Wife With Amnesia. Metsy Hingle

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СКАЧАТЬ the apartment she’d lived in during the past six months. For all intents and purposes, it looked as though she’d never been gone.

      And he felt as guilty as sin for the deception.

      His intentions weren’t all self-serving, he reasoned in an effort to lessen the foul taste that deceit left in his mouth. If Claire knew the truth, she never would have agreed to come home with him today. Memory or no memory, she was still the same maddeningly independent person she had always been. She would rather walk through fire than ever admit she actually needed anyone’s help. Matt sighed as he recalled what a problem that had proven to be for him in their marriage. Growing up in a close-knit and loving family, he’d always known he could turn to his family for help—be it financial, physical or emotional. After all, that’s what family was all about, sharing good times and bad. It had taken him a long time to understand that Claire’s refusal to share her burdens with him had been born out of her fear of being rejected and not out of distrust.

      Claire needed him now, he told himself. Someone had to take care of her, and the fact remained that she had no one else. Who better to fill the job than her husband? Because despite their separation, he was still her husband—at least for the time being. Taking care of her was his responsibility. But more than that, it was what he wanted to do, what he needed to do. He wanted to be there for Claire. To show her that he wasn’t like everyone else she’d cared about in her life—ready to abandon her and forget her. Most of all he wanted to prove to her that she could count on him, that they could make their marriage work because they belonged together.

      And when her memory comes back? What then, Gallagher? Suppose this little plan of yours blows up in your face and she walks out on you for good?

      There was the distinct possibility she would do just that—walk out on him—because she would be furious when she found out what he had done. No question about it. But it was a risk he had to take, Matt decided as he drove the car to a stop in front of their house. Because unless he could win Claire’s love and trust again, he didn’t have a prayer of winning her forgiveness and a second chance.

      “This is where I live?”

      Matt snapped his attention back to Claire. Wide-eyed, she stared at the house as though she were seeing it for the first time. Giving himself a swift mental kick, he reminded himself that in a sense she was seeing it for the first time. If she didn’t remember him, she probably didn’t remember the house, either. “This is where we live,” Matt told her, and felt the prick to his conscience at the half-truth.

      “It’s so beautiful.”

      “That’s what you said the first time I brought you here,” he told her. And it was true. Nestled between ancient oaks, the old Southern charmer of stuccoed brick had been painted to look like sandstone block, and the front porch had been done in a shade of soft white. The lush green lawn sprawled from the front door to the sidewalk. And the carefully tended gardens were bursting with the yellow day lilies and white roses Claire had insisted on planting when she’d moved in after their marriage. He’d fallen in love with the old house when he’d first seen it five years ago and had taken great care to restore it. But it had been Claire who had made the place a home. He decided against parking in the garage for now, so that Claire had the benefit of entering the house through the front entrance. Exiting the car, he came around to the passenger side and opened her door. “Trust me, it didn’t look nearly this good when I bought it.”

      “The gardens are lovely.”

      “Thanks to your green thumb,” he told her.

      “I did the gardens?”

      “Sure did. And you oversaw restoration of the courtyard.”

      “There’s a courtyard?”

      “Right over there,” he said, pointing to what looked at first like a second entryway.

      “Oh, I can’t wait to see it.”

      “Why don’t we get you settled first, and then I’ll give you the grand tour?”

      “I’d like that,” she said with the first real enthusiasm he’d seen her exhibit since he’d arrived at the hospital to take her home. Carefully swinging her legs around to the side, Claire started to get out of the car when Matt scooped her up into his arms. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her body stiff even as her arms circled his neck.

      “Making sure you stay off that ankle,” he informed her as he strode toward the house.

      “Don’t be ridiculous. I can walk.”

      “Humor me,” he teased as he climbed the stairs of the porch. “It makes me feel useful.”

      “But it’s foolish. I don’t need—”

      Matt cut off her protests with his mouth. The kiss had simply been a reflex, a means of preventing her from telling him what he already knew—that she didn’t need him. Claire had never needed him, not the way he had needed her.

      But he hadn’t counted on that kiss being so sweet or on lingering a moment longer to sip, to taste, to explore. He certainly hadn’t counted on Claire’s lips softening beneath his own and tempting him until all he could think about was losing himself in her, with her. Nor had he counted on lifting his head and seeing cinnamon-brown eyes filled with desire or on her lips parting invitingly until he couldn’t resist one more taste. And Matt positively hadn’t counted on having the door he was leaning against suddenly opening and nearly sending him sprawling on the floor with Claire in his arms.

      “Sweet heavens, Mr. Matthew,” Emma Dubois chided even as she provided him with a steadying hand. “What on earth is it you think you’re doing, mauling poor Miss Claire on the doorstep for all the world to see? And the poor dear just home from that wretched hospital?”

      “I wasn’t mauling her, Emma. I was kissing her,” Matt said to his housekeeper, not even bothering to point out that the so-called wretched hospital was one of the best medical facilities in the South.

      Emma huffed as she shut the door behind them. Folding her arms, she arched her brow imperiously. “And what would your sainted mother have to say if she was to hear you’d been putting on such a show for the neighbors, I wonder?”

      Matt sighed and wondered whether he should try explaining to Emma again that she worked for him now—not his mother. Of course since the half-Irish, half-French Emma was practically a fixture in his family, he would probably be wasting his breath. Still, he tried. “Since my mother is no saint—at least not judging by the earful she gave the staff at the hospital when they refused to let her see Claire in the emergency room—my guess is she’d say that she hoped I enjoyed myself.”

      “As if Mrs. G. would spout such nonsense,” Emma replied. She looked down her nose at him like he was still a boy—one who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

      It amazed him how she still managed to pull off that particular trick, since the woman was a full foot shorter than his own six feet. No doubt the fact that she’d changed his diapers and paddled his bottom on more than one occasion had something to do with it, Matt conceded. “Tell you what, Emma. Why don’t I kiss Claire again and you can call my mother and ask her?”

      “Matt, please.”

      “Behave yourself,” Emma told him. “You’re embarrassing the poor girl.”

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