Hope turned from the counter to look at Matt when he came in. The expression on his face made her uneasy, although she wouldn’t let herself think it had something to do with her.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked.
“Good guess,” he said brusquely. “We need to talk. Would you please sit down?”
At least he’d said please, Hope thought, although her uneasiness had become a sense of impending doom. Sending worried little glances his way she walked to the table and pulled out a chair. “Aren’t you going to sit, too?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Matt filled a glass with water at the sink and drank it down. Then he began walking around the room. “I’m going to tell you about my wife.”
Hope thought her heart might stop beating. “Your…wife?”
“Whose clothes do you think you’ve been wearing? Whose things do you think are stored in the attic?”
Hope’s shoulders slumped in abject misery. He had a wife and he’d repeatedly made love to her! Would he have been such a disgusting opportunist if she hadn’t had amnesia? Surely that was the cause of her own irresponsible behavior, wasn’t it?
Matt could almost read her mind. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he said gruffly. “My wife is dead.”
Hope’s eyes widened in horror. “And you let me wear her clothes? My God, what kind of man are you?”
“Not nearly as revolting as you’re thinking right now.” Matt pulled out the chair across from her and sat on it. “My marriage started great and ended badly. Trisha couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust to ranch life. Her family is very wealthy and she’d been raised with the best that money could buy. But it wasn’t my much smaller bank account that did the real damage to our relationship. It was living here, too far out of the loop, so to speak. She was accustomed to parties, parties and more parties, and trips to fancy resorts all over the world with her rich friends. They traveled in droves, or maybe a better word is herds. I knew that I never fit in, and to be honest about it I didn’t try all that hard. I also knew we were as different from each other as night and day, but apparently love just swept us away.”
His last sentence had been cynically drawled, and Hope realized that he didn’t have much respect for either love or marriage.
“And then she died?” she asked in a weak little voice.
“She died on the very day she was leaving me. It was a crazy, freakish thing.” Doing his best to speak without emotion, Matt related the events of that awful day.
Hope covered her mouth with her fingertips and listened in horror. When he was finished, or seemed to be, she said, “And that’s why her clothes are still here.”
“No, her clothes and that furniture in the attic are still here because I had Chuck get them out of sight while I was in Dallas for the funeral, and that was where he put them. I never go up there, and I forgot about my intention of donating it all to charity. I tried giving her things to her parents at the time, but all they wanted was a few personal mementos.”
“I—I’ll go change clothes,” Hope said tremulously, and started to get up. “I had no idea…I mean…I’m so sorry.”
“Sit down. I’m not through talking yet.” Hope slowly sank back to the chair. “First of all, I don’t care about your wearing anything you find in this house. There is something I do care about, though, and it’s your misguided belief that you and I have a relationship.”
“Misguided?” she echoed while her stomach started tying itself in knots. “What does that mean, exactly? It sort of sounds like I was wrongly guided. If I was, who was guiding me, Matt?”
His face colored to a dark crimson. “Go ahead and blame me. I’ve got broad shoulders.”
She studied him and sorted out the flush and the bluster. “Poor Matt,” she said quietly. “Living alone and liking it, with just a few female skeletons in the attic that he conveniently forgot about, and then along came a woman and turned his safe little male kingdom upside down.” Her voice hardened. “Now you’re worried that I might be falling in love with you and it scares the living daylights out of you. Why? Are you actually planning to live alone for the rest of your life?”
“I’m not planning anything. The days come and go all on their own, and so do the disasters, the pitfalls, the problems.”
“Is that all you’ve gotten out of life?”
“It wasn’t a hell of a lot more,” he replied, sounding bitter.
Hope had her fill of this depressing discussion and she got to her feet. “Whether you approve or not, I still feel safe with you. For the sake of your peace of mind, which you deserve as much as anyone else, I promise not to fall in love with you. Also, I’ll stay in my own bed at night. If you stay in yours, as well, that should eliminate any more intimacy between us. I do have to ask one thing from you, and that’s your permission for me to stay here until my mind clears at least a little. In return I would cook all the meals for your crew. I wasn’t sure I could do it before, but I know now that I can.”
Matt felt like he’d just beaten her over the head with something. “You don’t have to do that. All I was trying to get across was that I don’t want you getting hurt over something you’re probably not understanding very well.”
“Oh? Like what?”
He flushed again, but he had to tell her “what.” “I took your virginity and I had no right.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake, get over it!” Turning, she left him alone in the kitchen.
In her bedroom with the door closed, though, she fell across the bed and wept from sheer confusion. If Matt was worried about her falling in love with him, she must have shown signs of it happening. He certainly knew more about love than she did, after all.
Sitting up, Hope blew her nose. It was possible that she knew much more about love than Matt McCarlson, but the knowledge, or even the lack thereof, was concealed behind a locked door in her brain. It was strange, though, that if she’d ever been in love she hadn’t made love. The virginity that Matt was so remorseful of taking from her seemed so puzzling, because obviously she was neither cold nor inhibited.
Unless, of course, the amnesia had altered her personality so drastically that she wasn’t the same woman she’d been before the occurrence of her memory loss. Certainly the word chastity had very little impact in her present state and it just may have been her personal protocol at one time.
Pressing her fingertips to her temples, Hope shut her eyes, gritted her teeth and concentrated so hard on remembering something from her life—a face, a voice, a place, anything—that she soon had the seedlings of a headache. But along with tension pangs she felt a resurgence of fear, and for once she knew—without question—its source: her nightmares!
A chill permeated her body, and she dropped her hands from her temples to wrap her arms around herself in an attempt to melt the ice in her system. Swallowing dryly she forced herself to recall as much detail about those frightening dreams as she could dredge up.
Her conclusion after much deliberation was that the man threatening her in every single dream was a real person and not a figment of a terrified woman’s imagination. What’s more, she felt in her ice-cold bones that, as Matt had warned her, he was still a threat, even if she had no idea why anyone would want to harm her.
She couldn’t leave here, she just couldn’t! But during this morning’s disturbing conversation Matt hadn’t promised she could stay, had he?
Hope slid from the bed and stood on her feet with all the determination she could muster. She’d offered a trade, her cooking for his protection. When he came in for dinner this evening and realized that she’d also cooked for his crew, wouldn’t he feel obligated to let her stay?
It was worth a try, she decided while battling a wave of panic she dared not let overcome her. Breathing deeply in an attempt to bolster her courage, she headed for the kitchen.
When Matt walked in that evening and saw the amount of food Hope had prepared, he felt like a complete jerk. Hope wasn’t in the kitchen, but it was obvious she’d cooked for everyone on the place. Hurrying back to the outside door to catch Chuck before he reached the bunkhouse, Matt yelled, “Chuck, come and give me a hand, would you?”
Together they carried steaming pots and pans of delicious-smelling food to the bunkhouse for the men’s dinner.
“This is sure gonna beat Harvey’s warmed-up stew,” Chuck said with a grin a yard wide. “That little gal sure can cook, can’t she?”
“Yes, she sure can cook,” Matt agreed grimly.
“Funny that she can remember recipes when she can’t remember anything else.”
“Yeah, it’s a laugh a minute around here these days.”
“I didn’t mean ha-ha funny, Matt.”
“I know what you meant, Chuck. Sorry for being such a grouch.” Reaching the bunkhouse, they went inside and set the pots and pans on the stove. “Enjoy,” Matt said brusquely, and left the hungry men to their own devices. The crew was excited about the unexpected meal, which by aroma alone promised to be something special, and Matt was glad for their sakes. But as for himself, the direction of his life, his unwanted, tormenting feelings for Hope and the stupid way he was dealing with them were all getting Matt down, and he slogged back to the house with a sour, down-in-the-dumps expression on his face.
Inside again, he saw that the kitchen was still vacant. Obviously Hope was avoiding him and could he blame her? Considering the way he’d talked to her that morning, it was a wonder she hadn’t throttled him.
But he still didn’t know a way to tell her they’d never be more to each other than they were right now than what he’d already said. He felt bad about hurting her, but she’d be hurt a whole lot worse if he let her go on thinking they were headed for some sort of fairy-tale romance when they weren’t. At least, he wasn’t. That was the problem, of course: her romantic notions versus his realistic attitude about sex between consenting adults.
His own dinner was in the oven, and he decided to shower before eating it. He had to pass Hope’s bedroom door on the way to his own, and he was surprised to see it standing wide-open. He couldn’t resist a quick glance into the room, and he saw her sitting on the bed with pillows behind her back, reading a book.
She spoke without looking at him. “Let me know when you’re through with your dinner, and I’ll go and finish doing the dishes.”
“Uh, fine, okay, thanks.” Matt continued down the hall to his room, confounded by her subservient demeanor. It was as if she’d changed from guest to servant, and he knew in his soul that he could never think of her as a servant.
“Damn her hide,” he muttered. Why was it that females were born knowing how to get and keep the upper hand with men? She’d worked all day in his kitchen so he’d feel like a dog over their talk this morning. And it had worked. He felt exactly like a mangy old dog that had deliberately taken a bite out of baseball, apple pie, motherhood and the American way.
Cussing a blue streak, he gathered some clean clothes and went to take a shower.
He hoped that he would accidentally drown under the shower spray and be put out of his misery.
Hope awoke again in the middle of that night, sweating and terrified, but she hadn’t screamed, and she fought the smothering fear all by herself instead of running to Matt.
This nightmare was different from the others she realized when her pulse finally slowed to a more normal rhythm. She’d been running…running so hard…winded and gasping for air and running in a pouring, blinding rainfall, slipping and sliding in mud. And the man from her previous nightmares had been behind her, chasing her, reaching out for her with clawing fingers, but before she’d escaped his clutches in that motel room she had struck him with something, and she’d seen his face.
He had red hair!
“Oh, my Lord,” she whispered. Just as she’d suspected, her troubled mind had been remembering instead of dreaming!
But who was the red-haired man, and why in heaven’s name had she been in a motel room with him in the first place? Did she know him? If so, why had she struck him with…with a whiskey bottle? Hope’s eyes became big and startled. A whiskey bottle? Could that possibly be true?
Burying her face in her pillow, she moaned miserably and managed to keep it quiet, which was pretty remarkable when screaming was what she felt like doing. But if her past consisted of whiskey bottles, men and motel rooms, did she want to remember any more of it?
The next morning Hope got out of bed when she heard Matt moving around. She was dressed and leaving her room when he came out of his and saw her.
“Go back to bed,” he said gruffly. “We’re all used to making our own breakfast, and there’s no reason for you to be up at this hour.”
Hope lifted her chin, a defiant gesture. “We have a deal.”
“No, Hope, we don’t.”
Her defiance disintegrated, and her lower lip began quivering. “Are you kicking me out?”
He looked at her morning-fresh face and felt her vulnerability in his own body. “No, I’m not kicking you out,” he said gently, and he couldn’t stop himself from touching her. He laid his hand on her cheek, and the sensation of her soft, dewy skin on his palm was almost enough to make him forget everything but the two of them.
But this was a mighty big world and they weren’t the only two people in it, though there’d been times since her arrival that he’d felt as though they were. For the most fleeting of moments he savored that image—a man and a woman, loving each other so much that neither of them needed anyone else.
That’s the craziest idea you’ve ever had!
Yep, it sure is.
Matt dropped his hand to his side. “Didn’t I tell you days ago that you could stay here for as long as you wanted?”
“I guess you did. But then things, uh, happened between us, and—”
Matt broke in. “Maybe what happened between us should be forgotten. You know, one of these days whether you’re here or someplace else, you’re going to regain your memory. Hope, when that happens everything that took place on this ranch is going to be nothing but litter to you.”
“Litter! Whatever are you talking about?”
“Litter. Trash. Garbage.”
She sucked in a stunned breath. “Everything between us is garbage to you?”
“No, but it’s going to be to you.”
It was such a devastating idea that Hope nearly crumpled. She couldn’t disagree with Matt about it because there were no arguments against that possibility in her befuddled brain.
Since she didn’t want him to see the tears that burned her eyes and threatened to spill at any moment, she walked back into her bedroom and quietly closed the door.
Matt was startled by her sudden retreat. Also, she’d let him have the last word on a subject that had disturbed her, and that concession seemed sweetly feminine and affected him in an unaccustomed way. For one thing, he was getting damned good at disturbing Hope, and he didn’t much care for the aftertaste.
In fact, all along he’d been lumping Hope and Trisha in precisely the same too wealthy, self-centered category, and the two women had very few traits in common. Actually, comparing them at all wasn’t fair to Hope. She didn’t even know she had money, and any self-centeredness she’d shown during her stay was merely worry about her own mental condition.
Feeling the pain that Hope must be living with in his own system, Matt rued every harsh thing he’d said to her since day one of their association. He almost rapped on her door to tell her so, but he was so wretchedly confused about what might be happening to him. His feelings for Hope had a unique quality, a newness he was positive he’d never experienced with anyone else.
That bit of honesty was enough to scare him away from her door, and to hurry his steps through the house to go outside. Heading for the bunkhouse, he saw Chuck coming out of the building. Chuck was carrying a load of pots and pans, obviously in the process of returning them to the house.
They stopped when they met up with each other. “We cleaned and washed these pots after we emptied them,” Chuck said with a big grin. “We sure did have a fine meal.” Matt continued to look pinched around the mouth, so Chuck stopped grinning. “Do you want to take ’em from here?”
“Nope.” Matt walked away, leaving Chuck to stare after him and to wonder if he’d gotten another threat from the bank holding the mortgage on the ranch. Something had caused Matt’s dark mood and Chuck couldn’t imagine anything worse for a rancher than to lose his land.
Wishing he had the means to help his boss, Chuck continued on to the house. He was concerned about alarming Hope by just walking in, but it was very early and she might still be asleep.
He entered quietly and tiptoed to the longest counter. The utensils were stacked one in another for carrying, and he cautiously set the stack on the counter and then tried to separate it into several smaller piles that wouldn’t fall over—without making any noise. He might as well have stomped in and then deliberately tossed the pans around the room, because the whole stack toppled and flew every which way, banging and clanging against the cupboards before they finally landed on the floor.
“Dagnab it!” Chuck scrambled to pick up the pans, knowing in his heart of heart that if Hope had been sleeping, she was awake now.
The initial racket reached Hope’s ears. She stiffened and then panicked. Someone was in the kitchen—the red-haired man? Hope nearly dove headfirst under the bed, until common sense told her that Matt had left her alone only minutes ago and could still be in the house.
Soundlessly opening the door, she peered down the hall. A noise from the kitchen made her jump, but only Matt wouldn’t care if she heard him.
Still, what was he doing? Hope suddenly saw red. If he dared to be making his own breakfast after their disagreement earlier about her making it, she was going to…to… Well, she didn’t know what she would do, but she’d think of something!
Marching militantly down the hall, she entered the kitchen. “Chuck!” she exclaimed.
He straightened up with a pan in his hand and a look of self-disgust on his face. “I woke you up, didn’t I?”
She realized that she wasn’t completely comfortable with Chuck Crawford, but he really did look harmless. He was around fifty, with silver-blond hair and a bit of a paunch. For God’s sake, give it a break. He’s Matt’s right-hand man and look at the kindly concern in his eyes.
“No, you didn’t wake me. You brought back the cooking pots.”
“Thought you might need ’em.” Chuck smiled at her. “That was the best meal any of us have ever eaten, Hope. I’d like to say thanks for all your hard work.”
Hope walked over to the coffeemaker and began preparing the pot. “Cooking isn’t hard work for me, Chuck.” She laughed briefly, a bit sharply. “Not that I know why it isn’t, you understand.”
“Yeah, Matt told me about your having amnesia,” Chuck said sympathetically. “I’m real sorry about that. I can’t even imagine what it must be like.”
“Nor could I explain it so you’d know what it’s like.”
“Maybe you feel like a bundle of loose ends.”
She smiled. “That’s as sensible an explanation as any that I could come up with.”
Chuck was pleased that she no longer seemed scared of him, and, in fact, was actually talking to him. “We scrubbed the pans real good, Hope.”
“Yes, I can see that. They’re shiny clean. Thank you.”
“Well, guess I should be going,” Chuck said, and made a reluctant move toward the door.
Hope suddenly trusted him implicitly and didn’t want him to go. She would be alone for the rest of the day, alone and thinking about the red-haired man.
“Must you?” she said with a warm smile. “I was hoping you’d have a cup of coffee with me.”
“Really?” Amazed at her friendliness this morning, Chuck turned away from the door. “Well, heck yes, I’d like that a lot.”
“So would I.” Hope began setting the table, and it flashed through her mind that Chuck probably knew everything there was to know about Matt. Chuck had known Trisha and had been at the ranch when she’d been killed. He’d lived here ever since and he could be the closest thing to a friend that Matt had. Chuck was undoubtedly a fount of information where Matt was concerned, and Hope didn’t feel an iota of guilt over her impulse to charm Chuck into telling all, either. Matt was an almost unbelievably on-again, off-again type of man, and why shouldn’t she use every possible avenue to learn more about him after what they’d been doing when no one was looking?
Perhaps her justification was because of Matt’s completely groundless—to her way of thinking—regret over making love to her. What seemed strange, though, was that even though he wanted her to believe his remorse was for her sake, she knew in her soul it was to preserve his own conscience.
And maybe, just maybe, Chuck had some understanding of why Matt McCarlson was such a complex human being.
When Chuck left an hour later, Hope was upset and sorry she’d led poor, unsuspecting Chuck down the garden path. Matt wasn’t a womanizer at all, he was a man in serious financial trouble, which explained the tension she sensed in him most of the time. Also, Chuck hadn’t been at all reticent about the ranch being in bad shape, and she’d heard a long list of expenditures needed to put it right. “That storm might have been the final straw,” Chuck had told her solemnly. “Hope not, but I know Matt’s sure worried about it.”
Then he’d lightened up and done some joking around about Matt needing to find himself a rich wife, which had totally caught Hope off guard, because why would Chuck, who she’d assumed knew Matt so well, even joke about something that serious to Matt? Trisha had been rich, and that union certainly hadn’t worked, so why would Chuck think another rich wife would turn Matt into a happy man?
What it boiled down to, Hope realized, was that Chuck didn’t understand Matt much better than she did, which could be blamed on their being men and never really opening up with each other.
But she suspected that Matt never opened up to anyone, not even a friend.
So what chance did an intrusive, pathetically mindless person such as herself have with a man who never let normal people get close enough to know him?
“None,” Hope said with a forlorn sigh. “Absolutely none.”
Later on Hope realized that she was running out of food to cook. She kept going to the kitchen window and looking yearningly across the compound at the bunkhouse. Matt had said it contained a lot of groceries, and she would very much like to do some picking and choosing on her own.
But she’d have to show herself and now that she’d remembered the red-haired man, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was much closer than even Matt suspected. Would it have helped any if she’d told Matt about this morning’s dream? Would Matt have said, “He has red hair? Hells bells, Hope, I know exactly who you’re talking about. Let’s call the sheriff and have the bastard arrested.”
It was a silly fantasy and Hope knew it. The doors of the house were locked, and those locks were her only protection whenever Matt and the crew were off working somewhere. If she dared fate by going to the bunkhouse for more food, it might be the last thing she ever did.
On the other hand, could she live without courage? Having no memory was an indescribable cruelty, but pile cowardice on top of that and she would be a total zero. She was sure that she was getting braver, anyway, because look how she’d shaped up and welcomed Chuck this morning.
She made up her mind. Without ingredients she couldn’t cook, and if she couldn’t stay busy in the kitchen, she just might lose the thin little hold she still had on reality.
Unlocking the back door, she took a big breath and then dashed across the compound to the bunkhouse. Twenty minutes later she was back and so proud of herself and thrilled with the marvelous array of groceries she’d gathered that she was practically bursting at the seams.
She was going to prepare a feast, and Chuck and the other men would be grateful, even if Matt’s reaction to her sumptuous meal was to give her hell for going outside.
What difference did Matt’s reactions make to her anyhow? Regardless of the feelings he aroused in her—feelings she couldn’t even name, except for the erotic ones— Matt was pure heartache waiting to happen.
“Or to get worse,” Hope mumbled after admitting that she was already suffering from heartache.