What Should Have Been

“Can you answer one question?”

Devan froze. It had been six years since she’d felt such a mix of emotions, and she was terrified of what he would ask next. Once, she’d made herself his for the taking. She’d risked everything to hear him speak to her and her alone…touch her as she’d never been touched…encourage her to be free, to be truly herself.

But just as he’d changed, she had, too.

She turned back to him. “What?”

“Did you know me? I mean really? Were we…friends?”

Friends? For a night, he’d been everything she could dream of wanting or needing….

What should Have Been

Helen R. Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

HELEN R. MYERS

a collector of two-and four-legged strays, lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident learned while writing her first book. The bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA® Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

To my dear friend

Darese Cotton

This one’s for you because you asked most and loudest

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

“M ommy!”

Blakeley’s cry had Devan dropping the hot pan of garlic bread onto the kitchen counter. Ripping off her new sunflower pot-holder mittens, she threw them after it, sending one skittering off the edge of the granite top, but she let it go. All she cared about was the panic in her child’s voice.

By the time she yanked open the back door, Blakeley was scrambling across the stone patio. At the same time she flung herself into Devan’s arms, the little girl also locked all four limbs around her and clutched handfuls of her glittery autumn-motif sweatshirt.

“Sweetie, what on earth…? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a man out there! A stranger in my park!”

For once Devan didn’t correct or reprove her four-year-old daughter for her habit of calling everything she had a personal attachment to as “mine.” Instead she lifted her gaze to confirm that the back gate on the chain-link fence was open. That was enough to send her imagination into overdrive. She’d warned Blakeley repeatedly never to open the gate on her own, let alone venture beyond it without her—especially into Mount Vance, Texas’s woodsy Regan Park. The headstrong minx had inherited too many of her genes, all the wrong ones!

“Are you all right?” she demanded, hugging the child closer until she could feel her small heart through her light red jacket. She inhaled that unforgettable but fading baby scent to help calm her own pounding heart. “Did he touch you? Try to hurt you?”

“No.” Blakeley’s voice wobbled with emotion. “Because I ran. He scared me, Mommy. He just stood on the other side of the creek and stared.”

She’d gotten as far as the creek? Devan couldn’t believe she had let her out of her sight for that long without glancing outside. Her impulse was to dial 911, but she reminded herself that in the meantime, the creep could be getting away. She needed to find him, to see if she could identify him. The police would need an accurate description.

Just then the front door opened and her mother-in-law Connie poked her head inside. Devan had left the door unlocked expecting her at any minute to pick up a box of outgrown children’s clothing for a church fund-raiser this weekend.

Setting down Blakeley, Devan grabbed her jacket from the hanger behind the back door and called, “Connie, lock the door and call 911! Blakeley, tell Nana what you told me. Lock this door, too.”

“Where are you going?” Blakeley cried, her blue eyes huge.

“I promise I’ll be right back, sweetie. Now do as I say.”

Planting a kiss on top of Blakeley’s blond head, Devan grabbed Jay’s old baseball bat, which she always took on walks in the park against the threat of some stray, sick dog attacking them. Then she rushed from the house, ignoring Connie’s protest and her daughter’s whimpering; she ran across the yard, and alley, and entered the woods marking the east boundary of their neighborhood.

Regan Park framed Regan Creek, land donated by one of the most powerful families in the northeast Texas county. Barely an acre wide and eighteen long, parts of the outer perimeter were deceptively brushy, but the bike trails were well tended, as were the picnic areas. Often used by joggers and weekend cyclists, at odd hours it had been known to be the rendezvous site of occasional drug deals.

I should have put a lock on the gate.

I didn’t even ask her what the guy looked like.

As she berated herself, Devan charged through the thicket of holly and prickly vines, then between stately pines and bushy cedar. She willed the creep who’d scared her baby to still be out there. She could and would stop him—at least long enough to make sure the police were given an excellent description, and to give the man an earful. That scumbag would know what awaited him if he messed with any youngster in Mount Vance.

After another few yards she crossed the bike and jogging trail, but when she came in view of the creek, she stumbled to a halt. At first she thought the heavy shade cast by a sinking October sun was playing tricks on her. But no, that was a man standing monument-still on the opposite bank just as Blakeley described. More unnerving was who he reminded her of; there was something so familiar about him. With every shallow breath, her impulse to charge and swing receded like the most fleeting dream and left her feeling…what?

“Mead.” She’d seen the article in the Mount Vance Report, had heard the gossip flooding town like whitewater bursting from a broken dam. Most she’d managed to ignore in her struggle to repress the fear that her past could finally have caught up with her. However, there was no hiding from the reality that stood in front of her.

She shifted so what sunlight trickled in through the trees worked to her benefit and drew a steadying breath. She remembered those compelling eyes—dark as the promise of Poe’s raven whispering, “Nevermore.” Gone was the near-black mane of windswept hair of his youth, though she’d seen it almost this short on his last visit home. The bristles now appeared to be seasoned with a hint of gray, as was his beard. He had been home for more than two weeks, but he looked as though he was still existing on a diet of air and willpower, the latter no doubt force-fed him by his mother. Devan estimated him to be at least twenty pounds lighter than was normal for his strong-boned, six-foot-plus frame. The blue bandana not quite hiding the scar at his right temple suggested one of the reasons why.

Her next step forward was involuntary. “Mead…do you hear me?”

Hunkering deeper into the upturned collar of his denim jacket, he stared into the glistening water as though willing himself to merge with the few inches of cold liquid. But her question finally had him raising his eyes in slow motion.

As their gazes met, she almost believed she saw a slight flicker of something like a dawning, only to wait with a mixture of disappointment and relief when he failed to respond. “So it’s true…you don’t recognize any of us,” she finally said.

He made no reply.

She’d known when he left town six years ago that his first destination would be somewhere dangerous…and the next, and the next. Some sixteen months ago, his luck, and that of his crack commando team had finally run out. On a mission to the Middle East that had made national headlines despite the government’s attempts to keep information classified, something went catastrophically wrong, and everyone save Mead had been killed. After that, she’d shut her ears and mind to any more information, and thereafter tried not to think about the Mead Regan who was undergoing operation after operation, was no longer himself, and was reportedly lingering somewhere between “strange” and “scary.” Small wonder that Blakeley had been spooked, she thought, sighing inwardly.

“It’s…it’s good to see you on your feet,” she finally added. That was all she could get past the lump in her throat.

“Do I know you?” he said at last.

Like it or not, that stung. She remembered him as a kidder, the guy with the slow, wicked smile and a “come hither” invitation in his eyes, characteristics she’d insisted for years annoyed her…until, eventually, she had been drawn in like so many before her. This Mead’s countenance was as gray as the stone it appeared to be chiseled from, his deep-set eyes lacking any visible sign of interest in life let alone curiosity about her. Devan decided it would have been easier to deal with news of his death than this. What hell had he seen? What agony had he suffered to come back this far?

You do not need to go there.

“Ah…not really. Sorry to intrude,” she replied, taking a step backward. It was definitely time to go. Connie was waiting and Blakeley needed reassuring, she reminded herself as she pivoted to return home.

She barely registered the meaning of water splashing before strong fingers closed around her upper arm. Devan had neither time to protest nor to catch the bat slipping from her damp grasp; she was spun around and had to plant her hands flat against his chest not to fall into him.

“No!” Her cry was torn from some sleeping place inside her and sounded foreign to her ears; she couldn’t blame Mead for frowning at her.

“Who are you?”

“Devan. Devan Anderson.” Then she grimaced and amended, “You knew me as Devan Shaw.” She could tell he was trying to make some association and failing. Under her hands, she felt his heart beating as powerfully and rapidly as hers, and sweat began to stain his headband.

“Are you a reporter?”

Of course that would be what was bothering him most. It made sense that he would naturally shun prying eyes and probing questions. His politically savvy, reputation-conscious mother Pamela would have encouraged that caution, warned him to shun the media first and foremost if she wasn’t available to monitor each utterance. Devan didn’t want to think about what she would have to say if she heard about this.

“No, I co-own Dreamscapes. It’s a florist-nursery-landscape business in town.”

“I—I don’t…”

His gaze shifted away as though she’d asked him a question about quantum physics. Dear heaven, she hated witnessing this and had to fight a strange pressure in her chest, making it even harder to breathe. “It’s all right, Mead. It didn’t exist when you left.” And she had been only weeks away from changing her name, but that could remain fried with the rest of his memory. Removing her hands and easing from his hold, she strove to get their focus back to priorities. “Mead…you just terrified my daughter.”

He glanced back toward the creek as though rousing from a nap. “There was a child…she left.”

“No kidding. She ran home scared to death by some guy skulking around. Was that you?”

Slowly he touched his forehead near the angry red scar. “I was walking. I needed air.”

Devan refused to let memories or sympathy come before her concern for her precious girl. “Well, could you please walk in your yard until you’re more…more yourself?”

“There are walls.”

True again, with electronically operated iron gates at the end of the driveway. His mother had long been a person to separate herself from the rest of the world, unless it suited her. Some called her Mount Vance’s Liz Taylor. For a man who always enjoyed the outdoors every bit as much as Devan did, that kind of restriction had to be suffocating, and it momentarily eased some of her maternal fury. “You still have to go home,” she told him. “Your mother’s going to initiate a county-wide search for you if she hasn’t already.”

Once again she began to leave, retrieved the bat and started worrying about explaining this to the police—not to mention Connie.

“Can you answer one question?”

She froze. It had been six years since she’d felt such a mix of emotions and she was terrified what he would ask next. Once, she’d made herself his for the taking. Frustrated, hurt, infatuated, she’d risked everything to hear him speak to her and her alone…touch her as she’d never been touched…encourage her to be free, to be truly herself.

But just as he’d changed, she had, too.

With no small reluctance, Devan half turned back to him. This time his eyes looked clearer, even curious. “What?”

“Did you know me? I mean, really? Were we…friends?”

His hesitation was as sad as the question was bittersweet. Friends? For a night, he’d been everything she could dream of wanting or needing. By dawn he’d raced away to adventure, violence and catastrophe, leaving her with a scrawled four-word message. Take care of yourself.

She didn’t want to remember. She was a widow with a small child. Mead had been a mistake, a wild indulgence of her youth. “We didn’t have time,” she replied, shrugging.

“Why?”

This was getting more difficult by the minute. “Pick a reason. There are several that would do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was never in your league.” To her dismay that earned her another one of those vacant looks. She pointed to herself with her thumb, “Devan Shaw, small-town girl.” Then she pointed to him. “Mead Alcott Regan II.” When he failed to indicate he understood the nuances of social status, she drawled, “Your mother will be happy to explain it to you.”

Promising herself that this time when she walked away, she would keep going, Devan almost slammed into a police officer.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

The freckled, flustered young cop was as breathless as she’d been from running. Devan had seen him before in his patrol car but couldn’t remember if his name was Billy or Bobby something. The town was growing and the police force with it. He had to be three to five years younger than her thirty.

“I’m fine, Officer—” she glanced at his nameplate “—Denny. Sorry for the false alarm.”

“The lady back at your house, Mrs. Anderson, said your little girl escaped an attempted kidnapping?”

Devan’s heart plummeted and quickly worked to keep this from mushrooming. “My mother-in-law, Blakeley’s grandmother. It’s all a misunderstanding, as you can see. This is Mead Regan.” She gestured behind her. “Son of Mrs. Pamela Regan.”

As expected, the name had considerable effect on the newcomer. The red-faced officer glanced beyond her. “Uh—sir? You okay?”

“Yeah,” Mead replied.

When he offered nothing else, Office Denny shifted his attention back to her. “So what happened?”

“My daughter disobeyed me by leaving the yard while I was preparing dinner, and I panicked.”

Officer Denny studied her for a long moment. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m certain.”

Denny refocused on Mead. “Why are you here?”

“I was walking.”

“Maybe you should go home, sir.” The cop glanced down at Mead’s wet shoes and jeans. “Do you need me to call for someone to help—uh, escort you?”

Devan winced and wrapped her arms around her waist. At another time, Mead would have turned the guy into a stuttering fool with a mere look…or sent him off laughing, depending what mood he was in. Now all she heard behind her was the sound of footsteps, splashing water and more footsteps. It was all she could do not to go after him and apologize for her part in causing him this humiliation.

“Mrs. Anderson?”

Accepting she had to play out what she’d started, Devan nodded and led the way back to her house. To her chagrin, at the alley, Officer Denny bent to pick up the Barbie doll Blakeley had dropped. Devan accepted it with shaking hands; she hadn’t seen it when charging into the woods. It was the one Blakeley had received for Christmas.

Clearing her throat, she asked, “What happens now? You won’t press charges, will you?”

“It’s not up to me, but as you said, it was a misunderstanding.”

“Your report, though…these things get out onto the radio and into the newspaper.” As she regained her composure, she was thinking of the repercussions that could occur from this—for him as well as her.

“Nothing happened to where names need be used, ma’am.”

Devan could see he was thinking, too, concerned about Pamela Regan’s attorney breathing down the neck of the department for declaring her military hero son a public nuisance.

“Thank you for your timely response and sensitivity, Officer.”

“You take care, ma’am. Keep your little girl in sight.”

Devan all but gritted her teeth. “I will.”

Officer Denny motioned to another cop in the kitchen doorway. Belatedly, Devan recognized petite Sarah White with her spontaneous smile. Sarah’s reputation with kids prompted her to wave, albeit wearily. As the two cops left, Blakeley came running and Devan scooped up the only child she expected to ever have to hug her close.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. “

“I know. It’s over.”

“The man was scary.”

It was hard not to defend him. “He’s been sick, sweetheart.”

“Like flu sick or worst?”

“Worse. And I can’t answer that question because Mommy isn’t a doctor. In any case, you’re the one who needs to do some explaining, young lady. What were you doing going out of the yard without telling me?”

“I heard a kitty.”

This wasn’t a reassuring answer whether it was the truth or not. “Blakeley, you’re allergic to cats. If anything, you should run in the opposite direction of a mewing kitten.”

“But she was an orphan and in trouble.”

Although “orphan” was a new word in her daughter’s vocabulary, and “trouble” sounded adorable as “twubble,” Devan studied her for a third reason, wondering if Blakeley had inherited another undesirable gene of hers. The one that could shift one’s fantasy world and imagination into overdrive, and fabricate stories way too well? Terrific if you were a writer. Potentially problematic when you were trying to teach your preschooler to always tell you the truth.

“We are going to talk. In the meantime, you don’t do anything like this again, understood?”

Blakeley hugged her tighter and added a kiss on her cheek. “I love you.”

Devan’s heart swelled. “I love you, too, but you’re still going to bed tonight without TV.”

The child dropped her head limply onto her shoulder. “I figgered as much.”

Pressing her lips together so as not to smile, Devan replied, “Can you figger it’s past time to wash up? Dinner will be ready in a minute…what hasn’t turned into bedrock.”

“What’s bedrock?”

Setting her on her feet, Devan pointed her toward the house. “Get going before I haul you into court and change your name to Jabberwocky.”

Giggling, Blakeley ran inside and straight to the bathroom.

Devan followed, shutting and locking the back door, preparing herself for Connie. She adored her late husband’s mother and was glad she’d arrived in the nick of time to help, but Mead Regan was the last person she wanted to discuss with her.

“What happened?” the youthful-looking, sixty-two-year-old asked.

With her short frosted hair and hopeful gray eyes, she still turned heads whether cheering for Blakeley at her gymnastics class or mowing the lawn in her size four Capri pants. Devan had been blessed to call her “friend” as well as mom-in-law; however, there was no way this friend could ever understand her connection to Mead.

“Nothing,” she replied, slipping off her jacket. “An embarrassing misunderstanding, that’s all.” Her gaze fell on the loaf pan that Connie had placed on a cooling rack. “Thanks for your timing—and your help.”

“Don’t mention it, dear. I’m glad I was on schedule. But do you mean you didn’t see anyone out there?”

“Blakeley ran into Mead Regan,” Devan admitted reluctantly. That much would get around town fast enough; to keep it from her would only make her wonder.

“He tried to get her?”

Devan quickly shook her head. “No one threatened Blakeley, Mom. He was just walking and—” she gestured, groping for the most concise explanation possible “—you’ve heard the gossip. He’s still recovering.”

“Yes, I have heard. Bev Greenbriar says he’s downright spooky and if it wasn’t for the Regan fortune, he would be locked away in a you-know-what.”

“I’d bet anything that big-mouthed Beverly hasn’t been within a mile of Mead. For the record, he was extremely polite to me.” Devan tried not to think about how she continued to feel his strong hand around her arm. “Let’s look at the positive—Blakeley is fine and she learned a good lesson out of this.”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s over.” Devan quickly hung her jacket and rushed to the cabinet where she stocked the aluminum foil. She was grateful Connie had been here to help, but she didn’t want to discuss Mead with her another second. “Let me wrap some of this bread for you, and get you some lasagna. With all of your running for the sale, you’ll be too tired to cook dinner for Dad.”

Connie glanced at her watch. “Are you sure you have enough to spare? It does smell yummy.”

“Thanks. No problem. I always make a full batch to portion and freeze anyway.”

Devan continued her mindless chatting until she escorted Connie out the door and waved her down the street. Then she called to Blakeley, who she could hear had detoured from the bathroom to her bedroom—probably to delay that conversation that was promised.

As she waited for Blakeley, she glanced out the back door again. It was almost dusk. Had Mead made it back home? Was he all right?

The questions barely started in her mind before she thrust them away. She wouldn’t let him turn her head again. The first time had cost her too much.

“I’m sorry for what’s happened,” she whispered against her clasped hands. “But stay away. Don’t tempt me to care. I can’t afford to care.”

Chapter Two

M ead didn’t break any speed records returning home. He knew what awaited him there and slowed his pace to prepare for the inquisition, one that would be particularly grueling if the police had beat him there. He wasn’t ungrateful for his mother’s attention toward his recovery and understood she’d called in some serious IOUs to get him the best medical help beyond what the military had provided, which had been pretty damned fine from what he could tell. But what he craved was space in all of its ramifications. Since it was increasingly clear that he wasn’t going to remember who he had been, he’d like to decide for himself who he wanted to be from here on. If he didn’t grasp that before, that episode in the park with the little girl and her mother convinced him.

No doubt the poor kid had been scared. And her mother…Devan Anderson…who was that woman? It was nuts, but the moment she’d arrived, he’d felt as if the stream in the park had shifted ninety degrees and was suddenly carrying her energy straight to…no, through him. Whether she wanted to discuss it or not, he was convinced they had more of a history than she had admitted. Getting truthful answers would be the tricky part. It would happen, though, because until a few minutes ago, he hadn’t been convinced that he belonged here, let alone figured out whom he wanted to gamble on trusting.

Spotting Pamela’s majordomo at the back gate of the mansion, he steeled himself for the next step through his foggy maze. “Evening, Philo,” he said to the compact man in the tailored gray suit. Pryce Philo’s burr haircut was a duplicate of his except that it was completely silver and had him increasingly wondering if they didn’t have more in common than easy-to-manage hair.