by Tammy Walsh
But the truth was, I felt something with Clint.
Something about him drew me in, tugged at me like I was attached to balloons.
I would float into the atmosphere if he wasn’t there to anchor me down.
It was a very strange feeling, one I wasn’t used to.
To be dependent on someone else.
It wasn’t in my nature.
I was an independent woman.
At least, I used to be.
The stranger that abducted my friend had implanted a kernel of fear deep inside me.
When someone passed me on the street, they made me start.
I had to hurry into a store and sit in one of the changing rooms or restrooms until I calmed down.
It got to the point where I could no longer function in the real world any longer.
But when I saw Clint, I felt something much deeper.
He didn’t scare me, didn’t put me on edge as many other people did.
He looked like a lost child—a big, muscular child I admit—who needed my help.
And I couldn’t deny the sudden racing heartbeat in my chest or the cold sweat that broke across random parts of my body.
Well, some were random, others were predictable…
My cheeks flushed at the memory of seeing him in his hospital room for the first time.
I’d come to pick him up and bring him home.
The hospital staff was busy, constantly rushing from one ward to another.
His arms were muscular and tanned and his hair lay spread across his shoulders like a lion’s mane.
My eyes slipped down…
Down to that hard round ass and narrow waist.
Oh, my.
I turned away to stop staring but my eyes refused to leave.
I gazed like a cat at a nearby mouse ripe for the feast.
I even licked my lips, my mouth growing unconscionably dry.
I felt hot just looking at him.
How would it feel for him to be inside me? I wondered.
I slapped the thought aside but it rebounded back twice as strong.
I hadn’t thought about a man like that since that fateful day when my friend had been abducted.
I felt drawn to him, like a thread tugging on me from the center of my chest.
An entirely new sensation.
And as I edged forward to reach out and touch him, the nurse making the bed noticed me standing there.
My cheeks blazed brighter than a ripe strawberry as I introduced myself and invited him to my parents’ farm.
There was no way to go back on making that offer.
So what was I going to do now?
Give up on him and talk to my parents and help me to get rid of the stray I had invited into our lives?
That would go down as well as a lead balloon.
My parents would sagely tell me I had invited him into my life and now I had no choice but to live with that decision.
They were warm, caring people who never hesitated to help a lost cause.
Which is what I am, isn’t it? I thought wryly.
Wasn’t I every bit as lost as Clint?
Afloat in a sea of nothingness?
Weren’t we two souls adrift, lost to wherever the wind blew us?
And fate had blown him into my life.
And I had taken responsibility for him.
And with no way to shift him, that meant I had to live up to that promise.
I took a deep breath, exhaled, and grabbed the book the hospital psychologist had given me:
BRINGING THEM BACK: AMNESIA AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT
I flicked through the introduction and got comfortable reading the other chapters.
The book was very thorough and went into the earliest cases of amnesia in human history.
But the parts that really caught my interest were the activity sections at the end of each chapter.
I studied them carefully and memorized them.
The book pointed out it is best not to stress the patient out and that activities should take place while they’re calm and collected.
And how much calmer and collected could someone be than if they didn’t even know they were performing the activities? I thought.
I got to my feet and felt a fresh sense of purpose.
I had put myself in this position but I didn’t need to be a victim of it.
I would take charge and help Clint to the best of my ability.
I didn’t put the book down until I had consumed every word of it and made notes on how I was going to use the information.
Then he would remember everything and continue with his life.
And I could continue with mine.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather.
The sky was blue and wispy white clouds made slow but continuous progress across it.
The barnyard animals approached us from the other side of the fence, raising their noses for the breakfast we usually gave them at this time.
I cast a shy glance at Clint who seemed taken with the animals.
Maybe they reminded him of something already.
The book suggested I expose him to one object at a time so they might jog his memory, and once one synapse fired, it was much easier for another to do the same until the entire fire was ablaze.
It reminded me of restarting a computer so all the systems would come online at once.
When I asked Clint if he wanted to go for a walk, he leaped at the chance.
He dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt with “Cowabunga!” written across the middle.
Once again, I was taken aback by his height and powerful muscular frame.
He towered over me in the narrow corridor and I normally would have shied away from someone so big, but with him…
I don’t know.
I wasn’t cowed at all.
I motioned for him to head down the stairs and couldn’t help but let my eyes drift down to the perfect swell of his ass.
Wow.
I imagined it tensing rapidly as he drove his cock deeper inside me…
I growled and shook my head.
Hussy!
Control yourself!
Flustered, I focused on everything but his amazing ass.
I found myself thinking of it even if I wasn’t looking directly at it any longer.
Clint pressed his hand to the screen door.
“Hold up a sec,” I said. “It’s hot out there. Here. Wear this.”
I handed him one of my pop’s old stetsons.
It fit perfectly and I instinctively tucked his long hair out of his eyes.
His golden eyes.
My hand froze and I gasped.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed them before.
But then again, I hadn’t seen them caught by bright sunshine before either.
There was nothing common about those eyes.
They were rich, the color of liquid caramel, and glinted like dropped diamonds.
I’d never seen such eyes.
“Is something wrong?” he said.
I blinked awake and hastily pulled my hand back.
“Uh, no. I, uh, just thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“I… thought something was in your eye.”
There was.
Me.
“We’re just going for a walk!” I called out to my mom, who could always be found in the kitchen cooking one thing or another.
“Okay!” she called out.
The screen door squeaked open and banged shut behind us.
A breath of wind caught the dust and swirled it in a mini-cyclone before bringing it back down on the animals in their individual pens.
I took the lead and led him down the steps.
“Did you grow up here?” he asked.
“Been my home since forever. Until I moved away, anyway.”
“It must have been nice growing up on a farm.”
“Yes, I suppose it was. You
grew up in the city?”
I fingered the thread and pulled gently, hoping it might help him recall something.
“I’m not sure. I know what barnyard animals look like but I couldn’t tell you what the names of these are.”
Okay, so that took me by surprise.
The book said he should have access to all the knowledge he gained throughout his life, including what he learned as a kid, and which kid didn’t learn about common farmyard animals like these?
I frowned.
The only other possibility was that the amnesia he was suffering from was worse than the doctors feared.
It meant he might have suffered some kind of brain damage.
But what made me the great expert?
I’d only read one book on the subject!
There was no need for me to make a mountain out of a molehill.
“What animals can you remember?”
“Not ones like this.”
“So what do they look like?”
He pursed his lips for a moment in thought.
“There was one with a horn coming out of the center of its head, curved upward, and it dances to attract the attention of its mate.”
“I’m not sure about the dancing part but it sounds like you’re describing a rhino.”
“A rhino?”
“It’s an animal in Africa. They’re big lumbering beasts with thick skin.”
“Are they pink with purple spots?”
“Uh…”
My joviality at discovering his memory coming back to him took a violent negative shove.
“No. They’re not pink. They’re grey.”
But maybe he’s color blind…
“What color is the t-shirt you’re wearing?” I asked.
He peered at it and seemed confused by the question.
“Grey. Why?”
Damn. It was grey.
So that ruled out being color blind…
So maybe the colors were a little scrambled, but the image was right.
Wasn’t it?
My stomach twisted.
I couldn’t fool myself into thinking this was a positive thing.
“Have you ever taken care of animals like this before?” I asked.
He peered at his hands.
It wasn’t the first time I noticed the hard skin and welts across his palms.
He was used to using them… but did it have anything to do with taking care of livestock?
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I could.”
Then he did a surprising thing.
He smiled at me.
“That’s something new, right? Whatever I was before, I wasn’t a farmer.”
His smile was infectious and it transposed itself onto my face.
We just stood there for a moment, looking at each other, sharing that same idiotic smile.
Whoop-whoop!
We were so engaged with each other that neither of us noticed the police cruiser pull up alongside us.
My heart sank.
So much for having a nice day.
Here came Liam.
And he never failed to cast a dark cloud on my day.
Liam
I had a bad feeling ever since I laid eyes on the muscle-bound moron.
What sort of pilot crashes into a lake, anyway?
A very poor one.
I snickered at the thought of what would happen to him when he returned to whichever base he’d taken off from and the trouble he would get in.
But I knew it was just a smokescreen tossed up by my mind to protect me from flying off the handle.
Why did it have to be my girl that found him?
Of all the women in the world, why did it have to be her?
She was kind and good and rescued him from the lake—and what kind of man needed to be rescued by a woman?—and called the ambulance.
Things like this always ensnared a woman’s senses.
It was like fate was telling them they were meant to be with this mysterious stranger.
It overpowered a woman’s reason and logic.
They needed to be protected from themselves.
She needed to be protected from herself.
And I was the man to do it.
We’d been together a long time ago and I knew deep in my heart we were always meant to be a couple.
Silly things come up sometimes when you’re kids.
We were adults now and she had returned to me.
There was no reason for us to be apart any longer.
That was fate’s plan.
Not this asshole pilot falling from the sky.
I was her destiny.
Not him.
I wasn’t even convinced his amnesia act was genuine.
Doctors could be bamboozled the same way anyone else could be.
They liked to think they knew what they were doing with their fancy charts and graphs and tests but there was one thing none of their fancy degrees could tell them.
And that was what people were really like.
That came from cold, hard experience—experience I had in spades.
And I wasn’t about to let Isabella be the victim of whatever this guy had in store for her.
No sir.
No on my watch.
I had a fitful night of sleep knowing he was in the same house as her.
There was no telling what he might attempt in the middle of the night.
Unable to sleep, I put on a fresh uniform and drove down to her parents’ farmhouse and parked outside on the street.
I watched the building with a pair of binoculars and sharp ears.
I tried to warn her about the darkness in people, reminded her of the stranger that picked up her friend in the middle of a busy coffee shop and never saw again.
But Isabella wouldn’t listen.
She could be so bullheaded sometimes.
I sighed and shook my head.
The ones we loved were the ones we needed to protect more forcefully, even if that meant doing so secretly.
Come on, punk. Make my day.
I wanted him to make a pass at Isabella right here and now, so I could prevent her from coming to harm.
I would be her white knight, and I would send the asshole pilot away.
He would never see her again and I would get the girl of my dreams.
As the sun began to rise and the barnyard animals came awake, I realized it was morning.
I didn’t want to get seen parked where I was as someone might think me a stalker.
So, I headed back into town and grabbed some breakfast at a local diner.
I decided I would swing by the farm on my way to the station before I began my shift.
On the way, I stopped off at a stall selling locally-grown flowers.
There was a very nice bouquet of roses in the front that caught my eye.
The seller sauntered over and bent down to peer through my open window.
“Morning, officer. How can I help?”
“You have some very nice flowers here.”
“We do our best.”
He was a skinny guy with missing front teeth, a ne’erdowell that I didn’t recognize.
But that didn’t mean he always followed the rule of law.
“Those roses look mighty fine,” I said. “The red ones in the front.”
The seller picked them up and angled them toward me.
I sniffed them deeply.
“They sure do smell good too. You don’t add artificial scents to your flowers, do you? I saw something about it on the news the other day.”
“No, sir. The only artificial thing about these flowers is the wrapping paper. But even that is made with naturally-grown products.”
I fingered the price tag and whistled.
“Ten dollars? Is that the price of a small bunch of roses these days?”
“It is for the very best quality in town.”
I rubbed a petal between my fingers.
It was thick, solid,
and healthy.
“You can feel the quality, can’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
He smiled at me with his toothless grin and I smiled right back.
Neither of us took our eyes off each other.
He began to perspire and wiped a hand over his top lip.
“A lot of people applied for a permit to sell flowers here,” I said. “They all failed. I’m surprised they gave it to you. Do you mind if I see it?”
The seller’s eyes darted from side to side furtively as if hoping for someone to rescue him from this situation.
“Well?” I said evenly. “Can I see it?”
The seller patted down his pockets halfheartedly and shook his head.
“Shoot. I, uh, must have left it at home.”
“Well, isn’t that a shame? And here’s me looking forward to seeing it. Oh well.”
I didn’t move.
“How about, uh, you keep those roses?” the seller said, wiping the sweat from his top lip.
“You want me to keep them? This isn’t a bribe, is it?”
“What? No, sir. They’re on the house. For all your good service.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
And still, I didn’t move.
The old man swallowed and reached into his wallet and extracted a five-dollar note.
“And a drink. On me. For all your hard work.”
I took the note.
“Five dollars won’t buy much of a drink. Not in this day and age.”
The guy hesitated before reaching into his wallet and placing another crisp five-dollar note in my palm.
My smile broke into a grin.
“I’ll think of you while I down it. Have a good day, now.”
I slammed my foot on the gas and the back wheels spun and kicked up a cloud of dirt as I took off down the road.
I breathed in the sweet scent of the roses once more.
Isabella was going to love them.
Romance was the way to a woman’s heart, just as lust was the way to a man’s.
After I handed her the flowers, it wouldn’t be long before she dropped her panties and permitted me entry into her hallowed halls.
After six years of waiting, I was determined to pound that pussy into oblivion.
Only the asshole pilot stood in the way of that, but he wouldn’t be standing there long.
I knew my day was going to take a turn for the worse when I saw them strolling side by side along the pigpen.
They looked so calm and at ease in each other’s presence.
As if he had already claimed her for himself and sowed wild oats in her welcoming furrows.
