A CUPBOARD SLAMMED in the kitchen, striking Adam with instant awareness of where he was—and of what he’d been about to do. He yanked his hands from Sydney’s legs and rocked back on his heels, his body thrumming, every inch of his muscle and flesh intrigued and aroused.
“You don’t have to stop,” she told him, her voice throaty, deep. When her lashes fluttered open, only a thin, green circle remained around pupils black with need.
“My sister’s in the other room.”
“Then let’s go somewhere private.”
She didn’t show a single sign of embarrassment that he’d almost committed a full sensual assault on her with his sister only a few steps away. Sydney’s expression reflected only desire—the hot, unadulterated need to feel his hands on her body, no matter who might walk in on them.
“I don’t know you,” Adam said, certain the fact didn’t bother him in the least, but he wasn’t brain-damaged enough to think it might not make a difference to her. No matter how much of a bad girl she pretended to be—or truly was—he intended to play on the up-and-up.
She leaned forward, grabbed his hands and pressed them to her rib cage. Her breathing wasn’t quite as steady as she let on, and the moisture seeping through her paper-thin blouse testified to a heat more intense than the ninety-degree temperatures outside. She was burning up from the inside out, and she wanted him to know.
“You do know me, Adam. Better than any man ever has. You just don’t remember right now.”
A tinge of desperation clung to her tone, slapping Adam with a heavy hand of reality. He could only give her part of what she wanted—the part that had to do with his hands on her flesh. Yeah, he could give her sexual pleasure. He could give her a damned good time. But she’d already admitted that she’d come looking for him because she wanted what they’d once almost had—a real relationship. And that was outside his power.
Once his recovery had allowed him to live a semi-normal life, Adam had made some decisions. So long as he couldn’t offer a woman a decent life with financial security and emotional depth, he’d sworn off dating altogether. The loneliness hadn’t been easy, but he’d accepted the emptiness just as he’d accepted the excruciating pain of rehab. Until he found a new focus for his life, until he had a future beyond relying on his sister’s business to give his life foundation, he couldn’t commit to anyone. Not for a long-term relationship. Not when he had no way to predict where such an entanglement might lead.
“I won’t ever remember, Sydney.”
“You don’t know for certain.”
He winced, jabbed by the timbre of hope clinging to her voice. He’d once held tight to the same kind of wishful thinking, but he’d been a pragmatist before the accident and struggling through recovery had made him one again. He wouldn’t get his memory back. He’d never be able to draw again. And he’d never remember the intimate details of whatever explosive passion he’d shared with this intriguing woman, whom he wanted to kiss right here, right now, with every fiber of his soul.
“Yeah, I do know for certain.” He pushed away and stood, marking a distance between them with the sharp sound of his work boots on the planked wood floor. “Why do you think I’m now making my way by pounding nails into precut wood instead of designing buildings and raking in the dough?”
She leaned forward, elbows on knees, thighs spread just enough to make his groin tug in response. “Because you look incredibly hot in jeans and a workbelt?”
“I’m serious, Sydney.”
“I am, too, Adam, and that scares the crap out of me. I’m never serious. Serious is for people like my parents or my painfully responsible friends.”
She stood and limped back into his personal space looking as cool as a white water lily floating on a rain-swelled pond. “But I’m serious about you and I’m not about to let your memory loss get in the way of what I want.”
“Which is?”
She arched an eyebrow. “You, baby. Just you.”
“I’m not the man you knew.”
She licked her lips. “I don’t know about that. Neither do you.”
“I do know I can’t make you any promises, Sydney. You remember what we once had. I don’t. And the last thing I want to do is hurt you…or anyone.”
Her lashes fluttered as she allowed her gaze to devour him. “I can take care of myself. And maybe a hot dose of me will jog that memory of yours. Worth a shot, don’t you agree?”
Adam placed his hands on his hips to keep from pulling her into his arms and mussing her white blouse with the dirt and sawdust still clinging to his chest. She wore no bra beneath her tank top and, from so close, he could see the dark circles of her areolae, centered with tight tips that poked the soft cotton. Her eyes reflected pure want—with no fear, no expectations beyond the physical, though he guessed she harbored hopes he’d probably, inadvertently, dash. Still, how could any red-blooded American male say no to an offer like hers?
Renée strode back into the room with two tall glasses of lemonade, trying to look as if she hadn’t heard any of their conversation. She stopped short, and he wondered if maybe she hadn’t eavesdropped. His sister might be notorious for opening her mouth just long enough to either insert her foot or insult someone, but she’d focused on Adam and his recovery long enough to know the minute his emotions changed—mainly because he tried really hard and generally managed to maintain a steady calm of relaxed indifference. An impossibility with Sydney around.
“How’s your foot?” she asked Sydney.
Renée handed Adam a glass, eyeing him with about a dozen unspoken questions—questions that probably had nothing to do with the state of Sydney’s instep.
“Stings, but nothing I can’t handle,” Sydney answered, her tone friendly. She hopped back to the couch and accepted her glass with a smile. “I should know better than to walk around without shoes. If my mother were here, she’d be giving me that ‘I told you so’ look I so adore.”
“Mothers love to be right about everything,” Renée replied.
“Mothers?” he asked, stabbing Renée with a playful, accusatory stare. Sisters weren’t so shabby at handing out bossy remarks, either.
“Where do you think I learned?”
Luckily, Adam did remember his mother. Sylvia Brody had been an enthusiastic mom, the kind who loved unconditionally and baked cookies and supported their father’s authority. Luckily, Frank Brody had been a fair and even-tempered man who preferred his wife be the keeper of all strong opinions. Adam’s move back to the family home after the accident, surrounding himself with loving memories, had been a positive experience.
The only downside was that because his parents had died only three years ago, he sometimes didn’t remember that they were gone. He half-expected his parents to walk through the front door at any time. On the other hand, he held tight to primarily good memories. Which he needed. He’d had enough deep, dark times. More than enough. More than his share, at least in the past twelve months.
He needed a diversion. Preferably a sexy one like Sydney Colburn.
Renée scooted the rocking chair closer, the scraping sound snapping Adam into alert mode. “So, Sydney, tell me. If you and Adam were involved…”
Adam cleared his throat. “We were, Renée. I believe her.”
Renée sat back, her feet planted firmly to keep the chair from moving in the casual, homey way it was intended. “Then why didn’t she know about the accident?”
“That’s complicated,” Adam answered.
“No, it isn’t,” Sydney countered, then she stopped to think. He watched each detail add up into the complex story of their affair until she was nearly cross-eyed.
“Okay, I guess it is complicated,” she conceded. “I’ll summarize—we were involved, I left, now I’m back. End of story.”
Adam coughed, trying to swallow a chuckle that bubbled up from some part of him that hadn’t seen action in a heck of a long time. He considered himself a bottom-line guy. Apparently, Sydney Colburn had him beat by a country mile. “Not exactly the end of the story.”
“End of that story, beginning of the new one,” she said with a wink.
“It’s not that simple,” Adam countered.
“Why not?”
She had that look again. The same look of shock and disbelief in her sparkling emerald eyes that she’d worn when he’d confessed that he didn’t remember her. He hadn’t meant to make her look like that twice in one day. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Actually, there wasn’t much to Sydney Colburn that wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but she had a sharpness to her eyes that would scare the living daylights out of any man with a brain enough to be afraid. Luckily for Adam, his brain was not only damaged, but the challenge of living with his sister had made him less likely to be intimidated by a strong woman.
“Adam needs to focus on his recovery,” Renée said.
Sydney sat back so she had a clear view of him from head to toe. “He looks fine to me. Very fine.”
She licked her lips again, then kicked up her appreciation by wiggling her eyebrows. Adam wasn’t sure how much of her sexy reaction was for show, but he thought Renée was going to blow the vein in her temple.
“Adam doesn’t need a woman like you in his life right now.”
“A woman like me?” She drew her hand to her chest as if wounded. Man, if Sydney ever bottomed out in the romance market, she could take up acting. “That’s a loaded statement. Care to elaborate?”
Adam jumped in. Man, these two women were going to drive him nuttier than a Snickers bar. “Renée, I can speak for myself.”
“So speak,” they said in unison, eyeballing each other with a showdown stare.
Adam stepped back, instinctively putting a safe distance between him and the two women. Despite their similarities—or perhaps because of them—they couldn’t seem to get along for longer than ten seconds.
“I can’t say I’m not interested in you, Sydney…” he began.
“Damn straight. You may have lost your memory, but I don’t think you’ve lost your mind.”
“No, apparently, my physical recovery has gone very well.”
At the same time, he and Sydney glanced down at his crotch. Yep. He was good to go. Renée reacted by cursing the very foundation of their good Christian upbringing.
“So what’s the problem?”
Renée jumped in. “The problem—”
Adam interrupted his sister by shoving his empty glass into her hand. “I’d like a refill, Sis.”
“What?”
“Now.”
What a hell of day this was turning out to be, Adam mused. Renée snatched his glass, still half-full, and stomped into the kitchen. She banged cupboard doors and flung ice cubes into the glass so hard he was afraid she’d need the first-aid kit in a minute. But a man could only take so much catfighting before the appeal wore off, especially when the combatants were the sister he loved and a woman who fascinated him beyond reason.
“Renée’s right, Sydney. I shouldn’t get involved right now. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair to whom? Me? I told you, I can take care of myself. I’ve been pulling off that trick for a long time.”
“That may be, but you didn’t come all the way out here to renew a no-strings-attached affair, did you? You came here to try and start over, make what we once had mean something.”
She opened her mouth to reply, then popped her lips closed just as quickly.
“Damn, I hate that,” she finally muttered.
“What, when I’m right?”
“No, when I can’t come up with a snappy comeback.”
He laughed heartily, eliciting a reluctant grin from her. God, he could really start liking this woman. A lot. But getting involved right now wasn’t the right thing to do. Not because he was fragile or still in need of physical recovery as his sister believed. But because he had nothing to give a woman like Sydney, at least nothing worth having for more than a few months’ time.
Yeah, he had a job, but no career. He hadn’t had time yet to figure out his direction, not when so many stumbling blocks remained in the tangled web of his past. Until Sydney had shown up today, he hadn’t really allowed himself to think about finding out exactly what had happened on the night of his accident—he hadn’t had a clue where to start. The police investigation had been one dead end after another. But Sydney had been in his condo with him shortly before he’d gone out running. Maybe she had seen someone, heard something. Maybe she possessed an insignificant detail that when added to the context of his accident and the vandalism at the office, might give him a place to start figuring out exactly what happened that night…and why.
After he’d come home from the hospital, he’d made the normal inquiries, using old contacts to see if his blueprints had shown up under another firm’s design. So far, he’d received no feedback. But since he was no longer part of the industry, he couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure that the missing plans hadn’t been stolen and sold elsewhere, perhaps in another country. With literally tens of thousands of architects and builders plying their trade all over the world, he’d had no logical place to start a real search—until, perhaps, now.
“Look, Sydney. I don’t have the right, but could I ask you a few questions about what happened that night, before my accident?”
Sydney grabbed her shoes and buckled them around her slim, smooth ankles. “Sure, but I have a few questions for you, too.”
“That’s fair.”
Renée must have finished pouring the lemonade by now, but she hadn’t reappeared. He figured she was probably sulking and eavesdropping. Oh, well. If she heard anything she didn’t like, too bad. He needed to do this. For his future.
“You start,” he said, sitting beside her.
“Tell me about your recovery.”
Adam grinned, realizing Sydney hadn’t discounted his little sister’s overzealous concern. When he’d told her about the accident outside, Sydney had been broadsided. That she cared about his health made him wonder just how shallow their affair actually had been.
“I had to learn to walk again, to do everything again, really. And I’ve had occupational therapy, so I can take care of myself. For the most part, I’m as physically recovered as I’m ever going be.”
“What about your drawing?”
“Drawing?”
“Your architectural designs. You were going to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright.”
Adam couldn’t keep the disgusted sound out of his laugh. “That won’t be happening.”
“Why? You were an architect for longer than five years,” she reasoned.
He nodded, his lips curled inward, his frustration severely tamped down in the deepest part of his gut. “My brain is different now. I remember the basics, the skills, but my visual perceptions are shot. I can’t see things in the proper dimensions to draw anymore, not even with a computer.”
Sydney forced a huge lump of pity down her throat. He’d loved his job with the same vigor that she loved hers. To lose her ability to write…the possibility stole her best words, leaving her with only, “Adam, I’m so sorry.”
He waved a hand at her. “Hey, I’m alive. I have nothing to be sorry about.”
Sydney admired his perspective, but she knew he had to mourn the loss anyway. Still, she wasn’t qualified to be his therapist. Hell, she was hardly qualified to be his friend. They’d been lovers, end of story. And yet, she’d known about his obsession with his career. His single-minded ambition to become the next household name of building designers had been the quality that defined him.
Now who was he?
No wonder he was so reluctant to get involved with her again. His honorable side hadn’t been damaged by the accident—which, unfortunately for him, made her want him all the more.
“What were you working on out there?” she asked, crooking her thumb toward the backyard.
“Renée designs custom playhouses for children. I build them.”
Sydney smiled, amused to discover Adam now did something so whimsical, yet so sexy. I mean, what man caked in sawdust and sweat while wielding a hammer and nails for the sake of children didn’t make a woman’s pulse quicken? “Sounds like fun. I guess with you being independently wealthy now, you can do whatever the hell you please.”
“Independently wealthy? Don’t tell me your private investigator told you that, because if he did, you’ve wasted your money.”
“‘He’ is a she, actually. And I’m not here for your money, I’ve plenty of my own, thanks. But, you know, she didn’t find much financial information on you, except the sale of your business. You got way lower than I would have expected.”
Adam stretched out his legs and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I took what I could get. I needed every red cent for my recovery.”
He explained how his insurance hadn’t covered some of the more experimental treatments that his sister insisted he have—treatments that helped him recover physically in record time. And now that he could no longer ply his trade as an architect, he assisted his sister with the business she had built from scratch—in the home their father had left them—with the carpentry skills he had taught them both.
Sydney listened, but couldn’t understand. “But you’d just gotten that big multimillion-dollar contract!” she protested. “The one with the building that would revolutionize low-rise business structures. I mean, the timing couldn’t have been better. Developers were clamoring for a way to avoid building more high-risk skyscrapers and then you finished your design. What happened?”
She watched him close his eyes and press his lips together in what could best be described as a reluctant wince, born out of pain not so much physical as emotional. “I’m not entirely sure. The plans to the building disappeared. All the backups were destroyed in what the police claim was a random act of vandalism.”
“What do you mean, disappeared? All you had left to do was deliver the plans to the developer. You told me he’d set up an account with your money sitting ready for you.”
“The plans were never sent.”
“Of course they were! The courier came while I was at your place.”
“What?”
Adam shot to his feet, but the floor beneath him rocked, as if a fault line had suddenly developed underneath the wet Florida soil. He knew the unlikeliness of that, so he forced himself back onto the couch. Shaking with a mind-numbing combination of confusion and shock, he grabbed her hands.
“What do you mean the courier came while you were at my place? The courier company said they received a cancellation call about ten minutes after my secretary placed the original order. They said they never sent anyone to pick up the plans. When Renée checked, the plans weren’t in my apartment or in the office, which had been trashed, supposedly by vandals. The computer backups were destroyed. And the developer never received them.”
Sydney sat back, and he could tell she was watching his face very carefully, as if she didn’t know how he would react to whatever she was about to say.
Lucky for him, she seemed like a woman who didn’t shy away from stress.
“The courier came, Adam.”
“You’re sure?”
“He came while I was at your apartment. I saw him take the plans. You wanted me to be there, so we could celebrate right after he left.”
“Do you remember what he looked like? Do you remember his name?”
“I should,” Sydney said, lifting his hands to her lips, placing a kiss on his knuckles, then winking with a sly grin. “I slept with the man only a few months before.”