Hers To Remember

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“My name is Adrienne. It’s the name I lived with for twenty-seven years. And since I don’t remember the last three, I’d rather you call me by that name.”

He didn’t like it. It put too much distance between him and the woman he knew. If he let her distance him now, how could he ever make her understand what had been between them? The refusal was on his lips, but one look at her set face made him realize he had to keep it to himself. This wasn’t the woman he knew. “All right. Adrienne. Are you ready to go?”

She nodded.

Not exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of going home with me, Sam thought as they walked silently to the nurse’s station to sign the final release papers. And who could blame her? In Adrienne’s mind, she’d known him barely two days. She didn’t have any idea how much they’d shared.

But he knew. Seeing the lack of true recognition in her eyes hurt more than he dared admit. To tell her would be to lay the responsibility for his feelings in her lap. And this wasn’t her fault.

It was his. If he’d been there, she never would have been vacuuming. If she hadn’t been vacuuming, she never would have fallen. What next? he asked himself. If she hadn’t fallen, she never would have remembered? Is that what you wanted?

“Hi! Are you ready to go?”

Sam nodded at the girl who’d interrupted his thoughts. Hospital policy dictated that patients being released ride to the exit in a wheelchair. With the young student nurse accompanying them in the elevator, they made the descent to the lobby without saying a word.

Once outside, he directed the nurse to his truck where he’d parked in a patient-loading zone. Conscientious to the end, the girl didn’t leave her patient until she saw her securely seated in the passenger seat of the dark blue pickup.

Beside her, Sam took in Adrienne’s nervous movements. Poor kid. “I don’t blame you for being scared, sunshine. But I promise everything will be okay.”

His effort to comfort her failed. She bristled like an angry porcupine. “How can you promise any such thing?”

The sharpness in her voice shocked him. Such a tone had never crossed Amy’s lips. Though they’d had the normal adjustments to deal with, the fights that many newlyweds suffered had bypassed them.

“Well?”

Sam saw the fear behind the impatience. “I can’t.” Normally, he would have taken her into his arms and kissed her concerns away. With circumstances being what they were, he decided on a different tack. “Would you rather I said, ‘Everything isn’t going to be fine’?”

She rewarded his light sarcasm with a smile. “No, but it might be more honest.”

Her reaction relieved him greatly. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. The statement that followed did make him curious, however. “Why would being negative be more honest? Don’t tell me Adrienne Winston is a pessimist.” Amy had been an optimist. Could a loss of memory change a person that much?

“No,” she said. “I’m a realist.” She hadn’t liked thinking that way. Once she had been optimistic as any young girl could be. Experience had taught her to believe differently. If Sam hadn’t learned that lesson by now, he must have been very lucky indeed.

“What do you mean by a ‘realist’?”

She gave him a glance that questioned his naivetе. “Just that everything is fine only if you work very hard at making it that way, and you don’t run into someone who’s just as determined to do the opposite.”

“Sounds like you’ve run into a few of those people.”

“Too many.”

Even one was too many when it came to his Amy. It broke his heart to know she had experienced pain he couldn’t ease. “Well, I’m not one of them,” he assured her. “I’ll work for you all the way.”

“And if I decide that Amy Delaney’s life is not for me?”

He was being tested. He knew that, as surely as the sun rose in the east. This time, he refused to let her goad him. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

He started the ignition and drove slowly through the parking lot to the exit. At the stop sign, Adrienne watched him give strict concentration to the oncoming traffic. His thick golden eyebrows were drawn down, his quick smile had disappeared completely and his knuckles had gone white from holding the steering wheel too tightly.

It didn’t take a genius to see he was upset, which made Adrienne feel mean and petty. She shouldn’t be taking her frustrations out on Sam. He didn’t deserve it. He’d been unfailingly kind and caring. Her guardian angel. Suddenly, she felt an intense desire to make it up to him.

“The sign on your truck says Delaney Landscape. Are you a gardener?”

His tense expression lightened. “Sort of. I do landscape design.”

“You mean telling people where they should plant their flowers and shrubs?” She was hopelessly out of her league here. She hadn’t killed the plants she had in her condo, but that was the most that could be said for her gardening skills.

“Yes, plus planting trees, putting up fences, building decks, laying sprinklers. That kind of stuff.”

Well, that explained the muscles. She ran her gaze over Sam, who wore snug faded jeans and a baby blue sweater. Without being tight, the sweater emphasized his wide shoulders and chest. The sleeves had been pushed up, revealing muscular forearms, tanned and covered with golden hair.

Hours of physical activity had honed his body, and she couldn’t help thinking how envious Vaughn would be of Sam’s physique. He didn’t give a damn about her life or anyone else’s, but he’d spent hours in the gym trying to keep himself fit.

Thinking back over the last two days, Adrienne realized that Vaughn couldn’t begin to hold a candle to Sam Delaney. Not in looks or personality. Sam was good. Vaughn was evil. Thank God she was out of his hands.

“Adrienne? Are you okay?”

Adrienne looked over at Sam, whose concern shone clearly from his eyes. She smiled. “I’m fine.” It was true. For the first time since she woke up in the hospital that first day, she felt relaxed and free of fear. And, she realized, her head had stopped aching.

Suddenly, she longed to know everything about this man who was her husband. “Tell me more about your business.”

Sam sensed more than saw the change that had come over Adrienne during the last few minutes. Had she finally decided to trust him? He almost asked what had changed, but decided not to push his luck.

Instead, he filled her in on his company. “In addition to private contracts, we also do a lot of commercial landscape design. The people in this area are very conscious of ecology and aesthetics. The Monterey Bay area is very beautiful. The people who live here want to keep it that way.”

“I don’t blame them. Spending most of my life in Boston, I would never have believed the natural beauty I found here. The windswept cypress trees, all the brightly colored flowers, the waves pounding against the rocks.” She laughed. “I’m beginning to sound like an advertising campaign.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “Most people who’ve spent any time in the area do.”

“Yes, but I’ve only been here a few days, and most of it I’ve been in the hospi…”

Adrienne’s sudden silence made Sam glance over at her. She sat staring out the side window, biting her lip as if to keep from crying. He eased the truck over to the side of the road. Though they were only a short distance from home, he couldn’t bear to see her so miserable.

Disregarding any protest she might make, he pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “It’s okay, sunshine,” he murmured over and over, stroking her hair.

Unnerved, he didn’t know what else to say. One minute she sounded just like Amy, who loved Monterey and could go on for hours about how beautiful the trees and flowers were and how much she loved the beaches. The next minute she was clearly this Adrienne person who was hurt and confused and felt like Alice who’d been set down in a crazy world called Wonderland.

“How can you say it’s okay?” She pulled out of his arms and leaned back against her door, scrubbing tears away from her cheeks. “Your wife doesn’t remember you. Doesn’t that make you angry? I don’t remember living with you. I don’t remember falling in love or your proposal or our wedding. I don’t remember making love. I’m carrying your child right now, and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m pregnant! Why do you keep saying everything’s okay?”

The pain and fear grew with each word she screamed at him, until he couldn’t keep it in a moment longer. “Because if I stop saying it, I might have to accept the fact that you’ll never remember, that’s why! Are you happy now? I’m just as afraid as you are.”

He paused a moment to calm himself. “I got involved with you knowing your memory might come back one day, but I never expected it to happen. You’d been here a year before we considered moving into a house of our own. I’ve known you for over three years, and there hasn’t been one inkling of insight about your past.”

“Until now,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “Until now.”

“What are we going to do, Sam? How are we supposed to live with this?”

The tone held anger, but underneath he heard a plea in her voice that cut him to the quick. She asked for answers he didn’t have. Because he could do nothing else, he asked the question he’d been dreading. “Do you want to go back to Boston?”

“No!” The answer came quickly and with such adamancy he almost laughed.

“Then I guess we live with it one day at a time, and hope to God your whole memory returns.” Or, barring that, that you fall in love with me all over again. Because he could not imagine a life without her.

When she didn’t say anything else, he started the truck and drove on.

One day at a time, she thought as they drove through the streets of Pacific Grove toward the home in which she didn’t remember living. What else could they do? She didn’t want to go back to Boston. There was nothing left to draw her back. She’d signed the company over to Vaughn in return for a quick divorce. The home they’d shared hadn’t meant anything to her since the day she’d learned about his philandering.

But was it fair to put Sam through this? He’d really done nothing to deserve it. Except be unwise enough to marry her, a woman whose past had suddenly reared its ugly head.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t see any other way. To leave would mean taking his child with her. And that she would not do. The baby inside her had been conceived in love. Just because she didn’t remember that love didn’t mean it hadn’t existed. He’d loved her and taken care of her for three years. She owed it to him to try to make the best of things.

Still, she couldn’t help feeling that living with a man who had married another self would bring its own pain. She wasn’t Amy. She didn’t know anything about her, except that she’d fallen in love with and married Sam.

Adrienne had only drawn Vaughn, a man who had pretended to love her, because he needed her money and her creativity for the advertising empire he wanted to build.

It had taken her years to figure out that her creativity as a designer had been all that had interested Vaughn. And in the end, he couldn’t even give her credit for that.

It wasn’t enough that he’d had affair after affair behind her back, with her being too stupid to know. No, he’d had to take her confidence in her work away from her, too. He’d chipped it away piece by piece. Telling her she’d be nothing without him to guide her. Letting her know that their clients only accepted her ideas because he’d convinced them she could do better with his help.

But what she’d found out at the end had been so much worse. All her other complaints paled in the shadow of his horrendous deeds. Afraid of what he’d do to her, she’d taken the evidence and run, hoping that someday she’d find the nerve to turn him in.

“We’re home.” Sam’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“What?”

He smiled. “I said, we’re home.”

She’d been so involved in her dark thoughts, she hadn’t even noticed they’d stopped. Now she looked around. “Oh my,” she breathed.

When she’d tried to picture their home, she’d assumed they lived in a nice tree-lined residential neighborhood. Instead, she found herself in a small enchanted forest. All around her were trees and flowers. Though she caught a glimpse of another house through the pines, the quiet and peace that enveloped her made the nearest neighbor seem miles away.

Sam got out of the truck and moved around to open her door. She took the hand he offered and stepped out. Taking in her surroundings, she saw the house. Made of warm wood, rustic rock and soaring windows, it was at once natural, homey and, oddly enough, elegant. “It’s gorgeous.”

Sam laughed, and she turned to look at him. “What?”