Читать книгу Circumstantial Memories - Carol Ericson - Страница 9

Clem filled the stranger’s ears with local gossip as they ambled toward his house, covering the awkwardness that hung in the air like one of those heavy Native American blankets sold from roadside campers.

The truth of her past hovered right around the corner and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps this stranger…no, Ryder McClintock…didn’t know her that well. Wouldn’t his family have recognized her name as one of Ryder’s friends? Of course, they knew only her first name.

His father and stepmother didn’t mention him often and he hadn’t been to visit them in over three years. She recalled talk of the McClintocks’ middle boy working overseas on some kind of a secret mission. How did she know a spy? Perhaps they had some brief acquaintance.

If she didn’t know him well, why was she on her way to see him that fateful night when her car skidded off the road in a snowstorm? That couldn’t be a coincidence. She must’ve been seeking out Ryder when she crashed, but where had he been the past three years?

As Ryder chatted with Clem, his responses terse, he avoided looking at her but seemed fascinated by Shelby. Julia’s heart skittered in her chest. He could probably tell her all about Shelby’s father, where he was and why he never came looking for them.

“Hat, please.” Shelby strained away from Julia’s tight grip, leaning toward Ryder.

“You want my hat?” Ryder grinned down at Shelby, a gleam lighting his blue eyes.

“I’m sorry. Everyone spoils her around here.” She tugged Shelby back to her side. “Don’t be rude, Shelby.”

“Her name’s Shelby?” Ryder shoved his hands into his tight blue jeans. “That was my grandmother’s name.”

“I know. Ralph, your father, told me that after I named her.”

She folded her arms, gripping her elbows. “Do you think…?”

“Hat.” Shelby stomped her feet before planting them firmly on the dirt road.

“Young lady,” Julia crouched next to her, “I’m going to tell Aunt Millie not to give you any sugar cookies unless you behave yourself.” She secretly thanked her daughter for the distraction. After almost four years of having a blank slate for a memory, she didn’t think she could handle someone filling up that slate too quickly.

Julia looked up at the man who held the key to her identity and rolled her eyes. “She’s stubborn.”

“Just like…” Ryder stopped and clenched his jaw. Then he lifted his hat from his head and placed it on Shelby’s. “There you go, a real Colorado cowgirl.”

Shelby squealed and holding her hands in front of her as if gripping reins, she trotted around the three adults, as the hat slid down to her nose.

“Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that.” Julia stood up next to Ryder as a breeze lifted the ends of his brown hair, touched with gold. She flinched at the pain lurking in his eyes and it took a physical effort for her not to reach up and smooth her palms across the creases at the sides of his mouth.

She couldn’t be Ryder McClintock’s wife. His family would’ve known if he had a wife. Ryder could give her a husband and a father for Shelby, it just wouldn’t be him. Her throat tightened and tears pricked behind her eyes.

Her knees trembled at her response to this tall, broad-shouldered man—the McClintocks’ son. She slipped her arm through Clem’s, leaning on his shoulder.

“R-Ryder and I have to talk, Clem.”

“I know that, honey.” He patted her shoulder. “Let’s just make it back to my place, and Millie will get some lunch for Shelby and you two can have some privacy.”

Clem’s neat ranch house appeared all too soon. His wife, Millie, waved from the porch, a dish towel in her hand. She called out, “I heard Ryder was back in town. How’d you get him first?”

“Just luck.” Clem strode to the porch as fast as his old bones could carry him and mumbled something to Millie.

Julia overheard her name, Ryder’s name, and something about her memory. Word would spread as fast as a Colorado brushfire. It always did.

“Mercy me.” Millie covered her mouth with the dish towel, her eyes wide above it. She scurried down the steps and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Ryder’s cheek. “I hope you can help our Julia.”

Clem grabbed Shelby’s hand. “C’mon, buttercup, cookies and lemonade for you after lunch and then I’ll take you out to see Missycat’s kittens.”

Millie placed a plump arm around Julia’s shoulders. “You and Ryder can have the patio out back. Plenty of privacy there.”

Julia’s stomach churned and she stumbled on the top step. Ryder placed a steadying hand against the small of her back, beneath her backpack, his warmth seeping through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. Her hyperawareness of him had to be due to their connection in her previous life.

She always referred to her past as her previous life, as if it had no bearing on the life she led in Silverhill. The foolish phrase allowed her to ignore the terror she always felt when she groped in the shadowy darkness of her past for answers. Now a collision between her past and present loomed before her. Was she ready for the fallout?

“Behave yourself and don’t be greedy.” Julia settled Shelby at the Stokers’ kitchen table, while Millie handed Ryder two glasses of lemonade.

Ryder led the way to the patio and Julia followed, her gaze clinging to his tight jeans molded to his behind—a pleasant distraction from the uncertainty that lurked around the corner.

Too bad Ryder didn’t rush in claiming to be her long-lost husband like so many others had. She might have accepted Ryder’s story without question.

He clicked the glasses down on the glass-topped table, and then pulled out her chair. The legs scraping against the flagstone jarred her from her pleasant reverie back to the present…back to the past. She perched on the edge of the chair and wrapped her hands around the sweating glass.

Settling beside her, Ryder sipped his lemonade and then turned his blue eyes to her. His gaze meandered over her face and hair and skimmed her shoulders. A sinuous warmth suffused her skin, his intimate inventory feeling like a caress.

“You look…different.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Ryder.” She rubbed her damp palms on the thighs of her jeans. “Who am I?”

A quick grin split his face. “Not so different after all.”

His smile took her breath away, and she gripped the edge of the table to keep from sliding beneath it. Damn, if this man wasn’t her husband in her previous life, she must’ve had a hot fling with him. Or should have.

“Okay.” He planted his hands on his knees. “Your name is Julia Scott, although after you and Jeremy separated you started using your maiden name, Rousseau. How’d you remember your first name?”

“Wait a minute.” A dull pain thumped behind her eyes as she held up her hands. “You’re going too fast. I’m divorced?”

Dragging in a breath, Ryder raked a hand through his thick brown hair and the sun glinted off the golden streaks. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not very good at filling in someone about her life. You were married to Jeremy Scott for less than a year. Things didn’t go so well after he got back from Afghanistan, and you split up.”

“Afghanistan? My husband was in the military?” Maybe the military deployed him again, and that’s why he never looked for her.

“Yeah.” Ryder shifted his gaze and took a long swallow of lemonade.

“And my parents? My family? Why didn’t anyone else look for me?” She held her breath as she watched Ryder trace beads of moisture on the glass with his fingertip.

“I don’t think you have close family in the States, Julia. Your father, Girard Rousseau, was a diplomat with the U.S. Embassy in France. He passed away about five years ago. As far as I know, your mother, Celeste Rousseau, still lives in Paris.” A smile quirked the edge of his mouth. “And you and your mom were never close. When I called her, she said the two of you had had a falling out. She hadn’t seen or heard from you in years and figured you’d headed out for parts unknown.”

Yeah and who would figure those unknown parts would be her own mind? She slumped back in her chair and exhaled. Her father was dead. Her estranged mother lived in Paris. Her ex-husband was probably fighting overseas.

That explained the deafening silence when she tried to search for her identity. She clasped her hands in her lap. It didn’t explain her black eye or what she was doing in a stolen car with mounds of cash in the trunk and no ID.

Ryder’s large hand covered hers and his warmth soaked into her bones. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Julia. Didn’t you have any ID? Whose car were you driving?”

She met his gaze. His touch, his presence calmed her, making her feel as secure as those mountains that ringed her world for the past three and a half years.

“I didn’t have a purse, a suitcase or any identification with me. I was driving a stolen car. The police found the owner of the car in Washington, but he didn’t know me. Th-there was a lot of money in a bag in the backseat of the car, but the owner didn’t know anything about it. The police held on to the money for almost a year, tried to trace the serial numbers and then released it to me. It totaled about three hundred thousand dollars.”

His glittering blue eyes narrowed and he squeezed her hands before releasing them. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Why would I have that much money?”

“Your mom’s rich.” He lifted a shoulder, but his face tightened as if she’d transferred her anxiety to him.

“And the stolen car?”

“Did the police charge you with any crime?” he asked.

“No, they put it down to a mystery in my past, besides I was injured and pregnant. The owner of the car didn’t want to press any charges.”

“God, I wish I could’ve been there for you.” Ryder jumped up from his chair, knocking it to the ground.

His concern caused her heart to thump against her rib cage. He knew her…Julia Rousseau Scott…and he cared about her. That knowledge gave her strength, the strength to examine her past and unveil its secrets.

She took a deep breath. “How did you know me? It seems as if I didn’t have any friends who cared about me enough to search for me.”

“Oh, you had lots of friends.” He stopped pacing and shoved a hand in his pocket. “In Paris. I heard you’d followed Jeremy to Tucson, but if you landed here almost four years ago I don’t think you had time to form a circle of friends in Arizona.”

“You knew me in Paris?” Her voice squeaked. Even though she’d discovered she knew French last week, she never imagined she’d lived in Paris.

“That’s where I met you. I worked with…Jeremy and I served in the same unit. When I came to Paris on leave, Jeremy introduced me to his new wife.”

Ryder worked with her ex-husband? Did this mean her ex-husband was a spy, too? Did Jeremy even know about her pregnancy, about his daughter? Would she have to share Shelby with a stranger? Her gut clenched. She didn’t want to share Shelby with anyone.

Running her hands across her face as if brushing away cobwebs, she pushed out of her chair. “Where is he? Where’s Jeremy?”

Ryder spun around and gripped her shoulders. “Jeremy’s dead.”

She closed her eyes and waited for the grief, the sharp pang of regret, a twist of guilt. Nothing. She felt nothing but a flare of relief. No stranger would be knocking on her door to take Shelby for court-mandated visits with a father she didn’t know.

“Are you okay?” Ryder squeezed her shoulders.

Her eyes flew open. With his face inches from hers, she could smell his strong, clean scent and the citrus on his breath from the fresh lemonade. Two lines formed on either side of his mouth and his nostrils flared. Did he expect her to collapse?

“I—I don’t feel anything. I know he was your friend, but all I feel is relief that he can’t take my daughter. Am I a horrible person? I’m sorry you lost your friend.” A sob escaped her lips for the man, Shelby’s father, she’d never know.

The pressure on her shoulders turned to a caress and Ryder pulled her into an embrace. She molded against his hard body, and he tightened his arms around her, laying his cheek on the top of her head. Her blood sang in her veins as she rested against the solid comfort of his chest.

He murmured against her hair, “You’re not a horrible person. Your reaction is natural. You don’t remember Jeremy. How could you feel anything about the news of his death?”

Julia curled her arms around Ryder’s waist. Maybe if Jeremy stood here on the Stokers’ patio, holding her in his arms, she’d remember. The strong connection she felt with Ryder bubbled up from somewhere in her subconscious. Dr. Jim always believed if she met someone from her past, memories would start to return.

The memories still remained blank, but the feeling she had for Ryder surged through her, real and strong. She turned her head and pressed her lips against the warm skin of his throat, moving her hips against his. His breath hissed between his teeth, and she jumped back, disentangling herself from his embrace and the confusing feelings swirling in her head.

“I—I’m sorry.” She covered her face with her hands to hide the hot flash that claimed her cheeks.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. This must be…” He placed his hand on her back and steered her back to her chair. “Sit.”

She dropped into the chair, and Ryder shoved her glass of lemonade in front of her. She gulped the cool liquid and then pressed the glass against her hot face. Ryder must think she’d lost her mind along with her memory, coming onto him right after learning about her dead husband…ex-husband.

“How did Jeremy die and when?” She had to start piecing together the string of events in her past life that led to her accident in a stolen car with a bag of cash.

“You were living in Paris when Jeremy finished his last assignment.” He cocked his head. “Do you know that you speak French like a native?”

“Yeah, I discovered that just last week.”

Shaking his head, he said, “Weird.”

“You don’t know the half of weird. Go on.”

“You worked as a tour guide at the Louvre. Anyway, Jeremy returned from the field, and you two fought and decided to separate.”

“After one fight?” Her marriage to Jeremy couldn’t have been that strong.

“One of many fights.” Ryder shrugged his broad shoulders. “Jeremy left his job and went out to Tucson. When I found out about Jeremy’s…death, I called you in Paris. That’s when I learned you went to the States, but I don’t know why you followed him.”

“I was with him when he died?” She swallowed the uneasy lump in her throat.

“I don’t know, Julia. I saw you last in Paris before I left for my next assignment.” He shifted his gaze from hers and stared across the Stokers’ back yard that stretched into a paddock for their horses. “When I heard about Jeremy I called you, but you were gone. When I got back to Paris, I looked for you again, but you’d disappeared. I didn’t see you again until today.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Ryder.” Wings of anxiety fluttered in her belly. Something didn’t add up about Ryder’s story. He said Jeremy was in Afghanistan, in the military, but he talked of assignments instead of deployment. And what American soldier lived in Paris? The McClintocks never mentioned their son being in the armed services. He worked for a government agency, some said the CIA.

“How did Jeremy die?”

“Julia, we don’t have to go into this right now. You must be on overload. There’s plenty of time to get into this stuff, and I’ll be around for a while.”

“Before you get your next assignment?” She crossed her arms, squelching all the squishy feelings she had about this man. She needed some answers. “What agency do you work for?”

Leaning back in his chair, he stretched his long legs in front of him. His worn cowboy boots looked right at home on the dusty roads that led from Silverhill to the ranches that surrounded it. Of course he fit in because his family owned one of the biggest ranches, but he was also at home in Paris, Afghanistan, and wherever else he’d been hiding out these past three and a half years.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Or you’d have to kill me?” Her own attempt at humor caused a chill to ripple down her spine. Hunching her shoulders, she gripped her upper arms. “I must’ve known at some point because I was married to one of your coworkers.”

“You knew a little, but it’s best for those memories to stay buried.”

“Damn you.” She banged her fist on the table, and the ice in the glasses tinkled and shook. “You’re not the gatekeeper of my memories. Did Jeremy’s death have anything to do with this top secret agency? Is it the reason I was fleeing in a stolen car with gobs of cash?”

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.”

A quick grin broke across his face. “Still as hot-tempered as ever.”

She was? Nobody in Silverhill had ever accused her of having a hot temper. They tiptoed around sweet, gentle Julia and spoke in hushed voices so as not to startle her. She hated it.

Ryder sat forward and traced a finger along the knuckles of her clenched fist. “You never told me how you knew your name was Julia.”

A blatant attempt to change the subject, but his warm touch somehow made that okay. Not wanting to break away from him, Julia plucked her necklace from beneath her T-shirt with her other hand. Hooking her thumb behind the gold script of her name, she pulled it forward.

Ryder took it from her and ran the tip of his finger along the letters. Her heart ached at the gentle way he caressed her name. His eyes crinkled and a smile tugged at his lips.

“Do you recognize it?” She held her breath.

“Yeah, you wore it all the time.”

His eyes met hers, and she shivered at the longing mirrored in their depths. She shared a past with this man. His lips, inches from hers, invited her to explore further. As much as she wanted to, she had to learn more about herself, about her dead husband, Shelby’s father.

The patio door slid open, and Shelby barreled across the bricks and threw herself into Julia’s lap. “I want to go home. Uncle Clem said I could have a kitty.”

“Okay, we can go home now, but we have to wait until the kitties are ready to leave their mama.” Julia glanced at Ryder, who was smiling down at Shelby.

Shelby turned her head, a quick grin splitting her face. “I have your hat.”

“Then let’s go get it.” Ryder tweaked one of Shelby’s curls before he stood up. “And I’ll walk you and your mama home.”

Millie collected the glasses from the table, her gaze darting between Julia and Ryder. “You learn anything, honey?”

“Yeah, but we have a lot more to discuss.”

Ryder raised his brows, but before he could utter a word, Shelby grabbed his hand, tugging him toward the house. With narrowed eyes, Julia watched her daughter pull the handsome stranger inside. Seemed Ryder McClintock had cast a spell over her daughter, too.

As Julia and Ryder sauntered down the dirt road to her house, Shelby skipped ahead of them, examining every rock and stick along the way.

“She’s really bright and talkative.”

“She was my lifeline after the accident.” Tears pricked her eyes and she dashed them away. “Does she look anything like Jeremy?”

Ryder stiffened beside her and lifted a shoulder. “I think she looks like you.”

“Was I pregnant when Jeremy and I divorced?” It bothered her that she’d separate from her husband when they were going to have a child together.

Her house came into view, and Shelby pushed through the front gate.

“I didn’t know anything about your pregnancy.” Ryder kicked at some pebbles on the road. “You weren’t pregnant the last time I saw you in Paris…before I left on assignment.”

“Were Jeremy and I separated at that point?” She gnawed at her bottom lip, trying to piece together the strands of her life, like a movie where she knew the ending and had to figure out the beginning and the middle.

“Yes.” A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Mama, more flowers.” Shelby ran back toward the road, clutching a bunch of wildflowers tied with a blue ribbon.

Julia’s heart pounded as she took the bouquet of flowers from her daughter. Two offerings in one day? Her secret admirer had just turned up the heat.

“Is anything wrong?” Ryder’s brow furrowed as he tilted his head.

“Someone has been leaving me flowers the past few weeks.” She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “A secret admirer.”

“You used to love flowers…roses.” He pushed the gate open for her. “That’s how Jeremy proposed to you. He filled your apartment in Paris with roses.”

“What an extravagant gesture. How’d it all go downhill from a rose-filled proposal?”

“You inspired extravagant gestures.”

“Me?” She laughed. “Now I inspire scraggly bouquets of wildflowers.”

She shoved her key in the door, pushing it open. Many residents of Silverhill left their doors unlocked, especially during the day, but she never felt safe doing that. Maybe once she reclaimed her past, she’d stop looking over her shoulder, even though that past according to Ryder McClintock still contained secrets and unanswered riddles.

“Does Shelby take a nap? If you’re not on overload, we can continue talking. I can tell you about the time you jumped in the fountain fully clothed and the other time when you inspired a skinny-dipping session at a party.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not.” His blue eyes gleamed with a wicked light. “I was at the party.”

Shelby danced around Ryder’s legs. “Come see my rock collection.”

“You can show Ryder your collection, and then it’s time for a nap.” She had a lot to learn about herself, that carefree, uninhibited woman…and a lot to learn about Ryder.

Julia slid the backpack off her shoulder and pushed open her bedroom door. She stopped at the threshold and grabbed the doorjamb for support.

The blood rushed to her head and the roaring in her ears drowned out the sound of her own scream as it ripped through her throat.