Can You Forget?

by Melissa James

  She nodded and ran for the bag. Within two minutes of her injecting him, the arched stiffness of his body softened a little and color began to creep back into his face. “This is why I don’t go on Search And Rescue anymore.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “They might have to rescue me.”

  Her throat thickened with tears, but she swallowed it back. “It will get less and less frequent as time goes on.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t just break a leg, Mary-Anne. The femur broke through in three places and the infection was so bad they had to take some bone out and cut muscle when it threatened gangrene. The damage to the ligaments is permanent. The medical team went in and replaced everything, but with the high-use area the wound’s in, the operations will be never-ending, repeated every few years for the rest of my life. They had to shave part of my hip, near the joint. I’ll have arthritis later in life. The pain will always be there. The problems will never go away. I can never be on a Search And Rescue team again—even working in an ER or on a surgical team is out of the question.”

  “Oh, but surely you can—”

  “Trust me, I can’t.” He looked in her eyes. “Also on the ‘out’ list would be the rigors of following my wife around the world on tour—or protecting her from obsessed fans on a regular basis.” He closed his eyes, his face white and tense with strain. “Honey, Verity West hasn’t got the time or energy for a husband like me. She’d always have to leave me behind.”

  An ache blossomed all through her chest, realizing how right he was. Mary-Anne could handle the demands of living with him, and she’d cherish every moment; but Verity West didn’t have time to deal with the needs of a husband in constant pain, or needing repeat operations every year. Songbird couldn’t always be beside a husband like this, either, she’d be on assignment three and four times a year, absorbing every day off she’d earned from her famous work, leaving him behind and waiting for her to come home.

  Their differences grew more glaring every moment.

  There was nothing as useless as crying at the wrong time. So she winked the tears away and smiled with forced cheerfulness. “Then let’s do something about the symptoms today, at least.” With gentle care, she pulled his jeans right down.

  “Hey, nursie, I doubt I can manage what you’re contemplating just now,” he said with a weak laugh.

  Her heart full to bursting with his suffering bravado, she leaned forward and kissed him. “Trust me, Doc, I’ll make you all better,” she whispered into his mouth, then she unscrewed the jar and inhaled deeply. “Arnica, comfrey and lavender in an unguent, with Chinese herbs for muscle relaxation and aloe vera and honey for skin healing,” she said in a quiet, soothing tone. “Close your eyes, Tal. Rest, and let me help you.”

  Through the dark depths of his agony, Tal managed a smile. “Can’t rest. Damn goop on my face is making me itchy.”

  “Then wipe it off,” she said softly and, using the cream as a cleanser, she rubbed off the makeup, wiped it with a sponge and rubbed in more cream, working it into his cheek with gentle tenderness. “To soften the irritation and promote healing.”

  “At least I look decent with the goop and my clothes on. I still don’t know how you can stand to look at this mess, let alone touch it,” he muttered.

  She gasped. “How can you think that? You got the scars trying to save people who needed your help! How can you be ashamed of how you look?” She caressed his cheek, leaving a scent of indignation, unguent and caring. “Don’t you get it, Tal? Your scars make you far more beautiful than you ever were as a boy. They tell me and the world that you’re a man who cares, who will take any risk—even give his life—to save others.”

  The simplicity of her belief, the way she saw him—even more of a hero now to her than he’d been when they were kids—left Tal floundering in inarticulate silence.

  “Think about it.” With gentle circular motions, she massaged the twisted, puckered scars of his thigh, giving him time to absorb what she was saying. “You were always a good person, Tal, but now—what you did in SAR shows what a wonderful man you are. So much more caring, a deeper empathy—more heart and giving. You’re a strong man, a fighter for others. Even now. Most men with your injuries wouldn’t have come here, or done half the things you’ve done. But you never hesitated. Just like I hear you didn’t hesitate to join the Nighthawks.”

  He couldn’t let her think that, it hurt too much. “I joined the Nighthawks because I was bored in the Navy, Mary-Anne.”

  “I don’t believe it. You chose the Nighthawks,” she said gently. “You chose Search And Rescue to combine your flying and medical skills to help people without help.”

  Damn it, he could feel the flush on his face. She knew him too well. How could he deny exactly what he’d thought when Anson outlined the job description to him? “I’m no hero.”

  Her eyes softened even more, tender emeralds in velvet skin. “You are to me. You’re the man I always knew you could be, brave and caring…and a husband I’m proud to have beside me.”

  He gulped and stared at her. “Mary-Anne—honey—”

  She held up a hand, with a gentle smile. “Just go to sleep, Tal. Let the painkiller do its work on your pain and let the unguent heal your body.” She gave him a wicked little grin. “I have plans for that body when you wake up.”

  The smile he gave her was genuine, tender, humble. “Thanks.”

  She tilted her head. “For what?”

  “For still seeing me,” he said quietly. “For leaving Songbird and Verity West behind when you’re with me…both Verity Wests. For still being Mary-Anne, deep inside.”

  Both Verity Wests. The coldhearted star and the grieving widow, two totally different halves of one role, both protecting her from all she was still running from. Only Tal could know her well enough to guess that she wore masks of her own.

  Tal blew out a relieved sigh. “The pain’s almost gone now. You have healing hands, honey. You’re a born nurse.”

  A shaft of sorrow pierced her soul, forced away only by dogged will. “Private nursing for special patients only.”

  He looked up at her. “Lucky me.” But he wasn’t fooled by her joke. He knew she’d gone into retreat, running scared from his insight, from the emotions and ghosts she didn’t want to face.

  And she’d accused him of cowardice the first day.

  Slowly, as she kept up her soothing, rhythmic strokes, his eyes drifted shut. His even breathing told her he slept. She sat back on her knees over him, watching him, looking at the scars on his face and leg that so changed his life.

  He couldn’t run from his pain. He’d become a man by force of accident. Even hiding from the world as he’d been when they met again, he’d stopped running from his past.

  She was still running, hiding from her past. What she did in the Nighthawks made a difference to the world, and she was proud of it—but if she looked honestly at herself, she took on every mission because she didn’t know if she had anywhere else to go.

  But something inside her whispered that if she wanted them to have any chance at all of making it, she’d have to relearn all that she’d once chosen to forget about her past—and herself.

  “Complete confirmation,” Burstall said in a barking undertone to Falcone’s “royal guard.” The men, all burly in strength, fast, intelligent and lacking in scruples, watched keenly as he paced in front of them—they knew it meant money, big money, to obey him. “Miss West and Dr. O’Rierdan are the spies after Mr. Falcone. They must not leave with any evidence.” He smiled, with all the satisfaction in his soul. “Neither one of them are to be allowed to leave once they arrive here, gentlemen. Miss West is to remain alive, and Mr. Falcone would prefer her unmolested—but have fun, be inventive with O’Rierdan, so long as you leave him alive.” The smile grew, catlike and happy—the fulfillment of his plans was imminent, whether Falcone wanted it or not. “He’s mine.”

  Chapter 14

  For the first time after an attack of leg pain, Tal woke refres
hed. His leg wasn’t throbbing in pounding agony, forcing him to stretch out the kinks with an hour of full-on workout. The gentle scents of the herbs she’d used on him drifted in the air, filling him with quiet and peace.

  It had been worth relinquishing his pride to feel this good. Besides, what was the point in hiding his pain from her? If she could kiss those damn ugly scars like she had—and caress them without losing her hot-blooded need for his body—then she could obviously massage him without feeling revolted.

  They make you far more beautiful than you ever were as a boy. They tell me, and the world, you’re a man who will take risks, even give his life to save others.

  He’d never thought of it like that. Not until Mary-Anne walked back into his life, with her fame and her baggage and her tenderness, her caring and her deep, unspoken need for him. She’d made him a man again…in every sense of the word.

  Right now she curled her back into his chest spoon-fashion, her sweet behind snuggled intimately into him. Her wild curls tumbled all over the pillow and his skin. Her gentle breathing, her funny little catching sounds that weren’t quite snores, sent a shaft of tenderness through him.

  Uh-oh—his body was reacting just as it did every time he got close to her since he’d been about fourteen. She was so beautiful—just as she’d always been to him, inside and out. But he couldn’t afford to take the risk. He only fell in deeper every time he touched her. She had the power to break him heart, body and soul, her destructive potential all the stronger because she still didn’t know how damn much she could hurt him.

  Then she stirred right against his rebellious hard-on, and made a sound somewhere halfway between a moan and a whimper, and so totally sexual he knew he was a goner if she woke up.

  She rolled over and gave her sleepy, sexy smile… Yep, he was going under, hanging on in stormy seas with a leaky life preserver. “Yes, please…” She pulled him down to her.

  “Mary-Anne,” he groaned in half-protesting pleasure as her lips brushed his. “We have to talk, honey.”

  “No,” she moaned, hanging on to him. “Don’t ask me to stop. I can’t. I waited so long for you. We’ll talk soon…later…” Her lips moved on his in a slow-burning, clinging kiss, and she moved her near-naked body in sinuous promise against him.

  He made his voice gentle as he detached himself. “We have to talk now. Or you have to talk.” He rolled over and sat up. “From the day you came to me, it’s all been about me—my injuries, my problems and healing me.” He swore softly and tapped his good thigh with a fist as he tried to think. “That sounds ungrateful, but something’s missing. I’m doing all the talking, all the sharing…and we both know you’re the talker.” He twisted around to smile at her—and shock filled him at her white, stricken face. “I don’t know anything about you now except what I see on the mission. I don’t know anything about the years you were gone, except you’re famous, hounded by the press and your fans, and somehow you joined the Nighthawks.”

  “That last is easy,” she answered. “Nick read the tabloids and scoped me out. The famous singer with a worldwide fan base in the black market becomes a cat burglar for the good of the world. And a possible partner for you one day should a mission call for a famous married couple.” She shrugged. “Nick hit me with that last bit the day he told me about this mission.”

  She was shaking, but Tal suspected it wasn’t because of the obvious insult to her dignity and pride in Anson’s decisions to recruit her. He wiped his brow. Man, he’d never had to work this hard to get Mary-Anne to talk to him!

  “If you don’t trust me enough to open up to me, I can’t make you.” He got to his feet, slipped on his shoes with an insert. “Thanks for the massage. My leg’s much better. I think I’ll go walk on deck for a while. The sunset looks pretty spectacular over the cove.” He headed to the main deck with a heavy heart.

  And, inexplicably, Mary-Anne panicked. He was gentle and kind, but he was still shutting her out, just as he had when he was in pain a few hours before…

  Like you’re shutting him out?

  But she couldn’t say the words she barely understood herself. How did a woman who’d made the world’s Most Beautiful People list explain the terror that came over her whenever he withdrew from her? It sounded so selfish—if he accepted her as Verity West, recording star. But when she looked in the mirror, she only saw the person who’d lost him to a walking, talking Barbie doll. The girl so madly and deeply in love with this man, she’d never thought she’d recover from losing him.

  The woman whose marriage, like her life, wasn’t quite the perfect dream she presented to the world.

  “What’s wrong with me?” It was only then she realized what she was doing—and why he was holding back from her. He wasn’t breaking her heart—she was doing it all by herself.

  Almost the last words Gil ever spoke to her came whispering into her soul. He loves you, babe. A guy knows these things. If you get another chance with him, go for it. You deserve it, Mary-Anne, for all the happiness you’ve given me.

  Thank you, Gil, her heart whispered back. And she pulled on a pair of shorts and walked out on deck.

  She must have been lost in thought for a long time. Evening had come to the cove on quiet feet. A soft, warm, fuzzy half darkness filled the air, lit by pretty, hook-shaped lights on the top deck and tiny tufts of fog on the ocean, like tender, fallen clouds. Tal stood leaning against the rail between lights, lost inside the misty half shadows, his hair glowing silver-gold like a halo, his sadness and isolation making him look like a fallen angel.

  She moved toward him as quietly as she could. The time had come; finally it was time for the truth, but she didn’t know how he’d take it, even though he’d asked her.

  “Tal?”

  “Yeah?” His voice was part of the dusk and silhouettes slowly falling all around them, dark and still.

  Her eyes fluttered shut. She couldn’t face him as she said this. It was too hard…too humiliating.

  Within a moment, she felt him beside her at the rail, watching her—waiting.

  “You were right. I do need to talk.” She bit her lip, prayed for courage and said it. “Every time you turn me down, or say we need to talk, I panic—I become the girl I was ten years ago. Thinking it’s over. And that terrifies me—because my marriage to Gil wasn’t the perfect match you think it was.”

  “Ah, honey.” Gently he turned her around.

  She backed off a step; her hand flung up between them. “No, please don’t touch me. I think I’d break down if you do.”

  Silence filled the phantoms of the night. “Go on.”

  She sighed and leaned against the rail, looking out into the gloaming, wanting to fade into the darkness, become one with it. “When Gil started asking me out, I felt flattered. And I liked him a lot. He was a carefree kind of guy, cheerful—he always made me laugh, made me feel special. ‘Beautiful’ or ‘babe’ were his nicknames for me. I wasn’t in love with him, but I loved him—and he understood when I told him about you. He said we’d take our time, go slow. Then one night, when we’d been dating a few months, he told me about the brain tumors.” She took in a shuddering breath, remembering that awful night. “They were a rare kind of slow-growing benign tumor, but inoperable because they were clustered around and inside his medulla. He said he might have six months or six years, he didn’t know, but he wanted to spend the time he had left with me.”

  Even with her head lowered, she could feel his frowning look down at her. “You married him, knowing he was dying? But Aunt Miranda said—”

  “I didn’t tell them,” she said quietly. “We only let everyone know when it was obvious he didn’t have much time left.”

  His eyes searched hers. “But I saw you together. You loved him. I know you did.”

  “Yes.” She swiped at her eyes. “When he died, it left a hole inside me I’ve never been able to fill. He’d become my world in too many ways to explain…he created my new life, he managed me, he was with me all the
time. He knew I didn’t cope well with fame, and he helped me survive it. He loved me so much, and I cared deeply for him. He was an incredible person.” She closed her eyes as she got to the point. “Making love for us was sweet, so tender—it created a strong bond between us. I felt so loved. But he didn’t.” Tears squeezed out of her closed eyes and trickled down. “Not the way he wanted to. Making love wasn’t like it is with you and me. He wanted the uncontrollable passion he sensed in me, he wanted me to give him the love of a woman for a man, a-and I couldn’t. He was dying, Tal. Gil was dying, and I tried so hard, but I couldn’t give it to him…”

  He didn’t touch her, but she felt his hand, like the softness of moth wings, hovering above her hair. “Ah, honey.” He sounded as choked up as she felt. “That must have hurt you so bad.”

  “Hurt me? Hurt me?” Without warning, a pathetic kind of fury filled her and words tumbled from her mouth like a broken floodgate, all she’d held in for so long. “You know the worst thing? I made myself not think about you, or compare—it wasn’t fair to Gil—but after he died it all came back. Those dreams of you came back, and I hated you, be…because the dreams of us were amazing, so erotic, and they made me think, just your kisses were more intense than making love with Gil.” She gripped the rail so hard her knuckles gleamed softly in the night. “Then I saw you again that day in Canberra, and I thought, He’s come to me. I was so happy. But you never did. I had to come to you for the mission, begging you to come back into my life…and then you treated me like Verity West while I was dying from wanting you, needing you to see me, to touch me.”

  Turning to him, she flailed him with a fist, weak and tired. “When we finally made love, I was burning alive with joy and yet it hurt… I only have to look at you and all that uncontrollable passion fills me. When we make love, even when we kiss, I forget Gil completely and I feel so disloyal because he was so good to me, he loved me and you’re going to walk away from me soon, and it’s all going to be a sham for our parents. I know our lives are different and we can’t work it out, but it will hurt so much to go home, to be near you and touch you, knowing you’ll divorce me soon. And still I wouldn’t change this time if it’s all I’m going to get with you, because it was always you, Tal, it always was you and it always will be!”