Mills & Boon Introduces: What Lies Beneath / Soldier, Father, Husband? / The Seven-Day Target
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At least that was the original idea. Since then…the situation had gotten confusing. This was why Alex was here. He could help him sort things out before he made it worse.
“Have you told her yet? Or should I say again?”
“No, I haven’t. I think once she’s discharged, we’ll talk. We’re rarely alone at the hospital, and I don’t want her parents getting involved.”
“I take it she isn’t back to being the frigid shrew we all know and love?”
Will shook his head. Part of him wished she was. Then he could walk away without a pang of guilt after her recovery. But she was an entirely different woman since the accident. He’d had a hard time adjusting to the changes in her, always waiting for Cynthia to start barking orders or criticize the hospital staff. But she never did. He made a point of visiting her every day, but despite how hard he fought it, Will found he enjoyed the visits more and more. “It’s like she’s been abducted by aliens and replaced with a pod person.”
“I have to admit she was quite pleasant when I came by the other day.” Alex put a bit of filet mignon in his mouth.
“Yeah, I know. Every time I visit her, I just sit back and watch in disbelief as she asks people how they are and thanks everyone for visiting or bringing her things. She’s sweet, thoughtful, funny…and absolutely nothing like the woman who left for Chicago.”
Alex leaned in, his brow furrowed. “You’re smiling when you talk about her. Things really have changed. You like her,” he accused.
“What is this, prep school again? Yes, she is a more pleasant person and I enjoy being around her in a way I never have before. But the doctors say her amnesia is probably temporary. In the blink of an eye, she could be back to normal. I refuse to get reinvested only to end up where I started.”
“Probably temporary can mean possibly permanent. Maybe she’ll stay this way.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Will said with a shake of his head. It was just like Alex to encourage him to make a risky move. “She may not remember what she did, but I do. I can never trust her again, and that means we’re through.”
“Or this could be your second chance. If she really is a different person, treat her like one. Don’t hold a past she doesn’t even remember against her. You could miss out on something great.”
His friend turned his attention back to his steak, leaving Will alone with his thoughts. Alex said the words he’d been afraid to let himself even think. Being with Cynthia was like meeting a woman for the first time. He found himself rushing from the office to visit her or thinking about how she was while he needed to concentrate on the front page flash for the Observer. And today…he’d felt an undeniable sizzle of awareness when they’d touched. He’d never had that intense a reaction to her before. He didn’t know if it was the fright of nearly losing her for good or her personality change, but there was a part of him that wanted to take Alex’s advice.
Of course, Alex didn’t keep a woman long enough for the relationship to sour. It might not seem like it now, but the old Cynthia was still lurking inside her. That woman was miserable and unfaithful and stomped on his feelings with her expensive stiletto heels. Will had broken it off with her, and he had no doubt she’d be back before long. He wasn’t going to lose his heart, freedom or any more years of his life to this relationship.
The doctors said she could probably go home soon. He was certain Pauline and George would want her back at their estate, but Will was going to insist she return to their penthouse so he could care for her. Having her at home was the natural choice. It was closer to the doctor, and being around her own things would be good for her.
And if it jogged her memory and she went back to normal? It would save him the trouble of breaking up with her a second time.
“Would you like to trade seats?”
The words floated in her brain, her dreams mixing reality and fantasy with a dash of pain medication to really confuse things.
“My name is Cynthia Dempsey.”
The words made her frown even in her sleep. Cynthia Dempsey. She wished they would stop calling her that. But she also didn’t know what she’d rather have people call her. If she wasn’t Cynthia Dempsey, shouldn’t she know who she really was?
And she did. The name was on the tip of her tongue.
The boom of an engine bursting into flames dashed the name from her mind. Then there was only the horrible, sickening feeling of falling from the sky.
“No!”
She shot up in bed, hurting about a half dozen parts of her body in the process. Her heart was racing, her breath quick in her throat. The nearby bed monitor started beeping, and before she could gather her composure, one of the night shift nurses came in.
“How are we, Miss Dempsey?”
“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, the confusion of sleep removing the buffer that edited what she shouldn’t say.
“Okay. Cynthia. Are you all right?”
She saw it was her favorite nurse, Gwen, when she reached over and turned on the small light above her bed. Gwen was a tiny Southern girl with naturally curly ash-blond hair and a positive but no-nonsense attitude about life. She could also draw blood without pain, so that instantly put her at the top of Cynthia’s list.
“Yes.” She wiped her sleepy eyes with her good hand. “I just had a bad dream. I’m sorry for snarling at you like that.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty li’l head about it,” Gwen said, her thick Tennessee accent curling her words. She turned off the alarm and checked her IV fluids. “A lot of trauma patients have nightmares. Do you want something to help you sleep?”
“No, I’m tired of…not feeling like myself. Although I’m beginning to wonder if that has anything to do with the medication.”
Gwen sat at the edge of the bed and patted her knee. “You had some pretty severe head trauma, honey. It’s possible you might never feel exactly like you used to. Or that you won’t know when you do. Just make the most of how and what you feel like, now.”
Cynthia decided to take advantage of the only person she could really talk to about this. Will wouldn’t understand. It would just upset Pauline. Her mother spent every afternoon with her at the hospital, showing her pictures, telling stories and trying to unlock her memory. Saying she didn’t feel like herself would just be an insult to Pauline’s hard work.
“It feels all wrong. The people. The way they treat me. I mean, look at this.” She slipped her arm out of the sling and extended her pale pink cast to show off her engagement ring.
“That’s lovely,” Gwen said politely, although her dark brown eyes had grown twice their size upon seeing the massive diamond.
“Don’t. We both know this could feed a third-world country for a year.”
“Probably,” she conceded.
“This doesn’t feel like me. I don’t feel like some snobby uptown girl that went to private school and got everything she ever wanted. I feel like a fish out of water, and I shouldn’t. If this is my life, why do I feel so out of touch with it? How can I be who I am when I don’t know who I was?”
“Honey, this is a little deep for a three o’clock in the morning conversation. But here’s some unsolicited advice from a Tennessee fish in Manhattan waters. I’d stop worrying about who you were and just be yourself. You’ll go crazy trying to figure out what you should do and how you should act.”
“How do I do that?”
“For a start, stop fighting it. When you walk out of this room to start your new life, embrace being Cynthia Dempsey. Then, just do what you feel. If the new Cynthia would rather go to a Knicks game than the symphony, that’s okay. If you’ve lost your taste for caviar and expensive wine, eat a cheeseburger and drink a beer. Only you know who you want to be now. Don’t let anyone change that.”
“Thank you, Gwen.” She leaned forward and embraced the nurse who felt like her only real friend in her new life. “I’m being discharged tomorrow. Will is taking me back to our apartment. I have no idea what’s in store for me there, but when I’m in the mood for burgers and beer, can I call you?”
Gwen smiled wide. “Absolutely.” She wrote her cell phone number in the small notebook Cynthia had been using to keep notes. “And don’t worry,” she added. “I can’t imagine any future with Will Taylor in it being bad.”
Cynthia nodded and returned her reassuring grin. She just hoped Gwen was right.
Two
Will watched Cynthia walk through their apartment as if she were taking a tour of the Met. He had to admit the place felt like a museum sometimes with all the glass, marble and leather. It wasn’t what he would’ve chosen, but everything served its designated function, so he didn’t really care.
She examined each room, admiring the artwork, running her fingers over the fabrics and seeming visibly pleased with what she saw. She should like it, he mused. She and her godawful decorator picked it all out.
Cynthia moved slowly, the stiffness of her muscles slowing her down. The doctors had changed the cast on her arm to a brace so she could remove it to shower for the last few weeks until it was fully healed. All the bandages and stitches were gone now and only the faintest of discoloration was visible on her face and body. If not for the slight limp and the brace, you might never know what kind of trauma she’d undergone.
Pauline had a hairstylist come to the hospital to do her hair before she was discharged. The hospital staff had to trim a good bit of the length off as it was singed from the fire, but the stylist turned their chop work into a chic, straight style that fell right at her shoulders. It was an attractive change, and he found himself admiring it as the town car brought them home. Her face looked so much better, and the hairstyle accented it nicely. A new style for the new woman in his life.
There was a thought that would bring him nothing but trouble.
Will turned and found Cynthia staring at the large engagement portrait they had hanging in the living room. Damn. He’d gone through the apartment and put away all her pictures as Pauline had asked, but he had to miss the giant one on the wall. As far as he knew, she hadn’t seen any pictures of herself from before the accident. But now that she had, he expected her to have Dr. Takashi on the phone in an instant, threatening him with malpractice. Personally, he thought the doctor had done a great job even if she didn’t look exactly the same.
But nothing happened. She stood silently studying it for a moment, and then she continued to the back of the apartment. The chime of his phone distracted him with an email from work, and he heard her shout from down the hall as he read it.
“This bathroom is huge! Is this mine?”
“Does it have a sunken whirlpool tub?”
“No.”
“Then no,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s just the guest bath. Ours is off the master bedroom.” And not three weeks before the crash, she’d complained that their bathroom was too small. He’d asked if she was throwing a cocktail party in there, and she’d scowled.
Clipping his phone to his belt, Will followed her to see if she’d gotten lost somewhere. He found her standing in her closet, her eyes glazed over at the selection in front of her. After a moment, she reached out and started flipping through the neatly hung outfits.
“Dior. Donna Karan. Kate Spade. Are these…mine?”
“Every bit. You moved my stuff out of the closet six months ago to make room for your ever-expanding shoe collection.”
At that, she turned to face the wall of shoes behind her as though she hadn’t noticed it before. She whipped open a box of Christian Louboutins and stepped out of the loafers she’d worn home. The black patent-leather pump with the red sole slipped on without hesitation. “They’re a little too big,” she said.
That was odd. “Well, if your feet shrunk in the accident somehow, I’m sure you’ll have fun replacing all of these with your new size.”
She shot him a look of pure disbelief as she slid on the other shoe. She was a little unsteady on the five-inch heels at first, reaching out with her good arm to brace herself, then a wide grin spread across her face. Maybe now the bedazzled leather contraptions would be appreciated.
“I’m sure an insert would do the trick. I wouldn’t dare waste all these.” She turned back to the clothes, flipping through a few dresses he remembered her wearing at one society event or another. “Why is it that I recognize all these designers and understand their importance, but my own mother is a stranger?”
That was a good question. He had no idea how amnesia worked. Will ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “Maybe your brain just remembers what was most important to you.”
Cynthia stopped in that moment and turned to him. The look of wonder faded from her face. “Did I really prefer shoes over my own family?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not the person you confided in.”
She slipped out of the shoes, placed them gently into their box and returned them to the shelf. No longer seeming to enjoy her closet, Cynthia brushed past Will on her way into the bedroom and disappeared down the hall.
He followed her out and found her sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the hideous modern art piece hanging over the dining-room table. “Are you all right?”
She nodded stiffly, but he didn’t believe her. “I feel like everyone is tiptoeing around me. That there’s an elephant in the room that everyone can see but me. If I ask you some questions, would you answer them for me? Honestly?”
He frowned but agreed before sitting on the couch beside her. They needed to talk, and there was no sense in putting it off.
“Are you and I in love?”
She certainly didn’t hold back, so he opted to do the same. “No.” Candy-coating the truth wouldn’t help. She needed to know.
“Then why are we engaged?” Her wide green eyes looked a touch disillusioned. “We’re not.”
“But.” Cynthia started, looking down at her ring.
“We were in love a long time ago,” Will explained. “Our families were old friends, and we dated through college. I proposed two years ago, and then you changed and we grew apart. Your family doesn’t know yet, but I broke off our engagement right before you left for your trip.”
“Why?”
“You were having an affair. The benefits of staying with you were outweighed by the betrayal.”
“Benefits? That sounds like an awfully cold way to talk about it.”
“It’s the truth. We didn’t have a relationship left, really. Your father and I were collaborating on a project that would’ve been extremely lucrative for both our companies. Your father prefers to work with family, so I was trying to see it through, hoping we’d weather the rough patch. When I found out you’d been having an affair for quite some time, there was no choice left. Even if the project fell through, the wedding was off. I told you I’d be out of here by the end of October. Plans obviously changed after the accident.”
“You’re staying?” She looked up at him with hopeful eyes that gripped at his heart. Somehow it seemed wrong to punish her for what felt like someone else’s sins.
“No. I’ll be here until you’re well. Then we will announce the breakup and I’ll move out as planned.”
Cynthia nodded in understanding, but he thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes before she looked away. “I must’ve been a horrible person. Was I always that way? You couldn’t have loved me if I was.”
“I liked the woman you were when we met. I wasn’t fond of the woman you became after college.”
She swallowed hard and looked down at the hands she had folded in her lap. She said she wanted the truth and she was getting it, even if it was hard to hear. “Was I nice to anyone?”
“Your friends and family, for the most part. You spoiled your little sister. But you had a short fuse if someone upset you.”
“Am I anything like that now?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “You’re quite different since the accident.”
“But…?”
“But, I wonder how long it will last. The doctor says the memory loss is temporary and anything could trigger it all to come back. At any moment, the woman sitting in front of me could disappear.”
“And you don’t want that to happen, do you?”
The face of his fiancée, so familiar, yet so different, looked at him. Her green eyes were pleading with him, and he noticed golden flecks in them he’d never seen before. It was beautiful the way the colors swirled together, pulling him in. It made him want to keep looking, to find details he’d missed before. How long had he been with Cynthia but never really knew her? It made him wonder if he ever actually loved her or just the idea of them together. The smartest, most beautiful girl at Yale and the captain of the polo team. Both from wealthy families that ran in the Manhattan society circles. It was a match made in heaven.
But this was completely different. He wanted to know the woman sitting beside him. He wanted to help her explore the world and learn who she was and who she wanted to be. And he shouldn’t. He should tell her it didn’t matter if she got her memory back. But that wasn’t true, and she asked for honesty. “No, I don’t want that.”
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “there’s a part of me missing, and that bothers me. But from what I’ve heard, I think maybe it’s better this way. Better if I don’t remember and just start fresh.”
Her words resonated with him. Alex had said this could be a second chance for their relationship. But could he offer it? This woman had betrayed him, abused his trust and threw away what they had together. Did the fact that she didn’t remember doing any of it make a difference? He wasn’t sure. “You always have a choice.”
Cynthia’s brow furrowed, a line deepening between her eyebrows in concern. Her last dose of Botox must’ve worn off during her hospital stay. It was refreshing to see her express real emotions, even if it cost her a few wrinkles over time. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“At any moment your memory could come back. When that happens, you always have the choice of continuing to be the person you want to be instead of going back to your old ways. You can make a fresh start.”
She nodded, continuing to watch her hands and seemingly building up the courage to ask more questions. “I know you didn’t like me, but were you at least physically attracted to me before the accident?”
“You were a beautiful woman.”
“You’re dodging the question,” she said, her gaze meeting his. Her irritation brought a red blush to her cheeks that chased away some of the yellow discoloration from her bruises. She was so full of emotion now. Her skin flushed with anger and embarrassment, her eyes teared up with confusion and sadness. It was such a welcome change from the ice princess he knew.
It made him wonder what she would be like to make love to. Will’s groin tightened, and he pushed the thought out of his mind. He was leaving, and he’d never find out the answer to that question, so it was better he didn’t think about it. “I’m not. You were beautiful. Every guy at Yale wanted you, including me.”
“That picture in the hall…”
“Our engagement portrait?”
“Yes. I don’t look much like that now. I doubt I ever will again.” There was another new expression on her face, a vulnerability that Will wasn’t certain he’d ever seen before. Cynthia was many things, but she rarely showed weakness. The woman sitting beside him had a fragility about her that made him want to comfort her. He’d never felt that urge before. And he certainly shouldn’t feel that way about Cynthia, of all people.
Unable to fight the need, he reached out and ran a thumb over her cheek. The swelling was almost entirely gone now. “Before, you were like a statue in a museum. Perfect, but cold.” The tips of his fingers tingled as they glided over her soft, ivory skin. “I think flaws give character, and you’re much prettier now. On the inside, too.”
Cynthia brought her hand up to cover his where it rested on her cheek. “Thank you for saying that, even if it isn’t true.” Wrapping her fingers around his hand, she pulled it down into her lap, where she held it tightly. “I don’t know everything I did to you, but I can only imagine. I’m sorry. Do you think you could ever forgive me for the things I did in the past?”
Tears gathered in Cynthia’s eyes, and it made his chest ache to see her upset. The way she clutched his hand was like a silent plea. The guilt of crimes she couldn’t remember was eating her up. She wasn’t asking him to love her again. Or to stay. Just to forgive her.
Seeing her like this, spending time with her the past few weeks, had roused new and different feelings for her. Feelings that if left unchecked could lead him to getting hurt again. He couldn’t allow that, even if every part of his body urged him to take the chance. But maybe he could offer her absolution. And then, in time, perhaps more.
“Maybe what we both need is a clean slate. To put everything behind us and start over.”
Cynthia’s eyes widened in surprise. “Start over?”
“Yes. Both of us just need to let go of the past and move forward. You can stop worrying about what you’ve done and who you were and just focus on what you want for your future. And maybe I can stop punishing us both for things we can’t change.”
“What does that mean for you and me?”
That was a good question. One he wasn’t really ready to answer, but he’d do the best he could. “It means we start over, too. We’re strangers, really. We have no reason to trust each other, much less love one another. What, if anything, happens between us will take time to determine.”
“And what about this?” Cynthia held up her hand, her large engagement ring on display.
“Keep wearing it for now. This is our business. We don’t need anyone offering their two cents, especially our families. This is a decision we have to make ourselves.”
Forgiving her was the right thing to do. Cynthia nodded, a faint smile curving the corners of her full, pouty lips. Her eyes were devoid of tears now and lit with the optimistic excitement of new opportunities. After weeks of seeing her so battered and beaten down, she was almost glowing. She did truly look beautiful, regardless of what she thought. So beautiful that he was filled with the undeniable urge to kiss the smile from her lips.
He leaned in, pressing his mouth gently against hers. It was little more than a flutter or brush across her abused skin. A silent reassurance that things would be okay even if it didn’t work out between them.
At least that was the idea. In an instant, his whole body responded to the touch of her, and he knew the reaction at the hospital had not been a fluke. He’d felt a surge there but had convinced himself he’d just gone too long without sex. Maybe that was still the case, but every nerve ending urged him to cup her face and drink her in. But he didn’t dare. For one thing, he didn’t want to risk hurting her, since she wasn’t fully healed. And for another, it was the first step down a rabbit hole he’d be unable to crawl back out of.
“Think about what you want your life to be. And what you want us to be,” he whispered against her mouth. Then he pulled away before he changed his mind and did something he’d regret.
Cynthia didn’t feel beautiful. She didn’t care what Will said. That kiss was likely just out of pity. To make her feel better for realizing she’d been a miserable, beautiful woman once and a sweet, broken woman now. She could tell he was uncomfortable about it. His cell phone rang, and he immediately took the opportunity to disappear into what she supposed was his home office. She was left to her own devices to make herself comfortable and get used to her new, old home.
The problem was that it didn’t feel much like home. The whole space had an institutional quality about it. She appreciated the clean lines and indulgent fabrics, but it was too modern for her taste. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture that called to her to come and snuggle into it. The couch was firm, cold leather. The chairs were wood or metal without much padding. After poking around, she settled into the bedroom to watch television. The large, luxurious bed was perfectly comfy and the ideal place to lose herself in some mindless entertainment.