Remem-Bear Me (2 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said, putting up his hands. “I didn’t mean to upset you. How about we order dinner and just enjoy ourselves for a bit? You look like you need to relax.”

She nodded slowly.

He waved over the waiter and ordered for both of them. She’d never had a man order for her, and surprisingly, what he ordered sounded delicious, just like something she’d order for herself. More mysteries.

While they waited for the food, he told her about the island, vague details about his family that made her prickly inside. He had grandkids, but he didn’t say anything about there being a grandma in the picture.

His life sounded amazing, and she wanted to just insert herself into it.

Her life had been rough, full of drudgery and loneliness, but with this bright, sparkling man who glowed with life and promise, she felt she was coming alive again. As they ate and drank, she felt the ache and stress of the past few years slowly fading away, like a year was erased with every good, relaxed moment with him.

When dinner was done and she was comfortably full of good food and her face was sore from laughing at the things Sam said, she became aware of a low, buzzing tension between them. He checked his watch and she looked out and noticed it was getting darker.

“Want to go for a walk on the beach?” he asked. “The sand here is amazingly soft, and it tends to be just the thing after a dinner like this.”

She grinned and nodded, letting him help her to her feet. “That sounds lovely.”

He settled his hand into the small of her back to lead her outside. She wondered if she should allow him to do something so familiar, but somehow, it just felt right.

W
hen they walked outside
, he bent to help her remove her sandals and carried them for her without asking. He was just the sort of man who took care of things without thinking about it, and it made her feel safe and secure. And happy for the first time in so long. It was like coming back to your heart.

She just didn’t know why, and she wasn’t sure she would like the answer.

They walked out by the ocean, strolling languidly just at the edge of the waves. Sam had his pants adorably rolled up and his suit coat slung over his arm. Jo looked out at the rolling water and let out a long breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Want to sit for a bit?” he asked, putting his suit coat down for her in the sand. He sat down on the damp beach without complaint, and she winced because that suit probably cost more than her whole outfit combined.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“What are suits for if not to be chivalrous with beautiful ladies?” he asked playfully, pulling her down onto the jacket. The sand was soft and she relaxed into it. His soft jacket kept any grains from getting to her, and she sighed as she leaned back and looked out at the ocean.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s so beautiful, and it’s an amazing night. I’m just sorry I can’t give you what you want.”

“What do I want?” he asked, reaching out to touch a lock of her hair. Then he seemed to realize it was inappropriate and pulled back and sat rod straight, looking out at the ocean. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you want me,” she said. “I just don’t know why.”

“Tell me about you,” he said, looking at her abruptly. The sight of those handsome eyes pinned on her almost took away her breath.

“I don’t know anything about me,” she said.

“No, I mean, what you do for work, what your day-to-day is like.” He swallowed and looked as if he had to force out the next words. “If there’s any family.”

Her heart sank. “There might be some, somewhere out there. I have no memory of it, though.”

He nodded, exhaling in relief. “No men, then?”

She shook her head. “Goodness, no. I’ve never been interested in them. At least, in the life I can remember.”

“Women?” he asked quickly, raising an eyebrow.

She laughed. “No, not that I know of. I honestly just… haven’t been interested since I woke up.”

“Woke up?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet. It’s painful.”

He nodded. “But we’ll have to talk about it at some point. So what do you mean not interested?” He looked amused as she squirmed uncomfortably at the direction of the conversation.

“I mean… sexually, I haven’t.” She put her head in her hands to hide her blush. She didn’t know why she was acting like a schoolgirl. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said.

“I know why,” he said with a soft, knowing grin. But he turned back to the ocean, giving her a view of his perfect, chiseled profile. He looked like a movie star, dignified and striking and confident, so self-assured.

“Why?” she asked, her throat feeling dry.

He gave her a heated glance. “Because you’re interested in me, sexually. And you don’t know why.”

She nodded slowly. What was the point in lying? She didn’t know what her flaws had been in her past life, but she didn’t think one of them was lying.

His grin widened. “Glad to know I still have the touch.”

She hmphed. “Like teasing women, do you?”

“Just one,” he said, giving her a sideways smile.

She felt her heart stutter at the look he was giving her. Like she was the only woman in the world. “Were we lovers?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer as her heart thudded in her chest.

He took a deep breath, as if deciding how to answer. “No, Jo. We were so much more than that.”

She leaned toward him, not even knowing what she was doing, but just following what her body urged her to do. He put a hand up to stroke her face.

“You’ve only become more beautiful in the years you’ve been gone,” he said.

“How long have I been gone?” she asked, flushing as his gentle touch stoked the fire within her. She wanted him, needed him like she needed air. If she didn’t have him, she’d die. Everything about her called to him, belonged to him. Yet it made no sense. She’d been alone for years, could love really last that long?

“A long time,” he said. “But you’re back. That’s all that matters.”

She let him continue to run his hands through her hair, getting lost in the hypnotic peace it brought. “I don’t understand. How can I feel like this? How can you? We’ve just met. There are five years I don’t remember, but there are fifteen years I do. And you’re not in any of them. I’ve always been alone.”

He crushed her against his chest, and she could feel the pain of his emotion in the way his hands shook. “I’m sorry you’ve been out there alone. I tried to find you, but at some point, I had to take care of our sons.”

“Our sons?” she asked, feeling blood escape her face as shock moved through her.

“Yes,” he said. “Our three sons. Scott, Sebastien, and Sky.”

Her eyes went impossibly wide and she felt as if the world was spinning as a sharp, shooting pain went through her head. She bent forward, holding her head in her hands as she tried to remember. Children. She had children? The grief of it consumed her, not because she remembered them, but because she couldn’t.

She looked up at Sam with horror. If this beautiful man had been hers, then how could she ever have been separated from him?

“We were married? I was your wife?” she gasped hoarsely, her throat almost too dry to speak.

He shook his head. “No, you were so much more than that. You were my mate.”

The pressure in her head at the word “mate” grew too intense and she felt herself falling backward. She could have sworn he said something about the word “bear,” right as she passed out and everything went black.

S
am paced
in his room the next morning, wondering just how things had gone so wrong and how he could figure out what to tell his mate when some things seemed to be too much for her body to handle.

He’d taken her back to her room last night after she’d fainted on the beach. He’d carried her up to her room and tucked her in and then sat by her bed for much of the night, remembering how they’d been before. How many times he’d carried her when she’d been pregnant with their sons or when she’d simply wanted to jump into his arms for a ride to the bedroom.

How it felt to make love to her. He’d longed to wake her and pull her into his arms. Though it had been years, his body yearned for her the exact same way it always had. But when she’d been far away, it hadn’t been as much of an issue. He’d just gone without. It was different than being forced to sit so close to her marvelous curves, her soft, feminine body that had borne their children, had loved him for years with everything in her, and not being able touch her at all.

She didn’t remember him. She didn’t know why he turned her on, made her interested in things she hadn’t been interested in before.

He’d thought maybe telling her about being mates would snap her out of it. Instead, it had put her into a lot of pain and caused her to faint. He ran a hand through his hair, more weary than he’d felt in a long time.

He didn’t know where to go from here. It felt like an incredible blessing that he’d been given the chance to see her again, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that chance.

He didn’t want to hurt her; he’d rather cut off his hands than do that. He also knew his sons would worry, just as soon as Scott spread the news to them. As carefully as he could of course, but all the sons carried baggage in different ways as a result of their mother leaving. All of them would be angry with her. Sam had been angry at first. Angry with her for giving in to the animal inside her who had never been fully tamed. Angry with her for running out that night after they fought.

Angry with himself for not trying harder to understand, to find a compromise that could have allowed her to stay but helped her feel she wasn’t losing her independence.

She’d grown up alone, had been roaming wild until she met Sam, and Sam had known the bear inside her was stronger than the human.

Though that seemed different now. He could barely sense her bear at all.

That was just another mystery to be solved.

He decided to go for an early morning walk and left his room to take the elevator down. On the way, he bumped into his son, Sebastien. Assuming he was interrupting him, he tried to step to the side, but instead, with a growl, Sebastien pushed him back with a hard hand on his chest.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Seb asked, eyes flashing with anger as he shepherded his dad back to his hotel room and shut them both inside.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, hoping playing dumb would give him a chance to figure out how to explain things to his middle son.

“You’re keeping her here. Our mother,” Seb said, folding his arms. “After she betrayed us. Hurt all of us. Are you going to put her first? What about your grandkids? You think we’re going to just let her in to bond with them when we know she could get up and abandon them too?”

Sam sighed and opened the door to the balcony. He gestured for Sebastien to follow him out. He leaned on the rail and breathed in the ocean breeze. It was early, and red streaks of sunrise still spread across the light-yellow sky. “It’s so beautiful here. Do you know why I moved us here?”

Seb shook his head. “Because it’s warm?”

Sam laughed. “No. Because your mom always wanted to come here. I guess a part of me hoped she would come back. I guess that was selfish, and as you boys got older, I realized I needed to give up on that hope.”

Seb sighed and tapped his fingers on the wood, clearly showing this talk wasn’t doing anything for him.

“Can you imagine if you lost Kim?” Sam asked. “Can you imagine if she were somehow torn away from you and you never knew what happened to her?”

Seb let out a harsh breath and turned away from his father. “No, of course not. It’s part of why it was hard for me to even accept having a mate.”

“Right,” Sam said. “And if you had a chance to know what happened, to have her back again, wouldn’t you try?”

“With every breath in my body,” Seb said darkly. “But you have other people to consider now. And she was the one who decided to leave.”

“But we don’t know how long she meant to leave. She has amnesia, Seb. She’s not herself. I at least have to know if she truly meant to stay away from us or if she meant to come back like she had before.”

“What do you mean?”

Sam sighed. “I don’t know if you remember. You were young, but your mother used to go away on weekends, just to run and be wild, to be her animal. She was always more bear than human, and she wasn’t really ready for motherhood. In the wild, bears don’t stay together very long. Even with their cubs. It was hard for her to adjust, but she tried.” He sighed and leaned his cheek onto his palm. “Those years were very happy. There were some bittersweet moments, some times we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but there was also bliss.”

“And agony,” Seb said bitterly. “Do you even remember how you were? Seeing you like that, it traumatized all of us.”

Sam put an arm around his son. “Yet here all of you are, with amazing mates and moving into parenthood with all of the grace I always expected of you. That’s the thing about pain, son. It doesn’t stop us from getting where we’re going. It just makes it a little harder and makes us different when we get there.”

Seb said nothing, just let out another pent-up breath.

“But sending her away, rejecting her for something she did twenty years ago? That won’t take away my pain. That won’t change what we all went through,” Sam said.

“What if she hurts you again?”

“I survived once. I’ll survive again,” he said. “But what if she doesn’t? What if she stays?”

“I think you’re living in a fantasy, Dad,” Seb said. “Not that I blame you.”

“Fantasies are all I have, son. They’re all I’ve had for a long time. Except right now, my mate is in reach. I held her in my arms… I know you boys may never forgive her, but she’s part of me, not least because she gave you to me. I just hope you’ll try to understand. But I do think everyone else should stay distant. I don’t want to see other people hurt.”

Sebastien bristled. “But don’t you get it? If you get hurt, we get hurt,” he said

Sam winced. “I’m sorry, then. What can I do?”

Sebastien just shook his head and put a reluctant arm around his father. “There’s nothing you can do. We’re behind you. Damn, if only we were better matchmakers, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Sam ruffled his son’s hair. “It’s not your fault. You can’t match someone who has already been matched. Not when their match is still out there. In a way, though, you brought her back to me, since she saw that commercial.”

Sebastien grunted and folded his arms as Sam walked him to the front door. “Right, Scott told me.”

“So in a way, it’s all your fault she’s back,” Sam said playfully.

Sebastien let out a humph. “I just hope we don’t regret it.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “But something inside me says you won’t.”

Sebastien sighed and shook his head. “I hope you’re right.”

Sam watched him walk away down the hall, ignoring the ache that came every time he realized the pain he’d caused his sons by being the imperfect father he’d had to be alone.

But nothing would be solved by avoiding Joanna.

He had to press on. He had to know.