Her Man To Remember

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He should have known.

“Hey, bud.”

“Mark.” He should have known his mother would get right on the question of what Roman was doing giving up all readily accessible means of communication and buying a bar in the Keys. And since his parents and sister had made no headway with him, she’d turned to his brother-in-law to do the job.

“So it’s true. You’re buying a bar in the Keys.”

“Yes. I’m buying a bar in the Keys,” Roman said mechanically. “Anything else I can help you with, Mark? I’m pretty busy here, actually.”

“Just checking on you. There are people who care about you, you know. And we worry.”

Yes, he knew. “I appreciate that, Mark. But you can tell everyone that I’m not ready for the straitjacket yet. I’m making an investment. That’s all. Just doing business.”

“I hope that’s all it is,” Mark said. He hesitated a beat. “Roman, those questions you were asking me the other day, about amnesia…”

Roman tensed. “What about it?”

“Why were you asking those questions?”

“I don’t have time to talk, Mark.”

“Roman, I know sometimes when people are going through the grief process, there’s a part of them that wants to look in every face and see the person they’ve lost. They never found Leah’s body and that was hard for you to deal with. But she’s dead. There’s no way she could have survived. If you think you’re going to find her again in Thunder Key, if you’ve got some crazy scenario going in your head that she survived the crash and is living in Thunder Key with amnesia—”

Roman closed his eyes for a frustrated beat. His blood pressure was fast approaching the danger point.

“There’s no point wallowing in that girl’s death,” Mark said. “I’m sorry that she died. We’re all sorry that she died. But you’ve got to move on now. I hate to say it, but you’re better off without her and—”

That did it.

“I’m not better off without her. In fact, I’m not planning to be without her!” Damn. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. Seeing Leah again had sent his emotional control into a tailspin.

“That sounds crazy, Roman. That’s what she did to you. She made you crazy. You weren’t yourself after you married her.”

“No, I was myself after I married her and that was the whole problem.”

“The problem was you married the wrong woman. And she died. It was tragic, but it’s over. You need help, Roman. You need—”

“I need Leah. And I don’t give a damn how you or anyone else feels about it. I’m not crazy. She’s here, Mark. She’s alive.” God, he hadn’t meant to tell him that. He wanted to bang the phone down in frustration, but he couldn’t leave it this way. “I don’t know what happened the night her car went over that bridge, but I’m going to find out. And you’re going to stay the hell out of it.”

“Roman—”

“Don’t say a word about this to Gen or my parents. You know how they are, how they felt about Leah. About our marriage. And with everything I’m trying to work through now… They don’t need to know. Not right now. It would just upset them, and you know it. And do not—I repeat, do not—come down to the Keys. Don’t even call again. Tell my family I’m fine—because that’s the truth, and that’s all they need to know.” He took another steadying breath. He had to get Mark on his side. “Mark, I know you love Gen. Think how you’d feel if she disappeared and then you found her again. I need time. I’m counting on you to give me that.”

Mark was silent for a beat. “All right. I won’t tell anyone about Leah—if that’s really who it is. You’re right—that information would just upset people. But be careful. And I mean that.”

Roman hung up the phone and headed straight for the kitchen, drawn by the smell of frying fish and the hope that Leah was there. He had to see her again. Telling someone she was alive had felt so strange. No doubt Mark thought he was nuts now. Sometimes even he thought he was nuts. Every time Leah was out of his sight, he started to think he’d imagined her all over again.

Could he trust Mark to keep the news about Leah quiet? The truth was, he didn’t know. But there’d be hell to pay if anyone in his family interfered with him and Leah now.

Joey was at the stove, ladling chowder into a huge bowl.

“Leah said to help yourself,” Joey said. “If you’re thinking about buying the bar, you might as well find out if you like my cooking.”

“Does Leah cook?” She’d been the worst cook in the world, which he’d always found oddly charming since she was so creative in other ways. To find her running a bar and grill was ironic.

“Nope. She has a black thumb in the kitchen, she says.” Joey watched him. “Are you really interested in the bar, or are you just trying to hook up with Leah?”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind,” Roman said dryly.

Joey didn’t smile. “We’re shorthanded today. One of the waitresses called in sick. Want to help out?”

Roman figured that was as much leeway as he was going to get from the wary cook. “All right.” In New York he sat behind a desk and ran the show. In the Keys he was just another guy, even if he was possibly Joey’s new boss. He’d have to prove himself. It surprised him that he didn’t mind. In fact, he took it as a challenge. “Where’s this going?” He took the bowl of chowder. Joey ladled out a second one.

The cook pointed to a numbered table layout, faded and splattered, nailed on the wall. “Table six.” He turned back to the stove.

Roman carried the bowls out through the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the bar. The phone was ringing behind the bar. Leah finished filling a glass at the beer tap, then picked it up.

“Shark and Fin.”

Roman moved through the bar, set the bowls of chowder in front of the men at table six. When he turned back to the bar, Leah had an irritated frown on her face. She hung up the phone.

“You’re waiting tables now?” she asked.

“Sure. Might as well get to know the business from the ground up. I’m thorough. That’s how I operate.”

She went back to the beer tap, filled another glass. “Great,” she said, pushing a tray at him. She put a couple more beers on it. “That goes to the table by the door.”

And for the next hour and a half, Roman wore his feet out going back and forth between the kitchen and the bar and the various tables. He noticed that Leah kept up a relaxed interchange with the customers, whose garb varied between scruffy fishermen’s duds and T-shirts and shorts. She smiled that crooked, killer smile of hers—but never at Roman. Whenever he caught her eye, her expression would immediately darken, something frightened lurking there.

He tried to think of ways to approach her without scaring her, but couldn’t think of a damn one except for the one he couldn’t possibly do, which involved kissing the hell out of her. It just about turned his torn-up heart inside out every time he looked at her. Not being able to touch her—yet seeing her, being so close to her—was worse than any medieval torture.

The lunch crowd thinned, and Joey had the temerity to put him to work doing dishes. Roman was pretty sure the cook was testing him. He took it as another challenge and loaded and unloaded every plate as if he was making a fortune on Wall Street doing it.

By the time he was nearly done, his hands were red from the hot water. He hadn’t seen Leah in way too long. He was like an addict, but he had no intention of getting Leah out of his system.