Books by Maggie Shayne (32 page)

She closed her eyes and let herself relish his touch. She’d be all right if he’d just keep touching her forever; she knew she would. Richard used to massage away her headaches, just like this. Why wouldn’t he admit who he was? Could it be that he truly didn’t remember?

“The forces I’m here to protect you against made a move against you last night,” he said, and his hands fell to his sides.

Her eyes flew open. “How?”

His face was grim. “The pilot lights on the range in your kitchen were blown out, and the gas turned on. By the time I realized what was happening, you were unconscious.” He lowered his head. “I never should have left you alone.”

“But you were only upstairs, and…” Annie sucked in a sharp breath, looking down at her belly. “The baby?”

“The baby is all right.”

He said it as if he had no doubt, and for some reason Annie believed him. But she was stunned by what he’d just told her. Stunned and terrified. “I can’t believe someone… someone tried to kill me last night. In my own home. I just—”

“Not kill you,” he told her. “It isn’t allowed.”

Her mounting panic skidded to a stop, and she tilted her head to one side. “Come again?”

Ren paced away from her. “They can’t deliberately murder a mortal being,” he said as matter-of-factly as a driving instructor explaining the rules of the road. “They’re trying to make you miscarry with this gas ploy, same as they were with that car racing down the hill toward you. The impact probably wouldn’t have killed you, but—”

She shook her head. “If they can’t kill a mortal, then how can they try to kill my child? I don’t understand.”

He nodded patiently. “Birth is the crossing over, Annie. From the unseen, magical realm to this one. Until he or she is born, the child is fair game.“

She lowered herself to the hay-strewn floor, stunned. “So last night was an attempt to murder my baby?”

Ren sighed hard and came to her side. He bent over her and cupped her face in his big hands. “I’m not going to let that happen, Annie. I swear it to you.”

She couldn’t get over the impact of it. Someone had come to her home last night, while she slept, and made an attempt on the life of her unborn child. Good God! The very thought of it…

“Annie, try not to dwell on this. I’m here to protect you and I will; I promise you that. I told you you’d need all your strength for this battle. It’s time to call on that strength now.”

“I can’t.” She blinked away the nightmarish thoughts and fears racing through her mind and stared up at him. “How can I?”

He stroked her face, her hair. “I do have some good news for you, believe it or not. I saw the girl last night. The one you call Sara.”

She gave her head a shake. “You saw Sara?” Why did she feel such a twist in her heart at the mention of the girl’s name? Why was she suddenly longing to see Sara again?

“Yes. She spoke to me. She’s not of this world, Annie.”

Annie blinked up at him. “You mean she’s like you? Part of this realm you come from?”

“No. I’m not sure where she comes from. But I sense she’s here to help you, just as I am. I think she can be trusted.”

“I’ve always trusted her. From the first time I saw her,” Annie whispered.

Ren nodded and looked away. “Maybe if I’d come disguised as a young girl, you’d have more trust in me,” he said.

“I’d have more trust in you, Ren, if you’d stop lying to me.”

“I haven’t lied,” he told her. “Not the way you think.”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment, the headache slowly easing now, the fog in her mind lessening a bit. And she said, “You kissed me last night.” Then she frowned. “Or did I dream it, the way I’ve dreamed it so many times?”

He seemed startled, even pained. “You’d stopped breathing. I resuscitated you.”

Her smile felt bitter. “Oh.” She lowered her head. “That’s all it was, then?”

“All it can be,” he said softly.

She got to her feet, turning her back to him so she faced the open barn door and the pink predawn sky.

“I almost wish I were the man you knew,” Ren whispered from behind her, and he came closer. “I wonder if he knew how lucky he was to inspire this kind of fervent devotion in a woman like you.”

Tears burning her eyes, Annie turned to face him. He was very close. And she was afraid. Sorely afraid that all the clues, all her instincts were wrong, and that he really wasn’t Richard after all.

“I miss him so much,” she said, but her throat had tightened up, so the words were hoarse.

“I know.”

“Would you hold me, Ren? If you’d hold me…” A sob tore at her breast, breaking her voice. “I could pretend.”

His arms closed tight around her, drawing her against him. Annie pressed her face to his shirt, and she held him hard and thought of Richard’s arms. The way they’d always felt around her. Just like these felt now. Strong and safe, and so familiar. Ren’s shape, the feel of his skin, his scent. Every breath he expelled whispered Richard’s name to her. Every facial expression, every word he spoke. Every time he touched her. Maybe… maybe she wanted it to be real so desperately that she was imagining the myriad similarities. But there was so much.

He spread his palms over the small of her back and rubbed small circles there, where she caught herself rubbing so often.

She tilted her head up and looked into his liquid blue eyes, eyes she’d looked into so many times in her dreams. It was killing her, not knowing for sure… wishing… wanting…

Wake up, now, Annie-girl
.

Annie’s thoughts ground to a sudden halt as his words to her earlier came rushing back. Annie-girl. He’d called her Annie-girl. Besides Maria, no one in her entire life had ever called her that, no one but Richard.

She bit her lip, tried to rationalize. She’d been asleep. She might have dreamed the words. She might have subconsciously twisted something else into the endearment she hadn’t heard in so long.

But, God in heaven, she didn’t think so. She’d heard it. And all the other rationalizations she’d been making fled into the darkest corners of her mind. He might skip stones like Richard, and share a fondness for over salted lasagna, and he might have the same smile, the same voice, use the same figures of speech. But no one else would call her Annie-girl. No one but Richard. Not in a million years.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to think straight.
I don’t know how any of this can be. I just have to accept that it is, and go from there. Like Sara said. Trust myself. Believe what my instincts are telling me and go with it.

“Annie? Are you all right?”

She couldn’t stop staring at him. That face. Those eyes. She knew her Richard better than anyone ever had or ever would. And she knew. She
knew.
How could she ever have doubted?

What should she do now?

She didn’t know. Only one thing was for certain. Whatever she did, she would not risk losing him again. She’d battle an army with nothing but a squirt gun before she’d let him go. Fate had torn her husband away from her once, but some quirk of that lady had somehow sent him back. This time she’d have a hell of a fight on her hands.

As Ren searched her face, Annie felt something cracking and peeling away inside her— the shell she’d grown around the woman she’d been. And she felt just a little bit of the old Annie’s strength and stubbornness leaking out through those cracks and seeping into her. It was like breathing for the first time in eight months. Like a sliver of light after endless time enveloped in darkness. And she embraced it, clung to it, and prayed she’d never lose it again.

She had to confront Ren… Richard… and force him to tell the truth—if he even knew what the truth was. She had to have proof he couldn’t deny.

The solution came to her like a whisper of a song dancing on the dawn’s breeze and tickling its way across her ears to make itself heard.

The birthmark. Richard’s birthmark, right between his shoulder blades. If it’s there, then that’s all the proof I need.

Annie swallowed hard, nodded once, and felt better than she had in eight long months. “Ren, do you think the house is safe by now? I really want to go home.”

Ren—Richard—had opened every window and door in every room, shut off the gas, and set up fans to clear the air in the house. He’d done all of it while Annie had gone upstairs to wash the hayseed from her hair and put on clean clothes. There was still a slight odor stinging her nostrils, but she was confident the danger had passed. He never would have let her come inside if it hadn’t.

Now he was upstairs, taking his turn in the shower. And she was alone, with the opportunity she’d been waiting for all morning. Bolstered by the firm belief that she had every right to know the truth—more right than he had to keep it from her—Annie slipped up the stairs, quiet as a mouse. Her hands trembled a little. She supposed there was still a kernel of doubt in her mind. A tiny question. She might be wrong. He might truly be the stranger he claimed to be. But it was only nerves making her doubt what she knew in her heart to be true. It was her husband she was about to spy on. And she’d seen Richard’s beautiful body too many times to let herself be embarrassed by it now. No matter what he claimed.

She moved slowly down the hall and paused outside the bathroom door. She could hear the water running from within, could envision him standing beneath the spray. She touched the doorknob, turned it. Not locked. Why would he lock it? It wasn’t as if he expected her to do… what she was about to do.

Slowly she pushed the door open, holding her breath, half expecting the hinges to creak and announce her presence. They didn’t.

Inside, she could see him beyond the frosted glass of the shower doors, the hazy silhouette of his body. Her throat went dry and she swallowed hard, waiting until he turned his face to the spray, leaving his back to her.

She wouldn’t get another opportunity like this one. Bracing herself, she moved forward and tugged the sliding door open. And just before he whirled on her, she saw it. The small brown mark right between his shoulder blades hadn’t changed in the least.

“My God,” she muttered. “I knew… I thought I knew, but now…”

“What are you doing here, Annie?”

She met his eyes, wide and alarmed. But she could only stare up at him, shaking her head, working her jaw. It was true. There was no longer any doubt.

Sighing heavily, he cranked off the faucets and reached for a towel. Knotting it around his hips, he stepped out of the shower, gripped her shoulders, and searched her face. “Annie, what is this about?”

She looked over his shoulder, toward the mirror just behind him, saw the birthmark as clearly as she could see her husband standing in front of her, and said, “I used to tease you about your birthmark, Richard. I used to tell you it looked like a doughnut with a bite taken out of it, and say you must have been a cop in a previous life.”

Frowning, he glanced behind him, following the cue of her eyes, and he could see his back in the mirror.

“Are you forgetting your lines, Ren? Should I help? You’re going to tell me it’s a coincidence. That it doesn’t prove anything.”

He faced her slowly. And he wasn’t looking as if it were a coincidence. He was looking as if his deepest secret had just been broadcast on network television. His blue eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them. He shook his head, blowing air through clenched teeth.

“It’s true, isn’t it, Richard? It’s really you.” So much hope—more than hope,
certainty
—

surged in her heart that the organ strained to contain it all.

He looked at her for a long moment and finally looked away.

“For the love of God, Richard, don’t lie to me again. Not now.”

He closed his eyes slowly, expelling a deep sigh. “Yes. It’s true. I was your husband.”

She blinked in shock. Tough to believe she’d heard him right. She’d been fully expecting him to shoot down every bit of evidence she’d found. He’d been denying it for so long. She should be angry—but she couldn’t. It made no difference to her now.

She moved toward him, not feeling her feet touch the floor. Her hands rose as if on their own, and she touched his face, pressed her palms to his cheeks, and cupped his chin. She felt a tear roll down her cheek as she searched his eyes, and she knew the desperation she felt must show clearly in them.

“Richard…”

“No.” He caught her hands in his own, stopping them. “I said I
was
him. But I’m not the same man now, Annie. I don’t… I don’t remember.”

“I don’t care.” The words came out as a whisper. And she knew it was crazy. She had him back, memory or not. She had him back! Her fingers inched upward, threaded into his hair. She clutched his head and drew it downward until his mouth pressed to hers. And she knew he wanted to resist her, to pull away, but he didn’t.

“Annie,” he muttered against her lips. And then he kissed her, his stiff back and shoulders bowing over her, his hard arms gathering her to him as his lips nuzzled hers. His eyes fell closed just before Annie’s did, and she heard his coarse sigh of surrender. His mouth covered hers, captured it, drew on her lips as if in search of some forbidden nectar. His tongue slid inside to stroke the fires until they burned through her every cell. He tasted so good. So wonderfully familiar. And she knew it was all true. Because he’d confirmed it. He was Richard. He was her husband, and he was back in her arms where he belonged. No power on heaven or earth would take him from her again. She felt fierce and strong, determined and equal to any challenge. She wouldn’t let him go. No matter what. Not ever again.

And then he straightened, and she saw both blazing desire and unbearable pain in his blue eyes. And he spoke the words she’d refused even to consider.

“I’m not the man you knew,” he told her gently. “Not anymore. I can never be him again.”

“You’re already becoming him again,” she whispered.

“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t matter. I can’t stay.”

She shook her head in denial, but even as she did, she knew he fully believed what he was saying to her. It was in his eyes, in his voice—deep, trembling, and so, so sad. It couldn’t be true. She refused to accept it. It would kill her this time. It would. There was no way she could survive losing him again.

“No,” she whispered. “I won’t let it happen.”

“There’s nothing you can do to prevent it, Annie. Nothing I can do either. It’s the way this works.” His voice was so sure.

She’d find a way. She would. She just wasn’t certain how… yet.

“How long?” she whispered, not ready to argue over it. Not yet. Not while the chances were so good that it was an argument she’d lose. She couldn’t bear to have him prove her wrong.

He closed his eyes and turned away from her. “I don’t know. Until the child is born, I imagine.”

She choked back a sob. “I won’t pretend to understand any of this. I couldn’t possibly. But I…” She what? She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell him she loved him because she didn’t really know him. Not anymore. But, God, it felt as if she did.

“Richard—”

“Please, Annie.”

She sighed but nodded. “Ren, explain this to me. What happened to you? How did all of this… ? I want to understand.”

“I’m not supposed to tell.”

“You owe me this.” She touched his face with trembling fingertips. “If you can’t be my Richard, at least tell me why.”

Sighing heavily, he nodded. “You’re right. I’ve put you through hell. I owe you an explanation.”

“Thank you.”

He met her eyes and swallowed hard. She saw the swell of his Adam’s apple. “Gan I get dressed first?”

She looked up quickly and saw a hint of humor in his eyes. It was Richard’s. He was Richard, deep down. But she supposed she’d have to prove that to him before he’d believe it, or admit it. “If you have to.” But she let her hand linger on the broad expanse of his chest for just a moment. “I’ll make some coffee.”

He nodded but said nothing as she turned and left the room.

An hour later she sat in the living room, across from him, trying to digest all the things he’d told her. He’d told the truth when he said his memory of his mortal life had been erased, along with visceral feelings and desires. She sensed his honesty. She’d always been able to tell when Richard was fibbing. So she knew he was being open with her, finally.

But she thought perhaps he wasn’t fully aware of the other things she could sense. That his memory, and his feelings, hadn’t been destroyed but buried. And that she could find them and bring them back to the surface again. She knew she could.

And she would.

“I came here believing this to be just another mission. My job was to protect an unborn child. I didn’t… I didn’t know who I’d been…”

He stopped and she got the feeling he couldn’t go on.

“But why did this… this Sir George, whoever he is, send you? He must have known.”

He shook his head, but Annie thought about what she knew of her husband, and she knew the answer. “It’s because you’re the best, isn’t it? My baby is so important that he’d send you, in spite of all the complications, simply because you’re the best.”

Ren shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. You weren’t supposed to be able to recognize me. Sir George’s magic was supposed to conceal my identity from everyone but myself.“

“And that’s why no one else recognizes you,” she said, nodding. Finally understanding. “But nothing could fool me. You could have come to me with a bag over your head, and I’d still have known you.”

“I’m just beginning to realize that.”

“You haven’t changed as much as you think you have, you know.” She thought she detected moisture in his eyes. Maybe she’d given him enough to think about—for now. And maybe she’d know how to make him remember, make him love her again, after she’d taken some time to digest all of this.

She sipped the coffee. And for Ren’s sake, changed the subject. “Will this Dark Knight try again tonight, do you think?”

Ren tilted his head, studied her face. “He might. I won’t lie to you, Annie. But I’m not going to let anything happen to your baby. I swear it.”

“Don’t call it that.” She said abruptly, a knee-jerk reaction to his words.

He frowned and leaned forward in his chair. Annie sat in a rocker across from him and saw his confusion. “What?”

“My baby. Don’t call it my baby, Richard. It’s your baby, too.”

He paused, blinking. Then he looked away. “You have to stop thinking of that, Annie. I’m not Richard. Richard wouldn’t have known how to protect you in these circumstances. I do.“

Very calmly, she spoke her heart. “If you’re not Richard, then who are you? How can you be my husband and not be? How can you be the man I lost and this… this being you’ve become? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

She wasn’t crying, hadn’t raised her voice. She just sat there, questioning him in a voice gone soft and steady.

“I’m Ren, a White Knight. A Hero. Nothing about me is the same as it was in my mortal lifetime. I couldn’t drive a truck now if you put me in one. But I know how to fight. I know the ways of magic, and the secrets that lie beyond this realm. I’ve seen the forgotten past as well as the distant future. Wonders you’d never dream of. Things Richard would never have believed in.”

“You’ve only been away from me for eight months. Eight months.” A little breath escaped in a rush as she shook her head. “How could you forget what we had in eight—”

“Time moves differently on the other side. And I’m constantly moving through it. For me, Annie, it’s been years. Centuries.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. She shook her head, unsatisfied with his answer.

“Annie, when I… when I crossed over, the man I was before vanished.”

“No.” She rose from the rocker and moved toward him. She couldn’t keep her feelings to herself. Somehow she had to make him know what she knew. “Your memory of him might have vanished, Richard, but the man is still there. I’ve seen him.” She dropped to her knees in front of him, took his hands in hers. “They could take away your memories, Richard, but not your soul. Not your heart.” She lifted her eyes to his, and she could see the old Richard there, so clearly, longing to get out. To take over. To come back to her. “And not what we had together. No force in the universe could take that away. It’s still there. Sometimes I see just a flicker of it shining in your eyes.”

He lowered his head, perhaps unable to face her just then. “No.”

“You’re lying. To me and to yourself. Or maybe you just don’t realize it yet, darling. But I’m here.” She laid a palm over the pounding in his chest. “Right here, in your heart. I am there always. I carved a place for myself inside you when we were only children, and you did the same to me. And there’s nothing in the world that could take you out of my heart, and nothing you or anyone else can do to get me out of yours.”

Ren closed his eyes. She was quiet, studying his face. “If you let yourself believe what you’re saying, Annie, you’ll only be more hurt in the end. When I leave.”

“Is that why you won’t admit that it’s true? To spare me the hurt of losing you again?”

“I won’t admit it because it’s not true. I’m not Richard. I don’t even remember having been him. I can’t be what you want me to be, Annie.”

“And you don’t feel anything for me now,” she whispered.

He lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”

Annie sniffed, then ran one hand over his hair. “I always could tell when you were lying, darling.”

He went stiff and lifted his chin. There were tears in his eyes. He
did
feel something for her.
“I
saw a damp spot in the nursery ceiling,” he said, and she sensed he was grasping at straws. “I need to go up on the roof and take a look.”

“You need to be alone, to figure things out. It’s okay. I understand.”

He shook his head and got to his feet. “Just yell if you need me.”

“I need you, Richard. Don’t doubt that for a minute.”

Closing his eyes at her words, he finally turned and left her alone.

Fury! Damn undiluted fury was what Ren felt! The gods were having a hell of a laugh at his expense right now, weren’t they? Sir George, out there somewhere watching him twist and writhe in agony! Was it so amusing? And what the hell had he done to earn this kind of torment?