The Way You Make Me Feel Page 4

  The slight dark-skinned lawyer bowed and Stevie nodded. He thought that if she remembered him, it would be with hatred after the hard time he’d given her with the divorce.

  “And my bodyguard, the best, Nip Riley—called Nip because he never passes up a nip.” He laughed at his joke and the hulking cocoa-tan man nodded.

  “If we could trouble you for a drink, I’d make it worth your while,” Jake said to Nick.

  “Sure, we can do that,” Nick answered smoothly. He didn’t like the way Stevie looked so miserable since the four had come in. They stated their preferences and Nick went to mix the drinks.

  Jake looked at Stevie and grinned without sympathy. “Honi here tells me you’ve gone and lost your memory. Now what’d you go and do that for?”

  Damien cleared his throat. “Don’t tease her, McGowan. She’s in no shape to be teased. Loss of memory is no funny thing.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Hell, at some point in every day I wish I could lose mine. I don’t like remembering, for instance, the way Stevie cut me loose and how much of my money she took me for.”

  Stevie looked indignant. Damien reached over and pressed her hand causing Jake to ask, “You taking her under your wing and under your roof, man? I’ll never forget the good times Stevie and I had making out at first. You remember, babe?”

  Stevie drew herself up, and said haughtily, “I remember nothing about you, Mr. McGowan, and I wouldn’t want to remember if I did.”

  Jake roared with laughter. “Always the feisty broad—in and out of bed.”

  “That’s enough, Jake,” Damien commanded. “If you have no compassion, at least have good manners.”

  Jake stroked his beard and his expression was lecherous. “I never forget Stevie’s kind of woman, and since you’ve got her, neither will you.”

  Stevie looked at Damien. “I want to go now,” she said softly.

  “And I can understand why,” Jessi said bitterly. “Shame on you, Jake McGowan.”

  Jake leaned back, laughing. “What’d I do? What’d I say? I don’t pretend to be Mr. Sophisticate like Steele here. I’m a rough diamond. That’s why I’m a record mogul in R&B. It’s not a field for pansies.”

  “Let’s go, Stevie,” Damien said. He barely nodded at Honi who had said nothing else, but who was still giving Damien provocative looks. He was worried about Stevie; she looked so still, so numb. “See you Nick, Jessi,” he said as Nick brought the drinks on a tray

  “You’re leaving so soon?” Nick asked as an annoyed Jessi looked on.

  Jessi stood up and hugged Stevie fiercely. “Now I’m coming over to Damien’s sometime tomorrow so we can talk alone, or he can bring you here and we’ll talk in my office. I’ll help you to remember. Meantime, I’m going to call everywhere Bretta might have gone.”

  Tears stood in Jessi’s eyes as she gripped Stevie’s hand. “May God go with you, my love” was all she could say.

  Jake stared at Stevie and Damien as they walked out and his eyes were cold as he looked at his lawyer. “I’ll get her back,” he declared, “one way or the other.” The lawyer only shrugged.

  Out on the highway, Damien patted Stevie’s knee lightly, asking, “You okay?”

  “I’m—fine.”

  “You must be hungry. I know I am.”

  “A little.”

  “Would you like another hot dog?”

  She looked at him, smiling. “I’d much rather have a half smoke.”

  Damien laughed. “A real teenager’s appetite. I know a place where they make great ones and there’s a park nearby. We can sit there and eat them.”

  He was pleased that she didn’t seem too upset any longer, and reflected that as long as she was alone with him she seemed to feel safe and happy.

  He pulled into a parking space in front of a quaint building where they got the half smokes with everything and Stevie’s mouth watered. In a nearby park that held few people, they sat on a bench and devoured the half smokes and drank giant sodas. After a minute, Damien patted his belly and turned to her saying, “I want to be really good to you because you were really good to me.”

  Surprised, she looked at him. “When?”

  “Too bad you don’t remember because you’d be proud of yourself.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Saved my life. Listen, I was drowning in my pain when Honi left me and married someone else with no warning. We were going to get married that June and in May she went on a modeling shoot on this little Caribbean island. She met the bachelor prime minister and a week later she told me they were getting married. Said he just swept her off her feet. He gave her a Rolls Royce and made her his first lady.”

  He paused a minute. “Honi came back in tears, declaring that she had found she loved only me, a fact I doubted. Later, her husband divorced her on grounds that she refused to bear him a child, just as she had refused me. She not only betrayed me, she lied,” he finished grimly. His voice was raw with pain. Didn’t that mean he still loved her?

  “Oh my God, you had to be shattered.” She reached over and pressed his hand, and her touch sent waves of hunger through him.

  “I was in shreds. Went through all the bad stuff, boozing, chasing women, too little sleep. I looked like hell and felt like hell. I should have gone home to Minden, Maryland, but I couldn’t let my family see me like that. You had always been kind, so I went by your house one night, knowing you were getting a divorce and misery loves company.”

  He stopped for a moment then and touched her face. “You were my savior, Stevie. You took me in, tucked me in, made me stay the night and I’ve never had so much coffee in my life. You fed me and you kept me there for a few weeks while I dried out. And you talked to me about God and what it takes to make a life and how we go on no matter what. I gradually came to know how close I had been to killing myself, and I knew you were right. I had a life beyond Honi and damn it, I was going to go on. You saved me, Stevie, and I am forever in your debt.”

  Stevie looked at him. “I did all that?”

  “Sure did.”

  “You’re worth it and I’m glad.”

  They stayed in the park talking for almost two hours, then went home. In his big music room, they inspected his fifteen guitars, six of them made by the famed English guitar maker, Tony Zemaitis. The guitars represented a small fortune. She reflected that her collection seen that day paled by comparison.

  She picked up one of the Zemaitis guitars and stroked it. It had a shining pearl front and was truly exquisite. “My Zemaitises are so plain, just maple and a metal front,” she complained.

  He laughed. “No Zemaitis is plain. Any guitarist would kill to get the simplest one. The pearlies—that’s what the pearl fronts are called—are probably the most expensive…”

  “And you’ve got six.”

  “Yeah. Money’s made to enjoy. Would you like to do some duets with me?”

  “Could we do it later? I’m a little tired now and I want to think about Jessi and Nick’s children, Rip and Mia. I didn’t remember them, but I want to remember. I like you all so much.”

  “I’m special, I hope.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re very special. Thank you for everything. It’s as if I stepped from one life to another in one day. In a couple of hours I will have been with you one magic day.”

  She stood close to him and he kissed her temple lightly. She had a lovely natural perfume and he would have liked to hold her, inhale her fragrance, but she said, “I’ll go up now.”

  “I put your bags in your room. Why don’t you take a nap before dinner? We eat around seven.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Upstairs in Damien’s bedroom, Stevie stripped to her slip and lay down. The new underwear was fabulous and she stroked it. The new watermelon-colored robe lay on the bed. She would unpack her bags later. She had put the photos of Rip and Mia beside her pillow and she studied them, closing her eyes to envision past scenes, but none came. Jessi had said Rip would be disappointed that she
didn’t remember him, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. Damien had said she had no children, but she had these two children of friends and her memory just had to do its work.

  But she found trying to remember exhausting, so she thought about the past night and day. How long had it been since any man had held her, kissed her, gone into her body? Damien had said she was divorced for six months before she went away. She’d stayed away a year and been back six months. Had she dated during that time? He hadn’t said. Now she only knew she was hungry—no, ravenous—and Damien made that hunger even deeper.

  She wrestled again with her memory and some things came clear, but nothing she really cared about. She fell asleep, still trying and dreamed of a picnic where she frolicked with a man and a woman, a gangling teenaged boy and a baby girl. They were on the sand at the edge of the water and they were all wet. A warm sun was shining. “Hey, Dad,” the boy had challenged, “a game of tag?”

  “I’ll show you tag,” the father said as the boy touched him and went racing. The woman looked at her and smiled, handed her the baby. “Here, hold her. You’ll be holding one of your own one day.”

  Stevie had taken the baby and held the cotton-soft body to her bosom, wondering if she would ever hold her own child. On coming barely awake, she knew these people, knew them as certainly as she had ever known anyone. They were Nick and Jessi, Rip and Mia and she felt unbounded joy. It was a recent happening. That much she remembered, but she had so far to go.

  Someone was knocking. She quickly sat up, pulled on the robe and went to the door where Damien stood.

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. Hey, you look so happy!”

  She was bursting with glee as she told him, “I remembered! Oh, Damien! I dreamed a long dream and I remembered Jessi and Nick and their two kids. That’s a start.” She couldn’t stop herself from hugging him then, and he thought she fitted into his arms as though she belonged there. But Damien thought he, too, had had it with love, and he wasn’t sure he would ever love again.

  Stevie had come to him looking like a half-drowned waif the night before. Beautiful women had always been his meat. Beautiful, Stevie wasn’t. Alluring? Maybe. Love wasn’t on his menu anymore. Then why was his heart slamming against his ribs like a loose board on a shack whipped by a hurricane? He owed her, that was it. But he gently closed the door and his arms tightened around her. He turned her so that she was against the door and he pressed her hard against that door.

  Her body melded into his as wild thrills shot through them both. His erection was hard against her and she held her breath as he kissed her very softly at first, then with increasing passion. His tongue went into the warm, sweet hollows of her mouth and his hot mouth grew steadily more savage with hunger and with need. He groaned her name aloud. His thumb pad kneaded her jawline, then he traced her lips as he pulled his mouth away.

  She was half fainting and totally yielding, and he thought he knew what her body would be like crushed against his aching flesh, his hardness pressing into the softness of her. He thought he knew damned well it was more than sex he felt, but it wasn’t love. It would be a long time before he could let himself love again, if ever.

  Then he was kissing her again and she clung to him as if she were drowning and only he could save her. Her body flamed with desire, and passion unlike any she had ever known swept through her, filled her very soul. She stroked his biceps feverishly, feeling the muscles ripple and his hard abs and pecs against her.

  He felt all the old feelings, plus new desires, new hungers that gripped him. He was going sky-high with wanting her and it had never hit him quite like this before.

  Her body was ripe—like luscious sweet summer fruit—and she set his senses reeling. Would she let him into her body if he pressed her hard enough? He was nearly blind with wanting her, but she had been traumatized and no way was he going to take advantage of her. So he drew back, groaning inside.

  He kissed one corner of her mouth. “You pack quite a wallop, lady,” he told her.

  She was breathless, her heart drumming. “Did you ever kiss me before?”

  He laughed then. “No. If I had, I’d have been more prepared for this. You’re sweet, Stevie. Damned sweet. I wish I’d fallen in love with you, not Honi.”

  So he still loved Honi, Stevie thought. So much for her pipe dreams of Damien. She wanted him to keep holding her and it was painful to have him pull away.

  “It’s just as well,” she said sadly. “If Jake McGowan was my husband, I can’t trust myself to know what’s best for me.”

  “You were young when you married, and the way Jake pursued you was the talk of Nashville.”

  “Is he as bad as he seems?”

  Damien smiled. “I’d say he’s worse, but then I don’t like the way he treated you.”

  “Still does. The things he said at the table today were totally unnecessary.”

  “Yeah. Enough about Jake. You and I have things to talk about. You’re here for a while, so we’ll be together.”

  “Sure. A song keeps coming into my head. Just the first two verses. I want you to tell me what you think. I might need your help.”

  “You used to ask me about your songs.”

  And for the second time that day, what he said was a trigger. She saw herself talking earnestly with Damien in the past, felt his interest. Now she told him about that.

  “You’re certain,” he said, as another kind of excitement raced through him. “It’s so soon.”

  “Dr. Winslow said it could all come back fast or slow. Yes, I’m certain.”

  He hugged her again, but lightly. He didn’t want to be engulfed in flames again. He would kiss her again, he knew, and he couldn’t help still wanting her now. She had brought romance and something like love into his life again with her softness and her tender ways. Trouble was he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go that route again.

  He stretched out on the luxurious bed and tamped out a cigarette in the big ashtray beside him. He really ought to stop smoking in bed, he thought, but he liked living dangerously. Then he smiled. So the bitch had lost her memory. Lady Luck couldn’t have been kinder.

  He’d thought it would be easy to kill her. She walked alone. But she was surrounded by people these days. Damien never seemed to let her out of his sight. The sheriff’s men patrolled the area around Damien’s house. He had to be careful because prison was not right for him. Right after Bretta’s death he bought the gun and the special silencer. Bretta. Another big mouth.

  One thing was for certain, Stevie Simms knew too much. She’d seen him kill Bretta and she had to die. He should have taken the chance and chased her down in the woods that night.

  He had a master plan. Haunt her with little things. Threatening phone calls, faxes, notes. Not many, but enough to keep her on notice that she was in his crosshairs. He felt absolutely certain that the time would come when she was alone and available for death and he intended to be right there. It had to be soon because lost memories returned and when hers did, she’d babble and his goose would be cooked. He grinned at the thought of Stevie lying dead.

  Chapter 4

  “Now who could that be visiting so early?” Cina wondered aloud as she and Ben moved about the kitchen while Stevie and Damien sat just finishing breakfast. She went out and came back moments later escorting Detective Ralph Rollins of the Sheriff’s Department. A tall, red-faced man with bright blue eyes, stooped shoulders and a worn face, the detective was somber this morning.

  “Morning, folks,” he greeted them.

  “Pull up a chair and have a bite of breakfast. You look hungry to me,” Damien told him. “Cina made great hash browns and country sausage this morning.”

  The detective thought for a moment. “Yes, I think I will, but I’ve got a lot of talking to do with you. I like my coffee black.” He looked at Stevie keenly. “First, ma’am, I want to offer my sympathy for your memory loss. Folks say somebody beat you up. I’ll want to hear all about that.”

>   Stevie shook her head. “Things do get twisted when they’re passed around. I don’t remember what happened, but I think I just fell. At least I came to lying beside a big stone in the woods. But I was very, very frightened. I don’t remember being attacked, but then I don’t remember much anyway.”

  “You look well, so you’re recovering fast and I’m glad. I came by for that and I came to ask you if you’ve seen Ms. Bretta Evans. Her sister’s put in a missing person’s notice on her, so we’re looking. But then, if your memory has gone, you wouldn’t know…”

  That name again, Stevie thought, but by now she was getting used to it and she didn’t flinch. Her mind was going off on a tangent of its own.

  “Jessi said she last saw her Sunday night when she came by the club,” Stevie told him.

  The detective nodded. “We found your car about a half mile from your house. It was parked on a side road. You remember being there?”

  “No.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t, but if you do, please let me know.”

  “I’ll do that.” Bands were tightening around her head.

  Cina set the hot plate of food and coffee before the detective and he began to eat. After a few bites, he said, “Yeah, Ms. Colton told us she’d last seen her sister Sunday night. Said her sister told her she was having trouble with someone but she thought she could handle it.”

  Stevie had gone away from the conversation and her eyes were suddenly glazed. “Bretta likes to get lost sometimes. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

  Both men looked up sharply. “Stevie, do you realize what you just said?” Damien asked.

  “No, what?” When Damien told her, she put her hand over her mouth. Then she said, “I was thinking of something, someone.” Her breath came faster then. “If I said that, I remember at least something about this Bretta.”

  Detective Rollins nodded. “I reckon so. She was your best friend.”

  “So everyone tells me. I’m sorry I don’t remember.”