The Stranger She Married

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But she didn’t. She kept her tongue, hoping Lacey was right about the new man. Wishing that this Matthew Shane could see how much she’d always wanted to win back his love.

Outside, night creatures buzzed and chirped with the deepening shade of the sky. The evening felt like the tepid breath of a watcher, keeping time over the world.

Matt sat by himself and finished the last of his dessert, hardly tasting the summer fruit. He wanted Rachel out here, not hiding in the kitchen as if she wanted no part of him.

He’d sneaked a few peeks at the window, just to see what was keeping her. Lacey and Chloe had gone inside, probably attacking Rachel with girl talk.

Damn. Why couldn’t the only person whom he felt halfway familiar with be here, keeping him anchored, sane? He hadn’t even remembered his brother and stepsister, and that had made dinner even more awkward.

Matt cast one last glance at the kitchen, then stood, walking away from the house. After ambling around a few minutes, he reached a cool expanse of grass overlooking the white-fenced pond. The sky was purple, graced with streaks of faint star white.

He didn’t realize that someone had been following him until he heard a deep voice break the silence.

“The old man wouldn’t believe a word you’ve said about amnesia.”

He turned around to see a tall, dark shape. There was a scraping sound, followed by the flare of a match. Faint light skidded over the face of Matt’s brother, Rick, emphasizing the hidden darkness in the younger man’s gaze.

Rick noticed Matt’s scrutiny. “Cigar?”

“No, thanks.” God, shouldn’t he feel at ease with his own little brother? Shouldn’t there have been memories or some kind of emotional pull to ground him? All Matt knew was that Rick flew planes and generally holed himself up in a cabin just off Lacey’s wooded property.

There was nothing else Matt knew about his own flesh and blood.

Rick cocked an eyebrow in the star-palled light. Not for the first time, Matt noticed that his brother’s hair was the same deep chocolate shade, though Rick wore it a bit longer, scruffier.

The siblings watched the night together, and Matt was positive that they didn’t have a damned thing to say. Rick hadn’t uttered more than ten words tonight, hadn’t even shown much emotion when he welcomed his big brother home.

And then there was his stepsister, Lacey. After jumping into his arms and hugging him near to death, she’d come right out and told him not to worry, that she wasn’t as crazy as Kane’s Crossing made her out to be.

But who was worried?

Rick blew a plume of smoke in the air. The scent of brandy and shaded alley corners overcame Matt, making him think of laced grillwork, neon-lit bar signs shining over midnight streets. New Orleans, the place of his rebirth.

Rick said, “Dad would’ve questioned you up and down about this amnesia, thought you had some angle.”

Was he accusing him of something? Matt turned to him, his dander up. “Let me guess. We don’t have a very good relationship, do we?”

A grim smile flickered over his brother’s lips. “Not after the way you’ve treated your family the past couple of years. And I don’t give much credence to this tragic amnesia story, either.”

Before either of them could fire another verbal shot, the roar of a souped-up engine cut the air, followed by jubilant shouts and horn blasts. Both Matt and Rick turned to the commotion.

A cherry-red Camaro zoomed up their drive. A man dangled out of the passenger-door window, waving a ball cap.

“Mattie!”

Rick asked, “You still have questions about your past, Matt?”

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the approaching spectacle. “What the hell do you think?”

Rick chuckled and started sauntering away. He said, over his shoulder, “You’re about to get some answers.”

And without even a good-night, Rick left.

Matt started to wonder if he should’ve just stayed in Texas, training horses under his adopted “Matt Jones” name.

As the sports car squealed to a stop outside his home, three bodies tumbled out.

“Mattie!” they all cried in chorus.

He knew he’d regret this, but he approached the car anyway.

Two burly men, attired in tobacco-stained T-shirts, grimy jeans and tractor-logo ball caps flanked a person whom Matt first thought was a young boy. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the third party was actually a tiny woman dressed in tomboy clothing.

“Yee-haw!” cried the female, as she launched herself on Matt. Whiskey fumes washed over his senses as she wrapped her legs around him, smacking a kiss on his cheek.

The other males hefted some liquor bottles out of the car. One said, “We heard ya come back, Mattie! See, I told ya, Sonny, all them rumors are true.”

Without missing a beat, the bigger man—Sonny?—stumbled from the driver’s side of the car to Matt.

“Aw, lookie here, Junior. Mattie finally decided to throw away them hoity-toity business scrubs. Is your neck red, partner?” He slapped Matt on the back, almost knocking him over with the weight of the wild girl hanging all over him.

Matt tried to laugh off this ridiculous situation. Surely the old Matthew didn’t spend time with these people. “Listen, you all. I’m not sure—”

“Duh, Mattie,” said the girl who’d, by now, jumped off of him and grabbed the liquor bottle from Sonny. “It’s us. Remember?”

They must have seen the fill-in-the-blank of his gaze.

Laughter echoed through the night. Sonny knocked on Matt’s head. “Hello in there? Can you believe this, you all? He’s ignoring us!”

Matt’s hackles rose. This was a nightmare. Or a joke. Yeah, that’s it. Rachel had sicced these clowns on him in payment for over two years of her own personal hell.

“All right, you’re the Kane’s Crossing welcoming committee.” He stopped there, noting the trio’s miffed expressions.

The girl hung on his arm. “Come on, Mattie. Now that I’m back from Tennessee, we’re here to catch you up on all those drinking days you’ve lost. Farmer Fred’s got a bonfire going tonight. And there’s a keg there.”

“And college girls,” said Junior.

A swift kick from the girl clamped Junior’s mouth shut. Both Sonny and she muttered, “Damn, Junior.”

Matt was starting to get a really bad feeling about this. “Maybe I need to explain something to you all.”

Rachel’s voice interrupted him. “Junior, Sonny, Mitzi? I thought we’d come to an agreement about this before.”

Matt watched his wife emerge from the house. Watched the way her summer dress flowed around her slim body, clinging to the curves of her waist and breasts. As she patiently waited for Junior and Sonny to remove their caps and lower their heads, something primal and unexplainable shot to life in his soul. Something he’d been missing for years.

Mitzi wasn’t having any of this respect stuff. “Aw, come on. If Mattie stays home, you’ll make him boring. Just like you.”

Matt thought boring sounded like a great idea.

Rachel merely sighed, and Matt caught on to her game. A sheriff’s Bronco had stealthily pulled up their driveway, sirens and lights off. As a law enforcement officer stepped on to the pavement, the party crashers tried to hide their liquor.

The towering, football-shouldered sheriff came to stand behind Junior and Sonny. His gaze took in Matt before settling on Rachel. “Evening, Rachel.”

“Hi, Sam. Back from your honeymoon, I take it?”

Sam. Sam Reno.

Matt’s anger at himself burned. Why did he know this name, this insignificant detail?

Rachel still seemed calm, but she was bunching her dress with a fist. She added, “We seem to have a problem here.”

Sam glanced at Matt again, and he could feel himself bristling. Was he—the husband—the reason for Rachel’s agitation?

“No, wrong problem,” said Rachel. “Remember Matthew?”

Matt kept his gaze on her, feeling Sam’s stare, wondering how close Rachel had gotten to this man in Matthew’s absence. Jealousy filtered through him, making him stiff with anger.

Then he locked gazes with Sam, who nodded slowly in his direction. There was a total lack of respect written on his face. In a sense, Matt couldn’t blame him. If his life turned out to be half as awful as what he suspected, Rachel had every right to hate him.

The tension abated slightly when Sam addressed Sonny, Junior and Mitzi. “I saw the car weaving down the road. You’re all stinking drunk. I can smell you from the nearest dry county.”

Mitzi grinned. “We’re welcoming home our Mattie.”

A bottle crashed to the pavement, and whiskey pooled around Junior’s feet. “Why, look at that,” he said, worming a finger under his hat to scratch his head.

Sam narrowed his eyes as Sonny slapped Junior upside the head. “Junior Crabbe, Sonny Jenks and Mitzi Antle—”

The tiny girl interrupted. “That’s Madcap Mitzi—”

Sam continued without a hitch. “Nobody’s driving that hot rod home. Let’s take a trip to the office.”

Matt could feel the weight of Rachel’s stare as Sam herded them into the Bronco. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, couldn’t take her disappointment.

He was even disappointed in himself. God, had the old Matthew spent time with friends like this?

Sam glanced at Rachel as he prepared to reenter his vehicle. “Maybe you’d both like to come over to my place in a few days? Everyone will want to see you and Matthew, I’m sure.”

Rachel looked at Matt, silently asking if he was up to going.

He nodded, knowing that he’d have to deal with the rest of Kane’s Crossing soon anyway. There was no escaping the curiosity.

She smiled at Sam. “We’ll be there. Tell Ashlyn and Taggert hello.”

“I will. Night, Rachel.” Sam’s grin disappeared. “Matthew.”

From the way Sam looked at him, Matt knew he’d be in for a real test when he met Rachel’s friends. Hell, the whole town probably thought he’d gone off and cheated on his wife.

The picture of the blond woman with the little boy plowed into Matt’s brain again.

He only wished he could be sure that he hadn’t cheated.

As the sheriff drove away, leaving the blazing-red Camaro in their driveway, Rachel said, “Let’s go inside.”

A comment escaped his lips before he could stop it. “The sheriff was awfully interested in your comfort.”

“Jeez, Matthew.” Rachel suddenly seemed so tired, her eyes reddened as if from crying, her voice weary. “Sam’s a friend. You’d be mortified if you could see how much he loves his wife and son.”

Matt couldn’t move, didn’t want to come in the house after revealing his damned insecurity. “You go on in, Rachel, to the guests.”

She stood there for a moment more, but Matt turned away from her. He knew she wanted to talk about Sonny and his friends, but what the hell could he say? He couldn’t even apologize for this mistake.

He felt her leave, missed the jasmine in the air, missed the opportunity to say he was sorry once again.

Even if Matt Shane had come home, he was lonelier than ever.

Chapter Four

T en minutes later, their company had cleared the house. Rachel almost missed the crowd already, feeling just about naked without their sheltering small talk, the excuses to work in the kitchen or kick the party crashers’ tails back to the nearest jail cell.

She was just descending the stairs after making sure Lacey had readied Tamela for bed before leaving. Matthew sat on a couch in the family room, his head down.

Rachel walked behind him, peering over his shoulder.

He started, noticing her presence, a guilty cast to his eyes. A scrapbook lay in his palms, opened to shots of holly, Christmas ribbons and discarded gift wrap.

She knew he was sorry for what he’d said about Sam Reno. Sam was a good friend who’d just gotten married to the former Ashlyn Spencer, a woman Sam had considered to be the daughter of his worst enemy, the daughter of the man who’d been responsible for the factory death of Sam’s father.

Rachel had supported Sam while he’d come to terms with Ashlyn, while he’d fallen in love with her. In return, she and Matthew were going to need all the support they could get from friends like Sam and Ashlyn.

But for the time being, she could ignore Matthew’s discomfort and how it had made him jump to conclusions.

Rachel nodded toward the pictures. “The Christmas book. We record every Yuletide season for Tamela.”

His lips tightened, and Rachel couldn’t help noticing how lost he seemed. He flipped past another page.

“I wasn’t in too many pictures, was I?”

She didn’t want to tell him that he’d usually come home late from the office on Christmas Eve, bringing Tamela and Rachel generous presents as an apology for being tardy. He’d usually find some excuse to make himself scarce during the Christmas festivities.

Rachel wasn’t sure how much information he could handle in the space of one day.

She used her thumb to rub against her wedding ring, a silver trinket etched with roses. Simple, heart-felt. She wouldn’t have traded it for all the expensive gifts in the world. The jewelry represented a time when they’d been silly in love, just after college, during their honeymoon in Seville, Spain.

“You’re a little camera-shy,” she said, deciding to save the workaholic news for another day, a day when he’d had enough time to acclimate himself to his old life. Right now, he didn’t need to know about his corporate duties in the feed business. She only wished she could put off all the breadwinner talk forever.

Truth be told, she was enjoying his concern, his remorse for not spending every available moment with her in the past.