Memories: A Husband to Remember\New Year's Daddy (Hqn) (15 page)

“You
what?
”

“A private investigator.”

Her temper flamed white-hot. “You low-down, lying son of a—”

“Stop it!” he warned, his nostrils flaring slightly as his temper began to slip. “I wanted you to have a little freedom, but—”

“Not too much. You were just giving me a slightly longer leash, is that it? Why? So I could strangle myself?” She marched back to him and tipped her chin upward. Heat radiated from beneath her skin and she knew her eyes were throwing off sparks of fury. “You’re keeping something from me. No, I take it back—not something, but everything. You’ve been pointedly vague when I asked about your family, you’ve sidestepped a million questions about our romance, and you act as if we’re in some sort of dire jeopardy. Even now. When we’re home. You told me I wasn’t pushed over that ledge, and yet you’re nervous as a cat, acting like someone’s planning to do us—well, me, at least—in. What is it, Trent?”

“I told you I’d explain when we get home.”

“We
are
home.” She planted her hands on her hips and decided to force his hand. “Why don’t you tell me what all this...secrecy and cloak-and-dagger stuff has to do with Senator Crowley?”

His jaw hardened a little. “So you’re still onto that, are you?”

“Absolutely.” She skirted him, walked to her computer and snapped the power switch. The machine hummed to life. “I figure I’ll know everything I want to know and a lot of things I don’t want to know about good ol’ Diamond Jim when I find my notes in this thing.” She tapped the top of the monitor with her fingernail. “Maybe your name will come up, too.”

“We don’t have time—”

“Don’t we?” She whirled on him, her hair slapping her in her face. “What happened to ‘all the time in the world.’ Or ‘the rest of our lives’? On Salvaje you wanted me to think we could take everything slow and easy, but now we’re back in Seattle and it’s rush, rush, rush. Are you going to enlighten me, Trent?” she asked as the monitor glowed.

Exasperated, she plopped into her desk chair, pressed a series of buttons and scanned her files. “Let’s see, how about under ‘Crowley’ for starters?” Deftly, she typed the senator’s name, but the machine beeped at her and told her no such file existed. “Okay.” Her brow puckered and she tried to think. “How about ‘government’?” Only a half-finished story on a mayoral candidate. “Politics” was no better. “This can’t be,” she said, typing quickly, one file heading after another. She reread her work-in-progress menu again. No Crowley. No Diamond Jim. No political intrigue. Something was wrong. Biting her lip, she brought up other menus, from articles she’d finished. Not a clue.

“Why are you so damned certain that you were working on this story?” Trent asked, eyeing the screen skeptically, then sauntering to the fireplace and picking up pictures of her family. He fingered a color photo of her sister, Carole.

“I wasn’t assigned the story—not officially—but I have this gut feeling that...” Her voice trailed off as she noticed Trent move easily around the room, glancing through the windows, stuffing his hands in his back pockets, closing a closet door with a faulty latch, as if he knew the place inside out. As if he belonged.

Her throat went suddenly dry. Could he have erased her story on Crowley? Destroyed all records she had on the senator?

But why? Good Lord, her head was beginning to pound again. Maybe Crowley was the key to why Trent claimed to be her husband. Goose bumps raced up her arms. This whole theory gave her the creeps and it didn’t make a lot of sense. She swallowed hard and kept her gaze on the screen, unable to look into Trent’s eyes for fear he might read her thoughts. She didn’t want to believe he would sabotage her. Why would he lie about something so easily checked? What would be the point? And if he planned to hurt her...well, he had ample opportunity in a faraway country where the United States government couldn’t touch him. Her palms were slick with nervous sweat. “I think we need to talk,” she said, switching off the computer and swiveling in her chair to face him. He met her eyes in the oval mirror mounted over the fireplace as the machine wound down. Nikki’s throat squeezed, and his gaze, flat and unreadable, didn’t falter.

“You’re right. But we have to do it at my place.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not safe here, Nikki.”

“This is my home and—”

“For God’s sake!” He whirled and stormed back to her, drawing her to her feet. “Get your things—now! We don’t have a lot of time.”

“You’re serious about this danger thing?”

“Dead serious.”

“And when we get to your place?”

“You can ask me anything you want. But move it, now, before it’s too late!”

His harsh countenance convinced her. Swallowing a knot of fear in her throat, she stumbled to the closet and pulled out a couple of pairs of jeans and some sweaters which she stuffed into an empty bag. “Are you going to tell me what we’re running from?” she asked, picking up her makeup case as he grabbed the suitcase she’d dropped on the floor. She struggled into her Reebok sneakers and denim jacket and glared at him. “Because I’m going to remember, damn it, and when I do, there will be hell to pay if I find out you’re a fraud, Trent McKenzie!”

* * *

Trent had never been above telling a lie, not if the situation warranted stretching the truth a little, but this time he’d played out his hand and was about to ruin everything. He’d managed to get himself so emotionally tangled in his own web of deceit that he was trapped. Like a damned fly in a spider’s web.

Mentally abusing himself, he took the corner a little too quickly and the old Jeep slid a bit before the tread-free tires caught hold of the slick street.

He slid a glance at her, small and huddled against the passenger door. Confused, half her memory gone, the other half distorted by people she couldn’t even remember. He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel until they ached.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He wasn’t supposed to care for her. When he’d met her he’d been attracted to her, of course—hell, what red-blooded American male wouldn’t be? She was put together well, with curves in the right places and a face that could stop traffic. Whether she knew it or not, Nikki was a knockout. Even now, with the remainder of the abrasions from the accident casting parts of her face in pink, she was drop-dead gorgeous, in a way never exploited by fashion magazines.

Her eyes were clear and could cut to a man’s soul, her hair was thick and wavy and shimmered under any light and her mouth was bowed into a thoughtful little pucker that caused the crotch of his pants to seem suddenly way too tight.

Her looks had attracted him, and her personality, part pit bull, part banty rooster and another part pure sexy feline, had kept him interested. He’d been around enough good-looking women not to fall into the usual traps, but with Nicole Louise Carrothers he’d swan-dived off a tall precipice and was still falling. Straight into the depths of emotional hell. The woman had a way of getting into a man’s blood and there was no getting her out.

“Damn,” he swore softly. She cast him a quick glance, then stared steadily ahead, through the rain-peppered windshield to the curving streets that wound along the shore of Lake Washington.

Tugging on the steering wheel, he pulled out of traffic and into a long drive that wound through tall fir trees and dripping rhododendron bushes no longer in bloom. The drive was lit by small lights. They rounded the bend, and the house, awash in the exterior lamplight, was visible through the trees.

“This is where you live?” she asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

“Home sweet home.”

He cut the engine in front of the garage and she stared up at the house, a long, rambling brick cottage that rose to two stories at one side.

“Somehow it doesn’t fit with the Jeep.”

“I just like to keep you guessing.”

“That much, you do,” she admitted, stepping out of his battered rig and hauling her makeup bag with her. Flipping up the hood of her jacket, she let out a low whistle.

Trent unlocked the door with a key on his ring.

Inside, the house smelled of cleaning solvent, wax and oil. As they walked along wood corridors, Trent snapped on the lights unerringly, his hands finding switches in the dark, but still Nikki felt cold as death. Though she couldn’t remember her past, she was certain that she’d never set foot in this house in her life. The living room was situated near the back of the house. Furnished in high-backed chairs, ottomans and a couch in shades of cream and navy, the room offered a panoramic view of the lake, now dark and brooding, only a few lights reflecting on the inky surface.

Nikki stared out the window and wrapped her arms around herself. Brass lamps pooled soft light over mahogany tables and the smell of pipe tobacco and ash from the fireplace tinged the air in faint scents. “I’ve never been here before,” she said flatly.

“You’ll remember.”

“I don’t think so.” A chill skittered up her spine. “I would remember this. I would remember being here with you!” She trailed a finger along the window ledge, then turned tortured eyes up to his, hoping to feel a sense of security, of belonging.

“You’re just tired.” His voice was rough as sandpaper. Jaw tight, he took her hand and walked along a short, carpeted hall to the bedroom, where he placed her suitcase on the foot of a massive king-size bed with square posts and a carved headboard. The carpet was thick burgundy, the quilt was patterned in tan, burgundy and deep forest green.

A fireplace filled one corner, and Trent struck a match to the bottom of his boot and lit the dry logs resting on ancient andirons.

She felt a sudden sense of trepidation as she looked around the room. Something wasn’t right; she could feel it in the very marrow of her bones.

Flames began to crackle against desert-dry kindling and the moss popped as it was consumed by the hungry fire.

Trent straightened, rubbing the small of his back, then stretching. Nikki’s heart turned over at the sight of a slice of his skin just above the waistband of his low-slung jeans, visible as his hands reached toward the ceiling. She noticed the smooth muscles of his back and the cleft of his spine. “It’s been a long day,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it carelessly on the foot of the bed. “We should turn in.”

The room felt suddenly close and she could barely breathe. She’d slept with him while they stayed in the hotel on Salvaje, but she’d salved her guilty conscience with the knowledge that she’d had no choice. She’d made love to him hungrily because she was a willing prisoner and the rest of her life had seemed so far away and remote.

But now they were back home. Or in a place he claimed belonged to him, and the prospect of falling into bed with him was suddenly terrifying. Now the choice was hers. Or, at least, it should have been. An American woman on American soil in her own hometown. He wasn’t tying her to the bed, nor did he have to drag her here. True, he’d used his considerable powers of persuasion, but she had enough of her mind left to be able to say no if she’d really wanted to.

Truth to tell, she wanted to be with him. Here. Alone. As dangerous as he sometimes seemed, she couldn’t stop wanting him. Maybe he hadn’t lied. Maybe his story about the two of them held some water. The hot part was right. He yanked off his shirt, and Nikki watched as the firelight played upon tight, dense muscles sprayed with coarse chest hair.

He lifted a brow in her direction. “You want to take a bath or something?”

“You said you’d give me answers.”

“That I did.” He walked slowly to her, took the suitcase from her hand and dropped it onto the floor. With his gaze fastened to hers, he shoved her jacket over her shoulders and it dropped in a denim pool at her feet. “I just thought we should take care of a few more important things first.”

“You’re stalling,” she said, but her voice was breathless, and she couldn’t break the magnetic pull of his gaze as he searched her face.

He kissed her, his mouth molding over hers hungrily. Nikki closed her eyes and kissed him back, feeling the rough texture of his chest hair through her blouse, her fingers digging into the sinewy muscles of his shoulders.

“Nikki, oh, Nikki,” he whispered roughly. Her mind spun backward to another time when she was kissing another man, a man whom she thought she loved. But his kisses held none of the passion of this man’s, and she’d never felt the wild abandon that this man created deep in her soul. Yet they were confused in her mind, the then and now, the here and before. Trent or Dave? Her husband or fiancé? She couldn’t think and she tried to regain her disappearing equilibrium. “Dave?” she whispered as his lips traveled down her neck and touched the sensitive skin below her jaw.

He froze. His hands dropped. Stumbling backward, Nikki almost fell on the bed. She was dazed, her body still anxious and wanting.

His face was a mask of fury. “What did you call me?”

“Oh, God,” she said, her fingers trembling as she grabbed a clump of long hair and held it at the base of her skull. What had she been thinking? “I called you Dave,” she admitted, seeing a streak of pain slash through his eyes. “I...I was confused.”

He snorted and crossed his arms over the expanse of his chest. “You thought I was Neumann.”

“No—not really,” she said, shaking. Oh, Lord, why was she so rattled?

“But you called me—”

“I know. It’s just that I remembered,” she said, shaking her head as if to clear away the horrid cobwebs that kept wisping through her mind and distorting the past.

“Remembered what?”

“Kissing Dave.”

“Great,” he said, flinty anger sparking in his eyes. “Well, how do I compare?”

“Compare... No, I didn’t mean to—”

“Just what the hell did you mean?” he demanded through lips that barely moved. Brow furrowed, deep lines cleaving his forehead, he raked a gaze down her front.

“You could be happy for me!” she countered, her temper flaring, her chin thrusting forward rebelliously.

“Happy!”

“This is a breakthrough.”

“Wonderful.” He snorted in derision. “And if we make love, are you going to pretend that I’m Neumann? And am I supposed to applaud?”