Greek Mavericks: Seduced Into The Greek's World. Julia James

with him unless she absolutely had to. She very solicitously inquired about his well-being, never asking about his memories, as she assumed—rightly—that if there were any change he would let her know.

      But she didn’t look at him the way she had. Those blue eyes, that only real, organic memory in his mind, had changed. They were icy. Angry. Or, on the very worst of days, completely blank. This woman had loved him. And he had destroyed that love.

      There were no fresh starts. It was easy to buy into the idea that they’d had one here. That just because he didn’t remember what he had done those things didn’t exist. But his consequences had now reached their home. Consequences that didn’t care whether or not he remembered committing the sin.

      That fresh start had always been a lie. He was not a new man, reborn from the fiery wreckage of his accident. He was the same old man. A man who had betrayed his wife, a man who—according to Rose—loved no one but himself. A man who had abandoned his child. He was that man. With Isabella here it was impossible for him to absolve himself in the way he had been attempting to before her arrival.

      There was no absolution. He just had to find a way to move ahead. To move ahead desiring the new things that he desired. Carrying the sin on his shoulders, a weight he would try to bear as best he could. A weight he would try not to put on to Rose.

      He wanted to walk on, caring for Rose in the deep, real way he had come to. To try to make her care for him again.

      He had a feeling he would have to work hard to earn her affection. As it had taken such a massive betrayal to destroy it in the first place.

      It was late now. He would have to worry about these things another day.

      He crossed the room and got into his empty bed, feeling a deep ache and loss over the fact that Rose wasn’t in here. Not because he would go to bed without an orgasm—though he was not thrilled about that prospect—but because of the reasons she wasn’t here. Because of the distance between them that it represented.

      But even with that regret looming over him it didn’t take long for him to drift off.

      He woke with a start. The baby monitor he had plugged into the wall was nearly vibrating with the sounds of Isabella’s rage. She was crying in the middle of the night, which she had never done before. Something was wrong. Both he and Rose had baby monitors in their rooms, he knew that. They had decided that given the size of the house it was the wisest thing to do. But he was going to have to be the one to go and handle his daughter.

      He could hardly expect Rose to get out of bed at this hour to deal with a baby that she scarcely wanted.

      He made his way out of the bedroom, but each and every step he took down the hall he found his feet grew heavier. A strange, terrified sensation grabbed hold of his chest, freezing his heart, freezing his lungs. He didn’t know what was happening to him. His face was numb, his fingertips cold. His mouth tasted something like panic, which was strange, since he wasn’t entirely certain panic had a flavor.

      The baby wasn’t crying anymore. He couldn’t hear her. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own heart beating in his ears.

      He suddenly felt like he was walking down two different hallways. One in a smaller house. An apartment. And the one he was actually standing in. This was a new feeling. A strange one. The feeling of existing in two places at once, in separate moments of time.

      And he realized suddenly, that this was a memory.

      The second memory. Second only to Rose’s eyes.

      It was a foreign sensation. And it was still entirely nebulous. He couldn’t grab hold of it, couldn’t force it to play out. It simply existed, hovering in the background of his mind, wrenching his consciousness in two.

      He tried to catch his breath, tried to move ahead. It took a concerted effort. Perhaps this was what happened to someone with amnesia when their memory started to come to the surface. Perhaps it was always terrifying and foreign. Always immobilizing. If so, then the process of recovering his memories was going to be the death of him. Because this nearly stopped his breath.

      He continued to walk, battling against the icy grip of foreboding that had wrapped its fingers around his very soul. He had no idea what he was afraid of. Only that this was fear, in its purest, deepest sense.

      The image of the past imposed itself over the present again. Just as he walked into her room, he saw Isabella’s crib, and he saw another crib, as well. Smaller, not so ornate. There was no puffy swath of pink fabric hanging down over a solid wood frame. This one was simple. A frail, fragile-looking frame in a much smaller room.

      He took another step forward, and found himself frozen again. Isabella wasn’t making any sound. And he was afraid to look into her crib.

      Suddenly he felt as though he was being strangled. He couldn’t breathe. His throat was too tight, his chest a solid block of ice. He was at the mercy of whatever this was—there was no working his way through it. There was no mind over matter. He didn’t even know the demon he was fighting, so there was no way to destroy it.

      He was sweating, shaking, completely unable to move.

      And that was how Rose found him, standing in front of Isabella’s crib like a statue, unable to take another step. Terrified of catching a glimpse of his child.

      That was what was so scary. He didn’t want to see her lying there in the crib. He didn’t know why. He only knew that he couldn’t face the sight of it.

      “Leon?” Her soft voice came from behind him, and he couldn’t even turn to get a look at her. “Is everything all right with Isabella?”

      “She isn’t crying,” he said, forcing the words through lips of stone.

      “Did she need anything?”

      “I don’t know.”

      He heard her footsteps behind him, and then she began to sweep past him and he grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back. “No,” he said, the word bursting from him in a panic.

      “What?” she asked, her blue eyes wide, terrified.

      “You can’t... You can’t go to her.”

      “What’s wrong with you?”

      “I’m having a memory. It hurts and I can’t... I can’t move.”

      She examined him for a long moment, the expression on her face shaded. “I can.” She pulled herself free of his hold and moved forward to the crib, reaching down and plucking Isabella up from inside of it.

      Terror rolled over him in a great black wave, and he forgot to breathe, bright spots appearing in front of his eyes.

      Then Isabella wiggled in Rose’s hold and suddenly he could breathe again.

      He took a step forward, and the crib mattress came into full view. It was empty, because Rose was holding Isabella. But yet again, he was seized with the sensation that he was standing in two different places. That he was looking inside a different crib.

      He stopped. Closing his eyes he let the images wash over him, along with a dark wave of grief that poured over him and saturated him down deep. It was so real, so very present, so overpowering he felt as though he would never smile again.

      And then, it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t seeing images superimposed over reality. He was just remembering.

      Michael didn’t wake up for his feeding like he normally did. The silence was what had woken Leon out of his sleep. Amanda wasn’t awake. It was all right—Leon didn’t mind going and checking on his son.

      He walked down the hall quickly, making his way to the nursery. And from there, the vision in his head seemed to move in slow motion. He could remember very clearly being gripped by a sense of dread the moment his son came into view.

      And then he reached down to touch his small chest, finding him completely unresponsive.

      There was more to that memory.