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But Leah wasn’t ready for that, either. She had rebuffed Viv’s every well-intentioned attempt. And she’d had no regrets.
Her heart had felt so dead all this time.
But right now, her heart was hammering like mad.
“I need to talk to you,” the man named Roman said. Then, “Thank you,” to Viv, taking the second cup she handed across the counter.
“I don’t see what we have to talk—” Leah began, then stopped short.
As she watched him, he paid for his and hers, she realized suddenly.
“No,” she said sharply, pulling herself together. “I don’t want you to—”
“It’s no problem,” he said. “Forget it.”
Leah pulled out the exact change she carried with her in the pocket of her windbreaker every morning and placed it on the counter.
She barged past him toward the door.
A woman came through the door, a small black poodle on a leash at her side. Leah, limbs trembling for no good reason, strode blindly, wanting—needing—to get out of the suddenly too-small coffeehouse. And tripped right over the dog.
The poodle yelped, Leah went down and coffee flew everywhere. She swore and apologized, and pretended the coffee hadn’t burned the hell out of her fingers.
“Are you all right?” Roman was instantly at her side.
Viv handed him towels. She already had a mop. The woman with the poodle was wiping her sleeve where some coffee had splattered her. The poodle yipped and danced, its perfectly painted toenails clattering on the tile floor.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry,” Leah said to Viv. “I’ll pay your cleaning bill,” she told the woman. “Send it to me at the Shark and Fin. I’m sorry,” she said again, in general.
Then she was on her feet and hit the door without another word. She was on the sidewalk before she knew it.
“Wait.”
Not a chance.
“You should take care of those hands,” he said. “They’ll blister.”
Roman caught up with her, his long, lean strides no match for her somewhat shorter legs. She could run, but she’d just bet he would keep up with her.
“They’re fine. I’m fine.” She refused to look at him, but she was aware of him just the same.
He even smelled good, damn him. Soapy, musky, all male.
Danger, danger. Red lights, stop signs, railroad crossing bars. She had to get away from him.
“Would you slow down?”
She whirled. “Would you stop following me?” she demanded. “Didn’t I make it clear last night that I don’t want to talk to you?”
“If you don’t talk to me, then how is Morrie going to sell me his bar?” he answered matter-of-factly.
For a minute she could only stare at him. “You’re interested in the bar?” Could she be a bigger idiot?
She thought of how she’d behaved in the coffeehouse, how she’d raced out of there. She’d been practically in a frenzy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—” How did she explain? He was a stranger. She didn’t even tell her—brief—life story to people she saw every day. Viv and Morrie were the only ones who knew the whole story. Even Joey, the cook at the Shark and Fin, only knew part of it.
“Just what?” he prompted.
“You remind me of someone,” she said finally. “I don’t…” This question terrified her. What if he didn’t just remind her of someone? What if he was someone she’d known? Unable to avoid it any longer, she finally asked, “I don’t know you, do I?”
She felt as if her stomach had fallen to her feet while she waited.
Chapter 2
“No,” he said very quietly, watching her. “You don’t know me.”
Leah swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry,” she said for about the tenth time in the past ten minutes. “I guess I was just… I don’t know.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said briskly. “Why don’t we start over?” He held out his hand.
God, could he be more cool, more self-possessed, more hellaciously good-looking? Danger, danger.
“Start over?” she asked, trying to get her thoughts under control.
“I’m Roman Bradshaw,” he said again. He still had his hand out. “I’m from New York. I’m looking to invest in a business in the Keys. I’m interested in Morrie’s bar.”
She took his hand. Electricity shot all the way up her arm, and it was all she could do not to yank her hand back.
“I’m Leah. Leah Wells.” She sounded almost normal, thank God. “I’m taking care of the bar for Morrie. I’d be happy to provide you with any information—”
He hadn’t let go of her hand. The electrical pulses hadn’t stopped coming, either. And simply being this close to him was making her knees shake.
“Good,” he said. “I’m free this morning, if you have time for me.”
There was something unguarded in his expression. His burningly intense eyes seared her still, but she realized there was a vulnerability there, too.
“The bar opens at ten,” she said, quaking inside with unnamed emotions. “Meet me then.” She withdrew her hand and walked away, but she knew he didn’t move, that he watched her all the way down the street to the beach.
The water glittered in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, light reflecting up from the bottom of the ocean. Graceful sea birds glided and dipped. It was a sight she loved, craved to drink in each morning. But for the first time, she was in a rush to get back to the bar.
She felt his gaze long after she knew she was out of sight. She took the stairs in the back hall of the bar by twos and went straight to the shower. With water pouring down over her face, she cried for no reason at all.
“Darling, I just pray that you will find the same kind of happiness that Genevieve and Mark have. You know that’s all I care about. All I think about. Your happiness. You simply must come home.”
Roman held the bungalow phone in his tense, impatient hand, listening to his mother try to convince him to return to New York. He’d come back to the White Seas after seeing Leah at the coffeehouse, biding his time till their scheduled meeting at the Shark and Fin. He needed a few moments to collect his thoughts, calm his pounding heart.
He didn’t need this conversation with his mother.
“We miss you,” Barbara Bradshaw continued. “You need us.”
“I need Thunder Key,” Roman said plainly. “This is where I want to be, where I need to be right now.”
“What good can come of wallowing in that girl’s death?” his mother demanded, her voice breaking.
“‘That girl’ was my wife, Mother. Leah. She had a name.” Is my wife, he corrected to himself. Has a name.
He hadn’t told his mother about seeing Leah. Even after eighteen months of thinking Leah was dead, his family hadn’t softened their attitude toward her. They wouldn’t gladly accept her back, and his gut instincts told him they would attempt to convince him that her memory loss was some kind of fraud. Hadn’t they tried, over and over, to find a way to tear him and Leah apart? They never had.
He’d destroyed their marriage all by himself.
After she’d been declared dead, he’d gone back to work. His work had always been so important to him. His grandfather had been the founder of Bradshaw Securities, a professional trading firm. It was a family business—his father, his uncles, his cousins, his sister. It had always been assumed that Roman would take his father’s place as the CEO and chairman of the board someday. But now it was all so empty. Stocks, bonds, trading options. Who cared?
His apartment with a view of Central Park was empty, too. No Leah, lacing up her running shoes, daring him to keep up with her.
No Leah, cooking another awful meal and sneaking in takeout at the last minute.
No Leah, dancing in her underwear in front of the couch until he turned off his laptop and paid attention to her instead.
At least, that was how things had started out. Gradually she’d realized he wasn’t going to change, and that the very thing that had drawn them together—their utter dissimilarity—could also pull them apart. He didn’t know how it had happened. It was as if he’d looked up one day from his eighty-hour workweek and he’d lost her, and he didn’t know how to get her back.
Then there was no getting her back because she was dead.
He’d spent the first three months afterward pretending nothing had happened. Then he spent another year pretending he could deal with it.
The last three months, he’d given up the farce. He’d stopped going in to the office. His family had gone into shock. His father had raised Roman to take over the firm from the time he was born. Roman’s first memory was of his father bringing him to Wall Street to hear the opening bell rung when he was four years old. He earned a business degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.
He’d walked away from a multimillion-dollar legacy, and he still wasn’t sure why. He’d closed up his Central Park apartment. He’d put dustcovers on the furniture, protective bags over his business suits. He’d cleared every commitment from his always-full date-book.
It had taken three months for him to undo the life in New York he’d thought was more important to him than anything, even his wife.
His family thought they were watching their golden boy lose it.
“Mother, I have to go,” he said, bringing his thoughts back to the present.
“But when will you be back in New York?”
“I don’t know when I’m coming back. In fact, I’m thinking about making an investment here, a bar called the Shark and Fin. So don’t expect me back right away and don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m doing business.” If anything would convince his family he was fine, it was the idea that he was making an investment—though they probably wouldn’t be thrilled it was in Thunder Key. He said goodbye and hung up before his mother could get in another word.
He stared out the open garden doors of the bungalow. Beyond lay a perfect, picture-postcard world. White sands, blue ocean, clear sky. He closed his eyes, let the palm fronds rustling in the ocean breeze take him away….
Leah danced out the garden doors, silhouetted against the barely dawn blue-gold world. “Come on, you’re too slow!”
He told her to wait. He was shaving. She tickled him. He laughed, but kept shaving. “I can’t wait. I hope you can catch me—before someone else does!” She disappeared.
Roman dropped his razor, ran out of the bungalow wearing nothing but a towel. Leah could do that to him, make him do crazy things that didn’t come naturally to his conservative, subdued, Bradshaw personality. He raced across the empty, secluded beach, holding on to the towel and his dignity just barely, and caught up with her in the water—or maybe she caught him because somehow she was in his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist.
They fell into the shallow sea together, her sparkling green eyes his only contact with the world, and then somehow his towel disappeared and her bikini bottoms slipped away…and she had him doing things in the dawn-misted surf that were very un-Bradshaw-like indeed—
Roman opened his eyes, gasped. How could it still hurt so much? How could he still miss her so deeply? How could he still feel her in his arms?
Unable to keep his mind off her, he went straight to the Shark and Fin. He was early, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He walked, taking the boardwalk trail through a mangrove-lined lagoon that stood between the resort hotel and the town. He’d rented a car after flying in to Key West airport, but since he’d arrived on Thunder Key, he hadn’t touched it.
As he came out of the grove and into the town, he turned down the narrow, overgrown road that led to the Shark and Fin. Beyond the beachside bar and grill, he saw dolphins jumping in the brilliant blue water.
Dolphins mean good luck, Leah had told him when they’d seen dozens of them dancing up out of the waves during a seaplane tour of the Keys.
He hoped she was right. He could use some luck.
The Shark and Fin was just opening for the day. The front door was open to the fresh air and rapidly warming morning. Ceiling fans moved the lazy air as Leah sat at a scarred oak table by a large window, her fingers racing over a sketch pad. Her eyes were intensely focused on her creation.
Roman stopped in the doorway, just taking her in with his eyes, his heart. How many times had he caught her in the exact same pose, working on one of her designs in their apartment in the city? Memories washed over him and he could barely breathe for a moment. He knew he couldn’t speak yet.
She’d showered since her run—her hair was still damp on the ends. Leah had always been too impatient to get on with her day to blow-dry her hair. Her makeup was minimal—also as usual—just enough to highlight her glossy lips, outline her remarkable eyes, trace her high cheekbones. She wore a hot-pink sleeveless tank top and capri bottoms in white. She swung one sandaled foot while she worked, and he noticed that her toes were painted with little hot-pink smiley-faces.
She was oblivious to him, lost in her work.
But he wasn’t oblivious to her. His pulse had shot into overdrive as soon as he’d laid eyes on her, and the past swamped him again.
You remind me of someone. He’d been hard-pressed not to blurt out everything when she’d said those words to him. I don’t know you, do I? What was he supposed to say, to do? His heart screamed for him to pull her into his arms and tell her she belonged to him, they were husband and wife, she was his Leah, dammit.
No. You don’t know me. His words had been true—she didn’t know him. Not yet.
But she would, in time. Take it slow, that’s what he kept telling himself. Slow, slow, slow.
It was killing him. But he was scared, so scared, of losing her all over again. What if she remembered him—and didn’t want him? It was she who’d had divorce papers drawn up—not him. Had it been some kind of last-ditch attempt to shake him into changing, into noticing her, into putting her first?
“Hi,” he said quietly, coming forward into the bar now, finally recovering his voice.
Startled, she looked up at him. As their eyes met, it was as if he heard the surf roar straight into the bar and he felt himself drowning all over again.
“Oh, hi,” she said, scraping her chair back and standing to greet him. She dropped the sketch pad and pencil to hold out her hand, very businesslike, but he didn’t miss the nervous tuck she gave her hair, pushing it back behind her ear.
She gave him her all-too-familiar crooked smile, and that alone nearly made him lose it.
Then she surprised him by blushing as their hands met. She had a shy side, this new Leah. For all that was the same, there were so many differences, and he wanted to know all of them. He had to know everything about her new life.
“Thank you for meeting with me this morning,” he said smoothly, letting go of her hand despite every shouting fiber of his being that wanted him to do the opposite, to pull her all the way into his arms, hold her and never let go. But rushing Leah was probably the worst thing he could do if he didn’t want to lose her again.
He had to file his red-hot longing for her in the same place where he had kept the grief and guilt of losing her for the past eighteen months.
“I’ve been in touch with Morrie,” she said. “He suggested I give you a tour of the bar, then if you’re still interested, I’ll put through a call to him and let you two hash out the details.”
“Great,” Roman said agreeably. He’d already decided to buy the bar. He didn’t need to know the details. Hell, he’d buy the whole island if he had to.
The tour didn’t take long. The bar itself was wide-open, airy, bright with the morning light pouring in. There was the requisite back room with a pool table, and the small kitchen where the cook whipped up conch chowder and fried catch-of-the-day, along with a few other simple short-order items.
“Can I see upstairs?” he asked.
