“Lisa, honey, you said you’ve been in an accident. I’ll get you to a doctor and everything will be all right, you’ll see.”
“I’ve been to a doctor.” She was becoming really irritated with the way he spoke to her, as though she were an imbecile. “Going to a doctor isn’t going to bring back my memory. How did you find me?”
He looked startled at her question. “What? It, well, it wasn’t a question of finding you. I knew where you were.”
Suspicion sharpened her voice. “How?”
“Why, naturally you told me you were coming here.”
No, Lisa thought. She didn’t think so. She had gathered her medical records and several thousand dollars in cash and then told him where she was going? That didn’t make sense. But then, none of this made sense, so he could be telling the truth.
God, she was confused!
“Come on, honey, let’s get your things and go home.”
The thought of leaving with this man made her decidedly uneasy.
Well, of course. He was a stranger; she didn’t remember him.
But what if he was her husband? Shouldn’t she go with him?
“Honey?”
“No.” She couldn’t do it. “If you’re who you say you are, then I’m sorry, but I can’t go with you.”
Anger flashed in his eyes. “Don’t be difficult.” He shoved past Jack and reached for her arm.
In a blink Jack was on him. He grabbed Roger by the shoulder and spun him around. “You lay a hand on her, and I’ll have to mess up that pretty face of yours.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You better believe it.”
Roger seethed. “Since she doesn’t remember me, allow me to explain,” he said through clenched teeth. “I am an attorney. I will sue you for all your worth, which probably isn’t much.”
“Now let me explain,” Jack said, his voice low and cold. “You’re a trespasser in my home, presenting a physical threat to a woman under my protection. And if you still don’t understand, consider this. Dead men can’t sue anybody.”
Roger sucked in a sharp breath and stuck out his chest. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Please,” Lisa said. God, she didn’t want anyone hurt because of her. “Please just go, Mr. Hampton. Roger. If you’re really my husband, you’ll still be my husband after I’ve had some time to think this through.”
“Why, of course I will.” Roger’s stance eased as he turned back to Lisa. Between one breath and the next, the lines of anger on his face turned to contrition. “I apologize. I understand that with your memory loss, you need a little time to get used to the idea. But wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here with you so you could learn to be comfortable around me?”
She shook her head. “No. There’s a motel in town, isn’t there, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“You could stay there,” she told Roger, “until I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”
With obvious reluctance, Roger agreed. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“No,” she said again. “I’m going to need a few days.” He opened his mouth to object, but she rushed on. “I appreciate your patience. I’m sure you’ll understand that I would be foolish to simply take your word for everything when you’re a stranger to me.”
“But, darling, unless you get your memory back, I’ll still be a stranger to you in a few days. Why wait?”
Lisa backed away from him. “Because that’s the way I want it.” She kept her tone reasonable when what she wanted to do was scream at him to get away from her and not come back. She didn’t want to remember him. Didn’t want to know she was married to him. God, please, don’t let me be married to him.
“Very well,” he finally said. “I’ll be back day after tomorrow.”
“You’ll stay away,” Jack said, “until she calls you at the motel and asks you to come back.”
Lisa wrapped her arms around herself and watched the man named Roger Hampton get in his shiny black BMW and drive away.
Jack closed the door and turned toward her. “Are you all right?” She didn’t look all right to him. Her face was ashen and she was shaking so badly it was a wonder she was still standing.
“I…I don’t want to remember him,” she blurted.
Some of the tension that had tied his stomach in knots the minute the man had introduced himself eased. She didn’t want to remember Roger Hampton.
But the question had to be asked. “Could he be telling the truth?”
Lisa looked at Jack with such devastation on her face that it hurt to see it. “Why would he lie? He hadn’t known about my amnesia. He wouldn’t have known that I couldn’t deny anything he said. We even have the same last name. Oh, God, what am I going to do, Jack? What am I going to do?”
There was a need in Jack every bit as big as the need he saw and sensed in Lisa. A need so huge he couldn’t deny it one second longer. Right or wrong, he couldn’t stop himself and didn’t even try. He slipped his arms around her and held her close.
“I don’t know,” he told her truthfully. “But I know what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to do anything, and I mean anything, that you’re uncomfortable with. You hear me?”
With her face buried against his shoulder, she murmured what he hoped was a yes.
“If that man makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to have anything to do with him.”
Jack’s reassurance was balm to Lisa’s soul. As always, when she needed him, he was there in exactly the way she needed him to be. Always strong. Always gentle.
Oh, God, why couldn’t she have a husband like him?
“Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
But it wasn’t right, holding him, leaning on him, letting him take care of her. She would be a mother soon. How was she to take care of a child and give it a good life if she couldn’t straighten out her own life?
Slowly she pulled away and gazed into his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
His hands trailed across her back to her arms. “For what?”
“For not reminding me that a wife belongs with her husband. I believe that, you know. I believe it strongly. That when two people marry, they should stand beside each other.”
“So do I,” he said, “to a point. But sometimes, Lisa, things don’t work out the way we plan.”
She gave a wry chuckle and pulled completely free of his touch. “Don’t I know it.” She felt cold without his touch. “I doubt that when I came to Wyoming I planned to lose my memory. I just wish I knew what I had planned,” she added with a mixture of fear and frustration.
“It’ll come,” Jack told her gently. “Just give it time. You’re remembering more every day.”
“Bits and pieces. Just enough to make me crazy.”
“It’s only been a few days,” he reminded her.
“I know, I know. And I was doing all right until he showed up.”
“You don’t have to go with him.”
“I don’t plan to.” And with the words, her decision was made. “I shouldn’t say this, because I may have to eat my words, but I don’t like that man. If I find out I’m married to him, I’m not going to like myself very much, either.”
Jack tried to fight the fierce satisfaction that welled up inside him at her statement. It shouldn’t matter to him how she felt about the man who claimed to be her husband. She had already remembered the name Roger in association with comments so personal only a husband or lover could have made them. The man probably was her husband.
The thought ate a hole in his gut. Which was asinine. He’d known from the moment he’d met her that she surely had a husband. Now the man had shown up. End of question.
But dammit, did it have to be that man? Jack didn’t blame Lisa in the least for saying she didn’t like Roger Hampton. There was something too…slick about him for Jack’s taste. Too cold and calculating.
It’s not your taste that matters, pard.
“I’
ll have to alter my plans,” Lisa said. “I can’t stay here any longer and cause you trouble.”
He didn’t like the sound of that, no sir, he did not. “You’re staying right here,” Jack said emphatically. Until she got her memory back, she was too vulnerable to that smooth-talking snake Hampton. Even if the man was her husband, he should be willing to back off rather than force his will on her.
“Ace and Belinda will be home in a few days,” he added. “Belinda will want you here. I’m going to go try calling her again. She can tell you whether or not you’ve got a husband.”
Lisa watched Jack head for the wall phone in the kitchen. Calling Belinda was the logical thing to do. But what if he reached Belinda this time? Lisa wasn’t sure she wanted to know for certain that she was married to Roger Hampton. Don’t let it be true. Don’t let it be true.
She got a reprieve from having her fears confirmed. There was no answer in Belinda and Ace’s hotel room. But this time when Jack left a message, he stated that it was an emergency.
“The boys are fine, it’s nothing like that,” he told the voice mail in their room. “It’s about Lisa. She needs some information and it’s urgent. If you can’t reach her at the main house, try me at my number. Day or night.”
After he replaced the phone in the cradle, he and Lisa stared at each other a long moment, neither saying a word.
The next two days were the most miserable Lisa had ever experienced—at least in her memory, such as it was. But if she’d ever been this confused and unhappy before, she was glad she couldn’t remember it.
Oh, she knew what her problem was, just as she knew there was no solution.
Her problem was her growing feelings for Jack. At every turn, he’d been there for her, supporting her—sometimes literally, she thought, remembering the times he’d carried her in his arms—boosting her spirits, making her smile and laugh. She could so easily fall in love with him.
But to what point? There was no future for her with him. First because she was most likely married. Yet even if she wasn’t married, she was having another man’s baby. What man would want a woman under such circumstances?
Then there was this feeling deep inside that told her she didn’t have what it took to make a man happy. That she shouldn’t trust her heart to a man because he would only break it. She had enough to worry about with the baby coming and a life to build and no memory of who she was or what she was capable of. She didn’t need the added worry of a man in her life.
If that man turned out to be Roger Hampton, she was ashamed to admit that she could very easily put him out of her mind.
But Jack…
What would happen to her marriage if she couldn’t put Jack out of her mind, out of her heart?
“Oh, God, why is this happening to me?”
Jack wasn’t in any better emotional shape than Lisa. He had to force himself to stay away from her when all he wanted to do was scoop her up in his arms and claim her for himself, Roger Hampton or any other husband be damned.
Yet the feeling, the wanting to simply be with her, to hold her, touch her…taste her, was so out of character that Jack almost didn’t recognize himself. He’d wanted other women—and had had them. But he’d never wanted like this. He didn’t know what the matter was with him. If he didn’t know better, he might think he was falling in love with her.
But, of course, he did know better. He didn’t know the first thing about loving a woman. He honestly believed he was incapable of such a tender emotion. And if ever a woman deserved tender emotion, deserved to be loved and happy, it was Lisa. He wasn’t the man for her.
Neither, in his opinion, was Roger Hampton. If Jack had to watch her walk away on that man’s arm, it might just kill him.
So he stayed away from her as much as he could. No more trips to the house in the middle of the morning to see how she was doing. No more flimsy excuses to stop by in the afternoons or hang around after supper at night. He went up for lunch, but they barely spoke, and he left quickly. Supper was more of the same, but at least then Trey and Stoney were there to take up the slack in the conversation.
On top of it all, mixed in with it, was his growing frustration and anger that Belinda hadn’t called back. Damn her, what were she and Ace doing that they couldn’t take the time to return a phone call?
By the afternoon of the second day after Hampton’s visit, Jack realized he wasn’t doing anybody any favors by staying away from Lisa. He was deliberately denying himself the pleasure of her company, when she would be gone soon. What kind of idiot did that make him?
And he was essentially condemning her to solitary confinement in the house. She was stuck there with no way to go anywhere.
“Wanna go for a drive?”
At first Lisa scarcely paid any attention to Jack’s question. She was so glad to see him without the excuse of a meal between them, and without the other men to act as buffers, that her heart was racing and her blood was rushing in her ears.
Then she realized what he’d asked. “A drive?” Caution crept up her spine. He had all but ignored her for most of two days—since the afternoon Roger Hampton had shown up. Jack had deliberately backed away from her, and she had more or less encouraged him to do so.
Now he stood before her asking if she wanted to go for a drive as if there had never been any distance between them.
“Why?” she asked.
He took a deep breath, then let it out. Sadness filled his eyes. “Because you have to be tired of being cooped up in the house all the time.”
“Maybe I am,” she replied. “But Jack, it’s not your job to entertain me. You must have work that needs doing.”
“Is that a no?”
“No,” she said in frustration. “I just want it clear that I don’t expect favors from you.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Why not? Not that taking you for a tour of the ranch is any kind of favor. Call it a gesture of friendship.”
It was only then, when she wanted to shoot back with the fact that favors were always called in and had to be repaid, that she realized he had hurt her feelings by staying away from her. It was the hurt that wanted to fire back at him, when what she really wanted to do was step out into the sunshine with him and go for that drive.
Where had she learned that accepting favors was a costly mistake? Had Roger Hampton taught her that?
If he had, she’d be damned before she let him—husband or not—cause her to deny herself something as simple as a drive through the snowy countryside. Nor was she going to let her own hurt feelings keep her from accepting Jack’s invitation, even if Jack himself had contributed to that hurt.
She was going for herself. It wasn’t healthy, for her or the baby, to shut herself up in the house this way. She needed a little fresh air and sunshine, and a little company other than her own.
She was not going just for the chance to be with Jack.
Oh, Lisa, when did you start lying to yourself?
She conveniently ignored that voice in her head. “A tour of the ranch?” she asked. “You mean I didn’t see most of it the day you brought me here?”
Jack smiled. “Not hardly. Come on, let’s find you a pair of Belinda’s boots in case you want to get out of the rig somewhere to stretch your legs.”
Jack’s not hardly had been an understatement. They started by driving the two miles to the mailbox to get the day’s mail. From there, as she recalled from the day they’d gone to town, it was another thirteen miles east to the nearest pavement. But this time, instead of heading east, Jack turned north for five miles to another east-west gravel road that ran along the north side of the Flying Ace.
The sky was so clear and bright that it almost hurt to look at it. But for the mountains looming in the west, the land looked flat, but now and then Lisa caught a glimpse of dips and rises, which told her the flatness was deceptive. A line of winter-bare trees marked the occasional creek or stream. Here and there she spotted glossy black cattle, or sometimes
rich russet, grouped together around what was left of the hay bales Jack, Trey and Stoney had hauled to them after the blizzard.
“The farming operations are along the north side,” Jack told her. “The first field here is alfalfa.”
Lisa bit back a smile. If it was alfalfa, it was still buried. “Looks like snow to me.”
“Smart aleck.”
“Did you have to plow this road? It looks like it goes on forever.”
“It goes far enough—all the way to the mountains. Trey plowed a stretch of it. So did Stan Kovic, the neighbor west of here. But it’s a county road, so the county took care of clearing it from here to the highway. Stoney plowed the rest of the ranch roads.”
In a few minutes they neared a house with a barn and several other outbuildings.
“Is that part of the ranch?” Lisa asked.
“Uh-huh. That’s Trey’s house. He’s our farmer. Takes care of the crops.”
After they passed the house, Jack pointed out another field. “Winter wheat.”
It, too, was still covered in several inches of snow. “Gee, it looks just like alfalfa to me.”
Jack chuckled.
As they neared the foothills, Jack turned back south and crossed a cattle guard. “We’re back on Flying Ace land now.”
A house stood near the turnoff, one of the Flying Ace’s two section houses, complete with barn, corrals and several sheds. Five miles farther along the road sat the other section house, the one where Jack and Lisa had taken shelter during the blizzard. The one where she’d put her car in the ditch.
“It seems strange,” she said, “seeing something familiar.”
“It’s all a matter of perspective,” Jack said lazily. “To me it seems odd to see something unfamiliar.”
“Are you teasing me about my sieve of a brain?”
“It’s not your brain that’s got holes in it, it’s just your memory. Anyway, you’re tough. I figure you can take a little teasing.”
Lisa grinned to herself. She couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though she hadn’t been playfully teased much in recent years, if ever. She liked it.
They were about halfway between the site of her accident and ranch headquarters when Lisa spotted another side road taking off to the south. “I don’t remember seeing that the last time we came this way.”
A Child on the Way Page 12
