Her Man To Remember

“We miss you,” Barbara Bradshaw continued. “You need us.”

“I need Thunder Key,” Roman said plainly. “This is where I want to be, where I need to be right now.”

“What good can come of wallowing in that girl’s death?” his mother demanded, her voice breaking.

“‘That girl’ was my wife, Mother. Leah. She had a name.” Is my wife, he corrected to himself. Has a name.

He hadn’t told his mother about seeing Leah. Even after eighteen months of thinking Leah was dead, his family hadn’t softened their attitude toward her. They wouldn’t gladly accept her back, and his gut instincts told him they would attempt to convince him that her memory loss was some kind of fraud. Hadn’t they tried, over and over, to find a way to tear him and Leah apart? They never had.

He’d destroyed their marriage all by himself.

After she’d been declared dead, he’d gone back to work. His work had always been so important to him. His grandfather had been the founder of Bradshaw Securities, a professional trading firm. It was a family business—his father, his uncles, his cousins, his sister. It had always been assumed that Roman would take his father’s place as the CEO and chairman of the board someday. But now it was all so empty. Stocks, bonds, trading options. Who cared?

His apartment with a view of Central Park was empty, too. No Leah, lacing up her running shoes, daring him to keep up with her.

No Leah, cooking another awful meal and sneaking in takeout at the last minute.

No Leah, dancing in her underwear in front of the couch until he turned off his laptop and paid attention to her instead.

At least, that was how things had started out. Gradually she’d realized he wasn’t going to change, and that the very thing that had drawn them together—their utter dissimilarity—could also pull them apart. He didn’t know how it had happened. It was as if he’d looked up one day from his eighty-hour workweek and he’d lost her, and he didn’t know how to get her back.

Then there was no getting her back because she was dead.

He’d spent the first three months afterward pretending nothing had happened. Then he spent another year pretending he could deal with it.

The last three months, he’d given up the farce. He’d stopped going in to the office. His family had gone into shock. His father had raised Roman to take over the firm from the time he was born. Roman’s first memory was of his father bringing him to Wall Street to hear the opening bell rung when he was four years old. He earned a business degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard.

He’d walked away from a multimillion-dollar legacy, and he still wasn’t sure why. He’d closed up his Central Park apartment. He’d put dustcovers on the furniture, protective bags over his business suits. He’d cleared every commitment from his always-full date-book.

It had taken three months for him to undo the life in New York he’d thought was more important to him than anything, even his wife.

His family thought they were watching their golden boy lose it.

“Mother, I have to go,” he said, bringing his thoughts back to the present.

“But when will you be back in New York?”

“I don’t know when I’m coming back. In fact, I’m thinking about making an investment here, a bar called the Shark and Fin. So don’t expect me back right away and don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m doing business.” If anything would convince his family he was fine, it was the idea that he was making an investment—though they probably wouldn’t be thrilled it was in Thunder Key. He said goodbye and hung up before his mother could get in another word.

He stared out the open garden doors of the bungalow. Beyond lay a perfect, picture-postcard world. White sands, blue ocean, clear sky. He closed his eyes, let the palm fronds rustling in the ocean breeze take him away….

Leah danced out the garden doors, silhouetted against the barely dawn blue-gold world. “Come on, you’re too slow!”

He told her to wait. He was shaving. She tickled him. He laughed, but kept shaving. “I can’t wait. I hope you can catch me—before someone else does!” She disappeared.

Roman dropped his razor, ran out of the bungalow wearing nothing but a towel. Leah could do that to him, make him do crazy things that didn’t come naturally to his conservative, subdued, Bradshaw personality. He raced across the empty, secluded beach, holding on to the towel and his dignity just barely, and caught up with her in the water—or maybe she caught him because somehow she was in his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist.

They fell into the shallow sea together, her sparkling green eyes his only contact with the world, and then somehow his towel disappeared and her bikini bottoms slipped away…and she had him doing things in the dawn-misted surf that were very un-Bradshaw-like indeed—

Roman opened his eyes, gasped. How could it still hurt so much? How could he still miss her so deeply? How could he still feel her in his arms?

Unable to keep his mind off her, he went straight to the Shark and Fin. He was early, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He walked, taking the boardwalk trail through a mangrove-lined lagoon that stood between the resort hotel and the town. He’d rented a car after flying in to Key West airport, but since he’d arrived on Thunder Key, he hadn’t touched it.

As he came out of the grove and into the town, he turned down the narrow, overgrown road that led to the Shark and Fin. Beyond the beachside bar and grill, he saw dolphins jumping in the brilliant blue water.

Dolphins mean good luck, Leah had told him when they’d seen dozens of them dancing up out of the waves during a seaplane tour of the Keys.

He hoped she was right. He could use some luck.

The Shark and Fin was just opening for the day. The front door was open to the fresh air and rapidly warming morning. Ceiling fans moved the lazy air as Leah sat at a scarred oak table by a large window, her fingers racing over a sketch pad. Her eyes were intensely focused on her creation.

Roman stopped in the doorway, just taking her in with his eyes, his heart. How many times had he caught her in the exact same pose, working on one of her designs in their apartment in the city? Memories washed over him and he could barely breathe for a moment. He knew he couldn’t speak yet.

She’d showered since her run—her hair was still damp on the ends. Leah had always been too impatient to get on with her day to blow-dry her hair. Her makeup was minimal—also as usual—just enough to highlight her glossy lips, outline her remarkable eyes, trace her high cheekbones. She wore a hot-pink sleeveless tank top and capri bottoms in white. She swung one sandaled foot while she worked, and he noticed that her toes were painted with little hot-pink smiley-faces.

She was oblivious to him, lost in her work.

But he wasn’t oblivious to her. His pulse had shot into overdrive as soon as he’d laid eyes on her, and the past swamped him again.

You remind me of someone. He’d been hard-pressed not to blurt out everything when she’d said those words to him. I don’t know you, do I? What was he supposed to say, to do? His heart screamed for him to pull her into his arms and tell her she belonged to him, they were husband and wife, she was his Leah, dammit.

No. You don’t know me. His words had been true—she didn’t know him. Not yet.

But she would, in time. Take it slow, that’s what he kept telling himself. Slow, slow, slow.

It was killing him. But he was scared, so scared, of losing her all over again. What if she remembered him—and didn’t want him? It was she who’d had divorce papers drawn up—not him. Had it been some kind of last-ditch attempt to shake him into changing, into noticing her, into putting her first?

“Hi,” he said quietly, coming forward into the bar now, finally recovering his voice.

Startled, she looked up at him. As their eyes met, it was as if he heard the surf roar straight into the bar and he felt himself drowning all over again.

“Oh, hi,” she said, scraping her chair back and standing to greet him. She dropped the sketch pad and pencil to hold out her hand, very businesslike, but he didn’t miss the nervous tuck she gave her hair, pushing it back behind her ear.

She gave him her all-too-familiar crooked smile, and that alone nearly made him lose it.

Then she surprised him by blushing as their hands met. She had a shy side, this new Leah. For all that was the same, there were so many differences, and he wanted to know all of them. He had to know everything about her new life.

“Thank you for meeting with me this morning,” he said smoothly, letting go of her hand despite every shouting fiber of his being that wanted him to do the opposite, to pull her all the way into his arms, hold her and never let go. But rushing Leah was probably the worst thing he could do if he didn’t want to lose her again.

He had to file his red-hot longing for her in the same place where he had kept the grief and guilt of losing her for the past eighteen months.

“I’ve been in touch with Morrie,” she said. “He suggested I give you a tour of the bar, then if you’re still interested, I’ll put through a call to him and let you two hash out the details.”

“Great,” Roman said agreeably. He’d already decided to buy the bar. He didn’t need to know the details. Hell, he’d buy the whole island if he had to.

The tour didn’t take long. The bar itself was wide-open, airy, bright with the morning light pouring in. There was the requisite back room with a pool table, and the small kitchen where the cook whipped up conch chowder and fried catch-of-the-day, along with a few other simple short-order items.

“Can I see upstairs?” he asked.