Forget Me Not

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Alana looked at the amber eyes and gentle smile while Rafe’s voice surrounded her, caressing her. His hands were still in his pockets, his body was still relaxed. His posture told Alana that he understood and accepted her fear of being touched, held. Restrained.

  “How did you know?” Alana asked, her voice trembling.

  “That you didn’t want to be touched?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every time I touch you, you freeze. That’s as good as words for me. Better.”

  Alana was caught by the emotion she sensed coiling beneath Rafe’s surface calm.

  He sent back my letter unopened, Alana thought tensely. But did he dream of me, too? Is my coldness cutting him, making him bleed as I bled when my letter came back unopened?

  Remembered grief ripped through Alana, shaking her.

  That’s in the past, she told herself harshly. I’m living in the present. Today, Rafe has shown me only kindness. And now I’m hurting him.

  Alana wanted to hold on to Rafe, comforting both of them, but the thought of being held in return made her body tense to fight or flee.

  “It isn’t anything personal,” she said in a strained voice.

  “Are you sure it isn’t something I’ve done?”

  Alana looked at Rafe. His eyes were as clear as a high-country stream. Glints of gold and topaz mixed with the predominant amber color, radiating outward from the black pupil. He was watching her with strange intensity.

  “I’m sure,” she said, sighing, relaxing. “Very sure.”

  “Then what is it?” Rafe asked gently.

  “I—I don’t know. Since Jack died, I just don’t like people touching me.”

  “Do you like touching people?”

  “I—”

  Alana stopped, a puzzled expression bringing her black brows together.

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” she admitted.

  Rafe waited, watching her.

  And Alana watched Rafe, absorbing his silence and his restraint, the pulse beating slowly in his neck, the slide and coil of muscles across his chest as he breathed in the even rhythms of relaxation, waiting for her.

  Slowly Alana’s hand came up. He bent down to make it easier for her to touch him. Her fingers brushed over his hair lightly, hesitated, then quickly retreated.

  “Well?” Rafe asked as he straightened, smiling. “Is someone going to skin me for a fancy coat?”

  Alana laughed a little breathlessly.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It was so quick.”

  “Try again,” he offered casually.

  Alana climbed the stairs until she was on the same step as Rafe. This time her hand lingered as she allowed his hair to sift over the sensitive skin between her fingers. With a smile that was both shy and remembering, she lifted her hand.

  “Better,” Rafe said. “But you should take lessons from a professional furrier.”

  She made a questioning sound.

  “Professionals rub the pelt with their palms and fingertips,” said Rafe.

  His glance moved from Alana’s mouth to her glossy black hair.

  “And they tease the fur with their breath,” he said, “hold its softness to their lips, smell it, taste it, then gently slide the fur over their most sensitive skin.”

  Alana’s breath caught. A shiver of pleasure spread through her at the thought of being touched so gently . . . by Rafael Winter.

  “Do they really?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rafe admitted, his voice a teasing kind of velvet as he smiled down at her. “But that’s what I’d do to you if you were a fur and I were a furrier.”

  Though Rafe hadn’t moved any closer, Alana felt surrounded by him, by sensual possibilities that sent warmth showering through her.

  Suddenly, vividly, memories from the times they had made love went through Alana’s body like liquid lightning. She had spent so long trying to forget, yet the memories were as hot and fresh as though newly made.

  Or perhaps her memories of Rafe’s exquisite touch were merely hunger and dream entangled so thoroughly that truth was lost. Another kind of amnesia, more gentle, but just as filled with pitfalls in the present.

  Yet Alana had just touched Rafe, and he had felt better than in her memories.

  Rafe smiled as though he knew exactly what Alana was feeling. Before she could retreat, he pushed away from the wall and passed her on the narrow stairway without touching her. When he spoke his voice was no longer teasing, husky, intimate.

  “Get some sleep,” Rafe advised. “Bob and I weren’t kidding about leaving at dawn. If you need anything, I’m in the room next to yours. Don’t worry about making noise. The dudes are still on Virginia time. Sleeping like babes all in a row.”

  She stared at Rafe as he walked toward the living room.

  “And Alana . . .”

  Rafe turned back toward her, his face half in light, half in shadow, his eyes the radiant gold of sunset rain.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Don’t be afraid. Whatever happens, I’m here.”

  Rafe vanished into the living room before Alana could answer.

  Slowly she walked upstairs to her room, hoping at every moment to hear Rafe’s footsteps behind her.

  Only silence followed Alana to her bedroom.

  The exhaustion of sleepless nights combined with the familiar background sounds of the ranch to send Alana into a deep sleep. She slept undisturbed until clouds gathered and thickened, stitched together by lightning and torn apart by thunder.

  Then she began to sleep restlessly, her head moving from side to side, her limbs shifting unpredictably, her throat clenching over unspoken words.

  Riding next to Jack, arguing.

  He’s angry and the clouds are angry and the mountains loom over me like thunder.

  Spruce and fir and aspens bent double by the cruel wind. Wind tearing off leaves, spinning them like bright coins into the black void, and the horses are gone.

  Screaming but no one can hear, I’m a single bright leaf spinning endlessly down and down and—

  Cold, sweating, Alana woke up, her heart hammering against her ribs, her breath ragged. She looked at the bedside clock. Three-forty. Too soon to get up, even if they were leaving at dawn.

  Lightning bleached the room, leaving intense darkness behind, trailing an avalanche of thunder.

  Suddenly Alana felt trapped.

  She leaped out of bed, yanked open the door, and ran into the hallway. She raced down the stairs and out onto the front porch. Incandescent lightning skidded over the land, separated by split seconds of darkness that were almost dizzying.

  Frightened, disoriented, a broken scream tearing at her throat, Alana turned back to the front door.

  A man came out, walking toward her.

  At first Alana thought it was Rafe; then she realized that the man was too tall. But it wasn’t Bob. The walk was different.

  Lightning came again, outlining the man, revealing his pale hair, long sideburns, blunt nose, narrow mouth, and eyes so blue they were almost black.

  Jack.

  Past and present, nightmare and reality fused into a seamless horror. Helpless, terrified, shaken by thunder and her own screaming, Alana scrambled backward, hands flailing frantically, running, scrambling, falling, and everywhere ice and lightning, thunder and darkness and screaming.

  Falling.

  I’m falling . . .!

  This time Alana could hear the screams tearing apart her throat. But it wasn’t Jack’s name she screamed as she spun toward the void.

  It was Rafe’s.

  The front door burst open and slammed back against the wall. Abruptly Jack disappeared between one stroke of lightning and the next.

  Shaking, holding on to herself, Alana told herself that Jack was a product of her imagination, a waking nightmare from which she would soon be freed.

  Then she saw Jack laid out on the porch, Rafe astride him, Rafe’s forearm like an iron bar across Jack’
s throat.

  Panic exploded inside Alana, shards of ice slashing through her, paralyzing her. Jack was so much bigger than Rafe, as big as Bob, bigger, and Jack could be so cruel in his strength.

  Then her paralysis melted, sliding away into darkness and lightning as Alana realized that Rafe was in control. It was Jack who was down and was going to stay that way until Rafe decided to let him up again.

  Bob ran out onto the front porch, flashlight in one hand and shotgun in the other. He saw Rafe and the man beneath him.

  “What in the hell—?” began Bob.

  Then he saw Alana backed up against the porch railing, terror in every line of her face, her hands clenched around her throat.

  “Sis? Oh, God!”

  Bob started for her, holding out his arms.

  Alana screamed.

  Rafe came to his feet in a single powerful lunge. He stood between brother and sister.

  “Don’t touch her,” Rafe said flatly.

  “But—” began Bob.

  Lightning flared again. Bob saw Rafe’s face, hard and utterly savage. Without another word, Bob backed up.

  Rafe turned with the same fluid power that he had used to come up off the porch floor. As he looked at Alana, his eyes burned with rage and regret. He ached to gather her in his arms, to hold her, to feel her melt and flow along his body as she accepted his embrace.

  And he knew that was a dream, and she lived in nightmare. Broken Mountain was destroying their future as surely as his “death” once had.

  “It’s all right, wildflower,” Rafe said quietly. “I won’t let anyone touch you. Not even me.”

  Numbly Alana nodded, hearing the word wildflower echo and reecho in her mind, a name from the deep past, before Rafe had died and been reborn, killing her without knowing it.

  Wildflower.

  A name out of dreams.

  A name out of nightmares.

  “Bob,” Rafe said without turning around, “pick up Stan and get the hell out of Alana’s sight. Now.”

  Bob had no desire to argue with the whip-like voice, the poised fighting stance, the muscles visibly coiled across Rafe’s naked back, ready to unleash violence. Silently Bob bent over, levered the man called Stan to his feet, and dragged him into the living room.

  The screen door banged shut behind them like a small crack of thunder.

  Distant lightning came, revealing Rafe’s face, harshness and yearning combined.

  Alana blinked, half expecting Rafe to vanish.

  He stayed before her, outlined by forked lightning, a man both lean and powerful, wearing only jeans, and regret was a dark veil across his features.

  Instinctively Alana swayed toward him, needing the very comfort that her mind wouldn’t let her take.

  Rafe stood without moving, looking at her slender body shaken by shudders of cold and fear, his own private nightmare come true. He would have put his arms around her, but he knew that she would only scream again, tearing both of them apart.

  In the end, Rafe could not help holding out his hand to Alana. It was a gesture that asked nothing, offered everything.

  “Hold on to me, wildflower,” he said softly. “If you want to.”

  With a small sound, Alana took Rafe’s hand between her own. She held on to him with bruising intensity. He didn’t object. Nor did he so much as curl his fingers around hers. She took a shuddering breath, then another, fighting to control herself.

  “I thought—” Alana’s voice broke.

  She bent over, pressing her forehead to the back of Rafe’s hand. He was as warm as life itself, flowing into her, giving her peace. She swallowed and spoke without lifting her head.

  “I thought he was J-Jack.”

  Rafe’s left hand hovered over Alana’s bent head, as though he would stroke her hair. Then his hand dropped to his side and remained there, clenched in a fist.

  He was afraid to touch her, to frighten her and rend the fragile fabric of trust being woven between them.

  “Stan is one of the dudes,” Rafe said quietly, but emotions turned just beneath the smooth surface of his voice, testing his control. “Stan is big, like Jack was. And blond.”

  Alana shuddered and said nothing.

  “If I had known that the first time you saw Stan it would be in the lightning and darkness, a storm, like Broken Mountain—” Rafe didn’t finish. “I’m sorry, wildflower. For so many things.”

  But the last words were said so softly that Alana wasn’t sure she had heard them at all. For a moment longer she clung to Rafe’s hand, drawing strength and warmth from him, the nightmare draining away, fading like thunder into the distance.

  Slowly Alana’s head came up. She drew more deep breaths, sending oxygen through a body that had been starved for it, paralyzed by fear to the point that she had forgotten to breathe. Gradually the shuddering left her body, only to return as shivers of cold rather than fear.

  For the first time she realized that she was wearing only a thin silk nightshirt, which the icy rain had plastered across her body. The vivid orange cloth was nearly black where water had touched it, as dark as her eyes looking up at Rafe.

  Alana shivered again, and for an instant Rafe held his warm hand against her cheek. A single fingertip traced the black wing of her eyebrow with such exquisite gentleness that she forgot to be afraid. Tears stood in her eyes, magnifying them: Tears flowed down silently, tears as warm as Rafe’s hand.

  With dreamlike slowness, Alana turned her face until her lips rested against his palm. When she spoke, her breath was another caress flowing over his skin.

  “Thank you for understanding,” Alana whispered.

  Rafe’s body tensed visibly as he fought his impulse to hold Alana, to turn her lips up to his own, to taste again the warmth of her, to feel her respond. He knew that if he reached for her she would retreat, terrified.

  And that knowledge was a knife turning inside him.

  Slowly Alana released Rafe’s hand. For a moment he held his palm against her cheek, then he withdrew.

  “I feel like such a fool,” said Alana, closing her eyes. “What must that poor man think of me?”

  “Stan thinks he was a real horse’s ass to come barging outside after you in a storm, scaring you half to death,” said Rafe, his voice like a whip once more. “He’s lucky I didn’t take him apart.”

  Alana made a sound of protest.

  “It was my fault, not his,” she said. “I’ll have to apologize.”

  “Like hell. Stan will apologize to you, in good light, when you can see him clearly. And then he will stay away from you.”

  Rafe’s words were clear and hard, like glacier ice. Alana realized that he was furious, but not with her. He was enraged with Stan, because Stan had frightened her.

  Then she realized that Rafe was also furious with himself, because he hadn’t prevented her from being frightened.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” whispered Alana.

  “The hell it wasn’t.”

  Then, before she could respond, Rafe was talking again.

  “You’re shivering. Are you ready to go back inside?”

  Alana hesitated. The thought of seeing the man who looked so much like Jack disturbed her deeply. But she had no choice. She refused to spend the rest of her life at the mercy of her own fears.

  She clenched her hands at her sides, took a deep breath, and lifted her chin.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” Alana said.

  “You don’t have to.” Rafe’s voice was gentle despite his tightly leashed anger. “I’ll go in and tell Bob you’d rather not meet Stan right now.”

  “No. I’ve got to stop being so damned . . . fragile.”

  “You’ve been through too much, too recently. You’ve been through more than anyone should have to bear. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Ease up. Give yourself a chance to heal.”

  Alana shook her head.

  She wasn’t healing. The nightmare was getting worse, taking over more and more of her waking hours.
<
br />   “Life goes on, Rafe. The biggest cliché, and the one with the most truth. I have to go on, too. I have to leave those six days behind me. I have to.”

  For an instant Rafe closed his eyes, unable to bear either Alana’s pain or her courage.

  “Just like a wildflower,” he whispered. “Delicate and tough, growing in the most difficult places.”

  He opened his eyes and held his hand out to her.

  “Will you let me help you?” Rafe asked.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Alana put her hand in Rafe’s. The warmth of his skin was like fire, telling her how cold her own body was.

  “Thank you,” Rafe said simply.

  Then he opened the door and led Alana back into the living room, where her nightmare waited.

  6

  B OB AND STAN were sitting in the living room, talking about storms and high-country trout. Both men looked up, then away, clearly not wanting to intrude if Alana needed privacy.

  Rafe plucked a flannel shirt off a coatrack standing near the door, draped the colorful plaid folds over Alana, and turned toward the two men.

  Instantly Stan stood up.

  Alana took a quick breath and stepped backward until she came up hard against Rafe’s chest. Over Alana’s head, Rafe smiled coldly at the blond, muscular giant who was every bit as tall as Bob.

  “Alana Reeves, meet Stan Wilson,” said Rafe. “Stan, you’ll understand if Alana doesn’t want to shake hands. You have an unnerving resemblance to her recently deceased husband.”

  For a long moment, Rafe and Stan measured each other.

  Stan nodded, a brief incline of his head that was almost an apology. Then his head moved slightly as he looked toward Alana.

  At the sight of Stan’s cobalt-blue eyes, Alana made a small sound. Like Jack. Just like Jack. Only the solid warmth of Rafe at her back kept her from falling into nightmare again.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reeves,” Stan said. “I sure didn’t mean to frighten you like that.”

  Relief uncurled deep inside Alana. The voice was different, entirely different, deeper, permeated by the subtle rhythms of the Southwest.

  “Please call me Alana,” she said. “And I’m sorry for—”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” said Rafe, cutting across Alana’s words. “Now that Stan is aware of the situation, I’m sure he won’t take you by surprise again.”