To See The Daises ... First (15 page)

***

Sunny waited silently for Ben to unlock the apartment door. She stood inhaling the familiar smell, allowing the feel of the place to seep into her pores. She was home. Perhaps not forever, but for now, to be here was enough. To be with Ben was enough.

She glanced across the hall at the closed door. Mary Louise had obviously deserted her post. Sunny would have to seek her out later and hope the girl hadn't retreated too far into herself.

As she preceded him into the apartment, she felt the need that had tormented her in the past three days rise up to engulf her. Slowly she walked around the room, drifting a loving hand across the desk, the worn arm of the couch. Then she turned and met Ben's eyes. She took in the quickly shuttered insecurity, the hunger that flared out of control, and she flew across the room into his waiting arms. The past could wait. The future could wait. The loving couldn't.

***

Sunny tiptoed into the bedroom and stopped beside the bed to stare down at the man sleeping there. She had made her peace with Mary Louise. Now she wanted to do the same with Ben.

She loved this man so deeply. She wanted to reach out and brush the hair from his forehead, to caress his strong face, but held herself back. He had probably gotten as little sleep as she had in their time apart.

Her eyes drifted shut momentarily as she thought of what had taken place on this bed earlier. The desperation that had marked their first night together had been present in both of them again today. Although she hadn't planned on bringing everything out in the open so soon, she knew now it was necessary. If either of them were to have any peace, they had to know where they stood.

She became instantly alert as he rolled over, stretching his arm across the bed. Suddenly his fist clenched on the sheet and his head jerked around, his eyes wide open. When he saw her standing beside the bed, his head sank back on the pillow and the back of his hand came up to cover his eyes.

After a moment, he moved his hand away from his face to reach out and catch her arm, pulling her down to sit on the bed beside him as he smiled contentedly. "What was so important that you had to leave me alone?"

"I needed to straighten things out with Mary Louise," she replied softly. "It'll take a while, but I think she's going to forgive me for leaving."

"She'll forgive you." He urged her down with a hand on her back until she lay resting on his chest, their faces inches apart. "She loves you. The whole thing was just too reminiscent of what she went through with her mother."

"She talked to you about that?" Sunny asked in astonishment.

He laughed. "Mary Louise and I got to be pretty good friends after you left—the only good thing that came of your leaving." His hands slid past her waist to her buttocks and he settled her closer against him. "Haven't you got too many clothes on?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, probably," she murmured, distracted from her thoughts by his hands on her body. "But, Ben—"

"Ah love," he sighed, closing his eyes. "I'm so glad you're back. I've never spent three more miserable days. Wondering what was happening to you, what you were feeling. Wondering if you had remembered your past and forgotten me." He tightened his hold painfully and, in a choked whisper, said, "I hope you never remember. I may be damned for wishing that for you, but I do."

"Ben—" she began, biting her lip to still the trembling.

"Yes, I know." He opened his eyes to stare at her, his face solemn. "It's selfish of me. I never considered myself a selfish man, but where your love is concerned, babe, I am. Totally, completely selfish."

"Ben," she repeated, more insistently, gazing at him In a silent plea. "About my amnesia—" She couldn't continue. Fear was nagging at her, halting her words as her head sagged to his chest.

She could feel the tension in his body, hear his shallow breathing as the silence drew out. Then he gripped her chin and jerked her head up.

"Who are you?" His voice was a harsh whisper, his eyes blazing steel.

"Chelsea ..." she began, closing her eyes in resignation. She rolled away from him, wishing she could lie, but knowing their love had to be based on the truth. "... and Sunny," she continued. "And as much as I want to for you, I can't separate the two."

She glanced at him beneath her lashes. He lay beside her, his eyes closed now, his body stiff, his face carved in stone.

"I'm sorry." She tried unsuccessfully to keep the desperation out of her voice. "I couldn't stop the past from coming back."

He turned his head to stare at her with penetrating gray eyes as though he were searching for something. Something not visible on the surface, but deep inside her soul. Then he shook his head slowly. "You've remembered." His strangled voice sounded stunned. "You've remembered everything and it didn't make any difference."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement that contained shock and relief and an incredulous joy. He must have found what he was looking for in her eyes. Pulling her back into his arms, he began rocking her back and forth as he ran urgent hands over her body.

"I've been waiting for the damned ax to fall ever since that first day. And now that it has it doesn't matter." He gave a choked laugh in disbelief. "I can't tell you what that means. It's like the weight of the world has been lifted. I was so damned afraid Chelsea wouldn't want me."

She pressed her hand to her trembling lips as she began to laugh and cry at the same time. "And I was afraid you wouldn't want Chelsea. I knew you loved Sunny, but you seemed so desperate to keep Chelsea away." She paused, remembering the moment she walked into her bedroom and saw the portrait on the wall. "But she was determined to come back."

"I should have been there with you," he whispered harshly. "Was it bad for you—remembering?"

She touched his face lovingly, then sighed and pulled away from him to sit up and wrap her arms around her knees. "It was . . . strange. Enlightening, surely—a lot of pieces fell into place— but mostly it was sad. And painful. Remembering things from the past was almost like having them happen all over again."

'Tell me, babe," he begged gently as he rose to sit beside her, clasping one of her hands between his. "Let me share it with you now."

She sat silently for a moment, then drew in a deep, steadying breath. "It all started so many years ago, so many years." She shook her head, then rested her chin on her knees. "When I was a little girl, I can remember how happy we were.

Mother was so alive and vital—she was the center of our family. Then when we were five she died, and overnight it seemed that everything had changed."

His hands tightened on hers. "We?"

"Bryan and I were twins." Her voice was a dull whisper, and she could tell Ben had picked up on her use of the past tense by his quickly indrawn breath.

"What did he look like, Sunny?"

Lord, he was sharp, she thought as she raised her eyes to his. "He had red hair and turquoise eyes."

"The man in your dreams." His words were almost a groan as he pulled her into his arms, trying to absorb some of her pain.

She nodded against his shoulder. "After Mother died, it seemed that we were all we had." She glanced up at him. "You saw the way my father was today? That's new. The easygoing attitude, the warm acceptance. Those things haven't always been there. I don't mean he didn't love us," she added hastily. "He did. But after Mother died he seemed to squeeze us out of his life. Oh, he was always there, but only physically. The only time we got his undivided attention was when we got into trouble. We were supposed to do the correct thing, be seen with the correct people."

She let the warmth of Ben's body keep the past at a safe distance as she continued. "You remember the way I reacted when you wanted me to stay inside the apartment?" She felt rather than saw his nod. "The reason it frightened me is that my whole life had been like that. Dad wanted us to live in luxurious, insulated boredom, separated from the real world by an invisible wall. We were allowed no contact with real people, only those who met with his approval. That's why I found such pleasure in meeting the people around here.

They were from another world. Does it surprise you that I felt such a wonderful sense of freedom? I don't think my father even knew what he was doing. It was partly the fear that every wealthy man lives with—the fear that his children will be kidnapped or harmed. And It was partly tenth-generation snobbery. We were Barrens. We had to set standards. The world was always watching." She paused. "Dad and I talked, realty talked for the first time in years during the three days I spent with him. Bryan's death hit him hard. Then, when I disappeared, he started to think about all those wasted years. I never want to feel the regret that he's feeling now."

She lifted her head. "And you know something, Ben? He's a nice man, and realty very funny. I've never laughed with my father until now. All those years the servants were the only contact we had with the outside world, and we spent every minute we could with them. Henry—the stone-faced creature who opened the front door for you—is an absolute doll. He was realty the guiding force in our lives. He soothed our hurts and kept us out of trouble. But, as we grew older, we needed more."

She sighed in regret. "Anyone who was watching could have seen what was coming. Bryan couldn't stand the restrictions. Maybe because he was a man, Dad came down harder on him than he did on me. Or maybe because he was a man, he came down harder on himself." She shook her head. "Six months ago he came to me and told me he was leaving. He said he was twenty-eight years old and it was time he grew up. He was tired of doing busy work at one of Dad's companies. He needed to find out what he wanted in his life."

"That sounds like a reasonable decision." Ben's gentle voice pulled her back from the past. "Or maybe it sounds reasonable since it's something like what happened to me."

She nodded, pressing her trembling lips together, then took a deep breath to continue. "Bryan died in an automobile accident about a month ago."

"Was that why it hurt so to see his face in your dream? Because he was dead and you were alive?"

That and so much more, she thought. It hurt to
think about it. Almost as much as it had at the
time. But now the pain was untainted by guilt.
The last three days with her father had accomplished that. She had come to see that guilt was a
part of grief and that her father was trying to cope
with the same thing.

"Bryan wanted me to go with him," she whispered. "It had always been the two of us. Any decision had been a joint one. But not this time. I refused." She pushed the hair out of her eyes and gave a choked laugh. "We were always together. When I got stuck in the tree, he was there to pull me out. And when I broke the vase, he took the punishment instead of me." She closed her eyes tightly. "But I refused to go with him."

"Sunny," Ben murmured, pressing her closer. "Don't punish yourself. You must have had good reasons for refusing."

"I told myself I did. I wanted us to get an apartment together. To make the break and build our lives cleanly. But he wanted more. He wanted to hurt Dad by moving In with a crowd he knew our father wouldn't approve of. But all that doesn't change the fact that when he needed me, I let him down. That when it came to the crunch, I chose security instead of him. I was afraid, you see," she whispered, trying to smile. "I was afraid I couldn't make it in the real world. I thought I needed my father's money and name to pave my way through life. I didn't believe in myself as a person. I thought I could only exist as a Barron in the Barron world. And Bryan died before I could tell him that I had changed my mind." She was silent for a moment. "But you know, somehow, I feel he knows. I feel closer to him now than I have since he died."

She had tried so hard to feel close to Bryan in the days following his death. Tried and failed.

"When the police came to tell us," she continued. "I felt as though I weren't complete anymore—sort of other worldish, as though I weren't quite real. So after the funeral I went to the place where he had been staying to see if the feel of him, the essence of him, was still there. He had been rooming with two other men and, Ben, they were awful. I didn't need to talk to them. I could see in their faces that they had never been friends to Bryan and I would find nothing of him there. Dad told me later that he had been on his way home when he died. He must have eventually felt the same thing I did when I walked into that apartment."

Ben grew tense and still. "What did you do?" he prompted.

"They tried to talk me into staying. They said I owed it to Bryan. That since I hadn't stood by him while he was alive, I should do it then by staying with them and demanding money from my father."

Ben spat out a vicious expletive, his eyes growing cold and hard.

This must be the Ben who had forced her attacker to talk, Sunny thought. Suddenly she was very glad she saw only the gentle man and not this fierce giant.

"I refused, of course," she went on. "But when I tried to leave, one of them grabbed me. I fell and hit my head on a table. It must have been then that they got in touch with my father."

"I should have broken more than his nose when I had the chance," Ben said with tight anger.

"Ben!"

"No one will get the chance to hurt you again."

His voice was husky with emotion as he held her tighter. "I promise you that."

Didn't he know that the only person who could truly hurt her was Ben himself? She looked into the eyes that shone down at her with love, the deep, lasting love she had seen before in a dream. She felt happiness flood her body, wiping out the pain of the past.

Drawing back so he could see her face, he said
softly, "Will you marry me, Chelsea? I railroaded
Sunny into it, but I have a feeling you won't take
so easily to railroading."

She laughed. "You can railroad both of us any time you like." She ran a hand down his face. "Yes. Yes from Chelsea. Yes from Sunny. Or whatever else you want to call me."

"My love," he murmured, "that's what I'll always call you." He swung her over on top of him, then continued the roll until he was lying over her, his happiness evident in his face and his exuberant actions. "We'll be married right away. No engagement," he added sternly. "Your record isn't too good on engagements."