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He shrugged. “You love to argue with me.”
That seemed to deepen her amusement. “Maybe that’s a good quality, too. Maybe it’s a way to defend myself against your need to control. Even if I love you, maybe I don’t want to be taken over by you.”
“I don’t want to take you over,” he insisted. “I just want to keep you safe and happy.”
“Maybe what you want for me isn’t the same thing I want for myself.”
She knew that was it. She saw it in his face, though he averted it instantly to retrieve the afghan that had fallen to the floor when she’d sat up. They were at odds somehow, in some way he didn’t seem to want to explain at this point in time.
She wished she knew what it was.
“All I want for you,” he said gently, pushing her back to the pillow and covering her again, “is for you to stay safe and deliver a healthy baby while remaining healthy yourself.”
“And what do you want for you?” she asked.
He patted her cheek and then her tummy. “I’ve got it right here. Rest while I finish the dishes.”
With his touch lingering on her, she closed her eyes, trying to remember what the obstacle was between them.
Whatever it was, she’d be willing to bet that it was a problem he had with her and not the other way around. She couldn’t remember their past together, but she was falling in love all over again.
Chapter Three
Gusty stared at the small travel alarm on her nightstand. Illuminated green letters read 3:06 a.m. She was wide-awake.
She’d napped last night while Bram tidied the kitchen, then slept off and on while he replenished the fire and made notes in a leather folder he said held some of his detective agency’s paperwork. She’d awakened an hour ago safely tucked in bed, and had been unable to fall asleep again.
She struggled out of bed, pulled on a flannel shirt Bram had given her to keep her warm during the cool evenings, then waddled quietly into the kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove, put the kettle on to boil, then pulled sandwich-makings out of the refrigerator. She slathered cranberry sauce on bread, added chunky pieces of game hen and a generous portion of dressing. She had to push down on the sandwich to make sure it held together, then carried it into the living room.
She settled into the scratchy old upholstery of Bram’s chair and turned on the parchment-shade lamp on the table beside her. A little pool of light fell on her, the only bright space in the dark house.
It felt strange, she thought, to be all alone with herself when she didn’t know who she was. So far, she’d defined herself by things Bram had told her, but certainly the true reality of a person could never be understood by someone else, even someone as close as a husband.
She imagined herself in a classroom talking to third-graders about wildflowers. She closed her eyes and tried to picture herself at a chalkboard, eager little faces watching her.
Leanne watching her.
Leanne with lots of blond hair but no face.
On her head was a cardboard crown with gold stars all over it. Gold stars. Gusty struggled to focus, wondering if the crown was something she remembered, or something her tired mind had simply put there.
Perhaps the crowns were a way she’d developed of scoring achievement. Maybe each star indicated something accomplished.
But she didn’t know. She was only guessing. It might mean nothing at all.
In her mind, her eyes panned to the other children. Something reacted inside her. She felt happy. She liked children. She loved them.
She ran a hand over her baby and closed her eyes against her classroom, frustrated at her inability to remember.
But her baby was ever-present. She didn’t have to remember. Every day her belly swelled a little more as though trying to help her prove her own existence. I’m here! it seemed to say. Even if I don’t know who I am!
The baby moved subtly as Gusty rubbed. She wished she could remember his conception. She was beginning to think of it as a boy because of his swift and sudden movements, his determination to keep her up nights with wild dancing, his tendency to push against her spinal column as he took up more and more space.
She wondered if he’d begun as the happy aftermath of a party, the warm afterglow of an intimate dinner or a spontaneous response to the passion in Bram’s eyes—or his reaction to hers.
However it had happened, she thought, giving the baby another pat, she hoped he could be delivered in safety. The threat to her life seemed unreal—probably because she couldn’t remember the incident that had prompted it—but when she considered the threat to her baby’s life, the whole thing took on a terrifyingly real aspect.
Her sandwich half-finished, she put the plate aside and dropped her arm over the side of the chair, as she leaned back, trying to get comfortable. The baby seemed to resent her sending food down to take up his already cramped space. It felt as though he was stretching, feet braced against her spine, hands pushing at her ribs.
She stretched her legs out in an attempt to relieve pressure and tried to flatten her back against the back of the chair, dropping her other arm over the side.
This was a mistake, she knew. It would take a crane to get her out of this chair when she was ready to go back to bed.
Her left hand encountered leather. She peered over the side of the chair and saw Bram’s backpack tucked into the shadows between the small table and the chair. Thinking Bram might have misplaced it, she lifted it and leaned it against the front of the chair.
And as the pouch gaped when she caught it by the sides, she spotted what appeared to be the pencil-shaped antenna of a cell phone. She pulled the bag up into what was left of her lap and pulled out the instrument.
She stared at it in disbelief.
“We have no way to contact anyone unless we go to town,” Bram had said when she’d asked how they would call for help if they needed it. “We could give away our location by making calls. So we have to depend upon ourselves.”
No way to contact anyone and there’d been a cell phone in his backpack all along.
She looked deeper into the bag and saw a floral, very feminine looking address book. She pulled it out and opened it, guessing it was hers and not his. Or maybe one she kept for both of them.
She opened it and the first two names leaped out at her. Alexis Ames. Athena Ames.
She read them again, greedily searching for clues to her sisters’ personalities and possibly her own in the simple letters of their names.
Alexis had a European address and phone number, but Athena lived in Washington, D.C. Her eyes ran over the numbers.
“Interesting reading?” Bram asked. He stood in the living room doorway, long legs in sweat bottoms braced a foot apart, muscular arms crossed over a formidable chest clad in a simple white T-shirt.
“It’s our address book,” she said unnecessarily, to hide her guilt. Why did she feel guilty, she asked herself impatiently. She was rummaging through his things, but he’d been guilty of lying.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
She held up the phone. “You told me we had no way to contact anyone,” she accused, “unless we went to town.”
He held her gaze intrepidly. “I didn’t want you to try,” he replied calmly. “I was afraid that if you started remembering things and tried to call your sisters or a friend, Mendez would track us down.”
“You could have trusted me to understand that,” she said with an air of injured dignity, “and to behave accordingly.”
He raised a rueful eyebrow. “I might have if I didn’t know you better. You have a tendency to do what you want to do regardless of the possible consequences.”
“Then how do we get along,” she asked, her chin at a testy angle, “if you don’t trust me?”
He grinned. “I keep an eye on you.” He indicated the backpack with a jut of his chin. “You’re welcome to dump everything out and look through it. I have nothing to hide.”
“Except the phone you lied about.”
He nodded with no apparent guilt. “Which you found by looking through my bag. I think that makes us even.”
Indignant because he was right, she tried to pull herself out of the chair. She imagined she looked a little like a whale attempting a backbend.
Bram came to help her.
She tried to slap his hands away. “I can manage.”
“Let me help you,” he insisted. “I’m fond of that chair.” Placing one hand on her arm and his other arm around her back, he pulled firmly and drew her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said with precarious dignity. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Good idea.” He walked her to her bedroom. “What woke you? Are you warm enough?”
“I was hungry,” she admitted, rubbing her knuckles against the back of her waist. Or where she used to have a waist. “And the baby loves to stretch out when we sleep and push against my backbone.”
She was walking into the room as she spoke, but Bram caught her arm and splayed his other hand against the small of her back. “Here?” he asked.
She felt several things at once—a little frisson of sensation that seemed to bounce from one vertebra to another, then the simple comfort of his broad, warm hand against her aching back.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice barely there. She reached to the doorjamb for support as both the sensation and the warmth began to spread.
“Let me see if I can encourage him to move.” He went to her bed, drawing her with him, and sat down on the edge. He patted his knee, encouraging her to sit on it.
She eyed him skeptically, concerned on several levels. She could explain only one. “I’ll cripple you,” she warned.
He laughed. “I don’t think so. I’ve been running five miles a day for twenty years.” He pulled her between his legs and sat her on his right knee. “And there’s not that much to you, even with the baby.” He placed his hand over the spot she’d indicated before and rubbed gently but firmly.
She pitched forward at the strength of the first stroke and he put his free arm around her to anchor her.
In a matter of seconds she became his willing slave. She couldn’t help the “aah” of relief as his left arm supported her uncomfortable weight and his right hand rubbed that pressure point until she felt like a puddle of oatmeal.
“Better?” she heard Bram ask.
She considered answering no, because if she said yes, he’d stop.
Reluctantly she made an affirmative sound and pushed herself to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered, the air suddenly electric around them. They should be sharing a bed, a life, a baby. But there were too many unknowns here for her to settle comfortably into life as it should be.
All she knew about herself was what he’d told her—and if he’d lied about the phone, he might have lied about anything else—or everything else.
He stood, also, and gestured her into bed. “I’ll tuck you in,” he offered.
She complied and he lifted her feet for her, pulling the blankets over them, then over her.
She lay on her side, the only position that was comfortable, and he tucked the blankets in at her neck.
He turned out the light. “Sweet dreams,” he said into the darkness.
“Thank you for the massage,” she replied.
“All part of the service.”
The door closed quietly and she expelled a deep sigh of relief. When she knew who she was, she wondered, would she know what to make of him?
BRAM WAS ALMOST GLAD to see rain the following morning. It was cold and damp and they went through a lot of wood, giving him something to do that afternoon.
He chopped enough wood to replace the power of Bonneville Dam. He was frustrated on so many levels he was about to implode. But he had to bide his time.
In his other life, the government had directed him to a point, but he’d been the best security officer they had and they’d let him do things his way.
When he’d hooked up with Dave and Trev, they’d worked together like a well-maintained machine, each moving in harmony with the other, each mind reading the others’ so that there was seldom a bad move.
Until Afghanistan and Farah’s death.
Bram remembered explaining to them why they shouldn’t use her, that while she was valuable as a translator, she was outside the unit and therefore a potential danger.
But they’d needed her, and he’d fallen under the spell of her intelligence and her sweetness just like Dave had—though neither of them had fallen as hard or as far as Trevyn.
When they’d closed in on Raisu to stop his terrorism of American installations all over the world, Trev had told her to stay behind. But she’d had some scheme about distracting the camp so that the three of them could approach unnoticed, and she’d ignored Trevyn, determined to do what she thought would help.
He remembered hearing her scream when her traitorous brother had mistaken her for them and shot her. Then he remembered seeing her lying there, arms flung out and motionless.
Bram cleaved a wide log of cedar in half with a clean stroke of the ax as he remembered Trevyn’s primal scream.
The mission gone bad, they had no choice but to retreat. Trevyn wouldn’t leave without Farah’s body, and Bram covered their escape while Dave helped Trev carry her down the mountain.
They’d decided to quit after that, each weary of the business for his own reasons. Staying together in civilian life, at least until they’d all found another road, seemed like the sensible thing to do.
Then David had inherited the house in Dancer’s Beach from their CIA radio contact, code-named “Auntie.” He’d saved her life during an African uprising, and in gratitude, she’d left him her home.
That was where Bram had first met Gusty at a costume party. He and his friends had been dressed as the Three Musketeers, and Gusty had worn a velvet bonnet and a dress with petticoats and she’d caught his eye right away.
He’d excused himself from the group he’d been talking with and taken her aside so they could talk.
She hadn’t wanted to talk about herself, had tried instead to make him talk about the house, about how they’d come by it and which one of them owned it.
He’d told her about his sister, his nieces, his years looking for something to validate his existence. With a father who was a felon, and an alcoholic mother, he’d grown up wondering how he could be of any value.
Only his younger sister’s dependence upon him had forced him to try, and her gratitude and her reliance on him finally taught him that they were both better than the genes that made them up.
He’d joined the police force when she’d gotten married at sixteen and developed into just the kind of young man who could fit into the military. He had what it took, he could rise above, learn that adversity could strengthen and not destroy if a man was determined to be a winner.
And that was when Gusty had opened up a little about herself, though he’d learned later that it hadn’t all been the truth.
She’d told him she was a teacher, and that she lived in northern California in a small town called Pansy Junction, but she hadn’t mentioned her sisters. She’d told him she was visiting friends in Dancer’s Beach.
She was always trying to find her place, too, she’d said. That she had a tendency to be cowardly, to avoid risk and danger and heartbreak.
