Christine Rimmer – A Husband She Couldn't Forget (страница 8)

Connor hesitated midway to the armchair. “I can make coffee or something...”

She shook her head. As he sat down in the armchair, she asked, “You live here alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a girlfriend, Conn? Someone special?”

“No.” And what did it matter to her if he was seeing someone exclusively? “I’ve got a question for you, now.”

“All right.”

“Should I expect your brothers to show up any minute, eager to beat the crap out of me?”

She smiled at that. “Don’t worry. My mom will handle my brothers.” She concentrated on petting Maurice, her bruised hand moving in long, slow strokes. “Actually, I came to ask you a favor.”

Whatever it was, he would do it. Maybe he could make up at least a little for all the ways he’d messed up back when. “Name it.”

And just like that, she dropped the bombshell. “I’m on an extended family leave of fourteen weeks to take care of my mother, or so my dad and brothers have repeatedly explained to me since the accident. I want to move in here. I want to live with you until I go back to New York.”

Live with him?

Had she really just said that?

And why was his heart beating so hard against the walls of his chest? “What about your mom?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just said it. You’re here to take care of Cat until after the baby’s born.”

“I am, yeah. And I will. I’ll spend my days with her, be with her any other time she needs me, too. But if you say it’s okay with you, I would, um, have a room here, if you have an extra one. So that I could spend time with you, too.”

He was really trying to get his mind around this. “You want to live with me?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Yeah. And I don’t get it. I really don’t.”

“I, um...” She brought a hand to her head at the place where the bandage had been. Her sleek black eyebrows were all scrunched up.

“Alyssa. Are you okay?”

She rubbed the spot. “I am, yes. It’s just that when I get tense my head hurts sometimes. A little.”

“Are you sure that you...?”

“I’m all right,” she insisted. “It’s just what it is. Stress reaction after trauma. I’m not going to go crazy on you or anything, I promise.”

A scary thought occurred to him. “Did you drive yourself here?”

“Ungh.” Now, she pressed both hands to the sides of her head, as though his question had almost caused her brain to explode. “You sound like my dad, you know that? And yes, I did drive myself. It’s all worked out with the rental company. The blue Mazda out front is mine for the rest of my visit here. I’m cleared to drive, so you don’t have to worry I’m going to run into another tree or anything.” Her eyes sparked with equal parts irritation and determination. “And as for my staying here with you, I would pay rent.”

“Aly, forget about rent. It’s not about that.”

“Listen, I’m not asking to share your room or anything. It’s a pretty big house and you said you live here alone. You have to have a spare room.”

“I just don’t get it. We’re divorced. It wasn’t friendly. And it’s not like we’ve kept in touch.”

“I know that. I understand the actual facts of the situation, I promise you. All I want is a chance to...” She made a small, frustrated sound as the words trailed off. He waited, giving her time to collect her thoughts. Finally, she offered a sad little shrug. “Look, I get it, I do. Having me underfoot for three months does not make you feel warm all over.”

She had no idea how wrong she was. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to say it. It’s right there on your face.”

“Alyssa. I want to be up front with you.”

“Yes. Please. Be up front with me—and say you’d love to have me stay in your house while I’m in town.”

He braced his knees wide and bent to lean his elbows on them. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, okay? And I just don’t see how your moving in with me could possibly be good for you. Our marriage is over.”

“I know that.” She said it through clenched teeth.

“But you told me yesterday that you didn’t really believe it.”

“Connor. I do believe it. Yeah, my head’s a little screwed around right now, but I still have all my faculties. I know we’re not married. I have no illusions that I’ve somehow fallen down a rabbit hole and when I finally emerge, we’ll be married again and everything between us will be like it was eight years ago. I’m not Alice. There is no Wonderland. I get that. I do.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

She touched her head again. “I do believe it. I just said I believe it. I know my own brain is lying to me.”

He sat back in the chair and spoke as softly as he could manage. “I’m upsetting you.”

She put up both hands. “No. Please. You’re not. You’re really not. I am allowing myself to become upset—and I’m stopping that. Now.”

“It just seems like a bad idea. How are you going to find your way to fully accepting the truth if the two of us start playing house?”

“Playing house is not what I asked for,” she replied in a carefully modulated tone. “I asked you to let me stay with you while I’m in town. As a renter or a houseguest, whichever works better for you.”

The thing was, he wanted it. Wanted her. Still. He always had. It was his problem. And he accepted it. No one compared to her. He doubted that was ever going to change.

But that didn’t mean he should take advantage of her now. She needed to stay away from him, not start living in his house.

Major fail so far, Aly was thinking.

Connor was in no way convinced. He seemed to view her request to move in here as yet more proof that her injured brain wasn’t operating on all thrusters.

So what? He could think what he wanted. She had a goal and she was pulling out all the stops to attain it.

The accident had not only scrambled her memories. It had stripped away seven years of denial and foolish pride, brought her face-to-face with herself, shown her what she really wanted most in the world, held a mirror up to all the ways she’d failed in courage and in love.

She said, “Forget about all the reasons you believe it would be wrong for me, bad for me to move in with you. It won’t be bad. It will bring...understanding between us, peace between us. It will give us a chance to work out our issues with each other, which we never did.”

He still wasn’t buying. “Face facts. It’s long past the time when we could have worked anything out.”

“I disagree.”

“Aly, it’s years too late.”

“For us to piece our marriage back together, maybe. But it’s never too late for us to learn to put all the bitterness and sadness behind us.”

He regarded her steadily, those steel-blue eyes probing. “Is that really what you want, what you think you’re going to accomplish? That we can make peace and then let each other go?”

It wasn’t. No way. In spite of everything, she wanted it all with him. She’d never gotten over him; she understood and accepted that now. She still felt so powerfully drawn to him. She had it bad—bad enough that her injured brain had rebelled on her and tried to rewrite the past.

Her heart had never really moved on from him and she was finally willing to put her pride aside and let her heart lead the way. She wanted to try again.

And she needed to tell him that.

Just not right this minute.

“What I want is to spend time with you.”

“It’s a bad idea.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Aly. You know it is.”

“And yet just a few minutes ago, and yesterday, too, you promised me that you would do whatever I needed you to do.”