Touch the woman.
He brushed his elusive shape against her like a dawn mist settling before a rising sun. He knew the moment—the very instant—she felt him. A fine tremble went through her body. Her lush lips parted, her breath caught.
She was warm, so very warm. So intricately alive. Flesh and blood, bone and hollow. Sensations enhanced by the eyes of the human’s memory, until she became a bright, shining thing that blinded him with beauty.
The desire to see more, to feel more, became a burning need. Her soul was so lovely, so ethereal, so alive that it glittered, diamond bright—just there.
The Reaper reached. The Reaper touched. Deep inside him, he felt the human he’d come for awake and protest.
Somewhere in the room a doctor said, “Clear,” and pressed paddles to the human’s chest. Warning flashed red in the Reaper’s mind a split second before searing pain sliced through the human, impaling them both.
The body on the bed jerked violently. The Reaper recoiled, and Maggie jumped back just as the doctor said, “Clear,” once more. A second volt went through the human, through the Reaper, down to a place that shouldn’t exist, galvanizing them both.
The Reaper knew the smell of fear in humans, but he’d never known it in himself until that moment when he felt the man’s soul slipping backwards, felt the claws of it sunk deep inside him, thorns in the vine he himself had planted.
One last time, the doctor said, “Clear,” and the die was cast, the fate was written.
The Reaper and Sam Sloan slammed back into the vessel from which they came.
CHAPTER 2
Every part of Maggie felt numb.
She sat in the waiting room outside of the Intensive Care Unit and stared at her clenched fingers. Over and over, those moments played. The doctors rushing in. The nurse telling her to step aside. That sense of someone watching over her, reaching out ... touching her.
There’d been peace and promise in that moment, a sense of joy and homecoming. She’d felt Sam, the Sam she’d loved so desperately. But not only Sam, not just Sam. Something else had come with that touch, cool as a morning breeze, warm as a summer sun.
For that frozen second, she’d felt safe.
Until reality had crashed into her. The alarms beside his bed. The doctors and nurses trying to save him.
She’d cried out as the doctors had shocked his heart once, twice, three times. Someone had come in—the nice nurse, Leah, who always smiled and sometimes brought her coffee. She’d taken Maggie to the waiting room, asked if there was someone she could call. Promised to bring news.
Any moment now, they’d come to tell her Sam was dead. She still didn’t understand her own feelings. Still couldn’t piece together the last few days ... the last few moments.
Had she felt Sam’s soul leaving? Had an angel been in the room with them, ready to take Sam with it? Did she really believe in such a thing? Did it matter?
She shook her head, confusion and sorrow rolling over in waves. What she’d felt had been dark and mysterious ... seductive in ways she’d never be able to describe. And foreign—not just strange, but alien.
She covered her face with her hands. That shouldn’t surprise her. Her relationship with her husband had been a whirlwind of strange excitement. They’d met, fallen in all-consuming lust and married in the space of a month. She’d had a ring on her finger and a different last name before she knew anything about her new husband beyond the superficial. He was thirty-two, a single father and a successful engineer at a software company in Tempe, Arizona. His first disastrous marriage had ended with his ex-wife going crazy and trying to set their house on fire with his children inside it. She’d been committed to a facility for the mentally ill. Sam had taken the children and started over after the divorce.
He’d seemed a tragic hero to Maggie, triumphing over the wicked witch’s curse, and she’d been so willing to believe that they were meant to be one another’s happily ever after. Sam and his children needed her, and Maggie, who’d been on her own since her parents had died, needed to be needed.
But there the tale turned sour. Within weeks of moving into her small house and calling it home, Sam began to distance himself and the harder Maggie tried to reach him, the more distant he became. Strange bouts of paranoia had marked the path. At times, Maggie had suspected substance abuse, though she never knew for certain. The downfall came as quickly as the honeymoon.
Soon after, he left altogether. No explanation. No note or phone call. Not even an impersonal text message. Just gone, leaving Maggie and the kids to sift through the wreckage he’d left behind.
Until he’d been found in the parking lot of his apartment with a bullet in his brain and less than ten percent chance of recovery.
Now, he was dead, or would be very soon, and she didn’t know whether to grieve, rejoice or spit on his cold body. How messed up was that?
“Maggie?” the nurse—Leah—said, coming to sit beside her on the nondescript sofa in the nondescript room. Her face was drawn, her eyes over-bright. She was shaking her head.
Maggie nodded, bracing for the inevitable. “Is he gone?”
Leah gave her a dazed smile. “No.” A soft laugh accompanied the stunned expression. “He’s awake. He’s asking for you.”
CHAPTER 3
Even as Maggie pulled into the driveway six days later, she still couldn’t believe she was bringing Sam back home. Alive. Just last week, she’d imagined herself parking the car with the small box of his ashes on the passenger seat. From the moment she’d received the call that her husband had been shot, that his wounds were likely fatal, she’d seen that end. Not this.
“We’re here,” she said, stopping the SUV, but not shutting off the engine.
Sam stared through the windshield with a hard expression that didn’t quite hide the alarm she saw in his eyes. The doctors had prepared her for his memory loss, for the potential reactions he might have to it. Anger, frustration, and fear were common in victims of memory loss. Depression, equally so. But what she saw in his fleeting glance bordered on panic. For a moment, she wondered if he might bolt.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, turning his face away. Whatever he was feeling, he kept it to himself. Surprise, surprise.
Her many visits to the hospital had given her a small sampling of this stranger she’d brought home with her. He knew she was his wife, yet he seemed very fuzzy on what that really meant. What it entailed, being a husband. Well, that hadn’t really changed much, had it?
Give him time ... That’s what the doctors had told her.
Sam had clear recall of his childhood and early adulthood. He had a vague memory of his first wife, but nothing concrete or clear. He knew he had children—Lexi and Justin—but not their ages or anything about them. He remembered meeting Maggie, but nothing after.
Of course, she distrusted the holes in his recall. How could she not? He’d left without reason. Now, he was back, without having to provide a reason for that either.
And sometimes he referred to himself in third person. Once, he’d started to say something that began with, “This human.”
She couldn’t even guess where that had come from or where he’d intended to go with it. He’d caught himself and changed course, becoming so agitated that the nurses had hurried in and finally sedated him.
A gunshot wound to the head and a week in the hospital had hollowed out his cheeks and added a dark shadow to his jaw, but it hadn’t diminished the sharp gleam in his blue eyes or detracted from the masculine lines of his face. He was every bit as devastating as he’d ever been. She’d had plenty of reasons to fall so hard and fast for Sam Sloan.
“Are we going in?” Sam asked, shooting her a mystifying look.
Nearly a year had passed since their last curt words, longer since she’d gazed into his beautiful eyes. Yet as she did so now, an uncanny feeling filled her.
It was as if a different man stared back.
Baffled, she opened her door. She
wasn’t sure if he’d need her help so she moved to his side, but he’d already stepped out before she got there. He was such a tall, commanding man. The bullet was no longer lodged in his brain, but the injury made him understandably unsteady. Even so, the doctors had been stunned by his physical recovery. He was still strong. Able ... and more than dangerous to her peace of mind. The weight he’d lost added to that perception. He looked edgy, mean, hungry. A street dog on the prowl.
His gaze found hers. So blue. So intense that it made her shiver.
“Do you need help getting to the front door?” she asked.
His lips quirked as he looked down at her five-two frame. The smiling glance was so reminiscent of the old Sam, the one she’d loved, that for a moment she could only soak it in. Obviously, he considered the idea of her helping his six foot, two hundred pound self with anything amusing. She had a flashing image of him falling on her, leaving her like a splattered ink mark on the sidewalk.
“Okay, then,” she said and walked ahead, refusing to give in to the compulsion to glance over her shoulder and make sure he followed.
The house was still and quiet when they entered. In an hour, she’d need to pick up Justin from the bus stop. He was in first grade. Eleven year old Lexi and her pack of mean girls wouldn’t be caught dead walking with her step-monster. They’d take the long way home to avoid an accidental encounter. Like Maggie, both children were confused and conflicted about their father’s homecoming, though Justin was too young to vocalize his feelings and Lexi too much a hormonal pre-teen girl to indulge in sharing at all.
“Do you want something to eat?” Maggie asked after an awkward moment of silence. “I made lasagna for dinner last night.”
Which she knew he didn’t like, but some passive-aggressive—vindictive—ogre inside had pushed her to make it anyway. If he couldn’t remember being married, he shouldn’t remember that either, right?
“Does he—do I like lasagna?” Sam asked.
“Not usually,” she answered truthfully and then blushed like a school girl.
Sam cocked his head, watching her so intently that she had to fight the urge not to look away. He stood much too close and smelled way too good.
“Sit down and I’ll make you a plate,” she said. “If you don’t like it, you can shove it across the table like you did the last time I made it.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. The doctors had told her that a calm, tranquil environment would enable him to find those memories he’d lost—unless, of course, it didn’t. They hadn’t expected him to survive the brain injury, let alone remember.
His gaze followed her as she moved to the refrigerator and pulled out the lasagna. She could feel it lingering on her stiff back, traveling down the curve of her spine. A tingle followed its trail.
“Did I really do that?” he asked after a moment, his voice soft. Husky, with just a hint of his Texas roots in it. Something else she’d fallen in love with, that deep, intimate timbre and the peek-a-boo accent that only surfaced when he was tired. Or aroused.
“Once,” she answered with more attitude than she’d intended.
He frowned and his lashes lowered as he considered that, perhaps searching for the memory. After a moment, he looked up. “What did you do?”
Another flush heated her face. “I threw it at you.” She shrugged at his startled expression. “Not one of my finer moments. I should have found a more adult way of handling it.”
A slow grin spread across his face, the one that turned her insides to mush even now. “Did you hit me with it?”
She nodded. “Tomato sauce and cheese from head to toe. Now I make it just to spite you.”
She hadn’t meant to say that either, but this new, vulnerable Sam had her off balance and letting silence drape the spaces between them seemed like a bad idea. She cut a piece of the lasagna and put it on a plate, accidently splashing sauce on the counter and her shirt. Cursing, she put the plate in the microwave, licked a glob of sauce off her fingers and wiped up the rest, all the while hyperaware of Sam tracking her every movement from his seat at the island counter.
The microwave dinged, and she set a plate in front of him with a bottle of sparkling water. He caught her arm before she could move away and towed her closer. With a gentle, warm hand he brushed something off her cheek. She glimpsed sauce on his finger before he licked it.
Watching her the entire time.
She was pretty sure all of her traitorous girl parts just went up in flames.
“Your lasagna is getting cold,” she muttered, pulling away.
Finally, he lifted his fork and stared at the food for a quiet moment. Maggie steeled herself when he took a bite, chewing with that contemplative expression that made her want to ask what he was thinking. She suppressed the urge. Too many times, Sam’s thoughts had come with sharp little barbs.
“His—my mother worked in the cafeteria,” he said, his voice lilting up, as if this revelation were a discovery they shared.
“I didn’t know that. You never had much to say about your family.” Even when she’d asked, which she’d done a lot.
She’d always thought family was the nucleus of who and what a person was. Even before her parents had died leaving her all alone in the world, she’d found the subject endlessly fascinating.
Sam nodded and took another bite, lashes lowering as he chewed and swallowed. “I was ashamed of her,” he said finally, his words a peculiar mixture of wonder and fact. “She worked at my school.”
Maggie poured herself a glass of water and leaned against the counter, undeniably curious.
“She used to bring the lasagna home,” he said, taking another bite. “It was her favorite.”
“And you grew to hate it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just her. It was always my favorite, too.”
She stared at him, glass half raised to her lips. “I can make you a sandwich if you’d prefer.”
He took another bite. “She’s dead, now.”
“I knew that. She died when you were a boy.”
“Last year.”
“I’m sorry?”
“She died last year. May.”
“But ...”
They’d gotten married in April. Yet he’d never said a word. His mother had died and he’d never bothered to mention it. She hadn’t thought he could hurt her any more, but she’d been wrong.
“Is that why you left?” she demanded.
He blinked at her and his brows pulled together in consternation. His eyes shifted as he scanned his memory for answers.
“I don’t remember leaving.”
She sighed and rubbed her face with her hands. She needed to get some distance—from him, from her feelings about him.
She cleared her throat and looked away. “You always made it sound like she died a long time ago.”
“I don’t know why,” he said simply.
Maggie nodded. Silently, she watched him eat, his aversion to the dish apparently banished now. He ate slowly, savoring each bite. When he paused to take a drink, he looked up and caught her staring. And blushed. Sam Sloan blushed. In the world of crazy that life had become, this was an anomaly she couldn’t reconcile.
“Tell me about us,” he said.
Maggie stiffened. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did you marry me? Am I rich?”
“You think I married you for money?”
“Did you?”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “The doctors told me not to upset you.”
“And telling me the truth about us will do that?”
“I don’t know, Sam. I haven’t seen you in months. I don’t even know who you are.”
He waited, quizzical. Pretty much the opposite of upset. He gazed at her with the dispassion of a detective, waiting for a witness to respond.
“I have to pick up Justin in a few minutes,” she said, turning her back.
“You’re fond of h—my children.”
Half state
ment, half question. She drew in another steadying breath and nodded.
“Justin’s not even six. He doesn’t remember much about ... before.”
And he loved her unconditionally.
“Lexi is—” hormonal—“almost twelve. She remembers everything.”
Lexi was hard to love and yet, at times, there were glimmers of the lost child inside. Maggie understood that inner child. She had one like it inside herself. The children needed her almost as much as she needed them.
She faced Sam again and her gaze was caught by his impossibly blue eyes. What was he thinking?
“Yes,” she said thickly. “I’m very fond of them.”
“You said you’d keep them, take care of them.”
At her blank look, he went on.
“You said it in the hospital.”
He’d heard that? What else had he heard?
He took his last bite, wiped his mouth with his napkin and smiled. “That was delicious, Maggie,” he said.
“Thank you.” Inside, she felt raw. Exposed. She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned away. “I need to go meet Justin’s bus now. Why don’t you rest? The doctors said you should take it easy.”
He eyed her, making her feel like he could see right through to all the churning emotions inside. Before he could say anything else, she strode to the door, not stopping until she was outside on the front porch. She leaned against the railing, trying to catch her breath, trying to understand who the man in her kitchen was and why she saw a stranger when she looked in his eyes.
CHAPTER 4
Maggie took all the warmth from the room when she left. At least that’s how it felt. It had been the same during the interminable time he’d spent in the hospital, waiting for her to visit. Dreading the moment she’d leave.
Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set Page 63
