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Despite his tale that they were engaged, she couldn’t blame Noah for the affair they’d had, since she’d been the one to allow her own suppressed needs and desires to blossom and take flight. She’d tempted and teased him, instigating those first few erotic encounters and ultimately seducing him into making love to her.
She’d just had no idea how intimately involved her heart, body and soul would become with Noah—in a way she’d never given to another man. And while she harbored no regrets for loving him, neither did she expect him to make her promises of forever. As she now
remembered, he’d been a confirmed bachelor before her memory loss, a man who enjoyed his freedom and carefree, uncomplicated lifestyle.
And she was a woman who’d never let a man as close as she’d allowed Noah, for fear of losing her sense of self, as she almost had with Chad. The amnesia had loosened her inhibitions and left her much too vulnerable to love. To Noah.
She swiped at the moisture beneath her eyes and on her cheeks and shored up her resolve. With her memory back and the crisis of being stalked over, it was time for her to move on and start out fresh—no matter how much she dreaded a life without Noah.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The moment Noah pulled into his driveway and saw a patrol car and ambulance parked in front of his house, fear nearly strangled him. He jumped out of his vehicle and ran.
The broken window next to the front door and the shards of glass crunching beneath his sneakered feet as he bolted into the foyer sickened him, adding to his anxiety and dread that Chad had finally gotten to Natalie.
In his living room, he came across the paramedics strapping Chad to a cot, and Noah’s stomach lurched when he caught sight of the blood on the other man’s face, and his lifeless form. His gaze frantically swept the general area for Natalie, and his chest tightened with apprehension when he didn’t find her.
Where in the hell was she? Had they already taken her away in a separate ambulance? Or, God forbid, had she been fatally hurt?
Desperate to know something before he went insane with worry, he grabbed the arm of a passing EMT, and the young man looked up at him in startled surprise. Now that Noah had the technician’s attention, he released him.
“Where’s the woman?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
The man hooked a finger toward the adjoining room. “She’s in the kitchen with the police.”
“Thank you,” he muttered, and strode into the kitchen, instantly finding her sitting at the table in the corner nook with two police officers taking her statement. Relief at seeing her alive mingled with a stabbing pain in the vicinity of Noah’s heart as he took in her disheveled hair, puffy eyes, and the dried tears streaking her cheeks. Her shirt was torn, and she was holding it together with one hand.
Guilt swamped him, making him weak in the knees. She’d been attacked, and he hadn’t been there to protect her, even though he’d set the house alarm. The realization hit him like a swift punch to his gut. He knew what Chad was capable of and had sworn to keep Natalie safe, yet he’d left her alone and vulnerable to the other man.
Would she ever forgive him for being so careless with her life?
Natalie glanced beyond the police officers in front of her, her eyes widening when she saw him standing there. Both men followed her line of vision, and perceiving Noah as a threat, they placed a hand on their holstered weapons and narrowed their shrewd gazes on him.
“Who are you?” one of the blue-uniformed men asked.
Noah raised his hands, making sure that the officers saw that he was carrying a revolver beneath his untucked shirt so it didn’t come as a surprise to them later. “I’m the owner of the house, and Natalie is my fiancée.”
“Are you licensed to carry a concealed weapon?” the other officer demanded.
“Yes, sir.” Very slowly, Noah withdrew his wallet, showing the men his identification and his PI badge. “Can I have a few moments alone with her, please?”
Still skeptical, one of the officers asked Natalie, “Do you know him, ma’am?”
She nodded jerkily, apparently still in shock from all that had happened. “Yes, I do. I’ll be fine with him.”
As soon as the two men exited the kitchen, Noah pulled Natalie up from the chair and wrapped her in his arms. He felt the steady beat of her heart against his chest and absorbed the warmth of her body, the scent of her skin. Then he pulled back and searched her face, needing confirmation that she was unharmed, despite the harrowing way things looked.
“Did Chad hurt you in any way?” he asked, his muscles tensing at the possibility.
“Mostly, he just scared me,” she said softly, and managed a slight smile, though her body language was too guarded with him compared to her open, candid personality of the past week.
She sat back down and smoothed her tousled hair away from her face. “Did you happen to get a look at Chad?” she asked, a teasing inflection in her tone. “He’s in worse shape than I am.”
He heard the pride in her voice, that she’d fought Chad and won the battle. But where did that leave them? The emotional distance he felt growing between them frustrated Noah, and he hoped her reserve was because of the recent trauma she’d suffered, and not because she was withdrawing from him.
“Yeah, I saw Chad.” He took the chair next to hers. Desperate for some kind of connection to her, he reached for her hand and pressed it between his palms. “Can you tell me what happened?” He needed to know what she’d gone through, if she was truly all right—mentally, emotionally, and physically.
She inhaled a deep breath, but didn’t back down from reliving the nightmare she’d just endured. “He broke in right after you left and tried to attack me,” she began, and filled him in on all the details, right up to the point where Chad had pinned her to the living room floor with the intention of raping her. “When I saw your bronze statue on the coffee table, I knew it was my last chance, so I used it to knock him out cold.”
