by Gayle Wilson
The old man’s eyes had brightened at the suggestion, but he didn’t protest their intent to leave. His face looked pinched and drawn, the bruises still colorful.
He reached out and patted Raine’s hand. “Don’t let them keep you too busy to visit. There’s no reason not to now.”
Any danger Marguery or Sabina might have represented to her was finally over. If her uncle had only known that she’d blocked the memories of her former life, it would have been over long ago. Of course, if he had known that, he wouldn’t have made the fatal error in judgment that had led to his downfall.
“I have one more question before I go,” she said.
Griff shrugged slightly, which she took as permission. She turned back to Monty Gardner, whom she knew now had probably saved not only her life but also her sanity.
“Do you know anything about my mother and father?”
The small hope she’d nurtured since her memory had returned died when he shook his head.
“After I shut down Cassandra, I tried to find them, but Sabina, or Jimmy, acting on her behalf, had covered the trail too well. There was no way to trace your family.”
“Thank you for trying,” she said, burying her disap pointment by leaning forward to press a kiss against his cheek. “Thank you for everything.”
“If I had only known sooner—”
“I know,” she said, straightening to smile at him. “And now we really do need to leave you to get some rest.”
“Come back soon,” he urged as she stood and began to walk to the door of the hospital room.
“As soon as I can. You and I have some catching up to do.”
She stepped out into the hall to give Cabot and Ethan the opportunity to say goodbye. The door swung shut behind her only to open immediately as Cabot emerged from the room. In his hand was the small black jeweler’s box she had sent back to him two days ago.
He held it out to her with a smile. “A peace offering.”
“I can’t take these.”
“He wants you to have them. You can ask him if you don’t believe me. Just not now.”
“I thought you said he’d already given me too much.”
“I was wrong. About a lot of things. As I said, consider these a peace offering. Or an apology, if you prefer.”
She shook her head. “Give them to Claire. She has far more right to them.”
“Claire’s had her full share of both his love and his generosity. They really were his grandmother’s, you know. I’m not sure how you knew that, but you were right.”
She smiled, acknowledging the concession he’d just made. “It’s no different than using something that belongs to a missing child. The connection is still there, somehow embodied in an object they cherished.”
“Then cherish these. As she must have.” Griff took her hand and, putting the box into it, wrapped her fingers around the edge. “After all, he has already given you her name.”
She didn’t protest again. “Will you tell Claire how sorry I am?”
“She got your note. I think she understands. As much as she can. It’s hard for most people to imagine…”
“I know,” Raine said when he hesitated. “Sometimes it’s hard for me, too.”
The door to the hospital room opened again, and Ethan stepped out into the hall. His eyes met Cabot’s. With whatever unspoken communication passed between them, the Phoenix head quickly made his excuses, leaving them in the hallway alone.
“How are you?” Raine asked finally after the silence grew almost unbearable.
His injuries were the only safe subject she could think of. Everything else seemed fraught with too many emotional pitfalls.
“You didn’t return my calls,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry. I meant to, but… There are so many questions I don’t have answers for.”
“About me?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “I told you. There are some advantages to what I do.” The only important questions she’d ever had about Ethan Snow had been answered almost as soon as she met him.
“Then…you didn’t call because you didn’t want to see me.”
He looked tired. And he sounded hurt. She had never intended that, but she should have known he would be.
“You must know better than that.”
He looked away, his eyes focusing somewhere over her head. When they came back to her face, she ached for what was in them.
“I’ve never felt about another woman in my life the way I feel about you. I thought…” He hesitated and then closed his mouth, his lips flat.
“You weren’t wrong.”
“Then what the hell is going on? Why are you so damned distant?”
“Because everything I believed about my life is a lie. Something my mind created because it didn’t like the reality.”
Griff had insisted she see a psychiatrist to help her understand exactly what had happened to her. The thing that had frightened her most was the dissociative episode she’d suffered the night of the fund-raising dinner.
Had she been so frightened by the sound of Marguery’s voice that she had tried to escape by climbing out on the ledge? And then remembered nothing about it? If her mind could play that kind of trick, who could say for sure that the same thing might not happen in the future?
Until she knew it wouldn’t, she couldn’t make the kind of commitment she had dreamed of only days ago. It wouldn’t be fair to Ethan. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
“It was a way of dealing with what you’d experienced,” he said. “Thousands of people have done—”
“I’m not thousands of people. I’m just…me. Someone who climbed out on a ledge to escape who she really is.”
“You climbed out on a ledge to escape someone who had brutalized you. Someone you’d seen commit a particularly gruesome murder. I wouldn’t say that was…”
“Insane?” she finished when he hesitated.
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
He had cut to the heart of her fear, but it was one she didn’t intend to articulate again. Even admitting to worrying about that gave it credence, at least in her mind.
“I need some time to sort it all out,” she said instead. “To understand what happened. And to accept it.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Damn it, Raine.”
“That isn’t even my name. It’s the name Gardner gave me. I’d forgotten my own name, Ethan.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. And because of that, if for no other reason, it should matter to you.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“I know. None of it is. But I’m asking you to do it, anyway. Just give me a little time.”
His eyes fell. When he raised them again, she knew that she had won.
“I’m holding you to that. ‘A little time.’”
She nodded. And then, because she couldn’t resist, she stepped forward, laying her cheek against his chest. The scent of his body was almost enough to make her break the agreement she had just insisted they make.
His left arm came around her, holding her close. He put his chin against the top of her head and then pressed his lips there.
She closed her eyes, savoring the feel of being in his arms again. She couldn’t remember a time when she had ever felt this safe. He had protected her through everything that had happened these last two weeks. She knew he always would.
That would have been enough for most women. It should have been enough for her. The problem was that she wanted to come to him whole. An equal partner rather than someone he would again have to take care of.
She had had her fill of that, as grateful as she was to Monty Gardner for what he’d done. It was time for her to find out who Raine McAllister was and what she was capable of. And until she had…
She stepped back, moving out of Ethan’s embrace. It was the most difficult thing she had ever had to do in her life.
His face was set, unrevealing, but she knew he was fighting the same emotions she was. She put her hand against his cheek, feeling the muscle clench and unclench beneath the masculine roughness of his skin.
“I love you,” she whispered, and then, before she could change her mind, she turned and walked down that long hospital corridor alone.
Epilogue
Three Months Later
Her late-night walk along the shore had become almost a ritual. It not only helped to fill the long, empty hours until she could go to bed, but the physical activity helped her sleep.
If she concentrated on the beauty of the moonlight on top of the water or on the sound of the waves, there were even stretches of time during which she managed not to think of Ethan at all. Precious minutes during which she could also lock those long-suppressed memories out of her head once more.
Tonight’s expedition had been more successful than most. The peace she had always found in this setting seemed to again be healing her spirit. Now if she could only be sure she was doing the right thing as far as Ethan was concerned….
She glanced up, trying to locate the light she’d left on the back deck of her house and realized she was much closer to home than she’d thought. She had somehow lost track of both time and place. And she was infinitely grateful there was nothing to fear about that. Not any longer.
Before she stepped out of the edge of the surf to head across the sand, her eyes focused farther down the beach. The moonlight revealed a man standing almost directly behind her house, the incoming tide foaming whitely around his feet.
There was an indefinable something about the set of his head and the lean strength of his body that was instantly recognizable. Not only had she shaped those long bones and hard muscles while sculpting the figure of the runner, she had explored every powerful inch of them with her lips and tongue. She would have known Ethan Snow in her sleep.
She had known him. In countless erotic dreams since her return from Washington.
As she watched him, the waves continued to roll inexorably to shore between them. There was no other sound. No other motion.
Mentally she called to him, consciously electing to use the gift she had once rejected. If she had learned nothing else in the time she had spent in Washington, she had learned that. Her abilities were an integral part of who and what she was, and they always would be. Anyone who loved her…
Ethan turned his head, looking down the beach to where she stood unaware until now that her forward progress had stopped. She held her breath, waiting for whatever came next.
After a moment he began walking toward her. After a step or two, he began to run, long legs eating the distance between them, the motion as smooth and athletic as that portrayed by the runner she’d fashioned before she met him.
As he drew nearer, his stride slowed until he was once more walking. He had discarded his shoes, and although the cuffs of the khaki trousers he wore had been turned up a few times, their material was stained with saltwater. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the throat.
She noted those unimportant details before she dared to look at his face. The gray eyes were silvered by the moonlight, his lips unsmiling, their expression almost stern.
He came to a halt perhaps ten feet away from her, searching her face. “Raine?”
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
There was a small silence.
“Neither did I.”
As difficult as that was to hear, she knew it was the truth. This was something he had resisted because she had asked him to.
“But I’m glad you’re here,” she confessed.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “You seemed…”
“Distracted by the moonlight,” she said when he hesitated, and then she smiled at him.
He glanced out at the ocean where the rising moon cast its silver arrow across the water. The depth of the breath he took lifted his shoulders before he turned back to look at her.
“I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
Nothing. Everything.
“Why are you here?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Because I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Is that an ultimatum?”
“It’s a confession.”
One very few men would have made. And the fact that he had…
“I needed to see you,” he said. “I needed to know you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling at him. “No more ledges. No more dissociative episodes.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know, but…maybe I needed to tell you. I’ve been seeing someone to help me come to grips with what happened. You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
“How common this is. How…normal, for want of a better word. Especially in children. It’s a form of self-protection.”
“And now that you know that?”
“It’s not nearly so terrifying.”
“Good.”
“It also probably explains why I couldn’t cope with the other.”
“With the abducted children?”
“What was happening to them in some way brought back what had happened to me. I didn’t want those memories to resurface, so I chose to avoid contact with the evil that threatened them.”
“Self-protection,” he reminded softly.
“Or cowardice.”
“No.”
She hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear him say that. Not until he had.
She would deal with her own guilt, but it helped to know that the bravest person she’d ever met didn’t judge her. Just like the cops she’d worked with so long.
“I’ve also learned that I can’t change what I am,” she said. “And I can’t stop using what I’ve been given.”
“I know.”
“And, Ethan… Neither can you.”
The silence stretched a long time, broken only by the sound of the waves at their feet.
“I know,” he said, repeating the affirmation she had made.
Whether for the Phoenix or for someone else, Ethan would use the gifts he had been given. To fight injustice. To protect those who were unable to protect themselves. They were as much a part of who and what he was as her gift was a part of her. They were not to be squandered. Or denied.
“I spoke to Mr. Gardner before I left Washington.”
“How is he?”
“He wants you to come and live with him. I promised I’d give you the message.”
“I can’t do that, but…it means a great deal that he would ask me.”
“His isn’t the only offer you have.”
“It’s the only one I’ve heard so far.”
“Maybe you’re too far away.”
Smiling, she took the few steps that separated them. She stopped, looking up into his eyes.
They were far more beautiful than she had remembered. He was more beautiful than the figure her clumsy efforts in the studio had created. So beautiful her heart ached with the unaccustomed joy of having him here.
“Close enough?”
“Not quite.”
He bent, closing the distance between them. Although she had been expecting his kiss, he pressed his lips against her forehead before he leaned back, looking down into her eyes.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you know everything?”
“Enough. I know that you’re here.”
“Does that mean you’re going to let me stay?”
“Tonight at least.”
The smile in his eyes faded. “And then?”
“Then you have work to do. And so do I.”
“What kind of work?”
“It’s okay,” she said, responding to the concern she heard in his careful question. “There’s no reason for me not to do it now. And a lot of very good ones for me to go back.”
“Helping the cops with their missing chil
dren.” His voice was flat.
“Please don’t worry. I’m not nearly so fragile as you seem to think.”
“What I think is that for you to have survived, intact and functioning, means you’re tough enough to give a couple of the old hands at the Phoenix a run for their money.”
She laughed. “Will you tell me which ones they are when I meet them?”
When I meet them…
He was thinking about the phrasing. Trying to find any other interpretation for it before he believed her. And when he couldn’t…
“You’re coming back with me.” It was not a question.
“Unless you think Mr. Cabot is going to open a branch of the Phoenix down here.”
“I have to warn you,” he said, “my family is fairly conservative.”
“Meaning I can’t put up a sign outside advertising Tarot readings?”
“Meaning they would be far more welcoming of Mr. and Mrs. Ethan Snow.”
She hadn’t expected that. Not yet, at least.
“Is that a proposal?”
“Didn’t it sound like one? I can try again.”
“Then I’d like the ‘Will you marry me?’ version, if you don’t mind.”
“Will you, Raine McAllister, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“Lorraine,” she corrected before she stood on tiptoe to meet his lips. “You always use full names during the ceremony.”
“I wasn’t sure you were keeping it.”
“Why wouldn’t I? My first name was bestowed on me by someone I love very much. And my last name…”
“Your last name,” he prompted as he finally broke the long, deep kiss that had interrupted whatever she’d been about to say.
“Will be bestowed on me by someone whom I love even better. And will love even longer. Far longer,” she whispered, the last word lost as his lips covered hers again.
Until death do us part…
Ethan would love her forever, just as the vows they would take promised. She knew that with as much certainty as she had ever known anything in her life.
There were, after all, some advantages to what she did.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3229-7