Bridal Reconnaissance (8 page)

Her teeth nipped at her full bottom lip as she nodded, and the hope in her eyes vanished. He expected her to turn and run, instead she stammered, “That’s what Mr. Sullivan said, but… Uh…Ev…Mr. Quade…”

Regret was added to the burden lying heavy over his heart. Amanda didn’t even know what to call him, this woman who had vowed to love him forever.

He regretted her lost memory. Only he would ever know of the passion they’d once shared. The way she’d whispered his name and reached for him in the dark. The way her silky naked skin, slick with sweat from their passion, had slid over his as she’d moved against him in the night.

He swallowed hard. “It’s ridiculous for you to call me by my last name when it’s one we share.”

“Our last name is Smith.” Christopher spoke up, his voice soft and his dark eyes wide with curiosity.

Hell, what was in a name anyways?
Evan thought.
He would never use the surname that was biologically his. He found himself hunkering down before Christopher, but even on his haunches he was too big to meet the child eye to eye. “You’re smart.”

Christopher nodded, his curls tousling around his face. “Yup.”

Evan couldn’t laugh at the boy’s arrogance, not when it was something undoubtedly inherited from him. This was his child. His flesh and blood. “What else do you know?”

The boy lifted his thin shoulders. “Lots of stuff. My phone number and address…”

His little rounded chin wobbled, and his bottom lip, full like Amanda’s, trembled. “But it’s not our house anymore.”

Evan lifted his gaze to Amanda’s face. Her green eyes shimmered with unshed tears. His stomach clenched, and he glanced away at the watch on his wrist. “His all-day field trip end early?”

From the bodyguard he had hired to follow her, he knew she had intended to leave the house right after he and Royce had. He also knew the van had broken down and required repairs. How much did she have left of the pawn money from the necklace?

She leaned closer, close enough that her scent washed over him. Peaches and cream wafted from her short tresses. He liked it better than the expensive musk she used to wear. “I lied,” she whispered.

He nodded and straightened up, putting some distance between them with a step back. Dropping his coat onto the sofa, he turned to Royce. “I don’t think you’ve been introduced. Amanda, this is Royce Graham, ‘The Tracker.’”

She shivered, probably imagining having a child lost and needing this man to find him. “The FBI agent?”

Royce sighed. “Used to be. Now I work for myself…and my friends.” He stepped closer to where Evan’s wife and child hovered in the doorway. “Hey, little man, you should see this game I have. I borrowed it from my son. It’s pretty awesome. I have it in my room.”

Evan appreciated his friend’s interference. Although he had some experience with children, Evan could hardly talk to this one, not with all the emotions battering him. “Christopher, I bet you’d like to see that game. And, Amanda, if Royce takes him in his room, then you and I would have some time to talk.”

With wide eyes her expressive face telegraphed her fear of being alone with Evan and her reluctance to be parted from her child. Her fingers tousled his hair in an unconsciously loving gesture.

“Didn’t you come here to talk to me? Do you want him to hear?” Evan prodded gently.

“What kind of game?” Christopher asked.

Royce chuckled. “Something with lots of bright colors.”

“I don’t want him to see anything violent,” Amanda said, her voice quavering.

Evan hoped he would never have to. “He shouldn’t hear about any violence either, Amanda.”

She nodded. “You can go with Mr. Graham, Christopher. Mind your manners, though.”

“It’s golf—the only way I have time to play it,” Royce clarified, taking the boy’s chubby fingers in his
and leading him to a door off the living room of the suite.

At the threshold the little boy glanced back at Evan, a question in his dark eyes.
He knows. He knows I’m his father.
Staggered by the thought Evan settled heavily onto the sofa as Royce and Christopher exited to the next room.

“What have you told him?” he asked after the door had closed safely behind the pair.

“About leaving town?”

“About me.” Evan was unsure if he had ever intended to tell the boy that he was his son. What did he have to offer him? What kind of father could he ever be? After steadying it with an effort, he plowed a hand through his hair. “But since you brought it up, what
did
you tell him about leaving town, leaving his school, his house, his friends?”

She trembled as she crossed the room to the windows overlooking the river. “I said that we had to go. That it was time.”

“He’s a smart kid. I doubt he accepted that for an answer.”

“What else could I tell him? He’s five years old. I couldn’t tell him the truth.” She choked and swallowed hard, lowering her voice. “I couldn’t tell him we were leaving for his protection. Like I told you last night, he threw a tantrum, so no, he didn’t accept it. He still doesn’t. He wants to stay.”

“But you don’t.”

“I can’t!” After the outburst she pressed a fist against her lips.

Evan stood up and strode over to the windows, too. Despite the inclination to offer comfort, to offer a
shoulder on which she could release the tears that were shimmering in her enormous green eyes, he kept a few feet of distance between them. Breathing room. “So why are you here?”

He knew she hadn’t remembered anything about their past, about him. She still stared at him with a stranger’s wariness, or worse, a victim’s.

After spending some of the little money she had on the van repairs, was she desperate enough to ask him for more? “What do you need, Amanda?”

She blinked hard and the tears stayed at bay. “Answers.”

“You want to know about the past now?” Last night and the day before, she’d said she had no time or interest in it.

She shook her head and stepped closer to him, delineating the careful distance he’d kept between them. “Not all of it. I want to know about you.”

Why she’d left him? She would probably ask for the one answer he didn’t have—for the one he’d searched six years for—and due to her memory loss, would probably never know.

He dragged in a deep breath. “Ask away.”

Her gaze dropped to his chest to where the ring burned beneath his shirt, reminding him, always reminding him how damn bad love hurt. “I know that…we were…married,” she said after a moment.

He ignored the painful twitch of the muscle in his jaw and continued to clench it to bone-shattering intensity. “And?”

“I know who you are. That you’re an influential man with important friends…like Mr. Graham…and others… I’ve talked to the Winter Falls sheriff.”

The devil prodded him to say, “He’s my sister’s husband. He could be lying for me.”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. About my being a good man.”

“He never called you that.” Beneath her shaggy bangs, her forehead puckered. “In fact, nobody I talked to called you that.”

He swallowed a groan. “Is that what you want to know?”

She shook her head again. “No, they called you honorable. That’s close enough. And that’s really what I want.”

“My honor?”

“Yes.” She licked her lips, her tongue swiping over her full bottom lip and nearly undoing Evan’s fragile control. “I want your word that if Christopher and I go with you to Winter Falls that you will protect us.”

Just like the old Amanda, she had managed to stagger him. “What? You’re going to trust me?”

Touched by her faith, he slid his fingers along her taut cheekbone and into the hair feathering her ear. She flinched under his touch, so he dropped his hand. “No, you don’t trust me.”

“I want to.” The words were uttered as an anguished moan, and again the tears shimmered. “I really want to, but I can’t remember anything. I can’t remember if I should trust you. I can’t remember you…”

Feelings pummeled Evan’s restraint. He’d once loved her so much, once shared everything with this
woman, all his hopes, fears and passion. And she remembered nothing.

Nothing of him.

But since finding her again, he hadn’t acted like the lovesick fool he’d once been for her. He’d leashed his emotions because he’d known he’d found her with the sole intention of letting her go. But he couldn’t let her go now, not yet, not when a madman intended to hurt her.

Overcome by an unexpected surge of protectiveness, he then found himself taking her soft mouth in a hard kiss as his restraint snapped. His lips plundered, his tongue delving into the sweet recesses of her mouth when she gasped. One of his hands held the nape of her neck while the other ran over her slender back, grasping at the suedelike material of her jacket.

When her hands clutched at his hair, he fought for his senses, knowing she probably wanted to pull him off. Instead, her fingers tightened, and her lips returned his kiss, her tongue sliding along his.

Deep breathing was impossible with the way his heart pounded. Despite the years, she tasted the same, just as sweet with passion. Exactly as he remembered but more…

He gentled the kiss, his mouth caressing hers as his fingers ran through her short silky tresses. He’d just touched the hard ridge of a scar beneath her hair when she swayed in his arms. Had she fainted again?

“Evan!”

The voice that called his name wasn’t hers. She didn’t call him Evan. She called him Mr. Quade. His wife treated him like a stranger.

She pulled out of his arms as Royce poked his head out of the door to his room. “Sorry, man, but you didn’t hear the phone…”

Evan fought to clear the passion from his brain as Amanda turned to the window, her back to him and her arms wrapped protectively around her midriff. What had he done? She’d just agreed to try to trust him and he’d destroyed that, destroyed whatever chance he’d had of convincing her to come willingly to Winter Falls.

When the trial transcripts and medical records flashed behind the eyes he squeezed closed, he knew he would bring her home with him—no matter what resistance she put up.

“Evan,” Royce said again.

He shook his head, clearing it of the jumbled words and emotions. “Yeah, phone. Who is it?”

“Cullen Murphy.” A member of the River City security firm they’d hired. “He found Snake.”

“Is he with Cullen?”

“No, Cullen just called with the address to see what we wanted to do.”

“We want to talk to Snake.” God, he hoped it wasn’t another dead end. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t want to leave Amanda alone, but then another Murphy watched her. She wouldn’t get far without Evan’s knowledge, or without Evan himself. He wasn’t taking any chances on losing Amanda again.

“I’m going with you,” she said, her voice steely with determination.

A
MANDA DIDN’T KNOW
what surprised her more. That she’d convinced Evan Quade to let her come along
to confront Snake, or that she’d agreed to leave her son in a stranger’s care. But then again, The Tracker was no stranger to any parent. He was the first one you would call if you lost your child. Wouldn’t he be the best choice to keep Christopher safe? Probably a better choice than she was.

And Evan trusted him. Amanda doubted many people earned his trust. From looking into the intensity of his dark eyes, she wondered if she ever would. If she’d had it once, it seemed she’d destroyed whatever chance she’d had of keeping it. Of keeping
him.

What was she thinking? She wanted nothing from him but his protection.

His taste lingered yet on her lips. Rich and dark like her favorite chocolate. But there’d been nothing sweet about the way he’d grabbed her, taking…what had once been his. What still was unless he’d divorced her on grounds of desertion.

Had
she deserted him? If so, why? Or had she known then, with her memory intact, that they had nothing in common? He was so dark and intense, and she… She had no idea what she’d once been, but now she was afraid of the dark.

Evan hadn’t spoken to her since he’d given his consent for her to come along. His hands gripped the steering wheel of his powerful sports car, the engine rumbling with such quiet intensity that she felt the vibrations. Or was that still the passion that had hummed through her veins when he’d so briefly held her in his arms?

Amanda had to shake off the memory of that kiss, had to banish it to the dark abyss where the rest of
her memories of this man resided. But had something surfaced with his kiss? Some familiarity? She refused to dwell on it. Trying to remember never accomplished anything but a debilitating headache.

Although the calendar declared it spring, the weather didn’t know it. Winter gloom lingered, prematurely darkening the afternoon. Night still fell too soon and in a couple of short hours, total darkness would reign.

She shuddered.

“Change your mind?” he asked, missing nothing although he hadn’t taken his gaze from the road.

“No. I really believe he won’t talk to you.” She could hardly bring herself to talk to Evan, and a marriage license called this dark intimidating man her husband. “I can remind him of what he said, that he has a daughter my age, that he would protect her. There’s a better chance that I can get him to talk to the police.”

She prayed she could. Christopher’s future—and hers—depended on it for more than safety.

For sanity.

Amanda feared going to Winter Falls with this man. Although it might be the only way to ensure her physical survival, she doubted she would survive emotionally, since just a kiss had made her so weak-kneed, she’d almost fainted in his arms. Again.

“I wasn’t talking about seeing Snake,” Evan said, interrupting her thoughts. With the care of an expert, he rounded a corner at a speed she would have considered too great. The van would have rolled. But then this expensive machine was not her dilapidated
old van. And she didn’t have an ounce of the confidence this man displayed.

Was he really that confident?

“You were talking about Christopher and I going with you to Winter Falls?”

She studied his chiseled profile and noted the flare of his nostrils as he inhaled deeply, like the deep-breathing maneuver taught to her by a psychiatrist.