She didn’t smile. She didn’t even hold his gaze.
“You don’t remember buying the ring?” Alarm, panic—he swallowed them down, but damn, they made it hard to speak.
She looked at him, eyes bright with unshed tears.
He spoke as gently as possible. “What do you remember?”
“Um...just...”
Helen took another shivery breath beneath him. He made sure most of his weight was on his forearms, tensing his arms, his shoulders. It didn’t change anything; her breathing was still too shallow, too rapid.
He could barely breathe at all.
Tom remembered that she’d loved her dress. She’d been so happy with what she’d called the perfect dress. He wanted her to remember happiness. “Don’t you remember your dress?”
She shook her head.
“The ceremony?”
“No.”
Our vows? You said you loved me, and you would love me forever. You promised.
Even if he hadn’t been choking on this sense of dread, he wouldn’t have said those words out loud. Begging someone to love him never worked. He’d learned that early in life.
“Tell me what you remember.” His voice was quiet and gruff. It didn’t sound like his voice, nothing like the soldier he was, even as he gave her a command: “Tell me.”
“Just...this. Kind of.”
“This,” he repeated impatiently. “Sex?”
She nodded.
She remembered the sex. That was all.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His heart simply stopped beating.
She placed her palm over his heart, but only to push against him, bracing herself as she shifted a bit like she was going to get up.
He was still inside her. What was the proper etiquette for this? Was he supposed to beg her pardon and withdraw? What was the damned etiquette?
He pulled out of her body, breaking their connection, feeling his heart tear out of his chest at the same time. The misery on Helen’s face tore at him, as well. Regardless of what she remembered, she was still his wife, and it was still true that he didn’t want her to be upset, ever.
He wouldn’t allow it. He was a warrior, an officer in the US Army, trained to move forward, not to give up. He wouldn’t surrender to this heartbreak. He’d fight to ease his wife’s current pain. He could fix this.
He caressed her cheek once more with his thumb. “If you didn’t remember our wedding, then what was this? Don’t say it was just sex. There’s more to us than that. Why did you just make love to me?”
“I don’t know.” As she looked up at him, the tears in her eyes finally spilled over, running into her hair. “I just...when you kissed me... I guess I remembered something.”
He kissed her again. If this made her remember, this is what he’d gladly do. He kissed his wife, until death do us part, forever and ever, amen.
She melted under his kiss, opening her mouth, kissing him, until she gasped—no, she cried—until more tears ran into her hair.
“Helen, Helen.” He dried the tear tracks with the pad of his thumb. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I need... I just need...”
He 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