Brady nodded. “I’d really like that,” he agreed.
“Then consider it done.” To seal the bargain, Waverly shook Brady’s hand.
The key was here, in this lab. Brady knew he could find himself here.
And then, perhaps, he thought as he looked at Erin, he could find the man that she had loved.
Erin was bursting with questions. She couldn’t wait until they were alone again. She held out long enough for them to get to her car.
“How does it feel?” she asked as he buckled up. “Is some of it really coming back to you?” She started the car, waiting.
He couldn’t begin to describe the way he felt, but it had to be akin to seeing a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
“Yes, it’s all still sort of vague, but I felt as if I belonged there.” He had scanned a report that Waverly had told him he’d written and while he didn’t remember doing it, he could understand it. Brady laughed softly. “I guess the physics goes down deep.”
She’d always said that. “Right to the bone,” Erin responded, forcing a cheerful note into her voice.
She wasn’t going to let it bother her, Erin thought with determination. She’d always known that she came second after his work. This just verified it. And if the pill had a bitter taste, she could still swallow it.
“Do I have a car?”
Brady’s sudden question caught Erin off guard. She hadn’t given his car any thought in months.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I mean, you did, but it wasn’t at your apartment complex. My guess is that whoever mugged you stole it, along with your airplane ticket. If it was abandoned, it’s probably been stripped and recycled by now.” Erin was thinking aloud. “We could ask Gus to check if the police found any abandoned vehicles.” She glanced at him before driving away from the compound. “Why do you ask?”
This small crack he’d discovered in the wall that surrounded his memory excited Brady. He wanted to explore it further, push it for all it was worth to see where it would take him.
“Because I want to take Waverly up on his offer as soon as possible.” Another thought occurred to him. “To begin with, I guess I should find out if I can still drive.”
She backed up and tried to approach the problem logically. The irony of that amused her.
“We can go to the DMV and get you another copy of your driver’s license.” Doing a quick calculation in her head, she decided she could probably take him there tomorrow afternoon. “Until you get it, I can drive you.” Erin slanted a look at him, hesitating before she continued, “Especially if you move in.”
She’d been thinking about that all day. Waking up and finding him there this morning had been like an answer to a prayer.
Brady made no response, so she hurried on, “It only makes sense. You’ll need a place to stay if you’re not working at the restaurant,” she reminded him. “And the more you surround yourself with what was once familiar to you, the greater the chance of your coming across something that will make you remember more than a white-haired old man and an atrium.”
He knew that Demi would let him stay in the room he now occupied for as long as he needed. Both she and Gus were extraordinary people. But Erin had a point. He needed to have the familiar around him at all times. He was anxious to have this mystery existence he was living over with as soon as possible. Moving in with Erin only made sense.
Besides, there was no getting around the fact that he was attracted to her. Really attracted. He didn’t know that much about himself, but he did know that there was something about Erin he found enormously appealing. Being with her felt right, just the way being in the lab had been.
“All right,” he agreed. “Seeing as how you have most of my things, anyway, that only makes sense.”
Score one for the short redhead. “Absolutely,” she answered with a grin. “Logical to the very end.”
She was about to pass the last entrance to Westminister Mall before the freeway on-ramp when she suddenly decided to turn in.
The west-end parking lot of the large indoor mall was almost empty. In between holidays and sales, shopping should be light at this time of the evening, she decided. It was the perfect place.
Brady looked around. This didn’t look familiar to him, either. Why was she stopping here?
“What are you doing?” If he had learned nothing else in the last day and a half, he had learned that Erin was completely unpredictable.
“You said you wanted to know if you remembered how to drive.” She pulled up the emergency hand brake and shifted the car into park, but left it running. “No time like the present to find out.” As he watched, stunned, Erin struggled out of the car. She looked at him expectantly. He was certainly slow on the uptake. “Switch places with me.”
Brady got out slowly, uncertain about what she proposed. “What?”
“I said, switch places with me. You can find out if you remember what to do.” Erin looked around the nearly deserted lot. “There aren’t any parked cars to run into, and there’s plenty of room to make a goodsize turn if you want to practice.”
She had a point. Brady rounded the hood and slid in behind the steering wheel. He was surprised when she began getting in on the passenger side. He’d assumed that when she said switch places, she meant for him to be in the driver’s seat instead of her, but not that she would be in his seat. He would risk himself, but not her.
“Maybe you should just stay out and observe.” He waited for her to get out.
She wasn’t about to go anywhere. Erin had a feeling that, as he had at the laboratory, Brady would revert to automatic pilot once he started driving. She wasn’t the least bit concerned. She supposed that he probably wouldn’t think that was logical, but then, if she’d learned nothing else from him in all this time, it was that men and women approached situations differently. Especially if that woman was in love.
“Someone’s got to watch to see if you do it right,” she countered.
He knew she wasn’t about to get out. Brady shook his head, surrendering. He had a feeling he was no match for her when she got going. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
Erin grinned. “Pretty much.” He was learning. Or it was coming back to him. Either way, things were looking up.
Brady sat in the driver’s seat, slowly running his hands down the steering wheel and then back up again. He tried to remember if there was another time when he’d sat just like this.
He couldn’t recall, but it didn’t feel unfamiliar to him. He supposed that was something.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated for a moment.
Brady eased the hand brake down and then shifted into drive. His foot moved from the brake pedal to the accelerator. The car began to move very slowly toward the end of the lot.
“See, what did I tell you?” Erin cried, beaming. She’d never doubted him for a moment. “It’s like riding a bicycle.”
He glanced at her. “I don’t remember being able to do that, either.”
She laughed. “There’s a reason for that. You don’t know how to ride a bicycle. It’s just an expression.”
“Oh.”
Right after they found his memory, they were going to have to find his sense of humor. She watched him handle the car. “You’re doing very well.”
He thought she was patronizing him, but one look at her face told him that she was serious. He glanced at the speedometer. “At eleven miles an hour, I don’t think I can do much damage.”
Erin thought of the time her bumper had been creased by the car behind her just as the light had turned green. Impact had been at less than five miles an hour. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”
“At this point—” Brady executed a U-turn with a minimum of effort and smiled to himself in satisfaction “—everything is a surprise to me.”
Erin leaned over to get a better look at the speedometer. Fifteen miles an hour. He was still the same cautious man she had always loved.
“Why don’t you try for twenty?” she urged.
“You’re on.” He went down one long row and then up another, following the arrows.
Erin nodded, pleased. “Well, I’m satisfied.” She didn’t feel like struggling out of the passenger seat to get behind the steering-wheel again. “Would you like to drive home, Brady?”
It was one thing to drive around the lot, another to actually go out on the road. He thought of the legal ramifications. “But I don’t have my license with me. What if we’re stopped by a policeman?”
They were only seven miles from home. “Odds are against that, unless you suddenly decide to challenge someone to a drag race.” Erin smiled to herself.
He liked her smile, he thought, even though he usually didn’t know what brought it out. Like now. “What are you smiling about now?”
He was acting according to type, even though he wasn’t aware of it. “The old Brady wouldn’t have taken a chance either. He would have played it very safe.” She waited for him to stop the car.
Brady drove down another lane, thinking. He wasn’t certain if he liked the way she said that, or the implications that it held. He didn’t care for the idea that he was completely predictable, especially when he didn’t know what he was going to do himself.
He found himself wanting to be just a little reckless. Maybe it was because he chafed against the confines of the fog that held him prisoner. Maybe that was what made him want to break free.
Brady made up his mind.
“All right, I’ll drive. But you’re going to have to give me directions.”
She was surprised. And pleased. “Every step of the way,” she promised.
Brady had a feeling that she was talking about more than just the car ride. Somehow, she made him feel hopeful, an emotion that he didn’t think he entertained very often.
There was something about her bubbly enthusiasm that made the road he was taking seem a little easier, a little less lonely.
“Ready for your solo flight, Mr. Lindbergh?” she teased. “The exit is just up ahead.”
“It’s my memory that’s missing, not my eyesight,” he told her. “And Lindbergh took his solo flight alone, hence the term ‘solo.’”
“Testy.” But she wasn’t put off. He was trying hard not to smile, she noted.
Very cautiously, Brady eased his car onto the main road. Traffic was light, he observed gratefully. “When do you want me to move in?”
Yesterday.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to look subdued. “We could stop at the restaurant and tell Demi now,” she suggested nonchalantly. “You know, pick up your things. Settle up.” After all, this was the middle of the week, and he probably got paid on Friday.
Maybe she was going too fast, she thought when he didn’t answer. “Unless you’d rather wait until tomorrow to do it.”
Brady stopped the car at the light. The freeway entrance was just up ahead. He tried to remember the route she had taken here. North. He needed the entrance heading north, he thought. That minor hurtle conquered, he looked at her.
It bothered Brady a great deal that he couldn’t tap into that area of his brain where memories of Erin were lodged. He knew that there had to be a great many, and he needed to get to them in order to feel whole.
The sooner the better. Maybe something that she would say or do tonight would make the difference and bring him back.
“No,” he told her as the light turned green, “I’d rather we did it tonight.”
Content, Erin settled back in the seat. “You get on right there, just past the fast-food place,” she directed calmly.
“I know. I watched the road when you drove here.” Actually, he had watched her while they drove here. But the peripherals had managed to sink in.
“You’re making progress.” Erin began to hum to herself.
His head nearly snapped around as he looked at her sharply. “What’s that?”
She looked at the road, alert. Had he spotted something? “What’s what?”
“What you’re humming.”
Her heart settled into a normal pattern again. She paused, thinking. “I don’t know.” Erin hummed the refrain again. It was just one of those snatches of a tune that sometimes ran through her head. “Why, do you remember it?” she asked excitedly.
He thought he did, but then the feeling faded. He was trying too hard, it was just that he felt as if he were standing at a huge door that was barring him from the rest of his life. If he could only find a way to open it, if he could only find the right key, everything would be all right.
But he hadn’t even the vaguest idea where the keyhole was.
“No,” he murmured.
She noted the speedometer. “Um, about being stopped by the police—”
His eyes darted quickly to the rearview mirror. But there was no car with dancing red-and-blue lights following him. “What about it?”
“They stop you if you’re going too slow, as well.”
Murmuring something unintelligible under his breath, Brady pressed down harder on the accelerator.
6
Brady eyed the tuxedo that Erin had brought in and laid out on his bed dubiously. Like almost everything else, he had no recollection of it, but he couldn’t quite see himself wearing it.
“Are you sure this is mine?” he called out when he heard her shower door slam closed.
A minute later, Erin peered into his room. Her hair wrapped in a towel fashioned like a turban, she was wearing a blue bathrobe like the one that was hanging in his closet. Life with her hadn’t returned to him, but Brady discovered that he was enjoying the one he was sharing now.
Erin felt as if she’d been running since dawn. They had exactly one hour to get to Marlene’s house in order to be on time for the wedding. Weddings, she reminded herself. As planned, both Bailey sisters were getting married today at eleven. The flowers Marlene and Nicole had selected from her shop had been delivered by seven this morning. She’d been there to personally arrange the orchids, roses and carnations in the living room and the huge reception area.
The place had been in a state of what appeared to be organized chaos, with a small, gnomelike woman Marlene had introduced to her as Sally at the center of it, barking out orders to caterers and decorators alike. Erin had been grateful to do her part and then quickly slip out.
The flowers might have arrived on time, but she was having serious doubts right now if they would. Not if Brady insisted on looking at the tuxedo she had purchased as if it were the enemy.
“It’s yours.” She smiled at him reassuringly. “I’m positive.” When the time came, Erin hoped he would forgive her this one little white lie, but he did look elegant wearing a tuxedo. She patted her hands along the outline of the turban, dabbing the excess moisture out of her hair. Mentally, she crossed her fingers. “It was at the cleaners. Maybe they shrank it or something.”
He hadn’t even tried putting on the suit yet. He picked it up and hooked the hanger on the top drawer so that the tuxedo draped against the armoire. The change in perspective didn’t help. He still didn’t care for it.
“No, it looks like it fits, but I’m not talking about that.” He raised his eyes to hers. “It just doesn’t look like the sort of thing that I’d wear.”
Erin lifted the hanger and held the jacket against him. “Oh, you’ve worn it. And with aplomb.” That much she didn’t have to fabricate. “You look very dashing in it.” She grinned. “And very sexy.”
He didn’t know about that. Glancing toward the mirror, Brady suspected the tuxedo made him look like a mannequin. He arched an eyebrow as he looked at the expression on her face. “You wouldn’t be taking advantage of the situation now, would you?”
Erin exuded wide-eyed innocence, splaying a hand on her chest. “Who, me?”
Brady laughed and shook his head. She made him laugh a lot this past week. She added light to the gray world he was attempting to dig his way out of. Erin made this question mark he was living more than
bearable. She made it all worthwhile.
He couldn’t resist hooking a finger along her belt loop and pulling her closer to him. He liked the look of surprise that came into her eyes. Obviously, the gesture wasn’t something he would have normally done. In an odd sort of way, that pleased him. Brady lightly brushed his lips along hers. Even that slight touch caused a spark to ripple through both of them, electricity waiting to be unleashed. Brady savored it a moment, then released her.
“Yes, you.”
Erin stared at him, stunned. This was an untapped side of Brady, one she’d never seen before. One she really liked. A side she prayed she wouldn’t have to give up once things became clear to him again.
It had been a week. One precious, wonderful week since he had reappeared in her life. A week since she had begun living again. In a way, it was still a little like residing in limbo, looking into his beautiful green eyes and not seeing the Brady she knew there.
But even that had its compensations. He was displaying qualities she’d never known he had. Qualities he probably didn’t know he had. Qualities that made her fall in love with him all over again.
The main thing, she reminded herself, was that he was here. And, memory or no memory, he was still the man she loved.
When she’d picked him up at Edmond Labs that first afternoon, Erin had hoped that he would have experienced an epiphany of some sort sometime during the day. But although he told her that he continued to surprise himself with what he did know in terms of the work required of him, apart from Duffy and his office number, he still couldn’t remember that he had ever worked at Edmond Labs. He’d read pages that he’d written and could actually follow the analyses and the mathematics involved. Yet he couldn’t remember writing it. Recollection still seemed aeons away.
By now, she had come to grips with the fact that lightning wasn’t going to strike. Brady wasn’t going to look at her one morning and have everything suddenly come rushing back to him. She consoled herself with the fact that they were exploring each other all over again. That was pretty special in itself. How many people were given an opportunity to fall in love all over again?
The 7 Lb., 2 Oz. Valentine Page 7
