Carides's Forgotten Wife

She tried to think of Leon’s habits. She wasn’t overly familiar with them, since they didn’t spend all that much time together. But, come to think of it, he was rarely without a drink in his hand.

“A bit,” she said, cautiously. “Though I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.”

“I have been craving a drink ever since I woke up. I don’t know if it’s simply because I’m in a situation of extreme stress or if I potentially have a bit of a dependency.”

“You go out a lot,” she said. “And why don’t you put your shirt on?”

She sounded a little more desperate than she would have liked, but if he found it out of the ordinary, he didn’t show it.

She wasn’t supposed to pile a lot of information on him. She really was supposed to wait until he questioned things. But she was finding it difficult. Part of her wanted to dump the truth on him and then leave him in the hands of a doctor or nurse.

But he had been there for her the night of prom. He had also been there for her when her father had died. And this was what her father would want for her to do. Because he’d cared about Leon. Leon had always been the son her father had never had. Oftentimes she had felt like she was competing for affection, though she knew her father had loved her, too.

Her father wouldn’t want Leon abandoned right now.

And so she would stay.

And she would do her very best not to upset him.

“I can’t,” he said, standing there still, the shirt clutched tightly in his hand.

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I’m having trouble getting the shirt on. My ribs are too sore.” He held his hand out slightly, the shirt still clutched in his fist. “Can you help me?”

All of the air rushed from her lungs, her heart beating a steady rhythm in her ears. “I—” She was supposed to be his wife. There should be nothing remarkable about the request. There was nothing remarkable about it either way. He was an injured man and he needed help. He didn’t need her to be weird.

She cleared her throat and crossed the space between them, hesitating for a moment before she reached out and took hold of the shirt. Their fingers brushed as he relinquished it to her, and a shiver ran down her spine.

She needed to get a grip.

“When you say I go out a lot, you mean that I go to parties?”

She nodded, swallowing hard, her throat suddenly dry. “Yes.” She held the shirt so it was facing the right direction and gathered the material up. “You need to...duck your head or bend as much as you can.”

He bent slightly and she pushed the shirt over his head, dragging it down to his shoulders, his skin scorching hers as her knuckles brushed against his collarbone.

“And you?” he asked.

She looked up at him, her eyes clashing with his. He was so close. So close that it would be easy to stretch up on her toes and close the space between them. She’d only kissed him once. At their wedding in front of a church full of people.

What would happen if she did it again?

She blinked, trying to shake off the drugged feeling that was stealing over her. “Lift your arm as much as you can,” she murmured.

He complied, his fingers grazing his bicep as he slipped into the shirt. “Do you go out with me?” he pressed.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She wasn’t supposed to be dumping information on him, and beyond that, she didn’t really want to. “I prefer to stay at home.”

She pulled the shirt down the rest of the way over his torso, her knuckles brushing against the crisp hair and hard muscle as she did, a hollow sensation carving itself into the pit of her stomach.

It brought to mind all manner of things she’d scarcely allowed herself to fantasize about. Possibilities she’d only just now let go, as she’d accepted the fact her marriage had to end.

And now this. This unique and particular torture that brought her closer to her fantasy than ever before, and further away at the same time.

She took a step away from him, hoping to catch her breath.

He frowned, straightening. “I go out without you?”

He looked just as sexy with the shirt on. Tight and fitted over his muscular frame. She blinked and looked away.

“Sometimes.” She looked up at the clock and saw that it was nearing six, which meant that dinner would be ready. She felt absolutely rescued by that. Maybe when they had a whole table between them she’d be able to breathe again. “I think it’s time for us to go and eat,” she said. “I’ll show you the way to the dining room.”

“You have a full staff here?” he asked, as they made their way through the house.

“Yes. I have kept everyone on since my father died. I didn’t see the point in changing anything.” She cleared her throat. “More than that, I guess I have desperately tried to keep everything the same.”

“We both love this house,” he said. “It’s something we share. At least, you have told me I love this house.”

“Yes, you do. And so do I. I was very happy here growing up. It is the only place I have memories of my mother. I remember hiding up at the top of the staircase and looking down, watching their massive holiday parties. My mother was always the most beautiful woman in the room. She looked so happy with my father. I wanted... I wanted more than anything to grow up and have that be my life.”

Her throat tightened and she found herself unexpectedly blinking back tears.

“Is that not our life?” he asked.

He sounded... He sounded hopeful. It was a very strange thing. Typically, Leon spoke with an air of practiced cynicism. He was not the sort of man who held out hope for much of anything. He was grounded. A realist. It was why she cherished the very few soft moments she had ever had with him. Because when he took the time to be caring she knew that he meant it.

But when it came to things like this, flights of fancy, romantic ideas about life and adulthood, she didn’t expect him to care at all. Much less be able to envision himself as part of it.

She found that she wanted to lie to him. Or, if not lie, be a bit creative with the truth.

“This house is ours. To do with it as we wish. You have been very busy since my father’s death. Fully establishing yourself as the head of the company, expanding. We have not yet had time to throw any large holiday parties.”

“But we intend to?”

“Yes,” she said. That really wasn’t strictly true. She imagined that he never intended to. And she’d been planning on leaving him before next Christmas anyway.

Though she had wished... She had hoped, once upon a time.

Recently, she had given up on it. She didn’t even imagine her own future in this house, much less a shared future. But there was no benefit in telling him that now.

When they walked into the dining room the table was already beautifully appointed. She had warned the staff to keep a low profile. The doctor had told her that it was best to keep things as low-key as possible for Leon while he recovered. It was easy to focus only on the amnesia, which was of course the thing that both of them were most aware of, and forget that he also possessed quite a few physical injuries.

“They made your favorite,” she said, sitting down in front of the steak and risotto that had been prepared for them. There was red wine at her seat. Water at Leon’s.

“This seems a bit cruel and unusual,” he said, eyeing her drink.

“I don’t need to drink it.”

“And that,” he said, his tone hard, “seems remarkably wasteful. You can drink wine. I cannot. One of us should.”

“Awfully giving of you.”

“I feel that I am generous.”

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Do you?” She lifted her wine to her lips and took a sip, suddenly grateful for the extra fortification that it would provide.

“Yes. Are you contradicting me?”

“Of course not,” she said, looking down at her dinner. “You give to a great many charities.”

“There you have it,” he said, picking up his knife and fork. “Incontrovertible evidence that I am in fact generous.”

“Perhaps,” she said, slicing her steak slowly, “there is more than one type of generosity.”

His dark eyebrows shot upward. “Is that so?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Perhaps.”

“Do not speak in code. That is hardly less strenuous on my brain.”

“I am not supposed to bombard you. Much less with my opinions. Opinions are not fact. You need facts.”

“It is your opinion that I am not generous. At least not in every way.”

She let out a long breath, feeling frustrated with herself. Feeling frustrated with him. With the world. She wanted to get up out of her chair, throw her cloth napkin on the floor and run out onto one of the grand lawns. Then perhaps she might rend her garment for dramatic effect and shout at the unfeeling sky.

Of course, she would do none of that. She never did.

Instead, she looked up at him and spoke in an even, moderated tone. “Of course you are.”

“Now you are placating me.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you trying to start a fight?”

“Don’t be silly. We never fight.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she asked, a strange sensation settling in the pit of her stomach.

Of course, he wasn’t wrong. They had never fought. She had done nothing but idolize him for most of her life, and then she had married him. And in the two years since they had gotten married they’d had so little interaction they hadn’t been able to fight. And, frankly, probably wouldn’t have even if she had seen him every day.

He was indifferent to her, but he’d never been cruel. There had never been enough passion between them for there to be a fight.

“I just do,” he said.

“You are so arrogant. Even now.”

“Stingy and arrogant. That is your opinion of me. How is it that we never fight?”

“Perhaps because you are not often around,” she said, taking her first bite of steak and making a bit of a show about chewing it so that he would perhaps cease his endless questions.

* * *

Leon looked across the table at his wife. He did not know quite how to read the exchange that had just taken place between them. She was irritated with him, that much he was certain of. He wondered how often that was the case. He wondered if this was unusual, if the stress of the situation was simply overtaking her, or if she didn’t usually show him her irritation.

Or, more troubling, if he didn’t typically notice it.

She had made several comments now about him frequently being away. She made him sound as though he was an absentee husband at best. Her childhood dream centered around her home being filled with parties. Centered around her hosting these events with her husband, to recapture a part of her life that was clearly past.

Both of her parents were gone. She had made no mention of any siblings. He appeared to be all that she had left, and yet he had seen no evidence that he did very much at all to support her emotionally.

That bothered him. Regardless of whether or not it bothered the man he had been before the accident was irrelevant to him in the moment. She was caring for him. And she clearly felt uncared for in many ways.

He felt compelled to remedy that. If he had to sit around this manor and do nothing but heal for the next several weeks he might as well focus on healing his marriage as well as his body.

It was deeper than that, too. Deeper than just a desire to right a wrong from the past.

Rose was his only touchstone. She was the only person who knew him. The only person he really knew. She was his anchor in an angry sea. And without her, he would be swept away completely.

He needed to shore up the connection between them.

He had lost himself. He could remember nothing of who he was. And from the sounds of things, their connection was much more tentative than it should be.

She was all he had. He could not lose her.

There was only one solution. He had to seduce his wife.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT HAD BEEN nearly a week since Leon’s return to the manor and he still hadn’t remembered anything. Rose was fighting against restlessness, hopelessness and the growing tenderness in her heart whenever she was around him.

As if that tenderness is anything new.

True. She had always felt...something for him. More than she should. He didn’t care for her like that. He never had. But she could never quite stamp out that...that hope. That need. For someone who had been confronted with so much loss she retained rather more than a normal amount of idealism.

There was some part of her that believed steadfastly in happy endings. And being rewarded for good behavior. That was probably why she had always done exactly as her father asked. Why she had done her best to wait for Leon to come around to the idea of being her husband.

And why she had never actually sat down and told him how she felt. Better to close the door herself than have him do it.

“Don’t start hoping again now. Once he remembers...everything will go back to the way it was.”

She lay down on her back on her favorite settee, staring at the ornate ceiling. Then she heard heavy footsteps on the marble floors. She sat up, clutching the book she had been reading to her chest.

“Rose?” Leon strode into the room, looking much more alert and able than he had only a few days ago. He had been resting quite a bit, and had taken several meals in his room since that first night here. It seemed to have paid off.

“Just reading,” she said.

“What are you reading?”

“Nora Roberts.”

“I don’t think I’ve read her. Maybe I have. I wouldn’t know.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “I doubt it.”

“It’s not the sort of thing I would usually read?”

“Unless it’s business-related literature you don’t strike me as the sort of man who reads.”

“You don’t think?”

“You’re usually very confident about who you are, and how you see yourself. What do you think?”

“I think that... I cannot imagine myself going to university. But that’s impossible. Being in the position that I’m in I must have gone.”

“You didn’t,” she said, imagining that it was all right to confirm this.

But you don’t think it’s okay to confirm that your marriage is not quite what it seems?

She gritted her teeth and banished that thought. One thing at a time. And anyway, she intended to have this discussion with him. She intended to end their marriage. But she doubted news of a divorce would be overly welcome to him right now. Especially not when they needed to keep his condition a secret. Especially not when he would have no one else looking out for him. No one else who knew him to help him through all of this.

“Then how... I know enough to know that that is not typically how the world works.” He rubbed his hand over his chin, his skin scraping against the whiskers there. The sound was...strangely erotic.

Rose had no experience with men. Not intimate experience. Beyond that single chaste kiss on their wedding day, and the strangely arousing experience of putting his T-shirt on him, she hadn’t really had any physical contact with a man. Why would she? She had been waiting for Leon. Fool that she was.

As a result, she imagined she was a bit more affected by everyday things than a woman with greater experience would be. Looking at the situation with a little bit of distance she felt sorry for herself. Poor, innocent Rose quivering over whiskers.

Too bad she had no distance in the situation. She had...longing that she could do nothing about, sadness that never seemed to go away, that permeated her entire being and settled a heaviness over her chest, and a deep fear that Leon would never remember anything. Coupled with an almost equally deep fear that he would remember everything and she would have to leave this house, leave him, and move forward with her goal of independence. Of letting go of her feelings for him.

“I’m fuzzy on the details, and I’m sorry about that,” she said, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “All I know is that you were working for my father, for his company. In a very low-level position. You were a teenager. You had not graduated from school. Instead, you left and went straight into the workforce. You did something at the company to catch my father’s eye, and from there he began to mentor you. He took a very personal interest in you, and he began to groom you to be his protégé.”

“My family wasn’t rich,” he said, a strange, hollow look taking over his eyes. “I know that. I’m from Greece. We were very poor. I came here by myself.”

It struck her then, how little she knew about him. She knew he was Greek, that much was obvious, but she didn’t know about his background, not really. She was struck then how little she knew him at all.

He had appeared in her life one day like a vapor and she had hero-worshipped him from that moment on.

That is, until she had fully realized that he would never quite conform to the fantasy she had built around him in her mind. She didn’t wonder why he had married her. The perks of the union were obvious. Her father had been dying, and he wanted to see her settled. He had offered the company and the estate as incentives to Leon, and had put a time frame on the union likely to make sure the two of them gave it an adequate enough try.

All of that made sense. But she suddenly realized that she was the one who didn’t make sense. What had she been hoping for? What on earth had she possibly thought would come from all of this? Who did she imagine he was? That was the problem. All of it was imaginary.

As she sat here in the library attempting to reconstruct who Leon was for his own sake, she realized just how much of the puzzle she was missing.

It made her feel... It made her feel small. Selfish. As if she had only ever seen him as an object of fantasy, who lived and breathed to serve her girlish dreams.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She blinked. “Yes. Do I not look all right?”

“You look as though you have been hit across the face with a mackerel.”

She tried to laugh. “Sorry. It’s just... I don’t actually know as much about you as I should. When confronted with the gaps in your memory I’m forced to examine the missing pieces of my knowledge.”

He frowned. “I suppose I bear some part of the blame in that. If not most of it.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think in this case the fault is squarely mine.”

“I cannot help you with it now. I don’t have answers to any of the questions.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she said, feeling rather weak and pale.

“I do know a few things,” he said, squaring his shoulders, his eyes taking on a determined glitter. That made her feel more at ease. That reminded her of the Leon she had always known.

Sharp, determined, ever in command.

“That’s reassuring,” she said.

“I know that we are having dinner outside on the terrace tonight. And I know that it’s going to be Maine lobster. Which I know is your favorite.”

“How exactly do you know that? You didn’t know what your favorite was only a few days ago.”

It wasn’t really because of his memory loss that she found this strange. She wasn’t sure he had ever known her favorite foods.

“I am fully capable of making inquiries. Probably better than I was just a week ago. My entire life has become dependent on answers, and in part, the quality of my questions. I did my best to rustle up some members of the staff so that I could figure some things out about you.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” She felt slightly panicky. As though she was being given a gift that was entirely unearned.

“I know I didn’t. But you are my wife. Not only that, you have been taking care of me ever since the accident.”

“Not entirely. We’ve had a nurse on call. The doctor has been in constantly. I—”

“Just knowing you were here has been invaluable.” He smiled and she felt it all the way down, deep. It made her stomach tighten, made her heart flutter. Why was it always like this?

He extended his hand, his dark eyes meeting hers. She looked down at it as though it were a poisonous snake.

“I’m leading you to lobster. Not to your doom,” he said.

She hesitated, feeling very much like she didn’t deserve to touch him. Feeling very much like this was intended for a woman who didn’t exist. The devoted wife she wasn’t. The devoted wife she would be if Leon had any interest in being a husband in real life.

Or she was overthinking it. This was just dinner. This was only his hand.

She took a deep breath and wrapped her fingers around his. Lightning shot over the surface of her skin, crackling over her entire body, leaving her breathless, leaving her knees weak. She hadn’t touched him since the wedding. She hadn’t touched any man since then. She wasn’t entirely certain she had really touched anyone at all.

Her father was gone. And even when he’d been here, he’d been spare on physical affection. All of her close friends, the ones she’d made in her two years of university while starting her history degree, had moved away. None of them were spending their twenties rotting in their parents’ estates. They had all moved to Manhattan, London, exciting places. They were all pursuing careers, or higher education. Bigger goals than clinging to good memories. They were out making new memories. And until this moment, until his skin touched hers, she didn’t realize how incredibly lonely she had become.

She had no one to blame but herself.

And this is why you’re leaving.

She took a deep breath, trying to do her best to keep her reaction to him concealed. But then she made a terrible mistake. She looked up, her eyes meeting his, and what she saw there astonished her.

His eyes weren’t blank. They weren’t flat. They were... They were molten. The heat there a perfect reflection of the fire that was rioting through her core.

“Come on,” he said, his voice rough.

She could do nothing but follow him. Which was terribly telling. Not just of this moment, but of the past fifteen years or so.

And once they were outside, her breath caught in her throat, all of the sensations building in her chest, making it impossible for her to do anything but stand there and tremble. He was touching her. And right before them was a beautifully appointed table set for two, a candle at the center.

It was like something that had been torn from her fantasies. Her girlish fantasies. When loving him had simply meant aspirations of sweet romance, holding hands and making sophisticated conversation.

Back before she had realized that there was much more to the connection between men and women than candlelight and hand-holding.

“Is something wrong?”

She looked at him, at his fierce expression. There was an intensity behind his eyes that she couldn’t decode. All she knew was that she had waited most of her life to have him look at her like this. And for some reason he was looking at her this way now. She was... She was powerless to resist. Utterly and completely held captive by that look in his eyes.

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