Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

“With the Electric Dance Company,” he said, before he had time to think.

“The Electric Dance Theater.” She sat up against the pillows, her face alight with joy. “Classical ballet mixed with modern dance. You know. Kind of like the Alvin Ailey…” The rush of words came to an abrupt halt. “You already knew that about me,” she said, looking at him.

A muscle knotted in his jaw.

“No.”

“Yes. You did.” Her eyes glittered with accusation. “You just said so. You said the name of the company.”

Shit.

Matteo sat up, pushed back the blankets, pulled up his jeans, and got out of the bed.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “We need to get started.”

“Look at me!”

“I said, it’s getting…”

She shot from the bed and scrambled after him, yanking her shirt down and her pants up.

“You know things about me.” He headed for the bathroom door. She set herself between him and it. “What else do you know?”

“I never said I didn’t know things about you.” His hands closed on her shoulders; he lifted her as easily as if she were a doll and set her aside. “I’m going to get washed.”

“You are not going to get washed! You are going tell me everything!” She slipped around him, stood in front of him again. “Who I am. Where I live. Why I’m running.” Her chin lifted. “Why you’re running with me, or do you expect me to believe that’s what an ‘acquaintance’ would do for anybody?”

He stared at her. She was furious. In his heart, he more than understood that fury. He also understood that there was nothing he could do to assuage it.

“I can’t tell you anything more.”

“More? More?” She barked out a laugh. “You haven’t told me anything!”

“And you know the reason.”

“The doctor’s instructions. Those damn instructions.” She said nothing for what seemed a very long time. Then she cleared her throat.

“Will you answer one question?”

He shrugged. “If I can.”

“Is this… Was this the first time we…we had sex?”

He considered batting the question aside by giving her a flip answer. No, he’d say. I’ve had sex before. Or, Now, Ariel, a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. But the expression on her face, a heart-breaking blend of despair and confusion and desperation, tore at his heart.

“Yes,” he said softly. “It’s the very first time…and I’ve never known anything like it.”

Her face bloomed with color. She stared at him. Was she going to slug him? Or maybe throw herself into his arms?

In the end, she did neither.

Instead, her eyes filled with tears. She took a few quick steps back and sank down on the edge of the bed.

“I hate this,” she said brokenly. “Not knowing. Not understanding. I hate it!”

“Oh, sweetheart.” He moved quickly to her, knelt before her and took her hands in his. “I wish I could say some magic words and restore your memory.”

She nodded.

“I’m beginning to wonder… What if I never remember?”

He’d thought of that, too, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“You will. I’m sure you will.”

“See?” She looked at him. “You’re willing to offer some answers. Just not the ones I need.”

“Ariel. You must be patient.”

She snatched her hands from his and stood up.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to try and look into the past and see nothing?”

Matteo rose to his feet. “It must be hell.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what it is. And if you understand that, why do you act as if I’m trying to pry the secrets of the universe from you when I ask, when I beg you to tell me things about myself?”

“Honey, we keep having this conversation. The doctor said—”

“The doctor said! I know what he said, but he’s not the one with a blank page for a brain. I feel like—like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, and isn’t that amazing,” she said, on a choked parody of a laugh, “that I can remember a—a dumb movie but not—but not—”

Matteo reached for her. She jerked back.

“How about one more question. One more answer. Can you manage that?”

“Ask your question.”

She clamped her teeth down on her bottom lip as she stared up at him. He felt like the villain in a bad movie.

“Why?”

Matteo blinked. “Why, what?”

“Why did you come for me? Why did you believe me when I said I didn’t feel safe, that I felt as if somebody was after me?”

Great. She’d asked the one question he absolutely didn’t want to answer.

“That’s two questions,” he said, stalling for time.

“It’s basically one,” she said, chin lifted, eyes locked on his. “Because that’s why you came for me. You knew something might—might happen to me, and you had to protect me.”

“Yes.”

“Yes? That’s it? That’s your answer?”

He turned toward the bathroom. “That’s my answer.”

“Dammit!” Her voice trembled. “At the very least, I have the right to know who’s after me, and why.”

For what felt like the thousandth time, he heard Stafford’s warning in his head. She had to regain her memory on her own. Okay. Maybe that was reasonable, but what became of reason when lives were at risk?

He swung around. Ariel was breathing hard, her hair a wild tangle of golden silk around her beautiful, battered face.

Her battered face.

She’d almost been killed.

He reached for her and gathered her against him. He held her for long minutes, working through what he’d say, how much she could handle, because she was right.

She was entitled to the truth. Some of it, anyway.

He rocked her gently in his arms, whispering soft words of reassurance, stroked his hand up and down her spine. Then he framed her face with his hands and drew back so he could look into her eyes.

“There’s a man,” he said, striving to sound calm. “He wants you out of his life.”

She looked at him in bewilderment.

“What do you mean, out of his life? How am I in his life?”

No way would he tell her the truth. How could he, when the truth, that she was married to a man who was inconceivably evil, was unthinkable?

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. How a woman like this could have married Anthony Pastore was a mystery.

“You don’t know?”

“Believe me, I’d like to know the answer myself. You’re not his type—and he’s certainly not yours.”

“But I’m in his life.”

“Yes.”

She nodded, caught her bottom lip between her teeth and took a couple of delicate nibbles. Distraught as he was, the sight made his belly knot.

“And why does he—does he want me out of his life?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“You know him.”

A statement, not a question. And he couldn’t deny it.

“Yes. I know him.”

“Because…?”

“I knew him, growing up in Sicily. And he’s a—a former client.”

Still more truths. Pastore was a former client since… Monday?

Ariel stepped back. He let her do it even though he ached to hold her. Instinct, which had become his guiding force, warned him she needed space.

He folded his arms, narrowed his eyes and watched her march from one end of the cabin to the other.

He knew she was working over the details, the admittedly skimpy details, of what he’d told her. She couldn’t be satisfied with them. In her place, he sure as hell wouldn’t be, but he was counting on her to accept that he had, at least, told her something.

After a couple of minutes, she turned and looked at him.

“He wants me o

ut of his life.”

“Yes.”“What you mean is, he wants me—he wants me dead.”

The words were heart-stoppingly blunt. She deserved an equally blunt response.

“I think so, yes.”

“And you with me. Because you’re helping me.”

She was calm. Too calm. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her anything.