“Will?” Jarred repeated.
“He was here.” Nola glanced around, as if expecting him to materialize. “Your half brother. Where is he? Surely you remember him. He works with you at Bryant Industries.”
“Nola, we’re not supposed to tell Jarred everything,” Kelsey pointed out. “Dr. Alastair wants him to remember on his own.”
“Oh, honestly, Kelsey.” She kept her gaze on her son, turning one shoulder toward Kelsey in an effort to ostracize her daughter-in-law even while she spoke to her. “Dr. Alastair only wanted to make certain Jarred was ready for all the information.”
“He told me to let Jarred recall everything by himself.”
“You’re taking him too literally,’’ Nola argued crisply.
Kelsey had half a mind to search out Dr. Alastair herself and drag him to Jarred’s room. She turned with that intention, but Jarred suddenly spoke up.
“What happened to me?” Jarred asked Nola.
His mother didn’t even hesitate. With no regard for anyone’s orders but her own, she said, “Well, you crashed a plane on the banks of the Columbia River.”
“Nola!” Kelsey gazed at her in frustration. She wanted to kill her mother-in-law.
“I crashed a plane?” Jarred demanded, visibly shocked. “You mean… I was the pilot?”
“Yes, your Cessna.” Her impatience magnified at Jarred’s slow absorption of these facts. “I guess you were heading for Oregon, though God knows why. The flight plan was to Portland, but you never made it there. Something to do with the gas-feed line, I think.”
“Where’s Jonathan?” Kelsey asked. “Is he coming up?”
“He’s meeting me at the car. He didn’t think Jarred would be awake.” She leaned closer to her son. “Darling, there are serious decisions to make regarding the company. We need your approval and signature.”
“Nola, I believe your time is up. I’m sorry.” Kelsey gently but firmly linked her arm through her mother-in-law’s and steered her toward the door.
Nola yanked her arm away and gave Kelsey a scorching look.
Behind them, Jarred said in a slow drawl, “I don’t think I can sign anything at the moment.”
Kelsey shot him a look. He lifted one puffy, bandaged hand and Kelsey couldn’t decide whether she wanted to. laugh or cry. She did share a twinkling moment of repressed humor with Jarred, however, until Nola glanced swiftly from her son to Kelsey and then back again, a frown forming between her perfect brows.
“The signature is going to have to wait,” Kelsey told Nola, who gazed down her nose at her daughter-in-law.
“My dear, you don’t know anything about our company. You never have and you never will, and you have no right to tell me what to do with my son. “
“He’s my husband,” she pointed out.
Behind Nola, Jarred’s mouth slanted into a smile. He’s enjoying this, Kelsey thought with amazement.
“You know where I stand on this,” Nola stated tautly. “You’re no kind of wife if you can’t even share your husband’s bed.”
Jarred made a protesting sound and seemed to want to jump to his feet. Kelsey moved to stop him, automatically touching one leg still tented beneath the blankets.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Nola said, as if belatedly recognizing how badly she was behaving. “I’m kind of undone, you know. I’ve been so worried about you. So awfully worried.” She smiled down at him indulgently. “But you’re going to be all right now. It’s all okay.”
Jarred stared back at his mother, as if he were taking stock of her. “Kelsey’s my wife,” he said.
Appreciating his effort, Kelsey minded her own tongue, stopping herself from delivering the furious rejoinder she wanted to hurl at Nola. She actually had to press her lips together to keep from smiling.
Nola’s nostrils flared in defiance. She drew herself up to her full height, which was still several inches shorter than Kelsey’s five foot ten. Kelsey’s height, which had been a source of concern when she was in junior high, was a welcome bit of arsenal in the war between her and her mother-in-law.
“His memory will come back, you know,” Nola pointed out. “And when it does, nothing you can say will make things the way you obviously think they are.”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Nola.”
“Oh, honestly, Kelsey. You always want to fight me.” She glanced toward the bed. “I’ll be back later, darling. Get some rest.”
Her heels tip-tapped away. Kelsey felt a familiar, longnursed frustration boil up inside her. Her mother-in-law brought out the worst in her. Just as Jarred did. There was no escaping the past no matter how much she wanted it to evaporate.
“Plane crash?” Jarred asked from behind her.
Slowly she turned around, steeling herself. “Yes,” she said wearily. “It’s a miracle you survived.”
“I was piloting the plane.”
She nodded.
“Was I… alone?”
A heartbeat passed. She thought back to the grave site and the last glimpse of Chance’s coffin. For a moment she simply couldn’t move.
“Kelsey…?”
She opened her mouth and shut it several times without speaking. Her throat had mysteriously closed up. No amount of effort could bring forth words.
“Oh, God,” Jarred murmured.
Tears jumped to her eyes. Her head swam.
“Are they all right?” he asked urgently. “Please tell me. Please, please tell me. Are they all right?”
“Jarred…” she said achingly.
“Kelsey.” Guilt lay like a ton weight on her name. “You’ve got to tell me now. I have to know.”
She struggled, unable to look at him. “A man died,” she said. “Chance Rowden. A friend. I just came from the funeral….”
There was something distinctly unrestful about a hospital at night. Even when the staff came and turned down the lights, Jarred remained awake, the intensity of his pain and emotions flipped onto high. Now he lay perfectly still, weary and restless and wishing for some kind of absolution, which he feared he might not quite deserve.
Tonight had been pure hell. First, Kelsey’s blurted-out truth, a shock wave that still sent ripples through his whole body and tightened his chest. Chance Rowden was dead.
Because of me!
He’d heard the unspoken accusation even though she hadn’t meant to say it. She’d tried so hard to let him rediscover his own memory, and he felt like a heel because he already knew a great deal of it. But he hadn’t remembered the plane crash, and her revelations had left him with a strong sensation of falling down a deep, endless spiral.
And Chance Rowden. Kelsey’s lover. He certainly remembered that. He’d killed the one man his wife loved most in the world.
And that wasn’t even the whole of it: He still couldn’t remember one damn thing about the accident. Nor could he remember the events that had led up to it. How had he come to be with Chance? When he racked his brain for information, his last available memory before he awakened in the hospital was of the fight between Kelsey and him, which must have occurred about two days before the plane went down.
They were in his office and he was deeply annoyed with her, almost hurt, he recalled.
And she was standing in the center of the office, her hands on her hips, eyes flashing, lips quivering with emotion, equally as furious at him. “It’s not like I was asked here. I was ordered! So don’t go telling me that I need to change my attitude, because I’m not the one who treats people as if they’re pawns!”
“Drop it, “ he snarled. “We’ ve got things to discuss. “
“Really. Well, I’m not interested in discussing anything. I’ve got work to do.”
“This concerns a friend of yours.”
She shook her head at him as if he were completely dense. “Because of you, Jarred, I don’t have any friends. Good-bye.”
“Kelsey, don’t walk out until you’ve heard what I have to say,” he called to her retreating back.
At the door, she gave him one last long look. “You don’t know how to treat people. You never have and you never will, and if I stay here and put up with more of your verbal abuse, then I’m as guilty as you are of social incompetence that borders on pathology.”
“Did you stay up nights practicing that line?” he demanded harshly.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Good-bye.”
“Damn it, Kelsey!” But she was gone, leaving him staring after her in frustration.
Now, as he thought back on it, his head literally throbbed. Was Chance Rowden the friend that he’d mentioned to Kelsey? He could scarcely recall what the man looked like, but he knew the man as his own personal nemesis: the man who’d stolen Kelsey’s heart when she was still a girl and had never relinquished it. Oh, sure, Kelsey was adamant that Chance was a long-ago lover who held no place in her heart, but Jarred hadn’t forgotten how close Chance and she had been at the beginning of their marriage, and he certainly always heard the affectionate turn of her voice whenever any of the Rowden clan were mentioned at all. From that, he’d been forced to draw his own conclusions.
Why had Chance been in the plane with him? He knew Kelsey hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but she was consumed with emotion herself and she’d wanted him to know, doctors orders or no. And he wanted to know. Thinking, these days, was like dragging the ideas through • quicksand. He pulled every thought through a thick mire just to examine it. Nothing was easy, and nothing made sense anyway. He felt too damned exhausted to even really try.
But Kelsey hadn’t been his only visitor tonight. As he lay half dozing and turning over all the information he’d learned, his half brother stuck his head in the doorway, then entered the room.
Will grinned at him. “Hey, there, brother. Glad you’re finally awake. All this sleeping around, and nothing to show for it but some scars and a plaster cast or two. You’re going to ruin your reputation.”
“My reputation?”
“That’s a joke.” Will’s grin slowly faded. “You know, because women find you so attractive.” He hesitated. “You really don’t remember anything?”
“Nothing useful,” Jarred responded, hating himself for fostering the lie. But the need to protect himself felt strong, and he was a man who trusted his instincts.
“God, it’s good to see you again,” Will stated fervently, looking for all the world as if he wanted to hug Jarred but was uncertain of how to go about it. “Man, do we have a lot to talk about. I just hope that doctor of yours stays away long enough for me to do some real damage.”
Jarred smiled faintly. “I think we’re safe for a while.”
Will, like Nola, wasn’t nearly as reticent as Kelsey about delivering news. In fact he was practically bursting at the seams with information. “The place is in an uproar. Everything’s a mess. I sure wish you were there to put it all back together.”
Jarred’s sluggish thinking couldn’t drag up any information about work. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this? I mean, can you?”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, thank God!” Will said in relief. “I’ve been up for days, trying to figure out the right thing to do.” He drew a breath and collected himself. “We still don’t know who our spy is. I know you don’t want to believe that it’s Kelsey, but she has access. And let’s face it”—he shrugged—”she’s got motive. She’s not your biggest fan,” he added with a grimace.
Spy?
A flash of recognition. Someone working for, or associated with, Bryant Industries was systematically passing information about the development branch of the company to its most head-to-head competitor: Taggart Inc.
Kelsey works for Trevor Taggart of Taggart Inc.
“You really don’t remember any of this, do you?”
Jarred focused on his half brother. He couldn’t tell how Will really felt about his condition. “Could you fill me in?”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“But you will.”
Will nodded slowly. “I suppose I shouldn’t, but I don’t really care. You wouldn’t either if you were in my shoes.”
“Somehow I know that’s right,” Jarred said dryly. He was getting a picture of himself that he didn’t much like.
“Well, let’s start with Taggart Inc. Do you remember them?” When Jarred frowned, Will made an impatient gesture. “Look, I’ll stop asking, okay? I’ll just start at the beginning, and if you remember or you want me to stop and go over something again, you let me know.”
“Okay.”
“And if you get tired, speak up. I can come back tomorrow around lunchtime. I’ve got a couple of meetings in the morning—meetings with the City of Seattle over those setback requirements-—but I think I can sneak out early if I have to and let Sarah take over.”
“Sarah?”
“Sarah Ackerman.” Will’s face shuttered. “She’s worked for us for years. Came on about the same time you got married. A little earlier actually.”
“I don’t remember,” Jarred said truthfully.
“Yeah, well, she does.” Will rubbed his hands together and paced the room, leaving that cryptic remark for Jarred to mull over later. “Anyway, the big problem is in the development department. Taggart’s underbidding us on every job, and the bigger problem is who’s giving Taggart the information in the first place. You’ve never wanted to believe it’s Kelsey, but it makes too much sense. Anyway”—Will raised conciliatory hands—”I don’t want to go over that territory again right now. You know how I feel about Kelsey. If we could take care of that leak, most everything else can wait until you’re better.”
“You don’t like Kelsey?”
Will sighed. “I don’t trust her. It’s not the same.”
“She’s my wife.”
Will regarded him sympathetically. “You’ve got no one but yourself to blame for that one, buddy. She swept you off your feet, and you’re paying the price.”
Jarred absorbed that information in silence. It was funny. He knew so little of what had happened in the past but his gut instinct was to trust Kelsey and no one else. Yet Will was acting as if she were a spy for Trevor Taggart. Though he remembered that she-worked for Taggart, for the life of him, he couldn’t place her in the role of Mata Hari. She was just too straightforward.
“Why was I in that airplane with Chance Rowden?”
Will started. “Who told you about that?” A heartbeat. “Kelsey?”
“Do you know?”
“No. And I sure as hell wish I did. It would help a lot.”
“A detective wants to talk to me, but the doctor’s keeping him away.”
Will nodded. “Detective Newcastle. He’s talked to me, but I sure as hell don’t know what you were doing with Rowden. I mean—Rowden! We were all hoping you could explain.” Will’s eyes probed Jarred’s. “Do you really not remember anything?”
…has to remember… has to recover…Oh, God what if he doesn’t…
…Forget it. We could never be that lucky…
Jarred outwaited Will, who shook his head, then ran his fingers through his hair. For a strange moment, Jarred got the impression Will was relieved that he couldn’t recall anything. Was that true?
“Does the detective think the accident wasn’t an accident?” Jarred asked.
“The detective’s so closemouthed it’s incredible that words actually make it past his lips. I swear he doesn’t move his lips. But, yeah, there’s got to be something going on or he wouldn’t be so anxious to talk to you.”
Will sounded more annoyed than threatened. Jarred relaxed a bit. Maybe his fears were unfounded.
He suddenly recalled one his own axioms: Never trust anyone. Especially family…
What a sorry, cynical son of a bitch you are, he thought, hating a part of himself that he recognized now as insecurity.
“At least you’re going to be okay,” Will said, giving Jarred a quick smile. “When we first heard it was god-awful. Sarah damn
near fainted, and you know that’s not like her.”
Sarah Ackerman… Jarred recalled what” he knew about her and decided that much was true. From what he remembered, she was tough and unrelenting, and though she wore skirts rather than pants, there was something almost masculine about her that had never appealed to him, no matter how many times she came on to him and let him know she wanted more than a business relationship.
He realized Will knew nothing about that either. Nor did Kelsey, he thought with a sudden pang of guilt. He’d never explained about Sarah. Undoubtedly she believed they’d been having an affair.
His heart jumped. Had they? Searching the memory that he didn’t quite trust yet, he felt a few pulse-pounding moments of indecision. It was his own intense reaction that convinced him he’d never found his way to Sarah’s bed. All he felt was uninterest when it came to her as a woman. Uninterest tinged with a bit of revulsion…
But he remembered he’d let Kelsey think the worst— a thought that haunted him now and made him desperate to undo the past.
“Dad was upset, too,” Will went on. “Oh, and Nola, of course, but Dad just collapsed. I was really worried about him for a while, but he’s doing better. The whole thing’s been… well… hard.” Flexing his shoulders, he added on an afterthought, “Sarah will be here later. We’ve got business issues that can’t wait.”
Jarred nearly groaned aloud. The only person he wanted to visit him again was Kelsey, and he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He already looked forward to seeing her again tomorrow. That is, if she decides to come, he thought with a cold jolt of his heart. After all, Chance Rowden had died while he was piloting the plane.
“What?” Will asked, seeing Jarred’s tense expression.
“Nothing. Nola brought up the business issues earlier. “
Will gazed at him in surprise. “You said Nola!”
Jarred frowned.
“You’ve always referred to her as Mother. She wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Not Without You Page 4