The 7 Lb., 2 Oz. Valentine Read online

  She was holding on to the doorknob so hard, she thought her fingerprints would be permanently sealed into the brass. This felt so awkward. Erin fought off a fresh wave of despair. She shouldn’t have to be inviting Brady into a place that had been as much of a home to him as his apartment. More so.

  Striving to be cheerful, Erin closed the door behind them. Gus looked different in civilian clothes. Less authoritative, she supposed. Brady was still wearing the same shirt he’d had on in the restaurant. Blue. His favorite color. She wondered if he knew that.

  She’d practiced what she was going to say when Brady arrived. Over and over again in the car and then here, she had formed perfect sentences. Right now, she couldn’t remember any of them. For once in her life, she was at a loss for what to say.

  Desperate, she turned toward Gus. “Thanks for bringing him.”

  Gus glanced around the room. It was a nice house, he decided. A hell of a lot nicer than his. But then, chaos suited him. He had a feeling from what Erin had told him and from what he’d observed himself that it wouldn’t suit Brady.

  Erin watched, holding her breath, as Brady moved through the living room. She could almost see his thoughts as they marched through his mind. He was carefully taking in his surroundings, as if he was cataloging them and placing them in order. He might not remember being a scientist, she thought with a subdued smile, but his mind did.

  Brady stopped by the large, U-shaped sofa that dominated the room. The white leather appealed to him. He wasn’t so sure about the painting that hung on the wall directly over it, though.

  “You have a very nice place here,” he finally said quietly.

  Erin joined him in front of the sofa. She wanted to thread her arm through his, but refrained. One tiny step at a time, she told herself.

  “You helped decorate it.” She saw the way he was looking at the painting, as if he was trying to make a decision. Or as if he was trying to remember. Her heart skipped a beat. “We argued a lot about that painting.” He raised an eyebrow as he turned toward her. The painting was a blend of warm colors that splashed into one another, depicting nothing. “I won.”

  He nodded. That made sense. The large reproduction didn’t really look like something he might like.

  At least, he didn’t think so.

  That was what made it so hard getting through each day, not knowing anything about himself, waiting for some sort of breakthrough to take place. Did he have secrets? Was he friendly or reclusive? It was all lost to him. He hated not knowing.

  Most of all, he thought, glancing in Erin’s direction, he hated not remembering her or the child she carried.

  “It’s colorful,” he murmured.

  Erin grabbed his hand, excitement telegraphing itself through her. Taken by surprise, Brady looked into her startled eyes for an explanation.

  The words tangled on her tongue. “You said that.” She swallowed, sorting out the phrases as her eyes darted to Gus and then back to Brady. “That’s exactly what you said when you gave up trying to convince me not to buy it.” Realizing that she was squeezing his hand, she released it, smiling ruefully. Hope danced through her on silver toe-shoes. “You always had a graceful way of conceding an argument.” Until the last time, she corrected herself.

  She looked at Gus, elation and eagerness shining in her eyes. Gus nodded his mute support, then asked, “Would you like me to stay?” He posed the question to Erin as well as Brady.

  Emotionally, Erin knew that she could use the support. But this was Brady, she reminded herself. She needed to be alone with him, needed to go over intimate details that had been a part of their everyday lives. She couldn’t do that with Gus here.

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m sure you have things to do, and we’ve already imposed enough on your kindness.”

  In her own way, she took charge, Gus mused. Just like his sister. What was it his father had called Demi? The iron butterfly, that was it. It seemed that the title fit more than one person.

  Gus glanced at Brady, who nodded his agreement. “Then I’ll be back later to pick you up,” Gus promised.

  Erin didn’t want Brady leaving again so soon now that he was finally here. Maybe she was being unduly cautious, silly, even, but the last time he had left, he’d been gone for five months. She was afraid. Afraid of watching him walk out that door again.

  Erin talked fast as she looked from one man to the other. “Maybe it would be better if Brady stayed the night. You know, wake up in a familiar place and all that.” Her eyes darted back and forth, full of hope. And apprehension. “There’s a spare bedroom…” It was crammed right now with Brady’s possessions, things she had brought over from his apartment before the landlord could confiscate them. She’d paid the man part of Brady’s last month’s rent just to get them.

  Brady barely nodded. It didn’t seem right, staying with a woman he didn’t know. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair to her.

  He exchanged glances with Gus, but couldn’t read the other man’s thoughts. “We’ll see.”

  Gus glanced at his watch. “I could be back in a couple of hours or so.” He looked at Erin. “That okay?”

  It would have to be. She nodded.

  Erin walked with Gus to the door, her legs shaky. He gave her a warm smile just before he left, but it didn’t help assuage the queasy feeling in her stomach. When she shut the door behind him, it took a great deal of courage for her to turn around and see the look on Brady’s face. The look that said he didn’t know her.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Before he could answer, Erin continued quickly, “You always took it black as midnight.”

  He thought of the coffee he drank at the restaurant on his break. He’d instinctively taken it that way. “All right.”

  She turned to lead the way to the kitchen. She stopped when he didn’t follow. Erin looked over her shoulder. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  Brady had always liked sitting in the kitchen. The kitchen, he had maintained, was the heart of a home. Not the bedroom, not the living room, but the kitchen, where he would always spread out his work, leaving little room to eat. Or sit in the wee hours of the morning, reading. How many times had she found him like that? Too many to remember. But he had to.

  “All right.”

  Brady followed her through the living room, down a small hall adorned with framed photographs of people he didn’t recognize. He paused before the last one, squinting as if that small action could awaken the memory.

  “What is it?” she asked urgently. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him who the young man was, but she bit it back.

  “I don’t know…” He shook his head. “I just

  thought…never mind. I don’t know him.”

  “That was your father,” she said quietly. “The little boy in the picture is you.”

  The murky curtain wouldn’t lift.

  “My father…?” He turned to her.

  She second-guessed the question. “He died a few years ago. Your mother passed away when you were fifteen.”

  “Then I’m all alone?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said with feeling. “You have me.”

  Erin stopped at the threshold, letting him enter the kitchen first. She watched his face as he looked around. His eyes met hers, and he shook his head.

  “That’s okay.” She forced a cheery note into her voice. All he needed was time, she told herself. Erin crossed to the coffeemaker and began to pour coffee for both of them.

  If she truly was part of his life, he probably had witnessed this scene a hundred times. Why didn’t it look familiar to him? He’d been waiting all these months to meet someone from his past, and now that he finally had, nothing had changed except for the level of frustration. It was almost insurmountable.

  “I’ve been trying to remember you all afternoon,” he confessed as he watched her back. Brady saw her shoulders stiffen slightly in expectation.

  Very carefully, she filtered the disappointment
out of her voice. “No luck, huh?”

  “No.” The word came out on a sigh. “Although your perfume…”

  He broke off. Erin turned around to face him, a coffee cup in each hand. “Yes?”

  The one word was steeped in eagerness. The sound fairly surrounded him. He wished to God for both their sakes that he could say something positive to her.

  “It smells familiar.” But that could be for no other reason than someone’s having had worn it once at the restaurant.

  Erin set the cups on the table, moving one in front of him.

  “It should.” He raised a questioning eyebrow. “You gave it to me for my birthday. Two weeks before you disappeared.”

  He paused, thoughtful, as he sipped the dark brew she had placed before him. The hot, bitter liquid swirled down his throat and into his belly. Brady raised his eyes to hers. “Good.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “You taught me how to make it.” Erin drew her chair closer to his and sat down. “I used to tease you that you could eat your coffee with a knife and fork.” Her smile was nostalgic, as if she were speaking of someone else. Remembering someone else, he thought. “You maintained that if coffee wasn’t strong, what was the sense of drinking it?”

  He watched the overhead fluorescent light shimmer on the inky surface in his coffee cup. There was love in her voice when she spoke of him. Had he been lovable?

  He searched her face. “What am I like, Erin? As a person, what am I like?”

  He wanted the answer without embellishments. She knew that tone in his voice even if he didn’t. For once, she thought before launching into her reply.

  “Well, you’re good and kind.” Her eyes shifted to his face. “A little stubborn sometimes, but that’s a good thing—” Erin thought of their last argument with a pang. Looking back, it had been as much her fault as his. Maybe even more. But that didn’t change what had happened afterward. If there had been no argument, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. “Usually.”

  She might as well have been describing someone else, Brady thought. He set down his cup and put his face in his hands.

  Startled, moved, eager to comfort, Erin placed her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t,” she implored. She couldn’t stand to see him like this, so lost, so distant.

  The pressure on his shoulder felt familiar, but then, one human being’s touch was pretty much like another. It didn’t make him remember her any more clearly. It didn’t make him remember her at all.

  When he looked up at her again, embarrassed for the momentary lapse, he saw the genuine concern in her eyes. It drew words from him that under different circumstances he would have kept to himself.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, not knowing. Do I do this, do I do that? Do I like strawberries…?”

  She grinned, grasping the solid question. “Yes, you do. A great deal. And as for the rest, it’ll come to you.”

  It has to, she prayed.

  He didn’t feel nearly as optimistic about his situation as Erin did. Or Gus, for that matter. The man had said the same words to him on more than one occasion. “It hasn’t so far.”

  An overwhelming desire to somehow rip through the shroud that covered his brain and bring back the man she loved rippled through her. She had the will, but no weapons. Yet.

  “Give it time, Brady. Until then, look at it as a big adventure.” She knew she was reaching, but she had to say something. She’d glimpsed the despair in his eyes, and it tore at her. “There’s a whole host of sensations to experience for the first time.” Erin smiled at him. “Again.”

  He looked at her as if he was weighing her words. “You’re an optimist, aren’t you?”

  At times, that had been a dirty word for him. She grinned. “Yup.”

  He thought for a moment. “I don’t think I am.” He said it as if it was a revelation. In a way, for him, it was.

  “Not usually,” she said in agreement. She wondered if he was remembering or guessing. “You’re very pragmatic,” she added in his defense.

  Brady nodded slowly. That sounded right. What he had learned about himself in the last five months would point in that direction.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he told her. “Maybe it will come back to me.”

  She reached across the table and covered his hand with her own.

  “It will,” she promised. “It will.”

  He looked down at her hand. There was something comforting about it. Something almost—but not quite—familiar, like a dream that was fading even as he desperately tried to remember it upon waking.

  Brady sighed, disgusted. “This is like walking in a fog. Like evening in London.” He looked at Erin sharply as soon as he had spoken the words. “How would I know that?”

  Erin’s heart quickened. A piece of his puzzle was falling into place. Haphazardly, but it was there. The grin on her face was wide.

  “Because you were in London. Last spring,” she added quickly. “The lab sent you to attend a huge conference.” All the way to the airport, he had complained about having to make the presentation. “You didn’t want to go.” It had pleased her, when they parted, that he told her he was going to miss her. Brady didn’t usually get sentimental. “You read a paper on the latest developments of laser optics.” She saw the look in his eyes. A glimmer of a light dawning.

  “You remember,” she whispered. It was more of a statement than a question.

  He nodded his head as if he was in a trance. “Something.” He closed his eyes, trying to draw the fragments together so he could make sense of them. He felt her hand tightening on his. “Standing in front of people, reading.” He opened his eyes. There wasn’t any more. “It was awkward.”

  He was in there, all right. And every minute, he was closer to surfacing. It was going to be all right. She let out the breath she was holding.

  “You hate presentations,” she told him.

  Yes, he did, he thought suddenly. He didn’t like drawing attention to himself.

  Expectantly, Brady looked around the kitchen again. But it didn’t look any more familiar now than it had a few minutes ago. No lightning breakthrough, he thought. Just one tiny piecelet at a time. Piecelet? Where had that come from? It wasn’t a word.

  He saw her looking at him so hopefully. It only increased the frustration he felt.

  “But if I can remember that, why can’t I remember the rest of it? Why can’t I remember this place? Or you?” His eyes shifted to the swell below her heart. “Or this baby?”

  Erin bit her lip, debating. “I can answer the last part. It’s because you didn’t know about the baby. I…was saving that…as a surprise.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the argument. That she had been all set to tell him about the baby, but had backed away when they had gotten into a heated discussion about the morality of bringing a child into a world filled with discord and disease. Maybe if—when—he regained his memory, that part would still remain unavailable to him.

  It would be all right, she thought, if he didn’t remember that part of it.

  He was looking at her, waiting. Erin cleared her throat. “I never got the opportunity to tell you.”

  This had to be difficult for her, Brady thought. The dated photographs in her album indicated that they had been together for some time.

  But he had no answers, only questions. “Did I live here with you?”

  She smiled ruefully. “We talked about your moving in. To all intents and purposes, you practically had.” His clothes hung in her closet; his robe was still beside hers on one of the twin hooks on the bathroom door. But he had never asked her to marry him. She shrugged. If she was going to bring him back, it would be with the truth. “You found it difficult to commit sometimes.”

  If he didn’t live here, then where? He frowned, rising. “Where did I live?”

  “In an apartment in Newport Beach.” But not anymore. “That is, you did.” Brady looked puzzled. “After you didn’t return, the landlord eventuall
y had to rent out your apartment.”

  “My things?” He assumed that he must have accumulated some possessions, although nothing stood out in his mind.

  “I have them,” she assured him quickly. “I put some things in storage for you. The rest are here.” She nodded toward the back. “In the spare bedroom.” Her hand braced on the table, Erin rose. “Would you like to look through them?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I would.” Brady wanted to see anything and everything that would help ease him out of this cloudy prison he couldn’t seem to break out of on his own.

  “Okay, it’s this way.” Erin reached for his hand automatically, then dropped it when he looked at her curiously. “Sorry, habit.”

  He surprised her by reaching for her hand. She raised her eyes to his quizzically. “Then do it. Do everything that you did with me before I…went away. I want my life back—” Brady stopped abruptly, searching for her name. In his agitation, it had slipped away from him.

  He couldn’t remember her name, she realized. “Erin,” she supplied patiently. “Erin Collins.”

  “I want my life back, Erin,” he told her with feeling. “And I can’t get it back alone.”

  This was new, she thought. She couldn’t remember a time when Brady had asked her for help. Her fingers tightened around his.

  “I’ll do anything I can,” she promised. “You know that.”

  “No,” Brady contradicted her as she led him to the other bedroom. “I don’t know that.”

  Erin laughed. That was more like it, she thought. “See? You’re beginning to act like your old self already.”

  She’d lost him. He had a vague suspicion that she did that a lot. “How so?”

  She slipped her hand from his and touched his cheek lightly. Lovingly. “Brady Lockwood is a very, very logical person. Sometimes maddeningly so.” Alone in bed at night, she’d gone over every single moment they had shared. All his faults had become virtues. She’d sworn to herself that if he ever returned, she would be more patient. “Everything has a beginning and an ending for you,” she said softly. “A reason for being.”

  A shadow of a memory whispered along his mind when she touched him like that. But it had no form, no substance. He let it pass, knowing the harder he tried, the less he succeeded.