Her Man To Remember

by Suzanne McMinn

  Roman took notes while she spoke. Her close friends were few—Joey, Viv, Marian, Morrie. She was acquainted with numerous residents on the small island, however, due to her work at the Shark and Fin.

  “You run in the mornings,” he filled in. “Once a week you work at the shop in Smugglers Village. You go to the coffeehouse, the library, the grocery store. Am I missing anything? Do you go to the other islands much?”

  Leah swallowed hard. “How do you know all that? Oh, my God, you were watching me.”

  “I couldn’t believe it was you,” he admitted. “I watched you for days before I could bring myself to speak to you. I was afraid—” He was silent for a beat. “I was afraid you’d disappear, the way you did in my dreams.”

  He’d dreamed about her. He’d dreamed of losing her. It was awful, and she didn’t know what to say. She just knew they were both hurting.

  She answered his question. “I go to the fabric studio in Key West.” She gave him the name.

  “What do you know about Morrie?”

  Leah hesitated. Morrie had been too good a friend to her for her to feel comfortable discussing the shadier side of his past.

  “I need the truth, Leah.”

  “Morrie has a criminal history,” she said reluctantly. “But he’s been nothing but kind to me.”

  “What sort of criminal history?”

  “I don’t know the details. He was in prison. That’s all in the past, though. He’s trying to work things out with his family now. That’s why he wants to sell the Shark and Fin—so he can move to New Mexico.”

  “What about any other staff at the bar? Has there been any trouble in the past eighteen months? Anyone who could have something against you?”

  “I don’t think so. I fired a girl right after Morrie left, but she wasn’t coming in to work, so I don’t think it could be related. I had to replace her. She was a no-show half the time. Morrie’d given her a lot of chances and he’d given me the go-ahead to let her go if the problems kept up. I hated to do it but we needed someone more dependable. There’s nothing any of these people I’ve come into contact with in Thunder Key have ever said or done to make me believe I knew them in the past except—”

  Roman’s gaze locked on hers.

  “Except who?”

  “You,” she admitted softly. Her stomach fluttered, and she looked down at her plate.

  “I’m glad, Leah.” His hard voice filled with kindness, caring, and that just about broke her will to resist him. She looked up, captured by the pull of her name on his lips. “I want you to remember me.”

  “You want me to remember what a bastard you were?” she said, purposefully baiting him in order to wedge any distance she could between them.

  Something shifted in his eyes. As difficult as the past eighteen months had been for her, they couldn’t have been easy for him, either.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  Now she felt like a heel. He didn’t ask any more questions. They finished their meal, and they took turns brushing their teeth—an oddly intimate routine with a man who felt like a stranger. When she came out, she found Roman had opened the bungalow’s entertainment center. He’d turned off the light, leaving the glow of the television screen to light the room. Leah sat down on the floor at the foot of the bed. She noticed Roman had piled pillows there. It was as close to the bed as she could bring herself to get.

  She hunched her knees, placing her arms around her legs, and leaned back into the pillows. Roman surfed channels, finally stopping on a grainy black-and-white movie. He sat beside her on the floor, giving her plenty of distance and not nearly enough at the same time.

  The film had to have been from the forties. It was horribly acted, terribly stiff and ridiculous.

  She realized he was watching her, not the movie. She looked at him, pulled away from the B movie by his excruciatingly intense eyes.

  “Do you remember that you loved movies like this?” he asked.

  She blinked. “Are you serious? The aliens look like they’re wrapped in tinfoil, and did they have a five-year-old in charge of special effects? Are you telling me I had the worst taste in the world in movies?”

  Roman laughed, showing those damn dimples and making her heart beat too fast. “You loved old movies, especially science fiction,” he told her. “The worse the movie, the more you liked it. And you always made me watch them with you.”

  “Maybe I was just punishing you for being a bastard,” she said jokingly, trying to keep the conversation from getting too serious.

  “Old movies made you laugh,” Roman said. “You loved to laugh.”

  The way he said it, so tenderly, so romantically, had the breath clogging in her throat. It was getting harder and harder to think of him as a stranger, as someone she didn’t dare completely trust.

  “I hated the movies,” he continued softly.

  “So why did you watch them with me?”

  He was quiet for a beat. The light from the TV flickered across his rugged features. “I loved to watch you laugh.”

  Her stomach dipped inside her and she knew she couldn’t handle where this conversation could be going.

  “I’m tired,” she said suddenly. “I hardly slept last night. I think it would be better if I just went to bed.”

  He watched her. “All right, Leah.” He picked up the remote and flicked the TV off. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She realized he was heading for the chaise in the corner. He’d taken a couple pillows from the floor.

  “No.” She was having a heart attack thinking about getting in that bed. She almost wanted to tell him to turn the movie back on. But the movie hadn’t been such a good idea, either. “Let me take the chaise. This is your bungalow.”

  “You need a good night’s sleep,” he countered.

  She was left with no choice. She climbed into the huge, romantically shrouded bed, almost sure she’d have an impossible time falling to sleep. She shut her eyes and worked not to notice that the fresh scent of the clean sheets still somehow carried the musky male scent that was undeniably Roman.

  Her nipples ached in the darkness and she could have sworn she could hear his heartbeat across the room. She didn’t know how long it took her to fall asleep. She only knew that sometime in the night, she drifted off into a place that was as familiar as it was foreign.

  She felt herself dancing across an apartment floor, laughing, falling into the lap of a man who growled and kissed her, flinging her back against the sofa. He planted himself over her, suckling at her earlobes, kissing her neck, enticing her, making love to her. They ripped their clothes off, eager and passionate.

  Reaching up to the faceless man she’d kissed so many times in her dreams, his features cleared, focused for the first time. And it was Roman she held, Roman she kissed.

  Then Roman was gone, his face transposed into a blur of a man in a white coat. She was on a sidewalk, buildings soaring around her, running, running, and every time she looked back, the man in the white coat was following her. Terrified, she stumbled on a crack in the pavement, fell. The only sound she knew was the pounding of his feet, closer and closer.

  Leah sat bolt upright in the bed, darkness surrounding her. She didn’t know how long it was before she realized she was screaming.

  Chapter 10

  “Leah!” Roman gripped Leah’s arms against the pillows over her head, trying everything to still her crazed thrashing. She’d slugged his face once already before he’d pinned her back on the bed. If he didn’t have a black-and-blue eye tomorrow, he’d be lucky.

  Now she kicked him, struggling beneath the fine-spun sheet. She’d already thrown all the other covers off.

  He risked letting go of one arm to take hold of her thrashing face, force her to focus on him. “Leah, it’s me, Roman. You don’t have to be afraid. You’re not alone. You’re safe. You’re with me.”

  In the shadowed bed, he could see her tormented eyes shining up at him,
raw and wild. Long heartbeats passed, the only sound in the room now her too-fast breaths. He shifted slightly, meaning to take his weight off her, slide down next to her, but she must have thought he was leaving because she gripped his shoulders, pulled at him. She was clinging to him.

  “I’m just—” he began, his voice filling with rough emotion. He took a breath, struggled for control. “I’m not going anywhere.” He lowered his body beside her, the sheet and her pajamas and the briefs and T-shirt he’d stripped down to in the dark when he’d gone to bed on the chaise the only barrier between them. Through the thin sheet, he felt her every pulse, every breath. Her skin felt hot, clammy, but she shivered in his arms.

  The sweet agony of holding her this way was nearly unbearable. He was dying holding her, and he realized they were both trembling—he as much as her. He couldn’t help himself. He put his arms around her, pulled her closer, touching her shoulders, her hair, her face.

  “You were there, in my dream,” she said suddenly.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “And nobody’s going to hurt you ever again.”

  “I want the dreams to go away. I want them to stop.”

  He wanted to tell her he could make them stop, and he’d never felt so inadequate in his life. All he could think was that he never wanted to let her go. He wanted to tell her that somehow, if he just held her long enough, he could make all her bad dreams go away.

  But it wasn’t true and they both knew it. So he just held her and said nothing. He felt the wetness of her tears against his shoulder. The scent of her filled him, teasing and torturing him with her nearness.

  And he’d thought sleeping across the room from her had been difficult.

  “You were the only good part of my dream,” she whispered, her voice stark.

  Oh, God. His heart ached. She gazed up at him like a lost fairy in the liquid night, her lambent eyes shining with need and despair. He didn’t know what to say, what to do, and then she said something he knew she only would have said in that midnight bed.

  “Don’t leave me alone.”

  The pain in her voice grabbed him by the throat. “I won’t,” he swore to her.

  She moved, shifting slightly to slide her arms around his neck. His muscles tensed from the onslaught of desire. He was linked—heart, mind and soul—to this lost fairy-wife of his in a way he’d never been linked to anyone in his life before. She had been the one person who had made him whole, lifted him out of his cold, sterile business world, but she was someone else now, not that same ray of lightness that had once graced his life. She had her secrets, and he had his, and if he were a wiser man, he would tread carefully. He would get out of this bed before he did something they might both regret in the morning.

  But he didn’t feel wise tonight.

  “I’ll stay here with you all night,” he said. “If that’s what you want.” He skimmed his hand up along her shadowed jaw, and she leaned into his touch, closing her eyes.

  “I want—” she whispered, then stopped.

  “What do you want, Leah?” he coaxed her.

  She opened her eyes. And he dared to believe he saw the same bond in her gaze that he felt in his heart. The same aching, desperate desire. It was an intuitive, subliminal connection that went beyond memories. It was in skin on skin, touch on touch, gaze on gaze.

  “I want to know what it felt like to be your wife,” she said softly, her words rushing over his heart in one tender tidal wave. “For just one night. Even if that’s all we have. I want the one good thing I dreamed. The dream I dreamed of you.”

  He was drowning in her. “What did you dream of me?”

  Their faces were only inches apart. He could almost hear her heart pounding, as violently as his own.

  “I dreamed,” she whispered, “that we made love.”

  Roman had no words. He was beyond amazed, beyond lost. She was everything he wanted, and she was offering herself to him. So many feelings—guilt, need, desire, pain—tangled together, threatening to spin him out of control.

  “I have to know that one thing in my mind, in my heart, in my dreams, is real, and that it’s something beautiful,” she said. “Make love to me. Show me that it’s real.”

  “Leah,” he started, overwhelmed. “Of course it’s real.” Sweet Lord, this was all he’d wanted to hear her say, but it was so dangerous. That wiser man sitting on his shoulder told him it wasn’t too late to back away.

  But she clung to him and he had no idea if she was clinging to a dream or to a man. He knew he couldn’t bear it if he woke up tomorrow and she was sorry for what she’d said tonight.

  And he also knew there was no way he was going to be able to stop now. It was too late. Way too late.

  Tomorrow was far away from this night-shrouded bed.

  He had his wife back. For one night. Even if all she was reaching for was a dream, a sweet solace from her pain and fear, he was the one in her arms. And God help him, he couldn’t resist her. He’d promised her he wouldn’t do this very thing, but it was she who was begging him to break that promise.

  And so he kissed her with all the passion that had been sealed up inside him for eighteen months. She kissed him back, and he tasted the salty flavor of her tears along with the sweet tang of her lips. He kissed her face, her neck, her ears, his hands roaming over her, and all the while she drew him tight with her arms. He couldn’t get enough of her and he never wanted this night to end.

  She smelled like bougainvilleas and sweet memories.

  “I want to remember you,” she whispered against his lips. “Make me remember.”

  His heart swelled and emotion stung his eyes. He kissed her again with heated energy as his hands reacquainted themselves with her body. He wanted to be so tender and careful with her, but he was driven by a force beyond his power as a soft groan sounded in her throat. Through the thin material of her pajamas he felt her slender body, and he knew no past, no future, only Leah, here and now, in his arms.

  Her hands streaked over his back, her need matching his own. Desperate now, burning, he laid her back on the pillows and turned his questing attention to her body, one by one slowly tearing apart the buttons of her pajama top.

  If tonight did turn out to be all they had, he was going to make it last.

  The top came apart, revealing her night-kissed breasts. They were small, perfect, and he longed for them. “Do you remember this?” he asked in a hushed voice, claiming one as his again with an excruciatingly tender mouth. “And this?” he asked again, suckling the other tight nub.

  Her answer was a moan, and she dug her fingers into his hair, then he realized she was tugging at his shirt. He sat back, pulled it over his head. She reached up with searching hands and placed one over his heart, as if feeling it beat.

  He took a moment then to gaze down at her in the shrouded shadows. Moonlight grazed through the mosquito netting, giving him a dreamy view of her silken torso. But it was her eyes that drew him, all darkness and hunger. He was on fire for her, and she was everything to him. She was his heart. He pressed hot kisses to her face, his blood pounding, emotion filling him for this intimacy that was so familiar and yet new at the same time. Too new for words.

  It was simpler to show her how right and real their love could be. And so he did, capturing her mouth again with sweet fury. Then he laved a tormenting line of kisses down her stomach, his hands skimming over the sheer material of her clothing. But that wasn’t enough for her, and she pushed at her pajama bottoms, ripping away the twisted sheet. He pulled away the pajamas, leaving only the ephemeral covering of her underwear.

  “Leah,” he breathed harshly. “Leah—” He would just die if she stopped him now.

  “Touch me.” She seduced him with her breathy wonder. “Touch me and don’t stop.”

  And no longer did he even hear the whisper of the wiser man who would have left this bed long ago. There was no chance in hell he would regret this night, even if she did. She was pleading with him to continue, and a team o
f wild horses couldn’t have dragged him away.

  He slid one hand inside her panties, his shaking fingers meeting her hot, wet center. Slow, he wanted to take this so slow. But sweet heaven above, he was so lost.

  In her dreams it had never been this good. Leah felt her body tremble as Roman’s fingers coaxed her heated core to life. This was madness; she knew it on some faraway level. But it was an exquisite insanity that she needed in the same way she needed air to breathe.

  The need she felt for this stranger-husband of hers was almost painfully intense. She felt as if she were blind, feeling for memory by touch, by her fingers on his hard, incredible chest and shoulders and back.

  Then, as his fingers slipped higher inside her, it was a different sort of madness altogether that she experienced. She was hungry and desperate and so eager to let this mindless passion, this all-encompassing physical sensation, take her over. She wanted to be free, for this one night, of fear and hurt and dread. And his lips, his hands, his heated body was her salvation.

  Somewhere deep within her heart, she knew he had always been her salvation. The familiarity of losing herself in his tender lovemaking brought an aching recognition. There had to have been more to their marriage than this passion, but whatever it was, she didn’t want to know it tonight.

  Fumbling, she tore apart the waist of his briefs. He gazed down at her with something wild in his eyes, something heartbreakingly needy, and her stomach dropped away. He kissed her with heated lingering, then pulled away to slide off his briefs. He was back in an instant, his hard body bare and unbelievable. She had a glimpse of powerful, corded muscle and gleaming moon-starred skin. He was man, all man, and she felt all woman beneath his gaze. And heavy—she felt so heavy everywhere. She couldn’t have moved from this bed if elephants had suddenly stampeded into the bungalow.

  “Remember me here,” he said, laying his long, hard body against her. “And here,” he added as he smoothed away her panties with a flick of his strong hand. “And here.” He claimed her mouth in a soul-searing frenzy of a kiss that swept her away from the bungalow. She didn’t know where she was anymore, and it didn’t matter. She was in his arms. That was all she knew.