A Marriage To Remember

by Cathryn Clare

  He felt her lifting her hands to his face, his hair, almost as though she was trying to persuade herself to push him away from her. But the gesture turned into a caress. The smooth sensation of her palms against his skin seemed to release something inside him, easing the anguish that had been eating at him all day.

  “Or this...”

  He was still intent on overcoming her protests, on igniting the hunger he knew she shared with him. He lowered his head and kissed the long, delicate curve of her neck. His lips found the ridge of her collarbone, and hesitated for a moment over the slim gold chain she still wore.

  Then he discovered the roundness of her breast, and opened his mouth against it, absorbing the softness of her even through the layer of lavender cotton that stood between them.

  His searching mouth found the hardened center of her breast. He heard her breath go in sharply. The quick, eager sound shot straight through him and settled low in his loins. He slid one arm under the small of her back, pressing them even closer together.

  The sagging mattress springs creaked beneath them as he moved. Jayne’s breathy, startled laugh reverberated under Ryder’s cheekbone.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “Thirteen years of marriage, and here we are hiding out in a third-rate motel like a couple of guilty teenagers.”

  Ryder had just had the same thought himself. “Hell, who’s feeling guilty?” he muttered as he raised himself to look at her again.

  Immediately he wished he hadn’t spoken. The light in her face dimmed slightly, and he could see doubt edging back in.

  Was he guilty? Had he committed crimes, betrayed his colleagues, endangered Jayne herself for all the wrong reasons?

  Neither of them knew. And the thought of it—the weight of all those unanswered questions—threatened to come between them, to end this sensuous moment of magic and possibility.

  He couldn’t let that happen. If he could prove to Jayne how powerful the bond still was between them, he might be able to salvage the vision of warmth and peace he’d just seen in her eyes.

  They were already half-submerged in a tempting, seductive sea. If he could pull them all the way in—if he could chase away the lingering suspicion in Jayne’s liquid gaze—

  He could think of only one sure way to do that.

  With every word he spoke, he ran the risk of stumbling over some dark corner of a past he couldn’t recall. So he abandoned speech and relied instead on his body’s instinctive, wordless response to this woman who seemed to belong to him in a way that went far beyond marriage, far beyond memory.

  He claimed her mouth again with a fierceness he couldn’t hold back. He heard her moan under his lips, and recognized urgency in the sound.

  Her hands slid under the waistband of his shirt, skimming past the elastic bandages around his ribs and up to his shoulders. The butterfly-light sensation of it made Ryder’s head spin. Images assailed him from out of nowhere, gentle curves of nearly white skin, a pearly glimmer that dazzled his mind’s eye and tightened the erotic throbbing in his loins.

  He shed his shirt with as much grace as he could muster around the constraining bandages. He watched her lips part again as she looked at him, and saw her eyes darken to velvety-black when he angled one long leg suggestively between hers.

  “If you try to tell me this all belongs in the past,” he muttered, “I won’t believe you.”

  She didn’t answer, except to arch her spine, bringing them even closer together. Her belly met the aching hardness of his arousal and they both gasped again, each new discovery—or was it a rediscovery?—more astonishing than the last.

  She bent one leg and slanted it against his hip. He felt cradled by her, surrounded by her heat, by her enticing, feminine scent. He reached one hand back and clasped her ankle, then slid his fingers higher, past her knee, under the hem of her flowered skirt.

  He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until his mind was already reeling with fantasies of Jayne naked in his arms, of the perfection of her breasts and the slender curve of her waist. His fingers had reached the impossibly smooth skin of her thigh. He lingered there, quivering from someplace deep within that was telling him exactly how it would feel to bury himself inside her, to feel her surrounding him, body and soul.

  The secret center of her beckoned like some half-remembered dream. He knew she was as aroused as he was—that she would welcome his touch and open to him eagerly. He thought about filling her, sharing all of himself with her, fulfilling the silent promise he’d seen in her eyes—

  And suddenly something said Stop.

  The response was so strong, so unexpected, that at first he thought it had been an actual physical jolt, an electrical shock, maybe, or a lurch from the old bed underneath them.

  It took him a moment to realize it had come from inside himself.

  He felt the admonition shudder through his frame and settle at the base of his spine, rough and insistent, battling with the desire that was still coursing through him.

  Stop now. Before you can’t stop.

  He forced his eyes open and saw Jayne’s face radiant with arousal and anticipation. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes brushing pink-hued cheeks, her petal-soft lips tantalizingly parted.

  It would be so easy to lower his head again, to claim those lips in another long kiss, to pursue this almost painfully sweet pleasure to its natural end.

  But what if Jayne got pregnant?

  That was the realization that had stopped him. Grappling with his own reactions—why was he feeling fear, for heaven’s sake? Why was his gut clenching like this?—he shifted his weight and moved slightly away from her.

  Her eyes flew open as he did it. The dismay flooding her delicate features was hard to watch. When he thought that just a moment ago...

  The mere thought of it—of how close they’d come to plunging into making love—brought back another instinctive wave of protest from somewhere in his belly.

  “We can‘t—do this.” His voice almost didn’t work at first. “Not without—precautions.”

  It was hard to speak. And suddenly he was having a hard time breathing. His chest felt constricted by the bandages around it and the renewed pain stabbing at him from inside.

  While he’d been holding Jayne in his arms, all his bruises and aches had receded, soothed by the balm of her nearness, her touch. Now, though, they were back.

  And Ryder clung to them this time. This was reality, he told himself. What he’d just been feeling—everything that had rolled through him at the sensation of Jayne’s hands, her lips, her skin—had been a dream he’d had no right to reach for. He’d let it momentarily blot out his common sense.

  But that moment was over. Or it would be once he got his rebellious body and crazily pounding heart under control.

  A few minutes ago he’d told Jayne he was feeling anything but guilty. He almost laughed at the idea now.

  Guilt was exactly what had just slammed into him. And it made his voice rough-edged as he said, “This is all wrong. We’re taking too damn many chances. What if somebody’s tracking us right now? We should be trying to figure out what the hell’s going on, not—”

  He ran out of words all of a sudden. The silent struggle going on in Jayne’s eyes didn’t help any.

  Neither did the quiet hurt in her voice. “Not making love,” she said simply, bluntly.

  “That’s right.” He tried for bluntness, too, but the words ended up sounding ragged.

  How could he have let himself even contemplate it? He was a man on the very edge of survival, with a past he couldn’t remember and a future he wouldn’t have bet two wooden nickels on at the moment.

  He had no right to be asking for intimacy, no right to be chasing after dreams. Especially not with a woman who’d already decided she didn’t want to be his wife.

  If they’d made love—

  If he’d fathered a child—

  His frame shuddered again at the thought of it. He had nothing of real value to offer t
o a woman.

  Not now. Perhaps not ever.

  And he certainly had nothing to offer to a child.

  He willed himself to move, though his legs were far from steady. He reached for the shirt he’d dropped over the edge of the bed and pulled it over his head, wincing as he raised his arms.

  The pain was almost welcome this time. It was a signal, a reminder of everything he needed to be free of before he could possibly pursue the passionate visions that had crowded into his heart while he’d been holding Jayne close to him.

  Jayne wasn’t looking at him. She hadn’t moved, except to raise one hand. She was staring at nothing, her fingers pressed against her mouth as though she was holding back words she didn’t want to speak.

  “Jayne, listen to me.” He had to explain himself, had to make her understand the fears that had gripped him so unexpectedly. “I don’t know what the hell is ahead of me. Maybe, once this is all sorted out—”

  “Stop.” She fanned her fingers out toward him, making her hand into a barrier between them. “I’ve heard all this before, Ryder. You don’t need to say it again. In fact—”

  He waited, taken aback by the idea that he’d unwittingly stumbled into a pattern he couldn’t even remember. Jayne’s suddenly pale face—and the fact that she was refusing to meet his eyes—told him that whatever was happening right now, it was at the heart of everything that had gone wrong between them.

  But Jayne was cutting off her own words, as though she’d said more than she really wanted to.

  “Never mind,” she said. Her voice shook as she swung her bare feet over the other side of the bed. “You’re right. We should be concentrating on finding out who’s chasing you, not letting ourselves get sidetracked. It’s still early, but by the time we get to a phone we can probably call Greg. The sooner we get this sorted out, the happier I’ll be.”

  She didn’t sound happy at the moment. She sounded resigned, and almost as bleak as the gray predawn light coming in around the edges of the threadbare curtains.

  Her somber tone was heartbreakingly different from the throaty gasp his caresses had called up a little while ago. Ryder could still feel the buzz of desire in every corner of his body, struggling with the bone-deep fear that wouldn’t go away.

  What if something went wrong?

  What if Jayne got pregnant?

  What if someone was on their trail right now?

  What if he ruined everything?

  It was all too chancy, too dangerous. Ryder pulled the car keys out of the pocket of his jeans, trying to ignore the fact that several crucial parts of him were still potently, powerfully aroused.

  “All right, let’s go then.” His voice was a low growl in the early-morning stillness. “I’ll be waiting in the car whenever you’re ready.”

  Chapter 7

  Greg Iverson slid into the seat across from Jayne. “So where’s our poster boy?” he asked.

  “Are they looking for him that thoroughly?”

  “You bet they are. All-points bulletins to local police stations across the entire region, checkpoints on major highways, faxed descriptions to gas stations and motels—” Iverson spread his well-manicured hands over the linoleum-topped table between them. “They’re serious about this, Jayne. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  The waitress brought two mugs of coffee. Jayne waited until the woman was gone again before she spoke.

  “He’s around,” she said. “He wanted to make sure nobody followed you.”

  Iverson frowned as he poured cream into his coffee. “I checked my mirrors the whole way here,” he said.

  “I believe you. But whoever’s after us is slick, Greg. Ryder’s taking no chances.”

  In fact, Ryder was in the diner’s kitchen, having bribed the cook to let him keep an eye on things from there. The cook’s manner had been matter-of-fact as he’d folded the twenty-dollar bill into his pocket. Obviously, Ryder had muttered to Jayne, they weren’t the first ones who’d found this little beachside diner a convenient meeting place.

  “No shooting,” the cook had said, and Ryder had lifted his hands to shoulder height.

  “No gun,” he’d replied.

  Jayne was careful not to let her glance stray toward the swinging door into the kitchen as she spoke now. But Greg was frowning, anyway, as though he sensed her deception.

  “They’re after him, Jayne, not you,” he amended. “There’s no earthly reason you should be caught in the middle of this mess.”

  Ryder had said essentially the same thing. “In case there’s anybody following Iverson, I don’t want them getting a look at me,” he’d told her when they’d parked the car in the back corner of the diner’s lot. “The only reason you nearly got shot yesterday is that you were too close to me. And I plan to make damn sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  It hadn’t been his only safeguard. Jayne had kept her phone call to Iverson deliberately short. She’d given him a bare outline of the previous day’s adventures, mentioning only that it was clear someone in the Miami police department must have leaked information about Ryder’s location to whoever the shooter had been.

  She hadn’t suggested a meeting place on the phone, either. Giving Iverson enough time to get on the road, she’d faxed directions to his car fax machine from a drugstore near the Olde Maritimer.

  “And to think I was ribbing him about all his yuppie toys the last time we had lunch together,” Jayne had said. “Maybe a car fax isn’t such a frill, after all.”

  “You two have lunch together often?” Ryder had asked.

  “Fairly often. He’s been a good friend this past year.”

  Ryder had frowned at her answer. Jayne had no idea why.

  And no intention of asking him.

  She’d been doing her best to keep her distance since this morning’s explosive moment of tenderness and passion—and its troubling aftermath.

  How had she let that happen? How had she lost herself so far in Ryder’s kisses, in the hungry blue fire she’d seen in his eyes? She’d been trembling on the verge of something she’d sworn was over, ready to let herself slide back into a haze of longing she should have recognized as an illusion, a shimmering, deceptive mist in front of her eyes.

  Well, her eyes were open now.

  And she could see one thing very clearly.

  There might be flashes of the old, tender Nick Ryder in this lost and beleaguered stranger who’d stumbled into her life once more. But just below the surface were all the problems they’d never been able to find answers for.

  Ryder still had to be the one in charge, deciding what he would and wouldn’t share, unable or unwilling to let their love truly blossom.

  He might not remember anything about their marriage or its slow disintegration, but the stubborn solitude she’d never been able to get past—the sudden silence that had ended that hazy moment of passion this morning—was still obviously very much a part of him, memory or no memory.

  “Jayne? Are you listening to me?”

  With an effort, she focused her attention back on Greg Iverson. He was leaning over the table toward her, touching her wrists gently with his fingertips.

  She couldn’t let her thoughts wander like this, she told herself firmly. Too much was riding on this meeting, and on enlisting their friend’s help. Just because her body was half-beguiled by the feeling of Ryder’s arms around her—just because her own anger was having a tough time making headway against all the other emotions and desires he’d ignited inside her—

  “I’m listening,” she said firmly. “You’re telling me this is Ryder’s problem, not mine.”

  Iverson nodded his close-cropped, jet-black head. “Considering how he treated you—”

  “I know.” She didn’t want to start reliving all that now. “And you’re right. But that doesn’t mean I want to stand by and watch somebody kill him. If you’d seen the look on that gunman’s face in the hospital hallway—”

  She shivered, despite the hot coffee and the
promise of warmth in the November morning. She hadn’t told Greg all the details of their brush with death in the hospital, and she didn’t want to tell him now. Just thinking about it was enough to raise goose bumps on her bare forearms.

  The problem was that she was being tugged in too many directions at once. Her good sense told her Greg Iverson was probably right—this wasn’t her fight, it was Ryder’s. If she was smart, she would step aside and let him fight it alone.

  But her photojournalist’s instincts were telling her there was a lot more going on here than had come to the surface yet.

  And her heart was saying, If Ryder dies, a part of me will die, too.

  Iverson’s liquid brown eyes were troubled as he met her gaze. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m still Ryder’s friend, and I’ll do what I can for him.”

  “But—” She could hear the reservations in his voice.

  He withdrew his hand from hers and took a sip of his coffee. “But he’s in a hell of a hole on this one,” he said. “And he’s not nearly out of the last hole he dug himself into, either. I want to see him safe as much as anyone, but I hate the thought of putting you in danger, too.”

  “Don’t worry. Getting out of danger is my very first priority.” She gave him a quick smile and hoped it wasn’t as shaky as it felt. “Greg, listen. What Ryder really needs right now is information. If you could talk to the FBI—”

  He was already shaking his head. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

  “I’ve never been more serious. If Ryder only knew why the FBI picked him up at the prison in the first place—if he had some sense of where he stands—”

  “Where I stand, in case you’d forgotten, is right in the middle of the city attorney’s office,” Iverson cut in. “By rights, I should have informed the cops or the FBI the minute you called me this morning.”

  “Someone in the police department is on the wrong side in this. They have to be. I told you—”

  “I know. And I believe you. That’s why I’m here.” He reached for her hand again, closing his fingers around hers. “But it’s one thing to meet with you on my own. It’s something very different for me to go digging into FBI files while withholding information about a fugitive they’re looking for as hard as they can.”