the same.” He nodded.
There was a wariness to him she couldn’t quite understand. Maybe people befriended him for his money. That would have never crossed her mind. Still, a lot of things made more sense now.
“No wonder I have this private room. Your parents own Mikkelson Oil.” She pressed her fingers to the headache starting again.
“It’s not Mikkelson Oil anymore. My father passed away nearly three years ago. My mother recently married the head of Steele Oil—widower Jack Steele—merging the two companies into Alaska Oil Barons, Inc.”
For what should be big news, he didn’t look all that happy about it.
“I’m sorry about your father.” She squeezed his hand and a shiver of electricity passed between them, like static popping through her.
His thumb stroked along the inside of her wrist over her speeding pulse. “Thank you. He was fond of you.”
“I wish I remembered that.”
“Me too.”
Awareness increased until the static between them was like a meteor shower. Beautiful...but something she feared could leave her scorched.
The door opened again with a call at the same time. “Dr. Gibson here.”
Chuck cleared his throat and stepped back. “He’s your ob-gyn.”
Dr. Gibson entered, wheeling a machine of some sort, with a nurse trailing behind. “I hear the two of you were going to have a discussion.”
Chuck nodded. “I’ve told Shana I’m her husband, and she knows about the baby.”
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Gibson stopped beside her bed.
“Overwhelmed. A little woozy. But mostly just confused.”
“That’s understandable,” he said with a kind bedside manner that must have been reassuring during all the fertility treatments Chuck had mentioned. “The nurse is going to check your blood pressure, and then we’re going to do an ultrasound. We’ll go as slowly as you need us to.”
Shana’s heart skipped a beat. So much was happening so quickly she wanted to tell them all to slow down, to stop altogether. But life didn’t work that way. She had to face the present. “No need to wait. I want to know as much as I can.”
“Ask anything you like, and I’ll do my best to answer,” Dr. Gibson said. “Are you all right with Mr. Mikkelson staying in the room? I understand these are rather unusual circumstances.”
Shana looked at Chuck. He was her husband. Everyone here knew that. And this was his child. As strange as it felt to have him in the room, he had a right to be here. The past day must have been hellish for him with her health scare. “Of course he can stay.”
“Thank you.” Chuck took her hand in his, his touch strong and confident.
Those green eyes of his held her, reminding her again of a changeable rolling sea. She could so easily dive in, immerse herself in him.
Lose herself.
And that made him dangerous.
Her first priority right now was deciphering who she was.
She couldn’t afford to let down her guard around the one man she should be able to trust with her life.
* * *
The next day, as Chuck checked Shana out of the hospital, he was still reeling from seeing that ultrasound.
Snow gathered on the ground. The blacktop parking lot looked more like a field than a place for cars. But he, too, felt like he’d fallen away from the present moment.
He recalled instead a different moment. The first time Shana had announced a pregnancy. The promise and hope of that moment. So different than this one.
He had fantasized about a future with Shana and a kid on the way, but in no realm had his fantasies played out this way. They’d watched ultrasounds together in the past, but they had given up on ever seeing one again.
And now, Chuck was preparing to take his pregnant wife home.
A wife who didn’t remember him.
He stepped out of the hospital and into the crisp morning air, an orderly wheeling Shana beside Chuck. His personal staffer had brought around his Escalade, the exhaust puffing clouds into the cold. The snow was pristine after yesterday’s storm, piles on the side of the roads from snowplows clearing the way.
As the driver opened the passenger door and left the engine running for Chuck to drive, Chuck held out his hand for his wife. His pregnant wife.
The ultrasound had made this so real.
There was a baby in the mix of this insane time in his life—the merger, the long hours, the amnesia, and a second chance with Shana he didn’t want to waste.
Growing up, he’d dreamed of having a perfect marriage like his parents. That wasn’t going to happen. He and Shana had too much water under the bridge, and for too long.
But Chuck had never failed at anything in his life. He didn’t want his marriage to be the first. Which meant he needed to use this time together to win over his wife.
* * *
Shana spent much of the drive back home in a state of shock, mixed with wary hope that surely her memory would be jogged by something. Soon.
So far, no luck.
The streets leading away from the hospital had markers of familiarity, but her mind whirred. Her memory of the main highway was five years out of date.
Five years.
Such a significant amount of time. She tried to conjure up a holiday, an image of her wedding day. Tried to imagine where she might have tied the knot. Wondered who her best friend was.
But no memories pounded against her mind’s eye. Just an ultrasound image and a cyclone of questions.
Questions that hammered harder at her chest as they pulled up to their house. Her home. The home she shared with Chuck, heir to an oil empire and sexy as hell in a Stetson. Chuck had told her that her mother would be going straight from the airport to their house. There had been some delays with her flight.
And as they turned the corner, Shana took in the mammoth structure, eyes moving past the snow-covered arbor to the chimney puffing gray smoke rings against the iced sky. So many rooms, so many memories that refused to materialize. Had they picked this place out together? Had she determined which trees should be placed where?
The automatic security gate slid back to reveal a clear view of the massive two-story house with a French country charm. More of that wary hope filled her as she studied the home and grounds. Would she recognize any of it? Whitewashed brick and porches. So many porches on every floor, enclosed and open, as if there was enough space to accommodate any season.
Beautiful,
