“I’m not afraid of what you’ll remember. I’m afraid of what you’ll do when you do.”
“What will I do?” He didn’t answer. She took both his arms and dragged him around to face her. “Tony, tell me!”
“I don’t know.” He looked down at her with something like dread. Yet his touch was gentle when he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Leave me. I can’t explain it. I’ve never been good with things like this…and I’ve never felt like this before. Like if you left me, I…I’d cease to exist.” He shook his head. “You made me believe again, Rebecca.”
“Believe? In what?”
“In you. In life.”
“Tony,” she breathed. Her eyes stung with tears. “I can’t remember how we were before. But I can’t think I’d ever leave you. Not if it felt anything like this.”
“It didn’t. That’s the problem.” Suddenly his arms were around her, dragging her close. He pressed his mouth into her hair, his words muffled. “I didn’t always feel this way. I was kind of a jerk when we met.”
“I thought you were a jackass.”
His chuckle was ragged, pained. “That, too. You didn’t like me very much.”
“I still went out with you.” She rested her forehead to his chest. “Maybe you got better on the second date.”
“Yeah.” There was an odd note in his voice, and beneath her hands his body tensed again. “The second date. Of course.”
Rebecca went cold. He was lying to her again. She didn’t need her memory to know that. She could feel it in every line of him, in every halting word, in her own unease. He’d been lying to her from the start, and she was sick of it.
She only allowed herself a second to feel bad over his stricken expression before she thrust back from his embrace. Folding her arms over her chest, she glared at him.
“I’m not buying it,” she said. “Start talking. Now.”
Chapter Nine
Angel Rule #9: Don’t push your charge too hard, or you might get a negative response.
Tony stared at Rebecca. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say? He couldn’t even hope to make sense of his own jumbled emotions, let alone explain them to her. He couldn’t even tell her he loved her. Not when she’d remember later, and only look at him with pity for being stupid enough to love an angel.
Why couldn’t she love him? He just needed one chance. One chance to prove he could make her happy. Even with his dismal track record of failure, he knew this one chance was all he needed. But she knew him—or she would, when her memory returned. She knew his life had been a string of disasters. Why would she take a chance on him?
Why would anyone?
He reached out to take Rebecca’s hands, gently coaxing her arms into unfolding so he could lead her to sit on the sofa with him. His thumbs stroked over her knuckles, and he searched her eyes, only hoping she would understand. He couldn’t tell her the whole truth. Not yet.
But he had to do something, or he’d go insane.
“My first wife left me,” he began. “I—you know this already, but you don’t remember. I was bitter. I’d been living in denial, refusing to accept that I wasn’t really hurting that Jane left me. I was relieved, but I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be hurt and angry, and I’d convinced myself I was wronged and she’d been the unreasonable one.”
Confusion clouded Rebecca’s eyes. “But she left Miranda, too. How could anyone leave their own daughter?”
“When I drove her away?” Tony felt like his chest was cracking open. “I won’t ever forgive her for abandoning Miranda. But I didn’t make things easy on her. I was an ass**le, and I took her for granted. I stopped telling her I loved her. Most of the time, when I tried to talk to her, I ended up making demands. I—” He almost couldn’t get the words out, and he couldn’t look at Rebecca when he said them. “I’m not sure I ever really loved her.”
“Then why were you with her?”
“I had to do the right thing. She got pregnant, with Miranda.” He glanced down the hall. Even now, Miranda’s laughter twisted his heart into knots. He could hear her ball bouncing off the walls of her room. “I couldn’t leave Miranda without a father. And when Jane left, I was all Miranda had. I told myself I missed Jane, but I was just feeling sorry for myself. And I took it out on you, when we met.”
“Oh.”
He winced at the flat tone in her voice. “It was wrong. I know it. I’d just…given up on life. On myself.”
“Tony.” She squeezed his hands. Her own were so warm, so smooth and soft. “You can’t do that. When you give up on life, it’s like giving up on breathing. You’d just be a shell.”
It was so close to what she’d said before. You shouldn’t lose faith. It’s like losing air. You’ll die without it. Yet this time her eyes shone with conviction. With belief. That hollow, mechanical recitation was gone. What had changed her?
And what had changed Tony, that he shared her conviction?
He knew the answer. Rebecca had changed him. Rebecca had given him hope. Rebecca had given him faith, because he needed to have faith. Faith that she could love him. Faith that she would stay with him, if only he had a chance.
“You’re right,” he said. “I know that now. When I first met you, I didn’t.”
“That’s why you’ve been acting so strangely? Because you were afraid you’d drive me away, just like Jane?”
Just like Jane.
He hadn’t made that connection, not really. Even admitting that he’d thrust Jane away, he hadn’t thought that he was so terrified of doing exactly the same thing to Rebecca. Terrified she’d be another Jane.
His lips felt wooden. He forced them to move. “Yes.”
Rebecca pulled her hand free from his so she could cup his cheek. With a soft touch, she guided him to meet her smiling eyes. “I’m not Jane,” she said. “And you aren’t the same Tony who hurt her.”
“I hope not. I hope I’m better. I want to be better for you, Rebecca. You changed me.”
Her answer came not in words, but in the soft touch of her lips. She pressed her warm, supple body against him, and brushed her lips over his. The merest taste of her was enough to set him alight, burning. He groaned in despair and jerked back.