Wife With Amnesia

by Metsy Hingle

  The phone continued to ring. “Nothing’s more important to me than you, than us,” he told her before he snatched up the phone. “This had better be good.”

  A moment of silence was followed with the disapproving voice of his mother, “Matthew James, is that any way for you to answer the telephone?”

  Matt winced. “Sorry, Mom. Claire and I were…” At the shocked gasp from the other side of the bed, he cut a glance at Claire and grinned at the panicked look in her eyes. “Claire and I were just about to go to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry. I realize it’s very late, but Maggie’s at the hospital—”

  “What’s wrong?” Matt asked, sobering instantly. “The baby’s not due for another three weeks.”

  “Maggie?” Claire mouthed his sister’s name as she moved beside him.

  Matt nodded. And with Claire sharing the receiver with him, they listened as his mother explained that his sister had begun complaining of backache early that evening and the pain had escalated until her husband had taken her to the hospital about an hour ago.

  “Are Maggie and the baby going to be all right?” Matt asked, concerned for his sister.

  “She’s in labor, and even though the baby’s coming early, the doctor says it should be fine. It already weighed over six pounds when she was in last week, so it won’t be a preemie.”

  “Ask her if we should go to the hospital,” Claire whispered.

  Matt hesitated for a moment as he thought of his plans for the night. “Claire wants to know if we should come down to the hospital?”

  “Actually, I was hoping maybe you’d be willing to come to Maggie’s house and watch the children for me so I can go. Dan says she’s been asking for me.”

  “Of course,” Matt said without hesitation.

  “Thank you. And thank Claire, too. Katie was supposed to watch the kids when it was time for Maggie to have the baby, but—”

  “But she and Dad are out in California for that Wine Awards Gala and to discuss the private labeling for Gallagher’s.”

  “Yes,” his mother said. “And they’re not due back until tomorrow. You said Emma had been down with the flu again, and with Dan’s family living in Texas, I didn’t know who else to ask.”

  “It’s not a problem, Mom. Give me time to get dressed and I—”

  “We,” Claire corrected.

  “We’ll be over.”

  After he hung up the phone, he slid his arm around Claire, held her close. “Looks like I’m not going to keep my promise to you the way I had intended after all,” he told her.

  With her head on his shoulder, she looked up at him. A smile curved her lips. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I think you made a pretty valiant attempt. You’ll get no complaints from me at any rate.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Besides,” she told him as she scooted off the bed and headed for the bathroom, “I’ll take a rain check and you can make good on your promise later.”

  Nine

  “My mother says she’ll be here by noon,” Matt told Claire the next morning while seated at the breakfast table of his sister Maggie’s home.

  “She doesn’t have to rush on my account. I told you Lori said she can handle things at the shop until I get there.”

  “Have I told you lately how much I love you, Mrs. Gallagher?” he asked.

  “Not for at least thirty minutes,” she replied, warmed as much by the words as the love shining in his eyes.

  “I do love you.” Leaning closer, he kissed her tenderly. “And you’re an angel for pinch-hitting like this. My mother sounded exhausted when she called from the hospital.”

  “I’m sure she is, after being up all night waiting for little Daniela to make her debut. Not to mention how tired your sister must be.” Claire sighed as she envisioned her sister-in-law with the new baby cradled at her breast. “Maggie must be thrilled to have her little girl at last.”

  “Yeah. Mom says she and Dan are both over the moon.” At the sound of a crash in the next room, Matt frowned. “Hey you guys, that had better not be a ball I hear bouncing in there,” he called out to his two nephews, who were supposed to be watching a video in the next room.

  “You dummy, Alex,” came a little boy’s voice from the next room. “I told you that trash can would make too much noise.”

  Matt groaned. “I’d better go check on that pair before they destroy Maggie’s den and my sister tries to hang me with the tab for repairing it.”

  Claire smiled as he strode away. Taking a sip of her coffee, her thoughts drifted to Maggie and Dan and their newly expanded family of three. She tried to imagine herself and Matt as parents. Surprisingly, she had no trouble doing so. The image of a baby with Matt’s eyes and her hair came full-blown into her mind and filled her with a sweet longing.

  “No major damage and they’re quiet for the moment,” Matt said as he rejoined her at the table. “You sure you don’t mind staying with those little monsters until my mother gets here? I can still take them to the office with me.”

  Claire rolled her eyes at the very idea. She had visions of Matt in the midst of a telephone conference with five-year-old twin boys underfoot. “We both know you’d get absolutely nothing done. Besides,” she said, smiling as she came to her feet. “It’ll be kind of fun for me. Maggie’s little guys are charmers—just like their uncle.”

  “I’m certainly glad to see you recognize the source of their charm,” he said, a cocky grin on his face.

  She laughed. “Go to work. I’m through stroking your ego for today. And quit worrying about me. I’ll be fine. I like children,” she informed him while she straightened his tie. The words were no sooner out than she wondered if that was true. “At least I think I like them.”

  Matt captured her fingers. “You love kids,” he assured her. “And they love you. I can tell you those two in the other room adore you.”

  “That’s good to hear,” she said, but it brought home something that had been rumbling around in her head for the past couple of days. Why didn’t she and Matt have any children?

  “Hey, hearing that Maggie’s little monsters adore you wasn’t meant to make you sad.”

  Claire blinked. “It didn’t.”

  “Then why the long face?”

  “I guess talking about kids and thinking about Maggie and Dan’s baby made me wonder about us,” she admitted. “Did we…did we plan to have a family?”

  The hand holding hers tensed. Something dark and painful flashed in Matt’s gray eyes before he lowered his lashes. When he looked at her again, his expression was guarded. “You wanted to wait awhile,” he told her.

  “What about you? Is that what you wanted, too?”

  One heartbeat stretched into two, then three, as Claire waited for him to answer. “I wanted you,” he said softly. “I understood your reasons for wanting to wait. You’d worked hard to build Desserts Only, and your business was just starting to take off. I wanted you to be happy. If that meant us postponing starting a family or opting not to start one at all, I could live with it. I still can. I can live without having children, Claire, if it’s not what you want. What I can’t…what I don’t want to live without is you.”

  Echoes and shadows spun around the edges of her mind. She could almost hear Matt’s voice saying those same words to her, another time, another place. “I…we’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” she asked, wanting to rip through the fog and remember.

  “Before we separated.”

  Claire tugged her hand free, pressed her fingers to her temple where a small scar served as a reminder of the mugging. But the mists refused to part. “I…I think my memory is starting to come back. Just bits and pieces right now. But I keep getting these feelings, sort of a déjà vu, that I’ve been somewhere, seen or heard something before.”

  Matt stared at her with anxious eyes. “Then you remember our conversation about having a baby?”

  “N
o,” she admitted. “Not really. But I’m sure that I wanted…that I want to have babies with you, Matt.”

  “Nothing would make me happier, Red. But I meant what I said. You’re what’s most important to me—not having a child to carry on the Gallagher name.”

  She cupped his cheek. “Well, since it occurred to me this morning that we haven’t been using any form of birth control, you might end up with me and a baby,” she informed him.

  “But I thought…” He huffed out a breath. “It was stupid of me to assume you were still taking the pill. I should have realized you wouldn’t remember to.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Besides, considering our activities these last couple of nights,” she said, pressing a hand over her abdomen, “I might already be pregnant.”

  Matt’s mouth split into a grin and he grabbed her. He kissed her hard and deep, and when he finally lifted his head, she was breathless. “Do you know what an amazing woman you are, Claire Gallagher?”

  “No,” she told him grinning. “But you can tell me tonight.”

  “Oh, yuck! Uncle Matt’s kissing a girl,” five-year-old Nicholas Reed exclaimed.

  “Yeah, yuck,” chimed in his brother Alex.

  “Yuck nothing, guys. I’m the luckiest man alive.” As if to prove his point, he kissed her again, ignoring the little boys’ giggles.

  She was the one who felt lucky, Claire thought a moment later. “I think you’d better get to the office,” she told Matt, and walked him to the door with the two boys trailing at their heels.

  “Call me if you have any problems. And promise me you’ll keep an eye on the weather? I don’t like the fact that that hurricane is still sitting out there in the Gulf and gathering strength.”

  “The forecaster says it’s going to head for northern Louisiana, not us.”

  “I don’t care what they predict. The weathermen have been wrong before. That thing can change directions at any time, and if it does, it’ll come right at New Orleans. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll probably still get some heavy rains.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on the news and turn the portable radio on in the kitchen. And, Matt,” she said, touching his arm. She wanted to relieve the stress she saw swimming in his eyes the moment the topic of the weather came up. “I can handle a few thunderstorms now. If I get nervous, I’ll think of the last one and how safe I felt.”

  His eyes flared with heat, sending a shiver through Claire as he made no attempt to disguise that he wanted her. “You tell me that and then expect me to go to work?” he growled against her lips.

  “Yes,” she said, feeling a little scorched herself.

  “You’re a cruel woman, Claire Gallagher.”

  “Oh, yuck! More kissing!”

  “That’s right, pal. More kissing.” He smacked her lips again and stooped down to high-five the two boys. “All right, you guys. I’m trusting you two knights to guard my lady here while I’m gone. Can you do that?”

  “You can count on us, Uncle Matt,” Nicholas said.

  “Yeah, you can count on us,” Alex said solemnly.

  Claire laughed at the antics. “Go! I’ll see you tonight at home.”

  “I understand, Dad. But for the time being, it looks like you and Katie are stuck in L.A.,” Matt told his father late that afternoon. With the telephone in one hand, he used the remote to hit the mute button on the television in his office, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen. “According to the latest weather reports, we’re under a hurricane warning here for the next twelve hours. About thirty minutes ago the mayor shut down Moisant Airport as a precautionary measure.”

  “I was thinking about trying to get a flight into Shreveport and maybe renting a car and driving to New Orleans,” his father said.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it. Even if this thing doesn’t hit, the roads are going to be a mess once the rain starts. Besides, they’ve announced voluntary evacuations in some of the lower lying areas of the city, and in the last news report I saw, the interstate heading north of the city looked like a zoo, with people already evacuating.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad. Your mother said that it wasn’t even raining when I talked to her.”

  “It’s not…yet. I guess it’s the calm before the storm. The sun pretty much disappeared around three o’clock this afternoon, and the sky looks like one giant mountain of black clouds.”

  “Damn!”

  “My sentiments exactly. The mayor asked the business owners to allow employees to go home and prepare for the hurricane. I’ve given orders to our managers to shut down all three restaurants and send their staffs home to their families. And I’ve already let the office staff go for the day.”

  Thomas Gallagher swore again. “I don’t like being halfway across the country and away from my family at a time like this. I should be there. I never should have let your mother convince me to come out here in the first place.”

  And they both knew why his father had gone to meet with the winery people instead of him, Matt thought. “Quit beating yourself up, Dad. You didn’t have any option if we were going to move forward with the private labeling. Katie didn’t feel she could structure the deal, and I wasn’t willing to leave Claire alone right now.”

  “How is Claire?” his father asked.

  “She’s starting to remember some things. She knows that we were separated before she was attacked. I don’t think it will be long before the rest of her memory comes back.”

  “The two of you okay now?”

  Matt heard the concern in his father’s voice, knew his family had been worried about him and Claire since they’d split. “Yeah. I think so.” And he prayed that he was right. He wanted to begin that new life that he and Claire had talked about, and he hoped that when her memory did return, the new bonds they had forged during these past few weeks would be strong enough for them to do that.

  “I’m happy for you, Son. For both of you. I always was fond of that girl.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” The television screen bleeped, indicating a special announcement was coming through. “Listen, I’d better go. They’re about to do another weather update in a few minutes.”

  “Keep me posted, Matthew, and make sure your mother stays put like she promised. The last time a hurricane was heading for the city, the woman decided to make an hour’s drive to your great-aunt Mae’s place to pick her up because the woman’s cable went out.”

  Matt chuckled. “Don’t worry, Dad. Dan’s at the hospital with Maggie and the new baby. So Mom’s got Nick and Alex at your place. That pair will keep her too busy for her to even talk to Aunt Mae on the phone.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  It wouldn’t be, Matt thought, when his father saw the bill for the trip his mother had insisted on sending Aunt Mae on. The ninety-four-year-old woman was now ensconced in a resort in Natchez, Mississippi, with Emma. And the two women had been told to enjoy themselves at the casino and send the bill to his father. “Try to relax, Pop. I’ll take care of things here on this end.”

  “You do that, Son. And, Matthew?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you, Son. And I really am pleased that things are working out for you and Claire.”

  “Me, too, Dad. Me, too,” Matt said, and ended the call. Punching the volume on the remote, Matt listened to the latest weather update by Nash Roberts, the retired meteorologist for the city’s leading news station, who was held in icon status by the citizens of New Orleans. While a good many of those same citizens didn’t trust the fancy and expensive weather forecasting equipment, everyone trusted good old Nash.

  “As you can see from this radar shot taken a few minutes ago, Hurricane Phoebe is still moving west at about ten miles per hour with winds reaching seventy-five miles per hour, which makes this a category four hurricane. For those of you who remember Hurricane Betsy that hit the city back in the 60s, that was a category four storm. These bands around the eye of the storm that you see here,” he said, pointing to
the green circles on the screen, “are what’s causing the rain that’s starting to hit some parts of the city now. My estimate is that Phoebe will continue to move along this course, but she’ll veer toward Alabama and come in over here near Mobile, hitting landfall there around midnight tonight.”

  Matt snatched up the telephone and dialed Claire’s store. “Come on, come on,” he said when the phone continued to ring.

  “Desserts Only,” Claire said.

  “Red, you have the news on?”

  “I’ve got the radio on in my office. What’s up?”

  “I just saw the latest weather update,” Matt explained. “All the other meteorologists are predicting the hurricane’s going to hit New Orleans around midnight. But Nash Roberts is predicting it’s going to change course and go in at Mobile.”

  “Well, how do we know who’s right?” Claire asked.

  “We don’t—not until the hurricane decides. Either way we’re still in for some heavy rain. The mayor’s asked that businesses close up and send their employees home. I’ve shut down the restaurants and the office. I’d like to see you close things up there and head home before the worst of the rain starts.”

  “All right. I just need to put away some of the orders we were supposed to deliver tomorrow, and then I’ll be leaving.”

  “Good. Make sure that Lori walks with you to your truck.”

  She said nothing for a moment. “What about you? Are you going home now, too?”

  “I’ve got to make a stop at Gallagher’s in the Quarter first. The manager’s wife got into a fender bender, and he had to go to the hospital.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “A few bruises. More shaken up than anything. The problem is the assistant manager called in sick today. I’ve had the maamp2;ˆtre d’ send the staff home, but I need to go in and close out the register. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  “I’ll see you at home, then.”

  “Right. I love you,” he murmured. “Be careful and make sure Lori walks with you to your truck.”

  Claire hung up the phone, feeling a tiny bit guilty. She probably should have told Matt that she’d already sent Lori home. But if she had, he would only worry and would probably have insisted on coming all the way over here to escort her to the vehicle himself. No, she’d done the right thing by keeping quiet, Claire told herself as she began sliding the cheesecakes into the commercial freezer.