Never Forgotten: Second Chances (14 page)

But Sal's hauntingly familiar eyes looked down at her from that hideous face. She had spent hours staring into his eyes and doubted she could be fooled. Sal's eyes seemed sad. He spoke softly in Sal's voice. "I know I look pretty horrid, Megan. You'd probably be surprised to know that I underwent quite extensive plastic surgery," he said calmly as if he read her thoughts. "You'd think after all the operations I went through, even if I didn't look like myself, I'd at least look, well, decent. The doctors say they repaired much of the damage caused by the collision and the fire; they seemed to take great pleasure in moving bits of skin from one spot to another, and even relocated a couple of minor bones." He touched his head. "I'm told they did some good work, but some things weren't fixable. Certainly the end result leaves much to be desired." He ran his hand over his head again and smiled, remembering how it had once felt. "My hair only grows in patches, which look even worse, if you can imagine that. So I keep my head shaved. I'd prefer I'd lost all the hair." Then he touched his nose. "My nose won't ever look the same because they couldn't find the right parts. I suspect they got the nose cartilage from a parrot, myself. If not, then I have to wonder what they used as a model."

She reeled. His soft, conversational tone was Sal's. His gestures. He laughed Sal's delicious laugh. The man dared laugh his laugh. Her heart pounded. "It can't be."

"I'm afraid it is."

"What happened? Why didn't you let me know where you were? I thought I'd go crazy. You just vanished."

"I took the train from the airport to go to my father's house. There was an accident, and the train went off the rails. The engineer apparently was speeding. At any rate, I was knocked unconscious. Before I came around, the doctors induced a coma to prevent brain damage. Six months later I woke. The world was insane. I learned that my father had sold the business and moved to be near me, to spend time taking care of me, and then died of a heart attack."

Megan moaned. "That's why he never answered my letters and why the phone was disconnected. I began to wonder if it was all a lie..." She didn't mention the moments she'd wondered if he'd done it deliberately for some reason she couldn't begin to imagine. "And then what happened?" The story was right, but the images in front of her were still wrong. She couldn't reconcile the damaged face with the familiar voice.

"I spent a year in the burn ward. They kept me pretty damn heavily sedated during the first few months. When they kicked me out of there, I started my rehabilitation and the reconstruction of my face. I had no money. Without anyone around to watch things, my father's money disappeared. I needed to work to live and for the surgery so as soon as I could, I started consulting online. People with money need someone to tell them when a company is sound, and, fortunately, that's something you can do sitting in a rented room if you've got computer access. I did some work for free that went well and got me referrals. That's when I met Carla. I was looking for someone to assist me part-time, doing research and interacting with clients. She found she had a knack for business that surprised her. And she liked it. She'd been working as an actress and took the job to tide her over between jobs, but she got addicted."

Carla made a face. "I liked acting, but the industry is terrible."

"We got on well, and very quickly she became my partner. But for a long time survival was a close call. We toughed it out and managed to build the business slowly, saving every penny and then investing for ourselves."

"Why didn't you contact me?"

He held his hands out. "It was well over eight months before I could do anything for myself. As soon as I could, I tried calling your phone number but it was disconnected. Everything I had was destroyed in the crash, including my phone, so I couldn't even be certain I remembered the number correctly, and I had no idea how to find your email address."

She remembered calling his mobile, getting the constant message that it was out of service. "I started planning to go to Italy to look for you. But I didn't speak Italian and had no idea where to look. I read about the train wreck and researched it, but I didn't see your name on the list of passengers."

"In the chaos after the wreck they didn't know who I was. My clothing was burned and my identification. There were a number of us they couldn't identify at first. If my father hadn't known I was on the train and been waiting at the station, he wouldn't have known what happened to me either. He had to go to the hospital and insist that I was one of the patients. With my face messed up, I don't have any idea how they sorted out who was who. Process of elimination, I suppose."

Megan wanted to cry. "I waited for your father to reply, then finally, I guess it was after a couple of months had gone by, I decided to go look for you. But I had no money and was working at terrible jobs. I lost track of time. I lost myself for a while. Then, out of the blue, I got a job offer. A wonderful job offer." The emotions she'd felt came rushing back, making her head throb. "By then I'd given up hope, Sal. Going to Italy was a desperate ploy. I didn't know if you'd chosen to disappear or if it had been something outside your control, but I realized that I was fooling myself into thinking there was any way to find you. Especially without knowing the language or having the money to stay long. Finally, I accepted that I'd lost you."
Lost, but never forgotten.

Sal shook his head. "And then, ten years later, I suddenly show up, or rather this monstrous apparition pretending to be Sal does." He sighed. "I know it's a shock. Hell, seeing you is a shock, and you are beautiful as ever. I would've done this better, let you know in some better way, but I couldn't think of one. How could I prepare you for what I am now? Carla wanted to warn you, but I needed to see you, to at least let you see the truth."

"And what is the truth, Sal?"

"The one I was thinking of was that I never left you willingly. I felt so damned helpless. When I woke, I realized that the chance we'd had, that we'd tried to take, was gone. Even if I could pick up the phone and tell you what happened, the months you'd spent wondering what had happened would always be between us. It was almost a perverse mercy that I couldn't find where you were."

"But then you did."

"Yes. Part of me wanted to avoid you, leave you alone. But finding you, hearing that you were in business, following the dream we'd dreamed together, struck like a bolt out of the blue. I had to get to you, talk to you, let you know what happened, that I didn't desert you."

"How did you find me?"

He nodded at Carla. "I didn't, really. Carla keeps her ear to the ground. Sometimes I think she can hear the ebb and flow of money, knows the sound of sums being withdrawn or deposited in distant bank accounts. She's brilliant that way. She got word of a company with a new program that needed investment and checked it out as a reflex. We were in the middle of a transition. She'd just sold our position in a company in Belgium to raise cash for another project. When she learned you were a principle…… well, Carla knows our story, how I felt about you. And here we are. I thought of dozens of ways to contact you, ways that might have softened the double blow—that I was alive but not the same man. In the end, I decided to just do it. We were torn from each other by forces outside our control, and it's a miracle that I've gotten to see you again. And what a delight to see that you are doing well and are as beautiful as ever."

The flowing of his words soothed her, despite the story he told, despite the face of the man that said them. The wording, the manner comforted in the old and familiar way and underwrote both her relief that he was alive and her sense of what they had lost.

"I'm not as comfortable with your analysis of my situation, I'm afraid. The company is doing all right, but as you know by now, it's in a crisis situation, and I stand to lose everything if it fails."

"So you will ensure that it doesn't, or you will do something different. That's what you do, who you are."

"I suppose so."

"You and Carla have a great deal in common."

The comparison, that he'd made it, bothered her. The look on Carla's face told her that she wasn't thrilled with Sal's line of thought either. "She has done a lot for you, with you."

He nodded. "She's made this possible."

"And now what?"

He gasped. "I have no idea. Seeing you, letting you know what happened all those years ago, was the most important thing in the world for me. I've been working under the assumption that I could, should provide the money you need to salvage your dream and move forward."

His offer seemed oddly unsettling. This was what she wanted, an investor, but Sal? "Why?"

"It's what I do."

"Is this the best use of your money?"

He laughed. "You aren't supposed to be talking me out of this investment."

"I need to know what you expect."

"I expect to fulfill a promise."

"What promise?"

"When I left for Italy, I told you we would be working together for the future. There was more, the personal side, of course. We lost it all, and I can't change what happened, turn back the clock, or be who I was. But I can certainly keep the business part of the promise. It would be a salve on my conscience and a good investment."

The words were sincere, and she wondered how it was she could sit and talk to Sal this calmly. A small part of her wanted to break into hysterical laughter. "I don't know if I can do this."

"I know it must be painful to see me. It's painful for me to see the look in your eyes when you hear my voice and then look at the face and suffer from the disconnect. I have no intention of adding to your anguish. I propose to be a silent investor. I'll put up the money and give you my proxy to vote my shares. You don't need to see my face."

"And you?"
You'll go off with Carla.
It surprised her that the idea of not having him could hurt her now, after all this time.

"I'll pursue other business interests, probably do more consulting and raise money to invest elsewhere. I like the work. It's interesting and lucrative. What do you think?"

"I think my world is inside out at the moment, Sal. You've spun me around, and I don't know what I want or what I'm doing. Learning all this at once is a huge shock."

He turned his head away. "I understand. And seeing my face, sitting here talking this way probably isn't helping. You take your time thinking about what to do. Carla will give you her number. You can call her to arrange the money whenever you need it, when you've sorted things out. I know you were hurt badly, probably as badly inside as I am outside, and I understand that. I wouldn't have had that happen for the world. My offer is sincere, and I just hope it won't be too painful to accept my help."

She grappled with the new reality that rushed around her, moving in swirls. Images of the old Sal blurred with the man she saw now; old feelings rushed up, flushing her cheeks only to be slapped down by years of reality and the knowledge she had lost him. It had been unfair of him to mention the dream, their dream. She'd never forgotten it, never forgotten how they talked about for long hours into the night and how business and a shared life and love swirled together for them. Yes, she'd followed the business part of the dream, and so had he, but with Carla. Was the past, the years of wondering, something that could be swept aside with a story that boiled down to 'it wasn't my fault?'
He had done nothing to hurt her, yet managed to inflict the greatest pain she'd ever felt. And his coming back made all the anger, the concern, the physical pain fresh and new again.

She wondered if would have been better to never know what had happened to him. Immediately she found that idea repulsive. She wanted to know. She had ached to know what had happened and why. And now she did. She knew that Sal hadn't left her. She knew about Carla and felt an unreasonable hatred for her that made a disgust with herself well up in her. The idea that she would hate Carla because she had helped Sal, that she did the things for him that Megan hadn't been there to do, was loathsome. Sal had needed help, and Carla had been there for him. And Megan hated her for it. How unfair was that? But was there a single fair thing in any of this?

Sal wanted to help her company, to compensate her in some way for her pain. He was reaching out with love, and it had the feel of rubbing salt into a wound—a deep and ulcerous wound that had never healed.

With her mind confused, her body sore, aching from the physical aspect of her stress, she stood, letting her trained reflexes move her to safety, to a place where she could recover. She took Carla's phone number, and with a voice that sounded weak, told them she would consider the offer, that she would call. She hated Carla but talking to her would be easier, about business anyway. She wasn't sure she could talk to Sal again, much less see him again, without exploding.

The door closed behind her, and she stood still, letting the numbness that seemed to be growing inside her take control. Voices came to her. Carla's: "Did you get what you wanted from that, Sal? Did that do any good at all?"

Sal's reply was muffled, sounding much like a sob riding on a breath that had been held in too long.

Her numbness eased, leaving her weak and empty. Juggling powerful conflicting emotions she managed to stagger to the elevator, down to the parking garage and into her car. Although she could never recall the drive home, somehow she found herself back to her apartment, where she drank several stiff drinks and then slipped into a blankness that passed for sleep.

* * * *

The room was shadowy, the air tense. Megan walked slowly toward the bed and saw Carla there on her hands and knees. She was naked, her long, lean body swaying to some unheard music. Megan stopped and then when she decided to move again, she found she was unable to. She looked at her wrists and found they were tied to rings embedded in the stone wall behind her. Looking down, she saw her ankles secured the same way. She was naked.

A man came in and looked at her. She knew the man was Sal, but it didn't look like him. It didn't look like the dazzling Sal in her picture or the new Sal she'd just met, but it was Sal. Her mind rejected the idea that they were the same person. This Sal was bald but gorgeous and naked. He had Sal's body, his muscled torso, and the hard cock that she had enjoyed so many times. This fusion Sal came to her, his prisoner, and he kissed her, standing close enough that she felt the tingle of his erect shaft brushing against her thighs. His kiss was Sal's kiss—the kiss she remembered, soft, yet insistent, desirable. Then he licked her lips, wetting them.