Her Man To Remember. Suzanne Mcminn
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you lost?” he’d asked her.
“No. I think I’m found.” She was where she’d meant to go. That was all she knew.
Then he’d asked her if she needed a job and a place to live. He didn’t ask any more questions after that. He didn’t care where she came from. At a trim and vigorous sixty, the slightly balding bar owner didn’t like to talk about his own past, but she knew he’d been in prison. He was reformed, he told her. He’d started life over in Thunder Key.
She knew he must have still had connections. He’d offered to help her dig into her past after she confided in him that she’d lost her memory. And one day he’d shown up with an array of identification for Leah Wells.
“In case you ever need it,” he’d told her.
She hadn’t liked taking the false ID, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. He’d done so much for her. So she had put the documents away in a drawer.
Recently he’d reconciled with the family from which he’d been long estranged. Leah missed him, and she wondered what the future held for her.
For eighteen months she’d been happy here. Now Morrie was selling the bar, and a stranger was watching her.
And the panic attacks were back.
She stopped running when she came to the public beach and the parking lot outside the community center. From there she walked up Thunder Key’s main street, letting her breathing slow as she headed for the coffeehouse.
The town was quiet in the early mornings. In the distance she could see a car or two on the Overseas Highway. Most drivers kept right on going, heading for the hot spots of the other islands where they could find more exciting attractions and hipper nightlife.
Thunder Key suited Leah just fine. Just as she’d known it would.
She had her breathing and her nerves under control by the time she reached the counter inside the just-opened-for-the-day coffeehouse.
“Hi, Viv,” she said. “Got my café con leche ready?”
“Of course,” Vivien Ramon said, her rough smoker’s voice softened by her smile and the youthful sparkle in her eyes that belied the silver threading through her swing of rich black hair. Her husband was a sail maker, and Viv ran La Greca, the island’s only coffeehouse. If Morrie was like a father to Leah, then Viv was like a mother.
Her real parents were dead. She just knew that, without question.
Like Morrie, Viv didn’t ask too many questions. But Leah knew Viv worried about her.
Viv had wanted her to see a doctor. Like Morrie, she’d offered to help Leah find out about her past. So far, Leah had held back. She was afraid—of what, she didn’t know. But she knew her past held pain, and that was enough to stop her from seeking answers. She wasn’t ready, she’d told them both.
Maybe she’d never be ready.
“Here you go, honey,” Viv said, handing the sweet, hot espresso across the counter. Then she was looking beyond Leah.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
Leah nearly leaped out of her skin, but she managed to stay very still. Then, slowly, very slowly, she forced herself to turn.
“Good morning,” he said, and his smile suggested he didn’t have a care in the world.
He must have come in behind her, but she hadn’t seen him outside. How had she missed him? How had she missed, for even a second, those intense, dangerous blue eyes of his? He was so devastatingly present, so vivid, just as he had been in the bar the night before.
She wanted to hate him. The reaction was strong, visceral. She couldn’t explain it. She wanted to say something horrible and rude. She wanted to shout at him. Go away!
But it was hard to think—much less speak—with her throat blocked by her heart.
“Fancy meeting you here. Roman. Roman Bradshaw. From the bar,” he clarified unnecessarily.
Leah finally found her tongue. “Yes, of course. Roman.” His name came across her lips smoothly, and she felt very strange, shivery, as she said it. She picked up her coffee and avoided meeting Viv’s eyes, though she didn’t miss the curious look on her friend’s face.
When Viv wasn’t offering to set her up with a physician, she was offering to set her up with a date.
But Leah wasn’t ready for that, either. She had rebuffed Viv’s every well-intentioned attempt. And she’d had no regrets.
Her heart had felt so dead all this time.
But right now, her heart was hammering like mad.
“I need to talk to you,” the man named Roman said. Then, “Thank you,” to Viv, taking the second cup she handed across the counter.
“I don’t see what we have to talk—” Leah began, then stopped short.
As she watched him, he paid for his and hers, she realized suddenly.
“No,” she said sharply, pulling herself together. “I don’t want you to—”
“It’s no problem,” he said. “Forget it.”
Leah pulled out the exact change she carried with her in the pocket of her windbreaker every morning and placed it on the counter.
She barged past him toward the door.
A woman came through the door, a small black poodle on a leash at her side. Leah, limbs trembling for no good reason, strode blindly, wanting—needing—to get out of the suddenly too-small coffeehouse. And tripped right over the dog.
The poodle yelped, Leah went down and coffee flew everywhere. She swore and apologized, and pretended the coffee hadn’t burned the hell out of her fingers.
“Are you all right?” Roman was instantly at her side.
Viv handed him towels. She already had a mop. The woman with the poodle was wiping her sleeve where some coffee had splattered her. The poodle yipped and danced, its perfectly painted toenails clattering on the tile floor.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry,” Leah said to Viv. “I’ll pay your cleaning bill,” she told the woman. “Send it to me at the Shark and Fin. I’m sorry,” she said again, in general.
Then she was on her feet and hit the door without another word. She was on the sidewalk before she knew it.
“Wait.”
Not a chance.
“You should take care of those hands,” he said. “They’ll blister.”
Roman caught up with her, his long, lean strides no match for her somewhat shorter legs. She could run, but she’d just bet he would keep up with her.
“They’re fine. I’m fine.” She refused to look at him, but she was aware of him just the same.
He even smelled good, damn him. Soapy, musky, all male.
Danger, danger. Red lights, stop signs, railroad crossing bars. She had to get away from him.
“Would you slow down?”
She whirled. “Would you stop following me?” she demanded. “Didn’t I make it clear last night that I don’t want to talk to you?”
“If you don’t talk to me, then how is Morrie going to sell me his bar?” he answered matter-of-factly.
For a minute she could only stare at him. “You’re interested in the bar?” Could she be a bigger idiot?
She thought of how she’d behaved in the coffeehouse, how she’d raced out of there. She’d been practically in a frenzy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—” How did