What Should Have Been. Helen R. Myers

      “Yeah, I’ve been watching the news a lot. I don’t know what it was like before, but it’s sure a mess now. I should have realized how this would look.” He grimaced and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I really am sorry, Devan. Everything is a learning experience for me these days.”

      That remark slipped straight through her defenses and touched her heart.

      She couldn’t begin to imagine what his ordeal was like. “How are you doing with that?” she asked slowly.

      He uttered a brief, mirthless laugh. “I don’t know. Compared to what?”

      Devan saw a flash of vulnerability in him, and barely restrained frustration. Unwise as it was, the urge to reassure was instinctive and strong. “At least you’re alive. Physically—” she gestured to encompass his tall form “—you’re all there.”

      “Yeah, two hands, two feet, two eyes that work…if only we could locate my mind.”

      He sounded so sad Devan ached to go to him, to slip her arms around his waist and rest her head against his chest. She didn’t dare, though, for so many reasons. Dear God, he could just have warned her that he wasn’t to be trusted. “Do the doctors say, um, that you’ll regain your memory someday? Any of it?” she added as his expression went from serious to grim.

      “I’ve heard ‘the brain is the least understood part of the body’ so many times, I’ve stopped asking the doctors. Or keeping therapist appointments,” he replied. “They’re about as clueless as I am because I didn’t just experience psychological trauma, I survived a head injury. As one surgeon put it without mincing words, my brain is going to let me know what and who it wants me to be. I can either go along for the ride, or opt out.”

      “‘Opt out…’” Devan felt a cold finger race along her spine. No wonder there was such a haunted look in those dark eyes. He had to be constantly wondering—could he lose his mind rather than regain his memory or should he save himself prolonged torture by—she couldn’t think the word let alone accept he would consider it. The thought of a world without him did exactly what she’d hoped to avoid, and she pressed her left hand against her heart. “Oh, Mead.”

      “Too much honesty, huh?” He shrugged. “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got.”

      “You were always honest,” she said gently.

      She saw him look at her hand, realized he was looking at her ring. Self-conscious again, she quickly stuck her hand into her suede jacket’s pocket.

      “Was I? No one has told me that. Thank you.”

      Melting under his steady inspection, she tried to lighten the moment. “I’m not saying you were a saint—”

      “Oh, my mother has pointed that out to me,” he noted dryly.

      “—But you never pretended to be anything you weren’t.”

      “That’s good to know.”

      His gaze roamed slowly over her face and his eyes warmed. He’d done that before, once relentlessly, and she couldn’t help remembering what had followed.

      “Can I ask you another question?”

      Suddenly she felt like a minnow on a hook. “I guess.”

      “That baseball bat you had yesterday…do you play?”

      She laughed, thinking self-deprecatingly, That’ll teach you.

      “No, it was Jay’s. My husband’s. He coached Little League when he wasn’t busy taking over his parents’ three dry-cleaning stores.”

      “He died.”

      Devan wondered how he knew? Had he asked Pamela? Of course, he must have; hadn’t she told him to? “Yes. It was one of those freak things, an aneurysm.

      “I’m sorry I can’t say more, but I don’t remember him.”

      “You didn’t know him.”

      “Would I have liked him? I mean, could we have been friends?”

      Although the five o’clock shadow that had made him appear more threatening yesterday was gone, Devan couldn’t imagine two more different people. Jay had dressed in a tailored shirt and slacks no matter where he was except for the ballpark, and had shaved twice a day whether he needed to or not. He’d never missed church or Sunday dinner with his parents.

      In contrast, Mead ignored social dictums and charmed his way out of faux pas. He had apologized to her once and smiled so beautifully, she suspected he wasn’t being quite truthful. By his own admission, it had been years since he’d been to church, and while he was cited as a good soldier, she knew he had never been a diplomat. Add to that knowledge of what he wanted from a woman—and it wasn’t compassion—she couldn’t see them as having more than three words to say to each other except by accident.

      “No, I doubt you would have been,” she replied.

      A flickering up the street caught her attention and she realized it was a flashlight. Of course, it was the usual time for Beverly Greenbrier to walk Jacque Blacque, her obnoxious standard poodle who had a rude fixation on the azalea bushes circling her mailbox and framing one side of the driveway. The second dose of emotional abuse was that Bev was a career gossip ranking right up there with Pamela Regan.

      “Oh, God. Let’s go inside,” she said to Mead.

      “What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing around.

      “A neighbor down the street is heading this way. She’s too nosy not to stop and ply us both with questions, and she’ll spend half of tomorrow on the phone sharing every word she gets out of us.” Not waiting for him to reply, she led the way inside. Once in her living room, Devan gestured toward the kitchen. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I can make you a cup of coffee.” Inwardly she groaned over her inane redundancy.

      “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mead replied, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll just let myself out the back.”

      “You might want to wait a minute. She’ll go around the corner and up the alley. I’m not kidding—she’s as relentless as she is annoying.”

      “Maybe we should get away from all windows?”

      He was teasing her, but she didn’t mind that. She thought it was silly herself; however, he didn’t understand the South and Southern women anymore.

      “Huh. This is more like it.”

      She noticed he was looking around. “Pardon?”

      “I like your house. I’m having trouble adjusting to my mother’s.”

      “You said that before about the mansion…to her.”

      “Did I?”

      “She was devastated.”

      “Somehow I doubt it.”

      Already cited as a monument to taste and quality, Pamela’s house was a testament to the fortune she had spent after Mead Sr.’s death, trying to make it Texas’s answer to the Biltmore Mansion. Glancing around, Devan was pleased that he approved of her far more modest home. No more than an eighth the size of the Regan mansion, the brick ranch was furnished with plush, inviting couches and chairs in sage and ivory. Across the room, a huge armoire encased the TV and stereo system. The cedar coffee table was large enough for someone to rest his feet on and still have room for assorted magazines, as well as Blakeley’s coloring books and crayons. In the center a crystal bowl held the potpourri that filled the air with a fine pumpkin-cinnamon spice. It was only as she turned back to him that she realized Mead was studying the family photo of her, Jay and Blakeley on a side table.

      “Your daughter favors you.”

      Devan thought so, too; they shared the same surprisingly abundant blond hair, same blue eyes and fair