Her Man To Remember

Fear. She was afraid—of what? Him? Roman felt cold all over.

What had happened that night she went over that bridge? Why had she been there? He’d never understood that. She’d been on a highway she didn’t normally travel, on a trip she’d told no one about, carrying divorce papers he would never have signed.

It had just been one of the many strange, horrible things about her death. But…

But Leah wasn’t dead.

Her Man To Remember

Suzanne McMinn

Suzanne McMinn

Suzanne McMinn lives on a lake in North Carolina with a bunch of dogs, cats, ducks and kids. Visit her Web site at www.SuzanneMcMinn.com to learn more about her books.

With appreciation to Julie Barrett, Susan Litman,

Leslie Wainger and especially Shannon Godwin.

And of course, to MLFF—you know who you are.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

He’d been in Thunder Key exactly four hours and thirty-two minutes when he first saw her.

On that first day at the Shark and Fin, Roman Bradshaw hadn’t believed his eyes. He’d left the beachside bar and grill without touching his drink. He’d gone back to the bungalow he’d rented—the same bungalow where they’d spent their honeymoon more than two years ago—and almost convinced himself he’d gone crazy.

The second day he made eye contact with her. She was behind the bar. Her blond hair was short, the same as always. Chin length, sexy, sassy, it swished forward onto her high cheekbones. She looked up at him from beneath the wispy bangs and met his eyes. No flicker of recognition. Nothing. Just…wide-open eyes.

A scar along her hairline, above one temple, thin, pale, was barely visible but familiar. The same silver bracelet encircled her wrist. It was a bracelet she’d worn ever since he’d given it to her on their honeymoon. And he knew it was etched with the name Leah.

He was in the back of the bar, near the door. There was a part of him that feared if he moved closer, too close, she’d disappear.

So he watched her.

She wasn’t his server. But when he caught her eyes across the bar, she stared at him for a very long moment. Then she turned to the girl approaching the bar, said something to her and pointed to him.

The girl came back to his table. “Can I help you? Do you need another beer?”

He shook his head. He couldn’t speak right away. Leah was still watching him but not as though she knew him. Her look was concerned, as if she was worried something was wrong.

“I’m fine, everything’s fine,” he had said finally, then left soon after.

He didn’t know what to think. How could she not recognize him? There was nothing different about him. He wore khaki shorts and a loose, untucked tropical-print shirt he’d picked up at one of the touristy shops in Thunder Key, but other than that, he was the same Roman on the outside. The same man she’d married. It was inside where he’d changed.

Was it really Leah? He was afraid to find out, afraid to lose her all over again. He spent hours walking the blustery beach, his mind filled with questions he was afraid to ask. Was he losing his mind? Was the woman a figment of his imagination, a ghost walking through the nightmare his life had become since the stormy night his wife’s car had gone over a bridge?

If it was Leah, how had she come to be here? Why had she disappeared? How could she have done this to him, to her own friends?

He dreamed of her that second night. In his dream they were driving through an autumn forest in upstate New York, enjoying the fall leaves. It was something they’d actually done on their six-month anniversary—before everything had gone wrong.

Except, in his dream, when he glanced from the road to look at his beautiful, vibrant, laughing wife and reached out to touch her, the seat beside him was suddenly empty. She’d vanished right before his eyes.

He woke, gasping for air, sweating.

The next day he arrived at the Shark and Fin earlier than usual. She wasn’t there. The bar was almost empty. It was early afternoon, and outside the August sun bore down on the blazing-white beach. Vacationers straggled along the shore, carrying towels and bottles of lotion and sun umbrellas. Thunder Key was a small, offbeat island, one of the least-visited of the Florida Keys, overshadowed by its more trendy cousins—Key Largo and Key West. It boasted a quaint dot of a town off Route 1, the Overseas Highway linking the chain of coral islands to the mainland. The relative quiet, compared to more fashionable destinations, was what had appealed to Leah for their honeymoon.

Thunder Key was small, artsy, homey. There was only one hotel, and it was one of the few islands that actually maintained more permanent residents in the summer than tourists. The Shark and Fin was an outpost of local color, down a nameless road at the far end of the island. Over a humpback bridge, the Bahamian-style building suddenly appeared on the beach, as if it had emerged from the sea. Colorful fish and bright moons and carefree slogans—like, This Is As Dressed Up As I Get!—were painted on the walls. People walked in barefoot.

Leah had discovered the bar the last day of their honeymoon and she’d loved it instantly. This is what the Keys are all about, she’d told him. Let’s throw it all away and open a bar of our own. We could be happy here, you’ll see. No stress, no smog, no cell phones or computers or fax machines. Just you and me.

Now here he was. No cell phone. No computer. And unbelievably, Leah was here, too.

“Can I get you anything?”

Jarred from his memories, Roman looked up at the owner of the voice.

He was a young guy. He had longish blond hair, a scruffy chin and an apron around his waist. Roman had seen him come back and forth from the kitchen the past few nights. He figured he was the cook.

Although the Shark and Fin had a typical Keys menu of fried fish sandwiches, hand-cut fries, conch fritters and chowder, Roman ordered a beer. When the guy came back, he stopped him.

“I was just wondering,” he began, “who owns this place?”

“Morrie Sanders.” The guy gave him a look. “Is there a problem? You need to talk to Morrie? He’s out west, with his daughter. Leah’s in charge while he’s gone, but she’s not downstairs yet.”

“She lives over the bar?” Roman guessed. He hadn’t realized there was an apartment over the bar. Then it hit him. “Leah? Her name is Leah?”

He heard a rushing sound in his head, realized it was his pulse pounding. He hadn’t imagined it. It was Leah, with her scar and her bracelet and her crooked Leah smile….

The cook’s brow furrowed, and when he spoke Roman heard him as if he was very far away. “That’s right.” He crossed his arms. “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong.” Everything was wrong. Roman’s mind reeled. Leah. “Leah. Is she— How long has she been here? Do you know where she’s from? Do you know—”

The guy cut him off.

“Hey, do you know her or something?” He sounded protective, fierce. His whole face turned cold.

Roman backtracked. “I was just curious.” He had to think fast. Leah hadn’t recognized him—or at least she’d seemed not to have recognized him. He should play it casual, but he was still having a hard time thinking. “I was— She’s a very attractive woman. I’m here on vacation. I thought—”

“You thought wrong.”

“Can you tell me her last name?” He still couldn’t believe it. Leah. Alive. Here.

“I don’t give out personal information about Leah.” The cook gave him a look, then turned around and walked away.

Realizing that the staff of the Shark and Fin were going to be a dead end in terms of learning about Leah, Roman went into the town. Blocks of crisscrossing, narrow, palm-shaded residential streets surrounded the backbone of the tiny Key, the main road that led to the Overseas Highway. He asked careful questions at the small grocery, the bank, the post office, the tourist office, the library and the Cuban coffeehouse. He learned she went by the name Leah Wells, that Morrie Sanders was trying to sell the Shark and Fin so he could move to New Mexico and be with his grandkids and that Leah Wells had been working for him for more than a year. It was apparent she had quickly become well liked on Thunder Key, and personal questions about her were not welcome.

He pretended he was interested in the Shark and Fin. He was a businessman from New York, he told them, and he was looking to invest in a business in the Keys.

Talk to Leah, they said. She could put him in touch with Morrie.

He wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. He was afraid to talk to her, still afraid he would break the spell and she would disappear. But he had to know more about her, so he followed her. He found that in the mornings she ran on the beach. Like most residents she walked—or sometimes in her case, ran—everywhere she went on the two-mile-wide island. Then she went into town and purchased a café con leche at the Cuban coffeehouse. One morning she went into a boardwalk boutique, part of a circle of shops surrounding a shady courtyard. He discovered she sold some of her designs there. She was still making one-of-a-kind clothes—sexy dresses, barely-there tops, wild-print shorts and pants. He found she made jewelry now, too. Shell necklaces and beaded bracelets. According to the locals, her work was popular with tourists.

She spent the rest of her time at the Shark and Fin.

This was her new life, the one she’d taken up after disappearing over a bridge eighteen months ago. This was Leah Wells, who didn’t recognize him.

He left town and went back to the Shark and Fin. They were busy, but Roman wasn’t going to sit in the back this time. He took the last open place at the bar.

When the cook came out of the kitchen, he wiped his hands on his apron and said something to Leah that Roman couldn’t hear. It was then that Leah looked down the bar toward Roman.

Tonight she wore a sleeveless blouse and loose-fitting cotton pants. They were colorful—blue-and-yellow patterned. It was like Leah to wear loud clothes. They were probably her own design. They were cut to show off her slender, shapely form.

She walked toward him. “Can I help you?”

Roman’s mouth went dry, his heart constricted. Her voice. Husky, low, sweet. Leah. He had to force himself to speak, to risk breaking the magic spell or dream or fantasy—whatever it was that had brought her back into his life. He had to find out if she was real.

“Hello, Leah.” He managed to speak in a steady voice.

She didn’t vanish. But her face held no expression as she stared at him. “Would you like a beer?”

Her eyes were wide open, the same as before. No recognition.

He had to know.

“Do you remember—” His heart was in his throat.

“Remember what?” She looked confused.

“—me?” he finished quietly.

“Um, I saw you here the other night.” Her voice wavered into wariness. “A couple of nights, actually.”

Either she was the best actress he’d ever seen, or she really didn’t know who he was. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach and at the same time as if the world was opening up all over again.

“You want a beer?” she asked again.

“No.”

She started to turn away.

“Wait.”

Her shoulders tensed. She turned back. The noise of people talking, glasses clinking, seemed to fade into the background.

“I just…want to talk to you,” he said.

“I don’t have time to talk.” She gave a pointed glance around the bar.

“Then maybe we can talk after you close. What time is that?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I go to bed then.”

“Then, in the morning,” he countered. “I’ll run with you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know that I run in the morning?”

“I’ve seen you.”

“Look,” she said, her eyes cool, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m not interested.”

“If you don’t know what I’m thinking, how do you know you’re not interested?”

“Joey told me— He said you were asking questions about me. That you said I was—”

“Attractive,” he supplied.

She shrugged.

He had to speak to her.

“Give me a few minutes, that’s all. I need to talk to you,” he persisted.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

In Manhattan, he would have walked away a long time ago. He never asked a woman out twice if she rebuffed him. He wasn’t a pursuer. But he couldn’t walk away from Leah.

He knew little—actually, nothing—about memory loss. He’d called his sister Gen’s husband, Mark Davison, the day before. Mark was a physician. He’d been surprised by Roman’s questions but had answered them in a general way.

Memory loss could be physical or psychological. Short-or long-term. Permanent or temporary. Forcing too much information too soon on the patient could be dangerous. But Mark was a pain specialist, not a psychiatrist, he reminded Roman. He didn’t have all the answers.

Why the questions? Mark had asked. But Roman had hung up without answering. He’d asked Mark not to tell Gen about the phone call. He wasn’t ready to tell anyone about Leah.

“I don’t date,” Leah said finally.

“Why not?” He kept his tone light. She tucked her hair behind her ear. He recognized the familiar gesture. He was making her nervous.

“I’m a lesbian, all right?”

Roman almost burst out laughing. “I don’t think so,” he said. His mind rushed with images. Leah playing footsie with him in front of the fire—wearing nothing but socks. Leah pulling him behind a barn for a roll in the hay—at a farm where they had stopped for a wagon ride. Leah crying out during sex—at his parents’ home. She was the most uninhibited, passionate sex partner he’d ever had.

“Who are you?” she demanded now, and the look in her eyes stopped him short.

Fear. She was afraid—of what? Him? He felt cold all over. What the hell had happened that night she’d gone over that bridge? Why had she been there? He’d never understood that. She’d been on a highway she didn’t normally travel, on a trip she’d told no one about, carrying divorce papers he would never have signed. It had just been one of the many strange, horrible things about her death.

Finding the car had taken them two harrowing days. Inside, they’d discovered her purse, with her wedding ring tucked into a side pocket, and divorce papers inside a briefcase—but no body. They said her body had been washed away in the rain-swollen river. The search had gone on for interminable days, but divers had found nothing.

Leah had no family. The people from her design studio, already devastated by the recent loss of another artist in the co-op, had held a small memorial service.

Roman had told no one about the divorce papers. His family’s relationship with Leah had been difficult enough while she had been alive. There was no point in making it worse after her death.

But she wasn’t dead.

“I’m Roman,” he said, watching her. Nothing. Still not a flicker. “Roman Bradshaw.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Roman Bradshaw,” she said, “but if you don’t mind, we’re busy tonight.” She turned away.

He let her go because he had no choice. He couldn’t tell her the truth yet. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t know him, and she didn’t want to know him. He couldn’t just waltz in here and claim her like a caveman throwing his woman over his shoulder.

But he wasn’t leaving, either.

Leah laced up her running shoes on the stoop outside the back door of the Shark and Fin. Dawn was breaking over the Atlantic. The sun shone a muted blue-gold glow through the morning clouds. It was chilly this early, but soon it would be hot.

The beach was quiet, empty. She loved this time of day, loved this beach, loved her life on Thunder Key.

She never wanted to leave, and she could only wonder, if she dared, what had taken her so long to get here. But she didn’t dare. She just lived her life, one day at a time. Thunder Key was her heart and soul—the endless water, sun, sand, the laidback lifestyle and friendly people.

Thunder Key was her home, and the people here her family. It was all she knew. And as if she had come desperate, thirsting, straight from the desert, she drank in what the quaint island offered. There was not a second of the past eighteen months on Thunder Key that was not stored precisely, vividly, in her memory.

Which made the fact that she could remember nothing before then that much more startling.

Do you remember me?

The man’s face leaped into her mind. Did she remember him? How could she forget him? Square jaw, intense blue eyes, planed cheeks, thick dark hair and a gorgeous, sexy dimple she’d glimpsed when he’d laughed. He was tall, wide-shouldered. Wealthy, too, she guessed. He had the bearing of a man accustomed to ordering the world to do his bidding. She’d asked around and learned he was staying in a bungalow at the White Seas Hotel, indefinitely.

The attraction had been instant, like being hit by a tidal wave. She had looked across the bar and her heart had gone wild, thumping and pounding. She’d had the insane urge to leap over the bar, throw herself into his arms, and—

What? The same way she’d known instant attraction, she had known instant fear, though she had no idea why.

But if she had learned anything in the past eighteen months, it had been to go with her instincts. Her instincts were all she had.

For example, she didn’t like peas. Cats made her sneeze. And the heart-stoppingly sexy man from the White Seas was dangerous. So she had schooled her features to reflect nothing of her thoughts, and she had stayed as far away from him as possible.

Quickly she looked around now and was relieved to see no one. He knew she ran in the mornings, he’d told her that. I need to talk to you.

She didn’t want to talk to him. She shouldn’t talk to him.

She stood, shoes laced tightly, images flashing through her mind. The man from the night before—smiling, watching, mixed with other, stranger images of the same man, another time, another place—then he was gone and there were no more images, only sensations, sounds. They were the markers of her panic attacks.

She’d had attacks like this before—both sleeping and waking—but not for a while. They had been so painful, so terrifying, that at first she’d thrown up after them.

Then she’d learned to block them. She had stopped trying to remember the past. And the panic attacks had vanished.

But they were back.

Rushing wind. Cold. Darkness. Screaming—her own.

Pain streaked through her temples, almost bending her double. She couldn’t give in to it. She forced herself to straighten, to walk. Then run, run. Breathe. Run.

She had been a runner in her life before Thunder Key; she knew that. She could run for miles. It was her salvation from the pain, from the past. She reached the packed wet sand and she immediately found the contact soothing. She loved to run right along the shoreline. The faster she ran, the faster she could shut down the haunting bits of the past that never came together, only remained in shards that stabbed at her mind.

Somehow the man from the bar had brought the past crashing down on her again. Was that why he was dangerous? Did he remind her of someone from her past?

Or was he someone from her past?

Birds wheeled overhead, their calls breaking the still morning air. She was alone, all alone, but in her head the haunting wind and screams played on. Sometimes she was afraid she was going crazy.

I know who you are, the voice said. Who was she?

Run, run, run. Before her head exploded.

I know what you’ve done. What terrible thing had she done? Why? What kind of person was she? Did she even want to know?

Leah ran faster, faster. Running was the first thing she remembered.

Pitch-black night, lights flashing past, air, just air, and she was dropping, dropping, dropping. Water. Pain. But not so terrible. No, she could move. She could run.

The trucker who had picked her up from the side of the highway had worn a green-checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole over one knee. He had a round, easy face, and kind eyes.

“I’m going south,” he’d said.

“Me, too,” she’d answered. “Thunder Key.”

Where had that come from? She hadn’t even known where Thunder Key was located. It had come out of nowhere, and it had actually scared her, but everything had scared her that night, so she hadn’t let that stop her.

She’d been damp, bruised, shaken. Barely dawn, and she hadn’t known how long she’d been running.

“You got a name?” the trucker had asked.

She hadn’t known what to say. The trucker had reached over, and in the glow of the rig’s dash, had touched the bracelet on her arm.

“Leah.” He’d read the engraved letters. “You got a last name?”

They’d passed an interstate sign: Wells, 1 Mile.

“Leah…Wells.” She’d shivered in the heated cab.

He’d had a road atlas. In the index, she’d found Thunder Key, part of the chain of islands that appeared like an afterthought on the tip of the Florida coast.

The trucker had taken her as far as South Carolina. He’d given her money for a bus ticket from Charleston. He’d insisted.

“A pretty lady like you shouldn’t be hitching,” he’d said.

She’d made him give her his home address, and promised to send him the money. And she’d sent it, a month later, after she’d gotten her first paycheck from the Shark and Fin.

She’d met Morrie on the beach the day she’d arrived on Thunder Key. She’d been sitting on a bench, just staring out at the vast ocean of clear water.

“Are you lost?” he’d asked her.

“No. I think I’m found.” She was where she’d meant to go. That was all she knew.

Then he’d asked her if she needed a job and a place to live. He didn’t ask any more questions after that. He didn’t care where she came from. At a trim and vigorous sixty, the slightly balding bar owner didn’t like to talk about his own past, but she knew he’d been in prison. He was reformed, he told her. He’d started life over in Thunder Key.

She knew he must have still had connections. He’d offered to help her dig into her past after she confided in him that she’d lost her memory. And one day he’d shown up with an array of identification for Leah Wells.

“In case you ever need it,” he’d told her.

She hadn’t liked taking the false ID, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. He’d done so much for her. So she had put the documents away in a drawer.

Recently he’d reconciled with the family from which he’d been long estranged. Leah missed him, and she wondered what the future held for her.

For eighteen months she’d been happy here. Now Morrie was selling the bar, and a stranger was watching her.

And the panic attacks were back.

She stopped running when she came to the public beach and the parking lot outside the community center. From there she walked up Thunder Key’s main street, letting her breathing slow as she headed for the coffeehouse.

The town was quiet in the early mornings. In the distance she could see a car or two on the Overseas Highway. Most drivers kept right on going, heading for the hot spots of the other islands where they could find more exciting attractions and hipper nightlife.