she knew the other side opened to the water.
“The length of time shouldn’t matter. He’s a child, my child—” she paused, brushing her fingers across the top of an impossibly small and soft hand “—our child. That’s life changing. A minute. An hour. A couple of hours. That should be burned in here.” She tapped the front of her head.
“Even if your marriage wasn’t?” he asked wryly.
Contrition nipped. This had to be tough for him, too. “I’m sorry. This can’t be easy for you, either.”
“You’re alive and awake, more than I ever expected to have again.” He said the emotional words with a harsh rasp as he guided the car along the palm tree–lined road. “I can deal with the rest.”
“You make me feel as if I shouldn’t be frustrated.”
“Give yourself time.” He kept both hands on the wheel, the late-day sunshine glinting off his Patek Philippe wristwatch. “You’ve been through a lot.”
How did she know the brand of his watch but not know if the band on his ring finger had an inscription? But then, she remembered studying art history when she’d got her bachelor’s degree. Recalled a love of finely made things and beautiful objects. Maybe that was why the watch resonated and the ring...nothing.
“What about you? What have you been through this past month? It must have been horrible, with a child in surgery and a wife in a coma.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice clipped. “I’m fine now.”
Her mouth twitched with amusement as the car braked at a stop sign wrapped in garland. “Are you one of those men who’s too tough to be vulnerable?”
His eyes met hers solemnly in the mirror. “I’m a man who thought he’d lost everything.”
And just that fast, she felt her terrified heart melt a little for this stranger husband of hers. “You still have, in a way,” she said sympathetically, “because of me and how I’ve lost any sense of us and our memories.”
At the deserted intersection, he twisted to look over the seat at her, his elbow resting along the back and tugging his button-down shirt across his muscular chest. “You and our son are alive. That truly is what’s most important to me.”
There had been tension between them since she’d woken up in the hospital. He still held all the answers she couldn’t access. But now, with the sincerity shining in his eyes, she wanted to hug him, ached to wrap her arms around him and have him do the same to her. Most of all, to have that feel familiar. She stretched a hand out to touch his elbow lightly—
A car honked behind them and she jerked her hand back. What was she thinking? Except for the few things he’d told her, she knew nothing about him or her or what kind of life they’d built together. Or what kind of future they might have because these events had changed them. Undoubtedly.
However for Thomas, she and Porter had to try for a level of peace between them. Could the Christmas spirit work a miracle for her family?
Shifting nervously in her seat, Alaina toyed with the reindeer baby rattle, gathering up her rapidly fraying nerve. “May I ask you questions about the past?”
“Why didn’t you question more before?” He kept his eyes on the road this time.
In some ways maybe that made this conversation easier.
“Because...I was scared you wouldn’t answer.”
“What’s changed?”
“We’re not in the hospital. There are no doctors who make me do all the work thinking, insisting I should only remember what I’m ready to know. They kept asking me not to push to remember, but that’s causing me even more stress, wondering.” She needed to know. How could she be a real wife to Porter and a mother to Thomas if she didn’t even know who she was or how they’d become a family?
“You trust me to answer truthfully?” He glanced back at her, his eyes darkening.
“What do you have to gain by lying?”
Now wasn’t that a loaded question? One that called for total trust in a man she barely knew. But she had no other choice, not if she wanted to reconnect as a family. “How did we meet?”
“My firm was handling building an addition to a museum where you worked. You saw me flex my muscles and here we are.”
He sure did have muscles, and if they’d enticed her half as much then as they did now she could see how he would have caught her attention. His humor made him even more appealing. “You’re funny, after all, Porter.”
“You think I don’t have a sense of humor? You’ve wounded my ego.”
“There hasn’t been a lot of room for levity this week.” She’d been so damn scared in the hospital. Walking the halls at night when she couldn’t sleep. Obsessively checking on the baby and praying she would remember something, anything from the past five years.
Most of all, wondering about the mysterious, handsome man who’d spent hours with her each day.
“True enough. Hopefully we can fix that. We have the whole holiday season to relax, settle our child and get to know each other again.” Through the rearview mirror, he held her eyes with a determined intensity. “Because, make no mistake, I intend to remind you of all the reasons we fell in love in the first place.”
His words made something go hot inside her, a mixture of desire and confusion and, yes, nerves. She swallowed hard. It didn’t help. But even if she didn’t remember it, this was her life. There was no choice but to push on. To regain her memories and her life.
And figure out just what this man—her husband—meant to her. Not just in the past. But now.
* * *
Porter Rutger had been through hell.
But for the first time in a long time he saw a way to climb back out.
His hands clenched the steering wheel as he drove his wife and son home from the hospital. The past month—worrying about how Thomas would recover from his first surgery for his clubfoot, wondering about possible hidden effects of the accident on the baby...
And all the while his wife had been in a coma.
Porter’s jaw flexed as he studied the familiar beach road leading to the vacation home they’d chosen after their third in vitro failed. Before they’d adopted Thomas, their marriage had showed signs of fraying from years of struggling with the stresses of infertility.
He and Alaina had been in hell for a long time, even before the accident. He’d thought they’d hit rock bottom when they’d contacted a divorce attorney. They’d been so close to signing the divorce papers when the call came about a baby to adopt. A special-needs baby, difficult to place, an infant who required surgeries and years of physical therapy. While foster care would have provided the basics, the search for a home would have to start all over again if they backed out, leaving the baby adrift in the system.
They hadn’t made the decision to adopt on a whim. They’d
