by Linda Turner
Joe nodded. “Fine. Whatever you say. Whatever it takes to get her memory back. She might hate my guts, but I’d rather see recognition and hate in her eyes than this god-awful wariness. You are saying that she’ll get her memory back, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” Grant agreed, “though there’s no saying how long it will take.” He hated like hell to tell him the rest, but there was no way to avoid the truth. “There’s something else you should know. God knows, I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you this, but you’re going to have to know eventually anyway. And I’ll tell you right now, there’s no use asking Annie about it because she can’t tell you a damn thing—at least not yet. So don’t hassle her for answers she can’t give you. That’s the last thing she needs right now.”
“Hassle her about what?” Joe growled, scowling. “Dammit, what the devil are you talking about?”
It wasn’t the kind of news you wanted to tell your best friend, but the Fates hadn’t given him a choice. Cursing the powers that be, he sighed heavily and gave it to him straight, with no sugarcoating. “She’s pregnant, man. And she hasn’t got a clue who the daddy is.”
Chapter 2
Annie was pregnant.
Nothing else registered. Caught off guard, Joe stared at Grant like a man who suddenly didn’t understand English. How? When? Questions slapped at him, stunning him. A baby. They were going to have a baby, ready or not. From out of nowhere, a laugh bubbled up in his chest and almost choked him. Of all the things he’d imagined, this was the last. Lord, how was a man supposed to react when he found out he was going to be a father for the first time? A crooked grin started to tilt up the corner of his mouth.
Then the rest of Grant’s announcement slapped him in the face.
She hasn’t got a clue who the daddy is.
He stiffened even as he told himself not to be a fool. This was Annie they were talking about. She’d been a virgin when he met her. He’d courted her for months, wooing her and earning her trust and love before she’d allowed him any kind of true intimacy. There was no way she’d have let a stranger touch her, let alone get her pregnant, just weeks after she’d left him. She just wasn’t capable of that kind of behavior. The baby had to be his.
If you won’t give me a baby, then I’ll find someone who will.
From the cold ashes of their last bitter argument, the threat she’d made right before she left him echoed cruelly in his mind, taunting him. Things hadn’t been good between them for a while—mainly because of work. In the months before she left him, he’d had nothing but one problem after another with the staff at Joe’s Place, the restaurant he owned on the Riverwalk. He was losing money and customers, and all his attention had been focused on finding new people to replace the troublemakers, then getting the business back on its feet financially. At the same time, Annie and Phoebe had just opened their real estate office the previous spring and were having to hustle just to break even.
In all the chaos, Annie had wanted to have a baby. Her timing couldn’t have been worse.
He’d tried to reason with her, to convince her to wait, but every discussion had ended in an argument. She’d accused him of not wanting children at all when nothing could have been further from the truth. Six months to a year—that’s all he’d wanted. Six months to get their lives back on track. Then they could start talking about babies.
But Annie hadn’t been willing to wait. She’d given him an ultimatum, and they’d both said some things they shouldn’t have. She’d ended up sleeping in the guest room, and when he woke up in the morning, she was gone. When she’d called later, it was to announce that she needed some serious time to herself to think about their future—if they had one. So she’d rented an apartment on the north side. She’d contact him when she was ready to talk.
Respecting her wishes and giving her the time she wanted was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he hadn’t had much choice. She’d been so upset that if he’d come after her, he would have lost her for sure.
And now she was back. And expecting a baby. There was a possibility that she could have been pregnant when she left him and not known it. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she let him know when she discovered her condition? She’d been gone for two months, for God’s sake! Surely sometime during that time, she could have found a few minutes to pick up the phone and let him know he was going to be a father.
Unless the baby wasn’t his.
The thought slipped like a dagger between his ribs. He immediately tried to reject the idea. But she’d been hurt and furious and in a reckless mood when she’d left him, desperate for a baby. And as much as he hated to admit it, she hadn’t been the same Annie he’d married for some time. She’d been on edge, unhappy, and nothing he’d done had seemed to please her. She’d complained about the hours he worked and the attention she claimed he didn’t give her. She might very well have gotten that attention from another man.
“Joe?” Grant said worriedly, when he just sat there. “I know this has to be a shock—”
“Shock?” he laughed harshly, his face set in bitter lines as he looked up from his grim thoughts. “Yeah, it’s a shock, all right, when you find out your wife might be carrying another man’s baby. And the hell of the thing about it is that she doesn’t have any more of a clue how she got in that condition than I do. Dammit, Grant, I need some answers, and I need them now! When is she going to get her memory back?”
Helpless, the other man could only shrug. “There’s no way to predict that.”
“Then try narrowing it down. Are we talking about a couple of days? A week? What?”
“It all hinges on the severity of the trauma she suffered,” he replied. “If I were you, I’d take her home, take care of her, and make her feel safe. She’ll remember when she’s ready.”
“And if the baby’s not mine?”
“Then you’ve got some decisions to make,” his friend said somberly. “Either way, that’s something you can’t discuss with her now. The less pressure she has to deal with, the faster her memory should come back.”
“What do you mean…her memory should come back? Is there a possibility that it won’t?”
Grant hesitated. “I don’t like to say never, especially when this isn’t my field of expertise. I think that with time, she will remember her past. Recalling whatever or whoever terrorized her, however, is another matter. Something scared her enough to make her forget her own name, and she may block that for the rest of her life.”
All too easily, Joe could see the stark terror in her eyes when she’d thought he was going to hurt her. He wasn’t a violent man, but at that moment he would have given everything he had to put his hands around the throat of the man who had put that look in Annie’s eyes. “That may be for the best,” he said grimly. “Some things are better off forgotten.”
Grant agreed. “Whatever happened, at least she followed her instincts and came home. I know it’s not much consolation, but deep down inside, she has to trust you, man, or she never would have run to you.”
Long after they left his friend’s office, Joe tried to find some comfort in that thought, but trust was the last thing he saw in Annie’s eyes when she looked at him. The sapphire blue depths that had once gazed up at him with such love were leery and full of apprehension. As cautious as a lone woman on a deserted highway who had no choice but to accept the help of the first stranger who came along, she finally let him talk her into his car, but she clung to the passenger door, ready to bolt if he so much as looked at her wrong.
And as much as he hated to admit it, it hurt. The Annie he knew, the only woman he’d ever loved, had been full of fun and sass and unafraid of the devil himself. Seeing her like this—pale and nervous and clearly frightened—of him, dammit!—tore him apart. What the hell had happened to her? Who had hurt her and why?
As Grant had predicted, it was determined after a battery of tests that Annie’s amnesia was psychological rather than physical. She would remember her p
ast when she was ready and not until then. As for her pregnancy, Annie’s gynecologist, Dr. Sawyer, couldn’t tell them. When she was further along, a sonogram would help determine how developed the baby was, but at this stage, it was impossible to pinpoint exactly how far along she was. Yes, Dr. Sawyer admitted, Annie could be less than two months pregnant. But then again, the doctor had seen women who were three or four months along and didn’t look much bigger than Annie. Joe was told to take her home, make sure she took her prenatal vitamins, and let her rest. For now, there was nothing anyone else could do.
So eight hours after they left the old Victorian house where they lived, they returned, knowing no more than they had when they’d set out…except that Annie was carrying Joe’s or somebody else’s baby. Every time he thought about it, it was all he could do not to grab her and demand some answers. Answers that she couldn’t give him, he reminded himself bitterly as she gazed up at the house like a first-time visitor.
Anticipating her questions, he said, “It’s called the Lone Star Social Club. Back in the trail-riding days, cowboys used to come here on Saturday nights to meet decent women.”
Earlier, Annie had been too upset to even notice where she was, let alone appreciate the old mansion’s turrets and gingerbread architecture, but now she couldn’t help smiling. Painted cream and trimmed in rose and robin’s-egg blue, with stained glass in every window and wide porches upstairs and down that wrapped all the way around it, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. “It’s gorgeous! How in the world did it survive all these years?”
“Actually, it almost didn’t. Ten years ago, the city was on the verge on condemning it when somebody stepped in and saved it. It was divided into apartments and restored, and it’s been the talk of the Riverwalk ever since. In case you don’t know, it’s located on pretty prime property, so whoever saved it must have had some major bucks.”
Surprised, she said, “What do you mean, whoever saved it? Don’t you know? Whoever owns it is your landlord.”
“Technically,” he agreed. “But he must be some kind of recluse because he’s never revealed his identity to anyone.”
Trailing her hand along the porch railing, Annie marveled at the wonder of the workmanship. “If I owned this, I think I’d tell the whole world. It’s beautiful. Is it haunted?”
He smiled, not surprised by the question. She might not know who she was, but she was still the same romantic she’d always been. “That depends on who you talk to. Some say that on still summer nights, you can hear the sound of music coming from the old ballroom in the attic. But it could just be coming from the nightclubs farther upriver.”
Her eyes wistful, Annie shook her head. “No, I like the ballroom version better.”
“I know,” he said ruefully, and punched in the security code on the keypad to the left of the mansion’s front door.
There was no elevator, only the grand staircase that led to the second floor. As they started up it and Annie marveled over the wainscoting and sweep of the stairs, it suddenly hit Joe that while she might be home again, he was a long way from having his wife back. If he even wanted her back. He was a stranger to her, and she was scared of men. To make matters worse, she had not only walked out on their marriage without trying to save it, she might have also betrayed him in the worst way a woman can betray a man. And she didn’t even remember it. How were they supposed to live together under those circumstances?
Wishing he could feel nothing but indifference when he looked at her, he couldn’t help noticing as they stepped into their apartment that whatever hell had sent her running blindly back there for protection was beginning to exact its toll. The bruises on her face stood out in sharp relief against her colorless skin, and she’d looked as if she had hardly enough energy to put one foot in front of the other.
Something shifted in his heart then, a damnable tenderness he seemed to have no control over. Silently cursing himself for the weakness, he said tersely, “You look bushed. Why don’t you go lie down while I fix us something to eat? I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
She wanted to argue—except for the brief history he’d given her about the house, he’d barely said two words to her since they’d left Grant Alexander’s office that morning. And over the course of the afternoon, his expression had grown more and more forbidding. They needed to talk, but she was so tired she could barely see straight.
“Maybe you’re right,” she admitted. “I am a little wiped out. Just give me a few minutes to put my feet up and I’ll be good as new.”
Five minutes. That was all she thought she needed, but the second she sank down on the couch and stretched out, what was left of her energy drained out of her. Her eyelids grew heavy, and within ten seconds flat she was out like a light. Forty minutes later, when Joe came into the living room to wake her, she hadn’t a clue that he was there until his hand settled lightly on her shoulder and he called her name.
Her eyes flew open, and before she was even awake, she found herself staring up into the face of a man as he bent over her, his dark, shuttered brown eyes much too close for comfort. Her breath lodged painfully in her throat, and for a split second, she was caught in the claws of a nightmare. The feel of a stranger’s hands on her, hurting her, was all too real.
A blind man couldn’t have missed the terror in her eyes. Swallowing a curse, Joe jerked his hand back. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right?”
A scream already working its way up her throat, she blinked, and just as quickly, recognition rushed through her. Limp, she pressed a shaking hand to her pounding heart. “J-Joe!”
“I called your name,” he said in that rough voice she knew would follow her into her dreams. “I thought you heard me.”
“No. I must have died away—”
“The food’s ready when you are—”
They both spoke at once, their words tumbling over each other as they sought to bridge the sudden awkwardness between them. Quickly sitting up, Annie swung her legs over the side of the couch. “I’ll be right there. Just give me a second to wash my face.”
“Take your time,” he said stiffly as he turned toward the door. “Just come on in the kitchen when you’re ready.” He was gone before she could say another word and never saw her wrap her arms around herself as the door swung shut behind him.
When she left the bathroom a few minutes later, her face was freshly washed and she was sure she was ready to face her husband. After all, he wasn’t a threat to her. She didn’t know why she had left him, but every instinct she had told her it wasn’t because he’d physically or mentally abused her. He just didn’t seem the type, so there was no reason to jump when he touched her. She was home. And safe.
Yet nothing seemed familiar. Not the antique iron bed in the master bedroom where she’d slept last night, or the living room with its rose-colored camelback sofa, or the gourmet kitchen, complete with a commercial stove large enough to feed an army. And most especially not the man she’d apparently shared the apartment with for the past five years.
Stopping in the kitchen doorway, she watched as Joe turned from the stove, two heaping plates of something that smelled wonderful in his hands. He’d been personable and charming with everyone they’d encountered over the course of the day, everyone, that is, except her. With her, he’d been reserved, watchful, his thoughts and feelings well hidden behind those dark brown eyes of his. He hadn’t said a word about the baby other than to inquire about how she was feeling, and she didn’t have a clue if he was glad or mad that she was back in his life. Which was something she could definitely identify with. She didn’t know why she’d come back to him when she was scared or where, if anywhere, they were going from here. Questions. God, she had so many questions!
“There you are,” he said, spying her in the doorway. “You want to eat outside or in? There’s a harvest moon tonight, and it’s not too cold.”
Confused, she followed his gaze from the dining alcove, where a Duncan Phyfe table larg
e enough to easily accommodate eight sat, to the French doors at the far end of the kitchen that opened onto an outdoor balcony that overlooked the San Antonio River two stories below. There, in the gathering twilight, an antique wicker table and two chairs offered an enticing view of the Riverwalk.
“Oh, outside,” she said, a delighted smile spreading across her face. “I had no idea we had a view of the river. It’s beautiful!”
If Joe had needed any further proof that she had blocked out everything about their life together, she’d just given it to him. She loved that balcony—in happier times, they’d eaten every meal out there when the weather permitted—yet there was no doubting her surprise at the sight of it. She honestly didn’t remember it.
“That balcony and this apartment is why we haven’t bought a house yet,” he informed her as he crossed to the patio table and set their plates on it. “You loved this old place from the moment you moved in and refused to even consider leaving it unless we found something similar. So far, we haven’t. I’m beginning to think it doesn’t exist. Have a seat and I’ll get us something to drink.”
Joe wasn’t surprised when she didn’t have to be told twice. Captivated, she stepped onto the balcony, which was hardly big enough to hold the table and two matching chairs, and stared down at the sights below. Framed on both sides by a forest of tropical plants and flowers, the river lazily meandered through skyscrapers and under arched bridges, creating a colorful, inviting oasis right in the middle of downtown.
She was still there, watching the activity below like a tourist, when he returned a few minutes later with glasses of iced tea. Taking the seat across from her, he couldn’t help smiling when she hardly spared him a glance. “Your food’s getting cold,” he pointed out dryly. “And it’s one of your favorites.”
That got her attention. Glancing down at the concoction on her plate, she frowned and lifted a doubtful eyebrow at him. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look like something I would like.”
