waited. She would tell him, talk to him, share her innermost thoughts with him.
“I need my clothes.” She pushed against his chest again, sat up, then grabbed a fistful of the rose-stained sheet and pulled it around herself. “I need my clothes.”
That kiss had been a start. She remembered something. She was just hungover. Some juice and water, some food—everything would be okay, just as he’d said.
“I think you need food,” he said.
“I need my clothes.”
He’d heard that tone of voice from her before, flat and uncompromising. It was how she spoke about her first marriage. About her ex-husband. Now she was using it with him.
He forced himself to smile. “Your suitcase is still in your car. You ran up here with nothing but the dress you had on. And me. We were all we needed.”
She seemed embarrassed by that. When he stood, she was definitely embarrassed, blushing and dropping her gaze.
He turned away from her. He picked up a silver platter from among the decorative roses he’d ordered as part of her first breakfast as his wife. “Food. How about some bacon?”
“How about a towel?” She held out the plush towel while keeping her face turned away.
First she made love to him, now she couldn’t look at him? No—first she’d stood in a wedding chapel and told everyone that he was everything to her, and now she couldn’t look at him.
Tom knew that routine. Dad putting a proud arm around his shoulders, introducing him as his son to other men. Dad refusing to even look at him after Tom had lost the hundred-meter dash. Dad driving away from the track, forcing Tom to run home, unwanted. Dad telling him he ought to thank him for the extra conditioning that he’d so clearly required. Thanks, Dad, he’d said sarcastically.
Tom tossed the platter back onto the table. Helen had pulled that towel off him, and now she needed to avert her eyes? He grabbed the towel out of her hand and retied it around his waist, sarcastically, if one could make a movement sarcastic. “Better?”
Helen’s face crumpled, just crumpled into tears, and the old wall that had so quickly gone up around his heart crumbled. She bowed her head.
Tom dropped to one knee by the sofa and ducked his head a little, trying to see her face. “I’m sorry. This is a rough way to start our first day. But I’m here with you, and you’re with me, and we’ll get through it. Some coffee, some food, a shower. You’ll feel better, and you’ll remember, dream girl, you’ll remember.”
Her head snapped up and she gasped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Dream girl...” She remembered. He could see it in her face for one shining second.
Then it was gone.
Helen stood, clutching her sheet, and backed away from him. “I’m not your dream girl. I’m not anyone’s dream girl. I’m very sorry, but I don’t know you. You’re a stranger to me.”
Tom dragged himself to his feet, as if every inch of his six-foot-two frame was made of lead.
Helen took another step back. “I realize last night...last night must have been different than this, but please believe me, I don’t remember.”
Tom tightened the knot on his towel, but it didn’t matter. Nothing he did was going to make her treat him as anything other than a stranger.
She held her palm up like a police officer telling him to stop. “I need my clothes, and I need to leave.”
He held both hands up, an innocent man who wasn’t putting up any fight.
She kept backing toward the bedroom. Not a cop, then. More like a beautiful princess retreating into her fortress. “Do you know what time it is? Is it noon?”
“Nearly two o’clock.” He dropped his hands.
She looked stunned for one second, then she started gathering up the trailing sheet quickly. “I have to go. I have to be somewhere by noon tomorrow—”
“I know. Fort Hood.”
Surprise made her hesitate for a moment.
My God, she really remembers nothing, nothing we said, nothing we planned.
It hurt.
Pain was an old enemy. Tom had learned to deal with it before he’d learned to drive a car. Thanks, Dad. Helen wasn’t locked in a fortress—his heart was. It had been for a long time, untouchable, invulnerable.
Until Vegas.
Until Helen Pallas. She was the one person who’d found her way to his side of the wall. She’d wanted to stay there, forever, the two of them safe and happy together, so certain they’d never feel pain in their little world for two that he’d let the wall disintegrate. With Helen by his side, he didn’t need to be on guard. Hopes wouldn’t get dashed. Love would never be withheld in chilling silence.
Please remember. “I was here this weekend because I’d flown in for a friend’s wedding. Vegas was the closest airport to the resort they married at, across the state line, in Utah. Then I came back to Vegas, and I saw you. Everything changed. We decided I’d cancel my return ticket and drive with you to Fort Hood instead.” Please remember.
She took another step back. “That’s crazy. This isn’t some kind of honeymoon road trip. I’ve got orders to report to Fort Hood. I’m an army officer.”
“I know you are, Helen.”
Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise. She clutched the sheet more tightly to her chest. “I’m traveling on orders. It’s at least an eighteen-hour drive, and I’ve only got twenty-two hours at the most to make it. I’ll barely have time to stop for gas and food.”
“That makes it more important for me to go with you. We can take shifts driving through the night. It will be safer.” Her safety mattered, because he remembered everything, and she was his wife. He’d sworn to love, honor, cherish her. You swore the same to me.
Helen sounded angry. “This isn’t some sexy Vegas game. This is real. The real United States Army, real orders, real clock ticking. You are a stranger to me. There is no way I’m going to spend eighteen hours in my own car with a perfect stranger.”
A stranger. Him.
The wall got higher, stronger. It felt so familiar. Thanks, Dad. You don’t want me for a son? Then I don’t want you for a father.
She abruptly stopped retreating. “Let me be clear. No means no.”
He laughed at that, knowing he sounded obnoxious. “I assure you, I can take no for an answer. It hasn’t been part of your vocabulary.”
“It is now. The answer is no. Do not cancel your plane ticket to wherever you were going. Do not cancel whatever plans you had. Don’t change anything for me. Just tell me
