Almost Remembered

by Marilyn Tracy

  He smiled and leaned his forehead against hers. “I usually get up about now, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry Billy called you.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Neither am I, to be honest,” she said with a chuckle. Her smile faded as she remembered the exact reasons he had come to Taylor’s house that night. “Thanks, Chas.”

  “Any time. It’s what I’m here for.”

  He’d said that once before, in those long ago days. Any time. That’s what I’m here for. But he hadn’t been there. He’d married Thelma instead. And raised Billy. And she’d been without him and without children.

  She resolutely shoved those thoughts from her mind. She didn’t want to spoil the moment, the feeling of peace. Even on a quest to put some closure on the past, some things were better left unsaid.

  His smile faded as he stared at her and the warmth in his eyes shifted to flame. He drew his hand down her shoulders, across the bare expanse of her upper chest, then lower, slowly, enticingly, rising to cup a breast, lifting it slightly as if testing the weight of it, then molding her to him, his forefinger and thumb caressing her already hard nipple. She moaned a little and pressed against him, feeling his want for her.

  “Allison...” he whispered, then softly kissed the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

  All she could think about was the fire he was creating in her, the warmth of his body against hers, the slow, seductive stroking of his hands, one on her breast, one exploring the contours of her waist, the slope of her thighs, her flaring hips.

  Her robe fell open the rest of the way, and she could feel the chill air as he pulled back slightly to trail his tongue along her collarbone. His breath, hot and rapid, thrummed against her skin, making her shiver and arch to him.

  His hands felt molten through her satin chemise. The silky material might as well not have been there, for she could feel every nuance of his hands against her.

  She knew she should stop him, knew also that he would halt immediately should she ask. Instead, she pressed still harder against his firm length, aching for more. Wanting nothing more than to not think for a moment, to not wonder what was happening to her mind. She wanted just to feel and to pretend for this one moment that she was fine, that no dangers mental or otherwise could exist. And just for this one moment of rare intimacy, she wanted to pretend that she belonged to Chas and always had.

  As if reading her thoughts, he began to stroke her more firmly, molding her to him, neither roughly nor abruptly, but surely, knowledgeably, hungrily.

  When she’d last felt the power in those strong hands, she’d been little more than a girl, a starry-eyed dreamer on the threshold of life. Relishing the feel of his hands upon her now, she was fully aware that she was a woman with a woman’s heartaches and wants. And every pore of her body desired this man. Had always done so.

  No matter how badly he’d hurt her in the past, no matter how many tears she’d shed in his name, she still wanted him. She literally ached for his touch, craved the feel of his hands on her body, and leaned into sensations she hadn’t felt for fifteen years and yet recognized with every fiber of her being.

  “Ah, Chas...” she sighed as her head lolled forward onto his shoulder.

  He pressed a kiss to her bared throat. “Allison...it was always you, Allison,” he murmured, his lips trailing down her shoulder, freeing the thin strap of her chemise with his teeth.

  But he was wrong, she thought, even as she shivered while he trailed kisses down her arm, nuzzling her, circling the globe of her bared breast. It hadn’t always been her. Somewhere, at some time, he’d found Thelma, rejected the “always” and had married, raised a son.

  His hands on her body, strong hands, confident and assured, seemed to be trying to erase the truths of the past, the hurts of long ago. And though she would never have admitted it in all those lost fifteen years, most of the pain did ebb at his touch.

  But not all.

  Some hurts remained, permanently vulnerable, forever endangered. But with his lips against her bare skin, his hands roving her every curve, it was so very hard to think about the past. The very long ago, dark and distant past. And the sound of his ragged breathing as he suckled her breast stole the last vestige of her resolve to stand away from him.

  Chas knew he should stop, should call a halt to the mindless, utterly perfect satisfaction of holding Allison in his arms once again, of tasting her, of feeling her perfect breasts in his hands.

  Her body melded to his, pliant and soft, and her hitched breathing spoke volumes. He knew she wanted him every single bit as much as he wanted her, and the knowledge infused him with strength, with even greater passion.

  Some dim and sane voice in him demanded that he let her go, that he talk to her about the past, about the odd occurrences of the present. But damn it, he told himself fiercely, he’d made sacrifices all of his life, and nothing on the face of the earth could force him to make this one, the one of letting her go now.

  Luckily, for the both of them perhaps, one of the boys’ dogs started barking.

  Chapter 7

  “Turn off the lights,” Chas said calmly, sliding the strap of her chemise back up and tugging her robe closed. He gently pushed her toward the hallway and the light switch. “I’ll open the curtains.”

  If he’d snapped the command or even looked the slightest bit perturbed, she might have felt fear or worry, but as it was, she only obeyed him, stepping to the doorway leading out of the kitchen and drawing her hand down the switch.

  In that strange way of light refraction, the room they stood in was instantly plunged into total darkness while outside the room, the night world took clear shape and definition. She could see the posts and ceiling joists of the porch and beyond it the broad backyard, the low chain-link fence and still farther the flat, flat plains that surrounded Almost, a stretch of land that sparkled silver in the moonlight then melded into darkness somewhere far away.

  One of the dogs—Allison didn’t know which one—was running along the back fence in an unsteady, ungainly lope and barking furiously at something in the great universe beyond. It was a high-pitched, frantic yapping, perhaps a reprimand directed at whoever had drugged him, or perhaps just a loud statement of life. It was impossible to tell which.

  Allison could just make out Chas’s large form silhouetted against the window. He didn’t look as though he was worried about any intruder. He appeared to be looking for the first rays of dawn, relaxed and comfortable with what he might see.

  And yet she could feel his tension from where she stood. He wasn’t looking for the sunrise; he was searching the darkness for any signs of the person who had terrified her earlier, a man who had drugged the boys’ dogs. A real person, but one who was obviously something straight out of one of her nightmares.

  “I don’t see anything, do you?” she asked finally.

  “Yes,” Chas said softly without turning around. “You gotta come see this, Allison.”

  She made a cautious way around the table and chairs and joined him at the window. She felt the warmth emanating from him before she actually stood beside him. She paused to take in his scent, a combination of outdoors and a spice she couldn’t identify but that she knew was uniquely his. And then he reached out his hand for hers, clasping it unerringly in the dark. She sighed a little as his warm fingers enveloped hers.

  The old clichés were wrong, she thought, stepping into that warm spice, tingling to the feel of his arms wrapping around her and molding her back to his front. Familiarity did not breed contempt. No, on the extreme contrary, it bred intimacy.

  What on earth was she thinking? To be embraced by this man, the man who had most hurt her in her life, was tantamount to losing what little sanity she had remaining. But she leaned back nonetheless, allowing his size, his strength and his very aura of peace to capture her emotions and wholly override what was left of her mind.

  “Look toward the windmill at the Speckler Ranch. You remember where it is?”


  She did, but she didn’t see what he wanted her to see.

  “Just beyond the outline of the windmill.”

  He lifted a hand and pointed. Her heart started pounding in a furious rhythm.

  “You see it?”

  “W-what?” She had to force the single word from her lips and felt as if she were trapped in his embrace.

  She couldn’t see what he wanted her to see. Beyond his pointing finger lay madness or worse, and she had to run. Just run. As hard and as fast as she could.

  Now!

  She stiffened in his embrace, shifted to her good leg, prepared for flight. But he held her tightly, his arm a band of steel around her midriff.

  “A deer. Do you see it?” He raised his other hand to press it firmly against her chest, holding her in place, not allowing her to run, though he couldn’t possibly have known the extent of her need to bolt. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Her heart thudded against her rib cage, undoubtedly thundering against his hand, irregular and painful. She couldn’t seem to gain her breath. And yet the panic that had flooded her ebbed slightly. His words? The deer? His broad, warm hands, which were intimately splayed above and below her breasts, holding her fast against his still body, bracing her, blocking her escape?

  “Do you see it now?” he asked, hugging her slightly, shifting her direction, redirecting her focus.

  And, the panic fading, the shards of night coalesced and allowed her to see what he’d been looking at. A mule deer. A doe. Head raised, poised, listening to the barking of the dog, cautious, ready for flight. Like herself.

  Chas whispered against her temple as if the deer could hear them, “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

  Her heart rate was slowing, and her breathing seemed to be trying to match his slow, steady respirations. “She is,” she whispered back. She could still taste the raw, grainy spittle of fear.

  “She’s part of a herd that drives Alva Lu Harrigan crazy by getting into her garden once spring comes.”

  Allison drew a tight, sharp breath and strove to appear normal. How often had she had to do just that in the past few months—lying to co-workers and colleagues, faking a nonchalance she was far from feeling? She forced herself to focus on the deer and on Chas’s words and touch.

  “Alva Lu would be upset if a butterfly landed on her fence post,” Allison muttered tightly, coercing herself to remember the too many times of being in trouble with the prissy-faced woman.

  Chas chuckled. She was amazed to feel his laughter ripple against her back, and more amazed to discover the sensation was mildly erotic and further served to dull the razor edge of her fear.

  “But then Alva Lu would bring you her prize-winning pie just because she thought you might need a taste of pecan.”

  Normality. Simple and sweet. Her fear dropped another dramatic few degrees. “You really do like it here,” Allison said, half-amazed at the strength of her voice, awed by her own ability to stay put. And warmed by his love of this tiny little desert town in the heart of nowhere.

  She knew she could move away from him now without the need to run, but was reluctant to lose the warmth of his arms, the depth of the solace she found there.

  “Yes, it’s home,” he said simply.

  “I used to love it,” she said. Even to herself, her voice sounded wistful. And perhaps a bit accusatory.

  “Maybe some part of you still does,” he stated. She couldn’t tell if he sounded meditative or was simply making a statement of fact.

  “Maybe,” she hedged, knowing she lied. She loved this strange and unique part of the world so much it hurt. But it had been far easier to leave it behind than to see it and not be a part of it anymore. From the moment Chas had told her he was going to marry Thelma Bean, she’d become a visitor only. A transient.

  And now she was just a woman who had come home for her sister’s wedding, hoping to find her sanity again, only to discover it was more elusive than ever.

  On some level, Almost was inextricably linked with her feelings for and about Chas. It had been easier to leave him forever than to watch him raising his son with another woman. Easier to leave them all, Taylor, her parents, Aunt Sammie Jo—all of them. Everything that had comprised her life.

  But it felt so good to stay still in his arms, to feel his entire body enfolding hers as his hand had enwrapped hers earlier. So warm, so strong. So peaceful. So sane.

  The land beyond their view began to lighten as the sun sent the first rays of morning over the horizon. The silvered fields glistened, adorned with precious frost. And pale blue fingers of light stretched across the lightening sky. The deer turned and walked on stiff legs behind the stock tank and windmill. Four deer, all does, wandered out from the other side and began moving into the west, following the night.

  “There they go,” she said, wholly unnecessarily.

  “They’ll be back.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “When they want to,” he said, pulling her a bit closer to his chest, a fraction deeper into his warmth. “When they’re ready.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “Just away.”

  “Aren’t they in danger?”

  “Of course,” answered the man who was a country vet. “But they’ll be fine.”

  “How can you be so certain?” she asked a little dreamily, lulled by his heat, his strength, the breadth of his compassion.

  “Because they’re magic deer.”

  A surprised chuckle escaped her. “Magic deer, huh? Not too many of those left around these parts.”

  “Nope,” he agreed, and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “But good things always happen when you see one.”

  “Do they? And we saw four.”

  “Mmm, so the good things are quadrupled,” he murmured, then lightly grazed his teeth across the narrow expanse of her back that the robe exposed.

  “Yes,” she sighed, tilting her head to allow him even greater purchase. Her fear had completely faded now, and in its place, engendered by his mouth, his full lips, his tongue, was a delicious and heavy languor.

  “Allison?”

  “Mom?”

  “What scared you a minute ago?”

  She tensed, but at the gentle, soothing pressure of his hands, his body spooned to hers, she allowed herself to relax again. “I don’t know, Chas. I honestly don’t.”

  Chas withheld a groan as she pressed back against him, unwittingly applying pressure where he least needed any persuasion.

  He thought wryly of the sacrifices he’d briefly cataloged for himself a while back, when he’d told himself he deserved the moment, the bliss of Allison in his arms again. Now he thought that not one sacrifice he’d ever made in all the years held a candle to the one he was making now in not giving in to his desire for her, hers for him.

  But she needed to talk about what was frightening her. She needed his help to understand what was happening to her. So with the greatest reluctance on the face of the earth, he was bringing them both back to the present, to the realities inherent in dogs being drugged, to children possibly wandering in, to the potential dangers surrounding his Allison at the moment.

  “When we were looking at the deer...”

  “Yes?” She slid a hand to his jean-clad thighs and stroked deeply, enticingly.

  He had to grit his teeth for a moment, warring with the raging fire she was knowingly reigniting in him. Finally he was able to ask, “You were ready to run again. Why?”

  She stilled so thoroughly that he felt the tension springing from her body. He realized that she hadn’t been aware she was stroking him as a device to steer him away from discussing whatever had scared her.

  She felt ready to spring from him, to fly again. He continued to hold her tightly to him, hating himself for making her face the unknown, inexplicable fear, willing her to understand that he was only doing it for her. And perhaps, on some deeper, more selfish level, for them.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m fine.”
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br />   “Allison, I’ve spent nearly every night of the past fifteen years recalling every aspect of your personality, the way you laugh, the way you wrinkle your nose when you don’t like something someone’s saying. I know you. Whatever’s going on with you, around you, it isn’t all just coming from inside your head.”

  She said nothing, but Chas thought her stillness held a different quality, an arrested, questioning immobility.

  “I know that you think we’re strangers, Allison. That we knew each other a long time ago, that we were lovers and then we weren’t anymore. End of a sad story. But it doesn’t work that way.”

  “W-what way?”

  “Ambivalence doesn’t mean indifference, Allison. It only means feeling two distinct ways about something. Opposites, good-bad, happy-sad, love-hate. I can’t ignore you, Allison. I can’t pretend that you’re okay and do nothing about it. And I’m not ambivalent at all. Not one little bit. I’m telling you right now, I’m going to help you figure this out. Whatever happens with you and me, I’m going to be right here for you, do you understand me?”

  As he waited for her answer, he felt the stiffness leaving her rigid form. Slowly, an inch at a time, she relaxed against him until finally she was pliant and resting easily in his arms again.

  “I...I’m not ambivalent now,” she said finally. “And I’m not running, either,” she said finally.

  “And why is that, Allison?”

  “Because this feels so good, so right. Here in your arms, I mean.”

  Chas looked up at the ceiling of Taylor’s kitchen and closed his eyes against the empty expanse of soft yellow. He was dying from the desire to do the right thing, but he’d be wholly unable to do that if she continued leaning against him, her soft body pressed to his, and with words such as she’d just spoken hovering between them.

  He wanted to abandon the quest to help her untangle whatever nightmare chased her. All he wanted to do at that moment was to turn her around and kiss her until tomorrow was forgotten and yesterday was forever buried.

  And if he did, he would be turning his back on Allison. She needed to be free of the fears, the panic attacks. And he needed to help her. It was that simple. And oh, so very difficult to do.