Memories of You

by Margot Dalton

  Steven got to his feet and stood waiting for the anger and the terrible sadness he knew his father was going to express.

  He stared down at his feet, aware that he deserved whatever happened. The silence between them lengthened, grew unbearable.

  “How much did you hear?” he whispered at last, his voice husky.

  “Pretty much all of it,” Jon said calmly. “Look at me, son.”

  Steven forced himself to meet his father’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he murmured in anguish. “It was a crazy thing to get involved in. I know you’re disappointed in me, and you probably hate me, but I want you to know I’m—”

  “Oh, Steve.” Jon’s voice was rough with feeling. “Son, I love you so much.”

  Steven looked up in amazement Despite the emotion, his father seemed utterly transformed. His strong tanned face was gentle with affection, the blue eyes clear and full of happiness.

  “You love me?” Steven whispered. “You’re not mad at me?”

  For reply, Jon put out his arms. Steven moved into his father’s embrace. For the first time in years the hard knot of pain loosened and fell away, replaced by soaring happiness and a sense of homecoming unlike anything he’d ever known.

  THE STORM RAGED all night long, surprising everybody who’d dismissed it as a passing autumn squall. Snow began to fall more heavily after midnight, driven by a wind that howled across the prairie. Ice coated the power lines until they froze and snapped. And sculpted white drifts piled over highways and vacant lots.

  When Camilla finally got home, weary after a twohour struggle to keep her car on the road and see the fleeing patches of bare highway, her phone line seemed to be dead. She unplugged both telephones anyway.

  She couldn’t bear to hear Jon’s voice tonight, and suffer through his attempts to be courteous now that he knew the truth.

  Camilla groped her way through the darkened apartment, searching for candles. She put one in the kitchen and one on the bathroom counter where they created a mysterious secret world, like campfires in the center of a cave. Finally, feeling unbearably lonely, she took another candle and went looking for her cats.

  Elton and Madonna huddled together in a warm ball in the middle of her bed. They stirred drowsily when she approached with the flickering candle.

  “That looks…cozy,” she said with a catch in her voice, gazing down at them. “I think I’ll join you. But will it bother you if I cry all night?”

  Madonna yawned, her whiskered face dim and secretive in the dusky glow of candlelight. Camilla fondled the silky ears, then hurried to bathe, take out her contact lenses and put on her nightgown.

  She blew out the candles and climbed into bed, snuggling closer to the warmth of her cats. The apartment heating seemed to have failed, as well, so she was grateful to have Elton and Madonna. Under a mound of quilts with the cats piled on top of her, she lay and stared at the ceiling.

  In truth, she felt like a turtle stripped of its protective hard shell. The revelation of her past had left her exposed, and so vulnerable that any ray of light or wayward breeze would probably destroy her.

  On some level there was also relief, but she wasn’t yet fully prepared to deal with that emotion. She only knew that the lies were all over. From now on she’d tell the truth to everybody, and let her life unfold from there.

  If colleagues scorned her for having allowed the lies to go unchallenged all these years, or friends turned away…well, that was the price she’d have to pay.

  At least she wouldn’t have this dreadful weight on her soul all the time.

  More important, she’d managed to prevent Steven Campbell from making a life-destroying mistake. Her debt to Jon was paid in full.

  Camilla rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, trying not to cry.

  But when she remembered his face as he stood there in the entry to the old barn, she was overcome with sadness. In the brief glimpse she’d had of him, he looked so shocked. Obviously Jon never had the slightest inkling that his English professor was actually the girl who’d shared that long-ago weekend.

  What must he be thinking of her now? She writhed under the covers and moaned aloud.

  All these weeks she’d played the role of dignified academic. She’d marked his essay without comment She’d even visited his ranch and made friends with his family, recklessly believing he’d never find out the truth. But now he knew everything.

  Misery welled up, too powerful to control. She gulped painfully, then began to sob.

  Only now, in the depths of her humiliation, did she understand how deeply she loved Jon Campbell. For years he’d been part of a girlish fantasy, a scrap of memory, a daydream that warmed her barren life. But after meeting and talking with him again as an adult woman, drawing close to him and getting to know him, she loved him so much that her life without him would never be the same again.

  She continued to cry, with deep, heartrending sobs that alarmed both cats. Sensing her need, they crept nearer and cuddled on the pillow by her face, purring raggedly.

  Camilla hugged them and tried to stop crying, but the well of tears seemed bottomless. She wasn’t just crying for herself. She was mourning all the wasted years, all the loneliness and sadness in the world, all the lost and wandering people who never found their mates….

  At last, after what seemed like hours, she fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep. When she woke, she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The room was shrouded in a misty, surreal kind of half-light and none of the clocks worked properly.

  She got up, pulled on a robe and stumbled to the window, where she was greeted by a remarkable sight.

  Though the calendar said October, it might just as well have been January. Snow drifted over the roofs of cars and across the streets in an unbroken sea of white. Thin shrouds of fog wrapped around the buildings, making them look like spaceships drifting in a cold gray sky.

  Most of the world was muffled in stillness, but a few people were out trying to shovel their cars from under drifts and make paths to their front doors. Camilla could see Mr. Armisch, the super, laboring below, clearing a patch of sidewalk in front of the building.

  She looked around vaguely, wondering if the coffeepot would work or if the power was still off, and headed for the kitchen to find out.

  Amazing, she thought bleakly, how these little things still mattered. Even though your heart was broken and your world had been torn apart….

  A knock sounded at the door. Camilla looked up in alarm. Just one of the neighbors from down the hall, she told herself firmly. Somebody wondering if the power had been restored.

  She pulled the robe more tightly around her and went to answer.

  Jon Campbell stood in the entry, looking large and handsome, the shoulders of his leather jacket dusted with snow. He carried something soft and bulky in his arms, but Camilla was too shaken to register what it was.

  She stared up at him, speechless.

  “Mr. Armisch let me in,” Jon said with a casual smile, entering the apartment and closing the door as he stamped snow from his boots, “after I bribed him by promising I’d come down later and help with the shoveling. I would have been here earlier, but they closed the roads at midnight and just opened them a couple of hours ago.”

  “How…how did you get here? All that snow…”

  “I drove my Jeep. It’s parked beyond the campus where the road crews have done some clearing. I had to hike the last few blocks, though.”

  “You didn’t have to do this, Jon,” she said. “Just because you know the truth, you didn’t have to come all the way over here through these snowdrifts. I don’t need…”

  He ignored her, holding the paper-wrapped bundle in his arms as he examined her face. “Your eyes are gray,” he said in triumph. “I knew they were.”

  “I’ve been wearing tinted contacts for years.”

  He grinned. “Well, this is much better. I prefer my gray-eyed girl.”

  His smile faded. He studied her so inten
tly that she began to feel uncomfortable.

  “Callie,” he whispered at last, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Callie, sweetheart.” His voice was husky, his eyes wet with tears.

  She gazed at him in wonder, trying to understand what was happening.

  “These are for you.” He held out the package.

  With shaking hands, she unwrapped the paper to reveal a massive bouquet of yellow roses, their amber hearts flashing like jewels in the depths of the glossy leaves.

  “Jon…”

  “Because you’re a golden princess,” he murmured, caressing her shoulders. “I wanted to pick you some wildflowers from the ditch, since that’s what you really like, but all the ditches seem to be full of snow.”

  “Oh, Jon.” She began to cry.

  He took the flowers from her hands and placed them on the hall table. Then he gathered her hungrily into his arms, kissing her wet cheeks, her eyelids and neck and mouth.

  “You don’t know,” he whispered, “how many times I’ve dreamed of this. I spent so long looking for you, then didn’t recognize you when you were right in front of my eyes.”

  She nestled in his arms, hardly daring to believe what was happening.

  She felt whole again, clean and unafraid, ready to face anything. And yet she felt strangely new and unformed, as if her life was just beginning and could take on any form. The squalor of her past, the lonely years of struggle, the weary burden of deceit were all gone. Now the joy and excitement made her tremble in his embrace.

  “Callie,” he murmured. “Are you all right, darling?”

  “I’m fine.” She leaned back in his arms to give him a tearful, misty smile. “I’m just thinking how happy I am, and how terribly much I love you.”

  He kissed her again with seeking tenderness, then smiled at her. “You knew right from the start, didn’t you? You recognized me the first time you saw me. sitting in your class.”

  “That very instant.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t bear to have the past come back to life, or see you feeling sorry for me. At the time, my privacy seemed important,” she told him. “Now, after everything that’s happened, I’m amazed to find how little any of those things really mattered.”

  “And all that talk about not wanting anything to do with me,” he asked, “and terminating the research project with the twins?”

  “I was trying to protect myself. I was so afraid that if we spent any more time together, you were going to recognize me.”

  He hugged her again, whirling her around in boyish delight as he buried his face in the tousled fragrance of her hair.

  “Jon,” she murmured against his neck.

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “How’s Steven?”

  “He’s fine. We had a long talk last night after you left, and I think I’m beginning to understand him better. You helped him so much, sweetheart. I owe you a huge debt of thanks.”

  “Then we’re even.”

  “Like hell.” His eyes danced. “I intend to spend a lifetime showing you just how grateful I am.” He released her and bent to pat Elton, who rubbed against his legs, purring. “Hurry up and get dressed. Wear something really warm.”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “Why?”

  “Because I promised the kids I’d bring you home with me for a sledding party this afternoon, and they’re all waiting. I’ll go down and shovel snow while you’re getting ready.”

  Camilla smiled, her heart bursting with happiness. “You can’t push me around like this,” she teased. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”

  His face sobered briefly. “If I’d done a little more pushing when you were seventeen, we wouldn’t have wasted twenty years of our lives. Come on, darling.” ÌHe took her in his arms again. “We have to start making up for lost time.”

  The look on his face made her shiver with anticipation as a warm excitement whispered passionately through her body.

  “Yes,” she said softly, nestling contentedly into his embrace. “I think you’re right. We can spend a lifetime, my darling, making up for lost time. And every second of it will be wonderful.”

  Here’s a sneak peek at Colleen Collins’s RIGHT CHEST, WRONG NAME Available August 1997…

  “DARLING, YOU SOUND like a broken cappuccino machine,” murmured Charlotte, her voice oozing disapproval.

  Russell juggled the receiver while attempting to sit up in bed, but couldn’t. If he sounded like a wreck over the phone, he could only imagine what he looked like.

  “What mischief did you and your friends get into at your bachelor’s party last night?” she continued.

  She always had a way of saying “your friends” as though they were a pack of degenerate water buffalo. Professors deserved to be several notches higher up on the food chain, he thought. Which he would have said if his tongue wasn’t swollen to twice its size.

  “You didn’t do anything…bad…did you, Russell?”

  “Bad.” His laugh came out like a bark.

  “Bad as in naughty.”

  He heard her piqued tone but knew she’d never admit to such a base emotion as jealousy. Charlotte Maday, the woman he was to wed in a week, came from a family who bled blue. Exhibiting raw emotion was akin to burping in public.

  After agreeing to be at her parents’ pool party by noon, he untangled himself from the bedsheets and stumbled to the bathroom.

  “Pool party,” he reminded himself. He’d put on his best front and accommodate Char’s request. Make the family rounds, exchange a few pleasantries, play the role she liked best: the erudite, cultured English literature professor. After fulfilling his duties, he’d slink into some lawn chair, preferably one in the shade, and nurse his hangover.

  He tossed back a few aspirin and splashed cold water on his face. Grappling for a towel, he squinted into the mirror.

  Then he jerked upright and stared at his reflection, blinking back drops of water. “Good Lord. They stuck me in a wind tunnel.”

  His hair, usually neatly parted and combed, sprang from his head as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Can too many Wild Turkeys do that?” he asked himself as he stared with horror at his reflection.

  Something caught his eye in the mirror. Russell’s gaze dropped

  “What in the—”

  Over his pectoral muscle was a small patch of white. A bandage. Gingerly, he pulled it off.

  Underneath, on his skin, was not a wound but a small, neat drawing.

  “A red heart?” His voice cracked on the word heart. Something—a word?—was scrawled across it.

  “Good Lord,” he croaked. “I got a tattoo. A heart tattoo with the name Liz on it.” Not Charlotte. Liz!

  eISBN 978-14592-7062-6

  MEMORIES OF YOU

  Copyright © 1997 by Margot Dalton.

  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 publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario. Canada M3B 3K9.

  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.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks Indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  Printed in U.S.A.

 

 

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