A Marriage To Remember

By Cathryn Clare

Second chance at marriage

THE WOMAN HE'D MARRIED

Had he truly forgotten his wife? Ex–cop Nick Ryder couldn't believe that any man could have forgotten Jayne Robards. She was a vision of loveliness in his hospital room and a quick thinker when a man came after them with a gun.

On the run and able to depend only on each other, Jayne and Nick had to put aside their personal problems and discover the truth. The truth about the secrets that had separated them a year ago and the truth about the danger shadowing them now.

But once Nick recovered his memory, could they make their marriage work? No matter what happened, Nick vowed he would live long enough to find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460874462

Book preview

Prologue

There was a year’s worth of stale air clinging to Nick Ryder’s body. He leaned back in the passenger seat of the car and tried to exhale some of it. How long would it take, he wondered, before he was free of that jailhouse reek of cheap disinfectant and cigarette smoke and too many frightened men?

Bet it feels good to be out.

Ryder closed his eyes. It was the third thing the kid had said to him. And the third dumb thing, too.

He was grateful for the ride. But that didn’t mean he felt like making inane small talk, especially with somebody so obviously new to the business that he hadn’t figured out yet which end was up.

Ryder needed fresh air.

He needed to sleep for a week.

He needed a pair of gentle hands on his skin, and a soft, husky voice at his ear telling him everything was all right now.

He grunted and sat up a little straighter in the seat.

At the moment, he was going to have to settle for fresh air. And maybe a blast from the open car window would chase away his futile dreams about that husky voice, too, along with the lingering staleness caught in the folds of his clothing. The flat Florida swamplands didn’t offer much in the way of scenery, but at least the sky was clear and the wind was brisk.

If he hadn’t been leaning over to open the window, he might not have seen them in the side mirror.

And once he had seen them, all thoughts of that throaty voice and the luminous violet eyes that went with it vanished.

How long has that white minivan been back there? he asked abruptly.

The young driver glanced in the rearview mirror. I don’t know, he admitted. Why?

Ryder stifled a groan. Where the hell had they dug this kid up, anyway? Didn’t he know anything?

How about the blue sedan? he demanded.

The driver shrugged. A while, I think, he said. But he’s just—

I know what he’s doing.

The blue sedan was passing the white van and then settling in ahead of it. Trading places, in effect.

It was a standard technique for two vehicles tailing a third.

Try speeding up, Ryder said. A lot.

Why don’t we—

Just do it, junior, all right? Ryder slammed his open palm against the dashboard. He’d never felt less like arguing. Every bone in his body was telling him there was something not right about those two vehicles behind them.

They zipped ahead for a mile or two without losing the pair. When they’d slowed to well under the speed limit and the white van and blue car were still with them, Ryder knew his instincts had been right.

You didn’t ask for reinforcements, I’m assuming, he said.

The kid was finally starting to look worried. As he shook his close-cropped head, Ryder could see his fingers closing tighter around the steering wheel.

Well, then, I’d say we’ve picked us up some unfriendlies.

Damn it, this wasn’t supposed to be happening. The tough part was supposed to be over by now.

Around him, the soft South Florida twilight was just beginning to settle into night. The sky was a pastel glow of orange and blue. The highway was straight and smooth, heading due south toward Miami. For the first time in a year Ryder wasn’t hemmed in by concrete walls and iron bars.

He was a free man. He’d planned to savor the feeling, slowly, the way he’d savored the fine Cuban cigars Jimmy Trujillo had managed to sneak into the prison for his occasional late-night parties.

And instead—

He leaned over to look in the side mirror again. The two vehicles were still there, too far away for him to see the drivers’ faces, too close to be a coincidence.

The wind coming in the open window buffeted him, swirling his hair around his face. He’d let it grow in prison because it suited the impression he’d been trying to make.

Now, though, the too-long dark blond strands were starting to bug him. A haircut was one of the first things on his list for when he got back to the real world.

If he made it.

There was a bridge up ahead. Ryder could see the slow swirl of water in the waning light, snaking lazily down from Lake Okeechobee to the ocean in one of the canals that intersected this part of Florida. His mind noticed the landscape automatically, storing away the information as he started trying to come up with a stunt that might shake off their pursuers.

He didn’t register the third car until it was too late.

It came screaming over the bridge with no warning, cutting across two lanes of traffic with reckless speed. The young driver shouted something panicky and unintelligible, and cranked the wheel around hard.

It wouldn’t do any good, Ryder thought grimly.

With a sick certainty, he knew exactly what the two vehicles behind them would be doing.

He heard horns blare as they went to work. The white van screeched alongside, carving a huge gash in the rear quarter panel. Ryder saw the kid’s foot jump to the brakes.

It was the wrong move, but there wasn’t time to say so. If Ryder had been driving, he’d have had the nerve to keep his foot on the gas, shooting past the head-on challenge of the car that had been waiting for them on the far side of the bridge.

But the kid didn’t know how he’d been set up. He was too young, too green. He was reacting blindly, trying to get out of harm’s way without realizing that the only way out of it was straight through.

So the only thing Ryder could do was curse and hold on. It didn’t help to know this was his own damn fault. If he’d been watching his back, instead of reveling in his freedom and imagining the velvety sound of Jayne’s voice and the soft magic of her hands on his body—

The thought of the woman he loved was still with him as the car crashed over the side of the bridge and plummeted toward the lazy silver surface of the canal.

He had just enough awareness left to unsnap his seat belt as they hit.

And to realize that even if he did manage to survive the next couple of minutes, his problems were only just beginning.

Chapter 1

It was the middle of the night.

And the phone was ringing.

Jayne Robards shook her head, pushing it farther into her pillow. Even half-asleep, she knew who it would be. And she didn’t want to answer it.

No more last-minute phone calls. She’d said it just last week, standing with her hands on her hips in the middle of the always-chaotic office of the Miami Bulletin. No more sudden brainstorms. I’m getting too old for this stuff.

And Chris Jimenez, the paper’s staff editor, had nodded solemnly and assured her he understood.

She might have known he hadn’t meant it.

The phone was still ringing. Jayne groaned and lifted her head out of the pillow. It took a few seconds for her sleepy eyes to focus on the bedside clock.

When they finally did, it wasn’t good news.

Six a.m.

That son of a gun was calling her at 6:00 a.m.

I know what this is about. Her voice was groggy and annoyed as she struggled to wake up. I already told Arnie I didn’t want to cover the tall ships sailing into the harbor. I don’t care how good a picture it’ll make. I don’t even care that he is the boss. I’ve got to get some sleep, damn it. I’ve got a life apart from that newspaper, in case everybody’s forgotten.

It was the defensive edge in her words that dragged her all the way into wakefulness.

Did she have a life apart from her job these days?

Recently, she’d been starting to wonder.

Which was why she was absolutely, positively, no longer going to let Chris Jimenez railroad her into taking on extra assignments with no advance warning. And if Chris hadn’t grasped that yet, she would have to find language that would make it clear, that was all.

She rolled over, reaching for the phone. And realized she’d done it again.

She’d gone to sleep last night with the two extra pillows stacked neatly and impersonally on the other side of the queen-size bed. Now the empty side was wrinkled, as though she’d migrated over there in her sleep.

And the two spare pillows had migrated, too. Instead of being lined up against the headboard, they were in the middle of the bed.

Pretty much exactly where Ryder had once slept.

The phone stopped ringing. The sudden silence was startling. It felt just like the hollow ache that was forming inside her chest as she looked down at the rumpled pillows.

When was this going to stop?

It’s been a year, for pity’s sake, she said out loud.

Immediately she wished she hadn’t spoken. Her voice sounded small and forlorn in the little room. And she couldn’t ignore the quiver in it, the telltale sign that she wasn’t nearly as strong and sure of herself as she liked to pretend. Even after a whole year there were parts of her that couldn’t quite believe Ryder was never coming back.

Believe it, Jaynie.

She kept the words silent this time, pushing past the little spurt of pain she felt at the thought of the nickname nobody but Ryder had ever used.

It’s definitely over.

She made herself think of the way Ryder had buried himself in his work for the last few years of their marriage. He’d used it as a reason to avoid anything and everything that was going wrong between them.

She reminded herself of his glib words on the day of their wedding. You’re the family I’ve been looking for my whole life, he’d said. He’d talked movingly of children, of sharing their love with sons and daughters of their own.

And then he’d seemed to forget all about it.

He’d gone out of her life a stony-faced stranger, hands manacled behind his back, his world in tatters, his handsome face hiding secrets he’d refused to share with her. How could their marriage not be over, after that?

Then why couldn’t she get through a single night without the pretense—the useless, ridiculous pretense—that he was still here with her?

She was going to get rid of those two extra pillows, and convince herself, one way or another, that she and Nick Ryder were history in all but cold legal fact. He was due to get out of jail any day now, and once he did—

The phone started to ring again. Lost in her thoughts, Jayne jumped at the sudden sound.

All right, Jimenez, she muttered as she reached for the receiver a second time. You’re really asking for it.

But it wasn’t the staff editor.

It was a voice she didn’t recognize, apologizing for waking her up, and asking if she was Jayne Robards. We thought you’d like to know as soon as possible, the woman said, I’m afraid your husband is in the hospital.

Jayne blinked. The hospital? she repeated. At the prison, you mean?

Prison? They sounded like two parrots, Jayne thought, echoing each other’s words. No, he’s at Dade County General. He’s been in a car accident. Most of his injuries are minor, but—well, he‘seems to have lost his memory.

The light in the small bedroom was always dim, filtered through the live oak tree in the backyard. Shortly after they’d bought the house, Ryder had carried her in here on a lazy Saturday afternoon. He’d murmured, as he’d undressed her, that the pearly light made her skin look like silk.

For a long time after that, Jayne had thought of this softly filtered light as the light of dreams, of passion.

And then of impossible fantasy.

And now, as she struggled to collect her thoughts, it seemed to her that there was something hallucinatory about the dim predawn glimmer.

It was an illusion, like her marriage had been. A mockery, a ghostly mirage.

The woman seemed to take her long silence for shock. After a few seconds, she went on, We found your address in his wallet, of course.

Of course. Ryder had no other home, not yet. His old address—their address—would still be on his identification. And she was still listed as his next of kin.

We wanted to wait until he was fully conscious before we called you. But now that he is, and now that it’s clear he has no recollection of what happened to him—

"What did happen to him?"

The police aren’t sure yet. It looks as though your husband was a passenger in a car that went into a canal just north of the city.

The prison was north of the city. Had Ryder been on his way back to Miami? Was he legally free? What was going on?

There are some witnesses who think maybe a car was trying to pass too close and forced your husband’s vehicle off the road, the woman explained. The driver is—well, they’re still trying to recover the body. They went off a bridge, but apparently they hit something on the way down. The whole driver’s side was crumpled. Your husband was lucky.

Jayne started to shake. Her eyes moved inescapably to the wrinkled surfaces of the pillowcases she’d had her arms wrapped around just before she’d been wakened by the phone. If Ryder hadn’t been lucky—if the other side of the car had been crumpled—

It was too awful to imagine. She thought about Ryder’s taut, tanned skin, the lean, strong body she’d always loved.

He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, the woman continued. That was probably what saved him. He was jolted around a bit—that’s how he got the bump on his head, apparently. But a couple of’ people saw the car go over the edge and were able to pull him out in time.

Ryder always wore his seat belt.

He’d seen too many grisly accidents in his fifteen years as a cop to get into a car without buckling up. The seat belt was one question too many.

Jayne frowned and tucked the receiver under her chin as she shimmied over to the edge of the bed and got to her feet. There was something nightmarish about Nick Ryder resurfacing in her life like this, she thought. But nightmarish or not, she needed to know what was going on, and why.

Tell me which ward he’s in, she said as she pulled open the top drawer of her bureau, and I’ll be there in a half hour.

The pattern of the cars in the hospital parking lot should have been calming.

It wasn’t.

They’d told him to stay in bed, but he couldn’t. Something about the smell of the place was driving him crazy. It was sharp and institutional and almost—almost—familiar. With every breath, his body was yelling at him to get on his feet and get the hell out of here.

He’d tried roaming the hallway, but a nurse with a no-nonsense voice and shoulders like a first-round NFL draft pick had ordered him back into his room.

We’ve called your wife, she told him. She’ll be here in a little while.

None of it made any sense.

He tried to connect with the idea that he had a wife.

He couldn’t do it.

He tried staring at the driver’s license that had been in his wallet. Nicholas James Ryder, it said, right next to a picture that was anything but flattering, but was obviously of himself. The dark blond hair, high cheekbones and wary expression were the same ones he’d seen in the mirror when he’d stumbled into the bathroom after waking up.

His hair was longer now than when the picture had been taken. In fact, he’d asked one of the nurses for a rubber band to pull it back. He was getting tired of shaking it out of his eyes.

And the bandaged welt on his forehead was new—brand-new, the nurse had said. That’s where your memory went, she’d told him. Stop agitating yourself, now, and with luck things’ll gradually start to come back to you again.

It made sense, as far as it went.

But he still couldn’t get any of these random facts to connect with any kind of a bigger picture.

Beyond knowing his name and the reason he was here, everything was a blank. A gigantic, frustrating, ominous blank.

He slammed a hand against the wall next to him, and glared out at the parking lot.

For the past half hour he’d been trying to ignore the dull thudding in his head, the ache in his midsection and the feeling of panic deep down in his gut by concentrating intently on the cars lined up outside his window. His room was on the fourth floor of the hospital complex, giving him a clear view of the parking area. It was almost 7:00 a.m., and the empty spaces were starting to fill up. He watched as a white pickup truck with red and maroon pinstriping pulled into a spot at the end of the row closest to the building.

Damn it, why could he recognize a pickup truck when he saw one, and a pinstripe, when his own face seemed strange to him? Why could he remember how to tell time, when he had no recollection of anything that had happened to him yesterday?

He growled and turned away from the window.

And realized he wasn’t alone.

The woman in the doorway wasn’t a nurse. She wasn’t wearing the right clothes, for one thing. Her flowered skirt and short-sleeved lavender sweater were nothing like the stark white uniforms he’d been seeing since he’d first opened his eyes sometime in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t just her outfit that was wrong, though. It was something in the way she held herself. She looked half-hesitant, half-defiant, as though she’d steeled herself to step into the doorway, and was now fighting the urge to turn and walk away again. He could see the silent struggle in the set of her shoulders and the stubborn tilt of her fine boned chin.

Whoever she was, she was beautiful.

Her dark brown hair was cut short. It made her eyes seem enormous. They were dark violet, luminous, seeming to shine with a light of their own.

He thought he could see a pale sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. And a taut determination in the way she’d curled her fingers around the strap of the big purse that hung from her shoulder.

Well. Her first word was abrupt, almost angry. It really is you.

Her voice sounded as though it had been made to murmur quiet secrets in a man’s ear. Its throaty undertones undid the bluntness of her opening line.

Is it? Politeness was beyond him at this point. At least this makes sense to one of us.

I didn’t say it made sense. I just thought—I wondered whether there’d been some mistake. I wasn’t sure you were even supposed to be out.

She’d been standing her ground in the doorway, assessing him with those amazing violet eyes. As she finished speaking, though, she finally stepped into the room.

Like her voice, her walk aimed for briskness and ended up being disconcertingly sexy. Ryder found his eyes drawn to the gentle sashay of her hips as she crossed the linoleum floor and dropped her large shoulder bag on the foot of his bed.

Was this his wife?

Was it possible that even the most enormous bump on the head could have chased away the memory of what it must feel like to hold a woman like this close against him? To kiss the soft lips that were pursed so seductively as she appraised him? To run his hands over skin that looked as soft as swansdown?

He shook his head.

Damn it, he was wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital-issue johnny. And if he let his thoughts run on in this direction, his body was going to start reacting in ways that a single layer of too-often-laundered fabric wouldn’t be able to cover up.

He crossed his arms over his chest and forced his attention back to her last phrase.

I wasn’t sure you were even supposed to be out.

Now, what the hell did that mean?

Out of where? he asked her. What are you talking about?

Her eyes narrowed slightly. They really were the most incredible eyes, he thought, as deep and brilliant as amethysts, and fringed by a set of impossibly long dark