Bridal Reconnaissance (12 page)

She shuddered. “What are you saying?”

When he turned back toward her, the anger burned brighter in his dark eyes. “He’s playing with you, Amanda. Taunting you.”

“He wants me to suffer.” She wrapped her arms tight around herself, holding in the tremors of fear. “If he wants to hurt me the most, he’ll hurt my child. That’s why we need to get Christopher tonight.”

“It’s too late. You know he’s sleeping. And if Weering is following
you,
he’s safe where he’s at.”

Safer away from her than with her. That’s what Evan was saying. The truth of that shattered her more than any of the madman’s threats. Her very presence endangered her child. “I can’t abandon my child. I’m the only parent he knows,” she argued desperately.

Evan winced. “I don’t expect you to abandon him, Amanda. Just let him sleep tonight.” The unspoken
at Royce’s, away from you,
hung between them.

“I’m sorry.” She sighed, frustration, fear and exhaustion fraying her nerves. “You really didn’t know that I—that I was pregnant before I…”

“Left me?” He turned away from her again, shrugging out of his overcoat, stained now with the blood of the accident victims.

Along with not remembering the past, she couldn’t imagine being with this man, let alone leaving him. Except for that flicker of recognition with his kiss and the ensuing conflagration of passion.

She licked dry lips, lips that still bore the slight flavor of his rich kiss. “I don’t know…”

He chuckled, but no laugh lines wrinkled in his face. Was he a man without humor in his life? From the starkness of his house, one might conclude that he had nothing in his life.

Since she left? A small part of her rejoiced in that thought, selfish as it was. Another mourned.

“You don’t believe it. You still don’t accept that you are my wife,” he said.

If he refused to lie, so would she. “No, I don’t completely accept it. I know you probably have proof, but I can’t remember. I can’t believe it unless I can remember.”

He dragged in a quick breath. “I dumped our coffee earlier. Do you still want some?”

She nodded, knowing that with or without the influence of caffeine, sleep would prove unattainable for her. “Yes.”

“The pot’s on the counter, beans and grinder in the
drawer below it.” He gestured toward the kitchen, which was in a corner of the great room, separated from it only by a long granite island.

She stiffened over his lack of manners to a guest. But then,
was
she a guest? If she could believe him, she was his wife. So even though she had never lived here, didn’t that make this house as much hers as his? She glanced around the deep gray slate floors and unadorned walls and shuddered. This house would
never
be hers.

“Fine, I’ll make the coffee,” she said after a moment.

He hadn’t waited for her acquiescence though as he’d already stridden back down the hall to the French doors that opened off of it and into a den.

Business.

Why did she assume that? And why did the thought fill her with resentment?

Dizzy, she swayed on her feet, gripping at the granite counter to avoid crumpling to the hard floor. Tired. That was all. Fatigue and stress inevitably brought on the headaches and the episodes of dizziness.

Maybe coffee would help. Forcing her hands to steady, she measured out beans into the grinder, breathing in the rich aroma. In minutes she had set the pot to brew, and the scent increased. Seductively rich. Like Evan.

And she was alone with him. And despite the starkness of their surroundings, this was even more intimate than the close confines of his sports car. This was his home.

Would she ever be able to return to hers? To the little house partially paid for by the watch found on
her battered body after the attack. But that tiny bungalow had never felt like home.

No more than this place.

“Did I ever live here?” she asked, sensing his presence by the enticing scent of his cologne and the power of his personality. She glanced over her shoulder to where he leaned against the granite island across from her.

“No. I told you before that you never really had a home.”

“Where’d I grow up?”

“London, Paris, Rome, Milan…in some of the finest hotel suites in those magnificent cities—that’s what you told me. Never seemed to bother you.”

“What did bother me back then?”

“Maybe me. I don’t know.”

“So that’s why I left. Not because I didn’t want a child.” That reason still gnawed at her. She couldn’t imagine not wanting Christopher.

His gaze hardened.

She dragged in a quick breath, not wanting to travel down a painful road again tonight. He had told her already that it was because he’d wanted children and she hadn’t. What kind of woman had she been?

“So where are my parents now?”

“Probably in one of those cities. And they’ve moved into the double digits on marriages now.”

“Combined?”

“Each.”

She shivered, not able to accept that she came from people like the ones he described. “Do they…have they…”

“Searched for you?”

She nodded.

He shrugged, but his dark eyes softened with sympathy. “You and your father had a fight before you left. You quit working for him. He’s a fashion designer. He was furious and disowned you.”

And being a man who could cut off his association with wife after wife, he’d had no problem cutting off contact with a daughter. Had he not loved her at all? Had he only loved what she’d done for his business? Emptiness yawned within Amanda until an image of Christopher racing off the school bus and into her arms flashed through her mind.

“And my mother?” Wasn’t the bond between a mother and child unbreakable, like hers with Christopher?

He chuckled. “Mother? You’ve never been able to call her that. When you were young, nannies raised you. She had little contact with you, ever. But you went to her after you left me, or you went to her estate outside Chicago anyway. That’s where you were last seen.”

And sometime after that she’d fallen into the clutches of a madman. She couldn’t think about that, not now, not when night wrapped around the house.

“You’re not painting a very pretty picture of the past.”
My past.
But she couldn’t claim it, not when she couldn’t remember it.

“I don’t think you thought that back then. It was all you knew.”

And now that she was a mother, she knew differently. She knew the unsurpassed joy of the first time Christopher had called her mama. She couldn’t imagine never wanting that. She couldn’t imagine any of
the past. And did she even want to try? Was there anything worth remembering?

Besides him.

Evan would be worth it. Or would he? Would the memories only bring more pain?

Her headache hammered at her, and she winced under the pressure.

“Do you want to remember, Amanda?” His dark eyes stared at her, maybe into her, since his question was so perceptive.

“I don’t know.” She turned back to the pot mounted under the white cabinet. “Coffee’s done.”

Her stomach flipped at the thought of drinking any now, so late at night. But the thought of closing her eyes to sleep summoned other images, images from Snake Timmer’s apartment. She shivered.

“A cup will warm you up,” Evan advised.

What warmed her up was his lean length pressing against her back as he reached into the cupboard above her head. Then he set down a coffee mug on the counter on either side of her, his arms remaining in a loose embrace around her.

She struggled with the urge to turn in his arms and lay her cheek against his strong chest. She had already laid her troubles on the broad shoulders of this stranger. Her husband?

His breath shuddered out, warm against her cheek as he dipped his head close to her ear. “Why is it so hard to accept that you are my wife?”

Something in his voice compelled her to tip back her head and meet his tortured gaze. Why did it matter so much to him that she couldn’t remember him? Had he cared about her?

She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him if he had.
That
woman was dead to him. And she doubted she would ever be resurrected, in memory or spirit.

“I don’t know.” She sighed, at a loss. “There’s so much I don’t know.”

“I can help you.”

She turned then, to stroke her hand along his hard jaw. The stubble of his five-o’clock shadow tickled her fingertips, sending a tingling sensation up her arm. “You’re helping me already. And I’ve never thanked you. You’re putting your life on the line for me.”

She wanted to take it personally, wanted to believe it had something to do with her, with the woman she had been and the one she was now. But she’d seen his response to strangers in trouble. And that’s all she was to him. A stranger.

He caught her hand, pulling it away from his face but not releasing it. His fingers wove through hers. “Amanda, I don’t see it like that.”

“You told me that I’m in danger. You can’t deny that. And just by being with me, you’re in danger, too.”

His eyes darkened as he shuttered whatever emotion flickered through them. She didn’t know why he bothered, she couldn’t read him anyway. “Amanda…”

“You had the faster car tonight. That’s the only reason we didn’t wind up like those poor people, turned upside down. We could have died. Both of us.” Had that happened, they would have orphaned Christopher. Her breath caught as she thought of her son raised by anyone but her. Strangers who wouldn’t love him as she did.

A thunderous look flashed in Evan’s eyes. “He didn’t want to run us off the road, Amanda.”

She shuddered, and he used their linked hands to pull her into his arms. Her cheek rested against his shoulder, tears spilling from her eyes onto his silk shirt. “You think he’s playing with us, taunting us?”

“Running you off the road is too impersonal. It’s not part of his plan.”

Torturing her was. Raping her. Killing her. Slowly. Painfully. As he’d killed his ex-cell mate.

“I’m so scared, Evan.” The confession tumbled out with a wretched sob.

His broad hand stroked over her back in a warm caress. “You’re safe here.”

Safe from Weering? She doubted it. She also doubted that, despite her memory loss, she was safe from the past.

“Come on,” Evan finally said. “Pour the coffee and come with me into the living room. I have something that’ll take your mind off…everything.”

She appreciated his effort, but she knew nothing would take her mind off everything. Nothing but losing it again.

But because she didn’t want to be alone or try to sleep, she poured the coffee and handed him a mug. Then after she’d added cream and sugar to hers, she followed him back into the great room.

Across a granite slab of a coffee table he had dropped some albums. What he’d retrieved from the den?

“What are these?” she asked as she settled beside him onto the supple leather sofa and reached toward one of the albums.

“Our wedding albums.”

She regretted the sip of coffee she’d taken when it scalded her throat as she choked on it. She jerked her hand away from the closest book. “I don’t think this is the time to…”

Resurrect the past? To resurrect Amanda Quade? She knew neither was possible, so why try? Why put them both through the disappointment and pain?

“Just look, Amanda. What can it hurt?” he gently prodded.

A lot.

“You still don’t believe me. I see it in your eyes, so look at the proof. Look at yourself back then.”

He flipped over a book bound in varnished maple. On the top cover, a heart had been carved out of the wood, and in the middle stood a smiling couple. A younger happy Evan had his arm wrapped around a glowing young blonde. Hair flowed past her shoulders and around the square bodice of a radiantly white wedding gown. A flirtatious smile tipped up the woman’s full lips, and pure happiness filled her green eyes as she gazed up at her husband.

Jealousy flashed through Amanda over the way the woman looked at Evan, over the proprietary way she leaned into his arms. Then she realized this woman was supposed to be her.

“No, it doesn’t even look like me. You’ve made a mistake.” She edged away, reaching with trembling hands for her coffee cup.

What would he do now? Would he withdraw his offer of protection since she was obviously
not
his wife?

He chuckled softly.

“Amanda, look closer. It’s you. Look beyond the hair and clothes.”

Although pain throbbed behind her eyes, she glanced again. He opened the book, flashing other photos in front of her. More of the same smiling carefree couple.

Until he thumbed to a candid shot, later in the book, she didn’t believe it was her. But in this photo, the woman gazed pensively across a garden, yearning.

As
she
yearned.

All those years ago that woman had had everything. Or had she? What had she yearned for then?

Now Amanda yearned for security.

Pain throbbed at her temples and pounded in her head. “I’m tired.”

“I can show you to the guest room.”

She caught his wrist as he leaned forward to place the album back on the table. “No, let me look.”

With trembling fingers she flipped through those pages, staring at people she didn’t recognize, wondering who they were, who she was.

Evan sat stiffly beside her, sipping coffee and studying her with those dark eyes so like her son’s. Like
his
son’s.

They had been married. In the back of the album the marriage certificate bore both of their names. His. And the one he’d told her had been hers.

Although she began to believe him, she didn’t know what it would change. She’d never again be the woman he had married. If William Weering III had his way, she wouldn’t even
be
much longer.

While going through the albums, she must have dozed off because she awoke to sunlight pouring
through the two-story windows. Squinting against the brightness, she glanced around her and found Evan still asleep, slouched beside her. She had curled up against him, her head resting on his broad shoulder.