The kids all greeted her with varying degrees of cheerfulness.
Her father moved around to Selena’s side. Oliver hung over his shoulder, giggling. Riff kissed her on the cheek. “I don’t think I’m ready to see blankness in his eyes if he doesn’t remember me. I’ll help with the boys for now.” He took Sawyer from her and tossed him over his other shoulder. He kissed her cheek. “I’ll give Belle time to tell the girls.”
With her father and Belle herding the kids to the barn, Selena headed toward the door. All the hurt and anger that was bubbling up needed to go away. She didn’t have time for a meltdown.
Xavier was back from the dead. He was here. He had been her best friend for so many years. Then they had pushed each other away. Maybe she did more of the shoving. Now she had no idea who he was or what he wanted from her.
A million emotions bombarded her. Simple, clear thought was impossible.
Breakfast smells swamped the house. Bacon, toast, cinnamon and coffee filled the air. Belle’s go-to when she was stressed was to feed people, so Selena wasn’t surprised to see the table piled with food.
Xavier sat with his back to her. His broad shoulders didn’t carry the muscles he’d left with three years ago. He’d always been solid and strong.
The healthy, well-muscled husband who had walked out her door for another adventure was gone. It was hard for her brain to recognize this man as the one she’d been told was dead.
When he’d left that last time, she thought her heart couldn’t be more broken. But then the news of his death had arrived, and she’d discovered what broken really meant.
Guilt made grieving harder. The only thing that had pulled her off the floor had been the three little wonders growing inside her at the time. Wonders who carried the pieces of her shattered heart.
He shifted and turned. Those once marvelous gray-green eyes that all the De La Rosas possessed were faded and flat.
Something wet hit her shirt and she looked down. Tears again? Taking a deep breath, she wiped her eyes and gave the solemn man at the breakfast table a smile.
Solemn. That was a word she would never have used for the Xavier who went to Colombia. He had been in continuous motion, a gleam in his brilliant eyes.
The gleam had disappeared a year before he left, but, too wrapped in her own insecurities, she hadn’t noticed the changes in him. They had been a mess. Her forehead knitted in a frown.
With a deep breath, she relaxed her face and gave him her best smile. Well, she tried, but a tight and forced one was the best she could manage for now.
He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Morning, Selena.”
“Good morning.” So ordinary and normal. The giggles started, and she couldn’t stop.
Without a single word, he lifted one eyebrow, silently asking what her problem was.
Every time she tried to speak, the uncontrollable giggles started again. Xavier stared at her like she’d lost her mind. Which was a good possibility. “I’m sorry. I’m just...” And there it went again. “When I’m nervous I...”
He nodded like he understood, but the doubt in his eyes told her he didn’t know her the way he used to. With his right hand, he made a gesture to the table. “Belle’s made a variety of breakfast foods.”
He was polite enough to ignore the ridiculous giggling. “Plus, there’s a platter full of what she assures me are my favorites. She and Damian already ate, and there’s still enough to feed an army.”
She nodded. “My father is here to see you. Do you remember him?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so but seeing him might help. Sorry.”
How many wonderful memories were gone?
“So, Damian came down from his hideout to talk with you?” she asked him. “Did seeing him help with the memories?”
His expression shut down. “Some, but not like I hoped.”
Remember me. Please. Oh, no. The tears were starting again.
Concern colored his every word. “I’m sorry. I want to help you, but I don’t know how.”
That was the same problem they had before he left. “No, I’m good. I should be the one offering help to you.” She straightened her spine. “No more crying or irrational giggling.”
Doubt furrowed his brow.
“I’m okay. I promise,” she assured him.
Under his steady gaze, she repeated the words. “I promise.”
Now less than ten feet apart, they stared at each other, neither talking. Last night had seemed like a dream, but today, even with all the blinds covering the large kitchen window, she could see him as if he were illuminated. The gauntness, the lines and the scars testified to the hardships he’d endured since he’d walked out her door.
She took a step closer. Should she just blurt out that he had three sons? No. “Are you feeling better this morning?”
With a stiff smile, he nodded. She didn’t believe him.
All night she had thought about him being alone, hungry and cold during those years, not knowing if anyone was coming for him. “You were the only one to survive the attack?”
“I’m the only one they took from our caravan, as far as I know. I have zero recall for the actual event or anything leading up to it.” He fidgeted with his hands, then shifted his weight and gripped the back of the chair. “Can we sit down?”
“Oh, yes.” She went around him to the opposite side of the farm table and sat in a chair. “Sorry. You must be exhausted. You said your sight was damaged. Does it affect your balance?”
Again, a simple nod. His gaze traveled the room, covering every area but where she sat. During the early years, talking had been so easy for them. Then the miscarriage created a shift in their relationship, and each negative pregnancy test had driven them farther apart. Looking back, she knew she had been as much to blame as he was.
Avoiding each other, they’d become strangers living in the same house, but that wasn’t even close to the feeling she had now. Now they were true strangers.
They were also parents.
She studied his face, tossing a few words around. Hey, guess what? You know that whole can’t-have-kids thing? Well, our prayers were answered and now you have three sons. Welcome home to a wife you don’t remember and babies you didn’t know existed.
It would be nice if they could have one normal conversation first. How exactly did one have normal conversations with someone who had been dead for the last two years? She didn’t know, so she asked the first question that came to mind. “So, what do you remember?”
After what seemed like an hour of silence, Xavier cleared his throat. “I can’t remember anything leading up to the attack in Colombia. Before that? Everything is fuzzy, mixed with the false memories they beat into me when they thought I was Pedro Sandoval. I don’t know which are real and which are made up.” He finally looked at her, his eyes desperate as his gaze searched her face.
“I do remember more about you now,” he said. “Last night I had a memory about you stealing my fries, but I didn’t have the words to tell you.”
“Really?” The nervous giggle took over again. She covered her mouth.
“It’s all right. I like your giggle. I do have a few images of you. But it’s like watching videos of someone else. There are holes. Actually, more like craters.” He reached across the table, then moved his hand back.
Little touches used to come so easily and naturally for them. Now she didn’t know what to do. Last night was surreal, like a twisted painting out of a dream. Everything in her responded to him. But they were strangers.
She didn’t trust that he was here, within reach. “What else do you remember?” She leaned closer.
He grinned. “I had a dream last night. You were wearing a long dress the color of sunset. But not dancing with me.” He narrowed his eyes. “By the end of the evening you were mine.” He looked down
as if searching for something he’d lost.
“That was homecoming our junior year. When you finally got the nerve to ask me out.” She leaned forward. “Do you remember our senior prom?”
He hesitated and twisted his lips to the left. “No.”
She bit back the disappointment. None of this was going to be easy. Not wanting him to feel guilty, she kept her gaze on the oversize cinnamon roll she had put on her plate. The weight of their silence pushed her shoulders down.
“Tell me,” he said. “Maybe it will help.”
“We had our first fight on the way to senior prom. You told me you were enlisting. I wanted you to enroll in the local community college with me. Later that night they played one of my favorite oldies, ‘Faithfully.’ You sang it to me in front of everyone.” Then he had promised to never leave her.
He nodded as if he remembered.
“We played it at our wedding.” She sat up. Her heart kicked up a notch. Did he remember?
She waited for more, but he kept his head down and the silence lingered. Disappointment pushed hard on her chest. He didn’t have any of their memories.
“So...” Looking out the window, he avoided eye contact. “What’s the deal with all the Christmas lights?” He finally turned to her with a half grin. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”
“I could have Christmas decorations year-round, but no one lets me.” She tried to laugh as if she had no worries. “With Elijah and Jazz getting remarried, I thought it would be a great time to pull out all the lights and wreaths.” She shrugged. “No Christmas tree or any of that, but the lights. They’re my favorite. It just makes everything glittery and enchanted.”
He nodded and went back to staring at his food, but not eating. Her fingers curled around a glass of orange juice, Selena fought back the urge to reach out and touch him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”
“It’s there, somewhere. The first memory I regained was the ranch. After digging I found the location. Nothing fit, so I thought I’d come here and see what I could find out. Belle De La Rosa was the only name I had.”
“And you found all of us.”
“Yeah. Names are coming to me. I remember my nieces. Belle tells me that Elijah has a daughter.”
She bit her lip. Now. Tell him now.
Crossing his forearms on the table, he leaned forward. “It’s your turn to tell me something. What have you been doing while I was gone? A beautiful woman like you had to be dating once you were single.”
For a moment, she froze. “No. No. I was a widow. Not that I had time.” Would this man with the blank stare have cared if she had gone on a date? “Now that you’re here at the ranch, what are your plans?”
“I have a list of specialists for my eyes and brain issues. I’ll find out what’s physical and what might be psychological. It’s gone untreated so long, but the doctors in Colombia say there’s a chance I can regain my sight with therapy. And, now that I’m home, my memory might fully recover, too.”
He rolled his shoulders and dropped his head as if all the words had been too much.
“I don’t remember anything, but I have this feeling there’s a job unfinished in Colombia and I need to complete it as soon as I figure out what it is. I was assigned to protect someone. I don’t know who I was working for. There’s something missing, and I’m going to find out.”
“You never told me anything about your missions. All I knew was you worked for an intense private security company. I didn’t even know you were in Colombia until...” She shrugged. “But everyone in your group was killed.”
He closed his eyes. “It doesn’t stop the fact that I have this driving need to return. There’s something compelling me to finish. I can’t remember what it was, but I can’t rest. I need to heal enough to go back. You don’t know anything at all about my last job?”
Her spine stiffened. “Nothing.” How could he even think of leaving again? Her mouth opened, but then closed again.
“Tell me about your life while I was...away.”
Lifting her head, she made eye contact with her husband, the father of her children. “I’m on the city council now and working with the chamber of commerce to plan a new Christmas event. I run the office for our company, Saltwater Cowboys. Keeping those guys organized is a full-time job. And I help Belle with the paperwork for the ranch.” What she wanted to say was that she was keeping his life together for their boys. “With the death of your father, the ownership of the ranch is shaky. I’m not sure how your returning will affect everything.”
She was making a mess of this.
“Saltwater Cowboys?”
“It’s the business you started with Elijah and a friend Miguel. At first the focus was on charter fishing trips. You added large tourist boats for dolphin watching. They had closed Pier Nineteen, so we bought that property with the goal to restore it. Which we’ve done successfully.” Her throat closed and she bit her lip. The burn in her eyes surprised her. “You’d be so proud of Elijah. It was hard losing you, and I worried about him drinking again, but he’s been so strong. It’s because of him I’ve been able to give most of my time to my sons. Our boys.”
Head tilted, he blinked. “We have kids? That doesn’t sound... I don’t remember anything about us having children.” His eyes darted across her face, as if he was scanning it for information.
“You didn’t know. We made several attempts. When the last one showed a negative result, you decided to take the job in Colombia. A month after you left, I was sick. I thought it was stress. I went in and found out I was pregnant. The first reading had been false. Spotting isn’t unusual.”
“But you said ‘boys.’ As in plural. Twins?”
She shook her head. “Triplets. We have three sons, Sawyer, Finn and Oliver. They’re twenty-two months old. They’ll be two in January. January 19. The last fertility treatment worked.” The horror in his eyes burned her and made her want to cry.
She managed a smile. “You’re a father.”
Chapter Four
He blinked. Her face blurred, and the buzzing grew louder in his head. “Father?” Babies. Three sons. “Where are they?” He stood, but the world tilted. Resting his hands on his knees, he lowered his head and breathed in deep.
Selena jumped up from her chair, but she stopped short of touching him when he held his hand up, palm out. “They’re here. Belle and my dad have them in the barn. She has some off-season orphaned baby goats. Your horses are out there, too.”
Crossing her arms tightly around her waist, she turned away from him. “Sorry, I’m rambling. All you probably heard was blah, blah, blah, you’re a father. Blah, blah, blah.”
She paused again.
He waited to see if she had more to say.
“Do you want to see them?”
He straightened and locked his fingers behind his neck, stretching. His sight cleared, and his airway opened. “The horses or the boys?”
In a blur of motion, her head jerked to him. Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a joke, right?”
He shrugged. “Not a funny one.”
The tension in her shoulders eased visibly. “That was your thing, you know. Telling lame jokes. The more stressful the situation, the lamer the joke.” Her bottom lip disappeared between her teeth. “Do you want to meet the boys?”
“You didn’t finish your breakfast.” This was so much more than he’d bargained for. Getting his brain around the fact that he was the father of three little boys was going to take time.
“Xavier.” Cautiously, she moved to stand in front of him, eyeing him as if she was a rabbit and he was the hungry wolf. “Do you want to meet the boys today? If you want to do it another day or—”
“No. Today. Finish your breakfast. Then we’ll walk over to...” His throat strangled the next word.
Slender, warm hands touched his. He look
ed down and stared at the soft, golden skin next to his rough, darker tones. Placing his hand on top of hers, he held it there, never wanting to let her go. How was it possible to be so connected to someone he didn’t know?
“It’s okay.” Her voice was soft and understanding.
More than he deserved.
She went on, not letting silence hover. “You’ve been gone for their whole lives. They’re so little they don’t understand. Another day or two won’t matter if you want to wait.” She pulled her hand out of his grip. “Unless you don’t want to see them.”
He heard a hint of anger he assumed she was trying to hide from him.
What did he want? To be whole. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare and be whole. To know who he was without any doubts and shadows.
Studying the beautiful woman that was his wife, he longed to reach out to her, to tell her everything was going to be all right, but he couldn’t make that kind of promise.
Hugging herself, she put distance between them. “Is that it? You don’t want to meet them. I know they’re a surprise.”
He cleared his throat. “Finding out I had a wife was a surprise. Learning I have three sons? That’s more of a shock.”
He hadn’t been here for her when she needed him. His gut told him it wasn’t the first time.
He held his hand out to help her up. “Tell me their names again.”
“Finn, Oliver and Sawyer.” For a brief second, her warm touch was his again, but then she pulled away and headed to the door. She popped her knuckles.
“I remember you doing that whenever you were nervous.”
Her hands went into her jacket pockets. “You know the strangest things about me.”
The hurt in her words made him uncomfortable. She deserved more. “So, we have Finn, Oliver and Sawyer?” He narrowed his eyes, trying to catch a thread of memory. “I know those names.”
She nodded. “They’re names you picked out. You love classic stories. We’d made a list of boy and girl names. With three boys, I got to use all of your favorites.”
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