“Your parents are gone.” At his questioning glance, she added, “Your father left when you were a baby, and your mother passed away when you were a teenager. Your only relative is your Aunt Rowena who lives in a nursing home.” She didn’t bother to mention that he would have had a wife if only he hadn’t been such a jerk.
He twisted on the sofa, moving his leg to the cleared portion of the coffee table so he could face her. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Forgetting about the wobbly chair leg, she scooted back into the cushions, causing the furniture to resettle with a thunk.
Jerry moved forward as if to catch her in case she fell.
“I’m okay,” she told him. “It’s done this before.”
“Why don’t you sit over here?” Jerry said, patting the sofa cushion beside him. “I’d feel terrible if you got hurt.”
Kim had to do a double take. It was hard to believe this was the same man who’d made a grid of dates and took bets from their co-workers on when the chair would finally collapse under her. When she saw that he wasn’t joking, she took him up on his offer.
“This place could use a little work,” he said once she’d settled beside him. “I noticed a loose step on the front porch, and last night when you went upstairs to your room, the banister swayed under your hand. If you’ll show me where your tools are, I’ll try to fix some of the stuff around here.”
He was right. There were quite a few things that needed fixing in this old farmhouse. But Gerald had never before offered to do any of the handiwork, partly because he considered it beneath him to do “common labor” and partly because he hated the big white farmhouse she’d bought outside the city. He kept insisting that they would buy a newer, bigger condominium to settle into once they were married. Gerald had considered it wasted effort to fix up a house he wouldn’t ultimately live in. Although she’d agreed to their engagement, they’d never finished working out where they would live.
And now he was offering to roll up his sleeves and be her live-in handyman despite the encumbrance of a cast on his leg.
“There’s no need,” she said. Eventually, she would get around to doing the chores herself, or she would hire someone to do the work after she was finished with the big project she was working on at the office. “I’ll take care of it before long.”
But that wasn’t soon enough to suit Jerry. He made her promise to show him where she kept her tools so he could start work after breakfast.
He shifted on the sofa so that he faced her. Once situated, he decided instead to pursue the line of questioning he’d started earlier. The more he knew about her, the easier it would be to protect her. And having her think he suffered from amnesia was a convenient tool for getting the information he needed. “We never finished talking about you. Tell me about your family.”
As she told him about her father, Maxwell, her young stepmother, Carmen, and her own single-child status, Jerry soaked up the warmth of the room as well as the warmth in her voice.
The house and its furnishings reminded him of her. It was simple and unpretentious, but still classic and welcoming. The old white frame house was situated in the middle of forty acres, about half of which were cleared. A small lake behind the house invited quiet introspection and meditation at its edge, and a barn gave shelter to the assorted wild geese and ducks that congregated near the water.
It was the inside of the house that most clearly displayed Kim’s personality. The blue overstuffed sofa and chair invited inhabitants to put their feet up, and the wood theme of floors and half-paneled walls gave an earthy feel. It was a house a man could feel comfortable in, but the ruffled curtains and thick blue-and-cream rug saved it from appearing masculine.
He knew from his forays into her library that she was an eclectic reader, sampling everything from the classics to science fiction, mystery and romance. He had been pleased to note that not only did a Bible sit among her collection, but it appeared by its worn condition to be well-read.
As she told him about her father’s thriving bakery business whose distribution covered a three-state region, Jerry took in the assorted magazine pictures of horses adorning the walls. On the fireplace mantel sat a framed photo of a young girl perched atop a pony while a man stood nearby holding the reins and smiling down at his tiny charge.
When she finished describing their planned expansion of the company, he changed the subject. “Why don’t you have any horses in the barn?”
She rolled her eyes and lolled back against the sofa. “That’s one reason I bought this place...so I’d have a place to keep the horses I’ve always wanted. But the business expansion keeps me so busy I don’t have time to care for an animal right now. Not even a cat.”
“How long until you’ve finished the expansion?”
“As soon as six months or as long as two or even three years, depending on how things go.”
He scratched his head. “I noticed a rosebush at the corner of the house. Do you ever take time to stop and smell the roses?”
Now it was Kim’s turn to scratch her head. If this question had been asked before Gerald’s accident, she would have known he was joking. But now...well, she just wasn’t sure.
“You are lecturing me about stopping to smell the roses?”
He grinned, the action deepening the small dimple in his left cheek. His whiskery cheek. Kim had never seen him unshaven before, and she couldn’t help noticing that the casual look on him was anything but casual. It made him look darker, more brooding, and more powerful than the clean-cut, three-piece-suited man she was accustomed to. Not even the gentle charm of his grin could lessen her gut-level response. In fact, the contrast actually emphasized the depth of his blue eyes and the sharp angle of his jaw.
“Does that surprise you?”
“Of course it does. You’re the workaholic pot calling me a black kettle. You were the one who talked Daddy and me into the expansion in the first place.”
Jerry frowned slightly as he took in what she was saying. “Did I work with you and your father at Barnett’s Bakery?”
“Yes,” she said gently, “and you worked just as hard or harder than both of us to get the merger started.”
“I did?”
Kim nodded. Her bangs fell forward and tickled her eyebrows. She hadn’t taken the time to mousse her hair this morning after her shower, and now her chin-length auburn hair swung softly around her face in free abandon.
“Then it’s about time I changed my ways,” he confessed.
“That’ll be the day.” The doctor hadn’t said whether Jerry would remember his recovery period once he regained his previous memories. However, Kim felt sure that once he recalled the events and motivations that had led him to become the person he’d once been, he would most likely go back to being the old Gerald. As for right now, he probably felt vulnerable and lost, which accounted for this new attitude of his.
“No, I’m serious.”
He touched her arm, and Kim shrank from the warmth of his touch. No matter how appealing he might be at the moment, she knew that, like a puppy that eventually outgrows its cuteness, Jerry would leave behind the innocence and charm that now warmed her heart. She expected he would probably also go back to the woman he’d been seeing. Her gesture didn’t go unnoticed by Jerry, and he removed his hand from her arm.
“It’s obvious that you and Gerald...uh, you and I...have our priorities mixed up. It’s impossible to enjoy the good things we have when we’re