Buch lesen: «Playboys' Christmas Surprises»

One

Alaina Rutger was living her childhood dream—a family of her own. Her charismatic husband was driving her home from the hospital with their infant son strapped into a car seat. She had the perfect life.

If only she could remember the man who’d put the four-carat diamond wedding ring on her finger.

A man who called himself Porter Rutger. Husband. Father of her child. And a man who’d been wiped from her memory along with the past five years of her life.

She tore her eyes away from his broad shoulders and coal-dark hair as she sat in back with their baby. Her baby. Alaina tucked the monogrammed red blanket over the infant as he slept, one foot in a booty, the other in a cast that had begun the repair on his clubfoot.

Another person she didn’t remember. Another heartbreak in her upside-down world. A week ago, she’d woken in the hospital with no memory of the man sitting by her bedside or of the blue bundle in the bassinet.

Waking up from a coma had felt a lot like coming to after the worst hangover ever, her head throbbing so badly she could barely move. But a quick look around showed her a hospital room rather than a bedroom.

And a hot man sleeping in the chair, his dark hair rumpled. His black pants and white button-down wrinkled.

Her own Doctor McDreamy?

“Hello,” she’d croaked out, her throat raw for a sip of water.

McDreamy bolted awake quickly. “Alaina?” He blinked, scrubbed his hand across his eyes in disbelief, then shot to his feet. “Oh, God, you’re awake. I need to get the nurse.”

“Water,” she rasped out. “Please, a drink.”

He thumbed the nurses’ call button. “I don’t know what the doctors will want. Maybe ice chips. Your IV has been feeding you. Soon, though, I promise, whatever you want, soon.”

The nurses? Doctors? He wasn’t Doc McDreamy? Then... “Who are you?”

He looked up from the control panel of buttons slowly, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Who am I?”

She pressed her fingertips to her monster headache. “I’m sorry, but I feel like hell. What happened?”

“Alaina...” He sank slowly into the chair, his voice measured, guarded. “We were in a car accident.”

“We?” She knew him?

“Yes,” he said, leaning closer to cover her hand carefully. “Alaina, my name’s Porter and I’m your husband.”

The shock of that revelation still echoed through her.

Once the nurse and doctor had checked her over Porter had further explained they’d been in a car wreck a month prior, after picking up little Thomas from the adoption agency. Her husband... Porter. Porter Rutger. God, she still struggled to remember his name. Porter told her the baby had a birth defect and had spent the past month going through surgeries while she’d been in a coma from the accident.

Too soon, before she felt ready to handle this life she’d landed in, it was time to leave the hospital. She’d been told many first moms felt that way.

But not all new mothers had amnesia.

Her throat burned with bile and fears that hadn’t abated since she’d woken from the coma a week ago thinking it was November, only to find it was December.

Five years later.

Five years of memories simply gone, pushed out of her head in the course of a month. Most devastating, she’d lost the four and a half years Porter had been in her life.

How was it that four weeks asleep could steal so much of her life? That coma had left her mind missing a substantial chunk of memories and yet her body felt 100 percent normal. She’d even been attracted to her stranger husband, so attracted that the aches and lethargy left over from her coma hadn’t dulled the shiver of awareness she’d felt at the brush of his hands against her as he helped her from the hospital bed and into the car.

She swallowed hard and turned to look out the window at the rolling waves as the Mercedes traveled the Florida coastal road toward what Porter had told her was their beach mansion. They also owned a home in Tallahassee but they’d been closer to the beach home when picking up the baby, then having the wreck. Traveling with their infant son so fresh from surgery and her so recently out of a coma hadn’t seemed wise. The doctors had advised they stay close for the short term at least.

Porter had quickly suggested they stay at their nearby vacation home. Apparently her tall, dark and studly husband was wealthier than Midas, thanks to his construction empire that won major contracts to build corporate structures around the country. They had no financial worries as she recovered, he’d told her. Another reason to be grateful.

But instead of gratitude, she could only feel fear at the imbalance of power between her and this man who was her husband. She was adrift with only the facts he told her about her past. No family since her parents were dead. No friends, other than people she apparently hadn’t seen in five years, since her breakup from an abusive boyfriend. She’d cut herself off from everyone then.

Still, she was missing the months following that breakup, the months leading up to her meeting Porter. Falling in love with him. Marrying him. He said after they married, they’d moved to southeastern Florida, away from her hometown in North Carolina. She believed what he said, but wondered what parts he might not have mentioned. Men could be so brief in their explanations, leaving out details or emotional components a woman would find crucial.

Porter glanced in the rearview mirror, his brown eyes as dark as undiluted coffee full of caffeinated energy.

Jolt.

“Alaina, is everything all right?” he said, his Southern drawl muted by some experience in another region.

Something else she didn’t know about him unless he told her.

What kind of answer did he expect from her? More of the same dodgy responses they’d given each other over the past week since she woke up? Guarded words spoken in front of doctors or said out of fear her fragile world might shatter into a somnolent fog again?

Each mile closer to a vacation home she couldn’t recall stretched the tension inside her tighter until she snapped softly, “Did the doctor give you any more insight as to why can’t I remember the past five years? Nearly a quarter of my life is just gone.”

“The doctor spoke with you. He has an obligation to be honest with you. You’re his patient.” The man in the front seat who called himself her husband was unfailingly polite but lacked the kind of warmth that Alaina would have envisioned in a man she’d married.

Her husband.

What had made her choose this coolly controlled male for a mate? Another question she couldn’t begin to answer. In spite of the spark that seemed to arc between them amidst the questions.

“I haven’t forgotten that conversation. It was more of a rhetorical question because there are so many other things I don’t understand.” She glanced down at her sleeping son in his impossibly cute elf pajamas. “Such as, how could anyone forget a child this precious?”

Her heart swelled to look at Thomas, his tiny nose and Cupid’s-bow mouth calling to her every maternal instinct. She’d always wanted children, dreamed of having a big family after growing up an only child. If she and Porter had been married for almost four years, what had made them wait to start their family?

“You’d only known him for a couple of hours before the accident.” Porter turned onto a secluded drive where mammoth houses were hidden by manicured privacy hedges on one side, although she knew the other side opened to the water.

“The length of time shouldn’t matter. He’s a child, my child—” she paused, brushing her fingers across the top of an impossibly small and soft hand “—our child. That’s life changing. A minute. An hour. A couple of hours. That should be burned in here.” She tapped the front of her head.

“Even if your marriage wasn’t?” he asked wryly.

Contrition nipped. This had to be tough for him, too. “I’m sorry. This can’t be easy for you, either.”

“You’re alive and awake, more than I ever expected to have again.” He said the emotional words with a harsh rasp as he guided the car along the palm tree–lined road. “I can deal with the rest.”

“You make me feel as if I shouldn’t be frustrated.”

“Give yourself time.” He kept both hands on the wheel, the late-day sunshine glinting off his Patek Philippe wristwatch. “You’ve been through a lot.”

How did she know the brand of his watch but not know if the band on his ring finger had an inscription? But then, she remembered studying art history when she’d got her bachelor’s degree. Recalled a love of finely made things and beautiful objects. Maybe that was why the watch resonated and the ring...nothing.

“What about you? What have you been through this past month? It must have been horrible, with a child in surgery and a wife in a coma.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice clipped. “I’m fine now.”

Her mouth twitched with amusement as the car braked at a stop sign wrapped in garland. “Are you one of those men who’s too tough to be vulnerable?”

His eyes met hers solemnly in the mirror. “I’m a man who thought he’d lost everything.”

And just that fast, she felt her terrified heart melt a little for this stranger husband of hers. “You still have, in a way,” she said sympathetically, “because of me and how I’ve lost any sense of us and our memories.”

At the deserted intersection, he twisted to look over the seat at her, his elbow resting along the back and tugging his button-down shirt across his muscular chest. “You and our son are alive. That truly is what’s most important to me.”

There had been tension between them since she’d woken up in the hospital. He still held all the answers she couldn’t access. But now, with the sincerity shining in his eyes, she wanted to hug him, ached to wrap her arms around him and have him do the same to her. Most of all, to have that feel familiar. She stretched a hand out to touch his elbow lightly—

A car honked behind them and she jerked her hand back. What was she thinking? Except for the few things he’d told her, she knew nothing about him or her or what kind of life they’d built together. Or what kind of future they might have because these events had changed them. Undoubtedly.

However for Thomas, she and Porter had to try for a level of peace between them. Could the Christmas spirit work a miracle for her family?

Shifting nervously in her seat, Alaina toyed with the reindeer baby rattle, gathering up her rapidly fraying nerve. “May I ask you questions about the past?”

“Why didn’t you question more before?” He kept his eyes on the road this time.

In some ways maybe that made this conversation easier.

“Because...I was scared you wouldn’t answer.”

“What’s changed?”

“We’re not in the hospital. There are no doctors who make me do all the work thinking, insisting I should only remember what I’m ready to know. They kept asking me not to push to remember, but that’s causing me even more stress, wondering.” She needed to know. How could she be a real wife to Porter and a mother to Thomas if she didn’t even know who she was or how they’d become a family?

“You trust me to answer truthfully?” He glanced back at her, his eyes darkening.

“What do you have to gain by lying?”

Now wasn’t that a loaded question? One that called for total trust in a man she barely knew. But she had no other choice, not if she wanted to reconnect as a family. “How did we meet?”

“My firm was handling building an addition to a museum where you worked. You saw me flex my muscles and here we are.”

He sure did have muscles, and if they’d enticed her half as much then as they did now she could see how he would have caught her attention. His humor made him even more appealing. “You’re funny, after all, Porter.”

“You think I don’t have a sense of humor? You’ve wounded my ego.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of room for levity this week.” She’d been so damn scared in the hospital. Walking the halls at night when she couldn’t sleep. Obsessively checking on the baby and praying she would remember something, anything from the past five years.

Most of all, wondering about the mysterious, handsome man who’d spent hours with her each day.

“True enough. Hopefully we can fix that. We have the whole holiday season to relax, settle our child and get to know each other again.” Through the rearview mirror, he held her eyes with a determined intensity. “Because, make no mistake, I intend to remind you of all the reasons we fell in love in the first place.”

His words made something go hot inside her, a mixture of desire and confusion and, yes, nerves. She swallowed hard. It didn’t help. But even if she didn’t remember it, this was her life. There was no choice but to push on. To regain her memories and her life.

And figure out just what this man—her husband—meant to her. Not just in the past. But now.

* * *

Porter Rutger had been through hell.

But for the first time in a long time he saw a way to climb back out.

His hands clenched the steering wheel as he drove his wife and son home from the hospital. The past month—worrying about how Thomas would recover from his first surgery for his clubfoot, wondering about possible hidden effects of the accident on the baby...

And all the while his wife had been in a coma.

Porter’s jaw flexed as he studied the familiar beach road leading to the vacation home they’d chosen after their third in vitro failed. Before they’d adopted Thomas, their marriage had showed signs of fraying from years of struggling with the stresses of infertility.

He and Alaina had been in hell for a long time, even before the accident. He’d thought they’d hit rock bottom when they’d contacted a divorce attorney. They’d been so close to signing the divorce papers when the call came about a baby to adopt. A special-needs baby, difficult to place, an infant who required surgeries and years of physical therapy. While foster care would have provided the basics, the search for a home would have to start all over again if they backed out, leaving the baby adrift in the system.

They hadn’t made the decision to adopt on a whim. They’d started the adoption process two years ago when the reality of infertility had become clear. Then they’d faced more heartache waiting. Their already strained marriage hadn’t fared well under the added stress.

To this day, he couldn’t remember which of them had asked for a divorce. The words had been thrown out during an argument and then taken root, growing fast, lawyers involved. It had damn near torn him apart, but their constant arguments had made it impossible to envision a future together bringing up the family they both wanted so much. Even marriage counseling hadn’t helped.

They’d reached the end—and then the call had come about Thomas.

He and Alaina had put their differences aside to adopt the baby and stay together temporarily. Her soft, open heart had welcomed the baby from the second the call had come. Thomas needed them. That had cinched the deal for Alaina.

Then the accident happened and the possibility of losing her completely had made him want to shred the documents. Maybe he could have that family he wanted after all.

And he’d had no idea how quickly that little bundle in the back would steal his heart. He would do anything for his son. Anything.

While he would also do anything to have Alaina healthy, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he had a second chance to win her over—for himself and for their son. This could be a fresh start, a way to work through all the pain they’d caused each other in the past.

Yes, he’d made mistakes in their marriage, but this was a new opportunity to build the family he’d always wanted. Growing up with a single-mom lawyer who worked all the time and husband-hunted during her hours off, he’d craved stability, love.

If he could only gain Alaina’s forgiveness, or convince her that he was in it for the long haul this time, that he’d changed. Hell, if he could just make Alaina realize he wasn’t the man he’d been a few weeks ago, then he could have the family he’d always dreamed of. The one they’d both wanted.

He’d never been one to procrastinate or waste time. He was a man of action.

And the stakes had never been more important than now.

Porter glanced in the rearview mirror at his blonde wife, the woman he’d fallen head over heels in love with four and a half years ago. Her intelligence, confidence and artistic flair had mesmerized him. He’d seen her discussing gallery art with a visiting class of elementary school students and he’d known. She was the one. She was his every perfect fantasy—soft, openhearted. He could envision her cradling their babies. Making sand castles with toddlers. Painting with children.

And it hadn’t been just the maternal images that drew him. She had a passionate nature that set him on fire. Even now, the memories turned him inside out.

But the more they’d argued, the more he’d realized how shaky their foundation had been.

“What did you want to know?”

“We didn’t talk much at all in the hospital.” Her blue eyes held his for an electric instant before she looked away.

“The doctor’s orders. And things were hectic, with Thomas’s physical therapists and your tests.” He’d been pulled in two different directions even though he’d taken time off from work, passing over control of his construction firm to his second in command until he had his family in order. Seeing her so helpless in the hospital had sucker punched him. Their love for each other might have died, but they still shared a history, an attraction, and now a child. His need for the picture-perfect family had destroyed their marriage and their love for each other.

But he owed it to her to take care of her while she healed and while they figured out how to parent Thomas.

“I’m not blaming anyone,” she said quickly. “I’m just trying to fill in the blanks so I can function. I felt so...limited in the hospital.”

He wouldn’t sabotage her recovery. The doctors had said she shouldn’t push to remember, and he planned to honor that directive. He wasn’t that ruthless, no matter what his competitors said. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to squander this chance to convince her to stay.

He would do whatever it took to keep her in this family. He wasn’t interested in being a part-time father, and had never been, even when he’d agreed to sign those damn divorce papers. He’d regretted that decision the moment he’d made it. How could he have the family he needed if he let his wife walk away? Even then, regardless of their problems, he’d wanted things to go back to the way they’d been in the beginning.

He didn’t know what had gone wrong, what more she expected of him. And now that she couldn’t remember their life together, he might not ever find out. “The doctor wanted to see how much you recalled on your own. We didn’t want you to confuse memories with things you’d been told.”

“Maybe hearing about us might help jog those memories.”

He noticed she didn’t mention the whole trust issue again. Did that mean she’d put it on the back burner? Or she was willing to take him at his word?

She sure as hell hadn’t trusted him at the end of their marriage, before the accident. Would that distrust eek through even her thick fog of amnesia? He steered off the highway onto the access road to their security gate.

“Porter, I don’t have a choice but to ask you these questions. There’s no one else from my past I still have a relationship with. If I want to find out anything about these past five years, it’s you or Google.”

He chuckled darkly. “A ringing endorsement if ever I heard one.”

A smile played with her full lips. It was almost comfortable and it caused his chest to tighten. He remembered a time when he’d been able to make her smile every day, back before their relationship had deteriorated into loud fights and long silences.

“Porter, I’m not going to apologize for speaking the truth.” The smile faded. “Why didn’t anyone come see me in the hospital?”

“When the accident happened, we were far from home, picking up the baby. Our friends weren’t nearby.” And no doubt they would have felt awkward coming to visit the couple given the impending divorce. “I saved the cards from the flowers and balloons that came at the start. I’ll show you when we get home.”

She chewed that full lip. “What about phone calls to quiz people? Who can I call to help me?”

He wouldn’t isolate her, but he didn’t want to make it easy for her to take off again, either. He just wanted a little time for them to cement their relationship again, to rediscover what they’d once had—and to parent the baby they’d always wanted. They needed this time to become the family he’d always imagined they could be.

“The doctor warned you to be careful and take it slow. You’ll have to ask your physicians near the beach house. Whatever they say is good by me.” It surprised him that she hadn’t asked many questions publicly at the hospital, but whatever had held her back, now that they were alone, she was more relentless about getting answers. There was an urgency and an edge to her now that she hadn’t possessed before the accident.

Or had she kept it hidden the way she’d hidden so many of her motives in the last months of their marriage?

“So you have no trouble giving me those phone numbers? If the doctor says it’s okay.” She leaned forward, resting her arms on the back of the seat as they waited at an intersection.

“No problem at all.” People would be eager to hear from her after the accident, but they’d also be busy with the holidays. And the doctor had given them no reason to think her memory would return so soon. He needed the next two weeks’ Christmas holiday with her and their son to tell her his side of the story. To see if they could make this work. Maybe, just maybe they could build that family after all. For Thomas. “Whatever you want from me, just ask. We’re married.”

Her quick gasp brushed across his neck, and her gaze met his, her eyes wide. “Whatever I want?”

The air went hot between them. Could she see the memories in his eyes? Could she sense just how damn good they had been together? How good they could still be?

There was desire and apprehension in her eyes. Her gaze broadcast loud and clear that she might not share the same memories, but she felt their connection—and it made her nervous.

He needed to proceed carefully. He hadn’t told her about their decision to divorce. He wanted the chance to convince her to stay first. He also didn’t want her asking questions that would box him into lying—or telling a hard truth. Like the fact they hadn’t slept together for a month before the accident. “I can promise you, I’m not about to demand husbandly rights or anything else from you until you’re ready.”

“That’s for the best,” she said a little too fast. “I’m not ready for—”

“You don’t need to say anything more.” He punched in the security code to open the scrolled gates that were designed like a pewter clamshell gaping wide. Christmas lights glistened on the palm trees lining the path to the yellow stucco mansion, the glimmer growing brighter with the setting sun.