Her Man To Remember

by Suzanne McMinn

  “You realize you could be wrong, completely wrong, about everything,” she said, so low he barely heard. She turned. “Especially about me.”

  He felt something icy prick at the back of his neck.

  “Have you ever considered that maybe I’m not in danger? That maybe someone’s looking for me, rifling through my apartment, watching me and photographing me not because they mean me harm but because I’ve done harm? Maybe I’ve done something wrong.”

  “Are you kidding?” he said immediately, still struggling to comprehend where she was going with this. “You fed stray dogs and worked in a soup kitchen, for Christ’s sake! It wasn’t enough for you to send money to one of those third-world children on the TV charity commercials—you told me we could afford to send enough to help a whole village and so we did. You put your name on a bone-marrow donor list in case you could help save a stranger’s life.” Now he couldn’t help himself. He strode toward her, grabbed hold of her. “The woman I knew wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

  She locked her tormented eyes on him.

  “Then maybe you should be as scared of the truth as I am,” she said. “Because if my dreams are telling me what I think they are, I was never the woman you thought you knew. I think I’ve killed someone.”

  Chapter 9

  Roman shook his head, and to Leah his eyes looked as tortured as she felt. “That’s crazy.”

  “Well, welcome to my world,” she said, and pulled away from his haunting hold. “I did something wrong, Roman. Something terrible. If you want to know the truth about me then you’d better be ready to face that possibility. In my dreams I was there, with a dead man. And I’m holding the gun.”

  His expression was filled with anxiety and she didn’t think he believed her. She had no idea how to convince him.

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Why not? I was going somewhere that night, driving down that highway—why wouldn’t my husband have known where I was going, what I was doing there?” she pointed out. “I must have had secrets from you.”

  “Not that kind of secret. The woman I knew wouldn’t have hurt a fly.”

  “In my nightmares I hear a voice. And yesterday that voice was on the phone in Morrie’s office.”

  His eyes didn’t move from hers. “That’s why you dropped the phone. That’s why you had the panic attack.”

  She felt as if she was choking. She was close to a panic attack right now. Carefully she forced herself to breathe.

  “Tell me what you heard,” he said.

  “‘I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.’” She took a ragged breath. “That was it.”

  “That doesn’t mean you killed someone.”

  She made a bitter sound in her throat and moved away from him. “You wanted to put it together, well put it together. I had a secret, something terrible I had done. And I ran away. Maybe that’s what I was doing that night, running away.”

  He stalked toward her, closing the distance she desperately needed to create. The spacious bungalow seemed to shrink. The bed stood in the center of the room, mocking her with a past she couldn’t remember, and the truth that it wasn’t Roman she feared so much as herself. She wanted him, had wanted him from the second she’d laid eyes on him.

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” he said grimly. “But you can’t go on living like this, thinking you did something like that. We have to find the truth.”

  Leah swallowed hard. He thought if they found the truth, it would exonerate her. And she was overwhelmed by the realization that she didn’t want to disappoint this man.

  And a dreadful certainty that she was going to. Was that why she’d run away that night, to save him from the truth about her? If she was right, they could both be in for more heartache than she could even imagine right now.

  He strode away, picked up the phone on the bedside table, punched in a series of numbers. She took a seat again, her legs suddenly weak.

  “Mark?” he said, his voice clipped, businesslike. It was like having a glimpse into his professional life in New York. This was Roman, the man in charge. It was eerily familiar, and the sensation rocked her mind. “I need your help,” he continued. “I need the name of a doctor in Miami. A psychiatrist.”

  His back was to Leah now.

  “I can’t discuss it. And again, please,” he added, “don’t mention this to Gen, or anyone in the family. I’m counting on you, Mark.”

  Mark. The name meant nothing to Leah.

  Roman hung up the phone.

  “Who is Mark?” she asked.

  “My brother-in-law. He’s a physician. He’s married to my sister, Gen. Genevieve.”

  She was reminded with a shock of what Morrie had told her about the Bradshaw dynasty. How in the hell had she ever fit into that? “Do they know—about me, that you’ve found me?”

  “Mark knows, but he thinks I’ve lost it down here.” His voice was dry. “He probably thinks the psychiatrist should be for me. My whole family is pretty sure I’ve lost my mind since I left New York.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  He smiled for just a moment, and she remembered how dangerously sexy he could be. “I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore, Leah.” He came toward her in the quiet light of the bungalow. She felt her heart beat faster. “Mark’s going to call back with a reference. That’s all that matters. I want to be sure you see someone good. I wouldn’t know where to start. Mark should be able to give me a good name.”

  Leah sat there for a long beat. She felt stunned, as if a bomb had exploded in her world. She didn’t know what to think, what to do. There was too much to take in.

  She needed to pull herself together, and she couldn’t do it here.

  “I need to go to work,” she said after a long beat. She needed to not be alone with Roman. “We’ll be opening soon. Just because I’m staying here, that doesn’t mean I can’t go to work.” Surely he hadn’t meant that. They’d be surrounded by people at the bar all day. “I need to keep busy.”

  He nodded, and intense relief soaked her that he wasn’t going to argue that point. But when the day was over, they’d come back here to this bungalow where she would be alone with a man she didn’t know and desperately wanted at the same time.

  What then?

  Roman called the Thunder Key Police Department from the Shark and Fin. And got a recording. There was a number for emergencies, and he tried that one, only to be told by the woman who answered that a possible break-in where nothing had been stolen was not an emergency but that they’d send an officer around to the bar as soon as possible. Unfortunately, tomorrow was as soon as possible.

  Roman would have liked to reach through the phone line and strangle the woman. “I think someone is watching her, possibly stalking her,” he said tightly.

  “Almost all of our officers have been called away to a search on Coral Key,” the woman explained. “We can only handle emergencies right now, sir.”

  He sat at Morrie’s desk. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.

  He couldn’t believe Leah had killed someone. But she believed it.

  What do you know about this girl? his parents had asked, berating him when he’d announced their quick marriage. She’s not one of us. She’s not good enough for you.

  Their objections had gone on and on. Walter and Barbara Bradshaw had huge ambitions for their only son. A future in politics had long been at the top of the list of their expectations. Leah with her lack of prestigious family background and carefree-artist temperament had not fit the bill they’d had in mind for their son’s wife. They’d made noises at the time about having Leah’s history checked and Roman had responded with a resounding refusal.

  He picked up the phone, punched in the number to Bradshaw Securities. “Walter Bradshaw,” he said to the secretary. “Tell him it’s Roman.”

  His father picked up a moment later. “Roman. Where are you?”

  “I’m still in Thunder Key. Look,” he went on, before
his father could launch into all the reasons he should come back to New York, “I want to know if you had Leah investigated.”

  “What?”

  “When we married. You wanted to have her investigated then.”

  “You got quite upset about it, if you’ll recall,” his father said.

  “Did that stop you?” Roman asked.

  The line was silent. “Son, I have a meeting.”

  “Did that stop you?”

  He could feel the tension in the phone line all the way from New York to Florida.

  “If you found out something about Leah, anything at all, I need you to tell me.”

  “Son, she’s dead. It doesn’t matter now.”

  At least now he knew Mark had kept his promise not to tell his family about Leah. “It matters. I want to know.”

  “We had her investigated. We didn’t find out anything.”

  Roman felt as if all the air went out of his chest. He should have known, all along, that his parents had investigated Leah despite their assurances to leave her alone. But now, ironically, it was exactly the information he needed.

  But what did that mean about Leah’s dreams?

  “Son, what’s going on down there? We’re worried about you.”

  “I’m fine. Stop worrying.” Roman said goodbye and hung up the phone. He turned over possibilities in his mind. Leah was convinced there was something terrible in her past. But maybe her dreams were just that—dreams. Horrible nightmares. Random crimes were reported on the news all the time. Sometimes not so random. Strangers who followed women in mall parking lots, broke into their homes. Men who became obsessed for some reason or another.

  The idea didn’t do anything to make him feel better. Either way, Leah was in danger.

  Leah put together a small bag of things from her apartment. Roman waited for her at the door with his hot blue eyes and finger-raked brown hair. His casual jeans and T-shirt hugged his killer body.

  She walked outside with him into the clear, dark night. They’d driven to the bar earlier in Roman’s rental car, and he opened the passenger side door for her, stowing her bag in the back. Flicking on the headlights, he maneuvered down the narrow road back toward the hotel. Leah lowered her window a crack.

  She leaned against the seat, breathed in the fresh night air and tried very hard not to think about how strangely familiar it felt to be so near Roman.

  “This could be completely unnecessary,” she said, looking at him. “We haven’t seen that man again. His presence could have been unconnected to my past. The phone call yesterday could have been a prank.” She was trying to convince herself, but she felt chilled in the warm, heavy night even as she spoke.

  “I was freaking out every time the phone even rang yesterday,” she went on. “Maybe I didn’t hear those words at all. Maybe—” She turned her head away from him, stared into the misty darkness of the wooded night. “Maybe I imagined them.”

  “‘Maybe’ isn’t good enough.” He came to a stop sign.

  Reaching over, he touched her chin gently, forcing her to look back at him. She was ultraaware of the strong warmth of his fingers.

  In that moment, in the dark of the car, they could have been the only living humans left on the planet.

  “I know that you’re frightened,” he said. “But you don’t have to be frightened of me.” A long pause, and he didn’t take his eyes off hers. “Are you frightened of me, Leah?”

  The answer to his question was elusive, tangled in the web of her lost memories and her present confusion. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I just hate for you to have to play my baby-sitter,” she finally managed to tell him, avoiding a direct reply.

  He looked at her for a very long beat, and something inside his soulful eyes made her quiver somewhere very deep within her body.

  “Trust me,” he said, “I don’t feel like your baby-sitter.”

  In that fleeting instant, she thought she saw the same impenetrable emotions in his eyes that tangled within her heart. Pain, loneliness, desire…

  He turned his attention back to the road. Leah hugged her arms to herself in the dark car.

  “Bathroom’s in there,” he said, pointing the way once they were inside the bungalow at the White Seas. “Feel free to make yourself at home.”

  She shut the door, grateful to be alone. The bungalow’s bathroom was blatantly luxurious. Gold fixtures, marble spa tub, separate shower built for two. Had they shared that shower, that spa tub, on their honeymoon?

  They’d been husband and wife. He’d grieved for her when he thought she was dead. But how did he feel about her now? He had pointedly not made any avowals of love to her, and aside from that one kiss, he’d barely touched her.

  She pushed away the thoughts, dropped her bag on the floor of the bathroom and turned on the faucet in the sink. What had she done? Where had she been driving that night? She splashed cold water on her face. The questions were killing her. She wanted them to stop, but they just kept coming.

  Her cut hand burned beneath the bandage as she dried her face, reminding her to take her antibiotic. She still didn’t want to take any of the pain pills.

  She’d brought a pair of pajamas with her—light-weight, the top buttoned, the bottoms long. But even covered as prudishly as that, she felt embarrassed to come out of the bathroom. The situation was undeniably intimate and strange.

  Roman sat at the table in the bungalow, a glass containing pale-gold liquid in his hand. His long legs were stretched out to the side.

  “Wine?” he offered.

  She nodded, still standing just outside the bathroom. The bungalow lay shrouded in shadows, only one lamp spilling a low glow across the large room.

  He’d already placed another glass on the table. There was a small bar in the bungalow that included several bottles and carafes. He poured her wine. In the quiet of the bungalow, the smooth plop of the liquid sounded loud. She sat across from him, took the glass, briefly brushing his fingers as he released it into her hand. He smelled musky, male, dangerous and safe all at once.

  A pang of longing speared through her. Her life could be in danger and yet she was punishingly aware of this man. You feel this connection between us. Yes, she felt it.

  And it was nearly unbearable.

  Roman took another sip from his glass, watching her intently. Her heart drummed wildly against the wall of her chest. How was she going to spend the night in the same room with him when her entire being came to aching life just from his proximity?

  If she gave in to those feelings, she didn’t know if she could handle it, keep her perspective. Keep things from going too far. The bed was like a living, breathing thing behind her.

  A sharp knock sounded on the door, and Leah jerked, spilling wine on the burnished surface of the table. She grabbed a napkin from the holder on the shelf, mopped up her mess.

  “It’s room service, Leah,” Roman explained. “I ordered some food. I know you haven’t eaten all day.”

  “I’m just jumpy. I swear I’m not usually this much of a klutz.”

  “I know,” he said.

  His eyes made her feel even more nervous. Yes, he did know. He knew better than she did what she was like, didn’t he?

  But he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know where she’d been going that night. He didn’t know her secrets.

  And she didn’t know his. There’d been something wrong with their marriage. How could she know he’d told her the full truth?

  He went to the door. A short, uniformed waiter entered with a tray of covered dishes.

  “Just set it on the table.” After Roman let the waiter back out and shut the door, securing it with the inside lock, he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you to come out of the bathroom to order, but I figured you were hungry. I ordered some of your favorites.”

  Leah swallowed thickly. He knew her favorites.

  She took another sip of the wine.

  He lifted the covers off the dishes
to reveal skewered shrimp with steamed vegetables and rice. The rich grilled aroma had her mouth watering immediately. She was hungry, and he was right, she hadn’t eaten all day. Her stomach had been in turmoil, her heart in her throat. And now?

  Her stomach was still in turmoil, her heart was still in her throat. But she was starved and eating was better than sitting here wondering what to talk about with a stranger who had been her lover.

  Using a fork, she slid a piece of seared shrimp off the skewer and popped it in her mouth.

  “Let’s go over your normal routine in Thunder Key,” Roman said after a minute.

  “I don’t think anyone here in Thunder Key wants to hurt me,” she said automatically.

  “We don’t know that. While it looks as if this has something to do with your past, we could be wrong. It could be a stranger who has developed an obsession about you. Or if it is someone from your past, it could be someone who is already here, someone you come into daily contact with and don’t even realize you know. They could have some connection to the man watching you. We just don’t know at this point.”

  “You don’t recognize anyone in Thunder Key, do you?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said grimly, “but I only knew your friends in New York. They were mostly people from your design studio.”

  Leah didn’t want to think that one of the friends she’d made in Thunder Key could be connected with her past and with the man watching her. Everyone in Thunder Key had been wonderful to her. The idea of a stranger being obsessed with her wasn’t any more comfortable, though.

  “We have to rule out anyone here being involved,” he added. “Whether it’s a stranger or a friend.”

  “You’re not a policeman.”

  He looked frustrated. “Well, so far we’re not getting a heck of a lot of help from the cops here. An officer is supposed to come by the bar tomorrow—there was some kind of search going on involving another Key today. I know it sounds like I’m reaching,” Roman went on, “but I want a list of the people you’ve been acquainted with since you came to Thunder Key.”