Bringing Bella Back

by Jean Brashear

  The man shook his head, pity in his eyes.

  The three people were staring at her so hard that Jane skidded to a stop. Were they her family? The way they were zeroes in on her, the tiny blond with tears on her cheeks, the lanky boy with his heart in his eyes—

  Nothing. Not a thing seemed familiar about any of them.

  A man stood behind them, tall and strong and handsome, his blue gaze locked on hers as the smile on his face faded.

  “I—” She glanced at Sam and knew it was true.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  She shook her head. “No, it isn’t.” Looked back at them. “I—I’m sorry.” Her voice was a croak, her throat tight with disappointment. “I should—” She switched from one to the next, wishing for something, anything—“I really wanted—”

  They were gazing at her with such hope, so much longing. She couldn’t breathe. Had to get away before—

  “Forgive me,” she managed. She tore her gaze from them, began backing toward the door.

  “Jane,” Sam said. “It’s okay.”

  But panic had her and wouldn’t let go. “It’s not. I—I thought—” She whirled and ran.

  Behind her, she heard voices, pleading. Arguing. She hurried around to the back, desperate to be alone, to think, to breathe.

  “Bella.” Not Sam now, she understood. Him. Her…husband.

  She didn’t turn around. “Why do you call me that?”

  “Bella? It’s my name for you. Your full name is Isabella Rosaline Parker. Your maiden name was Grant. But from the beginning, I called you Bella.”

  She recalled that second of hesitation when Luisa had first used the term bella. This man must be telling the truth, but—

  “I don’t…know your name.” A bitter laugh was startled from her. Furiously, she swiped at the tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s James. James Cameron Parker.” So kind, his voice, but layered with more. Disappointment. Determination. Some other current she couldn’t really name.

  She heard his footsteps and cringed. Faced him.

  Pain shadowed his features. She’d married this handsome, well-dressed man? She frowned down at her clothes.

  He smiled, a beautiful one. “I’ve seen you like this a thousand times.”

  “Like…this?”

  He nodded. “You had the most beautiful gardens in town, and you did all the work yourself.”

  But one word had caught her. “Had?”

  He hesitated. “You’ve been…busy lately.”

  There was a lot of misery in that statement. The weight of questions she needed to ask and fears she was afraid to voice crowded her chest.

  Sometimes important people from the past can do more harm than good, Sam had warned her.

  “Why?” Then she shook her head. “No, forget that.” She struggled for one deep breath. “The children. They’re…ours?”

  “Yes. Cele is twenty-three. Cameron is nineteen.”

  “Sam told me I hadn’t borne a child.”

  His eyes went dark. “You had miscarriages.”

  Plural. She’d lost more than one baby. Her mind went to that dark head.

  “So we adopted them. Cele was nearly two. Cam was an infant.”

  “The memory,” she murmured. “A baby.”

  “You’re remembering things?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Only that one, except for an image of some blue flower—”

  “Plumbago. One of your favorites.”

  Her hand fluttered. “There’s so much.” Her throat was tight, her head spinning. “I—I don’t know where to start.” Her heart was flopping inside her chest, and her vision was darkening—

  “Hey—” Suddenly, he was there, this James, this man she didn’t know. He scooped her up as though she weighed nothing, but she was frightened of the awful feeling in her head and her chest—

  “Bella, breathe, baby. Come on, easy now—”

  “Sam,” she barely managed. “I need Sam.” She attempted to scramble away, but she was so dizzy—

  “Put her down.” Sam’s voice. Safety.

  The man’s grip tightened. “I didn’t hurt her. She just—”

  But his hold was so confining, and she was struggling, crying out—“Sam—”

  Blue eyes, anguished.

  “Please,” she gasped. “Please let me go.”

  He released her abruptly.

  And Sam drew her close. She buried her face in his shoulder and trembled.

  “I think you’d better go now,” Sam said.

  “The hell I will,” the man James replied. Her husband. How could she not remember him? Her children, but they were no longer babies. She’d hurt them, hurt him—

  Hurt, hurt, only hurt—

  The darkness won.

  Cele, their tough little Cele, was sobbing in her brother’s arms.

  His tough little Cele, perhaps he should say. Bella hadn’t recognized her any more than him or Cam.

  And he’d caused all of this, every bit of the pain. He was the one who’d faltered. Who’d forgotten Bella, the real Bella, long before she’d forgotten him. The pain was crushing. For a second, he wondered if he might be having a heart attack his chest ached so fiercely.

  How did it feel when a heart died? If he never got Bella back, he might as well—

  Cut the crap. You’re all those kids have now. And you’re used to shouldering heavy loads.

  He opened his arms to one heartbroken young woman and a boy trying very hard to be a man. “Come here,” he urged. He caught them close, both of them, though Cam hadn’t accepted a hug in years. He’d been a good dad, he thought, but Bella had been the nurturer, the one to dry tears and talk out broken hearts.

  Sorry, kids, but you’re stuck with me. For now, he corrected. Bella would remember. She had to.

  Agony roasted his insides as he recalled the terror on Bella’s face. Never once in their lives together had she feared him. Had any reason to.

  And she’d called for that sonofa—

  Ruthlessly, James made himself relax. The poisoned barb was still there, but he’d survived tough times before, tougher than this—

  No, not tougher. He’d had Bella then.

  He embraced his children. Lowered his head to theirs. “We knew this could happen,” he began. “But it’s going to be okay, I swear it.”

  Cele looked up with tear-stained cheeks. “Will it, Daddy? How can she not remember us? We’re her children. She loves us—”

  They were grown now, but they wanted his reassurance, however rocky he felt on the inside. “She does love you,” he said firmly. “This is simply a medical problem, and she’s just not well yet. But she will be.”

  “You can’t promise that.” Cameron’s face revealed his yearning to be wrong.

  “Your mother will get better.” She had to. “She’s a very strong woman, and you are her world.”

  “You are, Daddy, more than us. Everyone knows how in love you two are.”

  Please make it true. That years of devotion will win in the end. “Children are special,” he said. “We’ve got all sorts of weapons in our armory.”

  “Like what?” Cam was obviously shaken by events.

  I understand completely, son. Never in my life would I have imagined Bella shrinking from my touch.

  He exhaled as he cast his thoughts about. “I hesitate to call this a war…more like a campaign….” His eyebrows rose. “That’s it, exactly. Hearts and minds.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled, more out of hope than assurance. “There’s a saying about conducting a war by setting out to win over the population rather than by fighting on the battlefield.” He chuckled at their perplexed expressions. “We don’t push to make your mother remember us.”

  “What?”

  “Nope,” he said, warming to the notion. Any plan was better than the misery of inaction. “We hang around for a while. Make ourselves useful. Let Bella get to know us
instead of pressuring her to remember. She loved us once.” He glanced from one to the other. “Why not fall for us all over again?”

  “But what if—” Cele had always been his worrier.

  “No, Dad’s right. It’s brilliant.” Cam grinned. “What’s not to love about us?”

  The ego of youth, James mused. The certainty they’d bred in their children, the understanding that they were fully loved. He drew heart from the notion, and did not doubt that Bella would indeed find herself adoring the children she’d formed.

  Him, though—would the man attract her as much as the cocky boy had? Who was he now, and who was she? Had they stayed together out of habit, or was there still something special between them?

  He was flat scared, to be honest. When had the magic left? Could they get it back?

  Once it had been powerful, all-consuming.

  He would make her love him again.

  And when she remembers that you blew it?

  For a second, James had a moment of uncharacteristic indecision. If he could make Bella fall in love with him once more, would that love survive, should she recall the end?

  No time to weaken; his kids were depending on him for answers. “Let’s get some lunch. We have plans to make.” He would keep himself too busy to think about how it had felt to have the one love of his life run into the arms of another man.

  Jane lay in the cool, dim room that had seemed so strange once, now a refuge she sought as eagerly as any woman might rush into a man’s embrace.

  She pressed her lips together so the moan wouldn’t escape, but she couldn’t still the heart that insisted on racing despite her every effort at calm.

  She had run to Sam. Not to him, that man. Husband by law but not in her heart. She’d hurt him badly, she could tell. He’d swept her up simply in a move to protect.

  But he’d wanted so much from her, more than she could bear to feel.

  She was breathing too fast. She tightened her fingers on the bedspread and pondered the yellowed ceiling above, the one little stain that was her own personal Rorschach test. Focused on its margins, brown fading to yellow, then cream, in no design she could discern.

  The bulbs. Think on them, on the gardening you will do tomorrow. Irises, big Dutch ones, purple as night’s deepest shadows. The buttery streak down each throat.

  Her breathing steadied, as did her pulse. She had refused the sedative Sam had prescribed. She’d wanted his comfort, yes, but not his pills. Needed the safe harbor he represented, when her mind had short-circuited after the emotional overload.

  That was how Sam had explained it, the dizziness, the near faint. Exactly what he’d worried about, and what she’d demanded, this chance to connect with her past.

  But she hadn’t really believed him. How could one not recognize those one held most dear? Wouldn’t their presence get a messenger past the barriers thrown up by her body in the wake of injury? She’d been so certain that the walls were only a papery shell, easily punctured by the arrow that was true love.

  Yet the reinforcements had held, despite the siege of a family armed with love and longing even a stranger could feel.

  Stranger. Her last hope crumbled. She was an enigma to everyone, even herself. She sat up suddenly, seeking a stronger posture than cowering flat on her back. She wasn’t yet up to standing, and the desire for a shield had her drawing her knees to her chest, curling her arms around them to protect the frightened creature within.

  She wasn’t taking this lying down, damn it.

  Gripping her forearms, she turned her head to the side, relieved to see that night had not yet fallen. The day that had begun with so much promise, if such nerves, was not over.

  She wasn’t ready to talk to him, the man named James. But she could at least manage a visit with the children.

  She lifted an image of each one from the tumble of emotions, the diminutive woman who had looked at her with a girl’s nerves—and a woman’s challenge. That one, her daughter—her daughter—would be a tough nut to crack, she thought. She might want her mother, but she would fight for the father she so obviously adored.

  The boy would be easier, less threatening. He stood a head taller than his sister, but he was still caught between man and boy and vulnerable in the way that young males are, not yet grown into their longer bones, posturing to frighten off the monsters while still wishing someone else would make them go away.

  He was beautiful in his own manner, with dark eyes you wanted to sink right into and melt. Stick-straight black hair…her fingers flexed as if to curve around an earlier, smaller version of that head.

  You had miscarriages. Sorrow there. She placed one palm over her womb. So we adopted.

  Her mind flashed to the hands that had held her tight.

  This James Parker owned the hand in her memory. Her drawing. She was almost certain of that, however overcome she’d been at the time. Nonetheless, she scrambled from the bed and made her way to where the simple drawing lay on the tiny kitchen table.

  Oh, yes. Her mind flicked back and forth, dream to drawing to sketchy memory only hours old.

  That hand. His hand. Cradling both her and the baby close.

  But though she could connect the dots, she couldn’t connect the emotions. She stood outside herself, an observer only.

  The lines of fingers and palms might be the same. Obviously, even through her tumult, she’d recognized that the man James had powerful feelings for both his children and her.

  But she only felt pity and shame right now. And fear. Not of them, perhaps, but of whatever world they’d drag her into, for that was how things seemed right now. She could accept their claims and go with them, but she wouldn’t be returning home, as they would.

  She would be leaving home, however recent and tenuous, behind.

  She wasn’t ready.

  Even after all that yearning…she could not go.

  James kicked a dirt clod as he walked around this odd hamlet time had forgotten. He’d visited many small towns, of course, in his part of Alabama, the northeast corner filled with what natives called mountains but people here would likely dismiss as mere bumps.

  The café was the newest structure, and it had surely been built in the 1940s. There was a squat brick building that housed a small grocery with a minuscule post office, and an old-style gas station with two pumps beneath a tin canopy, run by perhaps the oldest man James had ever seen. Houses more like cabins were sprinkled here and there, but James was headed for one tucked back on a road at the edge of town. Their waitress had told them Dr. Sam lived there.

  Dr. Sam. His nemesis. Bella’s savior.

  His prelunch resolve was strained. He’d always been a patient man; Bella was the one who chafed at waiting. He could handle whatever time was required, be it for negotiations with a supplier or for making sweet love to his wife.

  But he’d found her when he’d feared her dead. Gotten the scent of her in his nostrils, the feel of her on his skin. Another man was standing between him and her, and most of what was civilized in James had vaporized under the glare of his drive to stake claim. Bella was his, damn it. Whether she knew it or not.

  He’d been counting on memory to carry the day, to bridge the gap that his mistake had set in motion.

  Dread that he alone would not be enough to win her sent a cold line of sweat down his back. He stopped at the base of the road climbing up to where she stayed. Inspected the surroundings with a hunter’s eye.

  He was on foot with no weapons but his brain. In the past, that would have been enough, in his real life, all he’d needed.

  But here and now…he was all but naked. Defenseless. He understood far too little of his enemy, of Bella’s mindset, her condition. All signs pointed to the demand to take things slow.

  If only his insides would agree.

  James had never been to war, but he’d read a lot of military history. You didn’t win a skirmish or a battle, much less a war, by jumping the gun. You performed surveillance, you readied y
our troops, you made certain you were well-provisioned.

  There were a million details he should be dealing with back home, a business on the brink, a staggering load of responsibilities.

  He cared for none of them, not one whit.

  But if he were to bring Bella back, he could not let their home lie unprotected. He had to find some means to deal with what he must from here—

  Because he was not leaving Lucky Draw without her.

  Cele was back in town, on the phone to the plant. She was eager and capable, ready to assume some of the load. He would let her.

  Cameron needed to return to school, but he could help, too. He was a solid pilot, and James would put that skill to use. Cam could fly Cele back and forth this astonishing distance. He could ferry what was required for James to do business the old way, with paper documents, since James sincerely doubted that Lucky Draw had wi-fi or hi-speed cable. FedEx.

  All that pressed in on James made him tired, but he would manage. He always had. For now, though, he would do reconnaissance on the enemy’s lair, figure out where the princess was being held.

  James had to grin—that sounded much more like a Bella fancy—at least, the Bella of the old days.

  His ire was up; his juices were running. James hadn’t had a challenge like this in a very long time, and he was surprised at how it energized him.

  First step, survey the battlefield.

  Step two, shamelessly use your children as bait.

  Bella would have laughed, the old Bella, the daredevil. He had no idea who this woman, this memory-less Bella was.

  Please, he prayed. Please let me have my Bella back.

  Then he opened them again and began to plot. A quarterback was the general of the playing field, and he’d been a good one.

  He’d conduct this campaign with all the weapons at his disposal, every understanding of Bella’s nature he possessed. He’d tempt her unmercifully with what he’d learned during their rich, beautiful life together, and he’d adapt to the changed circumstances.

  This Bella was not the girl he’d married or the woman with whom he’d spent thirty-six years, though time would tell how much of either slept inside her.

  He’d turn the tables on her, make her love him again. He’d fallen like a ton of bricks years ago, while she’d played hard to get.