The attraction had been instant, like being hit by a tidal wave. She had looked across the bar and her heart had gone wild, thumping and pounding. She’d had the insane urge to leap over the bar, throw herself into his arms, and—
What? The same way she’d known instant attraction, she had known instant fear, though she had no idea why.
But if she had learned anything in the past eighteen months, it had been to go with her instincts. Her instincts were all she had.
For example, she didn’t like peas. Cats made her sneeze. And the heart-stoppingly sexy man from the White Seas was dangerous. So she had schooled her features to reflect nothing of her thoughts, and she had stayed as far away from him as possible.
Quickly she looked around now and was relieved to see no one. He knew she ran in the mornings, he’d told her that. I need to talk to you.
She didn’t want to talk to him. She shouldn’t talk to him.
She stood, shoes laced tightly, images flashing through her mind. The man from the night before—smiling, watching, mixed with other, stranger images of the same man, another time, another place—then he was gone and there were no more images, only sensations, sounds. They were the markers of her panic attacks.
She’d had attacks like this before—both sleeping and waking—but not for a while. They had been so painful, so terrifying, that at first she’d thrown up after them.
Then she’d learned to block them. She had stopped trying to remember the past. And the panic attacks had vanished.
But they were back.
Rushing wind. Cold. Darkness. Screaming—her own.
Pain streaked through her temples, almost bending her double. She couldn’t give in to it. She forced herself to straighten, to walk. Then run, run. Breathe. Run.
She had been a runner in her life before Thunder Key; she knew that. She could run for miles. It was her salvation from the pain, from the past. She reached the packed wet sand and she immediately found the contact soothing. She loved to run right along the shoreline. The faster she ran, the faster she could shut down the haunting bits of the past that never came together, only remained in shards that stabbed at her mind.
Somehow the man from the bar had brought the past crashing down on her again. Was that why he was dangerous? Did he remind her of someone from her past?
Or was he someone from her past?
Birds wheeled overhead, their calls breaking the still morning air. She was alone, all alone, but in her head the haunting wind and screams played on. Sometimes she was afraid she was going crazy.
I know who you are, the voice said. Who was she?
Run, run, run. Before her head exploded.
I know what you’ve done. What terrible thing had she done? Why? What kind of person was she? Did she even want to know?
Leah ran faster, faster. Running was the first thing she remembered.
Pitch-black night, lights flashing past, air, just air, and she was dropping, dropping, dropping. Water. Pain. But not so terrible. No, she could move. She could run.
The trucker who had picked her up from the side of the highway had worn a green-checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole over one knee. He had a round, easy face, and kind eyes.
“I’m going south,” he’d said.
“Me, too,” she’d answered. “Thunder Key.”
Where had that come from? She hadn’t even known where Thunder Key was located. It had come out of nowhere, and it had actually scared her, but everything had scared her that night, so she hadn’t let that stop her.
She’d been damp, bruised, shaken. Barely dawn, and she hadn’t known how long she’d been running.
“You got a name?” the trucker had asked.
She hadn’t known what to say. The trucker had reached over, and in the glow of the rig’s dash, had touched the bracelet on her arm.
“Leah.” He’d read the engraved letters. “You got a last name?”
They’d passed an interstate sign: Wells, 1 Mile.
“Leah…Wells.” She’d shivered in the heated cab.
He’d had a road atlas. In the index, she’d found Thunder Key, part of the chain of islands that appeared like an afterthought on the tip of the Florida coast.
The trucker had taken her as far as South Carolina. He’d given her money for a bus ticket from Charleston. He’d insisted.
“A pretty lady like you shouldn’t be hitching,” he’d said.
She’d made him give her his home address, and promised to send him the money. And she’d sent it, a month later, after she’d gotten her first paycheck from the Shark and Fin.
She’d met Morrie on the beach the day she’d arrived on Thunder Key. She’d been sitting on a bench, just staring out at the vast ocean of clear water.
“Are you lost?” he’d asked her.
“No. I think I’m found.” She was where she’d meant to go. That was all she knew.
Then he’d asked her if she needed a job and a place to live. He didn’t ask any more questions after that. He didn’t care where she came from. At a trim and vigorous sixty, the slightly balding bar owner didn’t like to talk about his own past, but she knew he’d been in prison. He was reformed, he told her. He’d started life over in Thunder Key.
She knew he must have still had connections. He’d offered to help her dig into her past after she confided in him that she’d lost her memory. And one day he’d shown up with an array of identification for Leah Wells.
“In case you ever need it,” he’d told her.
She hadn’t liked taking the false ID, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. He’d done so much for her. So she had put the documents away in a drawer.
Recently he’d reconciled with the family from which he’d been long estranged. Leah missed him, and she wondered what the future held for her.
For eighteen months she’d been happy here. Now Morrie was selling the bar, and a stranger was watching her.
And the panic attacks were back.
She stopped running when she came to the public beach and the parking lot outside the community center. From there she walked up Thunder Key’s main street, letting her breathing slow as she headed for the coffeehouse.
The town was quiet in the early mornings. In the distance she could see a car or two on the Overseas Highway. Most drivers kept right on going, heading for the hot spots of the other islands where they could find more exciting attractions and hipper nightlife.
Thunder Key suited Leah just fine. Just as she’d known it would.
She had her breathing and her nerves under control by the time she reached the counter inside the just-opened-for-the-day coffeehouse.
“Hi, Viv,” she said. “Got my café con leche ready?”
“Of course,” Vivien Ramon said, her rough smoker’s voice softened by her smile and the youthful sparkle in her eyes that belied the silver threading through her swing of rich black hair. Her husband was a sail maker, and Viv ran La Greca, the island’s only coffeehouse. If Morrie was like a father to Leah, then Viv was like a mother.
Her real parents were dead. She just knew that, without question.
Like Morrie, Viv didn’t ask too many questions. But Leah knew Viv worried about her.
Viv had wanted her to see a doctor. Like Morrie, she’d offered to help Leah find out about her past. So far, Leah had held back. She was afraid—of what, she didn’t know. But she knew her past held pain, and that was enough to stop her from seeking answers. She wasn’t ready, she’d told them both.
Maybe she’d never be ready.
“Here you go, honey,” Viv said, handing the sweet, hot espresso across the counter. Then she was looking beyond Leah.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
Leah nearly leaped out of her skin, but she managed to stay very still. Then, slowly, very slowly, she forced herself to turn.
“Good morning,” he said, and his smile suggested he didn’t have a care in the world.
He must have come in beh
ind her, but she hadn’t seen him outside. How had she missed him? How had she missed, for even a second, those intense, dangerous blue eyes of his? He was so devastatingly present, so vivid, just as he had been in the bar the night before.
She wanted to hate him. The reaction was strong, visceral. She couldn’t explain it. She wanted to say something horrible and rude. She wanted to shout at him. Go away!
But it was hard to think—much less speak—with her throat blocked by her heart.
“Fancy meeting you here. Roman. Roman Bradshaw. From the bar,” he clarified unnecessarily.
Leah finally found her tongue. “Yes, of course. Roman.” His name came across her lips smoothly, and she felt very strange, shivery, as she said it. She picked up her coffee and avoided meeting Viv’s eyes, though she didn’t miss the curious look on her friend’s face.
When Viv wasn’t offering to set her up with a physician, she was offering to set her up with a date.
But Leah wasn’t ready for that, either. She had rebuffed Viv’s every well-intentioned attempt. And she’d had no regrets.
Her heart had felt so dead all this time.
But right now, her heart was hammering like mad.
“I need to talk to you,” the man named Roman said. Then, “Thank you,” to Viv, taking the second cup she handed across the counter.
“I don’t see what we have to talk—” Leah began, then stopped short.
As she watched him, he paid for his and hers, she realized suddenly.
“No,” she said sharply, pulling herself together. “I don’t want you to—”
“It’s no problem,” he said. “Forget it.”
Leah pulled out the exact change she carried with her in the pocket of her windbreaker every morning and placed it on the counter.
She barged past him toward the door.
A woman came through the door, a small black poodle on a leash at her side. Leah, limbs trembling for no good reason, strode blindly, wanting—needing—to get out of the suddenly too-small coffeehouse. And tripped right over the dog.
The poodle yelped, Leah went down and coffee flew everywhere. She swore and apologized, and pretended the coffee hadn’t burned the hell out of her fingers.
“Are you all right?” Roman was instantly at her side.
Viv handed him towels. She already had a mop. The woman with the poodle was wiping her sleeve where some coffee had splattered her. The poodle yipped and danced, its perfectly painted toenails clattering on the tile floor.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry,” Leah said to Viv. “I’ll pay your cleaning bill,” she told the woman. “Send it to me at the Shark and Fin. I’m sorry,” she said again, in general.
Then she was on her feet and hit the door without another word. She was on the sidewalk before she knew it.
“Wait.”
Not a chance.
“You should take care of those hands,” he said. “They’ll blister.”
Roman caught up with her, his long, lean strides no match for her somewhat shorter legs. She could run, but she’d just bet he would keep up with her.
“They’re fine. I’m fine.” She refused to look at him, but she was aware of him just the same.
He even smelled good, damn him. Soapy, musky, all male.
Danger, danger. Red lights, stop signs, railroad crossing bars. She had to get away from him.
“Would you slow down?”
She whirled. “Would you stop following me?” she demanded. “Didn’t I make it clear last night that I don’t want to talk to you?”
“If you don’t talk to me, then how is Morrie going to sell me his bar?” he answered matter-of-factly.
For a minute she could only stare at him. “You’re interested in the bar?” Could she be a bigger idiot?
She thought of how she’d behaved in the coffeehouse, how she’d raced out of there. She’d been practically in a frenzy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—” How did she explain? He was a stranger. She didn’t even tell her—brief—life story to people she saw every day. Viv and Morrie were the only ones who knew the whole story. Even Joey, the cook at the Shark and Fin, only knew part of it.
“Just what?” he prompted.
“You remind me of someone,” she said finally. “I don’t…” This question terrified her. What if he didn’t just remind her of someone? What if he was someone she’d known? Unable to avoid it any longer, she finally asked, “I don’t know you, do I?”
She felt as if her stomach had fallen to her feet while she waited.
Chapter 2
“No,” he said very quietly, watching her. “You don’t know me.”
Leah swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry,” she said for about the tenth time in the past ten minutes. “I guess I was just… I don’t know.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said briskly. “Why don’t we start over?” He held out his hand.
God, could he be more cool, more self-possessed, more hellaciously good-looking? Danger, danger.
“Start over?” she asked, trying to get her thoughts under control.
“I’m Roman Bradshaw,” he said again. He still had his hand out. “I’m from New York. I’m looking to invest in a business in the Keys. I’m interested in Morrie’s bar.”
She took his hand. Electricity shot all the way up her arm, and it was all she could do not to yank her hand back.
“I’m Leah. Leah Wells.” She sounded almost normal, thank God. “I’m taking care of the bar for Morrie. I’d be happy to provide you with any information—”
He hadn’t let go of her hand. The electrical pulses hadn’t stopped coming, either. And simply being this close to him was making her knees shake.
“Good,” he said. “I’m free this morning, if you have time for me.”
There was something unguarded in his expression. His burningly intense eyes seared her still, but she realized there was a vulnerability there, too.
“The bar opens at ten,” she said, quaking inside with unnamed emotions. “Meet me then.” She withdrew her hand and walked away, but she knew he didn’t move, that he watched her all the way down the street to the beach.
The water glittered in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, light reflecting up from the bottom of the ocean. Graceful sea birds glided and dipped. It was a sight she loved, craved to drink in each morning. But for the first time, she was in a rush to get back to the bar.
She felt his gaze long after she knew she was out of sight. She took the stairs in the back hall of the bar by twos and went straight to the shower. With water pouring down over her face, she cried for no reason at all.
“Darling, I just pray that you will find the same kind of happiness that Genevieve and Mark have. You know that’s all I care about. All I think about. Your happiness. You simply must come home.”
Roman held the bungalow phone in his tense, impatient hand, listening to his mother try to convince him to return to New York. He’d come back to the White Seas after seeing Leah at the coffeehouse, biding his time till their scheduled meeting at the Shark and Fin. He needed a few moments to collect his thoughts, calm his pounding heart.
He didn’t need this conversation with his mother.
“We miss you,” Barbara Bradshaw continued. “You need us.”
“I need Thunder Key,” Roman said plainly. “This is where I want to be, where I need to be right now.”
“What good can come of wallowing in that girl’s death?” his mother demanded, her voice breaking.
“‘That girl’ was my wife, Mother. Leah. She had a name.” Is my wife, he corrected to himself. Has a name.
He hadn’t told his mother about seeing Leah. Even after eighteen months of thinking Leah was dead, his family hadn’t softened their attitude toward her. They wouldn’t gladly accept her back, and his gut instincts told him they would attempt to convince him that her memory loss was some kind of fraud. Hadn’t they tried, over and over, to find a way to tear him and Leah apart? Th
ey never had.
He’d destroyed their marriage all by himself.
After she’d been declared dead, he’d gone back to work. His work had always been so important to him. His grandfather had been the founder of Bradshaw Securities, a professional trading firm. It was a family business—his father, his uncles, his cousins, his sister. It had always been assumed that Roman would take his father’s place as the CEO and chairman of the board someday. But now it was all so empty. Stocks, bonds, trading options. Who cared?
His apartment with a view of Central Park was empty, too. No Leah, lacing up her running shoes, daring him to keep up with her.
No Leah, cooking another awful meal and sneaking in takeout at the last minute.
No Leah, dancing in her underwear in front of the couch until he turned off his laptop and paid attention to her instead.
At least, that was how things had started out. Gradually she’d realized he wasn’t going to change, and that the very thing that had drawn them together—their utter dissimilarity—could also pull them apart. He didn’t know how it had happened. It was as if he’d looked up one day from his eighty-hour workweek and he’d lost her, and he didn’t know how to get her back.
Then there was no getting her back because she was dead.
He’d spent the first three months afterward pretending nothing had happened. Then he spent another year pretending he could deal with it.
The last three months, he’d given up the farce. He’d stopped going in to the office. His family had gone into shock. His father had raised Roman to take over the firm from the time he was born. Roman’s first memory was of his father bringing him to Wall Street to hear the opening bell rung when he was four years old. He earned a business degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.
He’d walked away from a multimillion-dollar legacy, and he still wasn’t sure why. He’d closed up his Central Park apartment. He’d put dustcovers on the furniture, protective bags over his business suits. He’d cleared every commitment from his always-full date-book.
It had taken three months for him to undo the life in New York he’d thought was more important to him than anything, even his wife.
Her Man To Remember Page 2