Wedding Day Baby, page 2
“Please—I can’t do this. I have to go...” Maggie spun away and hurried toward the house.
Dylan stood for a long moment watching her departing figure. She knew him, that much was certain, but her reaction baffled him.
Damn! He wished his memories weren’t locked inside his head...wished—Gritting his teeth, he clamped down on his thoughts.
Wishing didn’t accomplish anything; that much he’d learned. The doctors had told him to rely on his instincts, to listen to and trust his inner feelings. And right now they were shouting at him to follow the young woman.
Dylan strode down the driveway after her. Quickening his pace, he reached the front door just as she was preparing to close it.
Surprise and another emotion he couldn’t decipher flashed in the depths of her brown eyes when she saw him.
“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I’d really like to talk to you....” He stopped to catch his breath, and as he inhaled he caught the sweet scent of the roses blooming in the planter under the front window.
Suddenly a chill raced through his body, and dizziness blurred his vision. Pain exploded inside his head, and like a soldier felled by a sniper’s bullet, he sank to his knees as a kaleidoscope of lights flashed behind his eyes.
His heart was pounding, and he covered his eyes with his hands as the pain inside his head became so intense he thought he might black out.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?” The feminine voice filled with anxiety and concern came from somewhere nearby, but for the life of him Dylan couldn’t respond.
“Can you get up?” the same voice asked, and he felt a pair of hands gently grasp his arm.
Dylan scrambled to his feet. His legs felt like two rubber bands, and he struggled to remain upright.
Fighting to stay calm, Maggie helped Dylan into the house. Something was horribly wrong.
“I’ll call a doctor,” she said as she led him into the spacious living room and urged him into the nearest armchair.
“No! No, doctors.” Dylan’s tone was emphatic. He’d seen enough doctors during the past four months to last him a lifetime. Besides, the throbbing in his head was beginning to subside.
With some relief he ventured to open his eyes and, glancing up, found himself staring into a pair of anxious brown eyes, eyes that for a fleeting second seemed familiar.
“What happened?” Maggie asked, fear and concern warring within her.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure,” Dylan responded as he ran a hand through his hair. A frown creased his features. “Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before,” he told her. “Although the doctors did warn me about headaches...”
Maggie felt her heart leap in startled reaction. “Doctors?” She repeated.
Dylan nodded. “I was in a car accident a few months back,” he explained.
“An accident?” Maggie felt the blood drain from her face. “What happened?” She pushed the question past a throat that was suddenly dry, and although she managed to sound calm, inside she was trembling like a leaf.
Dylan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. Clasping his hands together, he studied them for a long moment before answering. “A truck crossed the median and hit my car head-on,” he told her in a voice devoid of emotion.
Maggie bit down on the inner softness of her mouth to stop the moan from escaping, as images of Dylan slumped over the wheel of his car, bleeding and unconscious, flashed into her mind.
A queasiness, reminiscent of the morning sickness that had attacked her during the early part of her pregnancy, washed over her. Her legs threatened to give way, and she quickly lowered herself into the armchair opposite him.
“How...how badly were you hurt?” Maggie asked, and saw his whole body tense at her question.
Her gaze shifted to his hands clasped tightly together, their knuckles already turning white.
“I suffered trauma to the head, a broken collarbone, lacerations, a broken leg and various minor cuts and bruises,” he said, reeling off the list of injuries as if he was reading a grocery list.
Maggie sucked in a startled breath and felt her stomach heave.
Dylan heard the soft gasp and, glancing at the young woman, noted the paleness of her features. With a muttered curse he rose from the chair and knelt in front of her.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said, genuine regret in his tone. “But you’re the first person to come right out and ask me that question.”
Maggie smiled weakly, while her heart stumbled against her ribs in reaction to his nearness.
“I’d better go,” Dylan said, rising to his feet. “I seem to be making a habit of upsetting you. No...don’t get up,” he hurried on. “I’ll see myself out.”
Turning, he headed toward the door, but he hadn’t taken more than three steps, when he saw the beautiful antique mahogany bureau to the left of the doorway. A brass-framed photograph sat on its highly polished surface, and when his gaze fell on the two people in the picture, he came to an abrupt halt.
His heart shuddered to a standstill when he realized that the photograph was identical to the one he’d found on his desk in his living quarters at the base.
Snatching the frame from off the bureau, he spun around.
“How do you know these people? Why do you have this photograph?” Dylan fired the questions at her.
Maggie’s pulse took a crazy leap at the intense expression on Dylan’s face. She couldn’t for the life of her understand his strange reaction.
Dylan had been there the day the picture had been taken, that sunny afternoon in June, five years ago when his Aunt Rosemary had married her father, William Fairchild.
Maggie doubted she would ever forget that day. It was the first time she’d set eyes on Dylan. He’d driven all the way from San Diego just to give his aunt away, and Maggie could still recall how incredibly handsome he’d looked walking down the aisle wearing the dress uniform of a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.
“Tell me!” Dylan demanded as he retraced his steps.
Maggie could feel the tension coming off him in waves. Meeting his gaze, she saw a look of anguish in the steel gray depths of his eyes.
A shiver danced down her spine. What on earth was going on? Why was Dylan so agitated, so frantic?
“The man in the picture is my father,” she told him.
“Your father? My aunt married your father?” Dylan’s expression was incredulous.
“Yes,” Maggie replied. Why was he asking these questions when he already knew the answer? Confusion and anger stirred to life within her. “I don’t understand what’s going on here,” she said. “You were there at the wedding. You gave your aunt away. Don’t you remember?”
Dylan’s gaze flicked back to the photograph he held in his hand. Not for the first time since coming out of the accident-induced coma, he silently willed himself to remember.
“No! Dammit! I don’t remember,” he enunciated every word carefully, his voice reverberating with barely suppressed anger.
“You don’t remember your aunt’s wedding?” Maggie repeated, confused by his response.
Dylan’s eyes snapped to meet hers. “That’s right...I don’t remember my aunt’s wedding,” he parroted, exasperation and despair echoing through his words.
And suddenly Maggie understood. “The accident... all those injuries...you’ve lost your memory.” It was the only explanation that made any sense.
“That’s right,” Dylan confirmed, his tone grim.
“But, surely—” Maggie began, still having trouble grasping the situation.
“Wait! If my aunt married your father,” he jumped in, “then it stands to reason you were at the wedding, too.” Retracing his steps he set the photograph back on the bureau.
“Yes, I was there,” Maggie said.
He turned to face her. “So, we were all friends—your father and my aunt, you and me...we’d all known each other for a while?” he asked, an eagerness in his tone that puzzled Maggie.
“Not quite,” she replied, and saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes. “That was the first time I...that we’d met,” she told him, refraining from adding that the meeting had changed her life.
“I see,” he said on a sigh. “I was hoping...I thought maybe...” He ground to a halt. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to wake up and not know who you are?” he suddenly asked.
Maggie heard the fear and helplessness in Dylan’s voice, and her heart went out to him. But before she could say anything, he spoke again.
“I lay staring at the ceiling trying to remember my name. I mean... everyone knows their own name, right?” he appealed to her, and she nodded.
“But my mind was a complete blank,” he said. “I had no idea who I was, no idea what the doctors were asking me or telling me.
“They told me my memory would probably come back in a day or two...but after two weeks I still couldn’t remember anything. Eventually they told me my name and that I was a naval officer, in the hope it would help me remember. It didn’t...nothing did.”
He lapsed into silence, and Maggie held her breath waiting for him to continue.
“Weeks went by and I began to wonder if I had a family, if there was anyone who might be able to tell me more about my past, my life.” Dylan went on. “I asked the nurses if anyone had visited me while I was in a coma. When they scurried off to get the doctor I knew something was wrong....”
“What did they tell you?” Maggie asked, her head still buzzing from the knowledge that he’d been in a coma. She was beginning, in a very small way, to get a sense of how devastated and disoriented Dylan must have felt at the realization he had no identity.
“They told me—” his voice cracked “—they told me I had an aunt, who according to my records, was the only relative...the only family I had.”
Maggie’s heart skipped a beat. “But, she’s—” She stopped abruptly when his gray eyes darted to meet hers.
“Dead?” Dylan finished for her.
Maggie nodded. “So you do remember something,” she began tentatively, only to lapse into silence when his jaw tightened and a look of despair turned his eyes a dismal gray.
“I remember nothing,” Dylan corrected, his body quivering with renewed anger.
She stared at him for a long moment as the enormity of what he was saying began to sink in. “You mean you don’t remember that your aunt and my father died in a plane crash. You don’t remember coming here for their funeral. You don’t remember—” Maggie broke off, her tone hollow with despair.
“I don’t remember one single, solitary thing about any event in my past.... Nothing!” Dylan clamped down on the anger spiraling through him, annoyed with himself for indulging in a display of such blatant self-pity.
“But...the doctors... Did they say if you’ll ever get it back?” Maggie stumbled over the question.
Dylan sank into the chair he’d vacated a short time ago and gazed across at her, his expression unreadable. “Unfortunately none of the doctors or specialists I was paraded in front of would give me a straight answer on that one.”
“You mean you may never get your memory back?” she asked incredulously.
Dylan’s sigh was long and loud. “Amnesia is a condition that varies from person to person depending on the circumstances and the degree of trauma that brought it on,” he recited, almost as if he was reading the words directly from a medical textbook. “There’s no guarantee it will return. There’s no guarantee it won’t.”
Maggie heard the torment in his voice, glimpsed the anguish in his eyes, and the urge to reach out and offer comfort almost swamped her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, but Dylan didn’t seem to hear.
“You know, it’s strange,” Dylan said, a sad smile on his face, “but the worst thing about all this isn’t that I’ve lost my memory, though believe me, that’s been terrifying enough. It was finding out I have no family, no one who could help me fill in my past, no one who can help me piece together who I really am.
“Aunt Rosemary was my only relative...and she’s gone. I’m completely and utterly alone in the world—” He broke off, dropping his head onto his hands in a gesture that tore at Maggie’s heart.
“That’s not true. You do have family,” she blurted out, unable to stay silent.
Dylan’s head jerked up, and he looked at her in astonishment.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his gaze holding her captive.
Maggie drew a steadying breath. “You’re not alone. You do have family,” she said.
Dylan frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Maggie put her hand on her abdomen in a protective gesture. “This baby...the baby I’m carrying, is yours....”
Chapter Two
The moment the words were out Maggie regretted them. Dylan’s jaw dropped open, and he stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns.
“Are you serious?” Dylan asked in disbelief, and for the second time in as many minutes, Maggie wished she hadn’t spoken.
But as she’d listened to Dylan talk about having no family, of being alone in the world, she’d simply responded to his soulful cry without a thought to the consequences.
Biting back a sigh, Maggie felt the undulating movement as the baby shifted positions, gently prodding her low in her abdomen.
“I’m serious,” she assured him softly. Easing herself out of the chair, she crossed to the window, all the while gently massaging the area where she could feel one tiny foot or elbow poking her.
“But how?” With a perplexed look Dylan sank back against the upholstery.
Maggie glanced at him, and seeing the expression on his handsome face, knew he had doubts about her declaration. She couldn’t really blame him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You obviously have enough to contend with at the moment.”
Dylan studied his hands for a time. “I... well... it is quite a shock,” he said at last. “Uh...when is the baby due?”
“June twenty-second,” she responded. “At least that’s what my doctor tells me.” She started to walk the length of the room to where a stone fireplace filled the far wall.
Dylan followed her progress, slowly surveying the rounded contours of her body, from the fullness of her breasts to the voluptuous mound of fertility beneath the pink and white cotton maternity dress she wore.
There was something innately beautiful, as well as indefinably sensual, about a woman carrying a child... any child. But if he was to believe her...this child was his.
He drew a shaky breath and felt his heart shudder inside his chest as the enormity of the situation gripped him.
But surely he wouldn’t have forgotten making love with her? Or forgotten how her body felt beneath his, their mouths fused, their limbs entwined in passion, a passion that had resulted in the creation of another human being.
Dylan squeezed his eyes tight and willed himself to remember. But there was nothing, only a black empty void that was his past, that was his life.
But he couldn’t, in good conscience, ignore or dismiss what she’d just told him, and there had been an unmistakable ring of truth in her voice.
Suddenly Dylan recalled the warmth he’d seen in her eyes when they’d collided in the street, a warmth quickly replaced with a look of pain and wariness.
But if what she said was true, if he was the father of her child, then it was both reasonable and logical to assume a relationship had existed between them prior to his accident.
After his recent release from the hospital, he’d returned to his quarters at the base, but he’d found nothing that would indicate any such relationship existed.
Something was definitely amiss.
Dylan sighed and covered his face with his hands. The puzzle that was his past had taken a new and astonishing twist.
Gut instinct, combined with the letters he had found in his desk had brought him to Grace Harbor. Following through on his instincts had already paid off. He’d only been in town a few hours and he’d already made several new discoveries, but none more remarkable than her stunning declaration.
“You really don’t remember...anything?” Her voice cut into the lengthy silence.
The hint of a smile tugged at his mouth as Dylan shook his head. “I wish I did,” he said, and Maggie heard the frustration in his voice.
She watched as he rose from the chair and paced the length of the room.
“What’s strange about all this,” Dylan said, ignoring the pain in his left leg, “is that when I awoke from the coma I knew how to do simple, everyday tasks, all the things a person learns throughout the natural process of growing up.
“It’s the personal memories, anything that would reveal something about my past, about relationships in my life, about who I am...all that has been wiped out.” He came to a halt in front of her.
“I feel lost...as if I’ve been cast out into the sea without a life preserver, and I’m struggling to keep my head above the water.”
The pain vibrating through his voice tore at Maggie’s heart, and not for the first time she felt the urge to reach out and offer comfort.
“It must be very difficult for you,” she said, keeping her tone even. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Dylan’s sigh was heartfelt. “I don’t remember you... or your name—and you’re telling me you’re having my baby—” He broke off, and Maggie caught the ripple of movement at his throat as he swallowed convulsively. “I defy anyone not to feel a little overwhelmed,” he challenged.
Maggie met his silver gaze and suddenly the air between them crackled with tension. Every nerve in her body throbbed with anticipation, crying out to feel his arms around her, to experience again the magic of his mouth on hers.
“What is your name?” Dylan asked, effectively breaking the spell.
“Maggie,” she told him huskily. “Maggie Fairchild.”
“Maggie. Maggie,” he repeated softly, closing his eyes.
