There were too many strings attached to his mother’s gifts. The extravagant presents had clearly made Alaina uncomfortable given her less affluent upbringing and he couldn’t blame her. Still, he’d never been quite sure how to navigate the tense waters between his mother and wife.
Finally, she glided into his study in a swirl of expensive perfume and one of her favored fitted Chanel suits. She leaned toward him for an air kiss on the cheek. “Porter.”
He complied, as expected, wondering if she’d ever carried him around the way Alaina cradled Thomas. Making real contact, rather than an air kiss or half hug.
“Mom,” he answered, angling away and leaning against his desk. “Why are you here?”
“To celebrate Christmas, and to help you with your new baby and your wife.”
Help now? He wasn’t buying it. His mother had visited only on holidays during his marriage, and she hadn’t done more than come to the hospital the day after the accident. She’d seen her grandson, brought some gifts and flowers and left. She sure as hell hadn’t cooed over her grandchild, much less snapped photos on her cell phone to share with her pals. “You’ve never been interested in babies before.”
“I’ve never been a grandmother before.”
“Mother...” He raised an eyebrow impatiently.
“Son,” she answered with overplayed innocence.
“Is that what you’re about? I’m your son. I know you. And you’re not going to cause mother-in-law troubles.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, Mother, please. You’ve made it clear for years that you don’t like Alaina.” The friction between his wife and mother, which had grown over time, had added pressure to an already strained marriage. “She’s working to regain her memory and the last thing she needs is you tossing in digs or telling her things she’s not ready to hear. She needs to be kept calm and happy while she recovers. She should remember the happy times first.”
His gaze gravitated to the framed reproduction of a map of the Florida East Coast Railway from the Flagler Museum, an anniversary gift from Alaina two years ago. She’d respected his work, complimented him on being an artist in his own right through his construction company. She’d bought the gift in commemoration of another Florida builder/entrepreneur from the past.
Some people went on cruises for vacation. He and Alaina had spent their time off touring historic sites and discussing the architectural history of the buildings.
There had been good times between them... God, he missed what they’d once had.
And now he had a second chance. He wouldn’t let anything or anyone stand in his way of repairing his relationship with Alaina. Of building a family together. It was too important.
“Your wife is ill now. I understand that and will be nice. If you’re not ready for her to hear about the ‘bad memories,’ then okay. I’m here for all three of you.” Courtney clicked her manicured nails. “I do have a heart.”
She placed her hand dramatically on her chest, and gave a picture-perfect smile. It was with just such finesse that Courtney Rutger won over jury after jury—if not her son.
His mouth twitched with a smile. “That’s questionable.”
“And you’re just like me.” She winked. “Makes a mother proud.”
He shook his head. “You’re something else.”
“That’s one way to put it.” She clapped her hands together. “Now where’s my grandson?”
“He’s getting his diaper changed.”
Frowning, she smoothed back her French twist, her dark hair showing only a few threads of gray. “Then I’ll wait a couple of minutes until he’s through with that.” She hesitated, shrugging. “What? I like to watch babies nap.”
“Since when?”
“Since always. They’re easier then.” She grinned unrepentantly. “Now smile. It’s the Christmas season. Your family is under one roof. And I certainly wouldn’t have wagered a chance in hell on that happening this year.”
Neither would he.
A creak of the door snapped his attention across the room. Alaina stood in the doorway frowning. Damn it. How much had she heard? Had his mother’s strategic verbal land mines already blown his second chance all to hell? Courtney might have said she intended to respect his wishes, but he wasn’t 100 percent certain she wouldn’t try to find some way to finagle her way past on a technicality.
“Alaina?” he asked, waving her inside.
She stepped deeper into the room. “Please introduce me to your mother.” She tugged a Christmas plaid burp cloth off the shoulder of her blue cotton dress that skimmed her curves. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you, ma’am, but you’re right. We’re all lucky to be here together since I very well could have still been in that hospital bed. Or not here at all.”
He exhaled hard, grateful she’d misunderstood his mother’s comment. But he couldn’t count on continued luck. He needed to make progress with his wife and get his family back. The sooner the better.
* * *
Two hours later, Alaina opened the closet in her bedroom. Hers and Porter’s.
The space was larger than her first college studio apartment.
One side was lined with rows of Porter’s clothes, suits and casual wear, each piece hung and arranged with precision, even down to sleeve length. She walked along the row, her fingers trailing the different textures. She could almost imagine the cloth still carried the heat of the man who wore them.
A half wall sectioned the male and female side of the “closet.” Shoes fit into nooks, purses, too. And somehow she knew to push the button on the end—jewelry trays slid out in staggered lengths and heights. The stones that winked at her varied from semiprecious to mind-bogglingly expensive.
Who was she now? In this life? This house with an apartment-sized closet?
Even that thought gave her pause, reminding her that she hadn’t grown up with finer things like the ones in this house. How comfortable had she been living here? Had she grown jaded and used to these luxuries?
Glancing back at the elegant driftwood four-poster bed, she began to seriously consider their arrangements as they became reacquainted. He’d said he wouldn’t pressure her and she hoped he meant that. He couldn’t possibly think they would be sharing a bed. Not yet. In spite of the attraction that still simmered between them, she wasn’t ready for intimacy just now.
But someday?
She could barely envision getting through the night, much less through the next few weeks. She turned to the closet again and studied the racks of clothes and rows of shoes and purses and her clothes as if they could give her some hint about the woman she’d been in those missing five years. Certainly one who enjoyed shopping and bright patterns. Grasping at the clothes, she enjoyed the cool feel of the silks and satins. This closet was luxurious—the kind women might fantasize about. Alaina half hoped one of these garments would stir a memory, and the past five years of her life would come rushing back to her.
No such luck.
She released a floor-length gown with a jeweled bodice and glanced down at the simple cotton dress she wore, so different from the rest of her clothes. Had Porter packed this for a reason or had he simply grabbed the first item his hands fell on?
The cotton dress didn’t feel like the artsy sense of herself she remembered from five years ago. In fact, the house didn’t much reflect her, either. Where was her love of Renaissance art? There were no paintings or statues she would have chosen. Everything was generic, decorator style, matching sets. Had she really spent time here? Been happy?
Where had the traces of herself gone?
The sense of being watched pulled her back into the room, where she found her husband standing by the four-poster bed with a tray of food. He wore a T-shirt and jeans now, the pants low slung on his hips a
s if he’d lost weight recently. Perhaps he’d been worried sick about her and Thomas. She tried to imagine what the past month had been like for him, but came up empty. It was hard enough for her to grasp her own situation, let alone empathize with his when she didn’t know him beyond what the past week had shown her. But all of those interactions had been in the hospital with its sterile environment and lack of privacy. The four and a half years they’d supposedly known each other were wiped clean from her mind. Not so much as a whisper of a memory.
“I thought you might be hungry. There wasn’t much of a chance to eat with the trip home, settling Thomas and my mother’s surprise arrival.” He set the tray on a coffee table in front of the sofa at the foot of their bed. His thick muscled arms flexed, straining against the sleeves of the cotton tee. She tried not to notice, but then felt slightly absurd. He was her husband and yet a stranger all at once.
“That’s thoughtful, thank you.” She watched him pour the tea, the scent of warm apples and cinnamon wafting upward. “Between a night nanny for the baby and a full-time cook-maid, I’m not sure what I’m going to do to keep myself occupied.”
“You’ve been through a lot. You need your sleep so you can fully recover. I’m here, too. He’s my child.”
“Our child.”
“Right.” Porter’s eyes held hers as he passed over the china cup of tea with a cookie tucked on the saucer. “He needs you to be well. We both do.”
The warmth of the cup and his words seeped into her and she asked softly, “Where are you planning to sleep?”
He studied her for a slow, sexy blink before responding, “We discussed that in the car.”
“Did we?” She wasn’t certain about anything right now.
“We did.” He sat on the camelback sofa, the four-poster bed big and empty behind him as he cradled a cup of tea for himself in one hand. “But just to be clear, nothing will happen until you’re ready. You’re recovering on more than one level. I understand that and I respect that. I respect you.”
His sensitivity touched her. She should be relieved.
She was relieved.
And yet she was also irritated. She couldn’t help but notice he still hadn’t said he loved her, that he wanted her. He wasn’t pushing the physical connection that obviously still hummed between them. Was he giving her space? Was he holding back because she couldn’t possibly love a man she didn’t know? She kept hoping for some kind of wave of love at first sight. But they were fast approaching more than a few hundred sights and still that wave hadn’t hit.
Attraction? Yes. Intrigue? Definitely. But she was also very overwhelmed and still afraid of what those memories might hold. She wasn’t able to shake the sense that she couldn’t fully trust him. If only he would say the right words to reassure her and calm the nerves in the pit of her belly.
She looked around the room, everything so pristine and new looking, a beach decor of sea-foam greens, tans and white. More of the matched set style that, while tasteful, didn’t reflect her preferences in the least. “How often did we come here?”
“I have a work office in the house. So whenever we needed to.”
She set aside the tea untouched. “You’re so good at avoiding answering my questions with solid information.”
A flicker of something—frustration?—flexed his jaw. “We spent holidays here and you spent most of your summers here.”
“Then how do I not have any friends in this area?” Where were the casseroles? The welcome home cookies? Or did the überwealthy with maids and night nannies not do that for each other?
“Many people around here are vacationers. Sometimes we invited friends or business acquaintances to stay with us, but they’re back home in Tallahassee or at their own holiday vacation houses. We also traveled quite a bit, depending on my work projects.”
“So I just followed you around from construction job to job?”
“You make that sound passive. You’re anything but that. You worked on your master’s degree in art history for two years. One of your professors had connections in the consulting world and our travels enabled you to freelance, assisting museums and private individuals in artwork purchases. You did most from a distance and we flew in for the event proper when artwork arrived.”
That was the most he’d said to her at once since she’d woken from her coma. And also very revealing words. “We sound attached at the hip.”
He rested his elbows on his knees, staring into his empty teacup. “We were trying to make a baby.”
His quiet explanation took the wind right out of her sails. She’d guessed as much since they were adopting and had no other children, but hearing him say it, hearing that hint of pain in his words, made her wonder how much disappointment and grief they’d shared over the years while waiting for their son. Then to have that joy taken from them both because she couldn’t remember even the huge landmarks in their relationship that should be ingrained in her mind—when she’d met him, their first kiss, the first time they’d made love...
“And starting our family didn’t work the way we planned.”
He looked up at her again. “In case you’re wondering, the doctors pinpointed it to a number of reasons, part me, part you, neither issue insurmountable on its own, but combined...” He shrugged. “No treatment worked for us, so we decided to adopt.”
Thomas. Their child. Her mind filled with the sweet image of his chubby cheeks and dusting of blond hair. “I’m glad we did.”
“Me, too,” he said with unmistakable love.
The emotion in his voice drew her in as nothing else could have. She sat beside Porter, their shoulders brushing. It was almost comfortable. Or did she want it to be that way? So many emotions tapped at her, dancing in her veins. “He’s so beautiful. I hate that I don’t remember the first instant I laid eyes on him, the moment I became his mother.”
“You cried when the social worker at the hospital placed him in your arms. I’m not ashamed to say I did, too.”
Oh, God, this man who’d not once mentioned love could make a serious dent in her heart with only a few words. It was enough to make her want to try harder to fit into this life she didn’t remember. To be more patient and let the answers come.
She touched his elbow lightly, wanting the feel of him to be familiar, wanting more than chemistry to connect them. “This isn’t the way Christmas was supposed to be for us.”
“There was no way to foresee the accident.” He placed his hand over hers, the calluses rasping against her skin, another dichotomy in this man who could pay others to do anything for him yet still chose to roll up his sleeves.
“I never did ask how it happened. There have been so many questions I keep realizing I’ve forgotten to ask the obvious ones.”
“We picked up Thomas at the hospital. Since it was so close to our beach house, we considered staying here for the night, but instead opted to drive back home to Tallahassee. A half an hour later, a drunk driver hit us head-on.”
“We wanted our son in our own house, in his nursery.”
“Something like that.”
“What does his nursery look like at our house in Tallahassee?”
“The same as here, countryside with farm animals. You said you wanted Thomas to feel at home wherever he went. Even his travel crib is the same pattern. You even painted the same mural on the wall here.”
She remembered admiring the artwork when she’d laid the baby in his crib, enjoying the quiet farm scene with grazing cows and a full blue moon.
“I painted it?” Finally, something of herself in this house of theirs. Her eyes filled with tears. Such a simple thing. A mural for their son in their two homes—or did they have more?—and yet she couldn’t remember painting the pastoral scene. She couldn’t remember the shared joy over planning for their first child, or the shared tears.
And right now she was seconds away from shedding more tears all over the comfort of Porter’s broad chest.
When would she feel she belonged in this life?
Three
Porter woke from a restless sleep. He would have blamed it on staying in the guest room, but he’d bunked here more than once as his marriage frayed. He knew that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t sleep. Sitting up with the sheets tangled around his waist, he listened closer and heard it again. Someone was awake.
The baby?
He swept the bedding away and tugged on a pair of sweatpants. Even having a night nanny, he couldn’t turn off the parenting switch. Over the past few weeks, the accident and time in the hospital had kept him on high alert, fearing the worst 24/7.
A few steps later, he’d padded to the nursery, determined to relieve the night nanny and watch Thomas himself. He’d worked with minimum sleep before. Actually, this past month had made him quite good at operating on only a few hours of rest. He was still so glad his son was okay that being with him was reassuring, even in the middle of the night. Those quiet hours also offered the uninterrupted chance to connect with his child.
Stepping into the doorway, he stopped short. Instead of the matronly granny figure he’d hired to help out, he found his wife feeding their son a bottle in a rocker by the crib.
“Hey, little man,” she said softly, propping the bottle on her arm, “I’m your mommy. Forever. And I do want to be your mother. Who wouldn’t love that precious face of yours? I wish we could have had the past month together, but that wasn’t my choice.”
Alaina took his breath away.
Though her pale pink T-shirt was crumpled from sleep, it still hinted at the shape of her curves and the matching pale, striped shorts exposed her beautiful legs.
But Porter couldn’t see her face. Like any new mother, she was focused, homed in on her child. Her head was tilted down toward Thomas, blond hair spilling over her right cheek and shoulder.
A Christmas Baby Surprise: Reclaimed by the Rancher Page 3
