Love Lost and Found (10 page)

Felicity peered at the page he’d opened to. It was her diary, her handwriting, the
meeting she’d made with Novotech while Rick was still in hospital. She’d tried to
fit back in, settle down. She really had tried, but nothing at Biogena had made sense.
The manager at Novotech had called her to offer condolences and check that she hadn’t
had a change of heart over their offer. An offer she’d apparently laughed off when
they made it every year.

“It’s my diary.”
Why did he have it?

“Where you’ve scheduled a meeting with our competitors. My competitors. I’m not even
out of a coma and you’re already scouting around for a better offer?” His face was
twisted as he waved the book in front of her, the hurt obvious, the confusion evident
in the lines around his mouth. “I thought you didn’t have many friends because you
didn’t have time. I even thought your objectivity was an asset. Being able to see
through our technical and financial difficulties was always a strong point with you.
But this? I don’t believe you could have, that you would ever—but it’s right there.
In your diary. Your handwriting.”

“I know, but it’s not like that. I—”

“If you wanted out, why didn’t you say so? Why run?” His face was drawn, creased with
hurt. Could she really hurt him that much and not even remember him?

Felicity shook her head. “The meeting with Novotech wasn’t about money, or getting
out of Biogena. Well, maybe a bit about that. It was just me trying to work all this
out. Work out who I was.”

His mouth puckered as if he’d sucked on a lemon. “And you thought the best way to
do that was to have a meeting with your competitors? Did you lose your smarts in the
accident too? My God, Felicity, do you have any idea what you might have given away?
Even accidentally?”

“Enough.” She held up her hand. “I didn’t give anything away because I didn’t go.
I’m not an idiot. I realized I might compromise Biogena, let something slip that I
didn’t even know was related, so I canceled. They were disappointed. But they’re used
to it. I’ve turned down their job offers every year for the last five years, apparently.”

The room was so quiet the harbor’s gentle fluttering sounded huge. Waves crashing
on an empty world. She watched his face flatten and the fire calm in his eyes.

“I didn’t know,” he said finally.

“Of course you didn’t know. Now you do. So if you’ve quite finished, I think we’re
done for the night. I’m going for a walk. No,” she waved him off. “Save it.”

As the suite door slammed shut behind her, Felicity looked down.
Bugger.
A white fluffy robe wasn’t exactly beach-walking attire. “Too bad.” It looked like
a swanky place. Maybe they were used to eccentric crazies stalking the beach at night,
wearing practically nothing.

Outside, the moon spread its silver tongue across the harbor. The world seemed like
a mirror, stars prickling the still surface of the sea, echoes of the palm trees along
the shore looming large in the water. With the hush of night settled on everything,
Felicity let her shoulders drop and exhaled long and low. “What the hell sort of woman
am I?”

Everything Rick had told her painted a picture of a lonely and calculating person.
She knew she was into numbers and science, but she didn’t feel like the stereotypical
bean counter or chemistry nerd who hid from the world and had trouble stringing two
civil sentences together. Mentally flicking through her days on the cruise ship, Felicity
shook her head. She wasn’t that person any more. Onboard the
Pacific Empress
she had friends, colleagues who came to her with their own problems.
Who the hell was I, then?
As always, Felicity dived inward, looking for answers and coming up against the usual
blank, white wall of nothing.

And then there was Rick. Whoever he was, whatever he’d been to her, she’d obviously
meant something to him if he’d asked her to marry him.

But you don’t know what he meant to you.
No, she didn’t. And maybe she owed it to herself to try to find out. She hated to
admit it, but he was right about using the anonymity of the cruise ship to avoid facing
herself. If her memories never came back, she might end up at sea for years. Was that
what she really wanted?

Michaela’s words came back to her again:
Think of it as a do-over.

A do-over, a clean slate. This was supposed to be her second chance at life, and instead
she’d been running the whole time. Running scared from men in case they turned out
to be cheaters and liars like Brendon, running from herself because she didn’t know
where she fitted in.

Rick’s face flickered through her mind again. He definitely knew her, no question,
but he knew the
old
her. What did that make him? Certainly not husband material for her now. But he’d
tracked her down and followed her all the way here to be with her, so she owed it
to herself to see what might happen if she gave them a little time.

She checked the thought, looking for flaws, sharp snags that might cut her and leave
her to bleed out, again.
Not if you’re careful.
Yes. Careful. She would definitely be careful, with herself as much as with Rick
McCarthy. Taking one last deep breath of sweet tropical night air, Felicity turned
and started back toward their suite.

…

Rick rolled over and inhaled a mouthful of spiraling blond hair. His eyes flickered
wider and he stopped breathing a second.
Nope, it’s no apparition.
Felicity was in his bed and—he checked the nightstand—she wasn’t wearing her robe.
Had they…? He rubbed his face. No, no memory of angry make-up sex. Easing the cover
away just a centimeter, he spotted her bikini covering all the softer parts of her
anatomy
. Shame.
But she was in bed with him. This was real progress.

In sleep, the angry frown lines and thinned lips slipped off Felicity’s face. Gone
was the coiled fight in her body. As she lay beside him, lit by the lamp she must
have left on, her hair unrestrained over the pillow and soft from her bath, Felicity
was the epitome of wounded fairy-tale princess. Her cheeks held roses, the light sprinkling
of freckles over her pert nose gave her an air of freshness, and her hair was just
a bundle of golden temptation.
But she’s definitely no princess.
No. This new Felicity was different in more than just her vocabulary and temper.
The way she walked, the way she held herself… There was a softness to her that had
been hidden in the woman he’d known before. It was nice. His chest tightened a little.

He shook his head. He was supposed to be focused. Softness got in the way of business;
emotions clouded judgment and caused you to make mistakes. He leaned over and smoothed
a tendril of hair. Okay, but maybe he could put business aside just for a day or two?

He stood and went downstairs to the bar. There was too much going on in his head to
sleep. When Felicity had stormed out of the room last night, Rick had paced the suite
for a good hour. What if she’d gone for good? Disappeared into the night again? He’d
put his hand to the door to go after her countless times, but dropped it and kept
pacing instead. There was nowhere to run. Even if she managed to find someone with
a boat, she had no money, no means of getting off Vanuatu that he couldn’t track quickly.
She needed to be allowed to come back to him herself.

“Whiskey, straight up, thanks. Make it a double.”

“Tough day in paradise?”

Rick looked at the guy sitting next to him and did a double take. The man looked like
Tom. Spitting image.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.” The guy looked into his drink and Rick realized he’d
been staring.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that you look so much like my brother it’s crazy.”

“Good guy? Handsome? Charming?”

Rick laughed. “All of the above. I’m Rick.”

“Emmett.” The two shook hands.

“So, what brings you to paradise alone?”

“I’m not alone,” Rick said with a frown.

“Oh dear. I smell domestic issues.”

Rick sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.” He looked at Emmett again, properly.
What the hell. “The woman I’m here with, the one upstairs, is my fiancée, but she
doesn’t remember me.”

Emmett put up a hand. “Whoa there. She doesn’t remember you remember you, or she just
doesn’t want to?”

“She’s got amnesia.”

Emmett puffed out his cheeks. “I thought that just happened in the movies.”

“Apparently not.” Rick paused. “Do you work in biotech?”

Emmett laughed. “Hell no. Australian real estate.”

Perfect. “Can I buy you another drink and bore the bejesus out of you?”

“Sure. Not doing anything else. Although it sounds like I should be buying
you
a drink.”

Settled with two more whiskeys and the bartender on call to keep them supplied, Rick
found his shoulders loosening with the drink and the opportunity to talk. Emmett was
a good listener and absorbed the details of the business deal and Rick’s decision
to come after Felicity without any comment.

“Maybe I should have told her who I was up front, but I figured if I went in all guns
blazing, our whole story spilled out in a single conversation, she’d have run in the
opposite direction with no desire to try to work things out. At least this way we
got to spend some time together and I got to know the new her. Not that I realized
there would be a new her.”

“And now that you know there is a new her?”

Rick shrugged. “She fired both barrels at me this evening, and all I wanted to do
was smooth the hurt away. She looked so lost. The old Felicity wouldn’t have let me
see that.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know. I’m not very good at this sort of thing. But when she ran out on
me again—” Rick felt his heart tighten all over again.

“But she came back. She’s upstairs now, you said.”

Rick nodded. “But she’s still skittish. If I pull out the investment paperwork now
with all its detailed requirements for the reallocation of shares, she’s going to
run a mile.”

“You sure?”

Rick checked himself. He wasn’t sure. He’d thought about flagging this whole plan
several times over the last couple of days. But he still needed the investment to
go through. “I think so.”

“Well then, you’ve been off your cruise ship for how long?”

Rick mentally flicked through the numbers. “Two days.”

“So your boat’ll probably be out of the Vanuatu Islands by now. Where does she go
next?”

“Fiji.”

“Gives you two more days. Can you bring your lady around in two days?”

“I guess I have to.” Rick chewed on a fingernail, then pulled his hand away in disgust.
The bone was going to start poking through the top of his finger soon if he wasn’t
careful.

Emmett nodded. “You need a new plan.”

Rick took a swig of his drink and tried to switch on his chemist’s brain. There was
always a range of approaches for solving any particular problem. He just needed to
find the right one for this situation.

Emmett was ahead of him. “First step? Lower her defenses. Best method? Get her back
into your bed.”

Rick laughed at the other man’s grin. “We’re talking about my future wife here.”

“All the more reason to get it sorted then. Second step? Make sure you have rooms
with one bed and no couches for the next two days. It sounds like you need to restore
some trust, and getting her to see you warts and all for a few days should help.”

Rick pictured Felicity, sleeping upstairs. When he’d first considered what losing
five years of his life would feel like, the reality had been a bleak, frightening
place. And she’d been dealing with it all by herself. Still. He had a job to do. Tom’s
work to finish. Damned if he was going to let his business fail because he couldn’t
get his heart sorted. It was too close to the feeling of giving up on the IP that
had been stolen from him all those years ago. “So, what’s the third step?”

“She’s got amnesia, right? What if you find places and situations similar to stuff
you’ve shared together. If she gets a hint of her memory back, you’re sorted, right?
She’ll remember who you are and that you’re her one true whatsit.”

Rick made a quick mental checklist of the dates he and Felicity had shared and smiled.
It was enough. She’d said it herself: all he needed was a glimmer of proof that they’d
been together to gain a little trust from her.

“I think you might be on to something there.”

Emmett’s grin was Cheshire-cat broad. “Here to help. I often find my genius at the
bottom of a bottle of whiskey. Especially when someone else has paid for it.”

“Money well spent. If it works.” It had to work. He needed that paperwork sorted and
he needed Felicity back at his side.
Even with her new attitude?
He shrugged. Maybe especially with that.

Chapter Ten

“Sun’s already risen, and it sure is shining,” he said softly, when Felicity finally
showed signs of waking.

She rolled toward him and Rick couldn’t help himself. He cupped her face and stroked
her cheek with his thumb. She leaned into his hand before opening her eyes.

“Oh. It’s you.”

Well, everything wasn’t about to be nice and shiny right away, was it? She was right
when she said this wasn’t a fairy tale.
“Good morning to you, too. Sleep well?”

He saw her lips move, ready with the retort, but she bit it back.
See, progress already.

“I slept fine. Thank you.”

“Good. Because we have a lot to do today and time waits for no head purser. Or that’s
what they tell me.”

“And who exactly are ‘they’?”

Was that a flicker of a smile?
“You know, the cruise ship fairies.” He shrugged. “I dunno. Anyway, breakfast is
in the other room. We leave in fifteen minutes.”

“What? Hang on. We’re leaving now?” She looked around the room and he caught a glimpse
of regret.
This was good, wasn’t it?
Then he realized what she was looking at: the billowing white curtains, the soft,
enormous bed.
No such thing as fairy tales, remember.
“The
Pacific Empress
is in the middle of the wide blue yonder at the moment. It’s going to take us a bit
of island-hopping to catch up with her. But there will be hotels. No more camping
out, I promise.”

There, that was definitely a smile.

As Felicity stepped onto the jetty in the knee-length yellow sundress he’d had a hotel
staff member get for him from a local store, Rick could hardly take his eyes off her.
She refused the clothes at first, but when he showed her the stretched and torn state
of her uniform, despite the best efforts of the hotel cleaning staff, she agreed to
wear the dress. The underwear she pointedly ignored, though, and the straps of her
striped pink bikini peeped out from the top of the dress.

So far, plan C is on track.

Jumping onto the boat as if she’d been doing it all her life, Felicity took the farthest
seat on the small ferry. Nice try, but two days doesn’t give me long enough to be
that polite. Rick gave her a little space when he sat next to her, but only a little.
Happily, the boat filled up with locals and tourists and one of them shooed Rick along
the bench seat until Felicity was practically tucked up into his side. Just as it
had when he first touched her almost five years ago, the surface of his skin registered
the contact and Rick felt a stirring deep in his blood. She twisted on the bench,
and the length of her thigh met his. Hot. Easy—too much too soon and she’ll run into
the woods before you can say “poison apple.”

With the gentle sway of the boat through the water and the sun on his face, Rick wondered
again whether he would have proposed to this Felicity had he known her. Of course.
He sneaked a look at her from behind his sunglasses. Maybe? She looked the same. Sounded
the same, except for the more florid vocabulary. Her body felt the same. But the other
differences, the way she tasted, the snap in her eye, the sass in her every comment,
it all added up to a hell of a lot more woman than the Felicity he’d known. Nothing
wrong with more woman. Except that this Felicity seemed like someone who’d want the
whole package. The flowers, chocolates, romantic walks on the beach. She’d want the
fairy tale. And he didn’t know if he had fairy tale in him.

The boat caught a particularly large wave and the ocean spray startled Rick out of
his musing.

Felicity said something to him but the noise of the engine combined with the thud
of the ocean under their hull stole the words from her mouth. He waved at his ears
and she leaned in closer. “We’re not going to catch up with the cruise ship by stopping
here.”

“Nope,” he agreed, speaking directly into her ear. “But it’s got one of the largest,
most accessible wreck dives in the world.”

“We’re going diving?”

He nodded and the engine slowed, cutting the noise down almost instantly. “There are
no flights till tomorrow anyway, so I figured it was best we make good use of our
time. And there’s a bunch of World War II fighter planes just under the water over
there.”

Felicity turned to follow his finger and he inhaled her scent. Fruity and fresh. Delicious,
even considering the heat.

This was a woman he could see himself keeping close.

That hadn’t been a problem five months ago. The old Felicity’s eyes hadn’t brimmed
with tears over a petty argument, and he’d never seen her bite her lip when he was
sharp or overly objective about her point of view. Calm and considered, she was the
milk in his tea. This new woman was more like the gin in his tonic.

“Don’t think I’m going to be swayed by a fancy dive trip, Cashypants.”

“Swayed? Who’s trying to sway you? I’m just trying to fill your time productively.
I know how you love wreck diving.”

“You do?” She bit her lip, just as he’d pictured.

“Of course. Your parents introduced you to it.”

She startled. “You knew my parents? Hang on, no, that’s not possible.”

“No. I never met them. You told me about them, though. More than a couple of times.”
She’d held them up as pinnacles of virtue as much as he’d worshipped his older brother
Tom. And where had that gotten either of them? Dead, Rick reminded himself bitterly.
He was letting his emotions get in the way. Time to focus. “We’re just doing a couple
of dives over the SS President Coolidge, while the currents are right. She’s one of
ours, used to whip people across from San Francisco to Japan back in the 1930s. Almost
rude not to pay her a visit. And you can snorkel around the fighter planes after lunch.”

Felicity’s eyebrow arched. “Think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Lining up an array of activities you already know I like, but I don’t remember ever
telling you about. Makes you look like quite the sensitive type.”

“I couldn’t possibly comment.” But Rick let the smile ease across his face. This Felicity
might not be the same as the Felicity he’d once known, but she sure was fun. Even
special. The world would no doubt dampen her fairy-tale aspirations, eventually. A
shame perhaps, but better in the long run. He’d been in business too long not to understand
the full extent of human ugliness. Better to be a little guarded than wide-open in
his book.

Rick watched as Felicity sprang lightly onto the dock. Did his feelings toward the
old Felicity, feelings about building a union based on trust and mutual understanding,
still hold true with this woman? She was still the smartest woman he knew, still had
the ability to help build his biotech empire, even if she couldn’t remember at the
moment, and was still his match in bed, so what wasn’t to like? He still wanted to
marry her. Definitely. They could work out the rest on the way.

…

A rush of water enveloped Felicity as she jumped off the back of the dive boat, but
despite the temporary bubble haze she could already see that this was going to be
an amazing dive. With the currents all but stilled at this time of day, the water
was as crystal clear as looking into a fish tank. The boat driver had told them the
SS
President Coolidge
had originally been built as a luxury liner and even broke a couple of speed records
on her trips between San Francisco and Japan, but her conversion to a troop carrier
meant she’d been stripped of much of her finery to carry the five thousand or so souls
back and forth between the US and her Pacific ports of call.
Just look at her, though.
Felicity’s heart leaped into her throat as the massive length of the
President
, as the locals called her, loomed beneath her.
You’re no battle-weary lady, are you?
She was definitely built for a better life, and even with the years of ocean detritus
growing on her sides, Felicity could envisage the ship in her full glory, with swimming
pools, beauty salons, and soda fountains. While the
Pacific Empress
had all the modern conveniences, there was something about the lines of the
President
that were classier
,
an elegance that modern engineering had tempered in the cruise ship Felicity called
home.

A hand caught her wrist and Felicity swiveled to come face-to-face to Rick’s mask-clad
eyes. He made the “a-okay” sign, universal to divers, and she repeated it, smiling
around her regulator as she huffed the air in and out.
Chill out, lady, you’ll suck up all your oxygen too quickly if you let your heart
race too fast.
Closing her eyes for a second, she stilled her mind, and then her breath. Pointing
to a dark doorway she flicked her flippers and swam down and through it into the belly
of the wreck.

The beam of her flashlight picked out a plaque, or perhaps more of a ceramic panel;
she couldn’t tell in the half light. Swimming closer, Felicity’s eyes widened at the
serene woman depicted, standing in front of a unicorn. She seemed regal, despite her
surroundings, and the colors of her paint were astonishing in the gloom.
What secrets have you seen?
The woman, a queen, Felicity decided, gazed out into the darkness of her tomb. Turning,
Felicity tried to picture the ship full of people, first-class passengers to start
with, all bustling with the anticipation of getting to their destination, tuxedos
or gowns crisp, hair in place. Then she flicked her imagination to picture soldiers,
battle weary, desperate to get home. Putting out a finger, Felicity touched the side
of the queen’s face. It wasn’t something she’d usually do, since she never touched
coral as it deteriorated so easily with human handling, but this man-made woman seemed
lonely and Felicity wanted to comfort her.
You and me, hey lady, we’re still waiting for someone to come rescue us.

Was that really what she was waiting for? After snide lists of Prince Cashypants’s
attributes, had she just been kidding herself and secretly hoping he
was
going to rescue her?

Enough with the self-exploration. Right now she was going to enjoy this dive. She
might not get another opportunity like this the rest of her life.

For a blissful twenty minutes, Felicity’s flashlight ducked under doorways, drifted
down corridors, and stretched along the side of the
President.
Along with the scraps of history the boat offered, brightly colored fish crossed
her path, and once, a stealthy stingray glided out into the beam of her light.

Perhaps it was the fact that she hadn’t been diving for so long, or perhaps it was
her exuberance, but as she popped out of one room and cruised toward the propeller
casing at the end of the ship along a narrow passage, Felicity felt a tugging on her
leg. Kicking her flippers a little harder, she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere.
A panic she hadn’t felt since the reality of her amnesia had sunk in flooded her brain
with adrenaline. She was stuck in a dark sunken ship alone. No, not alone. With a
man who was practically a stranger to her, despite their history. No one else knew
where she was; probably no one cared. This was it. The end. Her life frittered away
in a bleak and watery tomb.

Calm. Down.
Taking a big pull on her oxygen, Felicity checked her gauge and felt her heart leap
again. Too low, she must have been playing around in the dark recesses of the ship
for longer than she realized.
One thing at a time.
Pointing her flashlight at her legs, she saw the issue. Her flipper was caught on
a sharp piece of old steel that had nabbed the fin, and the more she struggled the
deeper it imbedded itself. Twisting to try and reach it, Felicity felt the panic rising
up in her again.
Breathe in, breathe out. You are light. You are light.
Something moved in the flicker of her flashlight and, if she could have, Felicity
would have screamed, full throttle. Contrary to its usual shy nature, a giant moray
was making its leisurely way toward her. Its face fixed in a sharp-toothed grimace
and its tiny eyes glinting in the light, Felicity was sure she could read hunger in
its expression. Waving her hands and flashlight frantically, she tried to scare it
off and, even though it paused, when she stopped gesticulating it started toward her
again. The thickness of a good-sized thigh, with an ugly head about as big as a dinner
plate, the eel continued slowly and steadily toward her, apparently intent on using
her as an appetizer to whatever fishy main meal it had planned for lunch.
Oh shit, oh crap. Oh. Hang on. Yes! Yes, thank God.

A beam of light swept over her. The hand on her shoulder was firm, unafraid of the
eel. Grabbing her gauge, the diver peered at it, and clearly judging it just as low
as she had, didn’t bother trying to free the flipper, simply unstrapped it from her
foot and hauled her out of the passage and into the wide blue sea. Turning to face
him, Felicity saw Rick’s rich chocolate eyes magnified through his mask. Without the
darkness of the wreck to cover their expressions, she saw concern there. Concern and
anger. He took his regulator out and pushed it toward her. She waved him off, but
he took her hand and put the oxygen-giving apparatus in it. She couldn’t exactly refuse
it when he was going without air, so she took a suck and then passed it back.

Goddammit, now he’s going to think he’s gone and saved me.

Was this what the five-years-older Felicity had been after when she agreed to marry
Rick? Someone to look after her, guide her through life, and pick up the bill? Maybe
her old self had wanted that, but now she needed someone to share the journey with,
not someone who had the journey already planned out and just needed a wife to go along
with it. She’d promised herself she’d give him a chance, give
them
a chance, and she was doing that. But unless he showed her he could cope with a bit
of her messy reality, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go there full-time.