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Tough? He fought a ridiculous impulse to smile. “Angel, you look about as tough as a rose petal.”
The tip of her tongue flicked over her lips. “Er…you always call me Emily. I don’t have any nicknames.”
“I like ‘Angel,’ don’t you? It fits. You look like an angel, all pink and gold. You’ so beautiful.”
“Oh.” A look of surprised pleasure erased the worry in her face, yet it increased his own uneasiness. Emily didn’t seem accustomed to receiving compliments from him, which meant he must have been blind or insensitive—or both—before the accident. “That’s nice…I mean, thank you,” she said softly.
He caught her wrist and threaded their fingers together. For the first time he realized there were hard calluses on his hands, which contrasted with the softness of her skin. The small discovery pleased him for some reason.
“What do I do?” he asked. “For a living?”
“You’ a civil engineer.”
Hmm. It sounded interesting. “Roads, bridges, dams? That kind of thing?”
“Yes. You’ out of town a lot, but you’ on vacation right now,” she explained.
That was a relief. At least he wouldn’t have to start evaluating stress tests or any other formula in the im” mediate future. Stress tests? He thought for a moment and realized there was a lot of highly technical knowledge jumbled in his head. But why was his personal life eluding him?
He pulled on Emily’s hand, drawing his reluctant wife closer. He had to get his memory back, and if kissing this luscious bundle of femininity would help…Well, it was all for the cause.
Emily looked at Nick, and her toes curled. She’d never seen that particular expression on his face before… a kind of sensual appraisal. For her. Awareness flooded her body with startling speed.
Nick thought they were married. Really married—not the convenient sort of marriage it actually was. And the doctor said she couldn’t tell him, not when the truth was so complicated. It would be too traumatic, especially since he’d heard the medics from the ambulance talking about his wife. For the time being she’d have to pretend they were the perfect, loving couple.
“Come here, Angel,” he murmured again, smiling wickedly.
Emily resisted for just a moment. A part of her still believed Nick was playing some sort of elaborate joke and he’d start laughing the minute she came close to kissing him. Marriage or not, they were buddies, not lovers. All her life he’d been like another brother, teasing her in one breath, then tackling the neighborhood bully for calling her a bad name in the next.
Friends.
But there was nothing friendly in the sexy way he kept looking at her…like an ice cream treat on a hot day. With her free hand Emily tugged surreptitiously at her T-shirt, suddenly wishing it was bigger, or that she was wearing some safe, roomy maternity blouse. What was wrong with her? Nick had seen her in a lot less over the years. He’d even seen her in the raw when she was ten— the result of a prank by her obnoxious practical-joke-playing eldest brother.
“Nick,” she protested as he drew her down on the hospital bed. “I really don’t think this is the… ah…place.”
Nick. It sounded a little better now, he decided. He could get used to being called Nick, especially with that breathless way she had of talking. Lifting his arm, he traced the delicate lines of her face, trying to absorb everything as rapidly as possible. Tactile sensations. Physical response. Anything to get his memory back.
Emily’s skin was soft…he knew that. Like the finest silk. And her lips were moist and velvety. He’d bet they tasted every bit as good as they looked. She had a faintly stubborn line to her jaw, which contrasted adorably with her angelic sweetness.
This was awful.
He couldn’t remember being in love with his wife, but he’d immediately fallen into lust. His finger trailed down her throat to the first swell of her breasts, but he hesitated when she trembled.
No, maybe he shouldn’t touch her so intimately. Frustration edged along his nerves. Why couldn’t he remember? For heaven’s sake, he felt guilty for touching his own wife. He’d become a stranger. To her. To himself. He didn’t know the right touches, the right words, he didn’t even know if he was a total, unfeeling, rotten jerk.
“Emily?”
She didn’t meet his gaze. “Yes?”
“We’ okay, aren’t we? I mean, we get along okay, right?”
She smiled a little. “We’ve always been great friends. We kind of grew up together.”
Friends? That didn’t tell him very much. He bypassed the tempting curve of her breasts and rested his palm over the swell of her tummy. “When is the baby due?”
Emily swallowed hard. He could even see the muscles working in her throat. “In December,” she murmured.
“A Christmas baby. That’s nice.” With a small shrug to himself, he decided action was better than wondering and worrying. With a smooth, unhurried motion he drew her across his body.
Emily gasped, but didn’t fight him.
Grinning, he twisted until she rested on the pillow and he could arch over her, his back to the door to give them some privacy. It felt great, even though his abused muscles protested. Rebellion simmered in her blue eyes and a healthy flush of annoyance brightened her skin. Good. He didn’t want her to hide her emotions—he’d never remember a thing about their life if she didn’t act like herself around him.
“Mad at me, Angel?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Emily’s bottom lip pouted out, and he raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not sure, but it might be that not-so-angelic glare on your face.”
“I told you, I don’t have any nicknames. I’ve never been called an angel in my life.”
“I still like it…Angel.” Ignoring her muffled shriek of protest, he eased his fingers into the shiny thickness of her hair, concentrating on the texture of the cool silken strands. It occurred to him that he ought to be a little less confident—at least for someone whose memory resembled Swiss cheese—but he was enjoying himself too much.
“Let go of me.”
“Uh-uh. I want to kiss my wife.”
Emily gulped as he kissed her forehead. It wasn’t the first time Nick had touched her, she reminded herself. She would just pretend this was like any other platonic hug they’d shared. With this decision in mind, she closed her eyes and waited for the “kiss.”
His laugh was little more than a tremor of movement in his chest. “Going to take your medicine like a good girl?”
Her eyes flew open, flashing blue sparks. That was the old Nick. That was Nick Carleton playing one of his friendly I’m-almost-like-family jokes. Most of the time it wasn’t too bad, but this time he’d gone too far!
Chapter Two
Emily glowered. Some joke.
Amnesia? She’d give Nick worse than amnesia, she’d put him in traction!
“Why you arrogant wretch! I knew you were—”
Her furious diatribe was smothered by Nick’s mouth, hot and open over her own, possessive, his tongue invading her inner softness. On second thought, this wasn’t at all like the Nicholas Carleton she knew. Surely he wouldn’t go to this length for a gag…kissing her so passionately?
If he was fooling, it was an incredible acting job. Emily moaned, the assault on her senses threatening logical deduction.
No, he had to be fooling.
With that thought in mind, Emily drew up her knee to teach Mr. I’m Almost Like Family a lesson he wouldn’t quickly forget. It was then she realized she had proof of something Nick couldn’t fake, and certainly wouldn’t feel if he was just joking. He was leaning over her, pressing his weight along the side of her body. A sheet and blanket covered his hips, but they couldn’t disguise the bold, hard power of his arousal. Her heart skipped into triple time.
“Nick…?”
“Shhh.” His thumb traced her collarbone. “God, Emily. You smell so good…feel so good. I can’t wait until I get out of here. I must be the luckiest man in town. Why can’t I remember?”
Emily gulped, torn by the pain and frustration in his voice. Their friendship was too special to lose—he’d be horribly embarrassed when his memory came back. Imagine, passionately kissing the woman you’d always treated like a kid sister. And what about when she had to take him home from the hospital?
Home…as in a normal marriage with a shared bed.
The breath caught in her throat as Nick’s hand slid lower, carefully cupping her breast. Surprised response spun outward, clenching her abdomen.
“N…no!” She stuttered, pushing his fingers away and fumbling at the hospital bed railing. This was crazy. It was just shock and uncertainty making her respond to his touch. She couldn’t want to sleep with him, could she? Her best friend?
She had to get away, to think.
“Angel…Emily, stop it,” Nick protested, trying to halt her frantic motions as she hung over the side, searching for something to grab on to. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”
At that moment the railing dropped, and Emily slipped, falling toward the floor. Fear swamped all her other emotions.
No! The baby.
With a desperate lunge Nick caught her, the alarm in his face mirroring her own. He dragged her back onto the mattress, swearing a blue streak.
For several seconds Emily lay quietly, breathlessly listening to her heart thud and her husband curse. But when he reached the fifth “dammit all to hell” she’d had enough.
“Quiet!” She wiggled into a semiupright position. “Don’t you dare use that kind of language in front of my baby.”
“It’s my kid, too!”
The sound of laughter startled them both. They turned toward the door and saw a grinning Dr. Wescott. “Good catch, Nick. I see you’ getting back to normal.”
“I’m fine.” He crossed his arms and glared at Emily. “But it’s no wonder I can’t remember my name, my wife probably scared it out of me.”
“I did nothing of the sort. You fell off the roof.”
The doctor laughed again. “You both seem accident prone. I guess it’s a match made in heaven.”
“Thanks a lot,” Emily muttered.
At the moment she could cheerfully strangle Paige Wescott. She should have known better than to choose an old school chum for a doctor. Of course, no one could have predicted Nick would fall off the roof and develop a highly inconvenient case of memory loss.
She carefully brushed her hair from her face, ignoring Nick, who seemed to be handling amnesia a lot better than he deserved. The wretch.
“Are you all right, Angel?” he asked.
“Lord,” she muttered. “You must ask me that a dozen times a day.”
He scowled at her. “Of course I do. Remember me? The husband? Just because I can’t remember doesn’t mean I don’t have a stake in you, or the baby.”
Emily bit her lip, ashamed of the way she’d reacted. Nick wasn’t himself. He’d awakened without a memory, knowing only that he had a wife, without remembering the unusual circumstances of their marriage. Sheesh, what a mess.
“He’s right. I’d better check you over again, just to be sure,” Paige said, still standing at the open doorway with an amused expression on her face. “They’ll be coming to take Nick for more tests, anyway.”
“I feel fine, Doc,” Nick interjected.
“That’s good. But we’ll keep you here for a while, just to be sure.” The physician looked at Emily, still tangled with him on the bed. “Coming?”
“Coming,” Emily muttered. She carefully swung her feet to the floor and received an affectionate pat on her bottom from “the husband.” She gave him a fulminating glance. Amnesia or not, Nick had better watch his hands.
Grinning, Nick watched the two women leave, then tucked his hands behind his head and gazed out the hospital window.
Nicholas Carleton.
Nick.
He turned the name over and over in his mind, yet it didn’t seem any more familiar than it had before.
Nick. My name is Nicholas Carleton.
In a short period of time he’d pieced together several parts of his missing life. Most of it looked pretty good. Some of it he wasn’t so sure about. Let’s see….
Wife? Emily Carleton. Pregnant, saucy and delectable. A definite plus. She might not be an angel, but she got full points in every other category.
Career? Civil engineer, but on vacation. That wasn’t too bad, either.
Home? Presumably a house with a leaky roof—unless he’d been cleaning rain gutters and fell off that way. That made the house a question mark. But if he lived there with Emily it couldn’t be too awful. He already knew Emily could brighten up any place.
Character…?
Hmm. Frowning, he shifted uneasily. He didn’t like the astonished way his wife had responded to his compliments, or her belief he might be playing a practical joke. And what about the baby? She’d said, “Don’t you dare use that kind of language in front of my baby.”
Not our baby, but my baby.
What did that mean…if it meant anything? Were they having trouble in their marriage?
A needle of alarm stabbed through his already aching head. He shouldn’t have teased her so much. Deep down he realized he’d been hiding how terrible he felt inside— lost, alone, as though he was standing on the edge of a precipice with nothing but darkness around him. It had been stupid and insensitive, and had almost resulted in Emily getting hurt herself.
A wave of nausea rolled over him as he recalled the moment when she’d started to fall. He slumped deeper into the bed. The facts he’d gathered didn’t matter—he still didn’t know who he really was, or what kind of man he’d been. There was only one thing he was absolutely certain about…Emily loved and wanted their child.
Surely that meant she loved him a little, too.
Didn’t it?
“I’ll be fine,” Emily said, thanking the deputy sheriff as she got out of the cruiser.
“I’m sure Nick’ll get over this amnesia stuff real quick. Just call if you have any more problems.” Hank McAllister tipped his hat.
Emily sighed. Everyone had been so nice and helpful. It was a great hospital. The nurses had gotten her food, insisting she eat. Then Hank, an old high school pal of Nick and her brother, had come to take her home. There hadn’t been anyone else to call: most of her friends were on vacation, her folks had retired to Arizona, her sisters and younger brother lived out of state, and her real big brother was somewhere in Wyoming or Montana fighting forest fires. Or maybe Idaho.
Frazzled, she wandered into the living room and sank onto the couch.
So far she’d handled her pregnancy easily; no morning sickness, no particular aches and pains or hormonal swings. None of the emotional roller coaster rides her yuppie married-with-children friends had warned her about. She absolutely loved being pregnant. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
The soft tick-tock of the mantel clock was the only discernible sound in the house, that and the dripping water faucet Nick had planned to fix after finishing the roof.
Nick…. Emily curled into a ball and burst into tears.
“How did it happen?” she moaned into the cushions.
Everything had been going so perfectly. She was going to have a baby. She’d always wanted kids, and it seemed somehow perfect that Nick would be the father. Sure, getting used to the idea had taken a little while, then everything had fallen into place.
Their marriage hadn’t changed anything. She still took care of his mail and paid his bills when he was out of town. And he was out of town a lot. Nick consulted on projects all over the world. Whenever he did come home he’d cadge meals at her place and sheepishly hand her a bag of laundry in the bargain. Big difference getting married had made.
Now she had a husband with amnesia—an amorous husband with amnesia—who didn’t have any idea they were only friends. And the worst part was knowing how much she’d responded to him. Incredibly. Passionately. Melting like a chocolate bar in his hands. How could they go back to being just friends?
“Mrrooow!”
Opening her eyes, she found herself nose to nose with her cat. “Oh. Hi, GeeZee.” She sniffed.
A rough tongue lapped at the tears on her cheeks. She moved to give the enormous, black-and-white feline room by her side. His booming purr soothed her, and she cuddled him close. “We’ll have to rearrange the house a little. We have to make it look like Nick lives here,” she muttered. “Paige says we can’t upset him with the truth.”
Emily wiggled, hoping to get more comfortable so she could take a nap. GeeZee merowled and gave her a disgusted look, so she scratched his neck and tried to relax. An hour later she was still awake. Exhausted, but awake.
“Blast.”
According to the clock it was almost five in the afternoon. Nick had fallen off the roof less than eight hours before…it seemed like forever ago. Her life had changed a lot in those hours. Now she had to act like a dutiful, loving wife. Ick, dutiful. Except it wasn’t the dutiful part that bothered her the most.
GeeZee stretched luxuriously and bumped her with his forehead. She sighed. “You’ so big. You can’t sleep on the bed when Nick gets here. There won’t be enough room.”
For a full twenty seconds Emily froze, her words echoing in her ears. There won’t be enough room. She gulped and scrambled inelegantly off the couch.
“Arggh! I can’t believe I said that. Nick and I won’t be sleeping together. He doesn’t have his memory and he’s always been oversexed, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to fall into line like all his other women. No way. Not me. I’ll do laundry and meals, but the horizontal mambo—or whatever those bachelors call it—is out. Marriage or not.”
GeeZee stared at her without blinking, as though he thought a strange spirit had come and taken the place of his normally sensible human.
Emily stomped back and forth across the living room, gesturing wildly. “I’m going to make it clear to Nick. He’ll be grateful when he finally remembers. He doesn’t actually want to make love to me. It’s that old ‘glad I’m alive’ survival response. Primitive instinct. That’s all. It has nothing to do with me whatsoever.”
Having clearly decided this was the case, she looked at herself in the mirror above the fireplace and burst into tears again. “I’m fat. I’m pregnant with his baby and he doesn’t really want me because I’m fat.”
It took her ten minutes of crying, twenty minutes in the shower, and a whole lot of self-lecturing before she could even begin to think straight. And then she still had to get dressed for evening visiting hours at the hospital.
Emily toweled her wet hair vigorously. “Big deal,” she mumbled. “I’m fat because I’m pregnant. That’s a great reason to be fat. I’ll just wear a maternity dress so it’s really obvious I’m having a baby.”
Still dissatisfied, she looked at her reflection again. Wonderful. Nick was going to know she’d gone home and bawled her head off. But it was just those pesky hormones, finally showing up after over four and a half months of pregnancy.
Well…why not? She’d always been a late bloomer, why should her pregnancy be any different?
Clean, properly clothed, with her emotions firmly under control, Emily drove back to the hospital. Paige Wescott met her in the hallway, and she looked at the physician hopefully.
“He still doesn’t have his memory,” Paige warned.
“This is crazy. Somebody will slip and tell him the truth,” Emily declared. “We should tell him first”
“Oh? Who’s going to tell him? Just how many people know you had artificial insemination? Or that Nick isn’t something special in your life? Or that you don’t have a regular marriage?”
Emily blinked. “He must have told his friends.”
Paige clucked. “Nick is a man. I doubt he told anyone the details of your baby’s conception, especially his friends. Since it’s clear he’s the father, I suspect he’s letting everyone believe the obvious. What do you think?”
A vivid image of Nick’s embarrassed face rose before Emily’s eyes. He was a nice guy—with Neanderthal tendencies. Positively primeval. He’d no more discuss the intimate details of their trip to the gynecologist’s office, than he’d rob a bank.
But even more than that, Emily knew she hadn’t been entirely…well, candid herself. Crockett, Washington, was a small town, with its full share of affectionately wagging tongues. While she hadn’t exactly lied to anyone, she hadn’t really explained about the baby. Or Nick. She’d even taken his last name since she never planned to remarry and because it would be easier for their child.
“Well?” Paige prodded.
“All right,” she agreed reluctantly. “Except I can’t keep the pretense up forever. I’m no good at it. I feel so guilty about yelling at him and pushing him away. What if he never gets his memory back because of me? And he’s just going to die if he remembers. He’ll wake up and say ‘yuck, I kissed Emily. I knew her when she was a skinny eight-year-old with bubble gum in her braces.’”
Paige shook her head. “Hormones,” she complained. “Look, I’m not an expert on amnesia, but I do know Nick. And so do you. His personality is so close to the surface his memory block is transparent.”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“That means,” the doctor said patiently, “my instincts say you should treat him like you always would— argue, tease, whatever…except you don’t explain about your marriage. He latched on to the idea of being married like a drowning victim clutching a life preserver. Under the circumstances, I can’t say I blame him. Don’t worry, he’ll remember soon enough.”
“When is that going to happen?”
“It shouldn’t be long. I suspect this is a case of selective amnesia. His injuries were minor, so the memory block must be caused by some emotional conflict.”
Emily blinked again. Nick Carleton emotionally conflicted? Interesting. Not overly helpful, but interesting.
“You’ the only anchor he’s got right now,” Paige said seriously. “You’ve been friends since childhood. I doubt there’s anyone as close to him. The treatment in these cases is fairly simple—get him into familiar surroundings, remind him of his life, and his memory should return. From what you’ve said, he spends more time at your house than he ever does at that apartment in the city.”
“But he thinks we’…we’ really involved. I mean, uh, Nick has never kissed me like that before,” Emily said, flustered.
“From what I saw, it’s about time he did.” With that parting shot Paige patted her arm and headed toward the nurse’s station.
“God save me from matchmakers,” Emily muttered. She pushed open the door of Nick’s room with a nervous smile, smoothing the light cotton skirt of her dress.
Nick rose from his chair, relieved to see Emily instead of another doctor or lab technician, who would just be annoyed because he’d gotten out of bed. Although… he’d be happy to see her no matter what. “Hi, Angel. I wasn’t sure if you’d come back tonight”
“Of course I’d come back.” She took a few steps into the room. “How’s your head?”
“Empty,” he said flatly. “It’s like there’s this enormous wall in my mind and I can’t see over it.”
“I’m sorry.”
He winced. Great, he had to act like a bear with a sore paw. This was his wife, not a stranger. He was lucky to have Emily, it would have been far worse waking up without anybody to care about him. Which reminded him…
“Angel, what about my family? If you haven’t called them yet, maybe you should wait. I’m sure I’ll get my memory back soon, so there’s no need to upset them, too.”
A look of genuine dismay flashed into her eyes, and he leaned forward abruptly.
Yikes. His abused head didn’t appreciate the move ment, but it seemed more important to understand why Emily might be upset. Even worse…he could tell she’d been crying. “Angel? What’s wrong?”