by Cindy Gerard
“What am I up against here?” Michael asked.
“That’s one thing I always admired about you, Paige.” Brett sobered as he punched in a security code to access the elevator. “You cut right to the chase. Good to see some things never change.
“Parker’s a nice enough guy,” Brett continued after a thoughtful pause. The elevator doors slid open.
“He’s quite a bit older than Tara. She doesn’t love him,” he added with a contemplative scowl as they entered the elevator. The car rose in hushed precision to the top floor. “I take it you’ve seen her.”
“Last night.”
Michael had to force the words as he digested Brett’s news. Tara didn’t love Parker. The relief nearly sent him to his knees. He hadn’t realized until that very moment how much the possibility had been eating at him. It would have made a difference if she’d loved Parker. Michael would like to think he’d have been able to be a man and walk away, knowing she was happy.
He drew a bracing breath and followed Brett with a lighter step to the far end of a long hall and what Michael had decided were the penthouse suites.
Brett slipped a key in the lock and shoved open the door. They walked through the airy foyer and into a spacious living room. A bank of floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded the room on three sides.
Brett strode across the room and with the push of a button, opened the vertical blinds. The view of Lake Michigan from twelve stories up was breathtaking.
“Nice,” Michael said, taking in the dining area at the far end of the living room and the kitchen just beyond it.
“Bedrooms are this way.” Brett nodded toward the hall then headed in that direction. “Two, and two baths. Oh, and the basement garage has assigned spaces.”
“How is she?” Michael asked without preamble.
Brett met Michael’s eyes without blinking, seemed to consider how much he should reveal, then just let it go.
“She’s not Tara the Terror anymore. After you ‘died’ the old Tara disappeared.
“It’s not good,” Brett added grimly. “She’s too quiet, too… I don’t know. It seems like she’s just drifting. Oh, she loves Brandon and protects him like a mama bear but she’s lost all of her spunk, you know? Hell, I can’t even get a good rise out of her anymore and you know how she likes to argue.”
Brett shook his head, like he was trying to pin things down himself.
“I think…well, my gut instinct tells me that she agreed to marry John—you’ve probably already figured out that Parker’s one of Dad’s associates—because he can provide stability for Brandon.”
Michael clenched his jaw.
“It damn near killed her to lose you,” Brett continued, his eyes on Michael. “Brandon seems to be the only thing she really lives for. She just plays at her job at City Beat.”
“City Beat?”
“One of Chicago’s latest and greatest forays into the publishing industry.” They walked down the hall, Brett talking as he opened bedroom doors, showed Michael the closets.
“It’s one of those trendy, upscale magazines—fashion, interior design, city living, that sort of thing. Tara’s a consulting editor for the interior design segments. Part-time,” he added. “I don’t think she’s particularly passionate about it. It’s more like it fills the time for her.”
“Interior design, huh?” Michael poked his head into the guest bedroom.
Tara had studied interior design at the University of Chicago. He was glad she was able to do something with her degree. He’d insisted that she go to college even though it was all he could do to pay the rent and put food on the table during those early days of their marriage.
“Lots of rooms to fill here,” he said then met Brett’s thoughtful gaze. They exchanged a conspiratorial look. “Looks pretty bare.”
“What you need is a good interior decorator,” Brett said with a grin.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Look,” Brett said, suddenly sober, “I know things were a little rocky for you and Tara before Ecuador. I don’t know what happened between you two and I don’t want to know. That’s your business. But she’s my sister and I love her. You want her back? Then you see to it that you make her happy. All right?”
“I want her back. And I want her happy.”
“That’s good enough for me. Anything I can do to help?”
“Nope, but thanks for the offer. This is something I need to handle on my own.”
And it was something he intended to handle—as soon as he figured out how to convince his wife that what was right between them five years ago was something he could make right again.
Michael made the fifteen-minute drive from the condo to Lake Shore Manor in record time. He was still having a little trouble readjusting to the Chicago race pace. Time stood still in parts of Ecuador. Many times during the past two years he’d very much enjoyed being a part of those time warps. Since returning to Chicago, he’d actually found he missed them. He’d missed Tara more.
After the gatekeeper buzzed him in, he pulled up in the circular drive, climbed out of the BMW and stared at the classic Georgian mansion that was located in the city’s most fashionable neighborhood. A calm settled over him along with a comfortable realization. He wasn’t the same man Tara had wanted to divorce two years ago. That man had been hungry for power, determined to succeed, both intimidated and angered by this palace and all it represented.
No, he wasn’t the same man. And Tara, evidently, wasn’t the same woman. She was still the woman he’d fallen in love with, though. She was still the woman he wanted.
After another long, thoughtful look at Connelly Manor, he started up the steps, suddenly missing his grandmother, missing his mom who had struggled to make ends meet and been rewarded for her hard work by death at the hands of a drunk driver. Michael had been ten.
Shaking off the melancholy, he pressed the bell, then returned Ruby’s wide smile when she opened the door and showed him inside.
“I’m past my shock now,” she confided as she drew him into a laughing embrace. “Lord above but it’s good to see you, you handsome devil. I hope you’re here to bring that girl back to her senses, and back to life for that matter. She hasn’t been our Tara since you left us.”
Michael had always liked Ruby. She was sometimes gruff, but she always told it like it was. And she didn’t mind interfering in the business of the family she’d served for nearly thirty-five years.
“If it doesn’t work out, I don’t suppose you’d consider running off with me. You know I’ve always had a thing for you, Ruby.”
“Go on with you.” She swatted his arm. “Always were a smooth talker. You come on in now. She’s expecting you.”
When he’d left the manor last night, he’d asked if he could return the next day to talk to Tara and to see Brandon. They’d agreed on 9:00 a.m. It was 8:50.
The calm he’d felt earlier suddenly deserted him. He chalked it up to fatigue. He’d lain awake staring at the ceiling in his hotel room until well past two reliving the first full day of his resurrection.
Resurrection. What a word. And how fitting. After his memory had returned, he’d felt suspended in a half world of what was and what had been. The old Michael Paige was not fully alive yet. Even after he’d made the decision and had returned to Chicago, he’d felt suspended somewhere between yesterday and tomorrow, here and now, as he’d debated how best to approach Tara, agonized over what her reaction would be. But now the worst was over, the best was yet to be and he truly did feel reborn.
Oh, it wasn’t all over, he conceded as he smoothed a hand down his tie. He hadn’t won her back. But at least he wasn’t lurking in the shadows anymore, searching for a glimpse of her, longing for a look at his son.
His lips twitched in self-derision as the term stalker came to mind. He could smile about it now but for those first few days back in the city, that was exactly what he’d felt like. A stalker following his own wife, calling her on the
phone and then chickening out at the last moment when she’d answered.
It was not among his finer moments. No. He wasn’t proud of either his actions or his mind-set during that first week back in the city. But he gave himself a little latitude on that count. He was still recovering from the shock of learning about his other life. His life before Ecuador.
The small, recurrent stab of pain he’d been experiencing since recovering his memory shot through his temple. He felt it less frequently now; the bite was not nearly as strong. Dr. Diamanto had told him it would lessen and eventually abate all together. Yet he felt it now as he thought of the Santiagos.
They’d wanted to come to Chicago with him. Both Vincente and Maria had wanted to be with him when he encountered the disbelieving stares, the stunned astonishment, the look on Tara’s face when she saw him.
“It will not be an easy thing for you, Miguel,” Vincente had said carefully as they’d discussed details of the business operation that needed attention in Michael’s absence. “Nor will it be easy for her.”
He had smiled at this man who had taken him into his home without question, at the woman whose healing hands and sweet compassion had seen him through the most difficult period of his life. And he’d been reminded, as he hadn’t been reminded in the years since he’d lost his mother and then his grandmother who had raised him after his mother died, of the unqualified love and importance of family. The Santiagos were his family now.
Tara and Brandon—they were also his family. Never more than now did he realize how important it was to win her back.
“As much as I appreciate the offer, this is something I have to do myself,” he’d told Vincente. He hadn’t wanted to hurt him or Maria but he’d needed to see this through on his own. As always they had understood.
“And as much as we would like to help, we respect your decision,” Vincente had replied. “Go with God, my son.”
All of these thoughts flashed through his mind as he followed Ruby through the foyer as tiny rainbows of color, reflected from the hundreds of dripping Waterford crystal prisms that hung from the massive chandelier, danced across the gleaming white tile floor.
“She’s not alone, I’m sorry to say,” Ruby groused over her shoulder as she showed him down the spacious and richly appointed central hallway toward the sunroom.
“You know Grant. Protect and provide. Emma’s with her, too, so she’ll soften the way some.”
“Sounds like I could use someone in my corner.”
“My money’s on you, Michael. Always has been. You’re a street brawler and a hard head and you never did know when to quit. I’m betting you won’t be quitting now.” She squeezed his arm and left him.
No. He wouldn’t be quitting now. Squaring his shoulders, he gathered himself, then simply stood for a moment and looked at the only woman he had ever loved. And he knew, without a doubt, that what he said in the next hour might make the difference between winning her back or losing her again—this time forever.
September sunlight, as crisp and crystalline as the morning, sparkled through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sunroom. Tara sat in a fan-backed white wicker chair, oblivious to it all. Her coffee cooled, untouched on the table beside her. She stared without seeing at the fall flowers blooming in a riot of dazzling color on the patio just outside the French doors and the maze beyond. And she waited.
Before he’d left last night, Michael had asked if he could see her again. He wanted to talk to her. He needed to see Brandon. When she hadn’t been capable of anything more than a carefully controlled, “Of course,” he’d told her he’d be back in the morning. Nine o’clock.
She glanced at the Cartier watch John had given her on her twenty-fifth birthday in May and felt a pang of guilt. On its heels, a ripple of excitement, made sharper by anxiety, sent her heartbeat racing.
It was 8:55 a.m. Michael wouldn’t be late today. He’d never been late—until his career had become more important than she had ever been. Then everything had changed. He’d been late too many times to count during their last year together.
She wet her lips, counted to ten, willed her heart to settle. And still it pounded. She couldn’t wait to see him again, yet dreaded seeing him. Then Ruby was there, showing him into the room and the waiting was over.
She turned her head slowly. He stood in the doorway, tall and strong and alive. How many times had she yearned to see him that way again? How many times had she heard a voice, seen a face that made her think of him and long for him and know she could never have him?
The sight of him took her breath away, made her already stuttering heart go haywire. He’d always done that to her. From the first moment she’d set eyes on him he’d sent her senses reeling. She’d been fifteen. She’d also been a spoiled little prima donna, insisting on attending public school so she could experience the real world.
Michael Paige had been as real as it got. The day she’d seen him strut across the lunchroom with his laughing gray eyes, his thick, jet-black hair and his looking-for-trouble grin, she’d known he was exactly the kind of trouble her parents had tried to protect her from her entire life. She’d wanted him at first sight. She still did.
That was why this was going to be so hard.
“Michael.” Emma rose from the chair beside her at his gruffly murmured, “Good morning.”
Tara watched her mother clasp Michael’s hands in hers then kiss him softly on the cheek.
“I still can’t believe it.” Both wonder and warmth filled her mother’s voice.
Her father rose as well but his welcome was as cool as the fingers Tara clasped together on her lap. He extended his hand.
“Michael,” Grant said with a grim nod.
Michael returned her father’s handshake then shifted his attention to her. His gray eyes bored into hers, then roamed her face as if he were memorizing her features. Then he smiled—that wonderful heart-melting, knee-weakening smile she remembered—and she had to look away to keep from returning it.
She didn’t want to return his smile. She just wanted to assure herself that he was okay, really okay, and then she wanted to get on with her safe, pristine, façade of a life. Without him.
“With all of the…let’s say, stress last night, I don’t think I told you how wonderful you look, Mrs. Connelly,” Michael said.
Tara noticed, as she had last night, that his voice was deeper, his carriage, if possible, even more proud. No. Pride may not be the correct word. As she watched him, she wasn’t sure what it was that she saw.
He’d changed. Last night, even as shocked as she’d been, she’d sensed the changes his experience in the jungles of Ecuador had made in him. Michael had always been strong. It seemed he was even stronger now. He’d always led with his chin and with a bold arrogance that had turned his life into a competition. He always had to have the best, be the best, beat the best.
She could feel this new strength in the way he dealt with her father. The bold arrogance was absent, though. A new confidence, both understated and steady, had taken its place.
He’d changed in other ways, too. There was something dark and mysterious, like the boy she’d fallen in love with, yet…different.
He was still the same man, however, she reminded herself, the man who had been so driven by his goal of success that he’d shut her out of his life and not even realized that he’d left her behind.
“Well,” her mother said when the silence in the sunroom lengthened to the point of discomfort. She walked with purpose to her father’s side, linked her arm through his. “We’ll just leave you two. I’m sure you have many things to talk about.”
“Emma.” At her mother’s unexpected intervention, her father’s face grew as dark as a thunderstorm. Clearly Grant Connelly hadn’t planned on going anywhere.
“Come along, dear,” Emma insisted, a steel in her voice Tara rarely heard when her mother addressed her father. “We’ll be in the library if you need us, sweetheart.”
And that was th
e end of that. Her father shot a warning glare at Michael before he left the room, but he left, and that in itself, was a minor miracle.
Now she was alone with her husband. Her husband who had been dead for two years. There was so much she needed to say to him. Unfortunately, there was very little that he would want to hear.
Michael sent Emma a look of gratitude as she dragged Grant out of the room. He wasn’t exactly sure why Emma Connelly had chosen to park herself firmly in his corner but he wasn’t going to question it. He needed all the help he could get.
He turned to Tara. She was ghost pale, her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes too wide, too bright and too determined to avoid his.
Fragile. She looked fragile and vulnerable, not at all like the sassy hellion who had set her sites on him ten years ago, damn the torpedoes—and the consequences.
Maybe it would help to remind her that they had both been different people then, that life was about growth and changes that could strengthen, not diminish their love.
“I remember the first time I saw this place,” he said carefully.
Instead of sitting beside her and dragging her into his arms like he ached to do, he made himself walk to the French doors and stare out over the complex and meticulously kept maze.
“I was fifteen and this monument to your daddy’s fortune intimidated the hell out of me.” Just like Grant Connelly had intimidated him, Michael thought grimly.
“I’ve got to tell you, it was a hell of a culture shock for a fifteen-year-old outlaw who had never known his own father. Outlaw being the operative word,” he added with a rueful grin.
Back then, he’d had to use whatever means available to help put food on the table. Some of them legal, some of them stretching the limits.
He turned back to her, searched her face. Nothing. No change in expression. Nothing to say. She hadn’t asked him to leave yet, so he took it as an invitation to stay, and to continue.