A Hard Man to Forget (10 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a suspect?”

Laura’s words, softly spoken yet unyielding, caught him
off-guard. “Where did you hear that?”

“From Aimee. She cornered me for a while after I came out
here.”

He should have known. He bit back a curse. Aimee had made no secret
of the fact that she would be willing to take Meredith’s place
in his life, even before she disappeared. She’d spent the last
three years trying to worm her way into his bed. What she didn’t
seem to understand was that he couldn’t stand her. He’d
only put up with her for Meredith’s sake. He never had
understood why Meredith had put up with her. But then Meredith had
been a saint. Or so he’d thought.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

She turned to him, jaw turned upward obstinately. Her voice was firm.

Simon frowned. He couldn’t remember ever seeing this side of
her before. “I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“You didn’t think it was relevant that the police
suspected you of murdering your wife, the same wife I’m
supposed to be?”

“I didn’t want to scare you unnecessarily,” he
said, then realized how ridiculous that sounded. “I think I did
enough of that yesterday.”

“Well, it didn’t work.” She rubbed her hand over
her arms, as though trying to ward off a chill.

“I didn’t kill Meredith. The police didn’t charge
me with anything.”

“Only because they didn’t have any evidence.”

“Because there wasn’t a crime. There was nothing for them
to find.”

“But they weren’t convinced, were they?” she
challenged.

“No,” he admitted. “The official explanation didn’t
satisfy anyone, especially with the absence of a note or a body. Many
of the townspeople had decided that added up to murder. Never mind
the fact that I was in San Francisco when it happened and had an
alibi. I came home that night, and that’s when I discovered she
was missing.”

“Aimee thinks you brought me here to prove your innocence once
and for all. If Meredith is alive, you’re off the hook.”

Damn that woman. If he was going to turn to murder, he knew who his
first victim would be. “I seriously doubt that Aimee thinks
that.”

“Then why would she say it?”

“To scare you off.”

Laura’s mouth twitched. “Yes, she made it clear I should
keep my hands off her man.”

“I’m surprised she came right out and said it.”

“I don’t think that woman has a subtle bone in her body.”

Simon had to smile at that. Truer words had never been spoken. Then
he sobered. “I didn’t do it, you know.”

She glanced his way in surprise. Her eyes held his for a long moment.
“I know.”

Something in the absolute certainty he heard in her voice set off a
response in his system. There was no doubt in her tone. She meant it.
For some reason, her having that much faith in him in spite of the
events that had brought them together meant a lot to him. It took him
a moment to be suspicious and realize the only way she could be sure
he hadn’t killed Meredith was if she was Meredith.

“How do you know?”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense,” she said
matter-of-factly. “Why would you bring up the suspicious
circumstances surrounding Meredith’s disappearance if you
killed her? It seems to me you would want people to think she killed
herself.”

“Then why did you—"

“Because you should have told me. There are enough things I
don’t know. I don’t need information like that sprung on
me out of nowhere.”

He shouldn’t have felt any regret. If he was right, she’d
shown no consideration when she left, springing her entire
disappearance on him.

He felt it anyway, sharp and swift in his gut. “I’m
sorry.”

She nodded her acceptance of his apology. “So you didn’t
kill her,” she said, moving on. “Someone else could
have.”

“Not possible,” he scoffed.

She peered up at him with those big, observant eyes. “How can
you be so sure?”

“Who would want to kill her? Everyone loved her.”

“Aimee didn’t seem to be too fond of her ‘friend.’”

“Aimee’s all talk. I can’t believe she’s
actually capable of violence.”

He could tell Laura wasn’t convinced. “How can you be so
sure she’s not dead?” she asked quietly.

“I told you. The explanation makes no sense. If she’d
wanted to kill herself, she wouldn’t have done it in a way that
terrified her.”

“There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

Simon sighed, knowing there was no way to explain that didn’t
sound ridiculous, but knowing he had to try. “Because I would
know. We had a special bond, Meredith and I. There was an instinctive
connection between us. Don’t you think I would feel it if that
link had been severed?”

“Not if you didn’t want to believe it.”

“And not if she wasn’t dead. Do you really think I’d
rather believe she left me than she’s dead?”

“If it meant there was a chance you could get back together,
sure. Wouldn’t you?”

He couldn’t answer that. He didn’t know the answer. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Unable to resist any longer, Simon lifted his hand and brushed the
back of his fingers against her cheek. She shuddered and briefly
closed her eyes, turning her head into the caress. Though her skin
was cool, he felt like he’d been scalded by the contact. “You
feel that, don’t you? That connection between us?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. After a
long moment, she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He took note of the color that flared in her cheek where he’d
touched her, the slight tremor in her voice. “Now who’s
lying?”

Her mouth thinned with annoyance. Rolling her tense shoulders, she
turned her face away. “This is too confusing. There’s
just so much to process, and I don’t understand it all."

It was all he could do not to grip her shoulders and shake her, to
grab her again and press his body against hers and her mouth to his
until she was forced to admit that there was nothing confusing about
the reaction between them. It was the only pure thing they still
shared, an elemental, instinctive response that said more than words
could and went beyond all the secrets that lay between them like
loaded mines. In fact, it was more potent now than he remembered. Had
he somehow forgotten the strength of this reaction in three years? If
anything, he would have thought it wouldn’t be able to live up
to his memory of it. Instead, it was much stronger.

He kept his tongue in check and his body still. Barely. “I’m
sorry,” he said. His voice was stiff to his ears, the pressure
to keep himself under control making itself heard. “I didn’t
mean to push so hard. I just want to get to the bottom of this.”
And have you remember me.

She lifted her face to his. Even then the murky light kept her
expression partially disguised, masking her true feelings. “Don’t
you think that’s what I want?”

I don’t know
, he wanted to say.
I don’t know
why you left in the first place. I don’t know if you’d
want to remember a life you were so desperate to leave that you
walked away without a word.

He didn’t say any of it. He turned away, afraid of what would
come out of his mouth if he opened it.

A moment later, he felt her walk away. He lingered on the dock,
allowing her that bit of distance she needed. She could deny it, but
he knew she’d felt that surge of electricity pass between them
as surely as he had. That kind of reaction couldn’t be faked or
denied. She might not be comfortable with the connection, but it was
there nonetheless.

He frowned. It didn’t make any sense that he should feel relief
at her reaction. If only confirmed that she was Meredith, the woman
who’d walked away, the woman who’d left him to pick up
the pieces.

And instead of feeling the sting of her betrayal, all he felt when he
looked at her was a desire to pick up where they’d left off.

He shook his head in disgust at himself. He was a fool. If his
actions over the last few days hadn’t proved it beyond a doubt,
his reaction now did. Just as he couldn’t stop himself from
remembering for three years, now he couldn’t let himself
forget. He couldn’t let himself get caught up in the emotions
of having her back. He had to hold on to that anger, had to remember
what she’d done.

Getting involved with her was the most foolish thing he could
possibly do. He had to force himself not to think of her as any woman
and remind himself not to get lost in the way she made him feel.

It was getting harder and harder to do.

LAURA DIDN’T GO right back to the photo albums after returning
to the house. She needed the break from them, needed the onslaught of
information to sink in a bit.

Instead she wandered around the living room, trying to get a sense of
the man who lived there. In spite of what she’d told Aimee, she
did want to know more about Simon, especially if he was her husband.

A flush crept into her cheeks when she remembered how possessive
she’d been with Aimee. She’d called him her husband
without thinking. She didn’t know whether or not that was a
good sign or a bad one.

One wall was completely covered by bookshelves, filled to the brink
of overflowing. She trailed her fingers over the bindings and scanned
the titles. Many of them were computer-related, but there was also a
great deal of fiction shelved in with the technical tomes, mostly
action-thrillers, mysteries and science fiction from the look of
them.

She surveyed the room for anything else that could be considered
personal. There wasn’t anything. She understood that Simon had
packed most of Meredith’s belongings away in the attic, but she
also didn’t see anything of his. Nothing hung on the walls or
lay on the tabletops. There were no family pictures or mementos
anywhere in sight.

It struck her how stark and anonymous the room was. It said nothing
about Simon. It was almost as though no one lived there at all.

Troubled, she drifted toward an archway on the far side of the room.
It opened up into another room entirely. Three steps led down into a
large circular space with a high ceiling and windows on all sides.
There was only one object in it, arranged directly in the center of
the floor. A sheet was draped over it, but Laura had no trouble
identifying it as a baby grand piano. Even from the entryway she
could see dust motes floating in the air. The piano obviously hadn’t
been played in sometime.

She was about to turn back when he came in behind her. She sensed him
before she heard him, the way some people claimed to be able to feel
a storm in their bones before it arrived.

“Do you play?” she asked. She suspected she already knew
the answer.

“No, Meredith did. What about you?”

“Not that I know of.” She’d never tried before, at
least not that she could remember. She almost wondered if she should
sit down and give it a try. Maybe it would come naturally to her.

“She was actually very good,” Simon said. “She had
this amazing dexterity in her hands. Her fingers were incredibly
nimble. I think she said it was something she inherited from her
mother. She played the piano too.”

Frowning, Laura lifted her hands palms-up and stared at them. The
reason she’d become a stenographer was because of the dexterity
of her hands. When she’d first had to decide what to do for a
living, she’d taken a typing test. Not only had she remembered
whatever typing skills she’d had before the attack, she’d
done remarkably well, achieving well over a hundred words a minute.
The person who oversaw the test had commented on how nimble her
fingers were. That was when Jason had mentioned how much money
stenographers made and how she might be good at it.

“Was she a good typist too?”

He considered the question before answering. “I guess. I think
she took high school typing, but I don’t think I ever saw her
type all that much. She was more likely to be at those keys than in
front of a computer. At least until the last couple years, when she
lost interest in most things.”

Laura slowly lowered her hands and balled them into fists at her
sides. Did this mean she likely was Meredith or wasn’t? Or did
it mean anything at all? It felt like she was clutching at straws.
“Computers are your business and your wife never used one?”

“She probably didn’t want to encourage me. She thought I
spent too much time in front of mine as it was.”

She turned back to face him. “Did you fight about that?”

“Not the way you’re thinking. She would tease me about it
and I would stop whenever I could. I couldn’t say no to her.”
As soon as he said the words, he cleared his throat, seemingly
embarrassed at having revealed too much. “I’ve been
thinking. It looks like news of your presence is more likely to get
out now. There’s probably no hope in hiding you here. So if you
want to go into town, I can’t stop you.”

“I didn’t think you could stop me before,” she said
mildly. “Not if I really wanted to get away.”

His eyebrows rose, his expression almost mocking her. “You
didn’t want to get away?”

“I wanted the truth more. Considering you were threatening me
with jail if the police got their hands on me, I wasn’t looking
to run into the law.” She tipped her head and surveyed him,
seeking anything in his cool expression that might reveal what he was
thinking. The man let nothing slip. “Still planning on turning
me in?”

“I don’t know.”

Not exactly the most reassuring answer in the world. She’d come
to trust him in a remarkably short period of time, inexplicably so.
She couldn’t pretend it didn’t sting that he didn’t
return that trust.

She spun away before her expression could give her away. “Besides,
if that’s the kind of reception I can expect in town, I’m
in no hurry to meet the rest of the neighbors. I do have to say that
if you wanted to keep me a secret, you didn’t do a very good
job of hiding me.”