by Metsy Hingle
And she had turned him down.
Oh, she’d cried, said that she still loved him. But she didn’t think they could make the marriage work. She’d claimed they were all wrong for each other, that she wasn’t the right kind of wife for him. He’d listened to what she’d said and to what she hadn’t said—that she had forgiven him, that she trusted him with her love.
He wanted Claire to love him again—but this time he also wanted her to trust him. Had he earned her trust the first time around, maybe he wouldn’t have lost her in the first place. Because if she had really trusted him, she would never have believed that she didn’t belong with him. He didn’t intend to make that mistake again.
The sound of Delvecchio slapping the file shut yanked Matt from his musings. “I don’t suppose it does any good to tell you that you should have turned this information over to me right from the start.”
“I’m giving it to you now,” Matt informed the scowling police detective.
“But if we’d known about this,” he said, tossing the file to the desk, “we might have approached the investigation into the assault on your wife differently.”
“Damn it, Delvecchio. When they told me Claire had been mugged, the last thing on my mind was a search I had done six months ago to locate her mother.” He jammed his hand through his hair. “Do you really think there might be a connection between her mother’s death and the attack on Claire?”
“I don’t know, but I think it’s something we need to consider.” He paused. “I take it you haven’t told your wife about the new lead your P.I. got on this guy Dexter.”
“No.” But the realization that his digging into Claire’s past might have been the reason she had been hurt left him sick inside.
“I guess there really isn’t any point in telling her now—at least not until her memory returns.” Delvecchio stood. “I’d like to get a copy of those reports. And I’ll also want to talk to your investigator.”
“You can keep the file. I’ve already made another copy.” Matt jotted down the private investigator’s name and phone numbers and handed it to the detective. “I’ve already alerted him that you might be calling.”
“Thanks. I’ll see if the department can turn up anything else on this Dexter character.” He hesitated. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Gallagher. The chances are slim that there is any connection between Dexter and the attack on your wife. After all, it has been twenty-five years, and your wife has a different name now.”
“I keep telling myself that. But there’s still that slim possibility.”
“Yes, there is. Just to be on the safe side, I wouldn’t leave Mrs. Gallagher alone.”
“I don’t intend to,” Matt informed him as he shook his hand and showed him to the door. And he fully intended to keep that promise.
“Send my regrets and say I’ll be unable to attend the Downtown Development District meeting tomorrow,” Matt told his assistant, Annie, ten days later. “And messenger over those contracts with the winery for me to review.”
“What about the meeting with the advertising agency this afternoon at three? You’re supposed to finalize everything for the holiday promotions.”
“Reschedule it.” The meeting would last for hours, and with Emma out with the flu, there was no way he intended to leave Claire alone that long. Delvecchio hadn’t turned up any new leads, and there was no reason to believe Claire was in any danger. Still, he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone.
“Matt, you’ve rescheduled the meeting twice already,” Annie complained. “Greg says that if you cancel again, there’s no way he’ll be able to guarantee Gallagher’s will be included in the holiday ads that start running Thanksgiving weekend.”
Annie was right, Matt admitted. He couldn’t put off the meeting again. “Okay. Call Greg and explain that I can’t get away right now. See if he can send a runner over with a copy of the ads and the run dates, then he and I can hook up by conference call later this afternoon and finalize this thing.” He made the notation on his calendar. “All right. What else have I got?”
Ten minutes later Matt hung up the telephone with a long list containing the names of people whose calls he needed to return and things he needed to handle. Putting down his pen, he rolled his shoulders to ease the stiffness in them, then closed his eyes and rubbed the knot of muscles at the back of his neck. Damn. It wasn’t even noon yet and here he was, wired tight as a crossbow and feeling as if he hadn’t slept in days. Which he hadn’t, Matt conceded. Last night had been like all the other nights since he’d brought Claire home from the hospital. He’d fallen into bed exhausted, but had lain awake tossing and turning all night because his thoughts were on Claire in the next room.
Claire was his wife. He loved her, and he wanted her. And living with her and keeping her at arm’s length was driving him out of his mind. It certainly didn’t help knowing that despite her amnesia she was physically attracted to him. If he’d had any doubts on that score, they had been put to rest that morning when she had walked in on him in the bathroom. He’d still been damp from his shower with only a towel anchored low on his waist. Just remembering the way her eyes had gone all smoky as she’d looked at him had him growing hot and hard all over again.
Convincing Claire to make love with him wouldn’t have been difficult. But he’d decided to be noble instead—telling himself that until her memory returned and she made the choice to be with him without any secrets or half-truths between them, it wouldn’t be fair to her. He’d done the right thing, the honorable thing, Matt assured himself.
But sometimes doing the honorable thing really stank.
“You know, you don’t have to baby-sit me.”
Matt jerked his gaze to the doorway, where the object of his thoughts and physical frustrations stood watching him. As always, just the sight of Claire hit him like a punch to the jaw. In the short time since she’d been released from the hospital, her bruises had faded and her skin had regained its healthy glow. Even some of the pounds she had lost during their separation seemed to have found their way back to her curves. She smiled easily these days, and right now her eyes were filled with that sparkle and sass that had first attracted him to her. Had it not been for the lost look that stole into her eyes periodically and the fact that she still favored her right ankle slightly, he would swear Claire was her old self again. Except that she didn’t remember him or anything about her life before the night of the mugging.
“I mean it, Matt. I really don’t need a baby-sitter.”
Matt recognized the defiant tilt of her chin. “No one’s baby-sitting you, Red.”
She arched her brow. “No?” she asked, and started across the room toward him.
Matt knew her slow pace was in deference to her tender ankle, but the lazy sway of her hips did nothing for his peace of mind. When he could speak without tripping over his tongue, he said, “Absolutely not.”
She took the chair across from his desk. Leaning forward, she eyed him skeptically. “Then how do you explain the fact that since I’ve been home from the hospital, there’s always someone here with me? If it’s not you, then it’s Emma. Or your mother or one of your sisters or cousins just happen to pop in for a visit and stay with me until you get home.”
Matt shrugged. “You know I have a big family, and everyone’s been worried about you. It’s only natural that they would come by to visit.”
“And I can’t tell you how much it means to me that they seem to care about me.”
“They do care about you,” Matt corrected.
“I know,” she said and bit her lip. “But I’m okay now—at least physically. As for my memory…well—” Her voice caught. “You said yourself that there’s nothing I can do but wait for it to come back. But in the meantime you can’t continue to baby-sit me this way. I know you have a job, responsibilities that need your attention. Unless you’ve changed your mind and decided to buy into Detective Delvecchio’s kidnapping theory—which he’s apparently abandoned
, since I haven’t heard anything more about it—then you need to quit worrying over me and go to work.”
“I told you, it’s been slow at the office. I’m just taking care of a few minor things.”
“Really? From what I overheard when I came in, and from the looks of that list you’ve got right there, I’d say just the opposite is true.”
“Then you’d be wrong,” Matt told her.
“Am I?” she asked, standing.
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look exhausted, Matt?”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” he admitted. He tensed as she circled the desk to stand behind him. As she did so, he caught her scent—that mix of flowers and sunshine and Claire—and it filled his head.
“Is that why you’re so tense?” she asked, resting her hands atop his shoulders. She began to knead the stiff muscles in his shoulders.
“Red, you don’t have to do this. I—” The protest died on his lips as she worked on a particularly tight knot and he groaned.
Claire laughed, and the carefree sound had Matt sucking in his breath.
“Whatever it is you’re thinking about, stop it. You’re tensing up again. Try to shut off that brain of yours for a few minutes and relax,” she commanded.
“Yes, ma’am.” But that was easier said than done. Because even while her fingers worked out the kinks in his neck and shoulders, a new type of tension began to build inside Matt—one that had nothing to do with his work schedule or worries and everything to do with wanting Claire. When she slipped her fingers beneath the collar of his shirt to massage his shoulders, Matt’s throat went dry at the feel of her hands on his bare skin. Leaning his head back, he looked up at her smiling face. And heat streaked through him like lightning.
The smile slid from her lips. Her velvet-brown eyes darkened as he reached up, entwined his fingers with hers. “Matt, I…”
At the shrill ringing of the fax machine on the credenza next to his desk, Claire stilled. She pulled her hands free and stared over at the fax machine as it began spitting out sheets of paper. Frowning, she pressed her fingertips to her temple. “The fax… I remember…”
Matt held his breath. “You remember?” Confusion clouded her expression, and he waited to see if she would recall being here with him in his study that night when the report on her mother came over the fax machine from the P.I.
She shook her head. “I thought…for a moment, I thought I remembered…”
The desolation in her voice ripped at him. She looked so vulnerable, so lost. He wanted to take her in his arms and confess everything, fill in the blanks for her. This time with the truth—not the combination of fact and fiction he’d been feeding her so far. But remembering the neurologist’s instructions, he waited for Claire to take that next step, for her to ask him for the answers.
Instead she gave him a watery smile. “I’m beginning to think that door in my mind that keeps inching open a crack only to slam shut again is going to get stuck and I’ll never get my memories back.”
“You will.”
“What if I don’t?” she asked, her voice raw with frustration.
“Then you and I will make new memories,” Matt told her.
“Maybe it’s time that I…that we start making those memories, Matt.”
Six
The moment the words were out, Claire wanted to snatch them back. Too late she realized how her comment had sounded. Given the sexual sparks that had been bouncing between them like heat waves, Matt might easily misconstrue her meaning. Not that she could blame him if he did get the wrong idea. She couldn’t. This tension between them was as much her fault as it was his.
“Is that what you want?” Matt all but growled the question at her.
“Yes. No,” she said, confused.
“Which is it, Red?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, skimmed the shell of her ear with his fingertip. “Yes? Or no?”
“I—” She shivered as he drew a line down her neck. Desire began to spin through her veins again, muddying her thought processes. She needed to be able to think straight if she was going to explain to him what she’d meant. But she couldn’t think at all as long as Matt was touching her, she admitted. Taking a step back, she slicked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and attempted once more to explain. “I didn’t mean… I wasn’t suggesting that you and I…that we—”
“It’s all right, Red,” he told her, the disappointment in his voice mirrored in his gray eyes. “You don’t have to explain. I realize you weren’t extending me an invitation to join you in bed.”
Claire flushed at his frankness, but she forced herself to meet his gaze. “Believe me, it has nothing to do with me not wanting to be with you in that way. I do. I think it’s as plain as day that I find you physically attractive. And I like you, Matt. Truly. You’ve been so great about…about everything. But being attracted to you physically and liking you aren’t enough for me to be able to make love with you.” She let out a breath and looked down at her hands. The diamond and gold rings Matt had placed on her finger winked at her, reminding her this man was no stranger. He was her husband. He loved her. And she had evidently loved him enough to marry him.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that, as much as I might want to, I’m not ready to be a real wife to you again yet. Not while I still feel so unsure about who I am. I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you want. It’s certainly not what you deserve. You have every right to expect more from me. But I…I can’t.”
He tipped up her chin so that she met his eyes. “Sometimes you just blow me away. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. I didn’t mean to push you. I don’t want to push you. And I’m sorry if you felt that’s what I was doing.”
“Matt, you don’t have to—”
“Yes. I do. You’re right. I want to make love with you. All I have to do is look at you to want you. It’s always been that way for me where you’re concerned, and I suspect I’ll still feel the same way when I’m ninety. But I really did mean what I said before. We’ll take this one day at a time—together. I don’t expect you to do anything until you’re ready. When we make love again, it’s going to be when you’re sure it’s what you want.”
His patience and understanding touched something deep inside Claire. And it also compounded the guilt pricking her conscience. “This is all so unfair to you,” she told him. “That’s what I was trying to say before…that it isn’t right for you to put your life on hold because of me.”
“It’s only temporary.”
She shook her head. “Temporary or not, it still isn’t right. There’s no reason you should have to keep juggling your responsibilities to your job and family while we wait for my memory to come back.”
“Let me worry about juggling things. My first responsibility is to you. You’re my wife. You’re what’s important to me.”
Claire’s heart swelled at his declaration. How on earth could she not remember this man? What type of woman was she that she could forget being loved like this? She couldn’t help wondering how had she been so lucky to marry him. Well, maybe she couldn’t give him the wife he wanted yet, but she could at least give him her honesty. Surely he deserved that much. “Matt, I think we both need to face the fact that it could be a long time before…” Claire hesitated. Refusing to allow herself to even think the word if, she continued, “…before my memory comes back.”
“You think that matters to me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “It doesn’t. I told you, I’m in this for the long haul, Red. For however long it takes. I’m not going anywhere.”
Pleasure spilled through her at the conviction in his voice—only to disappear in an instant at the sharp clap of thunder. Claire jerked her gaze to the sweep of windows. The overcast skies of that morning had given way to dark threatening clouds. Wind whipped through the branches of the oaks, stripping off leaves and sending acorns scattering. Then the rain began to fall—big fat drops beating down on the lawn and shru
bs like punishing fists. Uneasiness crawled down Claire’s spine. “I forgot the forecast called for more thunderstorms today,” she said, trying to ignore the furious slap of water and wind against the windowpanes. Nervous, she lifted a hand to her throat, toyed with the chain and cross at her neck. “There’s another hurricane out in the Gulf.”
“It’ll be over soon,” Matt assured her, already moving toward the windows and reaching for the cord to the drapes. He pulled the drapes closed, blocking out the storm, but not before a bolt of lightning streaked through the sky.
The blood in Claire’s veins turned to ice as another roll of thunder shook over the house like an angry fist. Lightning flashed, bounced against the closed drapes—and the door in her mind cracked open another inch.
Suddenly she remembered another storm…the sound of driving rain, the flashes of lightning tearing through the sky. Her heart started to hammer in her chest. Her palms grew damp. And the urge to run, to hide, washed over Claire like a tidal wave. Fear spiraling through her, she began to tremble as she tried to see through the mists clouding her mind. But just as the shadows started to part, a scream climbed in her throat. Panicked, she pulled back—and the door slammed shut again. And then the memory was gone.
“Claire?”
Frustrated by her own weakness, Claire wanted to weep. The memory had been so close, so real…
“Claire!”
At the urgency in Matt’s voice, she looked up, and there he was standing in front of her, his expression grim, his eyes filled with concern. Instinctively she went into his arms. He was strong. He was solid. He was safe. The impressions wrapped themselves around her, chasing away the terror that had licked at the edges of her mind only moments ago. As the heat of his body warmed her chilled skin, her heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm once more. Breathing deeply, she drew in the scents of lemon and starch on his shirt, the spice and woods scent of his aftershave.
