Did You Say...Wife?. Judith McWilliams
up and brushed back a strand of her gleaming hair. It was the exact color of Italian chestnuts. A deep rich brown with just the slightest hint of red in the mix.
Who was she? he wondered. Certainly not a nurse. Not dressed in that severely cut, dark-blue business suit. He wished he could see her legs over the edge of the bed. If they were as intriguing as her face was…
A sudden flash of memory of her reaching up to get something on a shelf over her head flashed through his mind. She was wearing beige slacks that lovingly molded her trim hips. The instinctive burst of desire that surged through him made the pain in his head escalate to appalling proportions. He waited a moment for the pain to ebb before he followed his memory flash to its logical conclusion. He knew this woman. He knew her from before the accident. Knew her and desired her. Hell, he thought with black humor, if he desired her much more he’d pass out from the pain it caused him.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. This morning when he’d tried to ask the doctor some questions, the only information that the man had actually given him had been that Lucas had a wife named Jocelyn, and she had been in the hospital since the accident, although she wasn’t there at the moment. could this woman be his wife? He tried to slow his breathing to counter his sudden excitement at the tantalizing thought. His eyes dropped to her breasts. Did he know her intimately? Frustration engulfed him at his inability to remember.
Sending up a prayer that this intriguing-looking woman really belonged to him, he gave her a crooked grin and said, “Mrs. Forester, I presume?”
To his dismay her lovely blue eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“Oh, Lucas, I was so worried that…” Her musical voice broke, drowned in the depth of her relief. Lucas sounded so normal. So lucid. So…so Lucas.
“That I’d forgotten you?” he said, drawing his own conclusions. come closer. I don’t bite. In fact,” he added when she didn’t move, even thinking lascivious thoughts at the moment makes my head pound, quite literally.”
He frowned as a deep flush burned beneath her pale skin.
“You are my wife, aren’t you?” he asked uncertainly, confused at her odd reaction. Didn’t wives want their husbands to desire them? Or was it that this particular wife didn’t want him to desire her? Or was her seemingly embarrassed reaction caused by something else entirely? He winced as his head began to pound with his conjectures.
Jocelyn took a deep breath and said, Yes, I’m your wife.”
Her words seemed to bounce off the room’s bare walls, gaining strength as they ricocheted. Jocelyn listened to them, both elated and scared by what she had done. One of the many foster mothers she’d had when she was a child had once told her that, if she told a lie, God would strike her dead on the spot.
All her life she’d felt a nervous dread whenever she told a fib, even though she knew perfectly well that God had better things to do than to run around zapping people. But this certainly proved her foster mother had been wrong once and for all, Jocelyn thought ruefully. Because if instantaneous retribution hadn’t been demanded for a lie of this magnitude, she was safe forever.
“I knew you were familiar,” Lucas said, giving up trying to analyze the expressions flitting across her expressive face. She was probably just upset, which was hardly surprising. His accident hadn’t done anything for his mental health, either.
Instinctively he reached out to her as his head began to pound again.
Jocelyn grasped his hand. Unable to resist the temptation, she stroked her fingertips across the back of his hand, savoring the texture of his warm skin. A spurt of excitement shafted through her as he began to lightly rub his thumb over the palm of her hand in response to her caress. Her breathing shortened as a shivery sensation raced over her nerve endings.
Jocelyn ran the tip of her tongue over her suddenly dry lips.
Lucas watched the movement of her tongue from beneath his lowered eyelids, wanting to trace its path with his own tongue. And then he wanted to…
“Just a minute while I get a chair to sit in.” Jocelyn’s voice came out in a breathless squeak. Tugging her hand free, she hurried across the room to get the black vinyl armchair against the other wall.
Lucas watched as she dragged it across the floor, his sense of unease increasing. Did she really want the chair or did she just want to break off the physical contact with him? He clenched his teeth together in frustration at his inability to remember and immediately paid a price when his head started to pound again. Deliberately he tried to relax. This wasn’t the time to go paranoid, he tried to tell himself. He had enough on his plate trying to deal with the aftereffects of his accident. He didn’t need to be imagining problems where there might not be any.
Unless…Another more ominous possibility occurred to him and his eyes shot open. could she know something about his operation that he didn’t? Could the doctor have told her he wasn’t ever going to remember again? That his life to date was now dead to him? Fear shafted through him, sending a sheen of sweat over his skin.
“Lucas, what’s wrong?” Jocelyn caught his sudden spurt of emotion and feared that he might have remembered everything.
“What did that doctor tell you?” he demanded.
“Tell me?” she repeated, torn between relief that he hadn’t regained his memory yet and guilt at being so selfish as to be glad.
“About my operation?”
“That you were very lucky. That there would be no permanent damage and that memory loss wasn’t unusual after this kind of operation and that all we had to do was wait for it to come back.”
“That’s it? Just wait?”
“All those cartoons where they wap amnesia victims over the head to give them back their memory are just that, cartoons. Although…” She studied his annoyed features speculatively. If you turn out to be a bad patient, I might be tempted to try it.”
Lucas heard the laughter threading her voice and instinctively relaxed.
“That’s what he told me, too,” he confessed. “At least, the bit about just waiting. But what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Vegetate?”
Jocelyn flushed as a flood of activities that had nothing to do with vegetation poured through her mind. Not now, she ordered herself. Now she needed to reassure Lucas that everything would be normal. Later she could indulge in daydreams.
“At the moment your job is to lie there and rest,” she told him.
“What a boring scenario,” he grumbled. “Now, if you were offering to share the bed with me…”
“You’re supposed to be avoiding undue excitement.” Jocelyn struggled to sound more sophisticated than she felt.
“In that case, how about some background?” Lucas changed the subject. Tell me what happened to land me here. All that doctor would say is I had an accident and not to worry about it.”
“He doesn’t want you subjected to any stress,” Jocelyn explained.
“He doesn’t think not knowing isn’t stressful?” There really isn’t all that much to know,” Jocelyn said, happy to talk about something that didn’t involve her lying to him.
“We were on our way back to the airport—”
“Back? We don’t live here? And where is here, for that matter?”
“Here is Buffalo, New York. You were here to finalize your buying Bleffords Plastics.”
“And you came along for the ride?”
“I came along because I happen to be your highly qualified administrative assistant,” Jocelyn shot back. She might love Lucas to distraction, but she had no intention of playing the helpless little woman. Even if she was a little rattled at the moment by the whole course of events.
“Really?” His