Rita Herron - Memories of Megan

She had the face of an angel, the figure of a temptress and the lips of a lover.

But he had no right to even think such lurid thoughts, especially at a funeral.

From her grief-stricken face, she’d obviously cared for her husband deeply.

During those long, lonely days in the hospital, he had thought about his life, the fact that he had no one. No family who’d come looking for him. No woman who searched him out, sat by his bedside, vowed that she loved him.

Apparently he hadn’t made any friends in Oakland, either.

In a strange way, he envied Tom Wells.

He knew that was sick. The poor man was dead, for God’s sake, and here he stood, alive and breathing, feeling sorry for himself.

One by one, the visitors stopped to speak to Megan.

“I’m going to give her my condolences,” Parnell said.

Cole hesitated. Finally he took a deep breath and shuffled across the damp ground through the throng of people. Her gaze rose and met his across the crowd. Raindrops dotted her face, mingling with tears, the raincoat shielding her honey-colored hair and shapely body. But it was the shadows beneath her haunted blue eyes that made his gut clench.

An older man and woman Parnell had pointed out as Wells’s parents stopped beside her. Megan stiffened, clasping her hands tightly together. Cole moved into the shadows of the funeral home tent, close enough to hear.

“You will send us Tom’s things, won’t you?” the woman asked in a clipped voice.

“Yes, if you want them.”

“Of course we do.” Mrs. Wells flashed Megan a cold look. “He never should have come here, you know.”

Megan jutted her chin in the air. “I’m not going to argue with you at Tom’s funeral. I don’t think he’d want that, Kathleen.”

Mr. Wells pulled at his designer tie. “Let’s go, honey.” He threw a sorrowful glance over his shoulder at the grave. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

The couple strode off, huddled together. Hurt strained Megan’s features. A fleeting feeling that he’d lived that moment before struck Cole, then disappeared as quickly as it had hit him.

Without remembering how he reached her, Cole found himself standing in front of her, not knowing what to say, but extending his hand, wanting to take away the sting of the Wells’s attitude.

She slowly lifted her small hand and placed it inside his, the whisper of her soft skin brushing his callused fingertips. A small surge of awareness skated through him. Her lips parted slightly as if she, too, felt the odd connection between them.

A wave of images suddenly flashed through his head like a movie trailer. Images of Megan Wells looking at him with those haunted blue eyes. Images of her crying on his shoulder. Images of her raising on tiptoe to smother his mouth with kisses. Images of her lying naked in his arms and calling his name in the darkness of the night.

He snapped his hand back and felt himself grow weak. What in the hell had just happened? Those flashes seemed so real. But they couldn’t have been memories.

Could they?

Megan’s hand trembled as she pulled it from the stranger’s, a slight chill slithering up her spine. She pulled her raincoat around her, trying to place his face in the fog of grief engulfing her, yet she had never met him before. Or had she?

And why was he looking at her so intensely?

“I’m sorry about your husband,” he said in a gruff voice. “I’m afraid I didn’t know him very well—I’d just been hired to work at the center.”

He was nervous, she realized, remembering that Tom had an aversion to funerals as well. Maybe it was a man thing. Not that she enjoyed going to them herself, but sometimes people didn’t have a choice. In fact, she’d already been to enough funerals to last a lifetime.

At ten she had lost her only grandparents. At seventeen, she’d buried her parents.

And now Tom.

She shook her head, operating on autopilot. “Thank you for coming, Mr.…”

“Hunter. Cole Hunter.” A frown pinched his dark eyebrows as he shifted. “Anyway, I just wanted to offer my regrets.”

Megan nodded, clasping her hands together as his dark eyes bore into hers. “I suppose I’ll see you at the center.”

“I suppose.” He lifted his hand to wipe away the raindrops sliding down his cheek. A long scar curved his hand, another smaller one darkened his hairline. She wondered what had happened to him, but forced herself not to ask. Tom’s mother claimed she’d grown up on the wrong side of the tracks of Savannah, but even in shanty town, Megan had been taught manners.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, we’ll be working together.” His voice lowered, sympathy etching it with gruffness. “That is, when you feel like returning to work.”

Megan nodded. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Then again, work would probably fill the endless, empty days ahead. Help take her mind off of her grief. And her patients’ problems were so troubling they usually made hers feel trivial. Except Tom’s death wasn’t trivial. “You’re in psychiatry?”

His dark eyes looked somber. “Yes.”

For the first time, Megan realized he was handsome. Not in the gentlemanly way Tom had been, but in a more rugged way. He was big and muscular; he stood about six foot two, had broad shoulders, and a wide strong jaw.

Guilt suffused her—how could she notice a man’s looks when Tom had just been put in the ground? What kind of wife was she? Had she been?

One who had disappointed her husband…

Cole Hunter shifted again, wincing as if his leg hurt. He was leaning on a dark wooden cane. So, he had been hurt recently. The reason for the scars, perhaps the reason he was so lean…

“I was actually coming to work with Tom.”

Megan’s throat closed. A dozen other questions tumbled through her head, but the realization that she would see this man again, and probably on a daily basis, shook her to the core.

The trouble was she had no idea why the idea upset her so. She only knew that she didn’t want to be around him. And that the eerie feeling she’d had when they’d first met had just magnified tenfold.

COLE STEPPED BACK AS MEGAN stood to leave, and offered a hand for support, but she refused his help, looking wary as if he’d said or done something to upset her. Odd, how just a few moments before he’d met her, he’d had visions of knowing her, of seeing her before, when now his mind almost seemed blank. Like a deep tunnel, long and empty and devastatingly dark.

Briefly he wondered if they could have had an affair.

No, she hadn’t acted as if she’d known him at all.

Of course, his face looked different, but if they’d known each other before, if they’d met, she would have recognized his name.

Instincts told him he wasn’t the kind of man to sleep with another man’s wife.

Or was he?

Confused, he hunched inside his jacket and followed the other mourners. God, he hated that damned cane. A tall redhead gathered Megan Wells into a protective embrace. Obviously a close friend, Megan leaned on the other woman as if she were exhausted. He imagined she was. His own muscles protested the long walk. He hated the weakness right now. Hated any kind of weakness.

The light rain drizzled down, the fall wind kicking up, stirring wet leaves and forcing the flowers from other graves to sway and droop as he limped across the grass.

Parnell turned to wait for him at the edge of the cemetery. “How’s the leg?”

Cole grimaced. “Getting better.” He squinted through the hazy sky as Megan and her friend climbed in the car. “Have I met Mrs. Wells before?”

“Not that I know of.” Parnell frowned and pulled out his keys. “Why do you ask?”