In that instant of eye contact, the floodgates of Meredith’s mind opened, releasing memory after memory of love. And in that instant, Meredith knew why her mind had refused up until now to release those precious memories of her husband.
“Joe…my Joe,” Meredith said softly as tears filled her eyes.
Patsy grabbed Joe’s arm possessively. “Joe, tell them. Tell them I’m Meredith. Tell them I’m your wife.” Her voice was a full octave higher as she clutched at Joe. “Make them all go away. I demand you make them leave.”
Joe didn’t seem to hear her. His gaze remained locked with Meredith’s and he shrugged off Patsy’s grasping, clutching grip and took a step toward Meredith. “Meredith?”
His strong, familiar voice sent a shiver of sweet heat through her. “It’s me, Joe. It’s me.” Before she got the words entirely out of her mouth, he was reaching for her and wrapping his arms around her.
“I demand you take this woman away,” Patsy shrieked. “I’m Meredith Colton. That woman doesn’t belong here! Arrest her! Get her out of here.”
“You don’t belong here,” Rand replied and nodded his head to the officers.
Patsy screamed a protest as the policemen moved toward her. “You’re making a mistake,” she screeched as they cuffed her hands behind her back. “I’ll have your jobs for this. I’ll see to it you never work again. I’m Meredith Colton. That woman is an imposter. I’m Meredith Colton and this is my home.”
Patsy was still screaming threats and warnings as they stuffed her into a patrol car and drove off. Still Joe held tight to Meredith as if he were afraid she’d somehow slip away from him.
And she reveled in his tight grasp, smelling the achingly familiar scent of him, celebrating the warmth of his body against hers.
“Come on, Emily,” Rand said and wrapped his arm around his sister. Together they went into the house, leaving Meredith and Joe alone.
Joe cupped Meredith’s face in his hands, his blue eyes filled with wonder. “It is you, isn’t it?” he said softly. “I can see in your eyes that you’re my wife…my beloved Meredith.”
“Oh, Joe, I’ve missed you so.” Tears once again blurred Meredith’s vision as she gazed at the man she loved, the man whose aura had given her strength over the past ten years.
“I thought I’d lost you forever.” His blue eyes darkened and his features twisted into a tortured grimace. “I couldn’t understand how you could become a woman I hated. I couldn’t understand how we’d gotten so lost to each other. I should have known she wasn’t you. I should have known!”
“Shh,” Meredith placed a finger on his lips. “How could you know? I never told you about Patsy. You had no way of knowing I had a troubled twin sister who could do such a thing. I was wrong…so wrong.”
This time he placed a finger over her lips to halt her words of self-recrimination. “My sweet Meredith,” he whispered.
“My sweet Joe,” she returned. Eagerly their lips found each other’s in a kiss of explosive joy, of re-discovery and of enduring love.
When the kiss ended, Joe took her gently by the arm. “Come inside, love. We have so much to talk about, so much to catch up on.”
“Yes, I want to go inside.” She squeezed his arm, her eyes once again filling with tears of joy as her heart expanded with love. “Oh, Joe, it’s so good to be home.”
Fourteen
Lana awoke the next morning exhausted and ill. She remained in bed waiting for the morning sickness to pass and tried not to think of Chance. But not thinking of him was as difficult as not drawing her next breath.
He had remained outside her apartment for most of the afternoon and evening. She’d heard his confrontation with her neighbor then had heard him leave. But he’d returned soon after and begun the barrage anew. Occasionally he’d knock on the door and call her name, his familiar voice aching in her heart. But she’d remained steadfastly silent, refusing to give him any indication that she was even home.
It was close to midnight when he finally gave up and she’d watched him pull out of the apartment parking lot. She’d wanted to run after him, tell him she would spend the rest of her life with him, that perhaps she loved him enough for the both of them.
But she knew they’d both regret it. He would eventually regret being bound to a woman he didn’t love, to a ranch that had never been home and to babies he’d never counted on. She would watch him grow more and more unhappy and she would regret her own decision to keep him bound to her through a loveless marriage.
She rolled over in her small, single bed, her body aching for Chance’s arms around her, his chest beneath her fingertips, his legs entwined with hers. She remained that way until almost noon, then with her morning sickness waning, she got up to face a lonely day.
The items she’d brought from Chance’s house had not been unpacked, and as the coffee brewed, she eyed the suitcases with dread. Unpacking was the final step in reclaiming her life alone, but she wasn’t ready to face it yet.
Instead she curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee and wondered what Chance was doing at that very moment. Did he miss her just a little bit, or had the relief of being set free already seeped through him?
He’d probably put the ranch back on the market already, itching to go back to the Midwest and start his own business.
And she would remain here and have her babies. His babies. She looked around the small apartment. Eventually she’d have to move. This apartment was rented for a single woman and was far too small for a woman and two children.
Tears filled her eyes and her heart ached from loving Chance. In two months he’d captured her heart entirely. She felt as if by leaving him she’d deprived herself of a basic essential of life. But she absolutely couldn’t stay with him, knowing he was staying only for the sake of their babies.
She drank two cups of coffee before she realized it was Halloween and she didn’t have a piece of candy in the place. She knew from years past that the apartments always got lots of trick-or-treaters.
Within an hour she’d dressed and got in her car to head to the store for treats. The discount store was filled with frantic mothers and crabby kids shopping for last-minute costume needs.
“But I wanted to be a skeleton,” a little boy about seven wailed.
“There aren’t any skeleton costumes,” his mother replied. “Look, you can be Dracula instead.”
“I don’t wanna be Dracula. I want to be a skeleton,” the little boy protested.
The mother looked at Lana and rolled her eyes, then gazed again at her son. “If you’re Dracula, we can get fake blood and put it on your face.”
The little boy’s face lit up. “Fake blood? Cool!”
Lana left the two and hurried to the candy display. Someday she would be that mother, good-naturedly arguing with two children over Halloween costumes.
But before they got old enough to understand about Halloween, there would be diapers to change, mid-night feedings and fussy times. Trying to handle two babies alone would be exhausting.
At least she knew she could depend on her mother and her sister to help when necessary. It wasn’t as if she were all alone, even though without Chance she felt all alone.
She paid for three bags of candy treats, then headed back to the apartment. There was no sign of Chance’s car in the parking lot, and when she got inside, there were no messages on her answering machine.
He’d given up. The relief she knew he’d eventually feel apparently had already grabbed him. It was over. Truly and irrevocably over.
When she got back inside her apartment, she began to unpack, and as she unpacked, she wept. Because her babies would not have a father. Because she would never have Chance.
Chance sat in the kitchen, listening to the silence of the house around him. Lana had been absent from the house before, but never had the sound of her absence resonated so loudly.
Before he’d been fully awake that morning, he’d reached for her, and had come away with empty arms and
an aching heart.
Work, he’d thought. Work was the panacea for whatever ailed you and with that thought in mind, he’d gotten out of bed, dressed and spent the morning repairing the Sheetrock in the spare room.
The baby store had promised delivery of the cribs by noon and sure enough at fifteen minutes before twelve, the delivery truck had arrived.
Chance had spent the next two hours moving furniture out of the room and putting together the two cribs. When he was finished, he stood in the doorway of the room and stared at the beautiful baby beds with their lacy canopies.
The room was perfect for babies. The eastern window allowed in the morning sun and the floor space easily accommodated the two cribs.
If he closed his eyes, he could easily imagine the sounds of babies cooing, of a rocking chair creaking, and of Lana singing sweet lullabies. And at that moment he came to a decision.
He didn’t want the ranch, not if Lana wasn’t here. And she wouldn’t live here as long as he was here. Lana loved this place. Her love and caring was evident in every room of the house.
She’d placed her mark on it with flower arrangements and pictures on the walls, with shiny wood and spotless floors. She belonged here far more than he did. His babies belonged here.
Lana didn’t want to spend her life with him. Right from the beginning she’d made it clear she didn’t intend for him to be a father to her children. But he didn’t want his children raised in a series of small apartments, without room to play, without room to grow.
They belonged here. More than he ever had. This ranch would be his legacy of love to his babies, to Lana. But before he deeded the ranch to her, he wanted to talk to her, needed to make sure there was positively no room in her life for him.
With this thought in mind, he showered and dressed, then headed away from the ranch and toward the Colton house. It was the only place he knew of that Lana might be.
Perhaps she’d parked her car at her apartment complex just to throw him off the trail and she was really staying with her mother and father. If nothing else, Inez would know where her daughter was.
Inez herself opened the back door in answer to his knock. “Oh, Chance, have you heard the news yet?” Her dark eyes shone and her cheeks were pinkened with excitement.
“What news?” Chance asked as she grabbed his arm and pulled him into the kitchen.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle,” Inez exclaimed. For a moment Chance wondered if she was talking about Lana carrying twins. But before he could say anything, she continued. “Who knew that Meredith had a twin sister? Who knew that our poor sweet Meredith was suffering amnesia and living in Mississippi while her hateful twin was living here, pretending to be her?”
Chance’s head whirled as Inez filled him in on the drama that had taken place the day before. “I haven’t seen Joe this happy for ten years,” she said, tears of joy sparkling in her eyes. “The two of them are sitting in the courtyard now, like two lovebirds. We finally have our family back together.”
Family together. The words echoed with pain in Chance’s heart. That was what he wanted. He wanted his family all together. “Inez…where’s Lana?” he asked.
She frowned. “Chance, I don’t want to get involved in your business with Lana. I didn’t approve of this whole thing from the very beginning.”
“You don’t have to get involved, just please tell me where she is.” He heard the desperation in his voice, and apparently she heard it, too.
“She called me last night from her apartment.”
“But I was at her apartment all evening and nobody answered my knocking.” A wave of grief swept through him as he realized that Lana had been there all along, but had refused to open the door to him, had refused to even speak to him.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Chance. She loves you so much. She loves you enough to let you go. If you can’t love her like she loves you, then let her go.”
Stunned by Inez’s words, Chance nodded, murmured a goodbye and left the house. Surely Inez was wrong, he told himself as he drove toward Lana’s apartment. Surely she was talking about the fact that Lana had once loved him when they’d been young. If Lana loved him now, then why had she left him?
She loves you enough to let you go. Inez’s words reverberated around and around in his head. And she was letting him go because that was what she believed he’d wanted. Hell, it was what he’d believed he’d wanted until this very moment.
Now he knew. He knew the truth. He wasn’t staying in Prosperino for the babies. He was staying because he was in love with Lana. He pressed on the gas pedal, knowing the only thing he had left to do was to convince her that he was a keeper.
Meredith sat next to Joe on the stone bench in the courtyard. They had spent most of the night talking, catching up on their years apart. Then they’d made sweet, wonderful love, restoring what had been stolen from them, renewing the commitment they’d made to each other so long ago.
Meredith looked around her, strangely at peace despite the fact that the gardens that had once been her pride and joy had gone to seed and lacked the vibrant flowers she’d always adored.
“This place was the one memory that survived the car accident and my amnesia,” she said, breaking the peaceful silence that had lingered between them. She looked at the fountain, with its soothing gurgle and splash of water. “I dreamed of this place over and over again, and it upset me that I didn’t know where it was or how to get back here.”
Joe put his arm around her and pulled her close against his side. “And did you dream of me?” Joe asked.
She leaned into his familiar warmth, a sense of peace cascading through her. “I dreamed of a special man. I could feel his warm embrace, remember the touch of his hand. I dreamed of standing right here in front of this fountain and him placing a ring on my finger. The dream always brought me a sense of peace and also left me frustrated.”
“Frustrated?”
She nodded. “Because I couldn’t see the man’s face.” She turned in his arms so she could see his face now. “No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see your features…couldn’t remember what you looked like.”
She saw the whisper of pain that shadowed Joe’s beautiful eyes. She raised a hand and caressed his hair. On the day of the accident, his hair had been rich and dark; now the darkness was shot through with strands of silver. She thought him more handsome now than ever.
“I know now why I had absolutely no memories of you, why my mind refused to give me a glimpse of your face.”
“Why?” he asked.
She placed her palms on either side of his handsome, distinguished face. “Because remembering you would have been so painful, I don’t think I would have survived. Because of all the memories that flittered through my mind over the last ten years, the memory of our love would have shattered me.”
He wrapped her in his arms and lowered his lips to hers. His kiss was passionate, yet gentle and filled with a wealth of love. When the kiss ended, Meredith once again snuggled against his body, her gaze scanning around the courtyard.
“I have a lot of work to do here,” she said, remembering the way the courtyard had once looked. “We need new flowers planted and all these weeds pulled.”
Joe smiled. “We have the rest of our lives to plant flowers and pull weeds. And I have a feeling you will have more help than you need.”
She smiled. “You’re talking about the children.” She thought of them all…her beloved family. Later she would spend time with them all, but at the moment she was content to spend these quiet moments with Joe.
Meredith sighed, her thoughts turning to her sister. “What’s going to happen to Patsy?” she asked softly.
He hesitated before replying. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “We’ll have to wait and see what the authorities decide to do. She’s facing a number of charges.”
“She needs help.”
“Meredith, how like you to be worried about her after all she’s done to you,
to your family.”
“I hate what she did, but I can’t forget that she’s my sister, my own flesh and blood.” She sighed, and shoved thoughts of Patsy from her mind. “Joe, I’m worried about Emily. She’s hurting so badly.”
He nodded and took her hand in his. “I know. But hopefully time and love will heal her.”
Time and love. Meredith smiled at her husband, her Joe. Yes, they had time and love, time to heal all wounds, and enough love to last them for the rest of their lives. “I love you, Joe,” she said softly.
“And I love you.” Once again he wrapped his arms around her, his warmth suffusing her as his lips found hers.
Home, Meredith thought. Yes, she was truly home. Home in Joe’s arms where she belonged.
Fifteen
It was the longest day in Lana’s life.
With every hour that passed without a word from Chance, the knowledge that he didn’t love her echoed in her weeping heart.
She had finished unpacking and had no tears left unshed, so she took a nap. When she awakened, she felt more in control of her emotions.
She took a long hot shower, then pulled her hair back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Chance loved her hair loose and flowing. She would never again wear it that way.
As dusk began to paint the sky, she ate a light supper, then poured the candy she’d bought in a large bowl and set it by the front door in anticipation of the trick-or-treaters.
At least the evening would pass quickly with the little costumed munchkins at the door, she thought. Perhaps it would pass so quickly she wouldn’t have time to entertain one single thought of Chance.
As she ate, she thought of her conversation with her mother the night before. Inez had been brimming with the news about Meredith Colton’s return. “She and Joe are acting just like newlyweds,” Inez had proclaimed after she’d explained the whole situation to Lana.
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