Wife Without a Past. Elizabeth Harbison

and slowly pulled her toward him. Why wasn’t she afraid? Any reasonable person would be hightailing it out of there, but she didn’t move. The pounding of her heart felt more like excitement than fear.

      His hand slipped around to her shoulder blade. The movement was hypnotic, almost as if it were familiar to her. She knew exactly what was next. She saw it coming like a locomotive but was powerless to stop it.

      

      She didn’t want to stop it.

      He pulled her to him and his mouth descended onto hers. The touch of his lips was a spark. When he deepened his kiss and she felt his tongue probe her mouth, the spark became a raging flame. With an instinct wholly unfamiliar to her, she closed her eyes and raised her hands to the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his thick, dark hair.

      This was a dance her body knew, even if her mind didn’t.

      She felt his shuddering breath on her skin, and her body echoed it. He ran his hands down her sides, slipped them around to her lower back and crushed her to him. Their bodies pressed together like palms in a handshake. Mary drew in a breath and released it in a sigh. His powerful embrace made her feel as if she was finally in exactly the right place.

      Which was crazy, she knew, but it was also too comfortable to fight.

      His mouth moved over hers, reacting to her movements in a practiced way. Everything felt right. Like the last piece clicking easily, triumphantly, into a puzzle.

      Except that it wasn’t right, it was wrong. This was a stranger! She had to stop.

      “Stop!” Mary pulled back with some effort “What do you think you’re doing?” Her voice was too breathy to be commanding. “That’s assault!” Maybe, but on whose part? Why did I do that?

      “I thought I’d lost it when I saw you yesterday,” the man said in a husky voice that made her insides quiver. “I thought I was nuts, but it was you.”

      Yesterday. What was yesterday? Had they met before? Was that why he seemed familiar? Mary concentrated and remembered. This was the man who watched her drive past in the cab. The only reason she remembered was because the way he’d looked at her had made her feel so peculiar. She’d had a crazy impulse to tell the driver to take her back so she could talk to the man. But she had nothing to say to him. Then or now.

      Her eyes returned to the man before her and she found her voice. “I think you must have me confused with someone else.” There. That was a nice comfortable explanation. He wasn’t a maniac—maniacs didn’t kiss like that

      Of course that didn’t explain why she’d indulged so thoroughly in the kiss.

      All the emotions fell from his face except onesadness. Anyone could have identified it. His eyelids dipped and he shook his head and uttered a single low word. A name. “Laura.”

      The tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Why?

      “I—I’m sorry—”

      “Are you real?”

      “Am I real?” Where was the fear she should have felt at this strange and intense exchange? Why wasn’t she running by now? “I’m as real as you are.” She considered. “Maybe more.”

      “But—the body. I saw the body.”

      This was getting creepy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see my friend waiting for me over there.” She gestured vaguely toward a group of people. Her voice, which was supposed to be confident, was as weak as a child’s. She looked into his eyes to see if he’d noticed her lack of conviction.

      “Laura…How can this be happening?” He looked lost, she thought. Lost. Utterly defenseless. She knew how that felt.

      “My name is Mary Shepherd,” she said, like that would clear up all the confusion. “I’m visiting from Connecticut.”

      “Mary Shepherd?” He repeated the name as if repeating a foreign language on an audiotape. He gave a humorless spike of laughter. “No, you’re not. You’re home.”

      The simplicity with which he stated it almost made her laugh. Almost. Instead, she felt her breath catch in her throat. Home, he’d said. You’re home. A slow tingle moved down the back of her neck.

      “I’m…not Mary Shepherd?” She tried to smile but it was tremulous at best. “And who do you think I am, then?” It was meant to sound light, as though of course she knew who she was and this man was a fool if he thought she was someone else. But the possibility that he knew more than she did was just too real. A thin vibration ran through her chest, like a single violin note strung out to a trembling finish.

      Maybe he knew who she was.

      “Is this a joke?” he asked, his tone rising.

      Ridiculous, she thought. He doesn’t know who I am. He’s just a madman. Evidently Nantucket is full of them.

      “Are you kidding?” he prodded. His brown eyes searched hers desperately.

      It was the desperation that spooked her the most She had to get away. “Am I laughing?” She took a step back.

      He laid a hand on her shoulder and she could feel it shaking. It was like fifty thousand volts running through him to her. “Laura! What the hell is going on?”

      She looked around for help—a policeman, anything. A psychiatrist.

      “Laura!”

      His pleading exclamation turned her attention back to him. She straightened her back. “I told you, I’m not—”

      “Good Lord, do you think I don’t know my own wife when I see her?”

      A blow to the gut couldn’t have impacted her more.

      He continued in a softer voice. “My God, Laura, it really is you.”

      She stood frozen, looking at him. “You’re mistaken.”

      “Do you think I could possibly forget? Your hair.” His fingers tickled through the shoulder-length ends of her hair. “It’s shorter but the same color.”

      A tickle skirted her neck and, for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, she imagined him kissing her there.

      “And your face.” His thumb traced a burning line across her cheekbone. “My God, do you think I could forget that face? It’s been over a year, but there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about it—”

      Over a year. Her eyes closed and she fought the urge to lean into his touch.

      “Your mouth.” He traced the line of her lips with his finger.

      Without thinking, she parted her lips and his finger nearly touched the tip of her tongue. A lightning bolt shot straight into the pit of her stomach. He caught her eye and cocked his head slightly. The movement was small, but meaningful. Familiar? No. But electrifying.

      He put his finger to his own lips, then dropped his hand as if he’d touched something white-hot. “I thought I would die without you.”

      She swallowed but a hard lump remained in her throat. When her voice came out it was barely more than a whisper. “What—what happened to your wife?”

      He lowered his brow and a hardness returned to his eyes. “Great question. Why the hell did you let me believe—let all of us believe—that you were dead?”

      Suddenly she remembered coining to at St. Joseph’s. The thundering head injury. The doctors had said that someone had hit her. It had taken a full year to grow the hair back to a decent length after the surgery. And the rope burns on her wrists and.ankles, burns that had burrowed right through her flesh and left scars she could see to this day. She couldn’t ignore the obvious question.

      Had Laura wanted this man to find her? Or had she fled