A Marriage To Remember

by Cathryn Clare

  His bead was pounding

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Also by

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Copyright

  His bead was pounding

  He had no real idea who he was. He had no idea where he was going, or who the guy with the gun was. He didn’t know what he was going to do next. He was damn near naked. His ribs felt as though they’d been jammed together by someone who hadn’t been following the instructions properly.

  That was the bad news.

  On the plus side, he was still alive.

  And so was Jayne.

  He remembered seeing a gun leveled directly at Jayne, and his stomach came into his throat. If they’d been a split second slower getting through that door...if the shooter had been just a little more skillfui...

  At the moment it was his clearest and worst memory. And he wasn’t anxious to repeat it. Forcing himself to push past the pain, he concentrated on what was important. And that was keeping Jayne safe.

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you’ve got a few days to yourself for this month’s wonderful books. We start off with Terese Ramin’s An Unexpected Addition. The “extra” in this Intimate Moments Extra title is the cast of characters—lots and lots of kids—and the heroine’s point of view once she finds herself pregnant by the irresistible hero. The ending, as always, is a happy one—but the ride takes some unexpected twists and turns I think you’ll enjoy.

  Paula Detmer Riggs brings her MATERNITY ROW miniseries over from Desire in Mommy By Surprise. This reunion romance—featuring a pregnant heroine, of course—is going to warm your heart and leave you with a smile. Cathryn Clare is back with A Marriage To Rentember. Hero and ex-cop Nick Ryder has amnesia and has forgotten everything—though how he could have forgotten his gorgeous wife is only part of the mystery he has to solve. In Reckless, Ruth Wind’s THE LAST ROUNDUP trilogy continues. (Book one was a Special Edition.) Trust me, Colorado and the Forrest brothers will beckon you to return for book three. In The Twelve-Month Marriage, Kathryn Jensen puts her own emotional spin on that reader favorite, the marriage-of-convenience plot. And finally, welcome new author Bonnie Gardner with Stranger in Her Bed. Picture coming home to find out that everyone thinks you’re dead—and a gorgeous male stranger is living in your house!

  Enjoy them all, and don’t forget to come back next month for more of the most exciting romantic reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours.

  Leslie Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  A MARRIAGE TO REMEMBER

  CATHRYN GLARE

  Books by Cathryn Clare

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Chasing Destiny #503

  Sun and Shadow #558

  The Angel and the Renegade #599

  Gunslinger’s Child #629

  *The Wedding Assignment #702

  *The Honeymoon Assignment #714

  *The Baby Assignment #726

  A Marriage To Remember #795

  Silhouette Desire

  To the Highest Bidder #399

  Blind Justice #508

  Lock, Stock and Barrel #550

  Five by Ten #591

  The Midas Touch #663

  Hot Sthff #688

  *Assignment: Romance

  CATHRYN CLARE is a transplanted Canadian who followed true love south of the border when she married an American ten years ago. She says, “I was one of those annoying children who always knew exactly what they were going to be when they grew up,” and she has proved herself right with a full-time career as a writer since 1987.

  “Being a writer has its hazards. So many things that I see—a car at the side of the road, two people having an argument, a hat someone left in a restaurant—make me want to sit down and finish the stories suggested to me. It can be very hard to concentrate on real life sometimes! But the good part of being a writer is that every story, no matter how it starts out, can be a way to show the incredible power that love has in our lives.”

  A girl’s best friend is not a diamond

  but a husband who can fix a plot when it breaks.

  This book, with much gratitude, is for Fred.

  Prologue

  There was a year’s worth of stale air clinging to Nick Ryder’s body. He leaned back in the passenger seat of the car and tried to exhale some of it. How long would it take, he wondered, before he was free of that jailhouse reek of cheap disinfectant and cigarette smoke and too many frightened men?

  “Bet it feels good to be out.”

  Ryder closed his eyes. It was the third thing the kid had said to him. And the third dumb thing, too.

  He was grateful for the ride. But that didn’t mean he felt like making inane small talk, especially with somebody so obviously new to the business that he hadn’t figured out yet which end was up.

  Ryder needed fresh air.

  He needed to sleep for a week.

  He needed a pair of gentle hands on his skin, and a soft, husky voice at his ear telling him everything was all right now.

  He grunted and sat up a little straighter in the seat.

  At the moment, he was going to have to settle for fresh air. And maybe a blast from the open car window would chase away his futile dreams about that husky voice, too, along with the lingering staleness caught in the folds of his clothing. The flat Florida swamplands didn’t offer much in the way of scenery, but at least the sky was clear and the wind was brisk.

  If he hadn’t been leaning over to open the window, he might not have seen them in the side mirror.

  And once he had seen them, all thoughts of that throaty voice and the luminous violet eyes that went with it vanished.

  “How long has that white minivan been back there?” he asked abruptly.

  The young driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why?”

  Ryder stifled a groan. Where the hell had they dug this kid up, anyway? Didn’t he know anything?

  “How about the blue sedan?” he demanded.

  The driver shrugged. “A while, I think,” he said. “But he’s just—”

  “I know what he’s doing.”

  The blue sedan was passing the white van and then settling in ahead of it. Trading places, in effect.

  It was a standard technique for two vehicles tailing a third.

  “Try speeding up,” Ryder said. “A lot.”

  “Why don’t we—”

  “Just do it, junior, all right?” Ryder slammed his open palm against the dashboard. He’d never felt less like arguing. Every bone in his body was telling him there was something not right about those two vehicles behind them.

  They zipped ahead for a mile or two without losing the pair. When they’d slowed to well under the speed limit and the white van and blue car were still with them, Ryder knew his instincts had been right.

  “You didn’t ask for reinforcements, I’m assuming,” he said.

  The kid was finally st
arting to look worried. As he shook his close-cropped head, Ryder could see his fingers closing tighter around the steering wheel.

  “Well, then, I’d say we’ve picked us up some unfriendlies.”

  Damn it, this wasn’t supposed to be happening. The tough part was supposed to be over by now.

  Around him, the soft South Florida twilight was just beginning to settle into night. The sky was a pastel glow of orange and blue. The highway was straight and smooth, heading due south toward Miami. For the first time in a year Ryder wasn’t hemmed in by concrete walls and iron bars.

  He was a free man. He’d planned to savor the feeling, slowly, the way he’d savored the fine Cuban cigars Jimmy Trujillo had managed to sneak into the prison for his occasional late-night parties.

  And instead—

  He leaned over to look in the side mirror again. The two vehicles were still there, too far away for him to see the drivers’ faces, too close to be a coincidence.

  The wind coming in the open window buffeted him, swirling his hair around his face. He’d let it grow in prison because it suited the impression he’d been trying to make.

  Now, though, the too-long dark blond strands were starting to bug him. A haircut was one of the first things on his list for when he got back to the real world.

  If he made it.

  There was a bridge up ahead. Ryder could see the slow swirl of water in the waning light, snaking lazily down from Lake Okeechobee to the ocean in one of the canals that intersected this part of Florida. His mind noticed the landscape automatically, storing away the information as he started trying to come up with a stunt that might shake off their pursuers.

  He didn’t register the third car until it was too late.

  It came screaming over the bridge with no warning, cutting across two lanes of traffic with reckless speed. The young driver shouted something panicky and unintelligible, and cranked the wheel around hard.

  It wouldn’t do any good, Ryder thought grimly.

  With a sick certainty, he knew exactly what the two vehicles behind them would be doing.

  He heard horns blare as they went to work. The white van screeched alongside, carving a huge gash in the rear quarter panel. Ryder saw the kid’s foot jump to the brakes.

  It was the wrong move, but there wasn’t time to say so. If Ryder had been driving, he’d have had the nerve to keep his foot on the gas, shooting past the head-on challenge of the car that had been waiting for them on the far side of the bridge.

  But the kid didn’t know how he’d been set up. He was too young, too green. He was reacting blindly, trying to get out of harm’s way without realizing that the only way out of it was straight through.

  So the only thing Ryder could do was curse and hold on. It didn’t help to know this was his own damn fault. If he’d been watching his back, instead of reveling in his freedom and imagining the velvety sound of Jayne’s voice and the soft magic of her hands on his body—

  The thought of the woman he loved was still with him as the car crashed over the side of the bridge and plummeted toward the lazy silver surface of the canal.

  He had just enough awareness left to unsnap his seat belt as they hit.

  And to realize that even if he did manage to survive the next couple of minutes, his problems were only just beginning.

  Chapter 1

  It was the middle of the night.

  And the phone was ringing.

  Jayne Robards shook her head, pushing it farther into her pillow. Even half-asleep, she knew who it would be. And she didn’t want to answer it.

  No more last-minute phone calls. She’d said it just last week, standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of the always-chaotic office of the Miami Bulletin. No more sudden brainstorms. I’m getting too old for this stuff.

  And Chris Jimenez, the paper’s staff editor, had nodded solemnly and assured her he understood.

  She might have known he hadn’t meant it.

  The phone was still ringing. Jayne groaned and lifted her head out of the pillow. It took a few seconds for her sleepy eyes to focus on the bedside clock.

  When they finally did, it wasn’t good news.

  Six a.m.

  That son of a gun was calling her at 6:00 a.m.

  “I know what this is about.” Her voice was groggy and annoyed as she struggled to wake up. “I already told Arnie I didn’t want to cover the tall ships sailing into the harbor. I don’t care how good a picture it’ll make. I don’t even care that he is the boss. I’ve got to get some sleep, damn it. I’ve got a life apart from that newspaper, in case everybody’s forgotten.”

  It was the defensive edge in her words that dragged her all the way into wakefulness.

  Did she have a life apart from her job these days?

  Recently, she’d been starting to wonder.

  Which was why she was absolutely, positively, no longer going to let Chris Jimenez railroad her into taking on extra assignments with no advance warning. And if Chris hadn’t grasped that yet, she would have to find language that would make it clear, that was all.

  She rolled over, reaching for the phone. And realized she’d done it again.

  She’d gone to sleep last night with the two extra pillows stacked neatly and impersonally on the other side of the queen-size bed. Now the empty side was wrinkled, as though she’d migrated over there in her sleep.

  And the two spare pillows had migrated, too. Instead of being lined up against the headboard, they were in the middle of the bed.

  Pretty much exactly where Ryder had once slept.

  The phone stopped ringing. The sudden silence was startling. It felt just like the hollow ache that was forming inside her chest as she looked down at the rumpled pillows.

  When was this going to stop?

  “It’s been a year, for pity’s sake,” she said out loud.

  Immediately she wished she hadn’t spoken. Her voice sounded small and forlorn in the little room. And she couldn’t ignore the quiver in it, the telltale sign that she wasn’t nearly as strong and sure of herself as she liked to pretend. Even after a whole year there were parts of her that couldn’t quite believe Ryder was never coming back.

  Believe it, Jaynie.

  She kept the words silent this time, pushing past the little spurt of pain she felt at the thought of the nickname nobody but Ryder had ever used.

  It’s definitely over.

  She made herself think of the way Ryder had buried himself in his work for the last few years of their marriage. He’d used it as a reason to avoid anything and everything that was going wrong between them.

  She reminded herself of his glib words on the day of their wedding. You’re the family I’ve been looking for my whole life, he’d said. He’d talked movingly of children, of sharing their love with sons and daughters of their own.

  And then he’d seemed to forget all about it.

  He’d gone out of her life a stony-faced stranger, hands manacled behind his back, his world in tatters, his handsome face hiding secrets he’d refused to share with her. How could their marriage not be over, after that?

  Then why couldn’t she get through a single night without the pretense—the useless, ridiculous pretense—that he was still here with her?

  She was going to get rid of those two extra pillows, and convince herself, one way or another, that she and Nick Ryder were history in all but cold legal fact. He was due to get out of jail any day now, and once he did—

  The phone started to ring again. Lost in her thoughts, Jayne jumped at the sudden sound.

  “All right, Jimenez,” she muttered as she reached for the receiver a second time. “You’re really asking for it.”

  But it wasn’t the staff editor.

  It was a voice she didn’t recognize, apologizing for waking her up, and asking if she was Jayne Robards. “We thought you’d like to know as soon as possible,” the woman said, “I’m afraid your husband is in the hospital.”

  Jayne blinked. “The hospita
l?” she repeated. “At the prison, you mean?”

  “Prison?” They sounded like two parrots, Jayne thought, echoing each other’s words. “No, he’s at Dade County General. He’s been in a car accident. Most of his injuries are minor, but—well, he‘seems to have lost his memory.”

  The light in the small bedroom was always dim, filtered through the live oak tree in the backyard. Shortly after they’d bought the house, Ryder had carried her in here on a lazy Saturday afternoon. He’d murmured, as he’d undressed her, that the pearly light made her skin look like silk.

  For a long time after that, Jayne had thought of this softly filtered light as the light of dreams, of passion.

  And then of impossible fantasy.

  And now, as she struggled to collect her thoughts, it seemed to her that there was something hallucinatory about the dim predawn glimmer.

  It was an illusion, like her marriage had been. A mockery, a ghostly mirage.

  The woman seemed to take her long silence for shock. After a few seconds, she went on, “We found your address in his wallet, of course.”

  Of course. Ryder had no other home, not yet. His old address—their address—would still be on his identification. And she was still listed as his next of kin.

  “We wanted to wait until he was fully conscious before we called you. But now that he is, and now that it’s clear he has no recollection of what happened to him—”

  “What did happen to him?”

  “The police aren’t sure yet. It looks as though your husband was a passenger in a car that went into a canal just north of the city.”

  The prison was north of the city. Had Ryder been on his way back to Miami? Was he legally free? What was going on?

  “There are some witnesses who think maybe a car was trying to pass too close and forced your husband’s vehicle off the road,” the woman explained. “The driver is—well, they’re still trying to recover the body. They went off a bridge, but apparently they hit something on the way down. The whole driver’s side was crumpled. Your husband was lucky.”