Remember When...

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Murphy was the last one still present. Hanging in the door with one hand on the handle and the other on the frame, he made eye contact with his brother. “We’ll be right out here too, bro.”

He glanced at her before he went out.

Ginger was alone with Shane. Her husband, apparently. Her palms began to sweat, stealing all the moisture from her mouth it seemed because it was dry as a bone all of a sudden.

“I won’t bite,” Shane said. She took her time to lift her chin. “You were never into that.”

When his hand rose as though he intended to touch her face, she backed away, hit by another surge of worry. “I… I don’t like to be touched.”

Not only did he stop his advance, but he bobbed his head and put his hands in his pockets.

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you need, Bit.” His smile slid upward. “I’m just grateful to see you again… You look beautiful.”

Well it was her wedding day, people were supposed to say that to her. Except as she peered into him, she sensed he was looking at something other than the dress or her figure.

“Tell me more about how you found me.”

He swallowed, getting more business-like. “As Owen said, we had a program running continuously. It picked up stories about women who had unusual pasts, who’d been in accidents or been found in unusual circumstances. Amnesia was an idea floated by one of the doctors we had on the case, so the program flagged those stories too. As you can imagine, we would get several hits a day. Not too many that we couldn’t eyeball them… Then we got the story of your wedding, it was run in a local paper. A business tycoon like Calvin, his wedding was big news around here.”

She remembered the local media interviewing Calvin. She’d been around but hadn’t said much. It was hard to answer questions when your life’s narrative was filled with blanks.

Instead of being agreeable, she kept her guard up, remembering what Boyd had said. “How do we know you are who you say you are?”

There was one obvious way she could find out but wasn’t ready to go that route yet.

“Damn,” he said, but was smiling like he enjoyed this. “You never did take people at face value… For one thing, Owen will submit to a sibling DNA test. Believe me or not, he is your brother.” It would be helpful to find out if Owen was indeed her brother, but it wouldn’t prove Shane was her husband. “Why would I lie?”

He must have sensed she didn’t buy it yet.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I… this is just so… unusual.”

He gestured to the couch. “Why don’t we sit down and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“Everything?” she asked.

The swish of her gown as she turned toward the couch reminded her what she was wearing. A pointless garment given she wasn’t going to get married and one she couldn’t sit in. The dress even stifled her breathing, which was why she pressed her hands to her abdomen, trying to help her taxed lungs.

Shane was on his way to sit. “I’m an open book.”

“Do you mind if I get changed?”

He shook his head after sitting on the couch and stretching his arms along the back of it. “Go right ahead.”

The clothes she’d worn that morning were behind the screen to her left. Back there she’d be able to change concealed from his view. Except she couldn’t get out of the dress alone. Awkward as it was to ask a stranger to undress her, there weren’t any other options. If she called someone else in, she’d never get the chance to vet this man.

Going toward him, she turned her back and pointed to the lace at her lower back. “Can you unlace me, please?”

Looking over her shoulder, she expected him to be shocked, but he wasn’t.

One corner of his mouth curled upward. “Sure,” he said and sat up to pull the lace at the bottom. “I’ll even do it without touching you… I expect points for that.”

But he was touching her, even if there was no skin-to-skin contact. She was asking him to do something intimate and although her heart was pumping, her head was too overwhelmed to read too much into it.

“There’s a hook under the satin and the lace is—”

“I know,” he said. “I took you out of the first one. I remember how it works.”

Oh, right, that made sense if he was her husband. Course, he could be married to any woman. Helping someone remove their wedding dress didn’t prove he’d married her and taken hers off. His gentleness surprised her, she’d have expected such a bold guy to be more ham-fisted, but he was delicate about freeing her.

“Thank you,” she said when the bodice loosened.

“No worries,” he said and sat back again.

Ginger went behind the screen to slip out of it. After tucking the gown back into the dress bag, she bent to retrieve her clothes from the bag put there for her essentials.

“You cut it fine, didn’t you, Mr. Warren?” she asked. “When did you see the article?”

“It was published two days ago but hit our system yesterday. I’ll be honest, Bit, this is further out than we’d expected you to be. You’re a long way from home.”

Home, wherever that was. “Have you never heard of a phone?”

“The picture in the article was small, although we were sure it was you, we weren’t a hundred percent. And I know how pissed I’d have been if someone stopped my wedding day on a whim. Anyway, Calvin isn’t an easy guy to get on the phone and you’re not listed.”

“I live at the house with him and his mother, Diane,” she called out, zipping her strapless dress beneath her arm. “You’re right, it’s not listed. I don’t have a cell phone… who would call it?”

Coming around the screen, she tucked a ringlet behind her ear. When he saw her, he sat up, leaning forward with a look on his face that suggested he’d forgotten how to breathe.

“Damn, baby…”

So the simple short dress did more for him than the wedding dress? When she glanced down to try figuring out what got him so interested, she noticed the top of her garter belts peeking from beneath it. There she was trying to be more conservative and have a normal conversation and she’d just asked him to undress her then given him a glimpse of her lingerie.

Instead of being embarrassed, she laughed and relaxed further when he joined in. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You’re making it hard for me to keep my promise.”

“Your promise?” she asked, wondering if he’d made some promise to her while they were together.

“About keeping my c**k in my pants.”

“Oh,” she said and suddenly wasn’t so amused anymore. “I’m not… I’m not comfortable talking about sex.”

He got serious as he sat back. “Okay, but I figure you didn’t ask to talk to me alone so we could discuss your phone number.”

Shaking her head, she went over to join him on the couch. Luckily, it was long enough that she didn’t have to sit too near to him.

“This is awkward,” she whispered.

“Not awkward,” he said and moved closer. When she tensed, he stopped and held up his hands in apology. “Bit, there’s nothing you can ask me that I won’t answer. I’ll tell you anything it’s in my power to tell you. We don’t have to talk about s*x, but if you want me to prove I am your husband… I can tell you that you have a freckle on your p***y, right at the edge of—”

She held up a quick finger at the same time her chin dropped again. “That’s too much.”

“Okay, you tell me what you want to know… Anything personal, you won’t remember. Physically, I can tell you everything about your body… I can tell you that you make a little squeaking noise when you o****m, is that easier?”

Much as she was mortified, a smile faded onto her lips. Ginger let herself peek up at him though she couldn’t raise her chin. “Do you enjoy making me uncomfortable?”

Leaning in, he lowered his voice. “I don’t mind seeing you blush.”

“I’m not blushing,” she argued, though knew it was a lie.

He held up his thumb and forefinger. “A little… just a tiny bit, Bit.”

As she became more comfortable, her chin began to rise. “You could’ve started with the freckles on my feet.”

“You don’t have freckles on your feet… and that would prove I’ve seen you in strappy shoes.”

“What about my breasts?”

His eyes dropped. Their obvious interest made her teeth seek her lip.

“Sure, we can talk about those,” he said. “They’re perfect… what else is there to say?”

Okay, talking about them wasn’t any easier. Odd but Ginger was more relaxed now that they were pushing boundaries. Although he was interested in her figure, he wasn’t sitting close enough to intimidate or threaten and he wasn’t leering.

They couldn’t make jokes all day. Someone had to keep them on point.

“My doctors told me my memories might come back one day,” she said. “They said I could talk about what I know, but… if anyone from my past came into my life, they said I shouldn’t… that I shouldn’t ask too many questions or hear too many stories. They said there was a risk of false memories.”

He didn’t argue her gear change, just listened. “So you can’t ask questions and I can’t offer information… Doesn’t that make it hard for you to learn about where you came from?”

It was frustrating and confusing and exhausting. Her impulse was to run her hand through her hair so she could find a tendril to curl around her finger. Problem was, her wedding do was up and her hair was drenched in so much spray it was crispy. All she could do was brush her hairline with her fingertips.

“I don’t know the rules here,” she said.

He came an inch closer. “Bit, you and me were never very good at playing by the rules.”

Reaching over, he took a ringlet from behind her ear and laid it over her finger like he knew she’d needed hair to play with.

“Thank you,” she whispered, lost in his gaze.

“Giving you what you need,” he said. “It’s what I’m here for.”

The door opened. Calvin came back in with his mother and the others who’d been outside the room. All of them paused when they saw her and Shane on the couch. Sitting close, his hand was suspended near hers, but there was nothing untoward going on.

“What’s wrong with your faces?” Shane asked, maybe pissed off, his tone was certainly abrupt.

Murphy grinned and Owen leaned in to say something to him.

Calvin marched forward. “You took off your dress?”

Oh, that was why everyone was surprised.

Ginger smiled and stood up, pulling her dress down in an attempt to cover her garter belts. “I changed behind the screen,” she said, pointing at it.

Diane approached behind her son, displeasure all over her expression. “You can’t get out of that dress alone.”

Murphy laughed. “I think you’re safe. We were only out the room for five minutes. s*x between those two always took longer than that.”

“I don’t know,” Owen said, folding his arms. “It’s been sixteen months for him, at least. He probably went off like a rocket.”

The two men laughed.

Embarrassed and terrified, her cheeks were aflame. “I didn’t have s*x,” she said to Calvin, appealing to him as Diane and Boyd glared. “I promise you, I’m sorry I—”

“She’s not on trial,” Shane said. Although he was tense and probably meant well, his coming to her defense didn’t help. “You trust your woman or you don’t.”

“And not to be blunt, but they’re married… he has seen her n***d before. They have been intimate, were intimate for years,” Owen said. “Shane’s clocked more miles on my sister than you have.”

Wasn’t that a lovely analogy? Ginger cringed, but it didn’t matter, no one was looking at her anymore.

“Yes, but she doesn’t remember it,” Diane said. “So it never happened.”

“Is that the rule around here?” Murphy asked. “You don’t remember, it didn’t happen? Is that why you never encouraged her to find out the truth about who she was?”

Everyone started to talk again. There were too many strong opinions in the room; it got overwhelming fast. She didn’t know what to do or how to handle the situation. There were still considerations that she hadn’t even begun to deliberate yet.

Going to Calvin, Ginger took his hand, which calmed him enough to stop arguing with the others. “We can’t stay in the church all day. Did you tell everyone to leave?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And the reception? What should we do about that?”

For once, no one had anything to say.

Someone had to break the silence. “You paid for dinner for two hundred,” Owen eventually said. “I don’t think the staff would mind reducing that to a seven cover, right? We’re not going away. Sitting down to dinner like civilized people seems to be the best course of action. We can make a plan… We don’t want to turn this into a legal battle.”

“Custody over a grown woman,” Diane sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Squeezing Calvin’s hand, Ginger wished she had him alone. He was always more pliable without his mother around. She just had to hope he was focused.

“Please,” Ginger said. “We can’t just forget this happened. Let’s have dinner with them. Dinner can’t hurt.”