by Cindy Gerard
“They have their hands full investigating the problems you’ve been dealing with since last December.”
Grant grew silent.
The problems all appeared to be tied to the unsolved murders of her grandfather, King Thomas Rosemere of Altaria, her uncle, Prince Marc, and the subsequent attempted assassination of her brother, Daniel, who, as the eldest son of Emma Rosemere Connelly, had taken Thomas’s place as king.
Absolutely, the Chicago P.D. and her father’s hired investigators had their hands full.
“Besides,” she said, “what would I have told them? That I’d received some strange phone calls? ‘No. No heavy breathing. No, the calls hadn’t seemed ominous. No, they hadn’t felt like pranks, either. Hadn’t felt like wrong numbers.’
“It’s not much for anyone to go on, Dad, and it wasn’t enough for me to follow through with the detectives. And yet…”
“And yet what?” he asked when she paused.
“Last week,” she said, speaking more to herself than to her father, “I was walking out of a shop and…it was like I felt Michael there, watching me, waiting for me.”
“It’s all this business with your grandfather’s death and Daniel’s attempted murder,” her father said with gentle concern. “All the extra security I’ve had set up is making you nervous. This whole damn situation is making you nervous.”
“No. No,” she assured him. “It’s not that. I’ve never felt threatened on that front even though I know you’ve been concerned for me. For all of us. It’s… I don’t know. Like today in the park. There was a man.” Her heart stuttered now as it had when she’d seen him. “I couldn’t stop thinking about Michael.”
She rubbed her arms, closed her eyes. “Sometimes lately, it feels like he’s…still here, Dad.”
Her father sighed. “It’s because you never had closure.”
No. There had never been closure. Instead, there’d been a train derailment in the jungles of Ecuador, endless nights of not knowing, the empty ache of waiting. The helplessness of uncertainty. Of needing to hear. Of wanting to know, yet not wanting to know the worst of it. Then just wanting to know anything.
The jungle was dense and wild, the cavernous cliffs below the derailment site impassable. Michael’s body hadn’t been the only one that had never been recovered. And Tara had never recovered from the guilt of knowing that the last words she’d spoken to him had been the last words he’d expected to hear.
She still remembered every moment of that day as if it were yesterday. She drifted back to that day at the airport—that horrible day. She could still see the shock and pain on Michael’s face in her mind. Still heard the hurtful words….
“You don’t have to see me off at the gate,” Michael said as he closed the trunk, hefted his flight bag over his shoulder and set his Pullman on the curb by the car.
Around them horns honked, hotel shuttles jockeyed for parking. Travelers hunched their shoulders against the cold, struggled with their luggage, rushed to make their flights.
It was so cold. Cold outside. Cold inside. The bite of it stung her cheeks as she stood there, the collar of her red wool coat turned up against the wind, the air as heavy as the lead-gray sky. Stray snowflakes taunted, promising the bitter Chicago winter to come.
Michael’s eyes were troubled as he watched her face. He knew something was wrong. Finally, he knew. After months of combative silences and fractured truths, he finally understood. Finally. Too late.
“We’ll talk,” he promised as he gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You know I have to go on this trip. It could make or break my promotion, babe.” He rocked her gently, lifted one corner of his mouth in that crooked smile she’d never been able to resist.
When she didn’t react, he bent his knees, met her at eye level. “When I get back, we will talk.”
“It’s too late, Michael. It’s too late to talk.” Her words sounded as frigid as the wind that whipped off Lake Michigan and picked up speed and force as it funneled through the city and cut its way to O’Hare. “It’s been too late for a long time now.”
He straightened, his hands tightening on her shoulders. He drew her toward him protectively when a woman sprinting for the terminal doors bumped against them with a mumbled apology. His breath puffed out in smoky white clouds of frost that crystallized on the brittle air.
“It didn’t feel like it was too late last night.”
Last night when they’d made love.
Against all odds, when they could no longer communicate on a verbal level, they’d never lost their ability to communicate in bed.
As she stood there, feeling the heat of his strong hands through her winter coat, seeing the passion in his eyes, she knew that sex had been the only thing keeping them together for some time now.
“Michael…this is hard.” She worked up her courage to say the words but she couldn’t look at him. “I…I want a divorce.”
She felt his shock like the blow that it was. For a moment he was utterly still. Then his hands loosened their hold on her shoulders, dropped to his side.
“You don’t mean that,” he said after a moment in which they both felt the truth and the finality of her decision like the cut of the wind against their faces.
“Look at me,” he demanded, each word a command, each breath an effort. “I deserve to have you look at me when you tell me you want to rip my life apart.”
“Our life.” She raised her head, felt her heart beating with anger and hurt and utter helplessness. “It’s our life that’s being ripped apart, and I’m not the only one responsible. This didn’t start here, Michael. Not today.”
She felt the tears and couldn’t blink them back. “I—I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t accept that.” His words were as clipped as the wind.
She lifted her chin, looked past him at the glut of humanity crowding toward the terminal doors.
“I’m sorry. But your acceptance doesn’t change things. I want a divorce,” she repeated, meeting the bleakness and the anger in his gray eyes one last time. Then she turned away.
Like an automaton, she walked around the front of the car, opened the door and slid behind the wheel. She wasn’t aware that she’d fastened the seat belt, turned the key and slipped the car in gear. But as she checked the rearview mirror, she was very aware of him standing there. The wind tugged and whipped his dark hair around his beautiful face; his strong cheeks were red from the cold, his gray eyes were set with defiance and denial.
It wasn’t until after she’d parked in front of their apartment that she’d realized she was still crying, that she couldn’t stop crying.
Tara blinked herself away from a moment that even now, two years later, remained as vivid as Lake Michigan in the swell of a storm. She looked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows of her parents’ manor house and felt like crying now.
She still missed what she and Michael had once had. The passion, the hopes, the dreams, the defiance that had them eloping on prom night simply because they were in love. They were in love, but he was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks and she was the princess her wealthy parents wanted to exile to an exclusive girls school to get her away from him. Away from Michael, who hadn’t been good enough for her, who could never provide for her by Connelly standards.
“John won’t wait forever, Tara.”
Her father’s voice broke through the years, through the tears she hadn’t been able to shed for some time now. The accuracy of his statement undercut all the might-have-beens and should-have-beens, and relayed the truth.
“I know.” She laid a gentle hand on Brandon’s bottom, needing to feel his sturdy little bulk, to touch what was real when the surreal threatened to outdistance it.
The door to the den opened with a subtle creak.
“Mr. Connelly, I’m sorry to intrude.”
Ruby, dressed in her starched black uniform even at this late hour, stood in the doorway. Her hands clenched t
he doorknob so hard her knuckles had turned white. Her eyes were as round as the buttons on her blouse, her cheeks as gray as her apron.
Her father realized that something was wrong at the same moment Tara did. The unflappable Ruby, who had been their head housekeeper, a fixture and a friend for all of Tara’s memories, was far from the composed manager of Lake Shore Manor.
“Ruby?” Grant’s brows knit together with concern. “What is it?”
“Mr. Connelly,” Ruby repeated, clearly struggling for control. “There…there’s a gentleman here. He wishes to…he wishes to see Miss Tara.”
“At this hour?” Grant snorted. “And does this gentleman—who has the audacity to come to my home at—” he raised his arm, shoved back the cuff of his custom tailored white shirt and checked his watch “—just after nine o’clock in the evening—have a name?”
A preemptive anticipation had Tara’s heart suddenly pounding. Her breath inexplicably clogged in her throat as she rose jerkily to her feet.
If possible, Ruby turned a whiter shade of pale. Her gaze shot to Tara, apologetic, even a little alarmed, and yet guardedly hopeful as she opened the great oak door wider.
A man stepped into the room, a shadow in the doorway, a ghost from the past.
“Good Lord,” Tara heard her father murmur in shock and incredulity as Michael Paige’s lean, athletic frame filled the doorway.
Tara shook her head, disbelieving, yet wanting, with everything that was in her, to believe. She touched her fingers to her lips, tears brimming as the man’s somber gray gaze sought and found hers.
“Michael.”
Her father rose to his feet behind her; his strong hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her. But all she could see, all she could feel was Michael.
Blood roared through her ears. Her heart pounded like thunder—in her chest, in her throat. Her legs grew wobbly and weak. Tears stung in a hot, burning flooding of emotions.
Through the watery mist she stared as her husband stood there, his eyes—those flinty gray eyes—warm on hers, unblinking on hers.
He took a step forward and caught her hands in his. She cried out at the shockingly familiar feel of his fingers grasping hers. His grip was hard, his hands callused. Warm. Real. Alive.
She stared down at their clasped hands, aware that hers were shaking, and she studied the strength and the scars—some she recognized, some she did not.
“Tara.”
She raised her head at the gruff need in his voice, watched his eyes as he searched her face, then cast an unspoken plea at her father. Her father squeezed her shoulders protectively, hesitated, then with reluctance, dropped his hands.
With his gaze fast on hers, Michael pulled her into his embrace.
She fell into his arms on a sob, clung to him desperately, wept without shame—for him, for herself, for everything they’d lost.
He was here. My God, he was alive. Strong, warm and real. He smelled—oh, he smelled like Michael. She buried her face in his neck, needing more assurance that it was him—really him—and not some horrible trick of imagination and misery and guilt.
His hands roamed her back with a tender urgency, a familiar intimacy that said he, too, was struggling with the reality. His heart beat wild and strong against her breast as he whispered her name against her hair.
She pulled back so she could see his face, to cement into fact that it was really Michael.
The man she had loved.
The man she had asked the courts to declare legally dead.
The man she planned to divorce.
Two
Michael buried his face in Tara’s hair, wallowed in the silk and honey scent of her. It seemed like forever since he’d felt the sweet press of her breasts against his chest, her slim hips aligned with his. It seemed like a thousand forevers—and yet it felt like yesterday and the hundreds of yesterdays they’d shared.
He’d seen everything from shock to joy, disbelief to denial, hope to love in her eyes before she’d flown into his arms. He didn’t care that her reaction had been knee-jerk, maybe even involuntary. The only thing he cared about was that he was finally holding her.
“Michael…son.”
He heard Grant say his name a second time before he reluctantly lifted his head, searched Tara’s eyes. He touched his thumb to the aristocratic arch of her cheekbone, smiled gently, then transferred his attention to her father.
The man looked shaken. He appeared to be in as much shock as Tara and Ruby.
Son. Grant had never called him son during the five years he’d been married to Tara. Michael strongly suspected he never would—not when he had steady legs under him. The word had slipped out, a figure of speech, an indicator of just how much his appearance had unnerved the great Grant Connelly.
“Hello, sir.”
“Michael, how— What…” Grant trailed off, held up a hand, a gesture of utter confusion from a man used to being in total control.
“I know.” Michael read the questions in Grant’s eyes. “I know. You have questions.”
He looked down at Tara, at her violet eyes, misty now with that edgy mix of disbelief and shock.
“You all have questions.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her. He wanted to look into her eyes forever. He wanted to take her somewhere. Make love to her. Tell her all the things he’d been dying to tell her since he recovered his memory two weeks ago. But there was more, much more that he’d missed.
Linking his hand with Tara’s, needing to touch her, to be touched by her, he looked down at the little boy asleep on the floor.
His child.
He swallowed back emotions so consuming and complex he couldn’t put a name to them, blinked back the burn of tears that blindsided him. He did not want to give in to them. Not here. Not in front of Grant Connelly.
“May I?” His words came out gruff and thick with the knot of emotion that clogged his throat.
A long hesitation, then Tara’s voice, barely a whisper. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
From the corner of his vision, he saw her touch a hand to her mouth, saw a tear leak down her cheek as her father wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.
He bent down, picked up the stout little bundle and straightened, laying him against his chest. The child snuffled, a sighing, baby sound of contentment, then snuggled against him in his sleep, fearless of this stranger who was his father.
Soft. He was so soft and so sturdy and so vulnerable. He smelled of powder and little-boy smells. The silk of his hair caught in the stubble of Michael’s beard; the heat of his hearty little body warmed Michael in ways he’d never thought possible.
“I’d heard that having a child could change a person,” he murmured, unaware that he’d spoken aloud.
Something had definitely changed inside him the day he’d seen his son’s picture in that tabloid. Changed him enough that it had shocked his memory back. He’d discovered then and there that there was nothing he wanted more than to reclaim his life.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, fighting with his emotions, offering an apology. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”
The burst of love was so profound he felt the pulse of it thrum through his body in tandem with his heartbeat. He struggled to collect himself, but lost the battle and turned his back on the room. He pressed his face to the sweetness of Brandon’s neck, giving in to a sense of longing and loss so absolute that he couldn’t stop the tears.
When Emma Connelly hurriedly entered the room on a surprised intake of breath, he was hardly aware that she’d joined them. He was only remotely aware of Ruby—crusty and sometimes crotchety Ruby—dabbing a tissue to her eyes.
“Michael.”
Tara’s voice was gentle, her hand on his shoulder supportive and full of compassion. It brought him back, reminded him of other obligations.
“Would you…would you like to take him upstairs and put him to bed?”
She understood. He needed some time. He needed some space to comp
ose himself.
He squeezed his eyes tight and nodded. Without a word, he turned and followed her out of the room.
Grant regarded him with granite-hard eyes as he passed him by. Emma touched his arm, squeezed gently. Ruby grinned like a goose and finally made him smile.
He was back. He was home. And nothing—not Grant Connelly, not a legal divorce action and not a man by the name of John Parker—was going to keep him from claiming his wife and becoming a father to his child.
A half hour later Michael was back in the family room. If not completely composed, he was at least determined to field Grant Connelly’s questions.
He stood in front of the fire, felt the heat of it through his pant leg along with the burn of expensive liquor in his belly. He’d braced one hand on the mantel, wrapped the other around the snifter of cognac Ruby had thrust at him with a “drink it, you’re gonna need it” arch of her brow.
She’d been right. All eyes were on him. The adrenaline rush that had gotten him this far had ebbed, but the liquor had steadied him.
“I’m sorry. I know this is a shock showing up this way.” He met Grant’s hard gaze, then Emma’s. She smiled in encouragement.
“I ran through a hundred scenarios. Tried to figure out a way to make this play out easier for you. Finally, I decided the only thing to do was come over here tonight.
“This has to be very hard.” He glanced from face to face. “For all of you.”
“This isn’t hard, Michael.” Emma Connelly sat on the sofa beside Tara, holding her daughter’s hand in her lap. “Losing you was hard.”
Sincerity shone in her kind blue eyes. It made him smile. Grant Connelly’s wife loved her husband very much. So much that thirty-five years ago she’d turned her back on the small European country of Altaria, abdicated her rights as princess and moved across the Atlantic to Chicago to marry a man her family regarded as a crass, American upstart. The press still played on the fairy-tale elements of the story—and on the creation of Grant Connelly’s dynasty of wealth and power, as well as the lives of his many and colorful children. The Connelly dynasty not only made money for its own, it continued to provide a lucrative source of revenue for the paparazzi.