She shut her eyes, overwhelmed. She could almost feel him lean in, just so, and press his mouth to hers. His lips would be warm, seeking, amazing. He would make her feel secure and alive and right.
Some powerful connection seized her and she couldn’t have moved away to save her life. She wanted this touch, this feeling, to go on forever.
Heaven help her, she wanted him to kiss her. She already knew how it would feel, and she wanted it, wanted him. It made no sense, and the thought had her snapping her eyes open, jerking backward.
She stumbled, rocked off her balance, and dropped the dustpan, reaching back with her hands to keep from falling over.
A hot stab pierced her palm. She fell back on her bottom, lifted her hand. Blood dripped from the side of her hand. A shard of glass, missed in her too-hurried sweeping, protruded from the skin. She stared at it, immobilized for a beat from the mix of emotions and feelings and pain tangling inside her. Too much happening all at once. Her head felt light.
“Oh, God, Leah.”
Roman grabbed her, somehow had her up on her feet without her really being aware it was happening. He drew her to the kitchenette. Flipping the light on over the sink, he examined her palm.
“I think I can get the glass out,” he said. “It looks like just one piece. Then we can get the bleeding stopped. We’re going to have to get you to a hospital. This needs stitches.”
“There’s a small local clinic downtown, near the library.” She was having trouble thinking. “Dammit, I can’t believe I did that to myself.”
“This one’s for people, not turtles, right?” Roman asked teasingly. “Okay, I’m going to pull this out. You might want to look away.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, couldn’t look. She knew he was just trying to distract her from what he was doing, but she responded anyway. “Yes, it’s for people.”
There was a quick tearing pain, then pressure. Opening her eyes, she found Roman pressing a paper towel over her hand. With his free hand, he tore off more disposable towels, began wrapping them around and around her hand.
“How are you doing?”
“Fantastic,” she lied.
Leah’s face was ashen, and Roman prayed she wasn’t going to faint. She’d never been good with blood.
He put his arm around her and she didn’t resist. He grabbed Morrie’s keys without letting go of her arm. “Keep your arm elevated. That’ll help stop the bleeding.” Already the towel on her hand was spotting red. “Keep the pressure on it,” he reminded her. He placed her other hand over the towel where the blood seeped through.
“I’m fine, you know,” she said. “I probably could drive myself.”
He ignored her. They went down the steps, into the bar. Joey came out of the kitchen.
“Everything okay? What happened?” Joey’s eyes widened as he took in the makeshift bandage.
“Minor accident,” Leah said. “I fell on some glass in my apartment.” Her eyes swam with unshed tears. She was hurting more than she wanted to let on.
“I’m taking her to the clinic,” Roman said. He got Leah out the door. He was half-afraid if Joey had two seconds to think, he’d insist on being the one to take Leah to the doctor.
The gas tank was practically sitting on empty after their drive back and forth to Orchid Key. He opened the door on the passenger side for Leah. He moved around to the driver’s side and climbed in. The vinyl bench seat was hot.
“I hope we have enough gas.”
“It’s not far,” Leah said. “God, I feel stupid. I feel like I’m being such a pain. I can probably drive myself, you know,” she repeated. “I’m not helpless.”
“Not necessary. I’m here.” He backed the truck up, pulled out of the parking lot. He drove down the road, over the humpbacked bridge, made a left onto the main drag and headed into town.
“It’s right past the library,” she said. “There.” She pointed at a small building near a corner on the next block. He stopped at a stop sign, waiting as tourists crossed the street. Roman looked over at Leah. She was still pale. She’d closed her eyes and her lashes looked a little wet, but she wasn’t crying. Nope, not Leah. She didn’t like to cry.
She’d told him once that she’d taught herself not to cry in front of other people. For Leah, it had been out of character—she was so open, so free, wearing her heart on her sleeve. But there were things she’d never told him. Things about her past. Her childhood. She’d been an orphan, that’s all he’d known. Whenever the conversation had strayed to her childhood, something dark and wounded would fill her eyes. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and he hadn’t pressed. Leah had lived in the here and the now.
And he’d let her, because exploring her emotions might have meant exploring his.
Now he wanted to know everything about her. Everything. And even if she had wanted to, now she couldn’t tell him.
The irony killed him.
“It’s okay to cry if it hurts,” he said softly.
She opened her eyes. Her shiny depths reached right in and grabbed his heart with a tight fist.
“No, it’s not.” Her voice came out barely more than a whisper. “It’s not okay. It’s weak, and it makes people angry and—” She blinked, looked away. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She was so near, on the bench seat of the small cab of the pickup. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold her. He wanted to kiss her. And he wanted her to tell him why it was so hard for her to cry. What did she mean when she said it made people angry? He had no idea what she was talking about.
He’d had his chance to find out. He’d blown it. Guilt pressed down on him, dark and heavy. All he was to her now was a stranger.
A stranger who couldn’t kiss her, no matter how desperate the longing inside him to do just that might be.
He drove across the street, turned into the small parking lot of the clinic.
“Let’s go,” he said. He got out of the truck, came around to open her door.
Inside, the clinic had a tiny waiting area that was blessedly empty.
Roman approached the woman behind the reception counter. “She cut her hand on a piece of glass, needs some stitches.”
“I’ll let the doctor know she’s here.” The receptionist took down Leah’s name, then disappeared into the back. A nurse came out a few minutes later and called Leah inside.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Roman asked.
“I’ll be fine.” She disappeared behind the closed door of the examining room.
Leah looked away while the nurse unwrapped the makeshift bandage. It took all her energy not to cry out while the wound was cleaned and examined. The nurse explained that she had to make certain no small bits of glass remained in the laceration.
It hurt like hell, that’s all Leah knew.
The stitches were no better. The doctor sewed up the long cut in her hand while she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to pretend she was somewhere else…anywhere else. She searched her mind for some sense of safety where she could close herself off to the pain.
She was on a brick walkway in front of a small bungalow. A cigar maker’s cottage, they called it, with traditional Bahamian-blue shutters and a tin roof. But all she cared about was the man beside her, holding her hand. The man who held her and made her whole in ways she’d never known possible.
Do you smell that? It’s Spanish lime. Isn’t it delicious? she whispered, holding his hand in hers.
You’re delicious, he said.
He nipped at her lips, teased her mouth to kiss her so deeply he touched her very soul. Lime and musk and man swam together in her head. She felt his arousal pressed against her.
I want you, she breathed against his mouth, and he swept her into his arms, carried her inside the bungalow, stripped every stitch of clothing from her body, one slow piece at a time. And she knew that she loved him, intensely, unswervingly, forever. He was everything to her. He made everything that was wrong in her life into something righ
t.
Naked, she wasn’t satisfied. He had to be naked, too. She peeled off his jeans and tore back his shirt. Looking wasn’t enough, though—she had to touch. She pressed her face against the strong muscles of his chest, his heartbeat penetrating the daze of seduction as her hands roamed down his body, pulling him atop her, tumbling them both onto the big bed.
Then he was touching her, his warm fingers seeking her feminine heat, intimate and tender. She trembled as he entered her, hard and fast and deep—
“All done.”
Leah opened her eyes, shocked. The doctor patted her uninjured arm.
“You’re going to be just fine,” he said. “That should heal up nicely.” He gave her directions for tending the wound, changing her bandages. “I’ll give you prescriptions for pain relief and antibiotics. I’ll need to see you back in a week to remove the stitches.”
He set about scribbling on a pad.
Cold pain washed over Leah, but it didn’t come from her hand. The harsh light of the examining room stunned her eyes, and something fisted tightly around her chest. Oh, God, where had her mind gone? Where had that dream come from? It had been so real.
“Here you go.” The doctor handed her the prescriptions.
Leah walked from the examining room. Roman stood up. He looked dangerously sexy, and worried. A lazy fan turned the air in the waiting area, but it didn’t do that great a job on a hot Keys day. At the reception counter, she realized with a start that she hadn’t brought her wallet.
“I didn’t bring any money.”
“I’ve got it.” Roman pulled out his billfold. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Just had a few stitches.” She felt shy and strange as she briefly met his eyes. The weirdness of the thoughts she’d experienced while being stitched up still enveloped her. It had been a daydream, a fantasy, a way to escape the pain, but it had been so vivid. So real. Except the man in her dream hadn’t had a face.
Roman paid the bill, and they went out to the truck. The fresh air knocked the cobweb-like clouds from her mind, leaving her with the sharp sting of the wound.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said, trying to focus away from the pain again.
“It’s partly my fault. So forget it. I think I startled you, made you lose your balance.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she argued. “And it’s no big deal. I’ve been hurt a lot worse and lived to tell about it.” She bit her lip, not sure where that had come from, but knowing it was true. She’d had broken bones, burns, cuts. She turned her arm over, looked at a small trail of very faint scars that marred the underside. Cigarette burns, she knew abruptly, and the thought shocked her.
Roman opened the truck door for her then went around to slide in behind the wheel. She reached up, fingers trembling now, and ran her fingers along her hairline, felt another thin scar there. She’d noticed it before, of course, but suddenly it ached to the touch. She dropped her hand, her finger seeming almost burned by the scar.
Roman didn’t start the engine. He sat there, his gaze on her grim in the small confines of the truck’s cab. Then he moved, touched the scar in her hairline.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “How did you get this scar?”
A dizzy wash of something cold came down over her. She heard herself answering, but it was as if she was hearing someone else speak. Not her. “I was fifteen. My foster father hit me because I had disobeyed him. I’d hidden eye shadow and lipstick in my school backpack, and he picked me up early and found me wearing it. I looked like a whore, that’s what he said. When we got home, he followed me inside and hit me from behind so hard I fell into the refrigerator handle. It cut my head open.”
The words had burst out of her, and she had no idea where they’d come from. How had she suddenly known that story? Somehow, telling Roman was dangerous and safe all at once. She shouldn’t tell him anything. She’d determinedly kept her secrets to herself for eighteen months on Thunder Key, confiding only in Viv and Morrie.
But she found herself wanting to tell Roman Bradshaw things she hadn’t even told them. Things she didn’t even understand or remember till she spoke the words. Why? What was it about this stranger that made her open up when she knew better?
Her past was a dark, frightening danger. A black hole that could spiral her deep into a place she didn’t want to go. There were things about herself she didn’t want to remember. That was her gut instinct, and that was enough.
But she was starting to remember things. And she was terrified.
“Oh, God, Leah.” Roman’s eyes glistened in the shadows of the truck cab. He looked grim and unforgiving, and like he could kill someone. “I had no idea.”
Her heart pounded painfully inside her chest, and she shook all over now. She felt dirty for some reason.
It’s all your fault. She heard her foster father’s words in her head, over and over. It was another memory—disjointed and out of place—or was it? Was it real, or imagined? What about the dreamy lovemaking with the faceless man? And the voice on the phone? It all tangled through her, hopelessly lost in the maze of her mind. She wanted to block the memory of that awful nightmare voice, but it just kept coming back, relentless.
I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. Who did that voice belong to? It wasn’t her foster father. It was someone else.
Don’t think you can get away with this. Don’t think you can ruin my life— The memories came to her like disjointed audiotapes. What did it all mean? Piercing pain slammed into her temples.
“I want to beat the crap out of your foster father,” Roman said, bitterness filling his low voice. In that moment he looked fully capable of violence.
“You can’t. He’s dead.” Oh, God. Why did that terrify her so much? She was shaking more than ever. Some dark fury burst to the surface. She fought it back with all her might.
Blood, screams…
The tears she wasn’t allowed to cry spilled down her cheeks. She grabbed at the door handle. All she wanted to do was run, as far away from the past as she could go.
Chapter 7
Roman caught her before she could get the door open.
He could see she was desperate to not let him see her cry. She was going to get out on the damn street to prevent him from seeing her do anything that weak.
He held on to her and never wanted to let her go. What the hell was he doing? Every time he touched her, it only got worse.
How long could he hide his feelings from her? Especially when she was opening up to him this way suddenly. He hadn’t been prepared for what she’d told him about her past. She’d remembered something. How long before she remembered him? How much time did he have with her before he had to risk losing her forever by telling her the truth?
“I need to be alone,” she said, pushing away from him. She rubbed her good hand down her face, first one cheek then the other, removing the traces of tears. She sounded so stiff, so formal. All pulled together. Damn her. “That’s all. Just take me back to the bar. You’ve done more than enough. I really appreciate it and—”
“I don’t think being alone is what you need.” He wanted to kiss her, make all her heartache go away. And that was impossible. But he sure as hell wasn’t leaving her alone.
“You don’t know what I need.”
She was right. He didn’t know what she needed. If he’d known what she needed, he would have asked her to open up to him during their marriage. He wouldn’t have let his own wife suffer in silence, never so much as asking a single question about her childhood beyond where she grew up or if her parents were alive. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and he hadn’t pressed. Leah’d had a charming way of living in the present, and she’d made it so easy for him to let her.
Don’t ask, don’t tell. That was the Bradshaw way when it came to emotions.
“I know a little about keeping your feelings to yourself,” he said. “You can’t make feelings go away just by hiding them.”
“Oh, yes, you can.”
He thought for a minute she was going to say more, but she just stared out the passenger window, her expression stoic. He wanted her to tell him that she’d lost her memory, that she had these flashes that were clearly coming back to her.
Most of all, he wanted her to trust him.
“Not completely,” he said. “You can’t make them go away completely.”
She shrugged. “Good enough for government work. That’s one of Morrie’s favorite sayings.” Her eyes, red and still damp, met his. Her brief breakdown might have never happened—her emotions were all tucked away in some secret place he’d never been.
“You said he was like a father.”
“Morrie’s the only father I’ve ever known.”
Her birth parents had died when she was very young. Leah had grown up in a series of foster homes. That was all Roman knew.
“How’d you meet Morrie?” He still hadn’t started the engine. The windows were down, and people passed by on the sidewalks. But they were in their own world, inside the truck’s cab.
“On the beach.” She gazed out the windows, watching the tourists in their colorful Florida garb. The sound of stirring palms in the breeze mixed with the noise of cars and voices. But it all felt very distant. “I had just—arrived—in the Keys, and he offered me a job, a place to live. He was kind, generous. I was pretty much on my own, and he gave me the new start I needed.”
“How did you get here?” He was curious about everything that had happened to her in the last eighteen months, especially going back to the night Leah had disappeared.
Her answer didn’t satisfy him.
“Bus,” was all she said.
Her Man To Remember Page 8