by Cindy Gerard
“Shortly after Uncle Marc’s death, my cousin Catherine found an e-mail Uncle Marc received from some guy who called himself ‘The Duke.’ The note was some kind of assurance to Uncle Marc that his debts would be reduced for every week that he made sure no one interfered. Interfered with what, we don’t know, but it turns out that this Duke person is known to the authorities as an international go-between who specializes in making introductions between aristocrats and organized crime.”
Nodding, absorbing, processing, Michael took it from there. “So, if a certain crime family wanted to see a certain law weakened or ignored and was willing to pay, say, a prince with a gambling problem, the Duke would be their man.”
“So it seems,” she said, impressed by his reasoning power. “And if all this isn’t enough— Seth’s mother, Angie Donahue showed up a couple of months ago.
“It’s killing him. He’s been so quiet since she returned. He won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to anyone. At least, not about her. It’s got to hurt, you know? She’s his mother and yet twenty years ago she just delivered him—a twelve-year-old-boy—to Dad and Mom like he was a bag of laundry and then conveniently forgot to pick him up again. Until now. Her reappearance is just a little too much coupled with everything else that’s been happening.
“Everything’s such a mess,” she added, feeling so badly for Seth, confused and still saddened by the loss of her grandfather. Missing Daniel, who was thousands of miles away in Altaria and was the one who could always make her laugh.
“And then in the midst of all this,” she pressed on, “Connelly Corporation computer systems crashed a few months ago for no apparent reason. It’s up and running again now but it was a pretty dicey situation for a while. Dad’s been as tense as an air traffic controller ever since, and Charlotte—you remember Charlotte Masters, Dad’s executive assistant?”
He nodded.
“Even Charlotte, always cool, always efficient and always in control, has been walking on eggshells and acting very peculiar for the past several months.”
“It sounds like she has good reason. It sounds like everyone has good reason,” he said with a quiet resolve that had her meeting his eyes. They were dark, determined and even before he spoke the words, she knew what he was going to say.
“And it still sounds like I have good reason to stay as close to you and to Brandon as I possibly can.”
Although she didn’t say anything, Michael saw a shadow cross her face, noticed a sudden stiffness straighten her shoulders. She wasn’t comfortable with his statement. That was fine. It put them on equal footing because he’d grown increasingly uncomfortable as she’d related the unsettling news about her grandfather and her uncle and Daniel.
“Daniel, a king,” he said aloud, still having trouble wrapping his mind around that bit of news.
“Wait a minute,” he said suddenly as another thought struck him. “If Daniel is king, that makes you and your brothers and sisters princes and princesses, right?”
“Technically, yes.” She shrugged and she dug into the picnic basket. “Although none of us have any intention of laying claim to the titles.” She sat down on the floor across from him and got comfortable.
“I hate to break this to you, sunshine, but blood tells. You’re a princess, official title or no.”
That made her blush. It was very beguiling, that blush. So was the slender column of her throat as she concentrated overhard on setting her glass aside and coaxing Brandon to sit down beside her.
Yes, she was as regal as a princess but she was also as warm and nurturing as an Earth Mother as she ran a hand over Brandon’s silky hair and started pumping him up about eating his lunch.
For a while, that was where the conversation settled—on convincing Brandon to drink his milk and eat his chicken so he could have his cookie. The issue with her grandfather and her uncle and Seth’s dilemma upset her. Hell, it all upset him, but it was Tara’s interests he had in mind.
He didn’t want to add to her discomfort by pushing her for more information—information she may not even have. Grant would have it, though, and as soon as he could arrange it, he and his father-in-law were going to have an in-depth conversation. He needed to know what kind of danger Tara may be in. And then he needed to make sure nothing happened to her.
Intentionally, he let the conversation veer further away from organized crime and unsolved murders. Their dialogue drifted over little snippets about her mother’s and father’s health, the ages of her brothers’ children, due dates for upcoming blessed events and wedding dates. Brandon’s favorite food, favorite stories, favorite toys.
She, too, picked her ground carefully, he noticed, staying with the safe topic of her family while studiously avoiding asking him any direct questions about the time he’d spent in Ecuador, about what his plans were now that he was back in Chicago. As Brandon fell asleep, his head on her lap, Michael decided to open the proverbial door for her and see if she’d step inside.
“So,” he said, gathering the remains of their lunch and tucking it into the basket, “how are you doing with this? With me?” he clarified when she frowned.
“You’ve had less than twenty-four hours to process the fact that I’m alive, that I’m here. You have to have questions. You’re entitled to answers. More answers than I was able to give you last night.”
Okay, Tara. Your move, his silence stated. And then he waited. Waited until he was sure she intended to stay her own course and keep her distance by refusing to satisfy what had to be a raging curiosity. Waited while he worked to control his own very insistent and compelling need to close that distance both emotionally and physically.
He wanted his wife. He wanted everything about her. Wanted to feel the sensations he so vividly remembered—his hands on her bare skin, his mouth on her breast, his body clenched deep inside hers.
He ached with want. He tasted it, breathed it. And the only thing that kept him from reaching out and taking what he knew she would give if he pressed her was his son. His son, who slept like an angel, not even aware that their future as a family depended on his daddy’s ability to keep his cool, to take it slow, to do everything in his power not to scare away this woman who they both loved more than life.
So he waited. He didn’t reach out, didn’t draw her near, until finally, she let out a deep breath and took the plunge.
“After you recovered physically, why didn’t you try to find out who you were, Michael? Surely the…Santiagos, wasn’t it?”
When he nodded, she continued.
“Surely they would have helped you.”
Well. He hadn’t expected her to start there, but at least she’d started. For many reasons, this was the hardest question for him to answer. He decided to be totally honest.
“I’m not sure myself,” he finally admitted. “You’d think it would be a top priority, wouldn’t you? A man wakes up with no memories, in a foreign place, among strangers—even kind strangers—you’d think he’d want to know something about himself, about where he came from, who he’d left behind, who he’d been.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “You would think so.”
He set the picnic basket aside then stretched out on his side, facing her. Crossing his legs at his ankles, he propped himself up on an elbow and reached out to touch Brandon—just touch him—with his other.
“Wish I had a good answer for you. The one I have you’re probably not going to like.”
She looked so sad. “I don’t think that what I like really comes into play here.”
Oh, but it did, he wanted to tell her. It very much did. Because what she had once liked was him. Him holding her. Loving her. And it had never made her sad.
He’d like to think that what happened next happened because she couldn’t help herself instead of because he’d made her nervous when he’d stretched out on the floor within touching distance. Whatever the cause, he liked the effect.
She’d gone perfectly still, except for her eyes. Violet and vibrant,
her eyes were busy, busy looking their fill, busy taking him in.
Unconscious of what she was doing, unaware that he was watching her, she started at his feet and traveled slowly past his thighs, lingered, as her face reddened, on the growing ridge beneath the zipper of his slacks, before she appeared to force herself to continue upward.
He became as still as she, the caress of her eyes suddenly as intimate and arresting as the touch of her hand. His skin warmed beneath his shirt, his sex stirred. She blinked and met his eyes—a panicked check to see if he’d noticed. Discovering that he had, she looked away, embarrassed.
The heat her gaze had generated in his body slowly chilled to a sobering reality. She would continue to fight this—her attraction, her desire, her love that he was certain she still had for him—until the end. She’d given him her reason this morning.
“I can’t survive you again, Michael. I can’t survive loving you.”
As if loving him amounted to war.
Struggling with the anger that notion generated, he sat up and faced the bank of windows and the lake, ever aware of her own struggle to keep from watching him.
Okay, he’d concede that maybe toward the end, it had been a little like war. A cold war. But it hadn’t always been that way and he was infuriated enough over her statement that he decided maybe it was time for her to hear it all.
“I think,” he said, working to keep his voice level as he returned to the conversation that had dropped them into this hole, “that the reason I didn’t try to find out my identity was because somehow I knew I wouldn’t like what I turned up.”
She said nothing, effectively telling him she might not like the reason, either. He owed it to them both, however, to tell her.
“When my memory finally did come back, it was…I don’t know. It was really odd. It returned almost sequentially, starting with the first time we met. The first time we made love.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. She swallowed thickly and refused to meet his gaze. He looked back at the lake. Hitching up his legs, he propped his forearms on his knees and clasped his hands loosely in front of him.
“Only after all the good came back, did I remember the bad—like the last time I saw you at O’Hare when you asked me for a divorce.” He studied his hands, tapped his thumbs together as he pondered.
“I think that subconsciously I must have held on to that little bit of memory and didn’t want to face it. Didn’t want to find out who I was because I didn’t want to face losing you.”
“Michael,” she said. Just Michael. Just his name, but the single word held a sea full of roiling emotion. Most of it was regret; much of it was a stubborn resolve to make him understand that they were over. Truly and completely over.
Well, he had resolve, too, newfound and as serious as a heart attack. To that end, he was going to stay the course. He was not going to pressure her into coming back to him.
Emma was right. If he pressured her now, most likely he’d get an answer he didn’t want to hear and then she may never be open to an alternative.
Just as Dr. Diamanto had told him he would do, she, too, would react to the shock she was still feeling over finding him alive. She’d retreat into what felt safe for her. And what felt safe for her right now was denying her feelings so she wouldn’t get hurt again.
The Santiagos had taken him to see Dr. D. after he’d passed out in the supermarket then awakened with his memory bombarding him like artillery fire. They’d been concerned about his headaches, which the doctor had assured them all would recede to nothing in time.
“Don’t make any life-altering decisions for a while yet, Michael,” the doctor had said, very aware that Michael had been struggling with where he went from here. “Don’t count on your mind to be up to formulating conclusions or making choices that you may have to live with for a very long time.
“A shock of this nature affects the mind’s ability to sort out emotional decisions from logical ones, good decisions from bad. That’s not saying that logic always outweighs emotion, especially in matters of the heart,” he had added kindly.
Michael had confided in him about Tara. He’d had to talk to someone and he’d practically talked the poor doctor’s ears off.
In any event, it only made sense that Dr. Diamanto’s advice could apply to Tara, too. While Michael had known from the beginning what he wanted to do, he didn’t want Tara making decisions about them right now. She needed more time to deal with the reality after assuming he’d been dead for two years.
In the meantime, she was here with him. Skittish as a mouse in a room full of cats, but she was here. That had to count for something. And because it counted, he was determined to make the most of the time he had today and every other day until she came to the conclusion that their marriage was worth saving.
Or until she convinced him there was nothing to save.
“You’d like the Santiagos,” he said, changing course and giving them both a much-needed reprieve from the intensity of their emotions. “You’d love Ecuador. It’s almost unbearably beautiful. Especially this time of year.”
Leaning back on an elbow again, he told her about it. About the lushness of the mountains, the pristine beaches, the exotic rain forests, bustling cities and quaint, colorful villages. Most of all, he talked about Vincente and Maria Santiago.
“Vincente’s land was handed down to him from his father and his father before him. It’s rich with exotic lumber, ironically, the same type of lumber I’d been sent to search for by Essential Designs.”
At the time of his trip to Ecuador he’d been vice president in charge of sales at Essential Designs—having worked his way up from delivery boy, the position he held after school when he was fifteen.
“Vincente has this amazing natural affinity for wood and he’d been doing well selling to local buyers when I came into the picture. He’d been wanting to expand his market for some time and didn’t know how to go about doing it.”
He continued talking while Tara shifted her weight off her left hip and settled Brandon more comfortably on her lap.
“It’s odd. I couldn’t remember my name, yet I could remember everything I’d ever learned about wood, about textures and luster and durability and, most important, about a European market that was clamoring for specialty woods that grow in abundance on Vincente’s land.
“Like I said, he’d already realized that he needed to reach more buyers and had made a shaky foray into advertising on the Web. Again, the knowledge was just there for me. We set up a Web page and had over a thousand legitimate hits during the first two months. It just snowballed from there and it seemed overnight we became a major player in the exotic wood market.”
She’d been gently brushing the baby fine hair back from Brandon’s temple, watching him sleep, but now her head came up.
“We?”
He smiled. “I’m a full partner in the business now. It was Vincente and Maria’s idea. I fought it at first. I was afraid that I was taking advantage of the fact that they’d never had children and had started looking upon me as a son, just as I had grown to regard them as the family I never had. But they insisted, pointing out that it was my intervention that had transformed the business from a small, marginally profitable operation into a staggeringly lucrative one in a phenomenally short period of time.”
“So,” she said, then paused. He could see that she was having difficulty reconciling her thoughts to the idea, but her next words confirmed that she’d gotten the picture. “You’re saying that you really are rich.”
He lifted a shoulder, thought how best to answer. Finally he decided on the bottom line.
“You could safely say that money is no longer an issue for me.”
“And you left it all behind—the business, the Santiagos, a country that you so obviously love—to return to Chicago.”
He looked behind him, spotted the wine bottle and snagged it. “I left it to return to my life. The one I haven’t finished living.”
As he refilled both glasses, she appeared to be struggling with a response, a response that would no doubt point out that the life they’d shared was over. Well, from his perspective, it was far from over. And for sure, he wasn’t going to let it be over without fighting the good fight.
With his glass dangling between his fingers, he crossed his legs, drew his heels up under the back of his thighs and fully faced her.
“Tara, Santiago, Inc. is a business. And while I intend to return to Ecuador often—not only to see Vincente and Maria who are very special to me, but to see to the aspects of the business that I can’t handle from here—what’s most important to me is right here in Chicago. You’re here. Brandon is here.
“Look,” he said, softening his tone as a cornered expression inched across her face, “I’m not asking you to tell me uncategorically that you’re ready to take up that life with me again. But I am asking that you leave some room open to the idea that you owe it—not to me, not even to Brandon—but to yourself to consider the possibility.”
It was that very specific possibility that kept him going when, a short time later, she asked him to take her and Brandon home.
Seven
Later that evening Tara sat across the table from John at a posh but discreet French restaurant. She tried to concentrate on John but she couldn’t drag her mind away from the afternoon she and Brandon had spent with Michael.
Not only could she not stop thinking about Michael’s reaction to the problems her family and Connelly Corporation were having, she couldn’t forget the determination in his eyes, the resolve in his voice.
“It sounds like I have good reason to stay as close to you and to Brandon as I possibly can.”
They hadn’t argued about it. She’d known it would come to no good end. Besides, Brandon had been getting hungry and a little tired. So she’d let it slide and they’d eaten instead. As promised, they’d had their picnic on the floor, sitting on a blanket, with Lake Michigan spread out below them like a living postcard.