“Who are you?” she asked.

“I told you, I’m Cole Grayson.”

“That’s not what I mean. They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. That might even be my name, or maybe it’s Susan Smith or Mary Jackson. But whatever it is, a name doesn’t tell anything about who I am or who you are.”

He gazed down at her for a long moment then finally turned away and angled a hip onto the windowsill, studying their reflection in the dark glass. “I’m nobody you want to know.”

A gray veil of desolation emanated from him. She could see it, feel it in the weight of the air, smell the leaden scent, taste the bitter agony. Perhaps because her mind was completely empty of her own emotions, his came to her, strong and clear.

“I don’t have a choice right now,” she said. “You’re the only person I know.”

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

The recipe for a perfect Valentine’s Day: chocolate, champagne—and four original romantic suspense titles from Harlequin Intrigue!

Our TOP SECRET BABIES promotion kicks off with Rita Herron’s Saving His Son (#601). Devastated single mother Lindsey Payne suspects her child is alive and well—and being kept from her deliberately. The only man who’d be as determined as she is to find her child is Detective Gavin McCord—if he knew he’d fathered her missing baby….

In Best-Kept Secrets (#602) by Dani Sinclair, the tongues in MYSTERY JUNCTION are wagging about newcomer Jake Collins. Amy Thomas’s first and only love has returned at last and she’s ready to tell him the secret she’s long kept hidden. But would revealing it suddenly put her life in jeopardy?

Our ON THE EDGE program continues with Private Vows (#603) by Sally Steward.A beautiful amnesiac is desperate to remember her past. Investigator Cole Grayson is desperate to keep it hidden. For if she remembers the truth, she’d never be his….

Bachelor Will Sheridan thinks he’s found the perfect Mystery Bride (#604) in B.J. Daniels’s latest romantic thriller. But the sexy and provocative Samantha Murphy is a female P.I. in the middle of a puzzling case when Will suddenly becomes her shadow. Now with desire distracting her and a child’s life in the balance, Samantha and Will are about to discover the true meaning of “partnership”!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Private Vows

Sally Steward

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sally Steward, a hard-core romantic who expects life and novels to have happy endings, is married to Max and they live in Missouri, with their large cat, Leo, and their very small dog, Cricket. Although this is her first Harlequin Intrigue, Sally has written for mainstream publishers under her own name, and for Silhouette Romance as Sally Carleen. Her hobbies are drinking Coca-Cola and eating chocolate, especially Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream. Sally loves to hear from her readers, and you can contact her at P.O. Box 6614, Lee’s Summit, MO 64064.

Books by Sally Steward

HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

603—PRIVATE VOWS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Cole Grayson—The former-cop-turned-private-investigator wants to help the beautiful woman with amnesia but fears he will only lead her straight to hell.

Mary Jackson—She can’t remember anything from her past except for vague, terrifying images, images that fit with the blood on her wedding gown.

Pete Townley—The police officer is skeptical of Mary’s story. Does she really have amnesia or is she covering up a deadly secret?

Sam Maynard—He claims to be Mary’s fiancé. He’s obsessed with her, has his bedroom plastered with her pictures.

Geoffrey Sloan—He’s wealthy, charming and handsome and also says he’s Mary’s fiancé….

For Sharon Bishop.

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

Epilogue

Chapter One

With the top down on his big old T-bird convertible and one arm angled out the window, Cole Grayson drove slowly along Turtle Creek Boulevard, focusing on the trees and flowers, breathing in their essence, breathing out the bad taste his last job had left with him. This wasn’t the fastest way home by any means, but the older, wooded area—so close to downtown Dallas in actual mileage but so distant in other ways—always soothed him.

The early-June evening and the location were perfect, but they weren’t working their magic, weren’t dissolving that edgy, irritable feeling. He sat upright in the seat, fingers clenching the steering wheel, eyes darting from side to side, glowering at other drivers, ready to lean on the horn if somebody committed a slight infraction. What the hell was the matter with him? He should be happy!

He’d just turned in his final report on his last job, helping a large corporation catch an embezzler. Last month he’d found proof of fraud in an insurance scam. Business was booming, and it was good business. It paid better than being a cop and was certainly less dangerous.

And he felt totally useless.

Up ahead a woman emerged from between two buildings and paused, looking up and down the street. Cole sat even straighter and blinked, doubting his own eyes.

The woman wore a formal bridal gown.

Her clothing alone was enough to make him take notice, but it was her face, pale in the gathering dusk, her eyes wide with fear, that really caught his attention.

His foot jerked off the gas pedal and hovered over the brake but he ordered himself to go on. This was none of his business. He wasn’t a cop any longer and hadn’t been a very effective one when he was. The woman didn’t appear to be hurt. There was no reason for him to interfere.

A shabbily dressed man approached her and laid a hand on her arm. She screamed and whirled on the man, pummeling him with both fists. He tried to grab her hands, but she bolted into the street, directly in front of Cole’s car, the inappropriate yards of satin and lace billowing around her as she moved.

Cole slammed the brake pedal to the floor. His stomach lurched and a cold hand squeezed his heart as he felt and heard the sickening thud when over a ton of metal collided with a hundred pounds of flesh and bone.

The bride and all her regalia vanished from sight, hidden by the hood of his car.

He vaulted into the street, cursing himself, the woman, the man who’d frightened her…the world.

She lay on her stomach, almost hidden by the folds and layers of that damn frilly material.

Cole knelt beside her and picked up her arm encased in a lacy sleeve fastened with a bunch of little buttons. His big fingers trembled as he wrapped them around her slim wrist, searching for a pulse while his own pounded in his ears and made hers that much harder to distinguish.

He’d been a cop for twelve years. He ought to be used to this kind of thing.

But he wasn’t and he hadn’t been even when he lived with it on a daily basis.

He found her pulse, weak and fast as though she was in shock…or the terror he’d seen on her face still gripped her, but at least she was alive. Thank God he’d been going slow, that he’d already been poised to brake.

“Is she okay?” a man asked. Not the street person who’d scared her but a jogger, his face damp with perspiration.

“There’s a cell phone in my car! Call 911. Hurry!”

A small crowd of half a dozen people was starting to gather around them—concerned citizens, curiosity seekers.

The bride moaned and moved as if she was going to turn over. Well, she couldn’t be very comfortable with her face shoved into the street.

“Easy,” he cautioned. “Try not to move until the ambulance gets here.”

She gave no indication she even heard him, but rolled slowly and languidly, one arm flung above her head, as though she were turning over in her bed at home. She gazed up at him, light blue eyes blank in shock, not yet registering her situation.

She blinked then. Confusion surfaced and finally the fear again, her pupils shrinking to a pinpoint, the surrounding blue so pale it appeared almost silver in its translucence.

“No!” she choked, pushing herself into a sitting position, and he saw for the first time that the front of the dress was splattered with blood—lots of blood.

Cole broke into a sweat as the image of another woman, covered in blood because of him, flashed across the screen of his memory.

The woman in the bridal gown scooted away from him…toward the traffic in the street.

“Damn it, lady!” He grabbed her arm to pull her back, to keep her from further injury, and she burst into tears, collapsing against him.

“Let me go! Please let me go!” she begged.

Much as he’d like to do just that, let her go and pretend the whole thing never happened, he couldn’t. Instead, he held her as securely as he dared, considering the extent of the wound he must have caused.

“You’re going to be all right,” he assured her, though he wasn’t certain that she would be with all that blood on her dress. “That bum who was bothering you is gone.” The guy was probably harmless enough and her reaction to him had been, Cole thought, a little over the top, but he’d say whatever necessary to reassure her.

He stroked her back soothingly, the roughness of his palms snagging on the smooth satin. Her clean, innocent scent of lily-of-the-valley or some other white flower drifted up to him, cutting through the smell of hot pavement. She was thin and fragile, as if she would snap from too tight a grip.

Again that image of a broken doll, broken because of him, assaulted him.

Damn! This shouldn’t be happening. For the twelve years he’d been a cop he’d had no problem dealing with murderers and thieves and drug dealers, looking them in the eye and backing them down without even breathing hard. But this was asking too much, to expect him to cope with a terrified, fragile woman. He couldn’t. He’d long ago proven that.

“Lie back,” he ordered brusquely.

“No, no, no!” Face still buried against his chest, she shook her head, the netting of her veil shivering with the movement.

“There’s blood on your dress. I need to see how badly you’re hurt.” Reminding himself that she was in shock, he spoke more softly, made an effort not to startle her.

She continued to shake her head and cry.

He gripped her thin shoulders and pushed her away, forcing her to look at him. “Listen to me! I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to let me examine your wound.”

A woman from the group of onlookers knelt beside her. “Let me see, honey. Okay?”

Her tears stopping as if something inside had turned off, the bride gave the woman a puzzled glance then lifted her gaze to the chattering group around her as though she’d suddenly noticed her surroundings, suddenly woke up.

“The front of her dress,” Cole directed, and the woman nodded, gently turning the now-pliant bride to face her.

“Oh my God!” the woman exclaimed when she saw the crimson stains.

The bride’s gaze followed the other woman’s, and she gasped, then lifted her eyes to his again. Those eyes were even wider and more confused than ever, more frightened.

Now that Cole had a better look at the blood, he saw with a rush of relief that it was not coming from a fresh wound, nor was her gown torn. Either it had come from a preexisting wound or from somebody else. Not from her. Not from a wound caused by him.

Had she cut the man who’d approached her?

Automatically he rose to investigate the sidewalk where she and the man had been before she’d run into the street, to check for blood or a weapon.

“Don’t leave me!”

A hand gripped his arm with surprising strength and he turned to see the bride struggling to her feet. She was tall, which only emphasized her slender build, and she swayed as if she might not be able to stand without his support.

On the positive side, the fact that she was able to stand at all meant she couldn’t be hurt too badly. He clung to that, to the faint hope that he hadn’t caused her any permanent harm.

“A minute ago you were doing your damnedest to get away from me,” he reminded her.

“I know.” She released his arm and lifted both hands to her face. Hesitantly her slim fingers traced its tear-stained contours as if she’d never felt them before. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know why I wanted to get away from you. Who are you?”

“Cole Grayson. Who are you?”

She touched her face again. When her fingers encountered the edge of the veil, she frowned, fumbled for a second then yanked it off, releasing a cascade of quicksilver-blond hair. She studied the veil, turning it over as if secrets were hidden in its gauzy folds, looked down at the bloody gown then back up at him. The fear in her eyes had escalated to panic and spots of pink stood out on her porcelain cheeks like clown makeup. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

A siren screamed inside Cole’s head. Amnesia. Concussion. Brain damage. His fault.

Her head jerked upward, and he realized the siren was real, not just inside his own haunted mind.

“Ambulance, police, fire truck…maybe all three,” he reassured her. “It’s okay.” Liar!

She nodded. “I know what the sound is. I just don’t know who I am.”

“Relax. You’re probably in shock. You’ll be all right in a few minutes.” Please, God, she’d be all right in a few minutes. Please, God, he hadn’t hurt somebody else. “The blood. Can you tell me where it came from?”

Looking down at her midriff, she brought her hand within half an inch of touching the stain then drew back with a shudder. She bit her lip and shook her head slowly, the slight movement shifting the glow of the streetlights in her shiny hair. “I don’t know that either,” she whispered.

Maybe she was lying. As a P.I. and a former cop, that should be his first response. They all lied.

But some remnant of the man he once was, some remnant long buried and forgotten, believed she was telling the truth. Her fear was too real.

“Did you have a knife? Did you cut that man who scared you?” he pursued, forcing himself to act on logic, to beat back his unreliable emotions.

“Man?” she repeated blankly.

“You don’t remember the man who came up to you, put his hand on your arm, and you started hitting him before you ran into the street?”

She shook her head again. “No. I don’t remember any man.” Her gaze darted from him to the people, the street, the buildings on one side, the creek on the other. He could see and feel her terror expanding to fill her universe as shock loosened its hold and she realized the extent of what had happened to her. She gripped his arm. “How did I get here? Where am I?”

A patrol car squealed up with the ambulance right behind. Doors flew open and police and paramedics swarmed out of the two vehicles.

One of the officers was Pete Townley, and Cole was both glad and embarrassed to see his old friend and former partner…and angry at himself for being embarrassed. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was still performing an honorable service, catching lawbreakers, helping people.

“Hey, buddy,” Pete greeted him. “Can’t stay away from us, can you? What happened here?”

“This lady ran in front of my car and I hit her.”

Pete turned to his partner, a new guy Cole hadn’t met. “See if you’ve got any witnesses in the crowd and take their statements. I’ll deal with this shady character.” He grinned.

The team of paramedics rushed over, and for a few moments everything was chaos. The bride with no name clutched Cole’s arm convulsively as she shook her head to every request the paramedics made.

“Look, lady,” one finally exclaimed in frustration. “We’ve got certain procedures we have to follow for your benefit and ours. You were hit by a car, and you may have a concussion. Standard procedure is for you to lie on this stretcher, let us fasten this cervical collar on your neck and examine you. Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit. You’ll feel better and so will we.”

The bride’s grip on Cole’s arm tightened. “No.”

Cole patted her hand. “It’ll be all right. These men want to help you and I need to talk to the officer a minute.”

“Don’t leave me! You’re the only person I know here.” She looked around frantically. “The only person I know in the whole world.”

She sure had changed her tune, and it made him damn nervous. Cole had his spot in life. He caught embezzlers, con artists, insurance-scam criminals. What he didn’t do—what he hadn’t done even when he was on the police force—was successfully rescue damsels in distress.

“You don’t know me,” he protested.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly calmer as she stared directly into his eyes. “Yes, I do know you and I trust you.”

He wasn’t sure what she saw in his gaze; certainly not the truth or she wouldn’t trust him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a sigh. “The cops won’t let me leave until they get their pound of flesh.”

Reluctantly she consented to lying on the stretcher for the examination, but adamantly refused to permit the paramedics to put on the collar or the backboard. As they checked her vital signs, her gaze remained fixed on him, clutching him as if he were a lifeline. He fought back a laugh…or a grimace…at the irony of that concept.

“Long time no see,” Pete said. “What’s going on? You so hard up for a woman you’ve taken to running them down?” Pete grimaced immediately, pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his bright red hair. “Aw, geez, I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cole shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans and made himself smile. “Forget it. Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Angela either until you started falling all over yourself apologizing.”

It was a lie, but only a half lie. Of course he’d been thinking about Angela, about her still body covered in blood, about her fragility, about his role in her death. Pete’s careless joke hadn’t affected that one way or the other.

“Listen, you might want to check the sidewalk and the grass for blood or some kind of weapon. She ran from between those buildings and got into a struggle with a sleazy guy who came up, probably harmless, begging, but he did grab her arm. She got away from him and ran into the street, right in front of my car. I don’t think she had time to injure the guy, but you never know.”

Pete nodded and went to check out the scene.

Cole could feel the woman’s needy eyes on him, pulling him as a magnet, and he returned his attention to her, moving closer to where she lay reluctantly on the stretcher. “She okay?” he asked.

“Seems to be,” one of the paramedics answered. “We still need to take her in, though. Just a precaution since she appears to have some memory loss.”

“No!” The bride pushed aside the paramedics and raised herself to a sitting position. Terror showed in her gaze, her trembling lips, the shaky, beseeching hand she lifted to him. “Don’t let them take me. Please don’t let him take me!”

He squatted beside her, gently easing her back onto the stretcher. “Shh. Just relax, okay?”

Him? Don’t let him take me? Why had she used the singular pronoun the second time when there were two paramedics? Was something else going on here besides a fear of being taken to the hospital by strangers?

“I’m all right now, really I am. I remember my name and where I live. It’s…Mary Jackson, and I live at…1492 Main Street.”

She was definitely lying now, making it up on the spot, her eyes begging him to believe her, to help her, looking at him as if he were a hero or Marshall Dillon. Well, he wasn’t. He was just a former cop who hadn’t even been able to protect his own family, so what did she want from him?

He rose abruptly, doing her the favor of breaking away from her.

“What day is it?” the paramedic asked, his voice gentle. He knew she was lying, too.

Tears flooded her eyes, but she bit her lip and blinked them back, then looked around her. The curious crowd chafed at the police tape as they tried to get a closer look, and a steady stream of cars inched along while drivers gawked at the scene.

“Saturday.” A good guess from the number of people out and about. “It’s Saturday night. I don’t know the date. Do you?” she challenged.

Cole shifted his stance from one foot to the other and released a long breath. The woman, in spite of being in a complete panic, not knowing who or where she was, had guts. He had to give her that. “I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said, cursing himself even as the words slipped out of his mouth. “I’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”

She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, then, as if suddenly aware of the bloodstain she was touching, she dropped them to her sides with a shudder. “I can’t get in that ambulance. Please don’t make me.” Claustrophobia? A bad experience in an ambulance?

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “You can ride with me. I’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked in. I guess I owe you that much since I’m the one who ran you down.”

But it wasn’t only his guilt that motivated him. He wasn’t solely responsible for this woman’s problems. Something had been wrong with her before she ran in front of his car. A bride in full regalia with blood on her wedding gown had some kind of story to tell, even if she couldn’t remember it.

No, it wasn’t just the guilt that made him want to take care of her. This woman had that same fragile, helpless, innocent air that Angela had had. And in spite of knowing that the kindest thing he could do was to walk away, he couldn’t stop himself from responding to her pleas.

What the hell was the matter with him? Did he have some misguided notion he could get it right this time?

A psychiatrist could probably have a field day with that one.

“Evening, ma’am.” Pete strolled up. Cole noted that another squad car had arrived and the officers had taken over the search of the sidewalk and the surrounding area.

Instead of being relieved to see a uniformed police officer, the woman tightened her hold on his arm, and her breathing accelerated.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Pete asked in his best official mode.

“I can’t remember,” she said, her words barely above a whisper.

“A temporary fugue state,” one of the paramedics contributed.

Pete looked at Cole and lifted one eyebrow. “This guy here says you ran out from between those two buildings, a man accosted you and you ran into the street in front of his car. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“You come from a wedding reception somewhere around here?” Typical cop, assuming she was lying, trying to con her into admitting something. Standard operating procedure, but Cole wanted to tell him to ease up on her, that she was too fragile.

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“Where’d you get the blood on your dress?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t remember!”

“She said it was Mary Jackson a few minutes ago,” Cole interjected. “Mary Jackson who lives at 1492 Main. But I think she was lying so she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.”

Pete’s dark eyes bored into her, and she trembled slightly. “Is that your name?” he demanded. “Are you Mary Jackson?”

She looked down to the pavement and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Mary Chapin Carpenter sings country music. So does Alan Jackson. I just put them together. 1492 Main Street. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And every town has a Main Street. I made it all up. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Home.”

“Where might that be?”

Her eyes widened and tears again glistened. “I don’t know.”

Involuntarily, Cole reached over and squeezed her hand where it clung to his arm. Her skin was smooth and silky, like her dress, and her fingers were long and delicate. The only contrast was a large diamond ring that pressed with sharp cold edges against his fingers.

“The way I see it,” Pete continued “you’ve got two choices, the hospital or the police station. You’re going to have some questions to answer when you come out of this fugue state, and we need to run some tests on that dress, see what kind of blood that is.”

She swallowed, the sound audible over the traffic and crowd noises as if the three of them stood in their own little universe. “What kind of blood?”

“Could be human. Or could be chicken. Maybe you were cooking for your own wedding reception. Could be goat. Maybe this was some kind of voodoo ceremony.” He stared pointedly at her hand on Cole’s arm, at the huge diamond solitaire. “Apparently the wedding wasn’t over. You don’t have the band to go with that rock.”

She held out her hand, studying the ring as if seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she tugged it off and extended it to Cole. “It’s not mine!”

“It is unless somebody else claims it,” Pete told her. “So what’s it gonna be? The station or the hospital?”

Her eyes, the pupils so shrunken they were lost in the silvery-blue mist, silently asked his advice, trusting him to make the right decision, to lead her in the right direction.

Couldn’t she tell just by looking at him that the only place he could lead her was straight into hell?

“If I were you, I’d choose the hospital,” he growled. “I sure wouldn’t voluntarily go with the cops.” And certainly not with an ex-cop who had the scent of death following him like a shadow.

She studied him a moment longer, her hand still outstretched with the ring winking on her palm. “All right,” she said. “But only if you take me in your car. Only if I don’t have to get into that…that thing.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he agreed against his better judgment. She certainly did seem to have a phobia about the ambulance. Of course, she seemed to have a phobia about everything.

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you better let us take care of the lady.”

Cole flinched at his buddy’s words. Pete was only following procedure, but it hit Cole hard, like a direct attack, an affirmation that this frightened, confused woman would be better off with anybody in the world except him.

Pete knew his story. So maybe he was saying exactly that.

“Are you arresting me?” the bride asked, lifting her chin defiantly, that unexpected burst of strength again surfacing.

“No, ma’am. We’d just like to know where that blood came from. I didn’t find any more in the vicinity and I didn’t find a weapon, but you could have wounded the guy you were struggling with. If you did, he’s not around to press charges, and he did accost you first, according to your friend here. We’re not arresting you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital because I have nowhere else to go, but only if Mr. Grayson takes me.” She spread her hands several inches away from the dress as if she didn’t want to touch it. “And you’re more than welcome to have this…this thing as soon as I get other clothes to wear.” She shivered in the warm summer evening. “I don’t want it. It makes my skin crawl.”

She had amnesia…or a fugue state, as the paramedic called it. She had an aversion to ambulances and hospitals and cops. She was wearing a wedding gown but no wedding band, which probably meant she’d skipped out on her own wedding…after somehow getting blood all over the front of that gown…a gown that made her skin crawl. The only normal things about her were her knowledge of country-music singers and the date America was officially discovered.

She had problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she was looking to him to take care of her. What a joke!

“I can get her to the hospital, Pete,” Cole snapped. “I can handle that.”

“Please take this,” she whispered, still holding out her hand.

Pete reached toward her, but she jerked away from him. “I’ll take your jewelry in for you, ma’am,” he said. “Give you a receipt and you can have it back as soon as you get out of the hospital or anytime you want.”

“No. Not you. Him.”

“Look, lady,” Cole said, “I’m a complete stranger. The only thing you know about me is that I ran you down with my car. Give the ring to the police officer. You give it to me and you may never get it back again. You may never see me again.”

“I don’t want it back.”

“Take it, Grayson,” Pete snapped irritably. “We haven’t got all night. I’ll see that he doesn’t run off with it, ma’am.”

Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.

Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.

He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Chapter Two

Jane Doe.

That’s what she’d heard the doctors and nurses calling her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she hated it. Bad enough she’d lost all memory of self, but everyone’s insistence on using that generic, no-identity name stole any remaining sense of self.

They said it was normal that she could remember dates from history and the names of country singers but not whether she liked those country singers, not who she went to concerts with, nothing about the classroom where she’d learned those historical dates. Nothing personal. Nothing that made her anything more than a zombie with no soul and no name.

She tucked the hospital sheet more tightly around her as if that thin material could keep out the demons. She couldn’t remember their names or faces, but she knew they were there, watching from dark, soulless eyes, waiting to snare her with twisted claws.

The man who said he’d hit her with his car, Cole Grayson, the one person she’d felt connected to in this strange world, had brought her to the hospital and turned her over to the others then left. They had poked, prodded and examined every inch of her mind and body. She’d hated it, hated the invasion, hated and feared the strangers…medical personnel and police officers…with their questions she couldn’t answer and their sly insinuations that she might be lying.

Finally they’d put her in her own room and left her alone, and that was the worst of all. She was alone without even herself for company. But at least she was out of that horrible dress that had imprisoned her with its endless yards of fabric and the sticky blood that stained the front and clung to her skin like some foul creature. Even now, bathed and wearing a clean hospital gown, the metallic scent seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her tongue.

As she lay staring into the darkness, the door to her room opened. It made no sound except for a whisper of a sigh when it moved through the air, but she heard it and a nameless terror rose inside her. Pressing her nails into her palms, she fought the urge to bury her head under the sheet.

Instead, she forced herself to sit up and face the intruder.

He hesitated half in and half out of the doorway, the light from the hall turning him to a dark silhouette, unrecognizable except that he was the only recognizable element in this shadow world she’d been thrust into.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said. Cole Grayson, the man who’d caused her to be in this hospital in the first place, yet the only person her heart trusted even while her mind warned her against such insanity.

“No. I wasn’t asleep.”

He moved inside, closed the door and flipped the wall switch, flooding the sterile room with light. He was tall with wide shoulders that stretched the fabric of the blue knit shirt as it molded to clearly defined muscles. Faded jeans hugged muscular thighs. His brown hair was shaggy, had seen too many weeks between haircuts, and his square jaw was accented by the dark shadow of a man who needed to shave twice a day and hadn’t.

His appearance said he observed the rudiments of a civilized dress code but actually didn’t much care what he looked like. He bordered on disreputable and was surely someone she shouldn’t trust at all.

Yet there was a desolate emptiness somewhere behind his brown eyes that reached inside her and drew her to him, a sadness she suspected most people didn’t see. It was that desolate emptiness, an echo of what she felt inside herself, that had made her trust him while she was still in the middle of the street, virtually under the wheels of his car.

No, that wasn’t all of it. Behind her emptiness lay fear; behind his lay a stone wall strong enough to support that emptiness, to keep it from devouring him. She was drawn to that strength, to that stone wall, to the only security she’d seen so far in this unknown world into which she’d awakened.

“I brought your engagement ring back.” He walked over to the bed and laid the shiny object on her night-stand. She looked at it, somehow expecting it to take on a life of its own, to coil and snarl and attack her.

“I must have loved the man who gave it to me,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, you must have. I don’t think men go around giving that kind of jewelry to women who hate them.”

In vain she searched her memory for a picture of that man, for the love she must have felt for him, for some reason that would explain why she had such an aversion to the ring.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt badly,” Cole continued. “I talked to the cops, gave them my statement, and the officer said you were okay except for a little bruising, especially around your wrists. That guy you were struggling with must have grabbed you pretty hard.”

She lifted her hands and looked at the black-and-blue marks that marred the arms she didn’t recognize. Had she always been this thin or had she been sick? What event had occurred in her life to cause that small scar? Did she break that fingernail when she fell or when she grappled with the man on the street…or during whatever struggle had left all that blood on her dress?

“I guess he must have grabbed me hard. I don’t remember.”

“The doctors think you will, though. Soon.”

She nodded. “I know. They told me. Officer Townley said they’re checking missing-persons reports and they’ll put my picture in the paper and on the news. Somebody will recognize me. The doctor said as soon as I see a familiar face, that could jog my memory.” It all sounded quite logical. So why didn’t she believe it? Why did she fear being stuck in this foggy land of nowhere for the rest of her life?

“Yeah. The guy who gave you that ring is probably frantic right now. As soon as he sees your picture, he’ll come to take you home.”

“Yes,” she said. “If he’s still alive. If he’s not the man whose blood was all over my dress.” A memory beat leathery bat wings against the dark, closed windows of her mind.

“I don’t want that thing,” she blurted, scooting as far away from the diamond and from the almost-memory as she could in the narrow bed.

Cole looked as her as though she were nuts. Well, wasn’t she?

He rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture causing his biceps to bulge so that the sleeve of his shirt seemed certain to tear. He was a big man, a strong man. He could hurt anybody he chose to hurt, especially someone as defenseless as she.

Yet she felt no fear of him. Instinctively she knew that he would use that strength to protect her, and she desperately needed protection right now…from the dark, unknown terrors hiding in her mind, as well as from the unknown world around her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I told you, I’m Cole Grayson.”

“That’s not what I mean. They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. That might even be my name, or maybe it’s Sarah Smith or Mary Jackson. But whatever it is, a name doesn’t tell anything about who I am or who you are.”

He gazed down at her for a long moment then finally turned away and angled a hip onto the windowsill, studying their reflections in the dark glass. “I’m nobody you want to know.”

A gray veil of desolation emanated from him. She could see it, feel it in the weight of the air, smell the leaden scent, taste the bitter agony. Perhaps because her mind was completely empty of her own emotions, his came to her, strong and clear.

“I don’t have a choice right now,” she said. “You’re the only person I know.”

“What do you know about me, other than the fact that I ran you down in the street?”

“You said I darted in front of your car. If you hadn’t acted quickly, I could have been killed. So I guess what I know about you is that you saved my life.”

His lips twisted upward in a cynical imitation smile. “That’s a nice theory. I’ll try real hard to buy into it.” His gaze retreated into the shadowed depths of his own soul for a moment, then he shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”

He was getting ready to leave, taking with him the only connection, tenuous and brief though it was, that she had to herself, to the person she’d been before the accident, the only familiar element in this unfamiliar world.

“Tell me about the man I struggled with,” she entreated, interrupting him before he could declare his intention to leave, thereby making it irrevocable. “What did he look like? The police kept asking me, and I don’t know. They asked if I knew him, and I don’t know. They asked if the blood on my dress belonged to him, if I wounded him, and I don’t know.” She bit her lip as she realized her voice was rising, panic spilling over the edges of her words.

He moved to sit beside her on the bed, the mattress sinking with his weight, creating the sensation that, if she relaxed, she could slide against his body, into him, let herself be swallowed up in his strength.

She held herself rigidly against the temptation to do just that.

He gazed at her for a long moment and she saw that his eyes were actually hazel, the brown streaked with green like a tree in April, dead from winter’s cold but ready to burst into bloom with the warmth of spring. However, the torment that welled up from the depths gave the lie to that green promise.

He raised his hand and for a second she thought he was going to take hers, but instead he raked his fingers through his shaggy hair then dropped them to his denim-encased thigh. “I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. Average size, average height, dark hair. I think he was probably a homeless person, looking for a handout. They sleep in the parks around the area. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”

“Then I must have had the blood all over me before. Did I? When you first saw me, was there blood on my dress?”

“I don’t know.” He grinned wryly. “You see? You’re not the only one who has to admit that. If you want my opinion, though, I’d say you did. The blood was several minutes old by the time I got to you. That could be one reason that guy approached you. He could have been trying to help a beautiful woman who might be hurt.”

An involuntary, unexpected thrill darted through her and she touched her face, examining the unfamiliar contours. “Am I beautiful?”

“You don’t know what you look like? No, I guess you don’t.”

“Nobody had a mirror in the emergency room. They told me to wait until I got up here, but I haven’t looked yet. I’m not sure I can deal with seeing a stranger staring back at me.” Even as she said it, she felt shame for her cowardice, for being so frightened of everything, even her own face.

“To answer your question, yeah. You’re beautiful.” His words were complimentary but his tone was cold. For a brief instant, green fire seemed to flicker in the depths of his eyes, a fire that could heat a woman to the boiling point, past that and beyond, a fire that brought her body to tingling awareness. But that green flame died as quickly as it came.

If it had ever truly been there in the first place and not just her imagination, something she wanted to see.

“You’re beautiful like one of those cups with flowers painted on them that you see in antique shops,” he continued, his words so detached she was sure she’d imagined that brief spurt of flame. “The kind a guy’s afraid to pick up because it might break if he held it too tight.”

It was a pretty accurate description of the way she felt, but she bristled anyway. “Wouldn’t you be feeling a little fragile and a whole lot scared if you suddenly lost yourself?” She blurted the defense as much for herself as for him.

“Yeah, I guess I would be.” His square, black-stubbled jaw and the straight line of his lips contradicted his words.

With the clarity about others that must have come when she lost herself, she knew that Cole Grayson had met the devil and challenged him on his own turf. Considering the torment that lived behind his eyes, he might have lost the battle, but even so, he’d survived and nothing frightened him anymore.

“Would you hand me that other hospital gown from the foot of the bed?” she asked. “It’s the only pretense of a robe they could give me and I want to see what I look like.” She wasn’t sure whether her sudden courage came from the fact that Cole had enough strength for two people and she was able to absorb some of it, or whether his stoic demeanor shamed her into the action.

He rose from the bed, handed her the gown and waited.

She wrapped it around, covering the open back of the first gown.

Even so, when she stepped out of bed, she felt naked and exposed…and acutely aware of Cole’s masculine presence in the small room.

That was silly. The gowns, one tied in the back and the other in the front, hid her body effectively. Anyway, Cole was there as a rescuer. He had certainly not given her any reason to think he was interested in her body. He’d all but said she looked as if she might break if a man held her too tightly…and he looked like a man who would hold a woman very tightly.

She moved around the bed, carefully avoiding the mirror above the sink in the corner of the room. Facing herself wasn’t going to be easy.

Cole came up behind her, so close she could feel his body heat, smell his masculine scent combined with something else…something dark and dangerous and scary and exciting.

He flipped on the light above the sink then put both hands on her shoulders. “Go ahead,” he urged, his voice as startlingly gentle as his touch. “Maybe when you see yourself, everything will come back. You said the doctors thought the sight of a familiar face might help. You can’t get much more familiar than your own.”

She lifted her gaze slowly, as if she could sneak up on the strange woman she knew she would find in the mirror.

It was a pale, thin face with prominent cheekbones and overly large eyes. Long blond hair failed to add any color.

The image belonged to her, housed the brain she used to speak and walk. It was the woman other people saw when they looked at her. She ate with that mouth, smelled with that nose, saw through those eyes, combed that hair.

Though she couldn’t say the features were familiar, the tight, frightened expression somehow was.

She raised her eyes to Cole’s, looking for something—reassurance, courage, answers he couldn’t possibly have.

What she found instead was a flaring of the green flame she’d seen so briefly before, a fire that reminded her he was, after all, a man, an attractive, virile man, and she was a woman wearing nothing underneath the short hospital gowns.

For an instant, inappropriate thoughts and feelings flooded her mind and her body. Though Cole didn’t move, she could feel his heat against her skin, tracing down her spine and over her bottom, warming her thighs just as his breath warmed the nape of her neck.

He blinked, took his hands from her shoulders and stepped backward. “Recognize anybody?” he asked, his voice gruff with angry overtones. Anger at her? At himself?

“No.” Her answer came out on a breathy sigh and she was appalled to find her body yearning for him to return, to stand behind her, to touch her again. Her memory might be gone, but her hormones were working overtime.

Stress, she told herself. A reaction to the accident, to everything that had happened. So much stress that she’d imagined for a second time the brief flicker of desire in Cole’s eyes, imagined it and overreacted.

She cleared her throat and tried again to answer his question. “If I’d seen a picture, I wouldn’t have been able to identify it as me, but I would have known it was familiar.” At least, the expression was.

“That’s a good start.” He walked away, giving her plenty of space to return to the bed without getting close to him.

She hurried back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Thank you,” she said. “For being there just now, I mean. And for saving my life.”

He nodded, compressed his lips and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Well, I just came by to see if there’s anything I can do for you, anything you need, other than your memory, of course. I took that away from you, but I’m afraid I can’t give it back. No matter what you say, I blame myself that you’re here.”

“I don’t need anything.” She tried to sound more certain than she felt. “I’ll probably wake up in the morning with all my memories intact.” Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t still be terrified.

“I hope so. I hope that by this time tomorrow you’ll be home with the man who gave you that diamond.”

The sparkling ring looked incongruous lying on the nightstand between the plastic tray and plastic water pitcher. She swallowed hard and fought back the resurgence of unreasoning terror and disgust it evoked.

“You need to put it on,” he said. “Jewelry has a bad habit of disappearing in hospitals.”

She continued to stare at the ring, unable to force herself to move closer, to reach for it.

Cole picked up the diamond with one hand and took hers with the other.

His hand was warm and big and capable and she fought down a rekindling of that inappropriate response to his touch that she’d felt while standing in front of the mirror. He was being considerate and kind. That was all.

He touched the tip of her finger with the ring, and terror suddenly overwhelmed her again, a black void that drove out any other emotions and threatened to swallow her up, a nameless, pervasive fear that encompassed everything because she couldn’t recognize its face.

She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to divert herself, to maintain contact with reality. It was only a ring, not some instrument of torture, nothing to cause her breathing to become labored and her mouth dry.

The metal burned as he slid it onto her finger, then stopped at her second knuckle. “Your finger’s swollen, probably from the accident. You’d better wear your ring on a smaller one.”

“No!” She snatched her hand away, curling it to her chest and leaving him holding the ring. “It’ll fall off,” she improvised desperately. “I’ll lose it. You take it.”

Cole sighed and stepped back. “Lady, do you have any idea how much this ring is worth? Way too much for you to entrust it to a stranger.”

“You’re no more of a stranger to me than I am to myself. I trust you.”

“You don’t have any reason to.”

“I don’t have any reason not to. You asked if there was anything you could do for me. You can take that thing away. Please.”

He shook his head then reached inside his pocket and withdrew a battered leather wallet.

“I’ll tell you what. I just cashed a check and I’ve got—” He counted out bills. “Three hundred eighty-five dollars. It’s probably not even close to what this rock is worth. But I’ll take the ring with me and leave you this so you’ll have some money in case your fiancé doesn’t show up immediately and so you can have some reassurance that I’ll get your diamond back to you.”

“All right.” She refrained from telling him that she didn’t want the money, didn’t care if she ever saw the ring again. That would sound crazy.

Besides, she probably would want it back when her fiancé found her, when her memory returned.

Maybe.

Though wanting the vile thing on her finger seemed an impossibility right now.

He gave her the cash then took out a business card and a pen. “Here’s my home and office numbers in case you leave before I get back to you. The home number’s unlisted.”

She took the card and read it, memorizing both numbers. Just in case.

He studied the ring again then slid it into his pocket. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

She nodded.

“Good night and good luck, uh—”

She held her breath. Was he going to call her Jane Doe the way the nurses had, let her know that he didn’t consider her a real person either?

“Mary Jackson.” His lips quirked upward in a semblance of a smile. “Good thing you’re not a rock-music fan. You might have called yourself something really off the wall.”

She tried to return his smile. “Sure. Things could always be worse. Right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well, I’m sure it’ll all work out for you. Good night, Mary. Call me if you need anything.”

He spun on his heel and left, taking his aura of sadness and desolation with him, but instead of feeling lighter, the air seemed heavier and more oppressive than before he’d gone, darker, even though the light still blazed from the ceiling.

Chapter Three

For the next two days and nights Cole saw her haunted, frightened, alluring face on the six o’clock news broadcasts, in the local papers and in his dreams.

Despite all the publicity, however, her groom had not appeared to claim his bride. No one had come in to identify her, to take her home. Every afternoon Cole checked with Pete, and every afternoon the word was the same. Nothing.

She remained a woman with no past, adrift in a world she couldn’t remember. And no matter that she genuinely didn’t seem to blame him for it…he blamed himself. The accident had been unavoidable, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d been the one driving the car, the one who’d caused her problems and, ironically, the only one she’d trusted to help her. He couldn’t help her. He knew that.

Yet the memory of the way she’d lifted her chin and lied so bravely about remembering her name and address to keep from going to the hospital, the startled, pleased way she’d looked when he told her she was beautiful…the memory of her…stayed in the forefront of his mind and made him wish he could help her.

Pete had told him that she’d insisted on leaving the hospital the next day. Using the money he’d loaned her on her engagement ring, she’d rented a hotel room as close as she could get to the scene of the accident, hoping she’d recognize something familiar. He knew the place she’d chosen. It wasn’t luxurious nor was it seedy. It was mediocre. Institutional. Not a place where he could imagine Mary, with her air of fragility and dignity, being comfortable.

Cole tried to get the image of her in that hotel out of his mind as he pulled off the street and into his winding, tree-lined driveway a little after midnight. It was a dark, moonless night and, without the reflective strip on his mailbox, he might have missed the turn.

That driveway had been one of the things Angela had liked about the place, that the casual passerby wouldn’t be able to find them. On the outskirts of Dallas, the heavily wooded lots were large and had offered the requisite city residence for his job on the police force as well as seclusion and safety for Angela.

Which only proved that nobody could ever really be safe.

Not Angela and Billy in their secluded house and not Mary Jackson in her rented room in a mediocre hotel. But he couldn’t do one thing to change that, so why was he even stewing about it?

He pulled into the garage and got out of his car—not the beloved T-bird he’d been driving when he ran into Mary, but a dark blue, midsize sedan, the one he drove when he didn’t want to stand out, didn’t want to be noticed, when his job called for him to blend into the crowd, as he’d done tonight, infiltrating a society party dressed as a waiter.

He left the garage, closing the door behind him, and crossed his yard. The porch light had burned out a couple of years ago and he’d never replaced it. He liked the darkness.

A cricket chirped, his song loud in the quiet. Something scurried through the underbrush…a raccoon or ’possum, maybe. Too small for a deer. All sorts of wildlife shared the acres of dense woods that surrounded and separated the half-dozen houses in the development.

He strode onto the porch, unlocked the front door and went inside, crossing the entryway and climbing the wide wooden stairs without turning on a light. There was no need. He knew where every piece of furniture was located. He hadn’t moved anything in the last three years.

The only thing he’d changed was the room he and Angela had planned to use for a nursery, though the need had never arisen. He’d bought bedroom furniture and that was where he slept. He never entered the room he’d shared with Angela or the one that still held Billy’s twin bed surrounded by his stuffed animals and football posters.

The red light on his answering machine blinked in the darkness as he entered. He flipped on the light and pressed the button to retrieve his messages.

“This is…the woman who ran in front of your car two days ago.” Her hesitant voice emerged from the plastic machine like a soft spring breeze, and he could almost smell the white flowers with satin petals.

“I thought you might have tried to call me. Someone did—a man, the operator said. But when I answered, no one was there and whoever it was never called back. I thought perhaps it was you since you’re the only person besides the police who knows where I am. Although I don’t suppose you know, do you? I’m staying in room 428 at the Newton Arms.”

She recited the hotel’s number then hesitated as if debating whether to say more. He couldn’t tell if she hung up or if her silence triggered the answering machine’s automatic disconnect. In any event, the computerized voice announced that the call had come in at 9:23.

Cole played the message again, listening closely to what she wasn’t saying.

The tight sounds of fear were woven through her precise speech patterns and carefully modulated tones, and every word, every nuance sent guilt shooting through him.

Someone had called her…a wrong number, a reporter, a crank, a nobody…but she was illogically frightened. He’d seen Angela go through that torment a hundred times. Every hang-up call was a potential murderer or kidnapper checking to see if she was home alone.

Not only was he powerless when it came to helping people like Angela and Mary, but he seemed to have a talent for dragging them under, putting them in a position where fears that usually lurked in the background could grab them by the throat.

It was too late to return the call now. Tomorrow morning would have to be soon enough.

He peeled off his clothes and tossed all of them, even the uncomfortable, rented waiter’s uniform, into a pile in one corner then went down the hall to shower.

The cool water felt good sluicing down his body, washing off the stench of cigarette smoke, alcohol and cloying perfume.

Tonight he’d served drinks and hors d’oeuvres at the party while observing and surreptitiously taking pictures of a woman wearing the jewelry she’d reported to her insurance company as stolen. He’d been successful. His employer would be pleased.

But he didn’t feel successful. He felt useless, unfocused, as though he was just stumbling along down the road of life with no purpose and no goal.

Actually, that wasn’t completely true. His mind had consistently focused on one thing tonight…the wrong thing. Tonight’s job—like many of his assignments—was a no-brainer. He’d had nothing to distract him from thoughts of Mary Jackson.

As he’d offered fresh drinks, taken away dirty glasses and emptied ashtrays, her face had kept intruding, a small, pale image that loomed larger and larger, her eyes begging him for help he couldn’t give no matter how much he wanted to.

Then someone would speak to him or bump into him and he’d realize he’d been thinking only of Mary, had lost even the little attention he needed to perform his job. When that happened, he’d forcibly banish her from his thoughts, at least for a few minutes.

Now, after hearing her voice again, he found he couldn’t get her out of his head even for a few minutes. And it was more than guilt, more than a futile desire to help her and salve his conscience.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her smooth, porcelain skin…her long, graceful legs when she’d slid out of bed wearing that short hospital gown…the scents of harsh hospital soap that almost but not quite overpowered her white floral fragrance…the hungry way his body had responded to her nearness…and the brief flash of desire he’d seen in her eyes when they’d met his in the mirror.

He twisted the faucets angrily, shutting off the flow of water the way he wished he could shut off such troublesome thoughts, then, with a muttered curse, dried his body that had responded much too eagerly just to the thought of her.

He returned to his bedroom, flopped onto the unmade bed and switched out the light.

Okay, she was a woman, he was a man, and he lusted for her. So?

So that didn’t make any sense. He knew better than to lust after women with haunted, frightened eyes who needed a champion, a knight in shining armor. He lusted after women with knowing eyes, strong women who needed only what he had to give. And lust was all he had to give.

In spite of the fact that he was exhausted, sleep was elusive. When it finally came, he slept hard and long, waking shortly after nine.

Immediately, even before he made coffee, he called the Newton Arms, but Mary Jackson had already checked out.

He tried to call Pete, at home first since it was Saturday, but got the answering machine. He wasn’t at work, either, so Cole left a message at both places then went downstairs, made a pot of coffee, drank it and had ample time to wonder why he wasn’t pleased that someone—her fiancé?—must have come to claim Mary.

Because he sensed that her fears were of much longer standing than the normal disorientation that amnesia would cause anyone? Because the situation brought back the awful sense of helplessness he’d gone through with Angela?

Because the additional element of sexual attraction had, against all reason and common sense, insinuated itself into the equation?

When the phone finally rang, he snatched it up, half expecting, half hoping it would be her calling to tell him where she was.

“What’s up, buddy?” Pete asked.

Cole was both disappointed and relieved. “The woman I hit—”

“Mary,” Pete interjected. “She asked us to call her Mary Jackson. Sounds better than Jane Doe since that’s what we call all the unidentified female bodies that come through here.”

Cole flinched at the image of Mary on a slab in the morgue. She’d come awfully close to that. If he’d been going a little faster—

“I’ve still got her ring, you know, and when I called her hotel, she’d checked out.”

“Yeah, I just got back from taking her to the Gramercy shelter for a few days. She freaked this morning when I called to tell her that we got the lab results back, and the blood on her dress is definitely human. She started babbling about how she had to get out of that hotel because he knew she was there. Of course, when I asked who he was, she didn’t know and admitted she wasn’t being logical. Seems somebody called her and hung up and she’s positive it wasn’t a wrong number or a bad connection. Pretty paranoid, but maybe that comes with the amnesia.”

“No accident victims in the local hospitals that might belong to that blood?”

“None that admit it. I told her if we got any unidentified bodies, we’d like her to come down and take a look.”

“I’m sure that thrilled her.”

“About as much as when I told her about Sam Maynard coming in yesterday and trying to claim her—”

“Sam the Sleaze?” Cole flinched at the thought of the disgusting pervert coming into contact with Mary’s confusion and vulnerability. “Is he out of jail again? When are you going to put that creep away for good?”

“When he does something we can get him on. He’s a sicko, but he’s smart enough to ride the line between annoying women enough to get his wrists slapped and annoying them enough to get himself a prison term.”

“You think he’d go after her? You think he called her?”

“Sam? Nah. That’s not his style. Too much trouble. He can find plenty of women to accost right on the city streets.”

“If he was hanging around the station, he might have heard somebody mention where she was staying.”

“Could be, but I doubt it. Anyway, when Sam reaches out to touch somebody, he likes it to be in person.”

“Pete, you’re about as funny as a bad case of the flu.”

“I’ll tell you what’s funny, this whole case. I thought it would be open and shut. If you got a bride, the groom can’t be far behind, right? Whole thing’s damn odd.”

“Yeah, it is. Well, I’m glad you got her installed at Gramercy. She ought to feel safe there.”

Cole knew the small shelter Pete was talking about. Next door to a church and staffed by the members, it catered to families and people temporarily down on their luck. A good choice, as shelters went. Nevertheless he had a hard time picturing her there. “I’m going to see her, take her ring back. I’ll reassure her that Sam’s harmless.”

“Good deal. We’re doing what we can on this end, but with no evidence that a crime’s been committed, we can’t dedicate a lot of manpower to it. Well, I got another call. Check you later, buddy.”

After talking to Pete, Cole went into the small room downstairs that he used for a home office. Other than sleeping in his bedroom and storing beer in the kitchen, this was the only room in the house that he used. He had an official office in a nearby business area, a place to meet clients, but this was where he kept his files and did most of his work. This was the room that justified his holding on to a house he didn’t like or want, a house that reminded him every day of his failure.

He opened the top drawer of the desk and took Mary’s ring from its hiding place at the back. In the palm of his hand, the gold shone and the diamond sparkled. It was a beautiful ring, and Mary hated it.

Kind of like the way he felt about this house.

In his own way, he was as helpless as she. He couldn’t rescue her, couldn’t locate her relatives or bring back her memory or even save her from her own fears. Any gallant impulses he had in that direction were pointless.

But he did know someone who would give her a fair appraisal of the ring and loan her money on it. He could contribute that much to easing the trauma of the situation he’d put her in, that much and nothing more.

No matter how much his libido might want him to get more involved.

MARY SAT on the curb in front of the Gramercy Home and tried to push down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to think, to figure out what to do next, and next after that, what to do with the rest of her life in case nobody showed up to tell her who she was, in case she never remembered.

The church that sponsored the shelter owned the entire block as well as the parsonage across the street. The surrounding neighborhood was quiet, an area of older homes, some well kept, some neglected. Overhead, the sun shone cheerfully from a cloudless blue sky and the smell of honeysuckle was sweet on the summer air. She could not have been in less threatening surroundings. Yet the nameless, faceless fear she’d known since the accident refused to leave her.

In her small hotel room on the fourth floor of the Newton Arms, she’d felt isolated, trapped and claustrophobic yet unable to force herself to venture outside. Though she’d let the doctor at the hospital convince her to find a room close to the place where she’d appeared in the hope that familiar surroundings would bring back memories, she was terrified of the area, terrified to leave the hotel.

The hang-up phone call she’d received last night had increased her anxiety. Moving to another area of town, to this shelter recommended by Officer Townley, should have solved those problems. But it hadn’t. Now she felt exposed and vulnerable.

It had nothing to do with the dozen or so other inhabitants of the small shelter. They were basically in the same circumstances as she…homeless, unemployed, no friends or loved ones to care for them. Though actually they were better off than she was. They had memories of homes and loved ones. They knew their own names.

Nor was her feeling of vulnerability directly related to Sam Maynard, the strange man whom Officer Townley said had claimed to be her fiancé. True, the panic had wrapped around her with suffocating intensity at that news and hadn’t completely dissipated with Townley’s assurances that the man was essentially harmless and had no way of knowing where she was staying. The hang-up call the previous evening could have been from him.

But her fear went beyond such specifics. It was free-floating, attached to nothing and everything, all-consuming and illogical.

After completely breaking down that morning when Officer Townley had hit her with the double blow of the pervert who’d wanted to take her home and then told her the blood on her dress was human, she’d resolved to take control, to refuse her fear the power it demanded. Even if she never regained her memory, if no one ever came to take her back to her home and family, she would conquer this unreasoning terror.

A nondescript dark blue sedan pulled over to the curb and her determination vanished as a black dread encompassed her. Her heart began to pound irregularly, perspiration beaded on her forehead and the muscles in her stomach knotted almost painfully. As she got to her feet, her movements seemed to be the slow motion of a nightmare.

Someone coming to the church, she told herself. Someone coming to offer a job to one of the people in the shelter. Someone harmless!

She clenched her fists even as her body involuntarily turned to run back to the shelter.

“Mary!”

She choked down a sob as she recognized the voice, one of the few she could recognize, the only one that didn’t frighten her. Cole Grayson.

He got out of the car and came around to where she stood. Both his blue jeans and the beer logo on his T-shirt were faded and comfortable-looking. He’d shaved but his hair was still shaggy. The sight of him was marvelously, wondrously familiar.

He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a sunburst pattern, a reflection of the sunburst that had spread through her breast at his appearance.

“You sure look different in those jeans than you did in that wedding dress,” he said.

The mention of the dress dimmed that sunburst and shot a painful spasm of unfocused dread through her.

His smile changed to a scowl. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to pass out or something.” He took her arm, supporting her. The dependency she felt on him, the reassurance and comfort his touch brought her were totally at odds with her resolution to be strong and conquer her fears.

“I’m fine.”

Concern blended with the desolation in his gaze and told her that he knew she was lying, and she hated that.

She didn’t want anyone’s concern or pity.

Especially not Cole Grayson’s.

With a sinking feeling, she admitted to herself that this need came from more than her pride. She wanted this man to view her as a woman, not a victim. She wanted to see that momentary flare in his eyes that she’d seen or imagined when he’d stood behind her at the mirror in the hospital.

“I got your message last night,” he said, “but it was too late to call.”

“That’s okay.” Even as she’d dialed his number, she’d known deep inside that he hadn’t been her hang-up caller, and she wasn’t sure why she’d called him. It had taken seeing him in person, feeling his hand on her bare arm, for her to realize why. She’d wanted an excuse to talk to him, to see him again, to feel his touch.

She turned and walked a few feet away, removing her arm from his hand, her body from the vicinity of his, even though such action didn’t remove the growing attraction she felt for him.

He didn’t follow but stood watching her, squinting into the sun. “It was probably a reporter trying to get an interview.”

“Why would a reporter hang up?”

“I don’t know. Lost his nerve. Got another call. Could be anything.”

“How could he find me? The police said they wouldn’t tell anybody where I was staying.”

He gave an unamused bark of laughter. “Pete—Officer Townley wouldn’t. But there are some others who would. Don’t underestimate the power of the media. Anyway, maybe it wasn’t a reporter. Maybe it was a wrong number.”

She shook her head. “I asked the operator. She said the person asked for Mary Jackson.”

“Then it had to be somebody who got their info from the cops. Heck, it could have been one of the officers calling to check on you, and he got another call just before you answered. It happens all the time.”

“There was a man who came to the police station claiming to be my fiancé.”

Cole’s lips thinned and his eyebrows drew together in an expression of anger. “Sam Maynard. Pete told me. Yeah, it could have been Sam calling, though that’s not what he usually does. Anyway, he’s harmless.”

He’s harmless! He’s harmless! The words reverberated round and round in the empty caverns once occupied by memories of her life, bringing a wintry chill incongruous with the summer day.

“No, he’s not.” The sound of a woman’s voice startled Mary, and she almost looked around for the stranger until she realized it was she who had spoken the words. She wasn’t sure where they’d come from or who he was or why she knew he wasn’t harmless.

Cole’s eyebrows drew even closer together and he studied her intently. “I guess it depends on how you define harmless,” he admitted, obviously assuming she’d been talking about Sam Maynard. “Sam likes to touch women, their hands, their hair, their shoulders…or whatever he can reach. He’s a sleazy pervert. I just meant he’s never physically harmed anybody. He doesn’t go out of his way to pursue his victims, either, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about from him.”

He was being logical and making perfect sense, but none of it in any way lightened the terrible sense of dread that phone call had left her with.

She nodded, knowing she had no legitimate reason to disagree with him and trying to make herself believe he was right.

“Can we go inside?” he asked. “Somewhere private? We need to talk about this diamond ring of yours.”

Her mouth went dry at the mention of the object.

He lifted his hands as if to ward off what he knew she was going to say. “I understand that you don’t want it back right now, but I don’t feel good about keeping it. I can take you to a guy I know who deals in jewelry and precious metals. Kind of an upscale pawnshop. He’ll lend you some money, probably one heck of a lot more than what I gave you.”

She looked back toward the shelter, reluctant to have him see her in such needy circumstances, to reinforce his concern and sympathy. “There’s nowhere private in there. One woman has a baby who cries a lot and someone else has a couple of young kids. Even the sleeping cubicles are open.” And she had no idea how she was going to sleep at night, exposed and vulnerable like that.

He jammed his hands into his pockets and uttered a soft oath.

“It’s not so bad,” she said hastily, contradicting her own thoughts. “And I won’t be here long. I’m going to see about getting a job at a fast-food place. I can’t just sit around while I’m waiting to remember who I am.” She had tossed out the plan without thinking, merely something to reassure Cole that she was all right, that she didn’t need his pity, but as she spoke, she knew that was exactly what she wanted to do…get a job, focus on something other than her problems. Then maybe she could forget to be afraid.

“How? You don’t know your social security number.”

Her resolve wilted. Beaten before she even got started. With a sigh she walked over to the curb and sat down again, resting her chin in her hands and trying hard not to give in to tears.

She felt him come up behind her, felt his approach in the warm tingles up and down her spine, in his wonderfully familiar scent that both attracted and frightened her.

He sat beside her. “Look, I know some people and can probably pull a few strings to get you a temporary job. That’s all you need, anyway…something to fill your time until your fiancé gets here.”

Another chill zigzagged through her, and she shivered in the heat. “If he’s alive,” she whispered. “Officer Townley said the blood on my dress was human.”

“Which doesn’t mean your fiancé’s dead. If they’d found any unclaimed bodies with that type blood, they’d damn sure have pulled you in for questioning.”

“They’re checking with the hospitals and the morgue today and they’ll want me to come down and look at…at anyone they find. Officer Townley said they don’t think the blood belongs to the man you saw me struggling with because there aren’t any other signs around.” She picked up a small pebble from the street and bounced it in one hand. “Maybe that’s why I can’t remember. Maybe it wasn’t the trauma of being hit by a car but the trauma of killing somebody. Somebody I know. Knew.”

“Killing somebody?” He caught her hand in a firm clasp. She let the pebble fall to the street and lifted her face to his. In the bright light, his eyes were more green than brown, searing every inch of her face as they flicked over it, bringing the blood rushing to the surface and more than replacing the heat that chill had stolen. “You didn’t kill anybody,” he said.

She swallowed hard and licked her dry lips as she tried to find her voice, to ignore the sensation of his fingers wrapped around hers, his thigh pressed against hers, the scent of danger that lingered about him and blended with the exhilarating, turbulent way his touch made her feel. “You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t, but I’d be willing to bet money on it.”

“Why?”

“Gut feeling. It’s never wrong, and it’s saved my life more than once.”

“Saved your life?” She pulled away from him and stood, trying to regain her senses. “You never did tell me who you are, what you do.”

He rose also and shrugged, looking down the street rather than at her. “I’m a private investigator. I find missing people who don’t want to be found, infiltrate big companies and risk terminal boredom to track down embezzlers, crash private parties to save insurance companies from paying false claims. Do you want to go with me to see my friend about the ring? It’s just a few miles from here. Have you had lunch yet? We could grab some while we’re out.”

She had a gut feeling, too, and that gut feeling told her that Cole Grayson had a lot of secrets…those that had caused the barren desert in his gaze and those that caused the aura of danger surrounding him. He hadn’t lied to her, but he hadn’t told her the entire truth, either. She did know one truth about him, though. He was not a man that the faint-of-heart could exist alongside.

And she certainly fell into the faint-of-heart category.

But she wasn’t going to stay that way.

“Yes,” she said, lifting her head and forcing the word. “I want to go to see your friend. And no, I haven’t eaten.”

“Great.” Cole strode over to the blue sedan and opened the door for her.

“This isn’t the same car you were in the other night,” she said.

“No, it’s not. This is my work car.” He shrugged. “And it’s got air-conditioning. I thought you might be more comfortable.”

His work car. The other car had been a restored Thunderbird, obviously a treasure. This car was nothing personal to him. Inviting her into this car was simply giving her a ride, an act of kindness. He wasn’t giving anything of himself. And that, she thought, was the essence of Cole Grayson.

She slid inside and Cole started to close the door, when one of the volunteers from the shelter came running out.

“Ms. Jackson! There’s a police officer on the phone who wants to talk to you.”

The terror again swept over her, swirling through her like a black, destructive tornado. Had someone from her past finally found her? Had Sam Maynard done something else? Had the police found a body?

Why did all those prospects terrify her equally? Shouldn’t the thought of recovering her past make her happy instead of frightened?

“I’ll go in with you,” Cole offered.

“No.” She desperately wanted and needed him to come with her. Therefore, she couldn’t let him. Somewhere along the line, she was going to have to learn to stand on her own.

“Yes,” he countered, and she didn’t have the strength to protest a second time.

As she made her way back inside the shelter, through the noisy main room and into a private office, she could feel Cole’s presence behind her, supporting her and giving her strength as surely as if he were physically touching her.

She picked up the telephone on the desk. “Hello?”

“This is Pete Townley. We’ve got a John Doe down here we’d like you to come look at. Fished him out of the river this morning. He’s been dead about two days, has type AB blood, the same as what was on your dress, and multiple stab wounds.”

Stab wounds.

The cold, shiny blade of a knife slashed through her mind.

A torrent of red burst over her, filling her nostrils with a coppery scent and her soul with unbearable horror.

She had to get away from it, run as fast and as far as she could, into the dark oblivion that beckoned her with its promise of escape.

“Mary?” Strong arms gripped her, pulling her back from the edge. “Mary!”

She clutched Cole’s chest like a lifeline, holding herself barely out of the void.

That must be what had happened before. She’d allowed herself to seek the relief of complete forgetfulness when her life became unbearable.

Had she just retrieved the first memory of that life? If so, she didn’t want it!

“There was so much blood,” she whispered.

“Whose blood?”

The prosaic question snapped her completely back to the present. She looked into Cole’s dark eyes, now shadowed with concern. He’d been able to pull her back because he’d known where she was going. He’d been there himself.

Whatever had happened, whatever she’d done, she had to face it the way he’d faced his nightmare.

She realized she still clutched the telephone receiver in one hand while a small voice asked, “Are you there? Mary? Hello?”

With a strength she hadn’t known she possessed, she pushed away from Cole, into the thin air of the world, and lifted the receiver to her ear. “I’ll be there to look at the body,” she said, forcing the words up her constricted throat and past her dry lips.

Chapter Four

Cole had been present many times when someone had to look at a body. Most of them cried, especially the women and some of the men…cried from grief if they knew the person, from relief if they didn’t. Some of them passed out. Some got sick.

Mary just stood beside the slab in the morgue, trembling, arms wrapped around herself, staring down at the body.

“Look familiar?” Pete asked. “Ring any bells? Set off any alarms?”

She shook her head, the movement jerky.

In spite of knowing he couldn’t help her and should stay as far away as possible so he didn’t make matters any worse, Cole wrapped a comforting arm around her and pulled her rigid body against him.

“Nobody you know? You’re sure?” Pete pursued, and Cole resisted the urge to tell him to back off. Pete was only doing his job, the same job Cole himself had done many times. It couldn’t be helped that Mary wasn’t strong enough for this kind of ordeal. Some people just weren’t, and there was nothing he or Pete or anyone else could do to change that.

“How can I tell if it’s somebody I know when I didn’t recognize my own face two days ago?” she whispered.

“Let’s go,” Cole said, gently turning her away from the cold marble slab with its grisly occupant. “She can’t tell you anything, Pete.”

Pete nodded. “Thanks for coming down.”

When they finally got back outside the building, into daylight and warmth, Mary stopped on the sidewalk and drew in a deep breath.

“I never thought I’d enjoy the smell of exhaust fumes,” she said in a shaky voice.

“Yeah, I guess it does beat the hell out of smelling death and decay.” He had to admit, he shared her relief at getting out of the morgue. The place had been a part of his life for twelve years and he’d thought himself immune to its horrors, but today Mary’s distress had affected him, had made its way inside his pores.

Empathy.

Guilt.

“I need to get used to that, don’t I?” she said, staring across the street toward the parking lot but, he suspected, not really seeing it. She held her hands at her sides, clenched into tight fists.

“Probably. Every stiff they dig up that has AB blood, they’re going to want you to come take a look. It could be worse. Could have been type O blood on that gown. A more common blood type, more bodies.”

She grimaced. “Yes, I suppose things could always be worse.”

She didn’t sound as if she believed her own statement, and he didn’t blame her. Things were pretty bad in her life right now.

“You ready to go get some lunch and visit with my friend about the ring?” he asked, thinking how small a contribution he was offering to her well-being, considering the major contribution he’d made to her problems.

“I’m not hungry. I think I’d like to go straight back to the shelter.”

“You’re so thin. You need to eat.” He wanted to bite back the words as soon as he said them. He sounded like her father, for crying out loud. She was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. She didn’t need anybody to take care of her.

She’s a frightened, vulnerable woman alone without even her memories. And no matter what anybody said, he’d had a hand in making her that way. He had a responsibility even though he wasn’t sure he could fulfill that responsibility.

“They’ll have lunch at the shelter. I really need some time to deal with this.”

She was going to deal with it on her own. He was off the hook.

But something deep inside didn’t quite buy it as he thought of her in that crowded, anonymous shelter, eating anonymous food among strangers, sleeping with no privacy. She wasn’t strong, couldn’t stand alone. If he hadn’t run into her, she’d be safe in a comfortable home somewhere with a fiancé who loved her and could take care of her instead of planning to return to that place for people who’d lost their lives.

Nevertheless, he didn’t know what he could do to help at this point.

“I understand,” he forced himself to say. “We’ll visit my friend tomorrow.” With one hand he gestured to his car in the parking lot across the street, resisting the urge to place that hand at her waist, guide her, touch her. Any excuse to touch her. He sensed she felt the same attraction he did, but he wasn’t going to start down that road, take advantage of her helpless, needy situation.

Especially not with her engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket and the man who gave it to her probably frantic with worry by now.

As she started to step off the curb, a delivery van zipped past, pulled over and parked a few yards up the street…and Mary whirled around, eyes wide, pupils shrunken to pinpoints, face ghostly pale, sheer panic in total possession of her.

He grabbed her as she lunged forward in an effort to run down the walk, get away from the harmless van.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” He held her tightly as she struggled to get free. Over and over he repeated the nonsensical phrase. Of course it wasn’t okay when anybody was that terrified. He’d said the same thing over and over for Angela and achieved only minimal, temporary results, never anything approaching okay.

Gradually she stopped fighting him, closed her eyes and slumped in his arms. For a moment he thought she might have fainted.

She drew in a deep breath and her spine stiffened, though she kept her face turned to his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was soft with a slight quaver but an underlying determination. “I have no idea what just happened.”

“The van,” he speculated. “It’s basically the same kind of vehicle as the ambulance you didn’t want to get into the other night. You must have some kind of phobia about ambulances.”

Maybe she wasn’t completely off base about the blood belonging to her fiancé. Maybe she had a phobia about ambulances because he’d been taken away in one, though Cole certainly didn’t think she’d put him there.

He could be wrong, of course. She could have been a completely different person before her memory loss. But he didn’t think so. Her kind of helpless terror was bone-deep and came from the soul.

She nodded, still not looking at him, as if she was embarrassed over her outburst. “It’s hard to fight your fears when you don’t know what causes them.”

She sounded quite rational. She’d be fine. He should release her, let her stand without his support, take her back to the shelter and leave her alone to cope with things as best she could.

He should release her, but, damn, she felt good in his arms. Now that her panic had subsided, she was no longer a victim but merely a beautiful woman…a woman with rounded breasts beneath her white cotton blouse, breasts that were pressed against him because he held her so tightly, one hand at her slim waist and the other splayed across her back. Her hair the color of moonlight was long and soft and brushed his hand as she leaned her head back to look up at him. Her full lips were slightly parted as if she knew he wanted to kiss them…as if she wanted him to kiss them.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.