“I’m Afraid,” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

“I’m Afraid,”

she admitted. “I’m afraid I won’t ever find out what happened in my past. I’m afraid that I will, and won’t be able to stand that knowledge. Who am I, Richard?” she asked desperately.

Slowly, almost as though he had to do so, he brought her against the strength of him. And, as though this, too, he had to do, he lowered his mouth to hers.

She knew this touch! Somehow, from countless longings and memories still hidden from her mind, she knew it. She sighed and surrendered to the sense of homecoming that washed over her.

But too soon she felt him drawing away from her.

“We can’t do this,” he said unevenly.

She felt bereft. Alone. A chill wind seemed to slice through her. “Why?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because you don’t know me, Alexandra. And because, God help me, I don’t know you.”

Dear Reader,

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Popular Elizabeth Bevarly offers That Boss of Mine as August’s MAN OF THE MONTH. In this irresistible romantic comedy, a CEO falls for his less-than-perfect secretary.

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Cait London’s miniseries THE BLAYLOCKS continues with Rio: Man of Destiny, in which the hero’s love leads the heroine to the truth of her family secrets. The BACHELOR BATTALION miniseries by Maureen Child marches on with Mom in Waiting. An amnesiac woman must rediscover her husband in Lost and Found Bride by Modean Moon. And Barbara McCauley’s SECRETS! miniseries offers another scandalous tale with Secret Baby Santos.

August also marks the debut of Silhouette’s original continuity THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS with Maggie Shayne’s Million Dollar Marriage, available now at your local retail outlet.

So indulge yourself this month with some poolside reading—the first of THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS, and all six Silhouette Desire titles!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

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Lost and Found Bride

Modean Moon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MODEAN MOON once believed she could do anything she wanted. Now she realizes there is not enough time in one’s life to do everything. As a result, she says her writing is a means of exploring paths not taken. Currently she works as a land title researcher, determining land or mineral ownership for clients. Modean lives in Oklahoma on a hill overlooking a small town. She shares a restored Victorian farmhouse with a six-pound dog, a twelve-pound cat and, reportedly, a resident ghost.

One

Richard Jordan stood in the shadow of the draperies, but not completely unnoticed. The man behind the massive mahogany desk—the doctor, Richard thought derisively, Dr. Hampton—was aware of him. Although Hampton attempted an attitude of professional detachment, Richard saw the moisture beading on his forehead and upper lip as he gripped the pen in his hand and scrawled tense circles on the folder before him.

The atmosphere in the spacious room was close and stifling. Heavy mahogany furniture filled the room, heavy paneling diminished it, and heavy draperies darkened it still more. No medicinal smells intruded—only those of old wood and lemon oil. Not pleasant scents these; no, the old wood here carried the essence of rot, of wood worms busily destroying the structure behind the facade, and of decadence.

Outside the decoratively barred windows the late-October sunlight fought its way through the bare limbs of the trees, and a light breeze scattered the fallen leaves across the lawn. Outside, the air was crisp and fresh, promising a harsh winter but beguiling with its gentleness. Richard fought a fleeting impulse to thrust open the windows, in spite of the discreet wiring of the alarm system along the edge of them, and let that breeze into the room. Would that cleanse the air in the room? Could anything cleanse it?

But it was not the doctor behind the desk, or even the room that held his attention. It was the woman. Swathed in a shapeless, long-sleeved garment, she sat on the edge of the chair in front of the desk. The anger that he had felt when he’d first seen her asleep in a room bare of anything except the narrow cot on which she’d lain had not faded. He knew he might never lose the anger, but it had firmed itself into a chilling resolve—to have her released into his care.

Her hair, once shimmering ebony that fell to below her waist, had been cropped close to her head with no thought given to style. Always slender, she now appeared almost skeletal. But it was the sight of her eyes that fed his anger, that had him clutching at the window ledge to keep from lunging across the room. Gone was the sparkle of intelligence and humor that had lit her small features. Her eyes were now two gray smudges in the pallor of her face, without life, without hope, smudges that she turned toward the man behind the desk.

Even her voice had changed—still soft, still low, but without the music of laughter, without the breathless catch of anticipation. Without inflection of emotion, she answered Hampton’s questions—the same questions, the same answers Richard had heard the day before.

“What is your name?”

“Alexandra Wilbanks.”

“What is your birthday?”

“October 27.”

“What day is this?”

“March 15.”

“What is your husband’s name?”

“I have no husband.”

Hampton turned to him and spoke, calling attention to his presence, but the woman did not move.

“As you can see, as I told you yesterday Mr. Jordan, she is completely out of touch with reality.”

“Not quite.” Richard stepped from his place in the shadows. The answers were wrong for the questions, but they were based in reality—a reality this so-called doctor would have discovered for himself had he ever attempted to help her. Wilbanks, the name under which she had been admitted, was her maiden name. October 27, though not her birthday, was her wedding day. And March 15 was the day his plane had crashed.

Richard walked to her chair and knelt in front of her, willing himself to think of nothing but her and the present moment. He braced his hands on the arms of the chair as he spoke softly.

“Lexi?”

She cocked her head at the sound of his voice and turned her eyes toward him.

“Do you remember me?”

He thought he saw a question in the flatness of her eyes. It was fleeting, and he couldn’t be sure whether he had seen it or imagined it, but she looked at him—at the irritation on his cheek where dermal abrasion had finally removed the last of the scars, at the angry red welts still showing on his hand as it rested on the chair arm.

“You came. Before.”

He let his breath out in a long, slow exhalation. “Yes. Yesterday.” And it had taken all his control not to carry her from this place at that time. All his control to pretend to agree with Hampton that she was where she needed to be. But he had sensed that pretense was necessary for her safety, and he had needed time to prepare for today.

“Would you like to go away with me?”

There. He saw it again, and it wasn’t his imagination. A question in her eyes. A ghost of a smile flitted across her features, softening the tight mask of her face.

“They won’t let you take me,” she said softly. “I’ll never be allowed to leave.”

His hands tightened on the chair arms, but he kept his voice low and controlled. “Yes. You will.”

He straightened and turned to face the man behind the desk. “Send for her things.”

Hampton also stood. Richard watched him warily. The man was cool, but not so cool as he wanted to appear. his hands were clenched at his sides. “Perhaps we should send her back to her room while we discuss this.”

“No.” Richard stepped to the desk. “She doesn’t leave my sight again until she walks out of here with me.” He picked up the folder on the desk. “And this.”

“No.”

“These are her records, aren’t they?” Richard asked, but he knew the answer. They were. At least a part of them. There probably were more, hidden somewhere.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“And they would be forwarded to the next physician as a matter of routine.”

Hampton’s hands clenched again. “Yes.”

“Then I see no problem,” Richard told him. “But if you don’t wish me to take them now, I’m sure you won’t object to my calling for a full-scale investigation of your hospital.”

Hampton attempted to stare him down, but when that failed, he turned to the intercom unit on his desk. He depressed the lever. “Alexandra is leaving us,” he said. “Bring her things to my office.”

“Doctor, I should—” The voice of the guardian of the outer office burst through the small speaker before it was muffled and then silenced. “Yes. Immediately,” she said in more subdued tones.

When the knock sounded on the door a few minutes later, Richard interposed and opened the door himself. He took the small package from the tight-featured, gray-faced woman and closed the door on her and the outer office.

He looked inside the package. A pair of dark blue lightweight wool slacks. A light blue mohair sweater. A wisp of a bra and matching briefs in ice blue. A pair of Italian sandals.

“Where are her rings?” Richard asked. “Her identification? The rest of her clothes?”

“That’s all,” Hampton told him. “She came with only the clothes she wore.”

Richard muttered an oath as he slammed the garments back into the package, but when he approached the woman in the chair, his actions and his voice were once again gentle. He touched her arm, and she looked up at him blankly.

“Let’s go, Lexi.”

She stood obediently and let him guide her across the room, through the doorway and into the outer office, while Hampton followed.

The outer office was full of men, as Richard had known it would be, and they were silent, as they had promised him. He turned to look at Hampton, who had paused at the doorway, visibly paler as he recognized the prosecuting attorney standing before his secretary’s desk.

“Dr. Wilford Hampton?” the prosecuting attorney asked, but it was a ritual question, requiring no response. “I have a search warrant for this hospital, and an order requiring you to allow your patients to be examined by an independent team of physicians.”

“Jordan!” Hampton’s voice broke. “You have the records. You said—”

Richard turned a cold smile on the man. “I lied. I wanted to kill you, Hampton, but men living in civilization no longer do that. Instead, I’ll break you. And if these men find what I think they will, I’ll take great pleasure in seeing you behind bars, where you will no longer be able to control your nefarious empire.”

One deputy detached himself from the throng, took the folder and package from Richard and led the way to the outer door. He opened it and waited while Richard guided Lexi, still obedient, unquestioning, an automaton who responded to the slightest pressure on her back, from the prison where she had been kept for the last seven months.

On the top step of the porch, in her first stubborn action since he had come for her, she stopped. He looked down at her. Unaware of him or of the official cars now cluttering the parking lot, she lifted her face to the sun and filled her lungs with the fresh October air. Then she waited, once again obedient, for him to direct her.

The uniformed chauffeur stood at attention by the open passenger door of the limousine as Richard guided Lexi to the car. Then in an act of consideration that Richard had not thought possible from a veritable stranger, he produced a folded blanket and handed it to Richard. Richard took it, unfolded it, draped it over Lexi’s thin shoulders and helped her into the car.

The man who had accompanied them from the clinic took his place in the front seat of the limo, and silently, powerfully, the automobile pulled away from the converted Georgian mansion, glided through now-open gates and sped on its way.

Lexi showed no interest in the interior of the car, or in the autumn scenery along the twenty-five-mile route into the heart of Boston. She sat quietly during the entire drive, not even looking up when the powerful automobile pulled to a stop in the alley outside the service entrance of a hotel.

Richard helped her from the car and looked down at her as she stood shivering beneath the blanket. Her shoes were only slippers, little more than scraps of inexpensive cotton fabric with flimsily reinforced soles. Swearing under his breath, he bent to take her in his arms. She stiffened but made no protest when he touched her.

“I’m going to carry you,” he told her. “Don’t be alarmed.”

But of course she wasn’t alarmed, he realized. She tolerated his lifting her into his arms just as she had tolerated everything else for God-only-knew how long with a quiet acceptance. And she weighed almost nothing—a fragile weight that he held easily, but carefully, next to his heart.

The man who had accompanied them from the clinic led the way, across the alley and in through the hotel’s service door, to the freight elevator, which a uniformed police officer held open and waiting for them. He gave the guard the folder of records and spoke softly to him before joining Richard and Lexi in the elevator and pushing the button for their floor. When they reached the floor, he led them down the long, carpeted hallway and opened the door of the suite at the end of it, stepping inside after them, but remaining by the door.

Richard settled Lexi on the brocade-covered sofa and stood back, watching her, but she didn’t look at him. She stared blankly ahead, toward the window.

He stifled still another oath and turned from the sight of her. A tray of drinks waited on a nearby table, and he crossed to it and splashed a hefty dose of scotch into a crystal tumbler.

The noise was so slight he barely heard it. He turned toward its source. Lexi had shrugged off the blanket and risen to her feet. Now she walked slowly across the room, toward the window. There was a table in front of the window, and on that table, an arrangement of spring flowers—harder than the devil to find at this time of year, Richard had been told, but he had insisted. She bent to the flowers, inhaling their scent. He watched her, unable to take his eyes from her, and unsteadily lifted the glass to his mouth as she touched one slender finger to the bright blue petal of a forget-me-not barely visible for the profusion of Dutch iris and sprays of forsythia.

“Richard.”

His name on her lips was the last thing he had expected to hear. It stunned him into immobility. She turned, her eyes enormous, her hands outstretched—pleading with him?—holding him at bay?—her voice a thin, reedy moan. “Why?”

As he watched in stunned disbelief, she began crumpling, folding in on herself. By the time he realized what was happening, by the time he tossed the glass away from him, she was falling. By the time he reached her, she lay unconscious on the carpeted floor. He scooped her up, glaring a warning at the deputy, who had also run to her side, and carried her into the adjoining bedroom.

With one hand, he tore back the covers of the bed and laid Lexi on the sheet. Mindful of the man who’d moved to the other side of the open door, he seated himself on the edge of the bed, shielding her from view as he eased the abominable dress from her.

She wore nothing under the dress except a pair of cheap cotton underpants that were much too large for her. She was unmarked, if he could call emaciation unmarked, except for her arms. He touched the arm nearest him. It, like the other, bore the marks of careless injections. But this one still carried the bruise of a healing hematoma, which discolored the skin for several inches above and below the crook of her elbow.

Richard began swearing, silently, viciously. He damned Hampton and his entire staff. He damned his mother, no matter what the truth was. He damned the doctor who had first mentioned Hampton’s hospital. And finally he damned himself for his own carelessness, his own stupidity.

He bent over her, sliding his arms around her cautiously, knowing he could crush her with no effort, and held her while his silent tirade continued.

“Mr. Jordan?”

The voice from the doorway was an intrusion he didn’t want to deal with. He ignored it, until it came again.

“Mr. Jordan,” the man said again, now sounding as though he had stepped into the bedroom. “I don’t want to bother you, but it’s time. We don’t want to jeopardize the case by delaying gathering evidence.”

Richard silenced him with a curt nod. “I know.” Slowly he drew away from Lexi and covered her with the sheet. He reached for the telephone on the nightstand and punched out the numbers. The phone at the other end was picked up on the first ring.

“We’re here,” he said, hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “Mel...I need you.”

Dr. Melissa Knapp arrived in only moments—her room was just two doors down the hallway—looking beautifully cool and competent in her tailored suit, with each perfect blond hair caught in the sophisticated coil she wore, and accompanied by a uniformed nurse. His sister-in-law drew her brows together, the only sign of her concern, as she looked at Lexi.

“Leave the room, Richard,” she said.

“No.”

Melissa managed to get between him and the bed. “Then at least step back,” she told him. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Please,” she said. “It will be easier. Leave the room.”

He compromised. He couldn’t leave the room, and he couldn’t bear to watch as the nurse produced a syringe. He walked to the window and looked down over the street as the blood samples were drawn, as impersonal hands and eyes examined Lexi. A few minutes later the nurse left and, almost simultaneously, the guard arrived with a photocopy of the hospital records. Then Richard and Melissa were alone with Lexi—the guards gone, the evidence gathered, their part of this day finished.

It seemed like hours later, and they were still alone.

The hotel bedroom was softly lit by the lamp Melissa used as she studied the photocopy of the hospital records. Her eyes had widened when she first began reading, but she made no comment, reading silently, with her entire concentration focused on the file in her hands. The sky outside the window was dark now, the building across the street a darker shadow against it.

And Lexi slept on, unaware of them, unmoving.

“Can’t you do anything?” Richard asked in frustration, breaking the silence.

Melissa looked up from the papers. “Not until we know what has already been done,” she said. Her voice softened. “It doesn’t look good, Richard. Drug treatment like she has apparently received was never proper psychiatric therapy, not in the past, certainly not today, and I want the lab report before I make any decision. I’m afraid, though, that we may be looking at addiction, that it’s not going to be a matter of just letting her sleep off the medication.”

Richard closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, swallowing once before he spoke. “What do the records say?”

“Too much,” Melissa said. “And not enough.”

He shrugged impatiently and lunged to his feet. “Damn it, Mel. Don’t play games with me.” He looked at the silent figure on the bed. “She’s my wife!” With visible control he lowered his voice, speaking insistently. “And it was my money that put her there.”

“Do you believe that?” Melissa asked. “Do you really believe that?”

Richard turned from her. “Hell, I don’t know.”

Sighing, he stuffed his bands into the pockets of his suit pants. “Yes, damn it. And because of an overdraft in an unknown account, I have the bank drafts to prove it.” He straightened his shoulders and turned to face the woman. “So tell me, Mel, just exactly what do those papers say.”

“Richard—”

“Tell me.”

“They say I was the referring psychiatrist.”

“But you were with Greg.”

“They say that Alexandra admitted herself to the clinic.”

“But why?” Richard asked. “She’d left me. She was free.”

“Richard. Please don’t do this to yourself.”

“Why, Mel? Why?”

Melissa stood, but after one hesitant step toward him, stopped. “Her medical records state a history of depression—”

“That’s nonsense—”

“Following a...following a self-induced abortion.”

He saw her. He heard her voice. But nothing made sense. Lexi. Pregnant? Letting him leave without telling him? That he could believe. Being desperate enough to run away in his absence. That he could believe. But to kill a child, any child, even his child. No. Not Alexandra. Please, God, not Alexandra.

The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted them. Gathering the copies close, Melissa hurried to the bedside table before the instrument could ring again. She spoke softly, asking few questions, and replaced the receiver. She turned slowly. “It isn’t good. Her med levels are much too high.”

Richard faced her silently. The news shouldn’t have surprised him. They had discussed addiction as a possibility. But only as a possibility. Now it was reality. A reality he had to confirm by looking at the figure in the bed.

Her eyes were open, watching him.

“Lexi?”

At his sharp intake of breath, Melissa turned, too, until she was standing beside him.

Lexi’s head twisted on the pillow, a pale blur against the pale linens. She looked from Richard, to Melissa, then back at Richard. Before he realized her intentions, she scrambled up against the headboard, taking the sheet with her. She felt beneath the cover. She was naked except for the ugly cotton underpants, but she seemed to take no notice of that. She bent her legs, reaching to feel her feet.

“My shoes,” she said in a little voice. “Where are my shoes?”

Her shoes, those cheap cotton slippers, had fallen from her feet as he carried her to the bed. They had lain in the middle of the floor until the nurse had picked them up and at Richard’s insistence had thrown them in the wastebasket, along with her dress.

Richard dropped to sit on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need them any longer. You’ll have new ones tomorrow. All you want.”

“I want them!” She shrank away from him, and Richard heard rising hysteria in her voice. “Please. Let me have them. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll be good.”

Richard clutched her shoulders, holding her in the bed. “For God’s sake, Mel, get the damned shoes.”

The moment Melissa thrust the shoes into Lexi’s groping hands, all the fight went out of her. She ran searching fingers along the insole of each one, then, clutching them to her, she curled around them and slid back down in the bed and into unconsciousness.

Richard sat dazed beside her, looking at the soiled and pitiful treasure she had fought for. The cotton was worn almost through on the soles, and ragged cardboard protruded from rips in the fabric. But Lexi had fought for them.

Why?

Even in sleep, her fingers clutched them, fighting his attempts to remove them. As gently as possible, though, he did.

He glanced at Melissa, but she shook her head, telling him silently that she understood no more than he did. It was almost as if Lexi had searched them. He ran his fingers over the insoles as she had. The change in texture was slight, so slight he almost didn’t notice—an area slightly stiffer than the rest of the backing. The tear in the lining was just one of many, but he found it.

Impatient with the tiny opening, he ripped the lining, exposing a folded piece of cardboard different from the faded gray backing. He unfolded it, and a moan broke from him.

The print was cracked and faded from the constant pressure of her foot. It wasn’t dated, but Richard needed no date. He and Lexi had renovated the conservatory of his house in Backwater Bay, Oklahoma, the preceding winter. Together they had selected the furniture and had taken delivery on it the week before he left. The picture he held was a snapshot, not a very good one, but good enough to show him and Mel seated on the floral-covered rattan love seat in the conservatory. His face was turned so that his unmarked profile faced the camera, and they were smiling at each other as they shared one of the few moments of the past months in which they had found any reason to smile.

He handed the picture to Melissa, and she studied it silently.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked.

“Yes.” She smiled grimly, the first time she had smiled since entering the room. “It means that Alexandra is very tenacious. It means that she has more spirit than either of us gave her credit for. It means that at least a part of her is still intact, still holding on, in spite of what she’s gone through.”

“And it means,” Richard said, not wanting yet to digest what Melissa had said, “it means that someone in the house, close enough to us to take that photo, made sure that she got a copy of it.”

“Richard.” Melissa put her hand on his chest. “She ought to be in a hospital.”

“No! She’s been hospitalized too long. I won’t send her back to one, and I won’t run the risk of exposing her to the press during the early court proceedings unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

“Withdrawal will be painful for her.”

Richard closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I know.”

“And for you.”

“I know that, too.”

He opened his eyes and met Melissa’s clear, considering gaze. “How long?” he asked.

“Several days at a minimum.”

“And after that?”

Melissa refused to look away from him. “I can’t make any promises.”

He groped for her, like a blind man searching for shelter, and she went into his arms, holding him to her. “Oh, Richard,” she murmured. “My dear, dear Richard. I wish I could tell you, but I just don’t know.”

Two

Her first clear thought was that it was snowing.

The only light came from the windows across the room, and in the gray light of early morning, through the partially opened draperies, she saw great white flakes falling straight down.

Her next thought was that she ached—all over—and the weight of the blankets intensified that ache. Her left arm lay on top of the blankets, held immobile by some sort of brace. She grimaced when she saw the needle, but traced a wary glance up the tube leading from it to an IV bottle suspended from a metal rack.

Was this a hospital?

She doubted it The blankets were too soft and the room was too large for a hospital. And it was too finely furnished.

She glanced around the room, quietly absorbing impressions of her surroundings. There were two chairs near the windows, and across one of them lay a dark mass. As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she realized that the mass was a man, sprawled in the chair. His long legs stretched out in jeans straining at his thighs, and he’d thrown his dark head back while he slept, making vulnerable a strong throat above a black turtleneck sweater.

“Hello.”

Her voice cracked, and it was little more than a hoarse whisper, but he heard her. He awoke immediately—she could tell by the way his body tensed—but he lifted his head slowly, looking toward her, before he rose with an agile grace she thought must be unusual for someone of his size and walked to stand beside her.

For a moment his size intimidated her as he loomed over her. He was tall, well over six feet, or so it looked to her from her position of weakness, with a lean strength that reminded her of danger and darkness.

He switched on the lamp on the bedside table, and soft light pooled over that corner of the room, illuminating her. Illuminating him.

He had an aggressive jaw—that was the only word she could find to describe it—shadowed by a night’s growth of beard, or more, a straight nose, slightly longish, and a mouth that just missed being generous and was now fixed in a grim frown. His hair was dark, probably black, but it was difficult for her to be sure in the subdued light. His skin should have been swarthy, she thought, to go with the image he presented. But while it was probably naturally dark, now it was unhealthily pale. Deep grooves ran from each side of his nose to the corners of his mouth, emphasizing the frown. His eyes were dark, too, but now they were red rimmed and shadowed.

Do I know him? She felt that she ought to.

She realized that he studied her as intently as she had studied him, and now he seemed to be searching for something in the depths of her eyes.

“You’re awake.”

“Yes.” She felt trapped in his gaze, caught by questions she couldn’t answer. “Have you been here...all night?”

His lips twisted at what could have been a not-too-funny joke that he didn’t share with her. “Yes.”

His voice was deep...and comforting, or she thought it would be if he ever spoke more than a few syllables.

She broke the mesmerizing spell of his eyes and glanced at her arm. “I don’t like needles.”

“I know.”

Careful of her arm, he seated himself on the edge of the bed. “Now that you’re back with us, we’ll see about getting that removed.”

She had been right about his voice. It caressed her.

“Thank you.”

Was it safe to look at him? Surely she could do so now without being captured. She glanced up. He still watched her—intent, cautious, questioning.

“I hate to ask this,” she said, “but where am I?”

“We’re in a hotel. In Boston.”

He didn’t sound like a Bostonian. His accent was softer. Southern? Perhaps.

She saw the slight softening of his frown and the gentle inquiry in his eyes. “How do you feel?”

She examined her feelings, wondering for the first time how she came to be here. “Like I’ve been beaten,” she admitted. The thought stunned her. “Have I been?”

His eyes shuttered. “No. Don’t you remember?”

Remember? Remember what? Her first clear thought had been that it was snowing.

“Who are you?” she whispered, but even as she asked, she knew there was a more important question. “Who am I?”

His face could have been chiseled from marble—pale, gray marble. His mouth tightened in a thin line. His eyes lost their warmth.

“Your name is Alexandra Jordan,” he told her. “I call you Lexi. You are my wife.”

She had a name now, Alexandra Jordan, and an age, twenty-six, a husband and a family. Melissa, Dr. Melissa Knapp, was part of that family, married to Richard’s brother, Greg, also a doctor. But these were things Lexi had been told in the long, slow weeks of recuperation since she’d awakened to find Richard keeping vigil by her bed, not things she remembered.

She remembered nothing, not even the cause of her strange, debilitating illness, because she couldn’t call the fragmented comments that occasionally fell from her lips remembering. She didn’t like needles. She was fond of the color blue. She liked seafood and fresh fruit—and spring flowers. At least, she thought those were her feelings. But each time one of those comments slipped from her, Melissa’s eyes narrowed, and Lexi felt like a laboratory animal under examination.

And no one had explained the nature of the illness that had robbed her of her memory. Nor would anyone tell her anything about her past other than the basic facts of her identity.

“It’s best for you to remember for yourself,” Melissa had said, not unkindly but with a determination that told Lexi that arguing would be futile.

And Richard, the dark stranger who was her husband, seemed at times even less approachable than Melissa.

Now they were taking her home. But even as they sat almost in isolation in the first-class section of the jet that carried them inland from Boston, they had granted her only the general destination. Oklahoma. Lexi had a fragmented concept of that state, dimly calling up pictures of prairie and dust, Indians and teepees, but the terrain she saw from the window of the small plane into which they had transferred at Dallas was anything but flat or dry.

They had flown for miles over mountains—tall hills, Lexi amended mentally. There were no jagged peaks, only timber and rock-covered mounds pushing up from the surface of the earth. And in the center of those hills, seeming to stretch forever from south to north, with great fingers reaching out from it, lay a vast lake.

“What is it called?” Lexi asked.

“Eufaula,” Richard said.

“Eufaula.” Lexi tried the word experimentally. Yew-fall-lah. “Is it a French name?”

“Creek,” he told her. “Indian.”

Melissa, seated in a front seat next to the pilot, seemed engrossed in some papers she had carried with her, and Lexi sensed a different mood in Richard from that which had held him locked in silence.

“Was our home built near the lake?” she asked, hesitant, but needing to test that mood.

“Not exactly.”

Lexi felt a small stab of disappointment. “Oh.”

Richard frowned and leaned closer to her, speaking in a soft, conspiratorial voice hidden from the others by the drone of the single engine. “Why do you sound so deflated?”

“You’re always doing that,” she said, for the moment not the least intimidated by the man who had complete control over her life. “It isn’t fair, you know, for you to expect answers and never give any.”

She thought she had destroyed the fragile moment. Richard’s lips thinned, and his eyes—they were black, she had long since discovered—bore into her. “Perhaps it isn’t,” he admitted. “Why were you disappointed, Lexi?”

She had destroyed the moment. “It isn’t important,” she said.

“You don’t know that!”

“No. No, I don’t, do I?” Her frustration had been building almost daily, and now she vented it in softly hissed words. “I know nothing but what you choose to tell me. And you choose to tell me very little. Why, Richard? What are you hiding from me?”

Their time in the Boston hotel room even with his frequent absences had done nothing to improve Richard’s pallor. Now he seemed to pale even more with her words. He gripped her shoulders with both hands, as though he wanted to shake her, she thought, or—or pull her against the strength of his chest and hold her there with arms that now trembled with the effort of doing neither.

“Why were you disappointed?” he repeated.

His strength was too much for her; his determination was too much for her. “I just—” What? It had been so fleeting, she couldn’t call it a memory. “I just thought it would be pleasant to live near the water.”

He closed his eyes and released a long breath. Then, as though realizing how tightly he held her, he loosened his grip on her shoulders.

“And so you shall,” he said.

She looked away from his face in confusion, to where his left hand rested warmly against her, to the raw scars that ran across the back of that hand to be partially hidden beneath the sleeve of his shirt. She had wondered about the scars, had wondered if there was any connection between them and her loss of memory. But this was of her past and therefore a forbidden subject, as were so many, and she had exhausted her small store of energy.

She sighed in defeat and closed her eyes to hide the sheen of tears that gave evidence to it.

“Your answer was important, Lexi.”

It was a concession, and she knew she should be grateful for it. “But you won’t tell me why?”

“I can’t,” he said. A note of insistence crept into his voice. “Be patient, even if I sometimes seem to be just the opposite. We have to trust Mel’s judgment in this, at least for a while longer.”

The plane banked and began circling to land. Richard leaned back in his seat. Taking her hand in his much larger one, he laced his fingers with hers. Lexi glanced out the window, but the rough terrain leaped to meet her. She twisted away from the sight.

Richard was watching her, emotionlessly, and for the moment she didn’t mind his scrutiny. The trip had tired her more than she thought possible, but she saw her own exhaustion mirrored in his eyes, in the tight set of his jaw, in the gray cast to his skin. How long had it been since he had slept an entire night? Even though with the coming of dawn he withdrew from her, he was always there for her in the night when she needed him.

She felt a nameless fear rising up to meet her, even as the ground below seemed to. Richard held his hand out to her. Closing her eyes and her mind to that fear, she leaned back against the seat and held on to his hand—her lifeline.

“My God,” Lexi said in a shocked whisper.

The drive from the private landing strip had been unremarkable, and in the growing darkness she had only had impressions of the rough, timbered hillside. A pause at two stone gateposts and massive iron gates that opened electronically, even the mass of the house seen dimly when the car pulled up to the unimposing double front doors, had not prepared her for the shock that awaited her inside.

The three of them had climbed a short flight of marble steps to the wide, rose-colored marble hall that stretched away on each side of them. Across it, and down two steps, she saw a massive reception chamber. Twisted Corinthian columns rose to an arched and muraled ceiling.

Lexi looked up at the man beside her. No wonder he hadn’t told her about this. How could he have prepared her? “Do we live here?” she asked.

“Well, well. The weary travelers finally return.”

“Greg!”

Lexi heard emotion in Melissa’s voice for the first time as the woman started toward the man approaching them painfully slowly with the aid of crutches.

“Surprised, Wife, dear? I told you I wouldn’t stay in that damned wheelchair forever.”

“But your hands—” Melissa said.

“Forget my hands!”

The man stopped in front of them. He raked his gaze over Lexi. Should she know him? She thought she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. She knew he was Richard’s brother—half brother—and she did see a resemblance, although he was not as tall, not as lean as the man who stood beside her with tension stiffening his body even as he draped his arm over her shoulder. But know him?

“So you’re the woman who finally trapped my brother?”

Lexi flinched from the bitterness in the man’s voice.

“That’s enough, Greg.”

Richard spoke softly, but Lexi heard the implied command, and apparently Greg did, too. His face twisted into a smile.

“Of course, Richard. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone, would we?” He shifted his weight on his crutches and turned. “Your oh-so-efficient housekeeper has a light supper waiting for you, as well as a list of telephone messages. At least six of them are from your agent.”

“Alexandra is tired,” Richard said, interrupting Greg and tightening his arm on her shoulder, urging her to turn. “I’ll take her to her room now, but I’ll see you in the library in a few minutes.”

This time the command was not implied. Lexi turned, grateful to be leaving a scene she couldn’t begin to understand, and let Richard guide her up the staircase.

Upstairs, although the floor of the hallway was polished oak, not marble, Oriental runners and arrangements of massive furniture carried out the oppressiveness of the first floor.

Lexi cast a covert glance at the man walking silently beside her. Who was he? She thought she had seen all facets of him during the long weeks in Boston, from gentleness to impassive detachment, but never had she seen him exercise authority with such a sure knowledge of his right to do so. Could it be the house? No. She discarded that thought immediately. If anything, the house was a mere reflection of him, not the other way around. And he seemed to belong. She could see that now. From his erect carriage and the proud tilt of his head to the well-tailored suit and Italian shoes, he fit his surroundings. While she...?

She knew nothing about him—nothing more than she had known the morning she awoke to find a stranger beside her bed—a stranger who told her he was her husband.

Her husband.

Melissa, omniscient Melissa, had finally told Richard that Lexi was well enough to return home. Had she also told him that she was well enough to resume her conjugal duties?

Lexi stumbled, and immediately Richard turned, steadying her. She looked up at him, half expecting him to have read her thoughts, but there was wary concern in his eyes, nothing more. She felt the pressure of his hands on her arms, felt the strength inherent in those hands, and the gentleness. Would it be a duty? she wondered. Had it been only that in the past? Or had it been much, much more?

She offered him a tentative smile in apology for her clumsiness, and her thoughts, and he rewarded her by the softening of the concern in his eyes.

“Are you all right?”

No, she wasn’t. As she stood in the dim light of the alien hallway, with Richard looming darkly over her, she was more aware of that fact than she had been since her first moment of panic.

She didn’t know how she would have answered him in the past. She didn’t know how he expected his wife to answer him now. She only knew the irony of his words.

“Silly question, Richard,” she said, throwing her head back so that she could meet his penetrating gaze. “You must know that I’m terrified.”

He almost smiled. She was sure of that.

“Of what, Lexi?” he asked, still holding her. “Of my house, of my family, of what you can’t remember? Of me?”

“Yes.”

Even as she said the word, she knew it was not the truth. Richard’s eyes lost all traces of warmth, and he dropped his hands to his side.

“Not—not of you,” she said softly. “But of what—what you expect from me. And maybe of what I expect from myself.”

“And if I were to tell you that I expect nothing from you?”

“But you won’t tell me that, will you?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “No.”

He took her arm, and beneath all the layers of fabric, her flesh felt and came alive at his touch. It wasn’t fear, Lexi told herself, so much as it was an awareness of the power he held over her—physically, emotionally, even financially. No. Not fear. Not once since awakening to find him beside her bed had she feared him. Perhaps she should, she thought fleetingly. Perhaps one day she would. She pushed back those unwanted thoughts, not knowing what had called them forth and not wanting to examine the chill that had accompanied them.

The room he took her to was at the end of the long hallway. Opening a recessed door, Richard moved back to let her enter first.

She stepped into a room large enough to have been overpowering had it been furnished as the reception hall and hallway were. But it wasn’t. Soft lamps had been lit, casting warm circles of light throughout the room. Decorated in shades of blue, the room was delicate but not cloyingly so.

Lexi shrugged out of her coat, with Richard’s assistance, and while he dropped it onto a nearby French chaise, she surveyed the room, letting her smile play across her features.

Apart from the chaise, she saw no other French influence. The tables were English of Hepplewhite design, and their dark surfaces gleamed in the subdued light. The upholstered pieces were substantial, but not ungainly. Two club chairs and a matching sofa in softly tailored oyster white linen fronted a fireplace with a delicately veined white marble mantel.

Across the room, an alcove with two walls of windows and a third of French doors, all covered with tailored silk draperies, sheltered an overlarge, king-size bed.

She turned to find Richard watching her reaction.

“Is this better?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.” Even knowing this must be his room, too, even seeing how he seemed to belong in these surroundings, she couldn’t keep the relief from her voice. “I was half expecting gargoyles and griffons on the ceiling and bedposts.”

“No. No monsters, Lexi. That’s something you won’t tolerate.”

Then, perhaps thinking he had said too much, he half turned from her. “Your bath and dressing rooms are through there,” he said, nodding toward a door on a railed landing raised a few steps from the floor of the room. “I think you’ll find everything you need. I’ll bring you a tray when I come back upstairs. I shouldn’t be too long, but you’ll probably have time for a bath before I return.”

“Richard?”

He completed his turn, walked to a door near the hallway, and opened it.

“I’ve had my things moved into the adjacent room,” he said. “There is a key for the hall door, but I’d appreciate it if you would leave this door partially open so that I can hear you if you need me in the night.”

“Richard?” She watched him in confusion. He had reverted to impassive detachment. Polite, impersonal, he was treating her like a dependent stranger while she had questions spinning through her mind. He’d had his things moved. He helonged in this room. And while she wasn’t brave enough—didn’t know him well enough—to ask him to stay, there were questions she had to ask.

“We shared this room?”

He paused in the doorway. “Yes.”

“And that bed?”

His glance flicked toward the bed and back to her without revealing anything. “Yes.”

“Were we happy here?” she persisted. “Did we love each other?”

“Lexi.” His voice held a soft groan. “Why are you asking me?”

“Who else can I ask?” She walked to his side. Hesitantly she placed her hand on his arm. “You tell me this is my home, but I can’t remember. You tell me you are my husband. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t remember that, either. Can’t you give me at least this much?”

“And you’d believe me?”

She gazed up at him, pleading. “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

“If I told you that you loved me beyond reason, and the two of us were happier here than any two people had a right to be, you’d believe me?”

She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But she saw the flash of pain in his eyes, hastily banked, when he spoke.

“Or if I told you that you feared me, that you hated this place, that you only waited for a chance to escape, would you believe that?”

She felt his arm tense beneath her hand.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “Why won’t you tell me?”

He lifted her hand from his arm, holding it between both of his—safe? imprisoned? she wondered—before he released it.

“You have the answers, Lexi. Whatever they are, you have to discover them for yourself.”

Three

The sound of rain hitting against the windows in irregular, rapid bursts dragged Lexi from sleep. Through partially opened eyes, she noted the dim light in the strangely familiar room and snuggled back into the down pillows with a sense of sleepy satisfaction. It was morning. She had slept the night through, unawakened by disturbing dreams or nightmares that refused to stay in her memory, unawakened by the vague yet demanding longings that sometimes gripped her and held her for sleepless hours.

“Of all the months of the year, I think January must have the most miserable weather.”

Lexi’s eyes flew open. Between the bed and the French doors stood a slender woman with stylish, short silver hair. The woman wore a dark green velvet dressing gown and looked completely at home in Lexi’s bedroom.

“It’s later than it seems,” the woman continued reflectively. “The storm has darkened the sky. Without a doubt the rain will turn to ice before noon.”

Lexi, fully awake now, scooted up against the rosewood headboard, pulling the blanket with her. The hall door was locked. She had watched Richard turn the key the night before. She glanced across the room. Richard’s door stood open.

“Oh, he’s downstairs writing in his office,” the woman said. “He has been for hours. He spent half his childhood telling his little stories. It is so nice he finally found an outlet for his obsession.”

She walked to the bed and seated herself on the edge of it. “I wanted to visit with you while he was busy. He was in such a foul mood when he telephoned weeks ago from Boston. I wanted to resolve at least one thing before I saw him again.”

The woman was much older than Lexi had first thought. Though she wore carefully applied, tasteful makeup, she had been unable to hide the network of deep lines fanning out from her dark brown eyes or from her thin, rose-glossed lips.

“I truly wanted to like you, Alexandra. You bear such a stunning resemblance to my niece.”

Lexi submitted to the woman’s brief, intense scrutiny with growing irritation. She was an amnesiac, not a laboratory animal who had no feelings. She could have—would have—demanded that a stranger leave her room, but who in this house was a stranger? And who had been given the right to come and go at will?

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

Had there ever been any doubt of that? Lexi wondered, but a stubbornness she had not realized she possessed refused to let her answer the woman’s question, just as it refused to let her ask the woman’s identity.

“Oh, well,” the woman said, rising gracefully from the bed. “Perhaps it’s for the best, after all.”

She crossed to a small table and opened its one drawer. “Richard seemed to think that I knew something about these,” she said. “Naturally I was disturbed by his unfounded accusations, disturbed enough that I had to do something. And where better to look than where it all began?”

She closed her fist over something she took from the drawer and walked back to the side of the bed. Lexi watched silently, willing the woman to end her cryptic comments and tell her, straight out, whatever she had come to say.

“They weren’t hard to find, not once I decided where to search. They were just stuffed in the back of a drawer, where any thief could have found them.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t tell Richard how careless you were with them,” she said, taking Lexi’s hand and pressing two rings into her palm.

Lexi stared at the wide, filigreed gold band and the sapphire and diamonds in an antique setting that complemented it When she raised her head with a question already forming on her lips, she found that the woman had crossed the room.

Standing in the doorway to Richard’s adjoining room, she lifted one delicately arched eyebrow. “And, Alexandra,” she said with a trace of condescension in her well-modulated voice, “welcome home.”

The night before, the rose-colored bathroom with its marble fixtures had seemed just another indication of the oppressiveness of the house. After a night’s sleep, however, Lexi was able to look at the room with new eyes, able to see the beauty in it, and able to wonder, Had she been accustomed to such wealth?

But the clothes in the vast closets, although too large, seemed suited to her. Just as the rings—although she found them, too, a little large once she was no longer able to resist slipping them onto her finger—seemed to belong on her hand.

She wore the rings, testing the feel of them but refusing to give in to the speculation they aroused in her, while she pondered the question of what one wore to breakfast when one lived in a museum. Not one of the several pairs of jeans she found neatly folded in a drawer, she was at enough of a disadvantage already, and not a dress—not for breakfast at home no matter how unhumble home was. She compromised with a pair of softly tailored peach-colored wool slacks, a coordinated mohair sweater and comfortable low-heeled shoes.

She felt somewhat like a little girl playing dress-up, but the three-way, full-length mirrors dispelled that image. Her size and the strangely disturbing short, curling hairstyle she now wore conspired to give her the appearance of a gamine. But her eyes held secrets that gave lie to that impression—secrets they wouldn’t reveal, even to her.

She was a stranger to herself. As everyone she had met was a stranger to her. As everyone she would meet until this mental blackout was ended would be a stranger to her. And it was a mental blackout. Melissa had made sure she understood that there was no physical reason, now, for her not to remember.

She found herself twisting the rings on her finger and reluctantly, knowing it was only partially for their protection, drew them from her hand and tucked them into a deep pocket of the slacks.

Realizing she was only postponing the inevitable, Lexi lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. If this was her home, she wouldn’t hide in the bedroom; if this was her family, she wouldn’t cower from them, no matter how foreboding they might seem.

Maybe.

Heading downstairs, Lexi sighed with relief when she found the breakfast room. Here, as in her bedroom, someone had banished the gloom. Sheer Austrian curtains covered floor-to-ceiling windows against which the rain spat, but even the foul weather couldn’t dispel the charm of the graceful furnishings and the delicate marble fountain set in the bow of one windowed wall. Maybe this house could be—had been—a home, after all.

She pushed through a heavy door and entered an institution-size kitchen.

A fiftyish woman, with neat gray hair caught in a severe bun and wearing an equally neat gray dress over her stolid figure, raised her head from the recipe file on the table in front of her. Her look of surprise quickly turned to barely disguised dismay.

“Mrs. Jordan!”

Lexi stopped hesitantly just inside the doorway. Was this someone else she was supposed to know?

The woman rose from her chair. “Mr. Jordan said you would probably sleep quite late. He told me not to disturb you. But if you had rung me, I would have had your tray brought to you.”

Lexi felt a smile quirking her lips as well as a quick stab of frustration. “I’m afraid no one explained the system to me.”

“Oh.” The woman seemed nonplussed for a moment, and her glance darted around the kitchen before returning to Lexi’s face. “I’m sorry. We tend to forget. I—we—I’ll be happy to show you how it works. It’s tied in with the telephones.”

“Thank you,” Lexi said. “I would appreciate that.” She glanced at the pile of recipe cards and at the well-used oak kitchen table. “I wonder if I might have some coffee.”

“Of course.” The woman stacked the cards into a neat pile. “You just go on into the breakfast room, and I’ll bring it right out.”

A dismissal? As polite as it had been, the woman’s response had all the earmarks of a firm dismissal.

In only a matter of moments the woman came through the doorway into the breakfast room carrying a tray. Lexi turned from the window where she had been staring out into the rain.

“You can’t see the lake this morning because of all the rain,” the woman said, setting the tray on the cherry table that would seat ten comfortably. “But it’s sure to be roiling and peaking.”

Lexi released the curtain and let it drop back into place. “Can we usually see the lake from here?”

The woman looked at her curiously. “Of course.”

Was our home built near the lake?

Not exactly.

Why had Richard said that? She shook her head and walked to the table. A silver coffeepot and one delicate cup waited for her. No cream. No sugar. But then, she didn’t need cream and sugar. She looked up at the woman, who was watching her, almost anxiously, from a position by the door.

“I’m—I’m Eva Handly,” the woman said reluctantly. “My husband Jack—he met you at the landing strip last night—have worked for Mr. Jordan for years, here, and—and for you.”

Lexi sighed and nodded her head in acknowledgment of the introduction. “Thank you, Mrs. Handly,” she said softly. “I really do hate to have to ask.”

For a moment the woman seemed to warm toward her, but only for a moment. “I’ll have your breakfast out in a few minutes.”

“No,” Lexi said. “This is all I want.”

“Young Mrs. Knapp has already given me my orders,” Mrs. Handly said firmly before leaving the room.

Melissa’s idea of a suitable breakfast left a lot to be desired, Lexi thought later. It was suitable, she supposed for a farm hand or a laborer, but there was no way she could eat all of the beautifully prepared meal. There was no way she wanted to try.

Had Melissa always been so arbitrary? Maybe she had. Maybe only now was Lexi beginning to resent it. But surely the decision of whether she wanted breakfast was one she was capable of making for herself.

She was pushing the food around on her plate, wondering what she would do with the rest of the morning, when Richard walked into the room.

She started guiltily as she looked up at him, and abandoned her immediate halfhearted fight against the pleasure she felt at seeing him. He looked almost rested, and he was dressed casually in faded jeans and another of his innumerable long-sleeved turtleneck sweaters that set off the strength in his arms and shoulders and threw his dark features into harsh relief. He looked at home here, at ease with his surroundings, and although he gave her another of his wary smiles, he seemed almost happy to see her, too.

“Eva told me you were here,” he said in the comforting voice she had relied upon for so many days before she had begun to notice his detachment, that she still relied upon when he came to her in the long hours of the night. He drew out the chair next to her and seated himself. “Did you rest well?”

“Yes.” She dared a hesitant smile. “Did you?”

This time his smile was less wary. “Surprisingly well.” He glanced at the plate in front of her. “Don’t let me keep you from your breakfast.”

Lexi glanced at the mountain of food remaining and surrendered to a tiny grimace. “Please do.” She gestured toward the silver pot. “Would you like some coffee?”

He shook his head. “I’ve had more than I need already this morning.”

She poured a little more of the still steaming liquid into her cup and sipped at it tentatively. She hated to break the mood between them, but then, what was the mood?

“What now?” she asked.

He reached with his strong, long-fingered, unscarred hand and traced the path of a feathered curl against her cheek. Beneath his touch, her cheek seemed to tingle, to throb almost painfully as though too long denied the sustenance of blood, of life. Lexi caught her lower lip between her teeth as she watched his dark eyes follow the path of his hand and then look to hers questioningly.

“I thought I’d give you a tour of the house so that you won’t be completely lost,” he said at last. “If you would like.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, not wanting to be relegated back to the solitude of her room, and not wanting, yet, to be deprived of Richard’s company. “I’d like that very much.”

Richard started the tour with the adjacent room, a dining room that dwarfed the proportions of the breakfast room. Lexi seated herself on the arm of a chair and stared around it pensively.

The room was heavy. That was the only word for it. Heavy Spanish furnishings. Heavy drapes that blocked out all outside light. Flickering wall sconces, meant to represent candlelight, only added to the gloom.

She couldn’t hide her shiver as she felt the walls, the wooden-paneled ceiling and the furnishings all closing in on her.

Richard leaned against the sideboard with his long legs crossed casually, though he wasn’t at ease. Why did he think he had to pretend to be?

“Would it help if I told you your very first words to me over a year ago when I brought you to this house?”

Lexi felt her breath catch. Warily she turned to him.

“You said, ‘My God, do we live here?’”

“But that’s what I said—”

“Last night,” he finished for her. He abandoned his casual slouch against the sideboard and walked to her side, looking down at her. “You don’t like this room, Lexi. You never have. And you don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings by telling me. I don’t like it, either.”

“Does this mean—” She realized she had been holding her breath and expelled it slowly. “Does this mean you’ve decided to talk to me?”

“About some things,” he admitted. “You’ve got to understand that I know no more about how to help you than you do. When Mel said that we should tell you nothing, that we should let all your knowledge come from your subconscious, I had to agree with her. She is a doctor. She is trained in these matters. But I’ve given a lot of thought to what you said yesterday, and while I still agree with Mel, at least in part, I see no reason why you should be kept completely in the dark.”

He stared into her eyes with an intensity that would have stripped secrets from her soul, if she’d had any to share, and a chill claimed his features. “I want to know—have to know—the truth. And so do you. If this is the only way to learn what that truth is, so be it.”

Lexi shifted on the chair arm, away from this suddenly frightening stranger, and when she did, she felt the rings in her pocket pressing against her thigh. In a nervous gesture she was barely conscious of, she began massaging the base of her ring finger with her thumb as she remembered the cryptic words of the woman who had given them to her.

“Richard, does Melissa—do you...” Lexi fumbled for the words, not wanting to believe that he could think so, but knowing she had to ask. “Is there some doubt? Did you think that by not telling me anything, that I might, somehow, slip and prove that I really do remember?”

Richard captured her hand in both of his and stilled her nervous movement. “Why do you ask that?”

Lexi swallowed once and then met his eyes. “I had a visitor in my room when I woke up this morning.”

“Who?” The pressure of his hands tightened on hers.

“A woman. Silver hair. Very...stylish. She didn’t tell me who she was. I wouldn’t ask.”

Richard dropped her hand and twisted away, but not before she saw the flash of a pain so old, so deep, she wondered how he bore it. “Damn her!”

It wasn’t an answer, but Lexi sensed that it was the only answer she was going to get. Should she tell him about the rings? Maybe she should, she admitted, but she wasn’t ready to face a confrontation with this man about whether or not to wear the visible symbol that she belonged to him—or he to her, a small voice whispered—not when his face had tightened into a dark scowl that hid all the kindness she’d thought he possessed. Perhaps she could have found the courage to do so if that glimpse of his pain had remained. But now his black eyes reflected an even blacker anger.

“Your door was locked?”

“Yes. I checked it after she left. She left through your room.”

“I’m sorry.” He placed his hand on the side of her head, almost reluctantly caressing a wayward curl, and let it slide down until it rested on her shoulder. “It shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again.”

Lexi looked at his scarred hand resting against soft, peach-colored wool and felt the warmth of his touch seeping through to her. She fought the urge to rest her cheek against his hand and fought the urge to ask him about the scars. She looked up at him, but he had seen the direction of her gaze. He lifted his hand from her and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“Who was she, Richard?” Lexi asked, when she realized he was lost in bitter thoughts of his own.

He sighed. “My mother. You’ll see her again at lunch.”

The weather prevented them from going outside, so Richard confined their tour to the house. But even after they had passed through several rooms his mood did not lighten, only settled into one that was slightly less grim.

There were rooms they didn’t enter: Greg’s groundfloor bedroom next to the basement-to-attic antique elevator that had been restored to accommodate his wheelchair, the bedrooms occupied by Richard’s mother, Helene, and Melissa at the opposite end of the second floor and a locked door beyond Lexi’s suite that Richard explained was a sunroom undergoing renovation and not safe for her to enter.

There were places Lexi didn’t like, which she had suspected there would be: the reception hall, a massive game room on the ground floor with its walls hung with mounted trophies and its floor covered with the tanned hides of long-dead animals; and, surprisingly, the narrow service stairs leading from the second-floor servants’ quarters, down which she had to force herself to follow Richard.

There were also rooms she found delightfully inviting. Yet only in the conservatory, a glass-walled and roofed structure appended to the east wing of the house, did she feel she could be truly at home. But they only paused in the doorway, looking in at the heated pool and a virtual jungle of tropical plants before Richard led her away.

And throughout the tour, with a recital stripped of emotion or inflection, Richard told her of the history of the house. He had not lied to her about the lake, he told her eventually. The lake was a relative newcomer, only having been impounded forty years or so ago, while the house had sat on its mountaintop for half again that long. The house had been built by an oilman and land speculator for his mistress and her small daughter by a previous liaison. They had lived here until the oilman’s death in the crash of a private plane enroute to a west Texas oil field.

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