Billionaire's Contract Engagement / Money Man's Fiancée Negotiation (38 page)

Oh, well, it was just a photo.

“I found something else, too,” she said, and there was something about her expression, the way she was looking at him, that made his heart slither down to his stomach. She pulled a folded-up piece of paper from her back pocket and handed it to him.

He unfolded it and realized immediately what it was. A lease, for her rental in Abilene.

Oh, hell. He should have checked the damned outer pockets.

“I wasn't on a research trip, was I?”

He shook his head.

“I moved out, didn't I? I left you.”

He nodded.

“I've been sitting here, trying to remember what happened, why I left, but it's just not there.”

Which meant she didn't remember the affair, or the child. The limb-weakening relief made him feel like a total slime. But as long as she didn't remember, he could just pretend it never happened. Or who knew, maybe she did remember, and she was content to keep it her little secret. As long as they didn't acknowledge it, it didn't exist.

“You didn't leave a note,” he said. “I just came home from work one day and you were gone. I guess you weren't happy.”

She frowned. “I just took off and you didn't come after me?”

“Not at first,” he admitted, because at this point lying to her would only make things worse. “I was too angry. And too proud, I guess. I convinced myself that after a week or two you would change your mind and come back. I thought you would be miserable without me. But you didn't come back, and I was the one who was miserable. So I hired the P.I.”

“And you found out that I was in the hospital?”

He nodded. “I flew to Texas the next morning. I was going to talk you into coming back with me.”

“But I had amnesia. So you told me I had been on a trip.”

He nodded. “I was afraid that if I told you the truth, you wouldn't come home. I went to your rental and packed your things and had them shipped back here. And I.” Jeez, this was tough. They were supposed to be having this conversation when he was dumping her, and reveling in his triumph. He wasn't supposed to fall for her.

“You what?” she asked.

“I.”
Christ, just say it, Ash.
“I went through your computer. I erased a lot of stuff. Things I thought would jog your memory. E-mails, school stuff, music.”

She nodded slowly, as though she was still processing it, trying to decide if she should be angry with him. “But you did it because you were afraid of losing me.”

“Yes.” More or less, anyway. Just not for the reason she thought. And if he was going to come this far, he might as well own up to all of it. “There's one more thing.”

She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself. “Okay.”

“It's standard procedure that hospitals will only give out medical information to next of kin. Parents, spouses.
fiancés
.”

It took a minute for her to figure it out, and he could tell the instant it clicked. He could see it in her eyes, in the slow shake of her head. “We're not engaged.”

“It was the only way I could get any information. The only way the doctor would talk to me.”

She had this look on her face, as if she might be sick. He imagined he was wearing a similar expression.

She slid her ring off and set it on the counter. At least she didn't throw it at him. “I guess you'll be wanting this back. Although, I don't imagine it's real.”

“No, it's real. It's.” God, this was painful. “It's my ex-wife's.”

She took a deep breath, holding in what had to be seething anger. He wished she would just haul off and slug him. They would both feel better. Not that he deserved any absolution of guilt.

“But you did it because you were afraid of losing me,” she said, giving him an out.

“Absolutely.” And despite feeling like the world's biggest ass, telling her the truth lifted an enormous weight off his shoulders. He felt as though he could take a full breath for the first time since the day he had walked into her hospital room.

“You can't even imagine how guilty I've felt,” he told her.

“Is this why you've been avoiding me?”

Her words stunned him. “What do you mean?”

“All the late nights at work.”

“I always work late. I always have.”

“Do you always tell me you're at work when you really aren't?”

What was she talking about? “I've never done that. If I said I was at work, that's where I was.”

“I called your office yesterday afternoon, to ask you about dinner, but you didn't answer. I left a message, too, but you never called back.”

He could lie about it, say he was making copies or in a meeting or something, but the last thing he needed was one more thing to come back at him. “I was there. Brock and Flynn decided to throw an impromptu party. To celebrate our engagement.”

Her eyes widened a little. “Well, that must have been awkward.”

“You have no idea.”

“I guess that's my fault, for spilling the beans.”

“Mel, none of this is even close to your fault. I find the fact that you haven't thrown something at me a miracle.”

“In a way, I feel like I should be thanking you.”

“For what?”

“If you hadn't done this, I would never have known how happy I could be with you.”

Not in a million years would he expect her to thank him for lying to her.

“But,” she continued, and he felt himself cringe. When there was a but, it was never good. “If things stay the way they are, you're going to lose me again.”

This was no empty threat. He could see that she was dead serious.

“What things?”

“You're always at work. You're gone before I get up and you come home after I'm asleep. That might be easier to stomach if you at least took the weekends off. I sort of feel like, what's the point of being together, if we're never together?”

The old Melody would have never complained about the dynamics of their relationship, or how many hours he worked. Even if it did bother her. And maybe that was part of the problem.

He couldn't deny that right before she left, he had been pulling away from her. He was almost always at work, either at Maddox, or in his home office. And it seemed that the further he retreated, the harder she tried to please him, until she was all but smothering him. Then, boom, she was gone.

Had it never occurred to him that he had all but driven her into another man's arms?

He knew that the sugar daddy/mistress arrangement wasn't an option any longer. She wanted the real thing.
She deserved it. But what did he want? Was he ready for that kind of commitment?

He thought about Melody and how she used to be, and how she was now. There was no longer a good Melody and an evil one. She was the entire package. She was perfect just the way she was, and he realized that if he ever were to settle down again, he could easily imagine himself with her. But relationships took compromise and sacrifice, and he was used to pretty much always getting his way, never having to work at it.

And honestly, he'd been bored out of his skull.

He wanted a woman who could think for herself, and be herself, even if that meant disappointing him sometimes, or disagreeing with him.

He wanted Melody.

“Mel, after everything I went through to get you back, do you honestly think I would just let you go again?”

Her bottom lip started to tremble and her eyes welled, though she was trying like hell to hold it back. But he didn't want her holding anything back.

He walked around the island to her but she was already up and meeting him halfway. She threw herself around him and he wrapped her up in his arms.

This was a good thing they had. A really good thing. And this time he was determined not to screw it up.

After seeing the pictures of her wrecked car, Melody's memories began to come back with increasing frequency. Random snippets here and there. Things like the red tennis shoes she had gotten on her birthday when she was five, and rides her mother let her take on the pony outside the grocery store.

She remembered her mother's unending parade of boyfriends and husbands. All of them mistreated her
mother in some way or another, often physically. She didn't seem to know how to stand up for herself, when to say
enough,
yet when it came to protecting Mel, she was fierce. Mel remembered when one of them came after her. She couldn't have been more than ten or eleven. She remembered standing frozen in place, too frightened to even shield her face as he approached her with an open palm, arm in mid-swing. She closed her eyes, waiting for the impact, then she heard a thud and opened her eyes to find him kneeling on the floor, stunned and bleeding from his head, and her mother hovering over him with a baseball bat.

She hadn't been a great mother, but she had kept Mel safe.

Despite having finally learned that it was socially unacceptable, Mel had been so used to the idea of men hitting that when she'd started seeing Ash she'd always been on guard, waiting for the arm to swing. But after six months or so, when he hadn't so much as raised his voice to her, she'd realized that he would never hurt her. Not physically anyway.

When she admitted that to Ash, instead of being insulted, he looked profoundly sad. They lay in bed after making love and talked about it. About what her life had been like as a child, how most of her memories were shrouded in fear and insecurity. And as she opened up to him, Ash miraculously began to do the same.

She recalled enough to know that their relationship had never been about love, and that for those three years they had been little more than roommates. Roommates who had sex. She couldn't help but feel ashamed that she had compromised herself for so long, that she hadn't insisted on better. But they were in a real relationship now. They had a future. They talked and laughed and spent time together.
They saw movies and had picnics and took walks on the shore. They were a couple.

He didn't care that her hair was usually a mess and her clothes didn't cling. Or that she'd stopped going to the gym and lost all those pretty muscles and curves she'd worked so hard to maintain, and now was almost as scrawny as she'd been in high school.
Less is more,
he had said affectionately when she'd complained that she had no hips and her butt had disappeared. He didn't even miss the push-up bras, although he knew damn well if that had been a prerequisite to the relationship she probably would have walked.

He even forgave her for all the orgasms she had faked, during sex she didn't want but had anyway, because she was so afraid of disappointing him. And she was humbled to learn that there were many nights when he would have been happy to forgo the sex and watch a movie instead. He made her promise that she would never have sex if she didn't want to, and she swore to him that she would never fake an orgasm again. He promised that she would never need to, and in the weeks that passed, she didn't.

Despite all the talking they had done, there was still one thing that they hadn't discussed, something she had been afraid to bring up. Because as close as they had grown, there was still that little girl inside who was afraid to disappoint him. But she knew she had waited long enough, and one morning at breakfast, over eggs and toast, he gave her the perfect segue.

“Since your memory is almost completely back now, have you considered when you'll go back to school?” he asked.

She was suddenly so nervous that the juice she was drinking got caught in her throat. It was now or never.

“Not really,” she said, then thought,
Come on, Mel, be
brave. Just tell him the truth.
“The thing is, I don't want to go back. I don't want to be a lawyer.”

He shrugged and said, “Okay,” then he took a drink of his juice and went back to eating.

She was so stunned her mouth actually fell open. All that worrying, all the agonizing she had done over this, and all he had to say was
okay?

She set her fork down beside her plate. “Is that it?”

He looked up from the toast he was spreading jam on. “Is what it?”

“I say I don't want to be a lawyer and all you say is okay?
”

He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

“After you spent all that money on law-school tuition, doesn't it upset you that I'm just going to throw my education away?”

“Not really. An education isn't worth much if you aren't happy in what you're doing.”

If she had known he would be so understanding she would have told him the truth months and months ago. She thought of all the time she had wasted on a career path that had been going nowhere. If only she'd had the courage to open up to him.

“Do you have any idea what you might want to do?” he asked.

The million-dollar question.

“I think so.”

When she didn't elaborate he said, “Would you like to tell me?”

She fidgeted with her toast, eyes on her plate. “I was thinking, maybe I can stay home for a while.”

“That's fine. It isn't like you
need
to work.”

“Maybe I could do something here, instead of an outside job.”

“Like a home business?”

“Sort of.”
Just say it, Mel. Spit it out.
“But one that involves things like midnight feedings and diaper changes.”

He brow dipped low. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Mel, you know I can't—”

“I know. I do. But there's always artificial means. Or even adoption. And I don't mean right now. I would want us to be married first.” He opened his mouth to say something but she held up a hand to stop him. “I know we haven't discussed anything definite, or made plans, and I'm not trying to rush things. I swear. I just wanted to sort of … put it out there, you know, to make sure we're on the same page.”