conn was there, alone, standing not ten feet away from her, all tanned skin and golden windblown hair. There was sand sticking to the side of his neck and in a circle on his lean shoulder.

  “You’re gonna burn,” he said, in that scornful tone he used with her constantly.

  She sat up and held out her tube of sunscreen. “Do my back?” Her voice was perfect, calm and unconcerned.

  He gulped. His cool blue eyes weren’t so cool now. She stared right at him, watched his tongue dart out to lick his lower lip.

  All her sulky bitterness vanished. He did like her. He liked her a lot. He could knock himself out pretending that he wasn’t interested. But today, for the first time, he was letting her see how he really felt.

  Today, for the first time, he’d given himself away.

  Her body seemed to pulse with power, every nerve ending firing, shooting off sparks. One way or another, however long it took, Connor Bravo would be hers.

  Totally calm, cool as someone much older—fifteen or sixteen at least—she turned her back to him, smoothed her heavy hair out of the way with one hand and held the tube of sunscreen up over her shoulder with the other. “Come on. Help me out.”

  He couldn’t resist her. Could. Not. Resist.

  Triumph made her blood surge superfast through her veins as he padded across the sand and dropped to his knees behind her at the end of her towel. He accepted the tube from her fingers. She faced front and concentrated on controlling her breathing as she felt his hot, slightly rough hand on her back.

  It took only a moment or two for him to spread the sunscreen on her skin. But it was one of those times a girl never forgets. Her skin felt electric, her body on fire.

  And in the end, she couldn’t resist turning her head back to him again, capturing his gaze.

  He said her name in a frantic, desperate whisper.

  And she replied, equally breathless, “Connor.”

  And then it happened. He leaned that fraction closer and their lips touched.

  They gasped in unison.

  He pressed his mouth harder against hers, hard enough that their teeth clacked together—and that did it. The spell was broken. He jerked away.

  Her eyes popped open and they were staring straight at each other. Beneath his tan, his face had flushed deep red. “I gotta go.” He leaped to his feet and ran off toward the beach.

  She stared after him, transported. Victorious.

  Connor Bravo had kissed her.

  Oh, it was happening. He would be hers. Dante could just get over himself, give up his big-brother overprotectiveness. Conn would choose her. He would be her boyfriend, at last.

  What an optimist she’d been.

  After that one, too-brief kiss on the dunes at Valentine Beach, Connor never touched her again.

  Not for six long years...

  * * *

  Thirty-one-year-old Connor lifted his head and stared down at her through heavy-lidded eyes.

  Aly blinked up at him, slightly dazed.

  She’d gotten gloriously lost—in his kiss and the memory of that other kiss sixteen years before. The past and the present had all swirled together, sweeping her away. “Don’t stop.”

  His gold-kissed eyebrows drew together. “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Really?” She scoffed. “You’re going to go there? Connor, it’s why I’m here.”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s about peace, remember? You’re here so that we can make peace with each other. So that when you go back to New York, you’ll have figured everything out.”

  Sadness curled through her. “You make it all sound so cut-and-dried.”

  “It is what it is. It just didn’t work out for us. The point is that you need to accept the way things really are.”

  “Your point, maybe. Not mine.” She reached up and lightly brushed her fingertips against his forehead and up into his hair. Her body buzzed with desire.

  And another recent memory revealed itself to her.

  A memory of the last guy she’d tried to make a real relationship with.

  Kyle. That was his name. Kyle Santos.

  She remembered sitting across from Kyle in her favorite coffee place not far from her apartment in Lower Manhattan.

  Her turkey club sat untouched on the blue plate in front of her. Her flat white was growing cold. She told Kyle she was sorry, that it just couldn’t work.

  Her heart ached as she watched him get up and walk away.

  “Aly?” Connor gazed down at her, frowning. “You okay?”

  “I’m good.” She focused on how right it felt to be held in Connor’s arms, on making him see that anything was possible if they just put their hearts and minds into it. “Connor, you have no way of knowing what will happen in the next thirteen weeks.”

  “I know what’s most likely.”

  There was no point in lying there spread out across his lap if he wasn’t going to give her the kisses she craved. She sat up and flipped her hair back over her shoulder with a sigh. “You always were way too stubborn for your own good.”

  “I’m stubborn?” He picked up his drink from the coffee table and stood.

  “Wait. Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs.” And he started walking.

  It was not in her nature to quit. She took one more crack at the problem. “You just said peace is the best we’re ever going to do here. How are we going to make peace if you keep running away every time we start trying to talk about what went wrong?”

  He paused in midstep. From that angle, she could see the hard bulge at his fly. They might not be any closer to working things out—to finding peace or each other—but there was no question the fire still burned whenever they touched. “I don’t think there is any fixing it. Good night, Aly.”

  For a while after he disappeared upstairs, she sat there on the sofa, sipping her vodka tonic and wondering what it was about him that made him the only one for her.

  Yeah, he was hot. But a lot of men were hot.

  Connor, for her, was so much more. She’d always felt that he knew her in the deepest way, that he saw all of her—good points, flaws and all the parts in between. He saw her and understood her, as she understood him.

  He had that certain something that made her yearn for him and him alone, made her want to do whatever she had to do to break down any barriers between them.

  Until it all went wrong and her pride took over and she’d signed the divorce papers instead of coming home.

  Apparently, she’d tried for seven years to turn her back on him, to forget him and move on, to find someone else that her heart could beat for. A wry chuckle escaped her. Judging by everything she’d learned since the accident, forgetting him had not gone well.

  She’d had happiness with him once, though. Happiness, full and rich and ripe, with the promise of a lifetime together.
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br />   She stared off toward the dark windows across the room.

  He had walls, Connor did. And from the age of thirteen, she’d known she was the one to bust through them, to tear them down.

  So, then.

  He wasn’t willing at this point to talk through the issues that stood between them.

  Maybe she needed to go at this a different way.

  Idly, she lifted a hand and touched her lips. They were still warm with the sweet, wild pressure of his kiss.

  Would it be wrong to actively seduce him, to let their bodies do the talking—at least at first?

  She smiled to herself. “Whatever it takes,” she whispered to the dark window across the room.

  Chapter Six

  Connor sat on his bed and called himself ten kinds of a wimp for running away from her.

  But he really didn’t want to talk about the past, about all the ways he’d screwed it up, all the ways he’d been a stupid, pigheaded kid who wanted things his way and wouldn’t know a compromise if it kicked him in the ass.

  What he needed was to kiss her some more, touch her some more, explore all the ways she felt just like she used to under his hands—just like she used to.

  Only better.

  He’d finished off the last of his Scotch and plunked the glass down on the bedside table when she tapped on his door.

  “It’s open.”

  The door swung inward. She leaned into the doorway, crossing her arms under her beautiful breasts, her sandals dangling from one hand.

  And all at once, he was glad. That she was braver and stronger than he was, that she’d come after him when he walked away.

  Glad for her presence in his house. Glad just to have her near again, for as long as she remained in town.

  She asked, “Remember our first kiss?”

  He nodded. “In the dunes at Valentine Beach. I will never forget that red bikini. I thought I was going to lose it when you handed me the sunscreen. And when I finally got my mouth on you, I knew I would die.”

  Her smile was slow and painfully sweet. “You ran away.”

  He asked drily, “Just like tonight, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Like tonight. Are you afraid of me, Conn?”

  He answered honestly. “Terrified. Always have been. Of how much you meant to me. Of losing you.”

  “You did lose me.”

  “Exactly.”

  She looked down at her bare feet and then up at him through her raven-black eyelashes. “But here I am again. I’m not that easy to lose—at least not in the long run.” She laughed. The sound, husky and warm, made an ache in his chest and in his pants. “Good night.” She reached over and grasped the door handle, pulling the door closed again, leaving him alone.

  * * *

  The next day, before heading over to her mom’s, Aly dropped in at Valentine Bay Urgent Care to get the stitches out of her knee. After that, she spent an hour with Dr. Warbury. The doctor seemed pleased when Aly reported the little bits of memories that had come back to her.

  Aly explained that she was staying at Connor’s, that it was really helping her to spend time with him. She kind of wondered if her doctor would disapprove of her moving in on her ex. But Dr. Warbury just listened and nodded and let it be.

  When Aly joked about stalking herself online to learn more about who she had become during the seven years she’d lost in the accident, the doctor suggested she try reaching out to some of her New York friends. Maybe connecting with them would encourage more of her recent life to surface.

  The idea of reaching out scared her. Those people thought of her as a friend. And she did feel a tug of familiarity when she studied their Facebook and Twitter feeds, when she pored over their Instagram posts. But so far, she didn’t know the things a friend would know about them.

  “What about Kyle Santos?” asked Dr. Warbury. “You just described a memory of him.”

  Aly chewed her lower lip over that. “I don’t know. I mean, what I remembered was breaking up with him. I’m somehow positive I really meant it when I ended it with him. I don’t want him to think I’m hoping to get back together with him or anything.”

  “Well then, just tell him that it isn’t about trying again. Be honest with him.”

  She twisted her hands in her lap, still uncomfortable with the idea.

  Dr. Warbury asked, “Is your reluctance to contact Kyle actually about your ex-husband? You moved in with him, you said. Do you want to try again with him?”

  Aly puffed out her cheeks with a hard breath—and told her therapist the truth. “Yeah. I do. I really do.”

  Dr. Warbury only nodded, and suggested, “Then try another friend from New York, a girlfriend maybe?”

  Aly said she would consider it.

  On the way to her mom’s she started thinking about work, about what might be going on at Strategic Image, about how she kind of wanted to touch base there, but it didn’t seem all that wise to admit that she’d forgotten the seven years she’d worked there.

  They wouldn’t be contacting her, at least not for a while yet. She’d always been a driven, dedicated employee, one who rarely took time off. She was due a long break and they understood that her mom really needed her. They wouldn’t be distracting her with work-related issues.

  And how did she know all that?

  Because yet another memory had floated to the surface of her conscious mind. She remembered her last conversation with Jane Levelow, SI’s director of marketing. Aly had reported that all her projects were reassigned and in good hands. Jane had said that it wouldn’t be easy getting along without her, but that it was good thing for her to have some time for herself and her family. Jane also wished her well and promised not to bother her for at least the first few weeks.

  Aly parked in the turnaround in front of her parents’ house, next to Dante’s police cruiser. She ran up the front steps feeling pretty good about everything. Her bumps and scrapes and bruises from the accident were healing—and day by day, she remembered more of the years she’d lost.

  Things weren’t exactly fabulous between her and Connor. But he’d kissed her like he meant it last night. And he hadn’t asked her to leave yet, so the situation with him definitely could have been worse.

  She opened the door to find Dante right there in the front hall, his dark eyes stormy, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Shouldn’t you have been here a couple of hours ago?” he demanded. “I got here and Mom was all alone in the house.”

  So much for how great everything had seemed to be going. “Is she all right?”

  His frown just got deeper. “That’s not the point. You’re supposed to be here for her, taking care of her.”

  “Translation—Mom is doing fine, but you’re pissed off at me, so it doesn’t matter that Mom’s okay, you’re telling me off, anyway.”

  “You shouldn’t be staying at his house. It’s getting in the way of the job you came here to do—not to mention it’s bad for you. He’s bad for you. You may not remember it, but that jerk divorced you.”

  “He has a name. And I am fully aware that Connor and I are divorced. I’m also completely cognizant of your feelings about my ex-husband. There’s no need to share them with me again.” She recalled what she’d promised herself last night at Daniel Bravo’s house—that she would be more honest with the men in her family about the past, about her breakup with Connor. “And I was to blame, too, when we broke up. It wasn’t all Connor’s fault.”

  “You remember, then? It’s come back to you?” Anger and hope warred on Dante’s face. He was still so pissed off at Connor. But that she might be remembering was good news.

  And she didn’t remember their breakup. That was still a blank to her. “Mostly, I realize that I didn’t even try to work it out with him.”

  “Why the hell should you have tried? It was all his fault.”

/>   “It’s rarely all one person’s fault, Dante. You’ve been married. You know that. And as for my being late, I got my stitches out and then I had an appointment with Dr. Warbury. Mom knew I was going to be late. Marco said he would hang around until I got here.”

  “I can hear you two!” Cat called down from upstairs. “Stop it and get up here, the both of you!”

  Dante glowered at her. She glared right back. They’d always had a love-hate relationship. All her life, he’d tried to boss her around. He’d felt driven to protect her as his little sister. But she didn’t need his protection and she chafed under the weight of it. She could take care of herself and she was fully capable of making her own decisions, thank you very much.

  “Now!” Cat shouted.

  They dragged themselves up the stairs like a couple of guilty kids.

  “What am I going to do with the two of you?” Cat asked when they stood on either side of the bed, where she sat with Tucker curled up at her side and a fat novel spread open against her giant baby bump. She turned her chiding gaze on Dante. “I told you that Marco was here with me. He left maybe ten minutes ago. I sent him off to work because I knew Aly would be here soon, and if anything did go wrong, I have everyone in the family on speed dial. You’re making a huge deal out of nothing, Dante Ernesto. Stop.”

  She turned on Aly and said a little more gently. “Don’t argue with your brother. He only acts like that because he loves you.”

  He only acts like that because he’s a control freak, she thought. She said, “Right. Love made him do it.”

  Cat clucked her tongue. “Both of you. Say sorry.”

  Aly said it first—as always. “Sorry, Dante.”

  Dante muttered, “Yeah. Me, too.” He said it so sulkily that she couldn’t resist making one more point.

  “You should make peace with Connor.”

  He just stood there and seethed at her across their parents’ fancy new adjustable bed.

  And she simply couldn’t leave it at that. “He was your best friend. And he could be again. You two need to work it out.”

  He said nothing. But his eyes? They said it all, reminding her that it was his loyalty to her and his need to protect her that had always been the issue between him and Connor.