Over the next two days, Juliet and Martin—Colton, she corrected herself—did little but sleep and talk. He’d had so much to tell—about the horrible fight that resulted in his father’s death, running away at his mother’s urging so the police wouldn’t suspect him, years struggling to survive on the streets. He’d joined the army to stay alive, had used the GI Bill to put himself through college and then gone to work for the Drug Enforcement Administration in California, New York and Florida, in the Caribbean, Mexico and Colombia. He’d been shot the first time in Bogotá, the second in Jamaica, both in the line of duty.
He was one of the good guys.
But she’d known that all along.
It was Thursday afternoon, and they were standing in front of a grave marker at the cemetery. The stone was engraved with Olivia’s full name and the dates of her birth and death. Inscribed underneath in fancy script was the legend, Beloved Mother. Mart—Colton crouched to run his fingers lightly over the letters, the look on his face one of exquisite sorrow. It broke her heart.
“When I killed my father, I wanted to stay here and take my chances with the law, but she wouldn’t let me. I begged her, but she insisted that I couldn’t risk it. I could claim self-defense, but I was a big kid—bigger than him—and I’d made no secret of the fact that I hated him. I wanted him dead. Everyone knew it, including the police.” Closing his eyes, he shook his head. “They used to come to our house on a regular basis. They hauled him off, Mom refused to press charges, and he was back the next morning. Nothing ever changed. Until that night.”
He’d already told her about that night, how his parents had gotten into yet another violent fight. He had gotten between them, and his father had hit him, too, knocking him to the floor. With one knee in Colton’s back, Roy held him down and, as punishment for his interference, used his cigarette to burn his own son’s flesh. Colton freed himself, and, when Roy came at him again, Colton hit him. The force of the blow had carried him down the stairs, and the fall had left him dead of a broken neck.
Juliet felt no sympathy for the man who was buried in a distant part of the cemetery. She’d known from the moment Colton had told her about his dream, from the moment she’d connected the burn scar on his back to the smell of something burning in that dream, that Roy Stuart had deserved to die.
“I blamed her. I resented the hell out of her. She was my mother. She should have protected me. She should have made him stop, and if she couldn’t, if he didn’t, then she should have taken us far away from him.” He stood, glanced around the cemetery as if he didn’t know how he’d come to be there. “Being on my own and on the streets was so damned hard. There were times when I thought jail couldn’t possibly be worse than the life I was living. I wanted to go home, but I was so angry with her for making me leave in the first place, for putting me in a situation where I had to kill my own father, for not being a good mother. And I hated Roy Stuart even more. I dropped the Roy Jr. bit and became Colton Stuart.
“As I got older, I finally realized that life isn’t always so easy, that people make mistakes, that my mother had made mistakes. I finally admitted how much I still loved her, and I called her. I talked to her last spring for the first time in more than twenty years. It was my birthday.” He gave her a crooked smile. “In the last five years, I’d spent so much time out of the country that I never really had a place of my own. I was in Miami then, staying with an old DEA buddy—Jason Scott. He’s probably transferred out of there by now. That’s why we couldn’t locate him.”
“Olivia must have been so happy to hear from you.”
His expression saddened again. “Yeah. The first night, we talked for two hours, and she cried the whole time. She apologized, asked me to forgive her. I said I did.”
“Why didn’t she tell Hal and Eve?”
“In the beginning, she wanted to keep the news to herself for a while. She was the only one who always believed that I was still alive, and she wanted to…”
“Savor the moment.” She said it with a knowing smile. She had savored every single moment with him.
He nodded. “When she finally told me about the trouble Hal was in—the second call, I think, maybe the third—I asked her not to tell anyone. I arranged to take a leave of absence, to come here and try to help her with him. I wanted surprise on my side.” He shook his head, his gaze distant, his thoughts a year distant. “The shrink suspected all along that there was a hysterical aspect to my amnesia. He was right. I remember leaving the interstate and driving up the mountain toward Grand Springs, and the closer I got, the more desperately I wanted to be someplace else. I hated coming back here. I hated the fear and the old bitterness toward my mother. I would have gladly faced the toughest, most vicious and brutal dealers in the world rather than deal with my memories of Grand Springs. When I had the wreck, maybe subconsciously I was looking for a way out, for a way to forget.”
“Why didn’t anyone recognize you? I realize Eve was just a baby, but Hal should have known. A lot of people should have known.”
He came to stand behind her, sliding his arms around her. “I used to look more like Hal. When I got shot the first time, I was standing on a rooftop. I fell two stories to the sidewalk below. My face was messed up—lots of broken bones. Normally, in a situation like that, the doctors use a photograph to put you back together. If one’s not available, they try to match the more seriously affected side to the other. They couldn’t locate a photograph of me, and both sides of my face were pretty badly smashed, so they did the best they could. My nose came out crooked, they squared my jaw, and they altered a few other features. Considering the level of expertise at that hospital, I was just grateful that I didn’t come out of it looking as grotesque as I’d felt.”
So twice in his life he’d awakened to find himself wearing a stranger’s face. Whatever the face, she loved him more than she’d ever thought possible.
“Want to go home?” he murmured, making her shiver.
“To sleep?”
“Maybe later.” He nuzzled her hair from her ear, brushed his mouth across it.
“To talk?”
“That, too. Later.”
“Then what is it you want to do?”
He told her in explicit terms that left no questions and sent a heated flush through her body. “Martin—Colton!” She sounded scandalized. She felt turned on.
“Darlin’, I’m not suggesting that I lay you down on the grass right here. Though it’s not a bad location, considering.”
Giving him a chastening look that didn’t leave him the least bit chastened, she claimed his hand and started for the car. Halfway there, she stopped, reached for his other hand and clasped them both tightly. “I need to ask you something. Tuesday night you said…”
“That I love you.”
“And you asked…”
His smile was sweet and gentle. “I asked you to marry me. You didn’t answer.”
“It was a tense moment. Your adrenaline was pumping. We’d just been shot at. Our lives had been in danger.” She hesitated before quietly continuing. “I thought, if you really meant it, you would ask again when things calmed down. You didn’t.”
“I wanted you to know what you were getting into. I wasn’t a criminal, but…I don’t look much like husband material, either. I come with my own baggage. That’s one reason why I’ve been telling you everything. I want you to make an informed choice.”
“Martin—Colton, I’ve known everything about you that I’ve needed to know since the moment I realized I’d fallen in love with you. I’m sorry for all the things that went wrong in your past, but they don’t make a difference. They can’t change how I feel about you. They could never stop me from loving you.”
He studied her for a moment, then freed one hand to touch her face. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“With all my heart.”
“I love you, Juliet.”
“I love you, too, Martin-Colton—whoever you are.”
Grinning, he pulled her close against him. “You know, you could avoid the confusion by just calling me sweetheart. Or darlin’. Or husband. Or, in a year or so, Daddy.” His mouth closed over hers in the sweetest, most tempting, most full-of-promise kiss she had ever experienced. Just as she was growing too weak to stand, he lifted his head and gazed down at her. “I have only two questions for you, Juliet. Will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
“And can I take you home and—” Once again he whispered in her ear, offering wicked suggestions and sinful pleasures and love, more love than she’d ever known.
Laughing, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his jaw. “Yes. Yes. Oh, please, yes.”