Memory Lapse

by Kathleen O’Brien

  “I'm not saying it’s impossible, Laura.” Drew joined her on the bench, which was just barely wide enough for both of them. Instinctively she edged into her corner, but Drew settled comfortably, as if he didn’t even notice the warm contact of their shoulders and thighs. “To be honest, I've thought of it before. It was certainly the most obvious answer for—” He broke off. “For everything. But if anyone hurt you, I don’t believe it was Damian. I knew him well. He wasn’t capable of doing anything so cruel.”

  Wasn’t he? Laura stared at the sad marble eyes in front of her. Her own eyes. Hers was the last sculpture Damian Nolan had done. Had he known, even while he worked on it, that he was going to leave? Had the portrait been his goodbye gift?

  “It was fairly cruel to abandon your wife and your ten-year-old daughter,” she said dully.

  “True.” Drew sighed. “Cruel, but not sick. Not perverted. Hard as it was for you and your mother, Damian’s not the first man to find his home life intolerable, is he?” He ran his palm down the corded fabric of his pants leg. “But we've been over this so many times, Laura. You know your mother wasn’t particularly easy to live with. They fought all the time—”

  “I managed to live with her. I didn’t run away.” Laura stood, suddenly short of breath. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “But you're right. We've been over this too many times, and we still need to deal with some practical things. We haven’t even decided where I'll sleep tonight. I thought maybe the tower, if you have no objection. The tower room has only one door, and it would be easier for you to monitor...things.”

  But Drew wasn’t about to be deflected. “Laura, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward, his voice serious. “Isn’t it possible that your problems are connected with your feelings of abandonment? Think about it. Maybe consciously you hated your father for running away, but maybe, on some subconscious level, you're still looking for him.”

  Laura shut her eyes, squeezed them, as if she could block his words from entering her consciousness. But still she remembered the nights she had walked in her sleep, always coming back to this spot, the place most intimately connected with her adopted father—the last place she had seen him.

  “Think about it,” Drew repeated, his voice low and intense. “Doesn’t it make sense that, now that your mother is gone, those fears should resurface? That, in some primitive way, you feel left behind again?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her discomfort suddenly spiraling out of control. Her breath came quickly. “I don’t know.”

  He stood now, as well, and their shoulders were once again only inches apart. “And isn’t it possible,” he said, “that fear of abandonment is responsible for your other problems, too?”

  She jerked away, turning her back to him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. She tried to breathe deeply, but her lungs seemed to be made of something stiff and unyielding. Perspiration beaded on her upper lip. She had to get out of here. It was too hot, the air too wet and warm and thick. The glass walls were weeping with condensation.

  She cast her gaze around frantically. Even the mermaid appeared to be straining, struggling to escape from her watery prison. “Drew, I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  But he seemed not to have heard her. “Doesn’t it make sense, Laura?” His deep tones were insistent. “Maybe you've always been afraid of intimacy, afraid to give too much to a man—a lover—for fear he'll leave you, too.”

  * * *

  THEY DECIDED on the tower room. Or rather, Drew let Laura decide. She had been so distressed in the conservatory, so desperate to avoid his unwelcome words that she had practically fled from his side, her eyes wide and haunted, her skin as pale as the marble statues. Obviously his comments had struck a nerve.

  After that, he hadn’t had the heart to argue with her about anything. If she’d suggested sleeping in a pup tent in the backyard, he’d probably be driving stakes into the frozen ground right now. Luckily, her plan made sense. The tower bedroom, directly above his office suite, had only one window, which had long ago been barred, and only one door, which led into a small anteroom that would easily accommodate a cot for him.

  They went to bed early, Laura pleading travel fatigue. While she showered in the downstairs bathroom, Drew stood in the doorway between the two small bedrooms, unbuttoning his shirt as he double-checked his housekeeper’s arrangements.

  As he could have predicted, Mrs. Rose had given Laura the first-rate, visiting-dignitary treatment. Her bed was swathed in pale blue silk sheets and piled high with thick, downy comforters to help combat the chill that permeated the tower in spite of Winterwalk’s otherwise efficient central heating. Mrs. Rose had even brought up a pitcher of hot tea, a small cup warmer and several popular novels and magazines.

  His own quarters were more spare, simply a cot set up along one wall, though he, too, got the silk sheets and soft blankets, he noted with an internal grin. Mrs. Rose was an incurable romantic. She’d also sent up a comfortable leather chair and put a week’s worth of newspapers and a carafe of coffee on the adjoining end table. No one could have guessed that these rooms hadn’t been used in fifty years. Drew made a mental note to give the lady a kiss and a raise.

  “Oh, this is lovely!”

  Drew turned, his shirt half free of his waistband. Laura stood in the doorway, dressed in a floor-length robe that was as softly swirling as blue wood smoke. Her face was dewy and pink from scrubbing, and she must have washed her hair; it was loose, tumbling over her shoulders, and the ends that curled just above her breasts looked slightly damp.

  At the sight of her, something very male stirred deep inside him, but with an instinct perfected over too many miserable years, he clamped down on the urge mercilessly. He tugged the last edge of his shirt free, and shrugging out of it tossed it on the cot.

  Get hold of yourself, Townsend. Surely he wasn’t going to have to learn that lesson all over again! It was painfully simple. Any fool who allowed himself to desire Laura Nolan was as stupid as the greyhounds who chased plastic rabbits around in circles.

  “Your housekeeper has worked a miracle up here,” Laura said, smiling a shade too brightly, talking a bit too fast. She was a nervous wreck, Drew realized as he plopped on the edge of his cot to remove his shoes.

  “Yeah.” He spoke to the floor. “She’s a gem.” Shoes and socks off, he straightened. Now that he was down to his trousers, Laura’s pink cheeks had drained to a bloodless alabaster, and she seemed to be having a hard time deciding where to look.

  Grabbing his discarded clothes, he stood, holding back an annoyed oath. What the hell did she think he was going to do? Strip buck naked and make a diving lunge for her virginity after all this time? Hell, if he’d been going to lose control, it would have been back at nineteen, when he was six walking, talking feet of rampaging hormones. Or at twenty-two, when years of deprivation had made him a little crazy. Or at twenty-four, when he could see the woman he loved, the future he’d planned, slipping away from him. But not now. Damn sure not now.

  She averted her eyes as he walked barefoot to the small half bath that was really no more than a glorified closet. He went inside, pulling the door shut, and began changing into a comfortable old pair of sweatpants. He’d be damned if he’d stay fully dressed, tossing and turning all night just because she didn’t want to remember he actually had a body.

  “Honestly, these rooms have never looked so cozy.” Laura’s voice was muffled. He could picture her, standing ramrod stiff, her back to the bathroom, even though it would take X-ray vision to see anything through the closed door. “They used to be a lot like prison cells, don’t you think? I used to come up here all the time and play Rapunzel, wishing like mad that I really did have golden hair, like your sister.”

  He laughed, but as he came out of the bathroom, his sweatshirt in his hands, he saw that she had moved to the window and was staring down pensively, twirling a lock of hair around her index finger, as if she expected the wicked witch to
be out there right now, demanding admittance. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your raven hair.

  He wasn’t surprised Laura had chosen that fairy tale as her fantasy. After all, in a way it mirrored her life. Ever since she was ten years old, she’d been forced into a strange isolation with her embittered mother. Had Laura dreamed, even as a child, that someday a brave and clever prince would be able to penetrate her lonely prison, to climb up her thick, silken hair and rescue her?

  And should he have done exactly that? Should he have ignored all her defenses and simply stormed the tower? Was she secretly disappointed that he hadn’t? Well, God knows he’d wanted to. Remembering just how much he’d wanted to, his muscles tightened, mindlessly readying themselves for a battle he’d lost three years ago.

  Enough! He clenched his teeth and flung his sweatshirt over the arm of the leather chair. Sorry, Princess, it wasn’t that easy, he thought bitterly. First you would have had to let down your hair.

  He walked to the window, hoping she couldn’t sense his tension. “I used to come up here, too.” He was at her elbow. “The year I was about eight. Your house was more interesting than mine, more like a real palace. I’d pretend I was king of the castle, lord of all I surveyed.” He looked down at the moon-white snow. “Pretty spectacular kingdom, don’t you think?”

  She nodded without speaking. Words really weren’t necessary—the fairyland below them spoke for itself. The sky was a deep, thick purple, and light from the full moon caught on a thousand snow crystals. Ancient pines sparkled, giant Christmas trees decorated with spun sugar and diamonds. In the center of the front drive, glistening sprays of ice rose from the mouth of the frozen fountain like a magical flower.

  They stood that way for a long minute, sixty seconds of silence during which Drew’s focus shifted, against his will, from the wonderland below to Laura herself. He was close enough that her robe brushed against his bare chest, and his nostrils filled with the soft, peachy scent of her shampoo.

  Without thinking, he took a deep breath. He knew that smell so well, knew how rich it was down in the deeper layers, next to her neck, where it mingled with the wildflower of her perfume. And he knew that somewhere in all that intoxicating sweetness was the elusive feminine scent of Laura herself. Night after night he had buried his face in her hair, breathing deeper, faster, trying to find it and hold it and make it a part of his blood.

  He backed up a step, his head suddenly light. “Laura,” he said, “why did you really come back here?” One step wasn’t enough, so he took another, and mercifully the whisper of peaches faded. “You must have made friends in Boston. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to ask one of them to help you?”

  She didn’t turn around. “Do you want to know the truth?”

  The muscles in his abdomen seemed to draw in tightly. “Of course,” he said. Did she think he couldn’t take it?

  “I almost did,” she said. “But, you see, no one in Boston knows anything about where I come from.” Reaching up, she gripped the window frame. “They think I'm just like everybody else, slaving for a paycheck, rooting for the Red Sox, looking for Mr. Right.” Her hand tightened, the slim fingers curling around the ornately carved wood. “They would never understand all this—not the sleepwalking or the sculptures or this house or any of it.”

  When Drew didn’t answer, she half turned her head, just enough to let him glimpse her profile. “And I don’t want them to. That doesn’t make any sense at all to you, does it, Drew?” she said defiantly. “But I like being normal. When I go back, I want to be able to leave behind me whatever terrible things I may learn here. I don’t ever want any of the people in my new life to look at me with pity or with morbid curiosity.”

  Her new life. Naturally he’d known she had one. But, hearing her speak of it so reverently, he felt unreasonably angry. Her “old” life hadn’t been all nightmares and repressed horrors. “It sounds a lot like running away.”

  At that she finally turned to face him. “You're damn right it does,” she said, flushing. “I hate this house. I came back because I finally accepted it’s the only way to be rid of the sleepwalking. But then I'm going to run like hell.”

  * * *

  HE STAYED AWAKE for hours, lying on his narrow cot, listening through the open door to every small cough, every rustle and every sigh that came from Laura’s room. Then, when there was only silence, he listened to that, too, his mind obsessively picturing how she must look while she slept, her hand under her cheek, her hair like black ribbons spread out along the blue pillowcase. It required all his willpower to keep himself from going in to see if reality matched his imagination.

  In the end, though, he knew it would be an abuse of her trust, and chivalry carried the point. He tried to ignore the coiled tension in his muscles, the unrelieved heat that had gathered low in his body, but, damn it, he’d always known chivalry was criminally overrated.

  When he finally slept, he dozed fitfully, dreaming strange, shamelessly symbolic dreams of melting towers and bloodied swords and flowers made of ice. He woke often, his heart pounding and his body aroused, and he groaned into his pillow. They’d better get to the heart of her sleepwalking soon. He couldn’t take many more nights like this.

  In the deep of the night, at the height of his dreams, he woke again, but this time he sensed he wasn’t alone. Raising himself on one elbow, he rubbed the blur from his eyes and looked around. Laura stood by his window, her back to him, her head bowed, her body still.

  “Laura?” He spoke from the cot, reluctant to rise. His sweatpants had been chosen for comfort, not for their ability to conceal. But she didn’t turn around. “Are you all right?”

  He stood, wishing suddenly that he had grilled her more thoroughly on the signs of her sleepwalking. She seemed to hear him come up behind her, for as he drew closer she turned slowly toward him, and he could see the play of moonlight on silver tears.

  “Drew.” Her voice was low, but she sounded perfectly normal. Did sleepwalkers talk? Could their gaze be so serious and clearly focused? Did they recognize the people around them and call them by name? Surely not. Drew’s anxiety subsided. This wasn’t compulsion—this was something much simpler. It was insomnia, fueled by loneliness and fear. He knew all about that.

  “Yes, Laura,” he answered. “I'm here.”

  She sighed, a deep exhale of relief that misted warmly against the wall of his chest. “Drew,” she said again, inching even closer, as if she expected him to embrace her. He knew she needed comforting; she wanted someone to dry those silver tears. But he couldn’t do it. He didn’t trust himself to handle this confusing new role of guardian angel, not when his body was already thrumming with awareness.

  “You were wrong,” she said suddenly. The moonlight picked out soft glimmers in her eyes, and he could tell that her gaze focused somewhere around his chin, as if she didn’t dare meet his eyes. “My father didn’t want to abandon me. I know that.”

  Her father? A knife blade of shame sliced at his gut. So that was why she had been crying. How long had she been lying there, fretting about what he had said?

  “Of course he didn’t,” Drew assured her, rushing his words as if he must hurry to erase the damage. He couldn’t bear to think he had added to the weight that had already been crushing her. “Damian adored you. Everyone knew that. He wouldn’t ever have left you if he could have seen any other way.”

  She didn’t answer, her glistening gaze even lower now, somewhere near his collarbone. He wiped the dampness from her cheeks with gentle fingers.

  “Next time why don’t you just tell me to keep my big mouth shut?” He wished he could coax even a hint of a smile from her serious lips. Her smile was extraordinary, as most rare things were, full of light and beauty. “I may consider myself an authority on the stock market, but you could put everything I know about the subconscious in the palm of your hand.” He lifted her left hand, holding it between them, palm up. He traced a circle on the soft skin. “And still have room to spare.”


  Her hand was so warm, like sun-kissed silk, and her slender fingers twitched subtly as he ran his thumb along the perimeter of her palm. He knew he ought to let go, but he couldn’t. It had been a thousand starving days since he had last held her hand.

  She sighed once, heavily, and then, still without looking into his eyes, she slowly placed the fingers of her other hand against the hollow at the base of his throat.

  The movement caught him by surprise, and his pulse leaped in a hot, painful thrust. “Laura—”

  “Oh, Drew,” she whispered. Frozen in disbelief, he could only watch as she leaned forward, her dark cloud of hair cloaking her face, and pressed her lips softly against the throbbing pulse. Excitement leaped like a dagger of fire within him, even while his mind was saying no—this can’t be happening—this can’t be real.

  But if it was a dream, it wasn’t over yet. Boldly, as if she had been trained since puberty in some exotic art of seduction, Laura let her hand slide down his chest. She tunneled her fingers into the crisp dusting of hair, blindly nuzzling toward his nipples, which had hardened to nubs of delicious, painful sensitivity. She touched them, circled them with tiny butterfly strokes and then left them, aching tightly, to trace a long line of fire between his ribs.

  “Laura, don’t,” he said, the syllables low and strangled, but as if she didn’t hear him or didn’t speak his language, her strokes didn’t falter. He sucked in his breath on a growling hiss as her fingers kept going, down the clenched valley of his abdomen, and still farther, still down, down...

  “For God’s sake, Laura—” But her fingers were sure, unhurried, skimming over his waistband, sliding across the flimsy cotton, until with a sweet, wanton murmur of pure satisfaction, her hand finally closed around the rigid length of him.