A Husband She Couldn't Forget

by Christine Rimmer

  He had no illusions. There was no possibility of a future for them, together, anymore. They’d had something real and true and beautiful. All that was gone now, broken beyond repair, mostly by him. He didn’t want to fix it. He didn’t believe it could be fixed.

  He just wanted Aly to be whole and happy. He wanted her to be ready, the way she’d always been, to take on the world. He wanted to be able to picture her living the East Coast life she’d created for herself, making it big in New York, New York.

  “I’ll follow your instructions,” he said. “Please tell her brother it’s all right that I see her.”

  * * *

  The ride to Cat and Ernesto’s house was as silent as the one to Dr. Warbury’s office had been.

  Dante seethed. Connor had the feeling that anything he said might set him off. He and Dante were the same age, both of them two years older than Alyssa.

  It was sad, really. What they’d come to. All through elementary school, middle school and high school, it was Connor and Dante, joined at the hip, the best of friends. Alyssa had been off-limits to Connor then. A guy didn’t put moves on his best friend’s little sister—no matter how much he wanted to.

  Aly hadn’t helped. She’d done everything in her power to get him to give in and make a move on her.

  She’d started crushing on him when she was thirteen. By then, she already had serious curves to go with her beautiful face, her thick, dark hair, cobalt-blue eyes and milk-white skin. She started wearing shorts and tight T-shirts every chance she got, just to drive him crazy.

  But he’d pretended he didn’t notice. His mom and dad had died that year, the year Aly was thirteen. They’d drowned in a tsunami during a vacation in Thailand, of all the awful ways to go. He was all broken up about it, like everyone else in the Bravo family. Whenever Aly tried to get close to him, he would think of his lost parents and nurture the ache inside himself, the feeling of bitter loneliness to be without his mom and dad. He’d always felt a little guilty that he used his parents’ death to protect himself, to keep from getting too close to Dante’s gorgeous little sister.

  After a year or so of trying really hard to get his attention, Aly seemed to get the message that he wasn’t going there. She went totally the other way, completely ignoring him. He’d told himself that all he felt was relief. She was Dante’s precious sister and Dante was his best friend in the world. He didn’t need that kind of trouble.

  Not long after she turned fifteen, Aly started hanging out with her first boyfriend, Craig Watson. Connor had managed to keep his cool about that, but barely. He’d had a lot of violent fantasies wherein he beat the crap out of Craig. Somehow, he’d managed not to act on those fantasies.

  Over time, he’d even succeeded in convincing himself that everything was cool between him and Aly, that he thought of her as an honorary little sister and nothing more.

  Until they met up at OU. She was a freshman and he was in his junior year, and Dante was miles away at Portland State. At first, they pretended to each other that they were just friends, that Connor was looking out for her, taking the big brother role while she adjusted to college life.

  That pretense died fast.

  They were lovers within a week, and by the second week of classes, they were inseparable. Dante completely lost it when he found out. He came after Connor. They fought hard and dirty. Connor broke Dante’s nose and ended up busting the metacarpal bone of his little finger in the process.

  But their injuries healed. In time, Dante forgave him and agreed to be best man at the wedding.

  Everything was pretty much perfect. Except for Alyssa’s dream for her future, the one Connor had pretended he shared.

  * * *

  Cat and Ernesto Santangelo still lived in the big two-story house where they’d raised their family. Their four sons were all grown up. Pascal and Tony were married, with kids. Dante was divorced with twin daughters. Marco, the youngest, would be nineteen now. Last Connor had heard, Marco still lived at home.

  Dante parked in the big graveled turnaround in front of the house, filling an empty space between two other vehicles. A mud-spattered quad cab was parked several yards away. Had all the Santangelo sons shown up for this?

  Dante turned off the engine. “Mom and Aly are both fragile right now,” he warned. “You give either of them the slightest hint of grief and you will be dealing with—”

  Connor cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I get it. Let’s go in.”

  In the house, the full gauntlet of Santangelo men waited for him in the big living room. All four of them—Ernesto, Pascal, Tony and Marco—stared at him through identical angry, coffee-brown eyes. Dante, too, for that matter.

  Ernesto, as the patriarch, did the talking, his voice low and carefully controlled. “We don’t want you here, but what else can a man do? My Bella won’t quit asking for you. You’d better not screw this up or we’ll make it a family project to rearrange your face for you.”

  Okay, the threats were getting really old. He was here, wasn’t he? He’d promised to keep himself under control. What more did they want? About now, it was getting pretty hard not to imagine how much he would enjoy mixing it up with a Santangelo or two.

  Aly, he reminded himself. She’s why you’re here.

  Connor kept his voice calm and said what Dr. Warbury had warned him to say. “I’m not here to cause trouble, only to help.”

  Several seconds of cold stares ensued. Finally, Ernesto nodded at Marco. “Go on, get your sister.”

  “Wait a minute,” Connor put a lot of effort into keeping his voice low and easy. “I’m guessing Aly would rather meet with me in private. I have promised before and I’ll promise again to behave myself. I’m just thinking she’d rather do this without her father and her brothers breathing down her neck.”

  “Forget that,” Ernesto and Dante said almost in unison.

  Ernesto went on, “You know nothing about what my daughter would rather do. It’s happening here, in the open, where we can keep an eye on you. You will tell her that you’re not married anymore, that you haven’t been married for a long time and that’s gonna be that.”

  Connor let a shrug speak for him. He’d tried. At this point, it seemed counterproductive to push the issue.

  Marco vanished into the front hall. Nobody spoke. An endless couple minutes ticked by.

  And then, at last, Aly appeared in the open doorway to the foyer, with Marco right behind her. She had bruises on her pale arms and two black eyes. A white bandage covered a spot on the left side of her head. The gorgeous, milky skin of her cheeks and forehead was scraped raw and scabbed over. Cuts and scratches marred the soft column of her neck. Only her glorious mane of dark hair appeared unscathed, except for that shaved area on the left side. It was covered with a white bandage. She looked like hell—and so damn beautiful it hurt.

  She gasped at the sight of him. He probably did the same. It rocked him, rocked him deep, just to see her again.

  There was a moment, endless and so sweet. They stared at each other. God, it was good. A complete lie, yeah, but perfect nonetheless. She was looking at him the way she used to before he screwed it all up. Like he was everything that mattered, the center of her world.

  As the seconds ticked by, he grew more and more certain that she would throw herself into his arms. He could not wait.

  She didn’t do it, though. Instead she came forward with her head high and held out a hand. Every nerve in his body on fire with hopeless yearning, he took it.

  “Come on,” she said, and turned for the foyer again.

  “Hey!” Dante started after them as the other Santangelo men let out a chorus of protests.

  “Aly, no...”

  “Aly, stay here.”

  “You’re not leaving this room,” said her dad.

  Still holding tight to Connor’s hand, Aly stopped in the doorway. S
he turned and pinned them all with a look. “I will talk to my husband alone if you don’t mind.”

  Dante froze where he stood.

  And Ernesto, who never could refuse her anything, gave in. “Let them go.” Suddenly, he looked old.

  Not another word was spoken. Aly led Connor across the foyer and up the stairs. She entered the second room along the upstairs hall, the room that had been hers when she was growing up.

  He remembered that room. Even after they got married, her mom had kept it for Aly, with her purple satin bedspread and black lacquer furniture. Pictures of him and Aly and of her school friends had remained stuck beneath the mirror frame of the vanity table.

  Not anymore, though. Cat had redone it—as a guest room, apparently. The walls were a tan color, the bedspread a soft blue.

  He heard Aly shut the door, and turned from studying the room to face her.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Connor. At last.”

  And then she did throw herself at him.

  Heedless of the rules not to encourage her, he opened his arms and grabbed her close. She hopped up, the way she used to do, and wrapped her arms and legs around him.

  “Aly...” He tried to be careful of her, to remember her injuries. But at the same time, he couldn’t crush her close enough. She felt like heaven and the ginger scent of her was so sweet, so well remembered. It filled him with longing and regret.

  “Connor...” She lifted her head from where she’d buried it against his shoulder. “Oh, Conn...” Tipping her chin high, she offered her mouth to him, surging up higher, eager to meet his lips.

  He’d never wanted anything so much in his life as to steal a kiss from her right now.

  But he couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.

  “Hey, now...” Reluctantly, and much more gently than he’d grabbed her, he eased her thighs from around him. Setting her carefully down, he stepped back.

  She stared up at him, shattered. “Tell me.” Bright red stained her battered cheeks. “Say it.”

  “I’m sorry, I...” Words failed him.

  She’d always been the stronger one. Now, she said it for him in a flat voice. “We’re not married. You filed to divorce me seven years ago. I live in New York and I have a fabulous career. And you and me, we’re just...not anymore.”

  He blinked down at her. “So then, you do know? You remember now?”

  She laughed then, a wild laugh, and tossed her midnight hair. “No, I do not remember.” She put both hands to her head, as if to steady her brain after shaking it. “But it’s what everyone keeps telling me. It’s what I see in your eyes when I look at you.” She held up her left hand, poked her thumb at her ring finger. “Bare. That’s a big clue, right? My laptop is toast, but they recovered my purse and phone from the wreck of my rental car. I have a New York driver’s license. It says my last name is Santangelo. And I’m on social media. I’ve seen a bunch of great pictures of me with my friends and colleagues in Manhattan. I wear a lot of black and I have amazing shoes.” She put her hands to her head again. “Also, everything’s pretty fuzzy in here. I believe, I’m absolutely certain in my heart, that you and I are still married. But I don’t really remember much specifically—about you and me and our life now. I can’t tell you where we live or what we do, together, day by day...”

  “Because we aren’t together.” The words came out of him sounding cold. Cruel. He tried for a gentler tone. “Not anymore. Not for seven years.”

  “My family has explained it all to me, over and over, that we broke up because you wanted to stay in Oregon and I was determined to have a career with a major advertising firm. That you divorced me when I took a job in New York.”

  “That’s right,” he said gently. “That’s what happened. That’s the truth, at least basically.”

  She sneered at him. “Basically, huh? So then, what is the deeper truth, Connor? Tell me about that.”

  He’d come here to be honest with her, but still he hesitated, reluctant to admit what a rotten jerk he’d been. “You really don’t remember any of it?”

  She raised her hand and laid it carefully over the white bandage on the side of her head. “Just...random images. Nothing makes sense.”

  He stared down at her. Where to even start?

  “Tell me,” she demanded again.

  He made himself do it. “From the first, when we were at OU together, you were all about getting out, getting away. No small-town life for you, you told me. And I went along with you, I agreed with you. I said I wanted what you wanted, that I would go with you. I would get a job in finance. We would take New York by storm. I pretended to be all gung ho about it. You interviewed with your dream company in Manhattan and they hired you. We even signed a lease on a postage stamp of an apartment.”

  “But you didn’t really want to go?”

  He shook his head. “We were packing for the move when I finally admitted I didn’t want to do it. I wanted a life here in Valentine Bay, working with my brother, building the family business.”

  She seemed more confused than before. “You lied because...?”

  “I didn’t want to lose you. I told myself you’d change your mind, that deep in your heart, you didn’t want to go, either.”

  “But I really did want to go?” It wasn’t quite a question.

  “Yeah. You did. You really did. Still, when I finally admitted I wasn’t going, you were...patient with me. You tried to compromise, begged me just to try New York for a year and then we would reevaluate.”

  “And you?”

  “I dug in.” He couldn’t meet those bruised blue eyes. “I said forget it, I wasn’t going. I was so sure that when it came right down to the wire, you wouldn’t leave me, that you would give it up and stay home.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “No. You went. I didn’t reach out. You didn’t, either. Two months after you left, I had you served with divorce papers.”

  “Connor.”

  He looked at her then. Her eyes were wide, full of wonder—or maybe just complete disbelief.

  “Nothing?” she whispered. And then her voice gained strength. “You gave me nothing for two months and then, without so much as a phone call, you filed for divorce?”

  “That is exactly what I did.”

  “You were an assh—”

  “Yes, I was. And that’s not all. I scrawled a note on the envelope the divorce papers were in. I wrote, ‘Or you could just come home.’”

  She blinked. “Wow. You make yourself sound even worse than what my brothers told me.”

  “Yeah, well. You signed the papers and wrote your own little note. Two words. ‘Or not.’”

  That brought a low, husky laugh from her. “Good for me.”

  “I can’t say I thought so at the time, but yeah. Good for you.”

  “So then what you’re really saying is that you were a total douche-basket who threw me and our marriage away?”

  He held her gaze and told the painful truth. “That is exactly what I was and what I did.”

  She just stood there looking at him for the longest time. He had no clue what she might be thinking, though he was pretty sure it wasn’t anything good.

  And he was having a little trouble not surrendering to his insane compulsion to drop to his knees and beg her for another chance.

  He didn’t give in to that. He had no right. It was way too late for second chances, for big, dramatic gestures. He was here to help her, not add to her confusion.

  In time, she would remember her real life in Manhattan. She would realize that she had everything she’d ever wanted, that she was better off without him.

  “I don’t know what more to say, except that I am so sorry. And if there’s anything I can do now, anything at all to make it better for you, just let me know, okay?”

  “Anything.” She sco
ffed. “You’ll do anything for me.”

  “I just want to help.”

  “Well, okay then. Thank you for coming, Connor. As for what you can do for me, you can get the hell out.”

  Chapter Three

  “Love you and miss you. Lots. ’Bye, Sibbie.” Cat Santangelo hung up the phone.

  Aly, nice and comfy in the wing chair by the window, with her feet propped on the plush ottoman, asked, “How’s Aunt Siobhan?”

  “She thinks she needs to be here. I talked her out of coming. Your uncle Albert just had back surgery. She’s got enough on her plate taking care of him. She sends her love.” With a fond smile, Cat patted the empty side of her new king-size adjustable memory-foam bed. “Come on. It’s a giant bed and it’s super comfy. Get up in here with me.”

  Aly pushed the ottoman out of the way, rose and went to stretch out on the bed with her mom. “Is he kicking?”

  Cat rested a hand on the pillow next to Aly’s head. Aly felt her gentle touch as she fiddled with a lock of Aly’s hair. “He’s more of a puncher, I would say.”

  Aly turned on her side—the good side, without the bandage—and rested her hand on her mom’s big stomach. “Nothing, not even a nudge.”

  “Yeah, he never punches me except when we’re alone. I think he has a shy side.”

  Aly stroked her mom’s belly, soothing Cat and herself and maybe the baby, too. It felt good, to spend time with her mom again. A lot of women had issues with their mothers. Not Aly. She and Cat had always banded together, presented a united front. With five strong-willed men in the family, they needed to have each other’s backs.

  There was a hopeful whine from the floor on Cat’s other side. Aly and her mom chuckled together and Aly said, “Tuck wants up.”

  “Come on.” Cat patted the mattress and up came Tucker, a wire-haired terrier mix her mom had adopted from the local shelter a few years before. The dog made himself comfortable, cuddling up close to Cat.