by Maggie Way
If Gretchen found out he was remembering things about his past, she would never agree to marry him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Wait
John hated eating fast food. It wasn't so much a health thing as much as a taste thing. No matter how good the fast food, he always felt he could have done it better. It was the curse of being a chef, he supposed. Normally, John would have wanted to cook something for Gretchen, but they were both so exhausted and hungry after making it back down the mountain that he gave in and let Gretchen convince him to get takeout.
They decided to go with Chinese food. John hadn’t explored Asian cuisine much, so maybe he wouldn’t be too disappointed. It wasn’t much of an engagement dinner, but they were too tired to care at that point. Tired physically from the hike, and emotionally exhausted from the anticipation and then the excitement from Gretchen’s parents when they called to tell them, they both crashed on the couch with their steaming dinner as soon as they got home. As John ate his sesame chicken and egg rolls, he was actually surprised by how much he liked it.
Dropping his empty takeout container on the coffee table, he leaned back into the couch and slipped his arm around Gretchen’s shoulders. She had already finished eating and immediately snuggled up against him. Taking her left hand in his, John watched her ring sparkle in the flickering lights of the TV.
Gretchen noticed John staring at her hand and looked up at him. “Does it feel weird to you, being engaged?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “it feels right.”
She leaned her head up to kiss him, but the doorbell rang before she could reach him. And then it rang again. And again.
“That’s got to be Desi,” John said. “I told her I was going to propose to you today.”
Shaking her head, Gretchen kissed John before moving to answer the door.
“You better hurry up,” he said. “It sounds like she’s about to explode with excitement.”
Gretchen bounded over to the door and John got up as well. He made it halfway across the room before he heard Desi squeal with glee. He rounded the corner to see her hugging Gretchen nearly to death. Jake stood to the side with a grin as he watched the girls pour out their excitement.
Reaching out, Jake clapped John on the back with a nod. “Congratulations, man.”
“Thanks, Jake.” Then John leaned a little closer to him, and said, “You realize, of course, that Desi is going to expect her own ring now.”
All the color drained from Jake’s face. John laughed and patted him on the back.
“Just kidding, man.” He smiled, but he still looked a little pale. John really wasn't kidding, anyway.
Jake might have almost passed out at the mention of marriage, but he beamed when Desi finally let go of Gretchen and wrapped her arms around him. He was absolutely besotted with her. John had a feeling he would be ring shopping a lot sooner than he expected. Hopefully he would come to John for advice when he did. Desi already had her ring picked out and made John promise to guide Jake to the right one when he finally decided to man up and propose to her.
Caught up in Desi’s excitement, Jake was grinning like an idiot as he checked out Gretchen’s ring. Yeah, he wouldn’t last nearly as long as he thought he would.
“I’m so excited for you guys,” Desi said. “Did you guys think about a date yet?”
“The first weekend of April,” Gretchen said.
Immediately pulling out her cell phone, Desi brought up her calendar. “What day of the week? Saturday?” Gretchen nodded. “So, the third.” She typed something into her phone and closed it with a flourish.
April third. That was the day they were going to get married. John could feel himself smiling. He probably looked as stupid as Jake did, but he didn’t care. He just had to keep the memories hidden until April third.
“You have no idea how hard it was not telling you about the ring, Gretchen,” Desi said dramatically. “I seriously had to avoid your calls because I wanted to tell you so bad.”
“I was wondering why it was suddenly so hard to get a hold of you,” Gretchen said as she laughed. “I was beginning to think you’d given up on me because I’ve been so busy lately.”
Shaking her head, Desi pulled her best friend into another hug. She released her, but still held onto Gretchen’s shoulders, looking terribly serious. “We have a lot of work to do if you want to get married in two and a half months. Are you going to call the hall Mel and Eric used? Because that’s really the best one in town. John, we’ll have to start getting your menu planned out and make sure your assistants can handle everything without you.”
She blew out a breath and smiled excitedly at her friends. “You guys don’t want to talk about this now. Gretchen, call me tomorrow and we’ll get together and start planning. You two enjoy the rest of your night,” she said as she grabbed Jake and started bustling him to the door.
A few seconds later, the whirlwind that was Desi disappeared, and John and Gretchen were left standing in the entryway staring at the door.
“And you thought your mom was going to be bad,” John said.
Tiptoeing over to him with a smile to match Desi’s, Gretchen slipped her arms around his waist and kissed him. “We’re getting married,” she whispered excitedly.
“Yes, we are,” John whispered back.
She kissed him again, deeper this time, more passionately. Stealing all the tiredness out of him, Gretchen ran her hands up his chest slowly. Her fingers pressed against his sweater as she lifted onto her toes and kissed his neck. John’s whole body felt numb except for the places where she touched him. Wherever their bodies met, fire coursed through his skin.
Tightening his arms around her, John pressed her against him, wanting the heat of her body to consume him. Backed up against the wall, he couldn’t go anywhere, and could barely even think to move, but as Gretchen's hands gently pushed to turn him, he followed her direction willingly. He knew they were walking, but all John could see were Gretchen’s fiery eyes, and all he could hear was her breath pulsing in and out.
Running his hands up and down her body as he kissed her, John barely even noticed when she pulled him onto the bed with her. Her fingers slipped under his sweater, sending an electric charge up his spine. Then her hands ran up his chest again, pulling John’s sweater off as she went. For a brief moment, John wasn't touching her as he tossed the sweater aside, but then he was back kissing her skin, feeling her breath against his neck as he tried to kiss her shoulder. Her own shirt was getting in the way.
Sitting back, John stared at the bare skin of her stomach that had been exposed. Hesitantly, he touched her. Gretchen’s back arched with pleasure and he moved his hands up, determined to see the sweatshirt dropped on the floor.
John wanted to reach down and press his lips against her smooth skin, but a ripple in his vision froze him. He tried to blink it away, but it was too late. Gretchen’s green sweatshirt was gone, replace by pink lace. No, John begged. Go away. Please go away.
The memory had no ears. John’s mind followed the trail of pink lace up to the dark haired beauty that lived in his mind. Pleasure, desire, love, they were all etched on her face as she reached up and touched his cheek. She smiled and melted away, leaving him staring at a confused Gretchen.
“John,” she said, “what’s wrong?”
He couldn’t tell her. There was no way he could tell her. Falling to the side, John laid down next to her. Gretchen immediately rolled onto her side and stared at him. “John, what happened?”
“I…don’t think I can do this right now,” he said. It killed him to say it, but there was no way he could keep going. Not with that woman in his head. Not before it was too late to go back.
Gretchen’s eyes filled with tears, and she asked, “Why?”
Her obvious hurt feelings stabbed John in the gut. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against his chest. She thought it was her fault. John’s heart begged him to give her some explanation. He couldn’t hurt her.
He couldn’t leave her feeling like Steve always had, not good enough.
“Gretchen, please don’t cry. This has nothing to do with you,” John said. “I want you…very badly right now.”
“Then why?” she asked as she tried to hold back tears.
He had to give her something, but he couldn’t lie to her. So he gave her a version of the truth, one he hoped she would understand.
“I’m afraid, Gretchen. What you said about waiting until the year was up to get married, it scared me. I don’t want to risk hurting you. It might not make sense, but I think we should wait until after the wedding,” he said. By then, even if this memory woman for some reason decided to look for him, it would be too late to even think about going back to her.
“Do you really think you’ll get your memory back before the wedding, John? When you haven’t even had a single memory return so far?” she asked. She had stopped crying, but she didn’t understand what he was saying very well.
“I might get my memory back, or what if someone from my old life finally finds me?” He sighed. It didn’t sound like a very good argument without telling her about the memories. “I know neither one is very likely, but it bothers me that it’s still possible.”
“But, I don’t understand what that has to do with this,” Gretchen asked. “I mean, you’ve been very patient with me, so I won’t argue with you about it, but I want to understand.”
“I would never leave you if I had the choice, Gretchen, but if for some reason I had to, I think it would hurt me too badly to leave you after this. I think it would hurt you, too. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take,” John said. “I refuse to be another Steve to you.”
“You could never be another Steve to me,” Gretchen said. “Even if you had to leave, every memory I have of you is one I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.”
“Even when I got mad at you about Carl?” he asked with a smile.
“Even that one. Because I know you were only upset because of how much you loved me.” She kissed him then and touched his cheek with her soft fingers. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re feeling completely, but that’s okay. I don’t think you would ever leave me, for anything, but I can understand why it scares you. If you want to wait, we’ll wait.”
Falling onto his back, John slid his arm under her head and brought Gretchen up against his side, feeling incredibly relieved and frustrated at the same time. “Thank you, Gretchen. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said. Then she grinned and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “And the fact that I love you so much is just about the only that’s going to keep me off of you before the wedding.”
John rolled over and pinned her to the bed. “As soon as things get too serious, I’ll just start calling you Gigi, okay? That should kill the mood pretty quickly.”
“I don’t know,” Gretchen teased, “you did a pretty good job convincing me Gigi wasn’t so bad. That might just make things worse.”
“Okay, then I’ll call you Gretch.”
“That would definitely kill the mood. You’ll never convince me not to hate that one,” she said.
Leaning down, John kissed her lips lightly. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She smiled and pulled him down to lay beside her.
In his heart, John believed he would never leave Gretchen, not for anything, but every memory of the dark haired woman he recovered were so filled with love and passion, he was terrified that if she did show up he would remember her in an instant and not be able to stay away from her. If he loved this other woman as much as he did Gretchen, and all those memories came flooding back at the sight of her, what would he do?
It sounded stupid, even to him. John understood this woman had already had ten months to find him if she really loved him, but what if there really was some reason she couldn’t? What if she was looking for him at that moment? Could he really brush her away? In those memories, in those few brief moments John was captured in a memory of her, he would rather die than give her up. She was lost in his memories, but not in his heart.
Somewhere in the back of John’s mind, he feared he would have to make the choice. The more often the memories came, the harder it was to say what he would do. He wanted nothing more than to shove it away and lose himself in Gretchen’s luscious body, but what if in the end he was forced to leave her?
It wasn’t just the sex. As many methods as there were to avoid pregnancy, none were foolproof. At some point in the future, John wanted to have a child with Gretchen. What he didn’t want was to have it happen before they were ready, before he could be absolutely sure nothing could pull him away from Gretchen. The memory that had tried to surface after he proposed had rattled him. If he had proposed to the memory woman, did that mean they’d gotten married? Anything could have happened afterward, divorce, death…a loving marriage that would still be legal should she find him.
John doubted the woman would show up before the wedding. When the memories first started, he’d hated her for loving him and never finding him, but as they grew more frequent and he felt her devotion to him in the memories, it became harder to believe she had never tried. For some reason, she didn’t know where John was, but that didn’t mean she would never find him. The chance was remote. But it was there, and it wouldn’t leave John free to do as he wanted.
Chapter Forty-Three
Soon Enough
“Do you really have to meet with the Frederickson’s today?” Gretchen asked. “It’s Sunday and we just got engaged.”
“I’m sorry, Gretchen. I was supposed to meet with them Friday afternoon, but the prep for the birthday party took longer than I expected and the Frederickson’s company dinner is this Friday. I have to get their menu set today or I’ll never be ready in time,” John said. “I promise to make it up to you tonight. I have some veal cutlets in the fridge I’m going to make for you.”
He gathered up his notebooks and planner as he tried to get his coat on with only one hand. Halfway into his coat, he leaned down and kissed Gretchen’s forehead. “Besides, aren’t you and Desi going to get together and start planning today?”
Gretchen tried to maintain her pout, but she was itching to get started on the wedding plans. “She called when you were in the shower. She’s going to pick me up for lunch.”
“Well, I’ll probably be back by the time you two finish, and then we can do something together, okay?” John asked. “You can just relax this morning. You deserve it with all the extra work you’ve been doing lately.”
There was something else Gretchen needed to do this morning, but she was dreading it.
“Actually, I was thinking about visiting Carl this morning,” she said.
John frowned at the mention of Carl. They were getting along better, but John still preferred to not have him around. “Why do you need to visit Carl?” he asked.
“I need to tell him about this,” she said, holding up her newly decorated ring finger.
The head shaking started before she even got halfway through her sentence. “No, Gretchen. We can tell him together. I don’t want you going over there by yourself.”
Gretchen scoffed at that. “You think he would do something to hurt me? John, you know Carl better than that. I know you don’t like him that much, but he’s a good guy.”
“I don’t think he’ll hurt you,” John said. “I just don’t think he’ll take it very well. I’d rather tell him together.”
“And when are we going to do that? We’ve both been so busy lately. If I don’t talk to him today he’ll hear about it from someone else,” she said.
“And what’s so bad about that?” John asked with a smile. He’d probably prefer avoiding the encounter all together.
Gretchen’s smirk back said what she thought about that idea. “He’s my friend, John. I don’t want him to hear from someone else and think I was trying to hide it from him. That is what he won’t take well.”
“You getting married is what he won’t tak
e well, whether he hears it from you or someone else.” Grabbing a bagel to eat on his way, John pointed the bread at her to accentuate his point.
“When was the last time Carl bugged me about you?” she asked. John didn’t answer. He knew Carl hadn’t tried to interfere since summer. “He’ll be fine. I’m going to tell him.”
John’s frown remained, but it was waning. “Fine, but it he freaks out, just leave and call me. I’ll talk to him later if I have to.”
Rolling her eyes, she gave him a shove toward the door. “Would you just get out of here before the Frederickson’s think you’ve cancelled on them again? Everything will be fine,” she said.
He hesitated, but he was already running late. Finally, he gave her a quick kiss and darted out the door. Gretchen heard the car drive off and found herself still sitting at the table. Despite her assurances to John, she was nervous about telling Carl. She had no fear he would flip out or hurt her, but he would definitely be upset. Gretchen had to tell him.
Taking the time to clear the table of her cereal bowl and load the dishwasher, she quickly found herself out of things to clean. She straightened up the living room to waste a few more minutes, and then before she could change her mind, she grabbed her coat and hurried across the front yard to Carl’s house.
Gretchen’s knock sounded as nervous as she did. Carl yelled something at the TV before she heard him get up and head to the door. He pulled the door open and smiled.
“So who’s losing this time?” Gretchen asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” he said as he pressed her into a hug. He didn’t have to sneak those anymore. Ever since that day in the front yard when Gretchen asked him not to abandon her, she didn’t feel she had the authority to tell him no. His embrace lasted a touch too long as usual, but he pulled back and ushered Gretchen into his house.