Muriel Jensen - Father Found

He had the rugged good looks of a Bogart or a Bronson, his handsomeness defined by harsh features tempered by that reassuring strength. And a bright smile that came seldom and was always a surprise.

Except for the tendency to be a little overprotective and to consider himself in command of their tiny family, he’d been all kindness and consideration since the moment he’d appeared in her hospital room.

He held the dandelion to her lips. “Make a wish,” he said with a smile, “then blow on it and tell me what you wished for.”

She complied and the cottony wisps flew all around them. Several caught in his side-parted dark hair and she reached up to brush them away. It was strange, she thought, that though she didn’t remember their life together at all, she often felt the need to touch him. She wondered if the baby in her womb remembered him and that somehow translated itself to her as her own need.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that,” she admonished gently. “Or the wish won’t come true.”

His dark eyes roved her face, clearly looking for something. “You remember that?”

She tossed the dandelion stem onto the grass. “That’s probably one of those things the doctor said I’d remember, like brushing my teeth, or knowing language.” Then something else came to her, unbidden. “Did you know that the word dandelion is from an old French phrase meaning lion’s teeth. Dent de lion?”

He looked surprised. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes. Because the spiky leaves on the underside of the floret are like the teeth of a lion.” She felt momentarily encouraged by that knowledge, then realized it wasn’t technically a memory. She smiled ruefully. “I wonder what my third-graders thought of that information. I must have bored them to death.”

“I doubt that very much,” he disputed, getting to his feet. Then he reached under her arms from behind her to help her up. “Come on. It’s getting too cool for you to sit on the ground. Ready?”

“Bram, I’m fine,” she insisted, trying to push his hands away. “There won’t be many more days like this, and I’d like to take advantage of it. Did you know that the leaves, roots and flowers are edible, and that they contain calcium and vitamins?”

He ignored her question and her protest and lifted her so that she had no choice but to brace her feet under her as he brought her upright.

“I can’t believe I married you,” she said with a groan of exasperation, “if you pushed me around like this when we were engaged.”

“We were never engaged.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her toward the cabin. “We went straight from fighting over everything, to being married. And it was your idea, by the way.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Never engaged?” She looked at her ring finger with its simple gold band, then added, “I don’t mean with a diamond, but there must have been a period after you proposed.”

The breeze ruffled his hair as he shook his head. “Well, if you count the three days we waited for our blood tests and marriage license. And—once again—you proposed to me.”

Bram thought the surprise on her face was almost comical. Not flattering to him, of course, but this time in their lives was not about his ego but her survival. So he’d been demanding and cautious and she didn’t always like it, but that was the way it was.

“You’re just trying to make me believe that,” she said suspiciously as they walked back toward the cabin. “I would never have proposed to you.”

He took her arm where the ground was uneven. “Why not? You were wild about me.”

She slanted him a suspicious glance. “I was?”

“You were. Followed me all the way to Portland where I was doing surveillance on a divorce case.”

She stopped again, stubbornly folding her arms over her mounded stomach. He stopped with her, his expression one of indulgent impatience.

“One of the first things I asked you when we went to our house in California was how long we’d been married.”

“Right. And I told you eight months.”

“You also told me we didn’t get married because I was pregnant.”

“Right again.” He grinned. “You got pregnant because we got married. Must have happened on our wedding night. I’m good.”

She was trying hard to hold back a smile. “So, I chased you down and proposed to you just because.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe I’m like that. I mean, I don’t feel like the kind of woman who’d follow a man five hundred miles and risk rejection by proposing. I don’t think I’m that brave.”

He propelled her gently toward the cabin. “That’s because you don’t remember what it’s like to be in love. It gives you power you can’t imagine if you’ve never experienced it—or can’t recall it.”

“Why did you say yes?” she asked.

He squeezed her shoulders. “Because I was in love, too. And you make the best cookies I’ve ever tasted.”

“Then why didn’t you propose to me?”

“I had, but you’d turned me down.”

They were climbing the porch steps, and through a hanging basket of ivy the sun dappled her face. It was a beautiful peaches-and-cream oval, plumped a little by her pregnancy. In it were wide, deep blue eyes, a small, nicely shaped nose, and an expressive mouth that was now parted in interest. Her hair was deep red, and there was lots of it mounded loosely atop her head. The sunlight made it look molten.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’ve been a cop, a soldier, a CIA agent and now a detective, and you said I must have suicidal tendencies to be that reckless. That you wanted a home and children and a husband with a nine-to-five job.”

She thought that all over, frowned as though trying to remember it and finally shook her head. “Well, what changed my mind?”

He pushed the cabin door open and ushered her inside. “I like to think it was my winning personality.”

She teased him with a smile. “No, really,” she said.

He laughed as he picked up the wood he’d dropped onto the porch table and carried it inside. “If that’s not the reason, I guess I don’t really know. You didn’t say. You just asked me to marry you.”

She held the door open for him. “Then we were happy?”

She followed him inside and perched on the arm of the pink-and-green-flowered sofa as he lowered the wood into a copper box. That question concerned him. He wanted the circumstance surrounding the birth of their baby to be perfect. He didn’t want her to worry about anything.

She hadn’t asked that many questions since they’d been here, had mostly occupied herself with preserving the garden’s bounty. In fact, she’d dedicated herself to it as though relieved to have something she obviously understood to occupy her mind.

“Yes, we were,” he assured her, turning to face her. “Why? Don’t you feel happy? Despite the amnesia, of course.”

She looked him in the eye for a long moment and he held her gaze, determined she would read nothing to the contrary there.

She finally shrugged a shoulder and said, almost with apology, “I don’t know what it is. Something makes me feel that this…” She waved a hand between him and herself. “That it isn’t right. That one of us is—” She gave up trying to explain and shook her head. “I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.”

He made an airy stack of three logs, stuffed kindling and rolled-up newspaper in the pocket underneath, then lit it and gave her a quick smile as he reached for the poker.

“You’ve always had good instincts,” he said, giving the top log a slight nudge to open up the air space. “Things aren’t right between us. We’re usually very affectionate and physical and we have a lot of fun together. This having to sleep apart and treat each other like strangers probably seems wrong to you on some level other than memory. We understand why it has to be, but something elemental in you recognizes it as wrong behavior.”