Her foot twitched beneath the blanket

Alan went back to her bed. “Cate?”

Her eyelids fluttered. For a horrified moment, he was afraid she couldn’t open her eyes. “Cate,” he said again, “wake up. Uncle Ford, why didn’t you shout at her before?”

“Shall I try again?” Uncle Ford struggled to his feet, maybe to lean closer to Cate’s ear. He might have yelled at his niece, except Dan appeared at his side to help him—or maybe to hold him back.

Alan flashed his son a grateful smile and took Cate’s hand. “Wake up. Please, Cate.” Asking for things didn’t come naturally, and that had been a sore spot between them. But he’d beg freely if he had to. Finally Cate opened her eyes and held them open. He didn’t dare look away. Something different in her expression bothered him—some level of detachment.

She studied each person around her bed. Nothing that made her the Cate he loved was in her gaze. She eyed her aunt, uncle, niece and son with the same strange, dreamy look until she focused on Alan again.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Dear Reader,

Imagine this: You open your eyes and find yourself in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers who look like a close-knit family. You don’t know your aunt or uncle, your niece or even your twin sister. Worse, you don’t recognize your own son, and when the man who seems to be in charge claims he’s your husband, you realize your own name is a mystery.

This is only the start of Cate Talbot Palmer’s dilemma. Soon she discovers she’s pregnant with twins, but that she hasn’t told her husband, Alan—and she can’t remember why. Add to that the tales people recount of the wild Talbot clan she hails from, and you have the kind of family story I love. Cate must figure out who she really is and learn the truth about her marriage. No longer the “good” twin, or the woman who never rocked anyone’s boat, she wants to live life fully. Her struggle to recover her identity brings upheaval to her family and her marriage.

I hope you enjoy this story of learning to trust a loving stranger.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on this story, please write to me at annaadams@superauthors.com.

Sincerely,

Anna Addams

Unexpected Babies
Anna Adams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Sarah Greengas, Sharon Lavoie,

Jennifer LaBrecque, Amy Lanz, Carmen Green,

Wendy Etherington, Jenni Grizzle, Karen Bishop,

Theresa Goldman and Michele Flinn—

thank you for reading my unpolished pages.

And to Paula Eykelhof and Laura Shin. Thank you

for the chance and for all I’ve already learned from you.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CATE TALBOT PALMER opened her car door and stepped into the sand-blown street that paralleled the beach. Above the small, stucco building in front of her a metal sign rattled like faint thunder in the wind off the ocean. The sign read Palmer Construction, Leith, Georgia.

Her husband, Alan, was inside at his desk. Nearly two hours late for the burned five-course dinner she’d abandoned on their dining room table.

Cate ran one hand across her stomach. The stench of dry, overcooked lamb mingled with ocean salt. She swallowed, her throat almost clenching she felt so nauseous. She’d suggested a special dinner tonight because she’d finally decided to tell Alan the secret she’d been keeping. Thank God she hadn’t told him before.

She’d waited for him, staring at a bottle of sparkling grape juice she’d set on the table between their plates as a hint. She’d memorized that bottle while she’d opened her eyes to the facts. She and Alan had both kept secrets for the past sixteen weeks, only she’d been desperate enough to pretend she didn’t see what Alan was doing.

Late nights at the office, fierce silences at home, see-through excuses for the cell phone he’d practically strapped to his hand. Most women would suspect an affair, but Alan Palmer had a different problem.

His mother had left him and his father when he was ten because his dad couldn’t give her the material things she’d wanted. As a result of that longago abandonment and the way his father had used him as a confidant during the divorce, Alan tied his worth to his success with Palmer Construction.

He’d do anything to provide for Cate and Dan, their eighteen-year-old son, but he kept his emotional distance, afraid to risk the kind of pain he and his father had barely survived. His need to protect Cate had pushed her away, because she wanted a husband who would let her help him solve his problems, not pull away when troubles came.

She sprang from a long line of Talbots who’d failed at marriage or any relationship close to that kind of commitment. She and Alan had tried to create the family they’d both craved in their childhoods. Instead, they’d created an emotional divide.

She felt as if she’d already raised Dan on her own. She’d made up excuses for Alan’s absences, for his distraction when he showed up late at one family gathering after another. She couldn’t start that over again. This time, if she raised a child alone, it would be because she no longer lived with her baby’s father.

A car passed her. She knew the driver. Another mom whose son was about to graduate from high school. Cate pasted a smile on her face. After today she wouldn’t have to pretend everything was normal.

Wind from the car blew her hair across her face, and Cate brushed the strands out of her eyes. She refused to wait for Alan to tell her what was wrong with the business. Hurting from the pain of another betrayal cost her more than knowing the truth. She’d make him tell her.

Squaring her shoulders, she marched across the street to the office. Her legs felt like jelly. She opened the frosted glass doors that were engraved with the company’s name.

The moment she stepped inside, the temperature dropped. Even in mid-May, the South Georgia heat made air-conditioning a requirement. Cate swiped at perspiration on her forehead. Her hand trembled in front of her eyes.

She’d offer Alan a chance to explain because she still didn’t want to leave him. When they were good, they were very, very good.

Alan’s voice murmured from the office area. For a moment she hoped he had a late appointment with a client. Then she recognized a tone she always dreaded hearing. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he was in trouble.

Her anger simmered as every excuse Alan had given her in the past few weeks repeated in her head. She wouldn’t have kept her own secret if she’d trusted him.

Not that she could give him all the blame. She’d stayed. She hated feeling dependent, and her relationship with Alan made her feel dependent rather than stronger. When they were bad, they were unbearable.

Striding past models of the buildings and homes the company was contracted to build or renovate, Cate tried to imagine why her husband had decided his success here meant more than their marriage.

She passed empty offices. Her twin sister, Caroline, who worked as an interior designer for the company, had already gone home.

Alan’s office lay at the end of the hall. The air conditioning’s whisper cushioned the sound of Cate’s feet on the Berber carpet. Suddenly, John Mabry, Leith’s chief of police, leaned into Cate’s view, his bulk bending the frame of his chair as he crossed his arms behind his head.

“I know,” he said on a hefty sigh. “A trained cop had no business losing Jim Cooper in the men’s room, but I didn’t train the cops who work the Newark airport. Just chill, Alan. We’ll find him and your money before you have to shut your doors for good.”

The carpet’s warp seemed to rise up and trip Cate. Jim Cooper was their CPA, an oily man who always stood too close, tried to talk too intimately. She stumbled to a halt, flexing her fingers against the creamy, patterned wallpaper. The truth came as no surprise, but hearing it in plain words felt like a near fatal wound.

“What if we’re already too late?” Alan asked. “I’m working my creditors now as if I were the criminal.”

“What?” Mabry said in a sharp tone.

“With my banker’s help.” Alan placated the other man. “But I don’t do business this way, and I don’t like knowing my employees may be working on borrowed time.”

The scream in Cate’s head must have translated to some kind of sound. John Mabry turned to her, surprise widening his eyes. She pulled her hand off the wall. Nearly twenty years of pretending her marriage was healthy had honed her skills. She’d pretend nothing was wrong. Next best thing to acting as if Alan had talked to her about the problem.

“Hey, John.”

“Evening, Cate.”

Alan’s chair squeaked. After a few muffled steps, he came around the door, tall, dark and clueless. “Is something wrong with Dan?”

Startled at his unexpected question, Cate searched tanned features that had thinned over the past weeks to an ascetic sharpness. His problems in this office had distracted him. He’d forgotten their meal and his promise to come home early. Naturally, he only expected her to show up if something was wrong with their son.

“Dan’s fine.”

A father’s fear haunted his eyes. Alan loved the idea of family. He truly loved their son—as much as she did.

“I came because you’re late,” she said.

He turned a wary gaze on the police chief. “John…”

Mabry pried himself out of his chair. “I’ll get back to you later, Alan.”

Cate watched the other man leave. With each step he took toward the front of the building, she braced herself to face the reason for her husband’s guilty expression.

“Cate.” Taking her arm, Alan forced her to look at him before she was ready.

She shook him off. “Don’t.” All she wanted was for him to tell her she was wrong. “Why was John here?”

“Please believe I wanted to tell you.” He took her hands again. Heat throbbed from his callused palms.

She splayed her fingers over the undersides of his wrists, where his pulse tapped an alarm. A measure of calm came to her despite confusion that had become familiar. “Something’s happened. Again.”

He tightened his hands, but he couldn’t seem to answer her. She studied his face, intent on every nerve, every shadow of guilt that flitted behind eyes that knew her both too well and not at all.

“This time was different, Cate.”

“You always say it’s different, but it never is.” The future yawned in front of her like a hungry mouth. “You keep problems from me because you think I’ll leave if the business goes sour.”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He didn’t look well, but she couldn’t spare him any more of her empathy.

“I would have told you.” He released one of her hands so he could wipe the drops of moisture off his mouth. “I had to make sure I knew how much trouble we’re facing.”

“I don’t trust you.” She flattened her free hand over her belly, tracing the mound she couldn’t hide much longer. She wouldn’t expose another child to a part-time father. “I can’t go on the way we are, and you can’t change. You never would have told me about Jim. You planned to clean up the mess by yourself.”

“I haven’t told anyone except Mabry and the bank. Jim Cooper embezzled from the business accounts. He stole from every company he worked for. We’ve all lost money, and we’re trying to find Jim before he knows we’re looking for him.”

She fought to control her anger, but reason hadn’t worked with him in the past. “First, you should tell the employees if they’re in danger of losing their jobs. Second, I don’t work for you, and I’m not a newspaper reporter. You have no right to keep me in the dark. I’m your wife, and I have an equal share in this business. I turned myself into a stay-at-home mom for Dan, not because I’m not intelligent enough to be part of this company.”

“I never said you weren’t bright enough to understand the business, Cate.” He frowned, deep lines leaving furrows between his nose and mouth. “John told me the police had tracked Jim to the Newark airport.”

“That part I understood. You’re obviously worried, and I’m sorry, but I don’t know why you won’t let me help you.”

“What could you have done?”

“I don’t know, but you never gave me a chance. You prefer to suffer alone.”

“I’m supposed to protect you and Dan.”

“Please don’t start that old story again.” She freed herself from him. “I’m not like your mother. I don’t need a house or a car or clothes that impress our neighbors. If the business burned to the ground, I’d want to help you rebuild, but you wouldn’t turn to me. You want to protect me, but Dan and I can’t count on you if something goes wrong in this office.” She spun blindly toward the reception area. She had one thought—to escape this building without him—but he kept pace with her as if she were crawling.

“Where are you going?” His stunned tone hurt most of all.

“I told you I wouldn’t stay if you hid anything else from me.”

“Tell me how I’m different than you, Cate. How often are you at Aunt Imogen’s or Uncle Ford’s houses? They don’t need a nursemaid.”

“They’re family, and they took Caroline and me in when Mom and Dad didn’t want us.” Her parents, both officers in Naval Intelligence, had dropped her and her sister off at Aunt Imogen’s on their way to an isolated duty station in Turkey. From there, they’d gone on to one unaccompanied assignment after another, and Cate and Caroline had remained with their maiden aunt and bachelor uncle in Leith. “They’re both alone and over seventy. I look in on them.” And they continued to give her the unconditional love she’d never had from either her parents or Alan.

“What about Caroline? You run to her and Shelly every time they try to change a lightbulb.” Her sister had raised her daughter alone since Caroline’s husband had abandoned them when Shelly was only four. Alan had never seemed to resent her attention to their extended family before, but desperation edged his tone. “You cushion them and Dan in cotton wool. I’m only trying to give you the kind of care you give our family.”

His last, self-serving point pushed Cate too far. She turned on him, but momentum carried her too close to him. His familiar, spicy scent triggered a basic need whose power had always frightened her. Wanting him so much, she felt weak and angry with herself. “Don’t look for someone to blame because you and I failed at our marriage.”

He reeled backward, stumbling into a model of the library they were supposed to refurbish. Instinctively, Cate caught his arm before she was certain whether she wanted to shove him or help him.

No, she knew what she had to do. “I stayed for Dan, but he leaves for college in a few weeks. I don’t have to pretend you and I are going to live happily ever after. Not together, anyway.”

“Cate.” His husky plea caught her unawares. He reached for her, his wedding band glowing gold in the building’s artificial light.

She arched away from him. Tears clouded her vision, but she grabbed the chrome rail on the front doors. Approaching night had strengthened the ocean breeze, and she had to lean her whole body into the door to open it.

Outside the wind whipped her hair into her eyes. She bumped into a soft figure that had to be a woman. Cate muttered a tear-choked apology and broke for the street. But she stumbled into a parking meter and fell off the sidewalk.

Her right ankle turned over. Pain nearly paralyzed her as her foot skidded through sand. Behind her, a woman’s voice shrilled, but the deep blast of a car horn seemed to finish her shriek. Cate straightened, turning. A green sports car, coming fast, froze her.

“Cate!” Alan must have followed her. He was furious, afraid and too far away.

She reached blindly into thin air, twisting back toward the sidewalk. Seconds stretched, defying the laws of nature. Alan caught her hands. She recognized the strength of his long fingers, the breadth of his palms. She grabbed at him, but she couldn’t get her feet beneath her in the sand. Holding on to her husband, she peered over her shoulder at the driver.

Intensity crumpled his face. His body lifted in the seat, as if he were standing on his brakes.

They screamed, and time lost its elasticity. Cate willed her body away from the car. Alan yanked her, but something glanced off her leg, more a jarring thump than real pain.

At first.

Alan pulled her hard against his body as a fire-edged knife seemed to slice through her thigh. Behind her, the car’s tires ground into the road and chaos faded to silence.

An unnatural silence, empty of voices or traffic, footsteps or the constant whisper of the ocean. Cate knew only pain and an overwhelming nausea. Panic clutched at her. Was she sick because of the baby, or the torture of her leg? Was she going to lose her baby?

“I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

She looked up. Alan’s fear fed her terror. She hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him about her pregnancy, and now she didn’t know how to say the words.

“Focus on me.” Alan turned his head. “Somebody call 911!”

Around them, cell phones erupted in a cacophony of beeps. Somehow, Cate found a smile, but Alan stared at her, amazed.

She concentrated on his green eyes. “You’ve always wanted to save my life.”

With his face pale as beach sand, Alan didn’t smile back. “Don’t talk.”

People she knew, Alan’s busiest carpenter and Mr. Parker, who owned the Bucket O’ Suds, edged into her peripheral vision.

“Look at the blood running down her leg, Alan.” Mr. Parker pushed a man-smelling apron beneath her nose. “Maybe you need this.”

“Get a damn ambulance,” Alan snarled, but then the muscles around his mouth worked as he fought to maintain his composure. “Cate, you’re all right.”

A resounding roar overwhelmed her silent prayer that he’d keep holding her too close for her to look down and see the blood. Pressure, like a giant hand, seemed to push her toward the ground. “I think I’m not all right.”

She was going to faint. First time she could ever remember fainting. Was she dying? “Alan, I—Dan—I want—”

“Dan’s fine.” Alan’s voice cracked. “You’re fine.”

“I have to tell you…” That strange pressure swathed her in darkness. Only Alan’s arms kept her from falling. She forgot what she had to tell him, but she hung on until the darkness swallowed her whole.

DR. BARTON’S CALM infuriated Alan. “After a thirty-six hour coma, we can’t know how she’ll be when she wakes up. She lost a lot of blood from that gash in her thigh, and she went into shock.”

Each word the doctor spoke embedded itself in Alan like a gut shot. Infuriated that he couldn’t help her, he stared at his unconscious wife. Her vulnerable, wounded body rumpled the blanket on her bed. The bank of blinking monitors that surrounded her screeched persistently enough to wake the dead. Alan bit the side of his cheek.

Men didn’t cry. So his father had preached, weeping into his beer or scrambled eggs or the ironing they’d both avoided after Alan’s mother left. Clutching Cate’s unresponsive hand, Alan alternated between an urge to bawl with unmanly pain and an acute need to break everything in the small hospital room.

“She’ll wake up,” Dr. Barton said, as if he saw through Alan’s attempt at stoic silence. “She’s healthy—no sign of infection in her wound. We just have to see where we stand. Tests, physical therapy—Excuse me, Alan, Nurse Matthews wants me.”

The doctor barely cleared the doorway before Cate’s twin, Caroline, slipped into the room.

She shared his wife’s fragile bone structure and dark auburn hair. In the old days, only he could tell them apart until Cate had begun using a blow-dryer to straighten her hair into a sleek curtain that brushed her shoulders. She’d looked more like a bank president than a loving creative homemaker. Caroline, a pragmatic businesswoman, never bothered to tame the wild curls she used now to cover her face. Neither of them seemed to see the contradiction in their hairstyles, but maybe Cate had expressed her altered feelings about her life in a not so subtle change.

Alan rubbed his fist against his temple, annoyed that he hadn’t asked her such questions before she’d decided to leave him.

Caroline eased around the bed. “What does Dr. Barton say?”

The sisters were so close they sometimes shared each other’s thoughts. If only Cate could sense Caroline’s pain, she’d wake up, feeling a compulsion to help her twin.

“Barton says the same thing over and over. We have to wait.” He stroked his wife’s forearm, grateful for the body heat that warmed her silky skin. How long since he’d touched her? How had he not noticed she was avoiding him, even in their bed? “I’m fed up with waiting.” Waiting and thinking about all the signs he should have read as he and Cate traveled to the end of their marriage.

“Where’s your dad, Alan? He’s the only member of our families unaccounted for in the waiting room, and I think you need him.”

Richard Palmer hated hospitals. Sickness scared the pants off him. “You know his phobia.”

“I thought he might have handled it for Cate.”

She clearly disapproved, and Alan didn’t blame her. “He calls our answering machine at home every ten minutes.” Alan roused himself. Last time he’d been out of this room, the waiting area had been empty. “Is Dan out there?”

Caroline shook her head. “I sent Shelly to look for him, and she called when she found him carrying a gas can down the highway. They’ll come here after she takes him to a service station and then back to his car.”

He nodded, twisting his hands on the metal bed rail. “A full gas tank probably seems pretty mundane to him right now.” He and Dan had stumbled blindly through the past two days. Cate anchored their family. Alan only hoped he was taking up enough of her slack to be a good father.

Caroline’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide as she tried to smile. “We’re all afraid. What if she doesn’t wake up? How long are we supposed to—”

“Don’t think about giving up.” Alan briefly hugged his sister-in-law. “She feels what you feel, Caroline.” It was ridiculous, putting such an airy-fairy notion into words, but Caroline met his gaze with Talbot determination.

“Don’t you worry.” She gripped Cate’s hand. “I refuse to lose her.”

Caroline’s tenacity almost renewed his faith. But it might be too late for him and Cate. Her serious injuries and the possibility she’d never let him try to win her back lingered in his mind.

He’d wanted to make her life comfortable and easy. Instead he’d let her down, and even now, he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.

The door swished open, and Aunt Imogen entered the room without speaking. Her bare head made Alan take a second look. She habitually wore oversize straw hats that she’d trimmed with flower displays never seen in nature. Today, only her fine gray curls clung to her temples.

Courage in her tired gaze touched Alan. He’d swear she hadn’t closed her eyes since he’d had to tell her about Cate. Neither had he, but she looked fragile.

He dragged a chair to the side of Cate’s bed. The way he’d let Cate think he resented her care for Aunt Imogen shamed him. According to local gossip, the older woman had been in midheartbreak over an affair with a married navy pilot when she’d taken in Cate and Caroline. Her emotionally hungry nieces had loved their aunt back to health, and Aunt Imogen and her brother, Ford, had shown Cate and Caroline the only true family affection they’d ever known. They’d also convinced Alan he belonged to the Talbot clan from the first day Cate had brought him home. He owed them as much as Cate ever could.

Taking Caroline’s hand, Aunt Imogen sat and smoothed the sheet beside Cate’s hip. “I guess you spoke to Dr. Barton this morning, Alan?”

Before he could answer, Uncle Ford prodded his way into the small room with the aid of a cherry cane and his great-niece Shelly’s hand at his elbow. Behind them, Dan craned for a glimpse of his mom.

Alan sidled through the others to wrap his arms around his son’s surprisingly broad shoulders. Dan hugged back, to Alan’s relief, but then he quickly pulled away. Dan preferred a handshake in recent years.

Alan met Aunt Imogen’s questioning gaze. “Barton can’t say much until Cate wakes up.”

“Until she breaks out of that coma,” Caroline said, as if the coma were an animal that had wrapped her sister in its vicious grip. “Let’s face facts.”

“I won’t face that word.” Aunt Imogen stood, her expression a faultless display of barely controlled fear. “Take this chair, Ford. Stop banging that cane.”

Her brother gave her an annoyed glance. “Good thing I’m not sensitive about having to use it.” He patted his sister’s hand. “I know you’re just worried.” Bellowing at a decibel level that compensated for the hearing loss he refused to admit, Uncle Ford nevertheless took Aunt Imogen’s seat. “Maybe the racket will wake—” he actually lifted his voice “—Cate.”

Her foot twitched beneath the blanket. Alan went back to her bed. “Cate?” Could waking her be that easy?

Her eyelids fluttered. For a horrified moment, he was afraid she couldn’t open her eyes.

“Cate,” he said, “wake up. Uncle Ford, why didn’t you shout at her before?”

“Shall I try again?” Uncle Ford struggled to his feet, maybe to lean a touch closer to Cate’s ear. He might have yelled again, except Dan appeared at his side to help him—or maybe to hold him back.

Alan flashed his son a grateful smile and took Cate’s hand. “Wake up,” he said again. “Please, Cate.” He didn’t beg easily, and his reticence had been a sore spot between them. He’d beg pretty damn freely now. “Cate,” he said again, and she opened her eyes and held them open. Her steady blue gaze made him want to shout, but he knew better than to scare her.

“Are you in pain?” He didn’t dare look away. Something different in her expression bothered him—some level of detachment he’d always expected to see. Wives detached themselves, no matter what you did to keep them with you. “Caroline, get the doctor.”

As Caroline left, Cate’s gaze followed her. She studied each person around her bed. Nothing that made her the Cate he loved was in that gaze. She eyed her aunt and uncle, her son and her niece with the same strange, dreamy look until she focused on Alan again.

“Who are you?”

The courtesy in her tone chilled him.

Trying to ask her what the hell she was talking about, he choked on his first breath. Confusion threaded the air, like a piece of twine that slipped from body to body. Strangling them all.

Aunt Imogen finally cried out, but then she covered her mouth. Uncle Ford’s cane clattered to the floor. Alan reached for both older people, steadying them with hands that shook hard enough to remind him how his father felt about men who gave in to their emotions.

But even his dad would understand this. Cate had left him after all.

THE LOVELY WOMAN with copper hair had raced out of the room, and the others, except for the dark man, poured after her. Just as well. Breathing took such an awful effort, and that many people must use a lot of oxygen.

Why would a hospital let such a crowd mill around a patient’s room? She stopped in midthought. She must be the patient. She was in bed.

How she’d come there escaped her, although she felt as if someone had welded a hot metal plate to her right leg. Nausea hovered, as if she were on a boat that refused to stop rocking.

She willed her queasiness away and concentrated on the man. Watching her from wide, dark-green eyes, he was clearly waiting for her to speak. As if he knew her.

She didn’t know him.

She must have been in an accident. Had she interrupted a family reunion? That many people in the same place had to be a family.

She took a deep breath that seemed to fill her head. The truth rocked her. Strangers didn’t hang around a hospital bed, even if they’d banded together to rescue an accident victim.

She didn’t remember what had happened to her. She remembered—nothing.

At her shoulder, a monitor’s steady beep grew more rapid. The sound drew her gaze as she tried to pry her own name out of her blank memory. She didn’t seem to have a name.

She knew her name. Everyone knew her own name. It was—She could feel it on the tip of her tongue. She ought to know. The monitor began to ping like sonar.

She didn’t know.

Suddenly aware of the man’s harsh grip on her hand, she turned toward him. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m your husband. I’m Alan.”

He terrified her. She tried to sit up in bed, but a powerful, formless weight held her down.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

He wrapped his large hands around her upper arms, but his strength made her feel weak, and she pushed him away.

“I don’t need your help.”

Stung, he straightened, looking impossibly tall. “What’s the matter?” He reached for her again, but something in her eyes must have shown him how seriously she wanted him to keep his hands off her. He fisted them at his sides.

“You act as if you have some right to touch me,” she whispered. “Who am I?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“My wife,” he said. “Cate…Palmer.”

“Why don’t I know you?” She darted a glance at the window. Low clouds hung above a sandstone building. It all looked completely unfamiliar. The glass offered a faint reflection, but she couldn’t see the details of her face. “Let me see what I look like. Maybe I’ll rememb—”

Before she could finish, he whipped open the top of the table at her elbow. A mirror was mounted inside. With the man’s help, she twisted the table toward her, so she could see.

Wild blue eyes stared at her from beneath a mass of dark red hair. She gasped. That other woman—the one who’d gone for a doctor. She had the same face.

The mouth in the mirror opened, and a scream tore the air.

“Cate.” His fear-drenched voice scared her, but he tucked her against his body, and she seemed to fit into the hard contours of his chest.

She closed her eyes. Darkness and the man’s faint, spicy scent blotted out the mirror, the room, the world as far as she knew it. She didn’t want to see herself. She’d lost everything, her past, her sense of identity.

Her life.

CHAPTER TWO

“ALAN, GO HOME. Get some sleep and have a shower.” Dr. Barton’s voice woke Cate.

She opened her eyes. She’d hardly been out of the coma for a full day, but the doctor’s visits interested her. Unlike her family, he wanted nothing from her. She looked from him to the husband she didn’t know.

Alan straightened in a metal-and-vinyl chair. “I don’t need sleep or a shower.”

She lifted her hand to him, but he shook his head, obviously aware she was going to second Dr. Barton’s suggestion. She continued anyway. “You need to rest.” She shouldn’t have buried her face in his manly chest. Her momentary weakness had apparently convinced him she needed a bodyguard. “Nothing bad will happen to me if you leave my room.”

He shot a wary glance at Dr. Barton, who nodded. Alan stood, but tension built as he hesitated. Cate didn’t know how to respond to him. His deep concern touched her. She found his stubbled chin attractive, his brooding green eyes appealing. She liked the way he smelled, but Alan expected more than the gratitude and simple attraction she felt.

“Do you want me to come back?” he asked.

She’d like to remember why he seemed as uncomfortable with her as she was with him. Had their marriage been happy? “After you rest, if you feel like coming back, I’ll be here.”

He turned toward Dr. Barton, but his gaze lingered on her as he spoke. “You know where to reach me?”

The doctor moved to Cate’s bed, an impresario, showing off his brightest talent. “Cate is awake and healthy and on the mend. We won’t need to dive into that pool of phone numbers you gave us.”

With a wry expression, Alan trudged to the door, and most of the pressure left with him. Cate sank against her pillows. The gruff doctor shut her door and dragged a chair to her bed.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

His urgency alarmed her. “Did you find something in the tests?”

“No—well, nothing new, but I’ve been trying to get you alone since you woke up yesterday. I have to tell you something I don’t believe you’ve told Alan.”

She attempted a smile. “Another man came forward to claim me as his wife.”

He gave a slight, anxious grin that put her on edge. “We only allow one family per amnesiac.” His gaze grew as intense as any of her family’s. “I wish I could prepare you for this news, but I must say it quickly before someone else comes in. You’re pregnant, and I’ve been unethical.” He patted her good leg. “What a relief to say it out loud at last.”

Cate grabbed her bed rails as the world seemed to open up beneath her. “I’m pregnant?”

“Just over sixteen weeks.” He went on, as if they should both be ready to talk facts. “You were spotting when you came in. By the time we could leave you to speak to Alan, he should already have asked us about the baby. When he didn’t, I began to worry you hadn’t told him and that you had a reason for not telling him. I asked Imogen for your gynecologist’s name.”

Words escaped her at first. “How old am I again?”

“Thirty-eight.”

Pregnant, thirty-eight, with a son of eighteen, and she hadn’t told anyone about the new baby. Why?

She slid her hands over her stomach. It was round all right. She hadn’t thought to ask why. An unexpected protectiveness caught her by surprise, and she accepted a new first priority. “Is the baby all right?”

“Yes. Your bleeding was light, and you stopped within a few hours. I still would have told Alan if I hadn’t tracked down Dr. Davis.”

“My obstetrician?”

“Right. She said you’d decided not to tell Alan yet, so I followed your wishes. However, Dr. Davis needs to see you, so you have to decide how to tell Alan. She’ll never make it in here and out again without being ambushed, considering the way your family guards that door.”

Cate’s large family overwhelmed her, too. She couldn’t see their constant, well-meant surveillance as a joke. “No one else asked about the baby? Not my sister or my aunt?”

“I wish they had.”

“Did Dr. Davis explain why I’ve kept the pregnancy a secret?”

“She doesn’t know, and I can’t promise Imogen hasn’t talked to Alan since I asked her for your OB’s name.” Dr. Barton patted her forearm. “Try not to worry. I expect Alan would have exploded by now if Imogen had told him.”

“I need to talk to Alan. What was wrong between us?”

“I’m not sure anything was wrong.”

Cate pushed her fingers through her hair. “Dr. Barton, tell me the truth.” She pressed her palms together, trying to look self-possessed. She didn’t want or need a gentle bedside manner. “Will I ever know these people again?”

He hunched his shoulders beneath his wrinkled lab coat. “All I ever say to you or Alan is ‘I don’t know.’ And I don’t. Because shock, rather than a head injury, caused your amnesia, I’d say your memory will trickle back.” Grinning, he popped his glasses from the top of his head onto his face, where they magnified his weary eyes. “Trickle. That’s a technical term.”

Cate tried to smile, but his nonanswer made her head ache. She lifted her hand between them, turning it from side to side. “I must have seen my fingers millions of times, but I don’t recognize them. I scared myself to death when I looked in a mirror and saw my sister’s face. My son makes me feel anxious, because he’s at an age where he won’t even say if he feels let down. I’m responsible for him, but I don’t feel that he’s my child, and I’m more comfortable talking to you than to my husband.”

“These are the facts. You can’t balance them with what you feel, because all your emotions are tied up in your memory loss.” Dr. Barton folded her fingers between his weathered hands. “I don’t know why you’d hide a child from Alan, but he cares about you. He stood a vigil at your bedside no matter how many times I begged him to go home. I thought we might end up having to treat him. That man didn’t stay all this time because he felt it was his duty.”

Good. She didn’t want a dutiful marriage. She wanted passion and commitment, a love that made a thirty-eight-year-old woman want to tell her husband they were having a second child.

Might she have hidden her pregnancy from Alan for a more obvious and insidious reason than a marriage that had wound down to duty? “What if Alan isn’t the baby’s father? Would you have heard rumors if I was having an affair?”

Dr. Barton sat back as if someone had tried to yank his chair out from under him. “The Talbots have a bad habit of making destructive decisions, but not you, Cate.”

“Talbots?” She found no comfort in his vehement support.

“Your father’s family. Your Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford. Before you, the Talbots have tended to live by their own reckless rules, but you’ve broken that mold, Cate. I’ve known your family a long time, and I’ve seen you make healthier choices than the others.”

“Explain, please.”

“No. You speak to Imogen or Caroline.” At his nervous glance, she imagined redheaded women who ran with wolves and men who sought the company of sinners. “You need to rebuild your relationships with your aunt and uncle and sister, not with me.”

“You’re not hurt because I can’t remember you.”

He held up both hands. “You have to jump off this cliff. Think of me as a parachute if you jump and you need help getting to the ground, but talk to your family.”

Outside her room, a woman’s voice paged another doctor over the PA system, and some sort of heavy equipment rolled down the hall on squeaky wheels. Still, Dr. Barton waited for her to behave the way she always had.

Cate covered her face with her hands, but then flattened her palms at her sides. “I can’t lie here and wait for my life to happen to me, can I?”

He slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’ll arrange for Dr. Davis to see you. Figure out what to tell Alan about the baby.”

Memory must shape a person’s sense of self. When she tried to think how she should approach Alan, she faced a mental blank. “I think I’ll try the truth.” She winced a little. “The truth as we know it, anyway.”

ALAN DIDN’T go home and sleep. Instead, he asked Dan to join him in an early round of golf at the country club they’d belonged to since Dan had begun to show unexpected talent for the game.

Alan kept waiting for the right moment to ask his son why he was avoiding Cate. Since his golf skills didn’t measure up to Dan’s, searching for lost balls usually made them talk. Today Dan helped him scour the primordial, South Georgia forest in uneasy silence. He grunted one-syllable responses to Alan’s opening gambits. Finally, after they turned in their cart, Alan suggested lunch in the club’s excessively Victorian grill room.

After they ordered, Dan sprawled in his wide wooden chair with a look that anticipated a firing squad. “What do you want, Dad?”

His sullen question surprised Alan. Normally, Cate handled these types of conversations. He didn’t know where to go when Dan was clearly saying he didn’t want to talk.

“Are you angry with your mom? Why won’t you go see her?”

Dan rubbed his chin, unconsciously pointing out a little late adolescent acne. “She only woke up yesterday. I had to do some stuff for Uncle Ford and Aunt Imogen.”

Was he serious? Did he really think the horses Uncle Ford boarded or Aunt Imogen’s errands might be more important than Cate? “But why didn’t you stay long enough to tell your mom you were glad she’s okay? I know you are.”

“You’re talking like you think I wish she was still in the coma. I’m not a kid, Dad. I’ll go see her.” He sat back as their server delivered sodas and small salads.

“Hey, Dan,” the girl said.

“Hey. You know my Dad?” Dan generally knew more of the people who worked at the club than Alan or Cate. He’d played enough golf here to earn a scholarship for college.

This time, the girl looked faintly familiar.

“Sure, I know Mr. Palmer. How are you?” she asked.

He was on the verge of losing his mind. “Fine. Nice to see you.”

Nodding, she turned away. Dan’s smirk mocked his father. “Why didn’t you just admit you didn’t know her? I would have introduced you again.”

“To be honest, I don’t have time. I need to go back to the hospital, and I wish you’d come with me.”

Dan lifted his soda for a slow sip. When he put the glass down, he wiped his mouth and looked like the kid Alan remembered. “I’ll go,” he finally said, “but I’m not sure why. She doesn’t even know us.”

Alan studied him, taken aback. He finally understood how Cate had felt when she’d been the one Dan turned to. She’d handled their family’s emotional upheavals and freed Alan to provide material support. He wanted to retire to a safe corner and wallow in his own fear, but this time he was the one who had to put his son first.

“Are you afraid your mom’s not going to get well?” He was starting from scratch with a boy he loved more than his own life.

Dan’s friend came back and slid their meals onto the table. Even after she left, Dan focused all his attention on getting ketchup to come out of its bottle.

“Son, I need you to talk to me.”

“What am I supposed to say? How does she want us to feel about her? She’s always been overprotective. She offered my little league coach tips when he yelled at me for rubbernecking. She’s chaperoned every school trip I’ve ever taken. Now, she looks at me and her bottled water with the same interest.”

Dan had avoided overt affection for about four years, but Alan dared to clip his son’s shoulder with a loose fist. “Don’t underestimate how much she needs you. I don’t think she’s forgotten us forever, and she’s still your mom. You be a son to her, and she’ll follow your lead.”

Alan felt like a fraud advising Dan when he still hadn’t decided what he was going to tell Cate about the business. As he’d chased her out of the office, he’d longed for a chance to start over. He had it now, but it was a bitter beginning.

“Dad, you look worried. I don’t want you to keep anything from me.”

Alan shook off his indecision for Dan’s sake. “Dr. Barton promised your mom will be back on her feet in time to see you graduate.”

Dan folded a fry into his mouth. “Will she want to come?”

Alan dropped the corner of his turkey club. “Yes.” Cate would have found an answer more convincing than his shocked, one-word response. He tried again. “She’ll want to see you graduate from high school.”

Dan sounded a youthful, impatient snort. “Sorry, Dad, but I can’t really take your word for it.” He tossed another fry into his mouth and talked around it. “I’ll go by the hospital after practice this afternoon.”

Alan didn’t pause to enjoy his success. “Thanks, son. I’d better get back myself. How are your aunt and uncle?”

“I stayed at Aunt Imogen’s last night after I fed the horses. Uncle Ford came over for a movie and popcorn, and then I walked Polly for Aunt Imogen.”

Imogen had recently retired Polly, her old roan mare, from farm work. She’d presented Polly with an extravagant straw hat that matched one of her own. Shocking the neighborhood, but never Cate and Caroline, who loved their aunt for her fabled eccentricity, both Imogen and Polly wore their finery for their nightly walks.

“Did you wear the hat?”

“Sure, Dad, and I took a picture so you could use it for that dorky Christmas card you send out every year.”

Cate actually sent the card, but Alan had taken pride in her annual record of their family. He pushed his chair back. “Why don’t you stay with Uncle Ford tonight? I’m sure your being there helps them.”

“Maybe I’ll pick them up after practice and take them to see Mom.”

Alan got to his feet. “Sounds good. You want to sign for lunch? I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” Dan looked up. Strands of his longish black hair made him blink blue eyes exactly the shade of Cate’s. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to talk. I’m a little scared.”

Alan held back a relieved sigh. He felt as if he were luring a wild animal into a clearing. He didn’t want to scare Dan into running for cover. “Are you all right?”

Dan immediately thinned his smile. “I just hope Mom is. Soon.”

Alan hoped male stoicism didn’t run in his family, but he’d protected his own feelings long enough to recognize the steps his son was taking.

Close off. Look tough.

“Take it easy, son,” he said, wanting to hug his almost grown boy. “I’ll see you later.” He risked a quick pat on Dan’s shoulder and then crossed the black-and-burgundy dining room.

Hurrying back to his car, he checked his watch. He needed to talk to Caroline about her budgets for the medical building, but first he wanted to see his wife. Fifteen minutes took him to the hospital.

He parked in the lot and stared up at the skeletal, half-finished building that overshadowed the hospital. His work site, the new medical building.

Wind blew sand in his eyes, blurring his vision. He wiped a film of sweat off his neck as the early May sun soaked through his clothing. Work continued on the medical center despite the troubled turn his finances had taken. Thoughts of the money he’d owe his suppliers made him sweat some more.

He wanted to tell the suppliers, just as he’d wanted to tell Cate and their employees, about the damage their CPA had done. He hadn’t known how to tell Cate he’d failed her by letting Jim steal from them. The other businessmen Jim had duped had decided not to tell their employees until they knew the extent of the problem. He’d argued, but he’d finally agreed to hold off. Deciding to lie to Cate had been shamefully easy.

Maybe her injuries gave him a real reason to hide the truth. Getting acquainted with her family again would be hard enough. Maybe by the time she remembered everything, the police would have found Jim and the funds he’d stolen. Cate might not have to know.

Her accusations came back to him loud and clear and all too accurate. He’d always followed the same pattern, trying to fix business problems before he had to tell her about them.

He climbed the slight rise to the hospital entrance. Inside, he drank in the cooler air.

The guard who patrolled the lobby stepped forward. Alan knew him and the lavender-haired woman behind the information desk. Formerly kindergarten teacher to half the adults in Leith, in retirement, she volunteered at the hospital. After a curt nod to the guard and his ex-teacher, he evaded their sympathetic glances.

Their pity turned him back into the ten-year-old boy whose mother had deserted him. As his father had disintegrated in front of his eyes, Alan had cleaned and cooked and put on a “normal” face.

After he’d set the kitchen on fire for the third time, their neighbors had stepped in. A Southern staple, the casserole, had begun to show up in its endless varieties, in the hands of their well-meaning friends.

The food, he’d thanked them for. Their looks of commiseration he’d hated so much he’d begun to pretend no one was home at dinnertime. His makebelieve often became the truth once his father decided to drink away his sorrows at a bar instead of in front of Alan.

The elevator doors wheezed open, pulling him out of the past. He glanced at the number painted on the pale-blue wall. Cate’s floor.

At her door, he knocked lightly before he went inside. To his surprise, she was sitting up, reading a magazine. She looked up, stroking the dressing that bulged against the sheet on her thigh.

“Hey,” she said, her tone lush and deep, like the dark river that ran behind her aunt’s home.

“How do you feel?” Idiot, he thought. Idiotic question.

Cate set her magazine aside. “I want to talk to you about how I feel.”

She looked younger than thirty-eight. Far younger. He still saw her as she’d been the day she’d sat in a bed on the floor above this one and held their newborn out to him.

Her wary gaze intimated this wasn’t going to that kind of talk. He steeled himself. “Tell me now if something’s wrong.”

“You’re making me nervous. Can you sit down so we can talk eye to eye?”

Wondering how hard his heart could pound before it exploded, he dropped into the chair beside her bed. “How bad is it? Just tell me.”

Confronted with the threat of another injury she found hard to discuss, he realized once and for all how they’d changed. Not just because she couldn’t remember their past. They’d drifted apart before her accident.

He’d tried to fool himself. He hadn’t preserved their love for each other despite all his protection. He’d feared losing her for the same reasons he’d lost his mother. He’d shut Cate out, because he didn’t trust her to love the part of him that felt so afraid.

“Alan, I need to know you’re listening to me.”

Her demand surprised him. She sounded exactly as she had the day of the accident. “You’re still yourself, after all.”

“Am I?” Interest filled her blue eyes as she held out her hand. “Tell me how.”

“What you just said, that you needed me to listen. Just before you got hurt, you were trying to make me understand exactly what you—”

“We argued?”

“I’m afraid so.” If she’d given him time, he might have tried to paint a better picture of those last seconds. “It wasn’t important.”

“But you didn’t understand me?”

“We’ve been married a long time. We’ve learned a shorthand, but shorthand may not have covered the conversations we needed to have.” Jeez, he sounded like a talk show therapist. “What’s wrong with you, Cate?”

“It’s not serious—I’m not—Oh, I give up.” She pushed her hair behind both ears. “I’m trying to tell you gently because I’m not sure you’ll be pleased, but I’m pregnant.”

He heard but he didn’t hear. Alan leaned forward, seeing her as a stranger. Her watchful blue eyes couldn’t belong to his Cate. “How pregnant?”

“Sixteen weeks.” She spread the gown over her belly, and he saw why she’d begun to avoid his touch.

He’d trusted her with his life, but she’d kept his child a secret. Her betrayal cut deep. “I thought you didn’t even want me to make love to you any more.” The only time they’d still communicated.

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Cate asked.

Rage made him harsh. “Since you didn’t, I can’t explain.” She’d planned to leave, but her decision hadn’t been spur of the moment. She’d planned to take his child. His heart stuttered over a few beats. “I can’t talk any more.”

“But I need to know—”

With his own lie foremost in his mind, he met her tear-sharpened gaze. He didn’t trust her tears, but he’d been no paragon of honesty.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“Because I don’t understand. Were we unhappy?”

“I can’t guess how you felt. I remember the past twenty years. I remember when you told me about Dan.” They’d celebrated for nine months, until the real party started with his birth. “I would have been happy this time, too.”

“JUST PARK THE CAR. Don’t stop at the door, boy. I’m no invalid.” Uncle Ford’s orders bounced around the roof and doors of Dan’s car.

Ignoring his uncle, he braked beneath the canopy at the hospital’s front door. “I’m stopping here for Aunt Imogen. Will you wait with her while I park?”

“Imogen could best you in a footrace around the parking lot,” Uncle Ford said.

“Glad you recognize my talents, Ford. Now get out and let the boy park. Did you bring your cane?”

Dan shot her a grateful glance in the rearview mirror, and she smiled back while Uncle Ford wrestled himself out of the car. He insisted he just used the cane to lure the ladies to his supposedly helpless side.

“We both know I don’t need it,” he grumbled in what he always assumed was a whisper no one else could hear. People came out of the hospital’s vestry to see about the commotion. “Imogen, get out of this car. I’d like to visit my niece before tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t mind him.” Imogen waved a bottle of vanilla-scented perfume, which she dabbed behind her ears. “He’s worried about your mother, but he’d rather snap at us than admit he cares.”

Thanks to Aunt Imogen, he was the only guy his age who recognized vanilla at a hundred paces. “I don’t mind, but don’t go up to her room without me. Okay?”

“I’ll hold Ford back, but you hurry.” She shoved her perfume back in her purse and followed his uncle to the curb.

Dan parked in the first spot he found and dashed through the lot. Thank God for Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford. He wouldn’t have to talk to his mom with them around. They were still arguing when he joined them.

“Don’t tell me not to shout, Imogen. I never shout. Are you suggesting I’m not considerate of sick people?”

“I’m suggesting you put a sock in it before that guard throws us all out.”

Trying not to laugh, Dan herded them toward the elevator. That guard wouldn’t tell Ford Talbot to put a sock in anything. Uncle Ford’s wild life made him a legend to every man and boy in town.

They crowded into the elevator and Aunt Imogen opened her beaded purse. With pale, pink-tipped fingers, she drew out a small brown paper package.

“Your mother’s favorite cookies,” she said. “Oatmeal raisin macadamia nut.”

Dan made a face. Worst combination he’d ever tasted. “She’ll be glad to see you, Aunt Imogen.”

“Watch out your face doesn’t freeze like that. I made some chocolate chip for you. Remind me to pack them up before you go over to Ford’s tonight.” She made a tsking sound. “Chocolate chip. That’s a plain cookie.”

“Not the way you make them.” He meant it. He could earn a fortune off her cookies if he sold them.

Aunt Imogen looked pleased. “You may look like a Palmer, but Cate passed you the Talbot charm.”

Yeah? Most of the time he saw himself as a stiff shadow of his inhibited father.

At his mom’s room, Uncle Ford used his cane to open her door. His mom was standing at her window. Dan followed his uncle and aunt inside. Just in time to catch the way his mother’s bewildered smile lingered on his aunt. When she saw him, her smile faded.

“Dan.”

She sounded different. She seemed less worried, but she still looked at him as if she barely recognized him. He’d always wanted her to put a little distance between them, but now, he needed her to know him. Even though he was eighteen—a man—deep in his heart, he wanted his mom.

“I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Come in. Let me ask for more chairs. Uncle Ford, take this one.” She offered him the only seat in the room, but he pushed it toward Aunt Imogen.

“I’ll go to the nurse’s station and ask for more. They should have brought more chairs in here anyway. They know you have a big family. Sit down, Imogen.”

“No, I’ll go with you.” She nodded encouragingly toward his mom as she hurried after Uncle Ford. “Dan and Cate might enjoy some privacy.”

Good thing he was a man, or he’d have grabbed Aunt Imogen’s skirt as she passed him. Rocking on his heels, he looked at his mom. Tried to think of something worth saying. She limped toward him, and for a second, he thought she was going to try to hug him. Instead, she kept going. He lurched out of her way as she closed the door.

“I have to ask you.” She held the door shut. “Why does Aunt Imogen wear a strip of cellophane tape down the middle of her forehead? I swear I saw gold graduation caps and diplomas on this piece.”

Was that all? He shrugged. “I graduate in three weeks.”

She waited. When he didn’t go on, she tossed up her hands in an I-still-don’t-get-it gesture.

“Oh, the tape,” he said. “She always wears it.” He put his finger in the middle of his eyebrows and frowned to show her the kind of wrinkles Aunt Imogen was trying to avoid. “Reminds her not to frown.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventy-something. No one’s ever told me. Why?”

She dropped her hands to her sides. “Well—” she cleared her throat “—I shouldn’t say this, but she has some wrinkles. And the tape—”

Dan forgot they didn’t know each other any more. “Mom, that’s rude.”

She raised both eyebrows. “I guess it was. Sorry.”

Just like that, she looked like his mom, except laughter tugged at her mouth, and for no reason he could think of, he laughed with her.

She eased the door open. “She was thoughtful to choose tape to fit your occasion.”

“You should see the Santas at Christmas.” She laughed again, and he did, too, but he felt guilty about it. Aunt Imogen didn’t like to be laughed at.

“I’m glad they left us alone,” his mom said. “I was dying to ask, but I didn’t want to hurt Aunt Imogen’s feelings.”

“I think she uses the tape and the hats and stuff to hide how she feels about the gossips in this town. People still spread rumors about that Navy guy.”

“Navy guy?” She obviously didn’t know. “My whole life is on the tip of my tongue. Not remembering baffles me. I even wondered if I was imagining Aunt Imogen’s tape.” She tightened the belt at her robe and then offered her hand. “What a relief. Good to see you, Dan.”

Dan shook hands with her. “I’m glad to see you, too.” For the first time since she’d come out of that coma he meant it. “Mom?”

“Huh?”

He chewed on his lip. He wasn’t a guy who clung to his mother, but he’d been so scared she was going to die. “Can I hug you?”

She tilted her head back, startled. “Well,” she said, “yes.” She opened her arms, but he could see she felt funny about it, too. Then as soon as he put his arms around her, she hugged back. Tight.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.

“Thanks.”

They both moved to neutral corners and avoided looking at each other. But he felt better.

CHAPTER THREE

SHOCKED AT Cate’s pregnancy and the fact she’d hidden it, Alan avoided his family that night. He couldn’t have hidden his panic at the uncertain future of his marriage, but he realized he had to keep fighting. Dan and Cate and the new baby needed him to save the business and their family.

The next morning, Alan parked in front of Caroline’s small cottage. Several miles down the beach from his and Cate’s house, the cottage bore the loving stamp of the Talbot women in its neatly maintained appearance and glinting windows. Like all the Talbot homes, the cottage welcomed visitors.

Until today, anyway. He might not be so welcome once he suggested Caroline was neglecting her sister.

He opened the car door and strode up the walk to rap on the door. It swung open. Caroline peered around it and Alan got to the point. “Why haven’t you visited Cate?”

“And good morning to you.” She stood aside. “Come in, Alan, and tell me what makes you so surly.”

Yesterday’s news about the baby gave him plenty to be surly about, but he still wouldn’t discuss his growing family with Cate’s twin. A new thought made him uneasy. As close as the sisters had been, she might already know. He couldn’t ask. He didn’t want to know if Cate trusted Caroline more than she trusted him.

“Cate needs to see everyone who might help her remember. You didn’t go to the hospital yesterday.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice but she screamed when she looked at her own face after seeing mine.”

“She’s been there for you, Caroline. All your lives.”

“I know. She pretended to be me when I played hooky from school. She helped me run away with my bad husband, and then she picked up the pieces when he left me. She’s baby-sat Shelly when my childcare fell through, and she does more than her fair share for Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford.” Caroline paused to draw breath. “None of what she’s done changes the fact that my face scares her.”

“She sees your face every time she looks in a mirror.” He stepped inside the small house. It wasn’t so welcoming to a man. Only women lived here, and he felt too large for the narrow hall, the dainty French furniture. “Are you afraid to see her?”

She met his gaze. Not for the first time, this woman who looked so much like his wife but thought so differently disconcerted him. In silence, Caroline led him to the kitchen. She poured a cup of strong black coffee and set it on the counter in front of him.

“I’m terrified. Cate is part of me. We share so many of the same memories I’m not sure who I am without her.”

Her frankness only emphasized their serious fix. Caroline had become his friend as he’d fallen in love with her sister. He’d helped her and Shelly when he could, but she’d never confided in him this way.

And now they were going through the same crisis. Who were they when Cate, the glue that had held their family together, no longer knew them?

He closed his eyes. A shout rose in his throat. Pure pain that no one but Cate could alleviate. Only his Cate no longer existed.

“I understand why you’re reluctant,” he managed to say. “She may not remember you, but she needs you. You are part of each other. You can tell her things about her past that the rest of us don’t know.”

“I don’t know her better than you do, Alan.” She took another coffee cup from the cabinet. “I’m only her sister. You’re her husband.”

Not a very good husband. He’d blamed their uneasiness on the stress of raising a teenager who was about to leave home. He’d assumed they’d find their way back to each other after Dan left.

Not that he’d resented Cate’s devotion to their son. They’d both wanted to be better parents than their own. But he’d lost sight of Cate, the woman, in his reliance on her. Over the years, he’d become the provider. She’d been the mom. Had their roles divided them, or had Cate stopped loving him?

“What’s on your mind, Alan? Something else is going on.” Caroline’s conviction reminded him of Cate after she’d seen through all his half truths. “You’ve never stormed in here before to point out my responsibilities to Cate.”

“Help her. Make her remember.”

“Make her?” Caroline blanched. “You’re thinking she chose to forget? I wonder, too. Who made her so unhappy? You? Me? I’ve let her take care of me as if she really were older.”

“She is. She takes those thirteen minutes seriously.”

“And twenty-seven seconds.” Caroline poured coffee in her cup and lifted it to her mouth for a wary sip. “Don’t forget those twenty-seven seconds.”

“She never meant to make you think you couldn’t take care of yourself.”

“Sometimes I couldn’t. I needed her, but I couldn’t admit it. I always wanted to prove I knew how to handle my own life.”

Her guilt sounded too familiar. He’d needed Cate to believe he was her knight in shining armor, but he’d tried so hard to be a professional success—and then failed so spectacularly—he’d broken her ability to trust him at all.

Damn it, he’d learn how to win back her faith, but she still needed the rest of her family. “Why don’t you take care of her this time?”

She widened her eyes, as if she hadn’t thought of the possibilities. That happened when guilt overwhelmed you. “What’s to stop me?” She toasted him with her coffee cup. “I will go. Tonight. Evening visitor’s hours.”

He set his own cup on the counter. “I have to go into the office for a few hours. Can you fax me your budget for the medical center interiors?”

“Sure. Why are you working on Sunday, Alan?”

He had no choice. He still had to save the company. Caroline and too many others depended on him for their jobs. “I’ve spent so much time at the hospital I have to catch up on paperwork. How close are you to the figures we discussed when we started the project? Not over budget anywhere?”

She plucked a pair of glasses from the shelf beside the sink and slid them onto her nose. Cate didn’t need glasses. “I’ll get the file now if you want. We’re close on window treatments, and I hooked us up with the rugs.”

“Hooked us up?”

She flashed a grin. “Don’t you ever talk to Dan? I worked us a deal.”

Like her, he felt more at ease talking about work, a topic he and Cate rarely discussed. Lately, he’d tended to share tense silence with his wife. Silence couldn’t bide easily between two people hiding life-altering secrets.

“I’M DR. DAVIS. I hear you don’t remember me.”

Cate looked up from her book, relieved to quit pretending she could concentrate enough to read. A tall woman stood in the doorway, finely dressed in a beige suit that complemented her dark-mocha skin. Her looks were lovely, but the supreme confidence in her eyes brought Cate the deepest sense of assurance she remembered feeling.

“I’m happy to meet you.” Cate took a get well card from the table and slid it into her book to mark her place. “Come in.”

The other woman set a file on the nightstand. “Did you tell Alan about the baby?”

“Yesterday.” She left out the part where he’d gone and not come back.

“He didn’t take it well?” Dr. Davis reached for the call button on the cord at Cate’s shoulder. “You can’t blame him for that?”

“Maybe. Who are you calling?”

“A nurse. I’d like to examine you now that you haven’t spotted for several days. Your body has endured a great deal of trauma, and I’d like to make sure the baby’s perfectly healthy.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Relax if you can.”

Cate tried to disguise her distress. “I’m not sure I could even if I remembered how a pelvic feels.”

Dr. Davis laughed. “Good point.”

The nurse came, and the doctor began her exam. She seemed dissatisfied with what she found. From her particularly vulnerable position, Cate still tried to be brave. “What?” she asked bluntly.

“Nothing to worry about.” Dr. Davis peered over her shoulder at the nurse. “Open Cate’s file and remind me of her dates.”

The date of Cate’s last cycle seemed to make matters worse. Cate fought her increasingly primitive need to remove herself from the doctor’s hands. “You’re scaring me, and I really need to shove you away.”

The doctor straightened, peeling off her gloves. “Don’t be afraid. Nothing’s wrong, but I need to listen.” Taking the stethoscope from around her neck, she placed it all over Cate’s belly.

“I think we need an ultrasound.”

Cate grabbed her arm, pulling her close with strength that surprised her and the doctor. “You can’t hear a heartbeat?”

Humor softened the doctor’s wide eyes. “I hear plenty of heartbeats.”

Her response made no sense at first. Finally, Cate remembered she was a twin. She dropped back. “Plenty?” she squeaked.

“Just two, but I don’t rely on my ears this early on. Why don’t we make sure before you pass out?”

“An ultrasound will tell you? Ultrasounds don’t lie, do they? I mean I’m not suddenly going to come up with triplets, am I?”

“Try to stay calm. Sudden isn’t the way triplets show up.” Dr. Davis pulled the sheet up to Cate’s waist. “Why don’t I use my influence to run the test now?”

Calm? At thirty-eight, with a nearly grown son and a husband she didn’t know? “Now would be perfect.”

Dr. Davis picked up the large, insulated cup that stood on the nightstand. She shook the cup and then smiled as water and ice sloshed together. “Start drinking this.”

LATER THAT EVENING, Cate stared at the ultrasound photo. Two babies. In another twenty-two weeks or so, she’d give birth to twins.

The two small beings on the ultrasound screen had reconnected her to the process of living. She wrapped herself in the happiness she’d felt at watching the two twisting shadows. They needed her, and she resolved to figure out who she was in time to be a good parent to all her children.

And she’d learn to be a wife to her husband. He wanted their marriage. She must have wanted it, too. Their children deserved two healthy parents.

Someone knocked softly on her door. Cate lifted the top of her table and slid the ultrasound photo inside. “Come in,” she called. She smoothed the sheet around her hips and legs and prepared to interrogate her visitor about her past.

Caroline leaned around the edge of the door. Her face still jolted Cate, but another scream seemed inappropriate.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Caroline asked.

“I’m surprised you want to. Come in and let me apologize for the way I acted. I didn’t expect to see you in my mirror.”

“I shouldn’t have run out of here, but I love you Cate. No, don’t worry—you know, you used to be better at hiding your feelings—I don’t expect you to pretend you feel the way I do, but I want you to depend on me. It’s my turn to be the big sister.”

“Am I older than you?” Cate asked as Caroline paused to replace a lungful of air.

“By a little more than thirteen minutes, but I’ve needed you more than you ever needed me.” She stopped again, and her face flushed a deep red. “I used to wonder if you wished you didn’t have a twin, and now you don’t.”

“Well, don’t sound sad. You’re about to settle all your debts. I need a crash course in my own history.”

Caroline’s instant regret almost made Cate smile. “What can I tell you?” Caroline asked in a wavering tone.

With her new deadline, she had no time for subtlety. First things first. “Why are you so reluctant to talk to me?”

“I’m embarrassed. You rescued me from every jam I ever got myself into. I can’t repay you for—”

Cate interrupted. “I know you all loved me, because my close call seems to have turned me into a saint.” Saints held no charm for her. She didn’t trust the tale, and she needed facts. “Tell me the bad stuff, too.”

“What bad stuff?”

“We’re sisters. You must have helped me as much as I helped you.”

A deeper blush darkened Caroline’s high cheekbones. Cate lifted her fingertips to her own face as her twin went on. “You never needed help.”

Not true. She probably just hadn’t asked for it. “I need help now. Dr. Barton implied our family—the Talbots—are…”

Caroline’s discomfort eased as Cate trailed off. “Notorious?” she suggested.

Cate nodded. “I know our parents are deceased, but what happened to them?”

“Dad met Mom in the Navy. They were both intelligence officers, and apparently, the only thing they loved more than imminent danger was each other. They sent us here to live with Aunt Imogen when we were five. The Navy stationed them in Turkey, I think. Some remote place, but it was only their first isolated duty station. They liked the life so much they never came back.”

“Never?” Such parenting alarmed her. She felt for the two small girls they’d been. “We never saw them?”

“They came for visits. Brief ones.” Caroline shook her head. “But we missed them so much it was easier when they stayed away. When they tried to leave we cried—well, I cried. You pretended you didn’t care.”

“I did?” She couldn’t picture herself as such a tough kid.

Caroline pulled up a chair and made herself comfortable. “Always. You didn’t want anyone getting close enough to see how much you hurt.” She stopped, seemingly amazed, and reached for Cate’s water. “Do you mind if I drink some? It’s hot outside.”

“Go ahead.”

“I never realized you were pretending until I said that just now. I always envied you because you didn’t seem to need anyone, but you—”

Cate found she didn’t want to know what Caroline thought of her inner workings. Plain facts mattered more. Maybe later she’d be willing to discuss her private thoughts with her sister. “How did they die?”

Caroline’s expression clouded. She drank more water and set it back on the table. “In a car accident. They were driving to Nice to fly home for our high school graduation, and they took a curve too quickly. We think they had an argument before they left their hotel because the management billed us for damages.”

Cate stared at her for a second and tried not to laugh at the morbid picture.

“I know.” Caroline shook her head. “Aunt Imogen’s attorney pointed out the tactless nature of their claims, but they still wanted to be paid. My God, how we missed them.”

“I missed them, too?”

“You wouldn’t talk about it, but someone plants flowers on their graves and keeps them tended. Usually, when I go out to the cemetery, something new is blooming. You must be the gardener, but you always said you didn’t know anything about the plants. Aunt Imogen has a killer thumb, and Uncle Ford’s still too mad at Dad for dying to do something so kind.”

Sadness surprised Cate, knotting uncomfortable tears in the back of her throat. She’d like to see that cemetery, but she had to go by herself the first time. After that, she’d ask Caroline to help her with the flowers. She moved on to their aunt and uncle. “How about Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford? Dan told me a story about Aunt Imogen’s Navy man.”

“I don’t believe she ever had an affair, if that’s what you mean, but like you, she keeps her feelings private. Maybe she’ll tell you about him if you ask her in your present condition.”

Cate grinned at Caroline’s prim tone. “I wondered why she wasn’t married, but it seemed rude to ask. And Uncle Ford?”

“He’s never made conventional choices. None of us was conventional except you.” Caroline swallowed. “Actually, no one was ever sure if Grandma and Grandpa actually married each other. I mean we have a marriage certificate, but the story is, they bought it on the boardwalk in New Jersey.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. You and Alan are legal, and you’ve never taken a wrong step. You’ve walked a tight, straight line to give Dan a sense of family you and I didn’t get. You’ve made him strong.”

Tight, straight line? The walls started to close in again.

“In fact, you and Alan have given Shelly a good example. I want her to know someone in our family can make a marriage stick.”

A lasting marriage hardly equated with a wife who’d hidden her pregnancy. How had Alan responded to setting examples? What had she thought about such a responsibility?

“I need to ask you about Alan’s father, too. Uncle Ford mentioned that I wouldn’t be seeing him inside these four walls.” She glanced quickly around the room. “What did he mean? I don’t feel comfortable asking Alan.”

“Why?”

Because she didn’t trust their relationship. “Alan’s already stressed. I don’t want to add to his trouble, but he’s—Richard’s his name?”

“Yeah, Richard.”

“He’s family, too. I’d better know about him.”

“Richard has his quirks.” Caroline grabbed the water again. “I don’t want to talk about him, either. He raised Alan alone after Alan’s mom left when Alan was about ten. I’m not sure what went wrong.”

“I thought you and I were close.”

“We were.”

“I sure hid a lot from you.”

“Just the important stuff,” Caroline said with a trace of impatience. “I’ve never understood what went on between Alan and Richard, and you never told me anything. Of course there was gossip. I’ve heard Alan did a lot of the stuff fathers are supposed to do for their children, like laundry and cooking. I know Richard had a drinking problem. You and Alan both tried to pretend Richard was a better father than I think he was.”

Appalled and heartbroken for her husband, Cate tried to take this information in. “Why would we cover for him?”

“Maybe for Dan, or maybe you thought he’d remind me of Ryan, my own runaway spouse. You’ll have to ask Alan—or maybe Richard. He’s getting married this summer. He must have finally put his first wife behind him.” Caroline reached for her hand. “I haven’t helped you. You know my worst fears, but I only know hints of yours.”

Cate made herself accept her sister’s touch. Dr. Davis and Dr. Barton had both touched her in comfort, and she hadn’t minded. Family mattered more. Accepting affection she couldn’t return felt false, but she wanted to love her sister so she let her hand rest in Caroline’s.

“I have to ask you another question you won’t want to answer.” She felt disloyal to Alan after what Caroline had said about Richard. Imagining her husband as a lost little boy, forced to grow up, hurt her. She had to ask her sister about the state of their marriage, because she wasn’t sure he’d tell her the truth. If he’d persuaded her to go along with shielding his father, he must be used to pretending things were “normal.” “Were Alan and I happy?”

Caroline jerked her fingers back. “How would I know?”

Cate held her twin’s so familiar gaze with sheer will. “You’re my sister. I took you at your word when you promised I could depend on you.”

Caroline looked as if she’d like to run for her life. “You would no more have told me about problems between you and Alan than you would have hired a plane to list them in the sky.”

“I have to know.”

“You aren’t yourself.”

“I’m afraid not. I don’t trust the way people describe me so far. I was stuffy.”

“Not stuffy. Kind.”

“So much circumspection sounds unnatural.” Cate tucked her sheet around her waist. A walk down the hospital hall might clear her muzzy head, but weakness in her legs, combined with the deep cut on her thigh held her prisoner, and Caroline had backed away when she’d needed her most. “Thanks for talking. I appreciate your effort.”

“Wait.” Her expression dogged, Caroline propped one elbow on the edge of Cate’s bed. “Let me try again. Alan came to my house this morning, and he insisted I see you.”

Cate crossed her arms. She still possessed enough of her infamous self-sufficiency to resent Alan’s intervention.

“Hold on, Cate. He wanted to make sure I took care of you.”

If he knew she needed help, why had he stayed away last night? The obvious answer. She’d dropped a bomb on his head. He needed time to reconcile himself. Not the most romantic tactic, but if he showed up again soon, she’d try to understand. “Alan and I aren’t your responsibility.”

“Listen to me. You have to listen if you ask for advice. I don’t think he’d have come to me if he didn’t care.” Caroline fluffed her hair. “Why are we talking about this? He loves you. He’s been crazy since that car hit you.”

“He doesn’t act like a man in love. He acts like something’s wrong.”

“I noticed, but I don’t believe your marriage went bad.”

Cate plucked at a loose thread on her sheet’s hem. “I’m glad my marriage comforts you, but I’d love to know how I felt about it.”

“Yeah.” Caroline sounded unsure.

And she didn’t even know about the twins.

AGAIN, Alan stared at Cate’s door. Someone had printed her name on a small, square whiteboard beside the metal doorframe. He brushed away a smear at the end of the r in Palmer. Then he went inside.

Favoring her injured leg, his wife turned from the window.

“Cate.” He’d expected her to be in bed.

“I almost stopped hoping you’d come, but I didn’t want to be flat on my back when we talked.” A smile hovered at the corner of her mouth.

He knew that sweet shape as well as he knew his own face. He’d kissed that mouth, frowned at that mouth, dreaded seeing it thin in anger, and waited with held breath for it to smile. A real smile—not like her smile now.

“You knew you could expect me?” Somewhere inside her remained the wife who’d trusted him to take care of her.

“If you’d stayed away again tonight, I’d have understood you’d made your decision.”

No, this Cate wasn’t the wife he’d lived with for twenty years. His Cate had never tested him.

“I’m glad I passed.”

“I didn’t think of it as a trial. When you didn’t call or come back yesterday, I assumed you had to think about where we stood.”

A cold fist squeezed his heart. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

She shook her head. Her bright hair fell over her shoulder, tempting him to slide possessive fingers through the strands before she slipped away from him forever.

“How could I decide anything without talking to you?” she asked in a low voice. Behind her, the night sky perfectly framed her pale skin and tense silhouette.

Her open gaze gave him hope for the first time since she’d run from the office.

“I want to go on together,” he said. “You’re my wife.”

“Don’t put it that way, Alan.” Emotionally, she distanced herself from him. “I don’t want us to stay together because we happen to be married.”

“I get the idea you don’t want me to say I love you.”

Those words didn’t belong between them since he’d hidden the business trouble and she’d concealed their baby from him.

She limped toward him, but she stopped beside her bed and flexed her fingers on the lip of her table. From her knuckles to her nails, her skin faded to palest white.

“I know something’s wrong, and saying you love me would only alarm me now.” She lifted her chin. “You could tell me what’s wrong.”

No, he couldn’t. It wasn’t just that her injuries had given him time to win her back. He’d never been good at admitting she’d always be his deepest need. He’d shown her in the only way he’d known how, providing a good life for her and their son.

From now on, he’d pay more attention to her, become the husband she wanted. His father’s decadesold advice rang in his ears. “Give your wife the good things in life. Provide, and provide well, or she’ll find a man who can.”

“I still don’t know why I decided not to tell you about the baby.” She slid her gaze away from him. “Don’t we need to know why?”

“One day I hope you’ll tell me.”

Frustration tightened her mouth, but she controlled it. “Tonight I have to tell you I had a test today.”

“What kind of a test? Is the baby all right?” Fear nearly dropped him to his knees. Even if he couldn’t provide for this child as he had for Dan, he’d love the new baby. He’d be the best father his resources allowed.

“I’ve scared you again. I’m sorry.” Cate hurried around the bed and reached for his hand.

Her fingers felt vulnerable in his, but he couldn’t let go. “I should be taking care of you,” he said.

“I should have found a better way to say this. Dr. Davis did an exam today and discovered we’re having twins.”

“Twins?”

She nodded. Seconds passed. He didn’t know how to respond to twins. The cost, the timing. She’d never understand his panic. Distance came into her eyes. By not answering, he was losing her, the woman he’d loved since he’d learned to love, and the woman he no longer knew.

He threw a longing look at her chair. “Do you mind if I sit?”

She grinned, and he sat without her consent. Was she laughing at him? She didn’t respect him for sitting?

“Not that I mind,” he said. “The twins. I don’t mind the twins.”

“You don’t have to prove how tough you are. If I hadn’t been lying down when Dr. Davis told me, I might have fallen.”

“Twins.”

“Will you tell me how you really feel?”

“Startled.” He tried hard to think how she’d want him to answer. How he should answer as a decent human being who wanted his wife back, who loved the child they’d already created, and who knew he could love two more when the shock wore off. “How are you?” he asked her.

She actually seemed to find his lack of assurance comforting. She relaxed her tense stance.

“Glad to see you.” She squeezed his hand once and then let go to scoot onto the edge of her bed and straighten her leg. “I couldn’t tell anyone else before I told you.”

He should be the first to know. He tugged at the hem of her robe. “Do you feel anything for me?”

Her expression was solemn, but full of regret. “I feel responsible.”

He let her go. “I don’t know what I think about responsible.”

She folded her hands. “Let’s just be honest and see what kind of relationship we can salvage.”

“I want a marriage.” He still didn’t mention the business. Eventually, she’d understand. Between the twins and her memory loss, he couldn’t add to the pressure on her.

He’d been afraid she’d leave if he admitted his lie about the company had caused all their problems. Now, he kept the embezzlement to himself because he wanted to protect his wife and their unborn children. This time, he was right to try to protect her.

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