AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He felt real. Alive. His chest rose and fell with each breath. His heart beat. She saw with her own eyes the way a vein hammered in his neck.
All at once Lesley started to shake. Tears choked her throat and she tried to take in what was happening. Confusion swamped her. After taking months to accept that her husband was dead, she discovered he was very much alive.
“Say something,” she pleaded, fighting back the sobs. “Let me know you’re real.”
He brought her into his arms then, his hold so powerful and tight, he nearly knocked the breath from her lungs. His hands were in her hair as he repeatedly whispered, “I’m alive. Until this moment. Until I touched you, I was dead. I love you, Lesley, with all my heart, with all my being.”
His words confused her even more, but his touch…his touch was familiar and intimate. And welcome, so very welcome.
He kissed her with a hunger that wouldn’t be satisfied with one kiss or a thousand. A hunger a lifetime couldn’t quench. Again and again his mouth claimed hers, cherished her, loved her, using his lips his breath, all that he was.
“How…? Not possible…” she pleaded as she inched her mouth from his. She needed answers. Needed to understand how it was possible for him to have stayed away from her all these months and allow her to believe he was dead.
Zane led her back into the house, his steps slow and measured. Mrs. Applegate stood in the kitchen, weeping with happiness.
“He took ten years off my life, he did, showing up this way,” she announced to Lesley.
Lesley’s own shock hadn’t been any less dramatic. But if that was the price, then Lesley gladly surrendered each one of those years for the opportunity to have her husband back.
“How is it possible?” she asked again, needing answers, afraid to believe until she had them.
Zane led her into the library and lowered her into the leather wingback chair. He sat on the ottoman in front of her and reached for her hands, gripping them in his own, his hold painfully tight. Lesley didn’t care; she needed the pain to reinforce that this was really happening.
“I arranged to meet Schuyler in the desert,” he began, his face grim and tight with the memory. “Schuyler was as intent on killing me as I was in making sure he went straight to hell.”
Lesley bit her lower lip, which trembled uncontrollably. “He’s—dead?”
“Yes. I shot him, and saw the hate fill his eyes before he died. I heard him curse me as he screamed in pain. I wasn’t the only one who wished him dead, and some of my friends have their own way of dealing with the bodies of their enemies.
“I made one mistake,” Zane whispered, and kissed her fingers. “Schuyler had made a contingency to kill me if I succeeded in killing him first. He planted a bomb.”
Lesley gasped. Not another explosion. Zane had barely survived the first one.
“The world caved in on me and that was all I knew until I woke in a French hospital.”
“French?”
“I have no recollection of how I got there, and had no clue who I was or where I was when I woke. It’s taken me six months to regain my memory.”
“But you died,” she insisted, remembering the night his spirit had come to her, had filled their bedroom and told her goodbye. “I felt it. I woke up and you were there.”
His clear dark eyes held hers, unable to conceal his shock. “That was real?” He shook his head as though he wasn’t sure this was possible. “When I first felt the blast I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to make it. That escape now would be impossible. All I could think about was you and the baby.”
“You came to me.”
“Yes. I don’t know how it is possible, but I remember those few, precious moments with you. And I remember the pain, fighting it as best I could, choosing the physical agony over the summons of the intense white light.
“Week after week I lay in the hospital, more dead than alive. All I knew was that it was important that I live. Sometimes I would dream of a woman’s love, but those dreams were veiled and I woke frustrated with my inability to remember.”
“Your face?” She traced her fingertips down his smooth skin.
“The doctors seemed to think repairing my face would jolt my memory. It didn’t work.”
She kissed the edge of his mouth and braced her forehead against his. “You’re…beautiful.” She could find no other word to describe the difference. She’d always guessed that he’d been an attractive man, but nothing like this. He was the epitome of every woman’s dream.
“Not as beautiful as you are, pregnant with our child.” He planted his hands on her swollen abdomen, lifted her top and kissed her bare belly.
“Six months, Zane.” She wept with frustration. “You’ve been gone six months.”
