“For bringing me to her. Trying to help her.” Eric had to stop and clear his throat. “I guess you had your priorities straight, after all. I was the one who was screwed up.”
Mike shifted uncomfortably on his crutches. “But not anymore?”
“No, not anymore. You showed me what’s important. You and Mariah.”
“You take care out there, bro.”
“I will.” He jammed the sunglasses on his face and swung a leg over his old homemade bike. “You stay off the motorcycles until the doctor gives you the okay.”
Mike just grinned.
His goodbyes said, Eric headed east to Nevada, and beyond.
Under the Double M sign at the end of the drive, Eric killed the bike engine, pulled his helmet off and watched the show. Mariah had Jet in the front pasture. The black horse streaked across the open field to a background of majestic peaks, his hooves hardly seeming to touch the ground.
Eric sat back, admiring the grace, the fluid strength, the agility unfolding before him.
And the horse wasn’t bad, either.
Manah reined Jet in beside him. Breathless from racing the wind, her face flushed and her hair wildly tousled, she stared down at him, waiting, and every one of the words he’d practiced for the last seven hundred miles fled his mind. Vanished.
“You’re back?” she finally asked, filling the silence for him.
The uncertainty on her face imploded the chambers of his heart one by one. As the flush of exertion receded from her cheeks, she seemed paler than normal. Blue smudges under her eyes marred her otherwise flawless face, hinting that she hadn’t been sleeping well. Had she lost weight?
Only then did he realize the extent of the hurt he’d caused. Apparently he hadn’t been the only one suffering the last few weeks. He vowed to himself he’d make up tenfold with happiness every second of pain he’d caused, if she’d only give him the chance. “If you’ll have me.”
Jet stretched his neck forward and tossed his head up and down.
“Jet approves,” Eric added hopefully.
He thought he saw a spark of hope in her eyes, but her brow furrowed, creating a precious little worry line down the bridge of her nose.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked.
Words weren’t going to work, he realized. He had to speak straight to her heart. “Come ride with me. I’ll show you.”
She dismounted, unsaddled Jet and turned him out in the pasture, leaving her saddle draped over the fence rail. Hesitantly she climbed on the motorcycle behind him.
He turned so that he could see her and wedged his helmet over her head. “Trust me?” With the rest of her face covered, her eyes seemed that much more brilliant.
She nodded.
“Good.” He turned, twisted forward on the seat and kicked the bike over. “Hold on.”
If she thought riding one horse was a kick, he’d give her a taste of having fifty of those babies underneath her.
Mariah couldn’t contain her gasp as Eric rolled the throttle back and the front wheel of the motorcycle lifted up and the back wheel shot a rooster tail of dirt and gravel behind them. She was glad for the face mask on the helmet. Maybe Eric hadn’t heard her.
Not that it mattered, she thought. He had to have felt her startle. And the death grip she had around his middle would probably leave bruises to rival those he’d carried when she’d first met him.
He slowed down a little. “You okay?” he called over his shoulder.
Never let it be said that Mariah Morgan was afraid of a little speed. “Sure,” she yelled back. She caught the edge of his grin as he turned his head forward and peeled out again.
He leaned into the turn. Mariah tried to follow him, to imitate his moves. Balance and rhythm, she thought, gritting her teeth, but also beginning to feel the same tingle of excitement she felt every time she ran Jet. Balance and rhythm.
When he straightened from the second turn and steered the bike toward the small rolling hills alongside the corrals, she knew what he intended.
She ducked her head into his back, the helmet clunking off his shoulder blade. For what he was about to do, he deserved that bruise.
They sprung lightly over the first hill, the back wheel of the bike hardly losing contact with the ground. She thought maybe he was going to take it easy on her. On the second mound, she knew she’d been wrong. They took a lot more air. Mariah helped him balance on the landing, getting the feel of the bike. With practice, she could get to like this.
The third hill changed her mind. Eric heaved with his shoulders and pushed down with his heels, seeming to lift the bike into the air through sheer bodily effort. The earth dropped away beneath them. Her heart clamored as they reached the peak of the jump and suddenly the ground rushed up at them. She didn’t know what to do, how to help him. They were nose down, headed for a crash.
At the last second Eric heaved again, lifting the bike just enough for a perfect landing. Without so much as a wobble, he rocked the front wheel gently to the ground and skidded to a stop in front of the barn.
“What was that for?” she said, nearly breathless as she took off the helmet and shook her hair loose.
His dark eyes drilled into her. Reflexively her hand went to her abdomen, waiting for the hum to start. It kicked in like a diesel engine when he reached up and brushed a tangled wave from her face then outlined the shell of her ear with his fingertips.
“Just for the thrill of it,” he said.
His tenuous smile thawed every corpuscle that had frozen in her over the last two weeks. But she had to be sure about him. She had to be sure he was sure.
“Why did you come back?”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
He shrugged at her questioning look. “My mother got tired of me moping around and kicked me out. I canceled the lease on my condo and, oh yeah, I quit my job.”
She sucked in a breath. “You left Purgatory?”
“Yeah. The hell of it—no pun intended—is, it felt really good. You were right about that place. I never really wanted to work there. What I can’t figure out is how you knew that before I did.”
“It wasn’t hard. I saw the things that really mattered to you, that made you happy or sad, like finding Mike’s guitar broken and fixing that old tractor of mine. I saw the way you talked to Tucker like an equal. The man I saw wasn’t hung up on money or the things it could buy him, or power. You did what you had to, for your family. But it’s time to do something for yourself.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “I know.”
“Then can you believe that there is nothing I want no dream—that matters to me more than you? Can you trust me to love you enough?”
“Is that why you thought I left? Because I didn’t trust you?” His voice frayed around the edges as he spoke.
He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. Hard. “It wasn’t you I didn’t trust, Mariah. It was me.”
“You?”
“I wasn’t there for them when they needed me. I let down the people who loved me most.”
“You never let anyone down You saved your family. You saved me.”
He shook his head. “My dad wanted me to work in his business with him. But I was busy thinking about going off to college. And Mike—he wanted me to come ride with him out here. He always wanted me to come ride with him, and I was always too busy with my own dreams to bother with anyone else’s.”
“You can’t blame yourself—”
“Even my ex-wife. Although to be fair, there was a lot more wrong between us than her dreams, who knows what might have happened if I’d tried a little harder. If I’d loved her enough to listen to what she wanted.”
He pulled back and ran a hand through his hair. “I was never afraid that you didn’t love me enough, Mariah. I was afraid that I couldn’t love you enough. That someday I’d let you down.”
Mariah sat back, stunned. Him, not love enough? The man who had set aside the life
he wanted in order to support his family? The man who had cried over the place where he thought his brother had died? Who had risked his own life to save hers? She was so baffled that she couldn’t even find the words to tell him how wrong he was, so she didn’t try.
“What changed your mind?” she finally asked.
“I realized that we do share dreams. They just aren’t about jobs or riding motorcycles. And they have nothing to do with where we live or what kind of cars we drive. We both want the same thing—someone to love who’ll love us back, a family who needs us. Those are dreams we can live out together.
“So what do you say?” He wiped his palms on the thighs of his jeans. “Could you use a little help around here?”
She quirked one eyebrow, surveying the pile of ashes that used to be her equipment shed, the charred tractor and the hay field behind it, already sprouting grass that would soon need to be cut and baled. “A little help?”
“I don’t know a thing about raising horses, but I’d like to learn. And in the meantime I can fix just about anything with an engine, I can handle a hammer and saw, and I’m good with paperwork, accounting, budgeting and business stuff like that.”
“And just what are these services going to cost me?”
There was nothing playful in the look he returned. “A lifetime contract. Your firstborn child and every child thereafter.” He picked up her hand and rubbed the ring finger with his thumb. “Your left hand.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
He nodded. “Again, I might point out. Am I doing a better job of it than I did last time?”
She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Much better. And the answer is most definitely yes.”
She traced his stunned expression with her fingers, trying to burn the image into her memory forever. Had he really worried that she’d say no?
She held on quietly for a long time, simply absorbing the feel of him. When their heartbeats merged, beating in perfect synchronicity, she raised her head and grinned slyly. “Wanna go roll in the hay, city boy?”
His grin looked more cheeky than sly. “I think I’m starting to like horse ranching already.”
Minutes later, Manah pressed Eric to his back atop a fresh-smelling green bale and lowered herself on top of him. She stripped his shirt from him slowly. With her hands and mouth she cherished every inch of the finely honed body she exposed.
He let her hold her advantage a few moments, then returned the favor. Bare chest to bare chest, he slipped his hands beneath the waistband of her jeans and stroked her back.
“How many, Eric?” she asked. She delved her tongue into the hollow over his collarbone while she waited for an answer.
“How many what?”
“Children.”
His hands went still. “How many do you want?”
“A house full?” She hoped she didn’t scare him off. Maybe they should have talked about some of these things before he’d proposed and she’d accepted.
His mouth connected with hers for a languorous kiss. Under her jeans, his hands resumed their stroking. “We’re going to need a bigger house,” he whispered.
She giggled. Eric sniffed.
“So, how soon do you want to start this baby thing?” She rubbed herself gently against him.
“Soon, Mariah. Please.” His voice had thickened decidedly. “Soon.” His eyes drifted closed.
“That’s good. Very soon would be even better.”
His body stiffened as she lowered herself onto him. Frowning, he held her still. “Mariah, are you trying to tell me...ah, ah, shoot!” He sneezed. “You’re not pregnant already, are you?” He sneezed again.
Heedless of his restraint, she lowered her body and guided him inside. Rocking slowly back and forth, up and down, she shifted until she found a position that let her take the length of him, let her feel the slide of every inch inside her. Only when she’d found perfection for them both did she answer. “No,” she whispered, “not yet.”
She didn’t tell him how she’d cried when she’d started her period and realized there would be no dark-eyed baby. There would be time for those things later.
His breathing accelerated. His body relaxed. She rested her palms on his chest.
“That’s good. Not that it would have been bad, I mean. It’s just that—” The next sneeze took him by storm. “It’s just that—” He sneezed twice more.
She picked up the pace, her head thrown back, feeling the wind blow through her hair as they gained speed.
“It’s just that—”
“Eric?”
“Hmm?” He sniffed.
“Shut up.”
“I’m trying.” She looked down to see tears running down his face. He sniffed and sneezed nearly at the same time. “It’s just that...honey...I think I’m allergic to hay.”
He chuckled, then laughed outright, every other chortle broken by a sneeze or a sniffle. Tears streamed down his face. Even as he gasped for breath between the laughs, his body jolted and she felt the warm rush of him inside her.
“I love you, Eric.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
He sneezed again.
Mariah threw back her head and laughed with him as the world splintered around her. Then she cried, too. Because she’d never known people could laugh when they made love.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5916-4
VIRGIN WITHOUT A MEMORY
Copyright © 1999 by Vickie Spears
All rights reserved Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U S A
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
“Haven’t you done anything just because you wanted to?” Mariah asked.
Letter to Reader
Books by Vickie Taylor
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
Virgin without a Memory Page 22
