Chapter 13

Okay, so Race faked the cramp, but Chrissie was currently touching him with her magical fingers.  Sue him.  Curse him to Hell and back.  Brand him as the most horrible person in the history of monstrous persons.  He wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that way about him.  He'd welcome any horrific punishment thrown his way...just wait until she finished.  Chrissie knelt beside him on the floor, working the tightness and stress out of his neck and shoulders, and he sighed and sank further into the sofa cushions.  

I don't deserve her, he thought with a hidden smile.

Earlier, he noticed how she looked at his body with appreciation, and since then, he'd been trying to think up a way to get closer to her.  He was a bad, bad person to use her this way.  He knew that.  He had no qualms about how awful and despicable and sleazy this ploy was, but his wife was touching him...and she offered -- no, insisted -- that she do it.  

I really, really don't deserve her...

After a minute or two or ten -- time held no meaning when Chrissie touched him -- she grunted and jerked to her feet.  "This isn't working for me," she said.

Well...he got a small piece of Heaven in that small measure of time.  It was more than he was entitled to.  Race arched as he lifted his body off the sofa.  "Thank you, that helped," he said, right before she shoved him down again.

"I didn't mean I was done," she said shortly.  "But my knees are hurting."

"Oh...okay."  He tried to scoot over as far as he could, but the cushions were only so wide.  Chrissie solved his problem by straddling his lower back.  Race didn't move a muscle.

Except one.  The one with a mind of its own.

"Much better," she crooned, and his one, moronic body part twitched with anticipation.  Then she lifted up his shirt.  "Take this off.  It's getting in the way."

He looked over his shoulder at her.  A tiny, teasing smile curved her lush lips, and her fingers caressed the skin of his back in little circles...just like she used to do.  Was she back?  Was she remembering all those times they'd performed this very deed?  Did she even recall what usually happened after one of her massages?

"Chris?"

Her beautiful, glowing eyes flickered up to his face.  "Hmm?"

He blinked for a second.  Could she be...?  Hope rushed through his limbs, making them shake.  Please, God...please...

"Take the shirt off," she repeated.  He complied, clenching his eyes closed, hoping, praying...so damned afraid of saying anything.  "So..." she mused, tracing her fingers up his spine, "how do you usually like this?  Hard or gentle?"

His breath whooshed out of his lungs.  She was still gone from him.  He swallowed back a fit of tears that would have made a crybaby proud.  "Hard," he answered thickly.  "Really dig in."

"Okay," she said, and bored her fingers into his back.

After a while, even his disappointment was pushed to the background so that more interesting emotions and reactions could take center stage.  His groin began to throb, and he blessed his stars that he lay face down on the sofa.  As it was, there would be a hole gouged out of the tweed fabric that covered the old cushions.  But beside that small -- Hey!  Watch it!  There's nothing small about it! -- detail, the rest of him turned to a quivering mass of gelatin.  Chrissie truly had pixie dust or voodoo or supernatural powers or something in her hands.  He'd seen professional therapist who couldn't do what she did to his muscles.

Race moaned and grinned stupidly.

"Feel good?" she asked.  Her voice took on a husky quality, and he reveled in it.  

"Very good," he growled back.  

A throaty chuckle sounded somewhere in the air above him, and she said, "Now, where was that cramp?"

Cramp?!  "Um...my leg, but you don't have to do that."  Christ!  If she went anywhere near his thighs, he might start acting on more of those devious ploys skittering across his mind.

"It still hurts, doesn't it?" she asked, scooting down to straddle the back of his calves.  

Okay...just don't get up for the next hour, and she'd never know he had a tree trunk growing out from his lower abdomen.  "Not anymore," he said, not really lying because he lied about the cramp the first time around.

Her miraculous fingers curved around his lower thigh, just above his knee, and he grabbed hold of the arm of the sofa to keep himself from acting on his baser instincts.  Quietly, he chanted, she doesn't know me, she doesn't trust me, she doesn't want me...she doesn't know me, she doesn't trust me, she doesn't want me...

"See," she said importantly, "you jerked when I touched you.  You do too still hurt."

"Chris, please," he begged of her.  

Her touched disappeared.  "Am I hurting you?"

"God, if only you knew," he muttered softly.  She leaned over to hear him clearly, her breath tickling the back of his neck.

"Sorry...I didn't catch that.  What did you say?"

"Nothing," he said.  "Um...if you don't mind, I think I'll take a nap."  He smiled to soften the sting of discarding her benevolence.  "You've got me feeling so relaxed, I don't think I can stand up."

"Oh, okay."  Sober repose shadowed her words, and she hesitated for a long moment.  He could feel her eyes boring into the back of his head, but she scampered off of him.

"Thank you," he said, not lifting up from the sofa, although there wasn't much left of his erection by now.  Her disappointment managed to do what his concentration couldn't.  How could he be excited when she was obviously unhappy?

"You're welcome," she replied weakly and exited hurriedly by way of the interior stairwell.  A trail of something dark and angry was left in her wake.   With an exasperated groan, he pulled himself to an upright position and followed after her.  "Chrissie, wait!"

He found her standing in the middle of the living room, staring at nothing.  "Chrissie?"  He circled around to stand in front of her, scared to death she'd blanked out again.  "Chris?"

"I'm not stupid, Race," she said, not looking at him.  Her fists balled up by her side.

"I don't think that you are," he replied cautiously.

She didn't seem to hear him.  "Nor do I care to be sheltered or wrapped in cotton."  Now she looked at him.  Her eyes had turned hard.

"I don't think I'm following you..."

Her hand shot out and grasped him by the balls, startling him with uncertainty.  "I'm talking about this!" she screeched at him.  "I'm talking about how you dismissed me like a child who didn't know what was going on!  You think I didn't know?  Well, I did!"

He stepped backward because there was cruelty in her eyes, and he'd never seen it there before.  Her unfriendly proximity with his half-witted family member -- the thing actually enjoyed her contact right now -- remained with him.  Gently, he removed her hand.

"What do you want me to say, Chris?  Just the whisper of your touch gives me a thrill?  I was trying to save you from embarrassment.  Lord knows, I was ashamed enough for both of us."

"I don't want you to lie to me!" she yelled, her face flushing to an almost purple hue.  "Is this what our marriage had been based on?  Lies and avoidance and...and shame?!"

"No," he answered, keeping his voice as calm as he could, "we loved each other very much, but--"

"Stop!  Just stop.  I came down to the basement to discuss how we were going to do all this.  I wanted to know how we can compromise on living together, but all you seem to be doing is lying to me and giving me reasons not to trust you.  You broke into my house, you mauled me in the closet and brushed aside my feelings about all of it as though I am incapable of understanding."

She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs to capacity.  Her eyes still burned, but her complexion began to fade to a normal, pinkish color.  "Listen, I get it!  You're upset and confused and probably angry about all this, but so am I.  I woke up this morning married.  Married!  I don't know what the hell is going on!  And I don't know what to do about it!  Everybody says we're married.  Everybody says we had this wonderful, loving relationship--"

"We do," he injected, but she shrieked at him through clenched teeth.

"I-don't-know-that!  Look at me, Race...really look at me, because this is me...this woman standing right here is not-your-wife!  I never was!  You remember one life together; I remember no life together!  Until this morning, I was a single thirty-year-old...and I liked it!  I liked who I was...who I still am.  And I swear to God, Race, if you played me down there just to get a massage, I will throw something at you!  Something sharp and pointed!"

Race had the grace to flush.  "I hoped that a normal activity for us might trigger some memory," he said lamely.

"Well, it didn't!  And that's exactly what I'm talking about.  I don't appreciate being manipulated and used like that!  That's not how a marriage should be!"

Now, he was getting annoyed.  "What would you know about our marriage?  You just said you don't know about any of it.  I'm the only one here that remembers it!  And while we're on the subject of manipulation, if you knew what was happening down there, why the hell did you let it go for so long?  Do you enjoy teasing me?  Give the poor, desperate man a hard-on and see what happens, hmm?"

She threw her head back.  "I was trying to be nice!  But you want to turn everything around, don't you?  You may remember our marriage, but I don't!  And frankly, I wish I never do!  I've only known you for a few hours, and already I hate you!"

It honestly felt like she slapped him then.  Or punched him in the gut.  His stomach clenched in pain and a ringing sounded in his ears.  This was getting out of control.  There had to be a way for him to salvage the situation.  "Chrissie..."  He stepped toward her.  She jerked her chin up defiantly.

"Don't you dare touch me," she hissed.  "Or I will walk out that door and never come back.  You want this marriage so bad?  You can have it!  But not with me in it!"

His eyes narrowed.  "Don't make promises you might not keep," he threatened.  "Because I have one that I fully intend to see through."

"Which is?"  Her voice was icy and cold.

Yeah, he "dared"...and set a finger under her chin, tilting her head up to look him squarely in the eyes.  She didn't jerk away, so he knew he won this round.  "I promise you, Chris...I promise that you will be my wife again, whether you get your memory back or not.  I'm not giving up on us.  I love you too much to let you go."

A throat cleared from the front doorway.  Neither Race nor Chrissie noticed that Dena came back.  She hauled a suitcase behind her, and she held a stack of books and a paper sack in her arms.  "Hey...what's, uh, going on?"

Race and Chrissie glared at one another for a long moment.  Then Chrissie broke eye contact with him and turned with a brilliant, fake smile on her face.  "Nothing.  We were just having a nice, friendly chat."

Race growled deep in his throat, but he couldn't help loving the way she smiled, fake or not.

"Mom called," Dena said, looking between the two of them.  "Her flight lands in a few hours.  We can pick her up around five...and I got your prescriptions."  She waved the paper sack.

Shit.  He forgot that the Snow Dragon was flying in to tell him all about how awful of a husband he was...and to remind him she had yet to get grandchildren.  Wonderful.  Just perfect.  He was about to share his house with all three Hill women.  Chrissie, he loved, more than words could say, but the other two?  God help him survive the night.