be sorry. It was an accident,” he said firmly. “The important thing now is that you’re awake. How are you? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I haven’t seen Grace. Is she okay?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “You’ll get to see her soon. But tell me more about how you are. What did you dream?”
“Really, just a bunch of images, you know? Things we did.” She grinned at him. “Where we did them.”
“Oh.” His cheeks shot a deep red. “Those were good things. And good places.”
She leaned toward him. He did look different from how she’d seen him in her dreams. Had he always been this thin? She couldn’t be sure.
Well, that didn’t matter. She was awake and he was here. Soon, they’d get Grace. That was all that counted right now. It wasn’t that she wanted to spend more time in bed—there’d been enough of that—but if she remembered right, they could do just fine without a bed. “When you talk to the doctor, ask how long before I can do certain things, okay?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.
“Sure.” He squeezed her hands and gave her another tight smile. Then, finally, he leaned over and did what she’d been waiting for—he kissed her.
Except it was a small kiss, a mere brushing of his lips against hers. Not a passionate, soul-consuming kiss. Not the kiss she’d dreamed about.
Why not?
“I’m going to go check on Grace,” Jake said when the too-short kiss was over. “Your sister has her.”
“Yes, Lark. Because you weren’t here?” She shook her head, which was not the best idea she’d ever had. Her head began to hurt. “I missed something, didn’t I? You had a job in New York, right?”
“New York?” He looked at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. Or maybe a third one. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a haircut—a good one—right about now. She wanted him to look at her with the love he’d always had in his eyes. “I did have a job there.”
Oh, good—she’d gotten that part right. Suddenly, she was tired—the excitement of Jake’s arrival had worn off, apparently. She yawned and tried to hide it behind her hand, but she didn’t do a very good job. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m just so tired of being asleep.”
Finally, Jake looked at her with the tenderness she recognized. “Well, I’m here now. I’ll talk to the doctor and do what I need to in order to get you set up.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “You rest up. Grace needs you to get better.”
“Okay,” she agreed, having trouble keeping her eyes open. “But you’ll come back for me, right?”
There was another one of those long pauses as he stared at her. “I will always come back for you, Skye.” He squeezed her hand. “Now get some rest. I’ll see you soon. I promise.”
“Good,” she told him as she squeezed back. Then his warmth was away from her.
Jake was here, she thought as she drifted. He was going to get Grace. And he’d come back for her.
Everything was going to be perfect.
“What’s wrong with her?”
Both the doctor and his research assistant looked at Jake with raised eyebrows. Okay, maybe that had been a little gruff—but seriously?
She was different. Or rather, she was the same as she’d once been—but not the same woman she’d been the last time he’d seen her. Skye hadn’t looked at him with that kind of adoration in a long time. And when was the last time she’d wanted sex? When was the last time she’d wanted him?
Jake had only taken one job in New York. And that had been two years ago. It’d been a small job, but it’d led to bigger and better things.
Two years ago. That’d been the last time things had been good between them. After Jake had started getting those bigger and better jobs, things had begun to fall apart.
“Skye had a traumatic brain injury,” the doctor explained. “I’m her surgeon. Dr. Lucas Wakefield,” he added, sticking out his hand.
Jake shook it. “But what does that mean?”
“It means that, as near as we can tell, Skye was driving into Royal when the tornado hit. We suspect her car was picked up and tossed around.”
“And?” Jake demanded. Julie’s eyebrows went up again, but Jake was past caring.
Skye had driven into a damn tornado. Why? That wasn’t like her. She was more careful than that. She knew how Texas weather could be. She would have taken shelter or gotten off the road or something.
“Think of it as a concussion—only the most extreme kind. We kept her under for a few months to allow her brain to heal and it took her some time to wake up after we cut back on the drugs we were using to induce the coma. Her memory is...compromised.”
“And what does that mean?” Jake demanded. What was it going to take to get a straight answer out of the man?
“She’s got what the layperson might call amnesia,” Dr. Wakefield explained. “She doesn’t seem to have the last two years, although her long-term memory is mostly intact. Anything that happened right before the accident is probably gone for good.”
For the second time that day, Jake had to lean on something to keep his legs underneath him. “Will she—will she get those two years back?” Would she remember how things had broken between them? Would she remember the fight? The divorce papers?
When he’d seen her just now, she hadn’t had her ring on. She hadn’t had her earrings in, either—the big diamond studs he’d bought her just as things had started to go south on them. He wondered where they were—lost in the storm or left behind on purpose?
“Hard to say. The brain is an amazing organ. For now, we recommend keeping any shocks to the system to a bare minimum. Obviously, she knows about your daughter.”
Grace. His daughter, Grace.
“But,” Dr. Wakefield went on as if Jake weren’t on the verge of collapse, “if there were...other surprises, I’d keep those close to the vest.”
“You want me to, what—lie to her?”
Julie said, “Not lie, no. Think of it as glossing over. She’s going to be confused for some time. Too much too soon would be a severe shock to her system. We don’t want her to have a setback.”
Jake shook his head, hoping to get the world to stop spinning. None of this was right. None of it.
Skye didn’t remember how they’d broken up. Why they’d broken up.
And he couldn’t tell her.
God,
