Here to Stay (Silhouette Special Edition) (14 page)

The front door opened and Sam’s daughter, Maggie, flew off the porch and into Sasha’s arms. The dog wagged his tail so hard that the rest of him wagged with it. Miles found himself watching and grinning.

“Aunt Sasha! I can ride my new bike all by myself. Daddy took the training wheels off!”

Something inside Miles seemed to swell, to shift, at the way the little girl said
daddy.
He pushed it aside.

After a big hug and lots of giggles, Maggie stepped back to peer up at him. Then she looked at Sasha, a frown puckering her little face. “Daddy says Mr. Miles lives with you now. Does that mean he’s my uncle?”

Miles felt his jaw start to drop. Ahead of them, Donna and Marie were watching. Sasha looked at him, her smile turning a little stunned. Miles thought fast. He bent and offered his hand to Maggie, who put her tiny hand into it, and looked up at him with wide, dark eyes.

“Miss Maggie, I’m Aunt Sasha’s friend, not your uncle,” he told her very seriously, “but if you’d like to call me Uncle Miles, I’d be honored.”

Maggie frowned, smiled and nodded. “Okay.” She took her hand from his and said, “Are you here to drop a bundle?”

Ignoring Sasha’s muffled snicker, Miles brushed his fingertips over the top of Maggie’s sleek head and grinned down at her. “I’m going to try not to.”

“It’s okay if you do. We only play for nickels and dimes, and the pot goes to the horses, anyhow. Hurry up! Daddy made popcorn and he said I could stay up to have some.” And suddenly she was racing up the stairs, dashing through the front door and yelling to Sam that everyone was there.

Sasha paused on the bottom step. When Miles caught up with her, she smiled. “She’s like a puppy when she’s excited.”

Miles grinned back. “Cute kid,” he said, but what he was really thinking was how lucky Sam was to have her. The unexpected thought stunned him.

The door swung open again and Sam scowled at them. “Come on, you two. You’re holding up the game.” The other man’s obvious disapproval fueled Miles’s annoyance. Deliberately he took Sasha’s hand in his and led her up the stairs. At the door he stopped and let Sasha pass through first, making sure Sam saw his finger brush her shoulder as she passed.

Sam’s living room was full of contradictions. Some of his furniture looked like the contents of a yard sale, but the cabinets and side tables were beautiful examples of woodworking by a master crafts-man. Chips and popcorn had been set out in old-fashioned-looking crockery bowls, but the stereo system in the oak wall unit was state-of-the-art.

Peter came out of his chair to shake his hand, his eyes assessing behind his glasses. He introduced his wife, Marla, a small, warm-eyed woman Miles liked on sight. Sam introduced Ray, a carpenter and also a Native Canadian Miles figured to be in his early to mid-thirties. Ray shook Miles’s hand with guarded friendliness, making Miles wonder what Sam might have said about him and Sasha.

“Hey, Miles?” Sam said. “You remember how to play poker?”

Sasha started to sputter at him, but Miles only grinned. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Did Sasha tell you where the pot goes?” Marla asked him, her sweet voice cutting through the chuckling and teasing of the others. He shook his head. Marla smiled. “It goes to help Sasha’s old pensioners, because she won’t accept a direct offer from us.”

He looked at Sasha. She shrugged, but her cheeks turned pink.

“Okay. Let’s get started,” Sam ordered. “We can draw cards to split into two tables.”

To Miles’s relief, he and Sasha drew the same table, but so did Sam and Peter, which made Miles wonder if Sam was a creative card shuffler. They played a few hands, and Miles watched carefully, feeling suddenly and totally at home with the cards in his hand. The mood stayed tense until Peter won on a terrific bluff. Then even Sam lightened up and raised his next bet with a cocky grin. Peter and Sasha saw and raised his bet. Miles studied his cards, then looked down at his depleted store of coins. He slid the correct amount into the pile in the middle of the table, then glanced at the faces opposite him. As he’d suspected, the other three looked as if they felt pretty sorry for his bad luck and lack of skill.

Sasha drew two cards, but the face she made gave away her poor hand. Peter folded with a groan of disgust. Sam snapped his cards one at a time down on the table, then stood and reached for the coins piled in the middle.

“Hold it,” Miles told him. Sasha looked at him, her eyes wide. He smiled at her, then fanned his cards. Ace. King. Queen. Jack. Ten.

The muscle in Sam’s jaw clenched, but he sat down. The battle line had been drawn a little closer, Miles thought, but the stakes were more than a few coins. This was about Sasha, and Miles intended to win.

He did. Often enough that Sasha finally laughed and threw down her cards. “We’ve been had! We’ve got a shark in our pool!”

Peter snorted and threw his cards down, too. “Hell, Kent’s been losing on purpose, sizing us up. Good thing none of us bet the family farm.”

Miles heard the laughter from both tables, but suddenly he was seeing another poker game, at another time and place. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

He felt Sasha touch his arm. She was leaning so close that the scent of her perfume chased away the remembered stink of stale cigarettes and spilled beer. “Miles, what is it? Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“In a way. I just remembered how I started.”

“Started what?”

“In business. I was about twenty-two, flat broke. I won a guy’s business in a poker game.” He felt everyone’s eyes on him now, but it was Sasha’s stricken look that troubled him more than being the object of their curiosity.

“You won a man’s business in a poker game? And you
kept
it?”

He heard the censure in her voice and nodded. “Yeah. He was a lousy player, but he couldn’t stay away from the game. It was one of those copy shops. He’d run out of cash and it was all he had left that was worth anything. The other guys in the game refused to let him put up his wife and kids as collateral.”

“Oh, my God!” Sasha gasped. Her face had gone white. He wondered if he should do something for her.

“How could you take his business when he had a wife and kids depending on him?” Sam demanded.

Miles smiled grimly. It was coming back faster now. “Easy. His wife and kids were two steps away from starving, so I hired her. Neither of us had any business experience, but we got the business going again. She divorced him, and I sold out to her and her new husband.” He looked at Sasha. The color was back in her face, but her eyes were still wide. “I guess I got a kick out of saving a sinking ship.”

“Fascinating,” Peter murmured, staring at him. “The way such a casual comment can trigger the retrieval of a memory of profound significance.” He leaned over the table. “Did it all come back in a rush, or bit by bit, almost as you were telling us? Was it a verbal memory, or visual? Could you see yourself playing poker with this fellow, then see yourself working in the shop?”

“Peter! For pity’s sake!” Sasha scolded.

Under cover of the table, Miles touched her thigh. He heard her breath catch, felt the warm, firm muscle under his fingers tighten. “It’s okay, Sasha.” He turned to Peter. “I got a sudden picture of the guy looking at his cards and offering his copy shop instead of cash. The rest came back like frames of a movie played too slow. Images I suddenly understood as I saw each one.”

“I still think the best place to get your memory back is your own home,” Sam muttered. “Coffee’s on in the kitchen. Help yourselves.”

Sasha felt the sudden tension in Miles’s touch on her leg. She wanted to kick Sam, but he’d already gotten up, out of range. Miles probably wouldn’t appreciate another one of her impassioned defenses, anyway, she thought. All she could do was offer her support, silently, through her presence. With his hand on her thigh, sending a tingling awareness along her nerve ends, that seemed to be enough.

Everyone else got up and filed into Sam’s kitchen, but Sasha needed another moment to assimilate what had just happened. She wanted to apologize for her brief loss of faith in him, but the longer he kept his hand on her thigh, the harder it was for her to think coherently. As if reading her mind, he took his hand away, and Sasha felt a chill replace his touch.

How had she ever thought she could heal this man without getting her feelings any more involved than if he were a horse? She’d always been strong enough to let go before, but she’d never cared so deeply before, about a creature or a man. Would she have enough strength left over for herself when Miles finally left?

She would have to, she promised herself, but it felt like a very hollow promise.

* * *

In the morning Miles found Sasha in the kitchen, bending over the open freezer. He stood in the doorway, silently admiring the way her faded jeans molded to her trim little bottom. Then Copper trotted over to sit at his feet, giving him away. He scratched the grinning dog’s ears.

Sasha turned to face him, her smile bright, almost too bright. He’d bet anything that something was bothering her. But what? The evening at Sam’s had ended peacefully enough, and she’d seemed genuinely pleased that he’d remembered something important about himself. And when he’d kissed her lightly, standing on the upstairs landing, she had kissed him back sweetly, without any reserve. So now what?

“I’m just making coffee before feeding the critters,” she told him. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Nah. Princess got the jump on you.” He grinned and stepped into the room, Copper at his side. “Got the jump on me, too. Literally.” Sasha laughed softly and shook her head. “That’s okay. She’s good com-pany.”

“You might want to consider getting a couple of cats when you go home.” She reached into the cupboard for mugs. “Or a golden puppy?”

A little of the morning’s brightness faded as her words sank in. He’d been thinking hard about
being
at the place he called home, but he hadn’t been thinking about actually
going
home. Clearly, Sasha expected him to leave, regardless of his vow to make sure Copper’s kids were safe. Hell, he probably should go, before he did something unforgivably stupid and selfish, like seducing her. He decided to push the whole subject out of his mind for now.

“How are the pups doing?”

“They’re doing great,” she said, wiping her hands on the hips of her jeans. “Which I doubt we can say about the poor kids who left her. They must be good kids at heart. Look at what they went through to save their dog. But violence is learned. How are they going to grow up still being good, with this creep killing animals and beating them and their mother?”

A chill settled in his heart at her passionate words. He knew she was right. The faster those kids were found and taken away from their mother, the better. But other kids weren’t that lucky. How did they grow up to be good people? Or did they? Knowing more about himself every day, but still not enough, he wasn’t so sure how to define good anymore.

“The kids may get themselves rescued, now that they’ve taken care of Copper. They seemed pretty resourceful and gutsy,” Miles said, hoping to reassure her. And himself.

Sasha nodded. “I sure hope so.” She handed him a glass of orange juice. “Miles, do you have any idea if you know how to use tools?”

The change of subject caught him by surprise. He swallowed his mouthful of juice. “Like what?”

“Hammer? Drill? Screwdriver? Pliers? Tractor?”

“I don’t know.”

“Want to find out after breakfast?”

He’d do anything to see that teasing light in her eyes more often. “Sure.”

An hour later, after they’d fed the horses and themselves, Miles followed Sasha back outside to the barn. Opposite the row of stalls for the old horses, two stalls had been combined into one well-equipped workshop. He looked around at the hand and power tools, at the battered but sturdy workbench with the vise mounted on one end, at the sawhorses in a corner, at the extra lighting hanging from the rafters, and whistled.

“Most of the older tools belonged to my grandfather,” Sasha said. She picked up a chisel, then replaced it on the Peg-Board rack. “Sam drops by from time to time with some new gadget he thinks I need, but really, it’s so he doesn’t have to lug all his stuff from home whenever he comes by to fix something.” She smiled. “So, does any of this look familiar?”

He reached for the pistol grip of a power drill. The instant his fingers wrapped around it, he saw himself using it, long ago and far away. He could hear the whine of a power saw. Smell wood freshly cut. Feel the way the wood yielded to a nail pounded in just right. He grinned.

“I worked construction a few summers,” he told her, marveling at the way his memory could simply slip back into place like that, or elude him like a mosquito at night. “I also worked with the crew, on the house on Secret Island.”

“I thought you knew how to work with your hands,” she murmured.

He held his hands out in front of him, studying their familiar, yet oddly unfamiliar, shape and surfaces. “Why’d you think that?”

“Your hands are very strong, a little rough for someone who works at a desk or does meetings, and very competent looking.” Her eyes met his boldly, but her cheeks turned bright. He felt his own cheeks heat up at her unexpected compliment. And at the realization that she’d been thinking about his hands.

“So,” he began, then had to clear his throat. “What needs work?”

“There’s the list, on the white board behind you. Take your pick.” He turned and studied the neat lines of script covering the message board. Only the top three items had been checked off. He looked back at Sasha to find her frowning. “Don’t feel you have to do it all. Some of them have been waiting long enough that I can almost get along without taking care of them.”

Feeling equal to the tasks of Hercules, Miles grinned. “Good thing I’ll be around for a while.”

S
asha turned away before Miles could see the hope she suspected must show in her eyes like a neon sign. There was no point in fooling herself. She knew his primary reason for staying was to make sure Copper’s kids were going to be all right. So much for his self-proclaimed selfishness.

After leaving Miles whistling under his breath and examining the tools, Sasha approached Desperado in his paddock. This time, unlike so many of their other encounters, he seemed to remember that he had already trusted her. He allowed her into the paddock, ate out of her hand and stood quietly while she handled his feet. Figuring she’d gotten that far and was still alive to tell the tale, she decided to try grooming him properly. He needed to look his best when potential buyers came to inspect him.

She couldn’t tie him, since he still wouldn’t allow her to put a halter on him, so she simply stayed with him as he wandered around cropping grass or dozing in the bright sunshine. Moving quietly, croon-ing softly, Sasha curried the mud-crusted coat until her arms ached. When she decided to quit, Desperado nuzzled her bare arm with his nose, making her laugh when he tickled her. He even trotted along the fence line when she went back to the barn, nickering as if inviting her to play some more.

“That beast’s a real smooth talker, isn’t he?” Miles asked from the shadows, his voice low and husky. Her heart leaped and began to beat in overtime.

“He’s a silver-tongued devil, all right,” she agreed, her own voice coming out unusually husky, “and he’s finally figured out what’s good for him.”

“Looks like it,” Miles murmured, leaving her to wonder if Miles was having second thoughts about staying—or about going.

* * *

“Interested in learning to play telegraph with the computer?” Miles asked after lunch. “I want to download some financial reports from one of the bulletin boards.”

“Sure.” Sasha bit into a crisp, slightly tart apple, then met his golden eyes. He’d been watching her mouth. She wanted to reach for him right then, and kiss him silly until he got the message that she wanted him to make love to her. The very thought brought heat to her cheeks. It had never been her style to pursue a man she liked. Then again, she’d never before felt she
had
to.

She definitely needed to get her mind off kissing and back on something safe and dull, like computers. “Is it hard?”

Miles cleared his throat. “Is what hard?”

“To learn?” She took another bite of apple.

“Oh. No, it’s not, uh, difficult.” His hesitation made her realize the double entendre of her simple question. Immediately her cheeks burned. “Come on,” he invited, turning, giving her a moment to com-pose herself as she followed him into her office.

Sasha stopped short in front of her desk. “Good grief! You’ve been busy. There must be a ream of faxes here.”

“Close. Eleanor faxed my mail, and I’ve gotten some faxes from business associates.”

“Anything from the investigator?”

Miles sighed. “Not yet. But I’m hoping he’ll turn up something that rings a bell. Okay, sit here and type what I tell you.”

“I thought you were going to show me,” Sasha said as she sat in the new gray tweed typing chair she’d never seen before. Miles must have gotten it when he bought the other gizmos for the computer. It was much more comfortable than the antique leather armchair she used.

“Hands-on works better,” he assured her in that intimate, low voice of his, and her cheeks went hot again. She resisted the temptation to tell him she’d been thinking exactly that only a moment ago.

Trying to ignore the scent, the sound, the feel of him so close behind her, Sasha typed as Miles instructed her. She felt all thumbs, but he was patient. It didn’t take long before her computer was di-aling some distant number. The machine made an awful screeching noise, then flashed “CONNECT” on the screen. Within a few minutes she was much more comfortable about following Miles’s directions around the bulletin board’s menu. When the little blue box on the screen announced that her first file transfer was completed, she gave a little yelp of pleasure.

“This is fun. Now what?”

“Now we download another file.” Sasha could tell Miles was smiling by his voice, and didn’t dare look up at him. That would be too intimate, too tempting.

Miles talked her through the steps again. When the computer took over, she considered the files he was requesting from the bulletin board. “These are Canadian businesses you’re getting financial reports on.”

“Yeah. I started reading some of the Canadian business papers just to keep busy. It seems that a lot of good, small businesses are having trouble finding Canadian investors to keep them going. They’re looking for U.S. angels with money to invest. I saw a couple of companies that interested me, so I’m checking them out before I approach anyone.”

“Oh.” The little box flashed that this transfer was now completed. “This is amazing! What else can this thing do?” Without thinking of the possible consequences, she tipped her head to look up at him.

Miles smiled, apparently enjoying her enthusiasm over his technological toy, but her heart did a quick flip over the look in his golden eyes. “You can type messages back and forth to another computer,” he told her, bringing her back to reality. His touch on her shoulder was light as a feather, but she felt it over every inch of her body. “Want to try?”

Her pulse surged. “Try what?”

He gave her a half smile. “Calling Eleanor. Her computer stays on all the time. It will beep to let her know she has a call coming in.”

Still trembling inside from that light touch, Sasha fumbled her first attempt to type Eleanor’s phone number. Finally the screen flashed “RING,” twice, then “CONNECT,” and the words “Hello, Miles,” marched across the screen.

Sasha typed back, “Hi, Eleanor, it’s Sasha Reiss.”

“Well, hi, Doc! It’s about time!” Eleanor typed back. “How is Miles really doing?”

Miles leaned over her and his big body seemed to engulf her. He typed, “Miles is fine, damn it,” his fingers flying over the keys. “I’m going to upload some files. I want you to set up the usual feasibility studies.”

“Gotcha. Be nice to Sasha. She must be a saint to put up with you.”

Miles typed, “Were you always this disrespectful?”

“While the cat’s away, etc.,” Eleanor typed back. Sasha laughed at Miles’s disgruntled expression. “Anything else, or can I get back to my TV program?”

“Over and out.” Miles pressed a couple of other keys and the screen flashed the box again.

“That was fun, but you better take over the important stuff,” Sasha said. “I’d hate to do something wrong.” The truth was, she didn’t know how long she could maintain her sense of propriety with Miles practically surrounding her as he stood behind her.

“That’s okay. It gets routine after a while.”

“Mind if I hang around and work on this week’s bills?”

“It’s your office, remember?” he said with a grin she couldn’t resist answering with one of her own.

Just then her fax machine gave its earsplitting screech and began cranking out pages. Miles reached for the cover page. Sasha watched a frown form on his handsome face as he read it, then picked up the other two pages that came out of the machine, his frown deepening as he read.

Impulsively she put her hand on his arm. “Miles, what is it?”

He looked at her hand, then at her face, his expression clearing a little. “A message from my investigator.”

“Bad news?”

“Not really any news. He’s confirming my birth certificate, a couple of dead ends, and what he’s going to do next.”

“What is he looking for?”

“Who my parents were—or are, if they’re still alive. Brothers or sisters. Schools. People I knew. I’ve gotten a couple of flashes about being with other kids, but nothing specific enough to identify people or location. If I have siblings, who are they? Where are they? Could they be in my address book and I don’t know because I can’t remember? Or am I the kind of man who burns his bridges? I hate not knowing.”

“What if you don’t like what you learn?”

Miles shrugged, then covered Sasha’s hand with his, pressing it to his arm. The simple gesture touched her deeply. “I already don’t like some of what I’ve remembered. I need to know how bad I really was.”

“Why? If you were truly a ruthless, cold, selfish person, what good does knowing do you? Right now I see you as a decent, honorable man, a compassionate and generous man. Would a cold, ruthless man put his life on hold until a couple of abused kids he doesn’t even know can be rescued? I don’t think so, Miles.”

The bleak expression in his eyes nearly broke her heart. “I don’t know what good it will do me to know if I was a bastard, but I believe I have to know before I can decide what to do with the rest of my life.” Sasha opened her mouth to protest, but he pressed his forefinger to her lips, silencing her. “We aren’t ever going to agree on this, so let’s agree to disagree. Okay?”

The smile Miles gave her could have tempted an angel to sin, and Sasha was far from angelic. She was so close that she could see the black flecks in his golden eyes. She could feel the heat of his body. Her voice refused to work. Instead, she nodded her agreement.

“Don’t look at me like that, Sasha,” he ordered gruffly, “or I’ll forget all about that decency and honor you think I have.”

Her pulse raced at his tempting warning. She almost closed the distance between his mouth and hers. The only thing that held her back was the realization that this was the first time she’d wanted to give her heart to a man, and the first time she’d felt the need to guard her heart at the same time.

“Right,” she whispered, pulling back. She stood and cleared her throat. “I’m going to clean up. I’ll do my bills later, when you don’t need the computer.”

* * *

As soon as Miles was certain Sasha had gone upstairs, he opened the file containing his personal calendar and address book. He had already listed several women’s names recurring over the past five years. He’d tracked the times he’d spent with each of them and discovered that no relationship had lasted longer than six months.

Then he looked up each name in the address-book files. That software had been designed for storing important details about each person listed. He had filed away facts such as birthdays, employment, pre-ferred types of entertainment, favorite restaurants, favorite flowers, even habitual perfumes. As he scanned through the data, he confirmed his earlier memory. Every one of the women he’d dated had a profession that kept her traveling, making commitment difficult. Several were fashion models, a couple were actresses and a couple more were singers and recording artists. Once again he combed through his entire personal address book, but didn’t find a single woman listed who had a normal office career that kept her in one place.

More than a little disgusted with this revealing discovery, Miles got up and poured himself a few fingers of the single malt Scotch whiskey he’d bought at the duty-free store and which had miraculously survived the car wreck. The smoky-smooth liquid slid down his throat and landed in the pit of his stomach with a cold fire. Then he went back to the desk and looked up the number of the last woman whose name appeared regularly in his calendar.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he picked up the phone and dialed. He was about to face his past head-on, and his gut told him he wasn’t going to like it.

* * *

Sasha came out of the kitchen to find Miles lighting a fire in the living room fireplace. He crouched on the hearth, with the light of the flames flickering across the planes and angles of his face. His jeans showed the power of his leg muscles, bunched and ready to spring. With his black T-shirt stretched over his broad back and wide shoulders, he looked primal, dangerous and very, very sexy.

Perching on the arm of the chesterfield, she asked, “Do you think you were a Boy Scout?” The question earned a dismissive snort. “Well, you do know how to light a fire,” she added, unable to resist the little double entendre.

The long look Miles gave her then sent shivers of awareness over her skin. “Maybe I was an arsonist,” he countered.

She smiled into his eyes, hoping that his earlier dark mood had lifted. “Maybe you still are.”

He stood abruptly. Towering over her, he scowled. “I’m going to get a book.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” she answered his retreating back, determined to be cheerfully persistent about breaking through this new layer of wall between them.

Sasha fetched the novel she’d been reading from her office, pausing to look briefly at her calendar for the next week. When she returned to the living room, Miles was already sitting on the chesterfield, as far into the corner as possible for such a big man. A Tom Clancy novel lay open on his knee. He barely looked up when she sat at the other end of the chesterfield, but she could feel his tension as if she were touching him. After a few minutes of trying to concentrate on her book, Sasha couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Miles, is something bothering you? Something new? I heard you make a couple of phone calls before, and you’ve been in a strange mood since before dinner.”

He spoke without looking away from his book. “Nothing new is bothering me, Sasha.”

“But you seemed so optimistic before, when we were playing with the computer. I mean, you were looking into business deals and joking with Eleanor and—”

“Drop it, Sasha.”

“Sometimes the only way to heal something is to keep probing until it’s clean.”

His book hit the floor with an impressive smack. From the kitchen Copper woofed a soft warning at the noise. Miles shifted sideways on the cushion and glared. She faced him and gazed back, keeping her expression neutral.

“Will you stop thinking of me as a damn injured horse?” Miles barked.

“I don’t think of you as any kind of horse, Miles. Believe me, I know you’re a man.”

“Fine. So cut me some slack. I’m dealing with this on my own.”

Common sense told her to respect his request, but Sasha’s instincts as a healer, and as a woman, prompted her to persist. She figured she could handle the consequences. “Dealing with what?”