Читать книгу The Captains' Vegas Vows - Caro Carson - Страница 11

Chapter Two

The woman beneath him started to laugh—or at least for a second, Tom thought she was laughing, because they’d laughed together last night.

This was different.

“Helen?”

She had one hand over her eyes, her ring hand. The sight of that diamond and gold band choked him up, too, a sob of gratitude sticking in his throat, gratitude that he’d finally met the woman he’d dreamed of. His wife. His wife.

His wife was crying.

“Hey, Helen. What’s going on?” His voice came out a little more husky than normal, emotion making his throat tight, because she was wonderful, and he didn’t want this wonderful woman to be upset. About anything. Ever.

She took in a shivery breath, one he felt through her whole body and his, joined as they were. He kissed her hand and she lifted it away. Her eyes were closed and her lashes were wet, although no tears had spilled over. He brushed her hair away from her cheek, savoring their physical closeness, skin against skin, and he waited. His wife often paused before speaking, but she always answered him. He loved that about her. He would never have to cajole, beg or plead with her to talk to him. She was the last woman in the world who’d resort to giving him the silent treatment.

Helen opened her eyes, those beautiful warm brown eyes, and looked at him the way she’d been looking at him since their eyes had first met across a crowded casino.

“I...” She cleared her throat.

He waited.

“I can’t believe I did this.”

“This?” He raised one eyebrow as he looked down at her. “This seems to be what happens whenever we’re in the same room. We’ve been doing this all night.”

He smiled gently at Mrs. Tom Cross. It was an emotional morning. Crying was a normal reaction at weddings. He kissed the corner of her eye before a tear of joy could slip away.

The slight salt on his lips did something to him. To his heart. He felt it expand, like a lion stretching in the sun, full and satisfied. Content—he felt supremely content, heading into the rest of his life as a married man.

“All night?” She looked away, and pressed her fingertips into her forehead, like someone trying to think hard. “Yes, of course we have.”

“Of course,” he echoed her, and shifted some of his weight off her. “It was our wedding night.”

She shielded her eyes with her hand as if looking at him was as painful as looking into the sun. “It really was?”

He frowned. She hadn’t meant that to sound like a question, surely.

She held her hand out a little way to look at her wedding ring. “This is really...real?”

Another emotion tried to crawl up the back of his throat, threatening his contentment. He swallowed it down and kissed the tip of her nose. “Is that question really real?”

She didn’t smile.

He suddenly couldn’t, either. “You’re serious. You don’t remember?”

She looked away again, concentrating, but after a moment, she shook her head. “No.”

Alarm tried to choke him, but he beat it down. This was temporary. They’d had a lot to drink and not a lot of sleep. Helen would remember.

He’d tell her. “We picked out that ring together. It nearly made us miss getting the marriage license. Vegas may be 24/7, but even their government offices close at some point. We got there in the nick of time, just before the stroke of midnight, Cinderella.”

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 know. Fort Hood.”

Surprise made her hesitate for a moment.

My God, she really remembers nothing, nothing we said, nothing we planned.

It hurt.

Pain was an old enemy. Tom had learned to deal with it before he’d learned to drive a car. Thanks, Dad. Helen wasn’t locked in a fortress—his heart was. It had been for a long time, untouchable, invulnerable.

Until Vegas.

Until Helen Pallas. She was the one person who’d found her way to his side of the wall. She’d wanted to stay there, forever, the two of them safe and happy together, so certain they’d never feel pain in their little world for two that he’d let the wall disintegrate. With Helen by his side, he didn’t need to be on guard. Hopes wouldn’t get dashed. Love would never be withheld in chilling silence.

Please remember. “I was here this weekend because I’d flown in for a friend’s wedding. Vegas was the closest airport to the resort they married at, across the state line, in Utah. Then I came back to Vegas, and I saw you. Everything changed. We decided I’d cancel my return ticket and drive with you to Fort Hood instead.” Please remember.

She took another step back. “That’s crazy. This isn’t some kind of honeymoon road trip. I’ve got orders to report to Fort Hood. I’m an army officer.”

“I know you are, Helen.”

Her eyes widened a fraction in surprise. She clutched the sheet more tightly to her chest. “I’m traveling on orders. It’s at least an eighteen-hour drive, and I’ve only got twenty-two hours at the most to make it. I’ll barely have time to stop for gas and food.”

“That makes it more important for me to go with you. We can take shifts driving through the night. It will be safer.” Her safety mattered, because he remembered everything, and she was his wife. He’d sworn to love, honor, cherish her. You swore the same to me.

Helen sounded angry. “This isn’t some sexy Vegas game. This is real. The real United States Army, real orders, real clock ticking. You are a stranger to me. There is no way I’m going to spend eighteen hours in my own car with a perfect stranger.”

A stranger. Him.

The wall got higher, stronger. It felt so familiar. Thanks, Dad. You don’t want me for a son? Then I don’t want you for a father.

She abruptly stopped retreating. “Let me be clear. No means no.”

He laughed at that, knowing he sounded obnoxious. “I assure you, I can take no for an answer. It hasn’t been part of your vocabulary.”

“It is now. The answer is no. Do not cancel your plane ticket to wherever you were going. Do not cancel whatever plans you had. Don’t change anything for me. Just tell me where my clothes are, and I’ll be gone from your life.”

Don’t go. The wall around his heart felt the same, but his heart was no longer the same within it. With every beat, he wanted his wife.

She did not want him.

“Your dress is in the shower.” His words were stiff. Unemotional.

She frowned. “Why is it—Never mind.” The rosy flush reappeared across her cheekbones, across her chest.

He stayed where he was, towel around his waist, arms crossed over his chest. He was made of stone. He was the wall. Stone didn’t bleed. Walls didn’t beg.

Then Helen returned wearing her wedding dress, and he wanted to howl in pain.

She dropped the sandals she carried and started pushing her toes into the sparkling straps as she finger-combed her hair, a whirlwind of action in a long elegant gown.

“You need to slow down.” His voice was astoundingly even. Then again, why should it waver? The worst had happened. He’d fallen in love and had that love rejected. Everything from this point on was inconsequential. “Ten minutes won’t make a difference. Eat.”

“I should have left hours ago.” She gave up on her hair and dropped her hands with a sigh. “Look, Tom, you seem like a really nice man. I’m sure we had a really good night, but you can count yourself lucky that I have to go. This would have been a giant mistake. I’m not wife material.”

“Too late. Literally, you are wife material.”

That gave her pause. “Is there...paperwork?”

“The license was signed and kept by the chapel. They file it with the county. In two weeks, the official certificate will arrive in the mail.”

“I can’t believe I did this to myself.” The misery on her face infused her whole body. She seemed to fold in on herself, looking too small for the white column gown she’d worn with such confidence. “How could I do this to myself?”

Damn it. His heart wouldn’t stay behind any wall. He was supposed to care about his wife. He did care about her.

He took one step closer to her, but she stopped him with a raised hand. She raised her chin, too. “No—I’ll take care of everything. A divorce. An annulment. I don’t know, but I’ll get a lawyer when I get to Texas, and I’ll get this all straightened out, I promise.”

That wasn’t the promise she’d made the night before. It wasn’t the promise he wanted. He refolded his arms across his bare chest and didn’t get any closer.

“So, um, Tom, could you write your number down for me? For the lawyer? Quickly? I’m running so late.”

“It’s already in your phone.” They’d gotten married. Of course they’d exchanged all of this kind of information. “I have your number.”

She ran her hands down the sides of her dress. “No pockets. Do you...do you have my phone?”

He nodded toward a shining brass credenza, where both their phones had been tossed. His wallet was there, as well. He picked it up. “I have your driver’s license and your military ID.”

“Oh.” She laughed nervously. “That would have been bad, to leave without those.” She took the cards with one hand and stuck her other hand out to shake. “I guess this is goodbye, then. I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out what to do legally.”

He let her stand with her hand outstretched. They’d just made love on the sofa. Now she expected him to shake her hand like a stranger?

It was enough to put that final stone in the wall—until he saw that the hand she offered him was trembling. The wall came tumbling down again, that quickly. His heart demanded that he take care of his precious bride. For better or for worse...

Helen dropped her hand. Her attempt at a smile only made the sadness in her eyes more obvious. “Goodbye, Tom.” She skirted around him to head for the door.

“Stop.” He caught her with a hand on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you eat.”

She looked at his hand on her upper arm, then raised her eyes to his. Dark eyes. Angry eyes. “Or else what?”

“Or else I won’t let you leave.”

The loathing on her face was not how he’d ever dreamed she’d look at him. He was being a pompous jerk, making rules for her like her ex-husband had.

He wasn’t her ex-husband. Not yet.

She didn’t need to be given orders. She needed help. He let go of her and walked past the sofa to pick up the house phone. The operator greeted him by name. Obsequiousness came with the penthouse suite. “Good morning, Mr. Cross.”

“I need the valet to bring the car around as quickly as possible. It’s urgent.” He turned back to Helen and gestured toward the table with the telephone receiver before he dropped it back in its cradle. “They’ll have the car up in five minutes. You might as well eat.”

She glared at him a moment longer, but apparently common sense won out, because she turned to the table and grabbed a croissant. She stuffed some bacon slices in it, then sloshed some orange juice into a glass and chugged it down.

With the croissant in her hand, she sketched him a sarcastic salute. “Goodbye, Mr. Cross.”

His bride walked out the door.