But the familiar phrases didn’t come. Instead, Ryder seemed to be shifting himself in the bed, moving closer to the edge of it.
“Why?” he asked again.
She’d been asking herself the same question for the past day and a half, every time someone tried to suggest that she go home and let the hospital staff look after Ryder. Why had she stayed with him, when he’d already made it so clear he didn’t want her in his life?
Because she loved him, that was why.
But she couldn’t say that to him, not after how he’d pushed her away from him only a couple of days ago. “I—wanted us to end this properly,” she said instead. “I didn’t want you just to disappear again. We‘ve—been through too much together to—” She stopped, frowning. “Ryder, what on earth are you doing?”
He’d slid his long body to the very edge of the bed, and was looking back at his left side, assessing the assemblage of wires that connected him to the various monitors next to the bed.
“I’m getting up,” he said.
“You’re crazy. You can’t get up.”
“The hell I can’t.” He seemed on the point of unclipping a wire attached to a round foam pad on his chest.
Jayne took a step closer to the bed. “Ryder, you’re all patched together and—”
The pleading look in his eyes stopped her in her tracks.
The Nick Ryder she’d loved so completely—the man who’d made her his own so many years ago—was suddenly looking out at her again, hungry, open, searching.
“Then get over here, damn it.” His voice sounded anything but pleading. “I can move if I have to. And I will, if you’re planning on staying so far away from me.”
Away from him... Jayne almost laughed. The only place in the world she’d ever wanted to be was with him. But—
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She took another step toward the bed. “The surgeon said the anesthetic might—”
“No. I’m not feeling okay.” He reached out his left arm, grimacing as he did it. But the strength in his fingers was as powerful, as compelling as ever. He circled her wrist and drew her nearer to him, pulling her over to the bed.
“I feel like hell,” he went on. “But that’s the least of my worries at the moment.”
“Then what—are you worried about?”
She sat in the spot on the bed where she’d kept most of her solitary vigil over the last thirty-six hours. Then, Ryder might as well have been a million miles away, drugged by anesthetic and worn out by everything his body had been through. But now...
Now he eased her against him, avoiding the worst of the damage but keeping a close enough hold on her that she could feel his heart thudding against the hard wall of his chest. His skin was warm, his eyes seeking hers as though he wanted to peer directly into her soul.
“I’m worried about hearing you say we’re ending things,” he said. “Hell, I’m more than just worried. Jaynie, is that what you really want—an ending?”
The sudden wild hope that filled her was mixed with trepidation. She’d worked so hard to fight against these foolish dreams. If she let herself hope again...
“I thought that was what you wanted,” she said slowly. “When we talked about this back in the boat, before we met Greg...”
She paused, still shaken by the realization that the friend she’d been so close to had not been what he’d seemed. Like Ryder, Greg Iverson had hidden a lot of secrets behind his handsome facade.
But there was no sign of any facade covering Ryder’s emotions now. She’d been so certain that his openness, his tenderness, would all disappear with the return of his memory.
But his memory was back.
And so was that seeking, ardent expression that stirred her so deeply.
“You said then what you always used to say when I wanted to talk about the future—about having a family together,” she went on, forcing herself to think past the intensity of Ryder’s dark blue eyes. “You always said it was the wrong time to talk about it—until I realized there was never going to be a right time. I can’t go back to that, Nick. I can’t watch you bury yourself in your job and ignore our future—especially when your job—”
She broke off and shivered, leaning gladly into his embrace when he pulled her a little closer. “I thought I was going to lose you forever,” she whispered, discovering too late that her voice wouldn’t work above a whisper.
“You won’t lose me—untess you want me to go.”
His words rumbled against her ear, and she realized she was pressing her face against his shoulder as though she wanted to recapture the intimacy they’d shared in the old cabin for those few precious days. From the way he held her, Ryder seemed to be trying to do the same thing.
His bullet wound hampered him, but he still managed to lean over far enough to kiss the curve of her cheek as he said, “Jaynie, I was wrong—from the beginning. I just thought—well, hell, I don’t know what I thought.”
That surge of hope wouldn’t be repressed this time. “You thought you had to prove yourself to the whole world before you deserved a chance to be happy yourself,” she said.
She couldn’t see his face. But she knew—oh, how intimately she knew—the feeling of his expressive mouth curving into a smile against her forehead.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Something like that. And I guess I just didn’t trust that what we had would last. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it. And so I—”
She finished the sentence when he halted. “You retreated to the point where we started to lose everything, anyway,” she said gently. Shifting her body, she looked up into his face and saw all the doubts and hesitations that he’d finally admitted to in the old cabin in the woods, chasing each other around and around in his storm-blue eyes.
But there were other feelings there now, too. She could see him marshaling the strength and fierceness he’d poured into his job, finally directing it toward himself—toward themselves.
The thought of it made her almost dizzy. “Ryder, are you saying you want us to try this again?”
“If it’s not too late.”
“And—you want to have children? A family?”
“I want us to have children.”
He said the words so slowly, so softly, that she knew how deeply he meant them. It was a vow, a promise. And maybe it was better and stronger than the one he’d made so many years ago as a younger, brasher man.
His next words confirmed it. “I feel like I’ve lived ten years in the past few days,” he said. “It’s almost as though—when I lost my memory, I had a chance to start all over again.”
“That’s how I felt, too.” Jayne stroked his forehead, pushing a lost strand of hair back into place. “But I was so sure it would all end when your memory came back.”
“It did—at first. I was so scared when I remembered what was happening. All I could think of was going back to the way I’d always been, shutting everybody out, relying on myself and nobody else. It was how I survived my childhood. It seemed safer, smarter that way.”
He shook his head and the dark blond strand she’d just caressed came right back where it had been. “But when I realized at that parking lot that I might never have the chance to tell you that the only thing I want is to spend the rest of my life with you—that I never stopped loving you, not even for a minute—”
She couldn’t tell whether he finished the sentence or not. Her own answer was swallowed up, like Ryder’s words, in the sudden urgency of their embrace. She could feel the muscles in his left arm quivering where he held her. But whatever pain he might be feeling seemed to be of less importance to him than the need to hold her close.
Forever.
She thought her heart might come apart from the sudden joy filling her. Everything she’d longed for—every dream she’d reached for and had never quite been able to hang on to—it was all starting to come true. It was—
“Mr. and Mrs. Ryder!”
The voice from the doo
rway startled them both. They half turned, still folded in each other’s arms, to see a stern-looking nurse with a scandalized expression on her face.
She hurried into the room, anxiously checking Ryder’s dressings, his monitors, his bedding. Through it all, Ryder held tight to Jayne, refusing to let her move away from him. She saw a gleam of his old reckless humor in his face as he submitted to the nurse’s none-too-gentle poking and prodding. And when the woman was finally finished with her inspection and the lecture that had accompanied it, Ryder glanced at her name tag and said, “Actually, Nurse Adams, I owe you a favor.”
“You do?” Her narrowed gaze said clearly that she didn’t trust the renegade grin in his eyes. “And why is that?”
“Until you called us Mr. and Mrs., I’d almost forgotten we were still married.” He tightened his arm around Jayne and eased himself closer to her again on the newly smoothed sheets. “I was about to pop the question all over again, and now I realize I don’t have to.”
He kissed the side of her temple, and Jayne closed her eyes, lost in the rightness of his lips against her skin and the vision of everything their love might finally blossom into now that they were letting it flower at last.
“I still owe you a wedding ring, though, Jaynie,” he added. “We’ll go get it back just as soon as I’m out of here.”
He’d pitched his voice lower, but Nurse Adams obviously had ears like a cat. “Which will be none too soon,” she said firmly, “especially if you intend to carry on like this just hours after you’ve had surgery.”
“It’s a waste of time telling him to do things,” Jayne felt compelled to tell the nurse. “Once he’s made up his mind—”
“Even if it does take him ten years to do it—” He grinned down at her, and Jayne caught her breath, seduced by the gleam of tenderness and laughter in his eyes.
She traced a fingertip along the line of his cheekbone, stopping at the corner of his jaw. “Nick, I love you,” she said. “Have I told you that recently?”
His face changed at her words. But the humor in it didn’t fade completely.
“You might have,” he said. “I don’t remember. It’s this darned amnesia—very liable to relapse, you know. Maybe you’d better tell me often, just in case.”
He cocked one sandy eyebrow toward Nurse Adams, who had moved away and was trying briskly to get a bouquet of iris to stand up straighter in their vase.
“And I love you, Jayne Robards.” He ended the sentence on a gentle kiss. “Shall I prove it to you again?”
The pure suggestiveness in his tone was enough to drive the nurse back out into the hallway, leaving the flower arrangement half-finished and Jayne and Ryder laughing into each other’s eyes with a joy that felt strong enough to last forever this time.
They were alone in each other’s arms, with a future that was beginning at last.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-7235-4
A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER
Copyright © 1997 by Cathy Stanton
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
His bead was pounding
Letter to Reader
Also by
About the Author
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
A Marriage To Remember Page 22
