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Her Gift Is Her Present

When Gabe Rodriguez took the job of deputy sheriff in the small town of Forever, Texas, he thought he’d be bored. So he’s shocked the morning he discovers a car teetering on the edge of a deep ravine with an unconscious woman at the wheel. Gabe makes a daring rescue, but when the woman awakes, her memory is wiped clean.

Gabe may call her his Christmas “Angel,” but in her eyes, he’s the one who is truly heaven-sent. Gabe’s given her a whole new life, and she is haunted by the feeling that this is the happiest she’s ever been. Though Gabe is trying to help Angel recover her memory, she’s willing to leave it all behind her and start fresh with him at her side. But when her past finally catches up to her, Angel could lose everything, including Gabe.

As she spoke, Angel drew nearer to Gabe.

She was so close that he could feel each breath she took as her chest rose, brushing against his. When she exhaled, he felt her breath along his skin.

His gut tightened in response as he struggled to hold himself in check.

Gabe wanted to believe her. Wanted so badly just to take her into his arms and not fear the ramifications and consequences that were waiting for them just beyond the night.

But there would be ramifications and there would be consequences.

Gabe gave it one more try. “I need to find the light, Angel.”

“It’s right here,” she whispered to him, rising on her toes, leaving her soft lips mere inches from his mouth.

Gabe could feel himself weakening. “Oh, damn, Angel, you could break a saint.”

“I don’t want a saint,” Angel told him, her eyes never leaving his. “I want you.”

Dear Reader,

Here we are, back in Forever, Texas. This time we’re visiting Alma’s brother, Gabe. Gabe is trying to deal with the sting of being dumped by a woman who felt she could do “better,” and by “better” she meant finding someone wealthier. Alma, in an effort to get Gabe to come around, gets the sheriff to offer him a temporary position as a fill-in deputy. Gabe accepts, but there’s not much to do in a small town like Forever—that is, if you don’t count saving a beautiful woman’s life by pulling her out of a car tottering on the brink of a ledge before it goes over—or bursts into flame (which it does, seconds after he rescues her). There’s a slight hitch with the rescue. The woman doesn’t know how she got there—or who she is. Impulsively, Gabe names her “Angel” because she looks like one to him (and because it’s nearly Christmas).

With nothing but time on his hands, Gabe takes Angel on as his private project, trying to help her remember who she is. But as the days go by, both Gabe and Angel grow more and more reluctant to unearth her past, especially since they are growing so close to one another in the present. Still, nothing goes smoothly, and someone from Angel’s past is looking for her—and he’s not looking for a happy reunion.

As always, I thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this latest stroll through Forever. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Happy holidays!

Love,

Marie

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

A Forever Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Stella Bagwell, My Go-To Person For All Things Western. With Love And Thanks

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Teaser Chapter

Prologue

It was the rain that was ultimately responsible.

The rain and fear.

In their own unique way, they were both blinding. The rain came down in sheets, demanding that she pull over, or at the very least drive more slowly.

The sky was close to being as dark as midnight, despite the fact that it was in the middle of the day. But there was nowhere for her to pull over, no town, no gas station. Nothing.

Nothing but exposed space.

And she couldn’t risk being exposed. Even in this storm.

She didn’t know if she was still even in Texas anymore.

All she knew was that she had to keep going, had to put as many miles between her and Jake as she could. There had been murder in his eyes the very last time she’d seen him.

Her murder.

He was coming for her. She could feel it.

She’d raced to her car, soaked before she’d ever reached it. Once inside, her hand shaking so badly it was hard to put the key into the ignition, it took her three tries to get it to turn over. Tearing away from the house, she put her foot all the way down on the gas pedal and drove as fast as she could.

Just drove. The destination didn’t matter. She had to save herself.

It was her own fault.

She shouldn’t have come back. She should have known he’d be watching the house, waiting for her to show up.

Jake.

The man who was the reason why she’d taken off to begin with. Why she’d changed her name, changed her appearance, changed her life. Changed everything just to get away from him.

And she had.

But when she’d learned, by accident, of her mother’s death, she couldn’t stay away from the funeral. Her heart ached too much not to say goodbye one last time.

She should have realized that his obsession would have had him watching the cemetery, watching the house. She’d thought she was careful, waiting for everyone to leave before she’d paused at the cemetery. Before she’d slipped into the house. She wanted to get the album of pictures her mother had kept. Pictures from a happier time. That, and her mother’s locket, those were the only two things she’d wanted—almost needed—to see her through this awful period.

Securing them would have only taken a few minutes. In and out. But even just a few minutes were too many.

He’d been watching for her.

Waiting.

And the moment she was in the house, he’d closed in. If that floorboard hadn’t squeaked when it had…

But it had and she’d bolted after throwing the jewelry box at him, hitting him squarely in the face. Bolted even as he heaped a barrage of curses at her through his bloodied lips. Curses that were drowned out by the whine of the bullet that tore by her head.

Missing her by inches.

Her heart hammering so hard she was sure it would burst, clutching the album in her arms and the locket chain woven through her fingers, she had thrown herself into her car and drove. Drove like the devil was after her.

Because he was.

She had no idea how long she’d been driving. Time and space all merged into one formless entity. Her gas tank had been full when she’d begun and now the needle was shivering around Empty.

She kept driving.

She hadn’t seen his headlights—or any lights at all—in her rearview mirror for a while now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. She knew Jake, knew how obsessed, how focused, he could be. His superiors thought of it as his dedication. They didn’t know the man beneath the facade. Only she had been exposed to him. Jake would think nothing of turning off his lights and driving without them even in this storm if it meant being able to catch her off guard.

She was tired. Frightened and tired. Maybe death was the answer. If she had been the one who’d died instead of her mother…

No, damn it, she wouldn’t give him this final triumph over her, she wouldn’t, she thought angrily. She wouldn’t let him steal her life from her.

She—

The tree came out of nowhere. It was far too close for her to avoid even if she swerved to the right. She swerved anyway.

She could hear the high-pitched sound coming from her tires. The car was fishtailing, spinning out of control. She vaguely remembered something about driving into the spin even as everything else told her to turn the wheel in the opposite direction.

A scream tore from her lips a second before she hit something. The tree? Something else?

There was no time to identify it. The impact had her head hitting the steering wheel. Trying to raise her head, she blinked several times before she saw the edge of the ravine yawning before her.

And then the darkness mercifully swallowed her up even as another scream tore from her throat.

Chapter One

The rain was finally subsiding after coming down in buckets all night.

For a while there, it had been a toss-up between using his 4x4 or debating using a canoe to get back to town this morning. Gabriel Rodriguez shook his head as he laughed shortly to himself. It figured that he’d wind up facing this deluge just when he finally decided to drop by to visit his father on the family ranch. What with everything going on in his life lately—or not going on, he thought ruefully—he’d come up with one excuse after another for not taking his father up on the invitation.

His father, Miguel Rodriguez, wasn’t the type to shout or make demands. Rather, the father of six merely nodded his head and accepted whatever excuse he’d given him. That was the way the man had always been. And his soft-spoken approach had always been far more effective than shouting or giving angry ultimatums. Everyone always came around sooner than later. Though he was quick to deny it, Miguel Rodriguez knew just how to wield guilt as if it were a finely honed rapier in his hand.

The old man always got the results he was after, too, Gabe thought. They all complied, he and his five siblings. Some a little faster than others—Alma could really dig in when she wanted to—but no one was ever immune to their father’s sad brown eyes or quiet demeanor for long. The man had a very easygoing personality, unlike Miguel Jr.—Mike to his friends—who had a highly volatile one.

Mike liked to call it being passionate, but whatever term was given to it, Miguel Jr. was definitely explosive whereas Miguel Sr. was not.

“Senior” also got what he wanted far more often than “Junior” ever did.

Given the monotony of the scenery around him, Gabe’s mind drifted as he drove to town and his relatively new job as deputy to Rick Santiago’s sheriff.

He hadn’t meant to stay as long as he had last night. Initially, he’d planned on leaving by nine, but things hadn’t quite worked out that way.

Dinner had been good, the conversation even better, and somehow the time had just managed to slip away. Suddenly it was way past nine and his father was telling him that his old bedroom was still right where he’d left it—upstairs, down the hall—if he wanted to stay the night rather than taking on the elements.

By then it was raining so hard, it was as if someone had ripped open the sky.

So he’d stayed.

Besides, there was really nothing pressing in town that required him being there by dawn’s early light. Forever, Texas, was one of those sparsely populated towns that really needed law enforcement officers only to settle verbal disputes that sometimes got too heated and testy. On occasion, the sheriff or any of his three deputies might be called upon to rescue the town drunk from himself—or from his less-than-contented wife who, all things considered, was the dangerous one of the two.

He’d lost track of time because he actually enjoyed his father’s company, and he also knew the real reason behind the recurring frequent invitations to come for dinner. His father—like his sister, Alma—was very worried about him.

Worried because, for once in his life, he’d taken a breakup really hard. Usually he was the one doing the breaking up, or orchestrating things so that the woman he was involved with was pushed to break up with him. He did the latter to spare the woman’s pride.

But this, this breakup—or, more accurately, this dumping—had hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. Erica, the woman he’d come to believe that he was going to marry, had abruptly declared she’d found someone else “better suited” for her via a popular dating site—as if finding a husband-to-be was the same as shopping for a dress.

That was when he’d discovered that Erica had actually drawn up a “checklist” of traits—and possessions—that her future husband had to have.

As it turned out, the woman of his dreams turned out to be money hungry.

Looking back, he had to admit, if only to himself, that there’d been signs that Erica was more of a gold digger than the sweet, loving partner he thought she was. She was a woman who knew what she wanted out of life, and what she wanted, first and foremost, was a husband who could give her those things. All those things.

He, as a rancher, very obviously did not fit the bill.

He supposed that made him rather naive because he’d assumed that that was what love was for: to fill in the gaps.

But in Erica’s case, he’d thought wrong.

“You can do better, Gabe,” Alma had insisted fiercely when she’d discovered that he was no longer with Erica. “A lot better.”

He’d smiled and nodded at the youngest member of his family, pretending to shrug off the breakup, but deep down being rejected like that had really bothered him.

Or perhaps, he reconsidered, not so deep down because obviously Alma had seen right through his act. Acting on her firm belief that keeping busy was the best way to forget about a painful situation, she’d casually mentioned that Larry, Sheriff Rick Santiago’s third deputy, had to suddenly leave town for Fort Worth because of an urgent family matter that required his presence. That left his position temporarily vacant.

Then Alma had reminded him about all those times, when they were kids, that they’d played sheriff and cattle rustlers. Knowing that Alma had the ability of going on forever, he’d nodded, barely remembering what she was talking about.

Before he knew it, that casual, noncommittal nod turned into a job offer from Rick. He’d made it clear that the job would only be temporary. At which point Alma had piped up and said it was temporary—unless Larry decided not to come back.

Gabe’s first reaction was to laugh and decline. But the words never rose to his lips. Instead, he turned the idea over in his head. He’d really been feeling restless ever since the breakup and this seemed like a good stopgap solution.

Who knew, maybe he’d even discover that he liked the work, liked the uniform and what it represented. And, quite truthfully, he had nothing to lose. So he’d shrugged good-naturedly and said to Rick, “Sure, if you think I’d make a good one.”

Rick had smiled at him and rather than offer platitudes or say something that lacked sincerity, the sheriff had said to him, “That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?”

And then he and the sheriff had shaken hands on it.

The first couple of days on the job, Alma had stuck to him like glue, explaining absolutely everything until he began to believe his sister thought that he was six years old and incapable of understanding anything unless broken down to the simplest terms and shortest words.

On the third day, he’d just about had his fill. But before he could say as much to Alma, Rick had given her a look that succinctly and silently put the senior deputy in her place. After that, whenever she began to explain something to him, she’d stop herself, murmur, “You’ll get the hang of it, Gabe,” and went back to doing whatever she’d been doing.

Now, after almost four weeks, Gabe had to admit it was an interesting change of pace from being a rancher. Certainly less physically tiring. There’d been times when he’d thought about getting his own spread, but his father still needed help with the ranch now and then. Besides, that ranch technically belonged to all of them. His father had seen to that.

Around the time when they’d lost their mother, all six of them had joined forces, taking any job they could, to help their father pay off all the medical bills that had accumulated. They’d also raised money to keep the bank from taking away the ranch because their father had fallen behind in payments.

Paying off the bills was a point of honor for Miguel Rodriguez, so they had all pitched in together, pooled their resources and their money. They did everything and anything until the bills were paid off and their father was back on good terms with the bank.

That was when Miguel Sr. had them all accompany him to the bank. He’d been very mysterious about why he wanted them there, not really saying anything by way of an explanation until they were all assembled in the bank president’s office. That was when he told them that he was having the title on the deed changed so that it included all their names under the word Owner.

Stunned, they’d tried to argue him out of it, but their father had been adamant about it, refusing to change his mind. So now they were all proud joint owners of the ranch where they had grown up. And although no one said as much to their father, as far as they were all concerned, the ranch still belonged to him. Rafe, Mike and Ray still lived on the ranch and worked it while the rest of them lent a hand whenever they were needed.

But Alma worked predominantly as a deputy and Eli had his own spread to tend to, so that cut down on the number of “hands” his father could tap into.

Which was why he’d hesitated when Alma had initially suggested his taking Larry’s place.

“It’s only going to be temporary. C’mon, what’ve you got lose?” she’d urged in that way of hers that got people to come around no matter what it was she was pushing.

So he’d said all right, and before he knew it, he was holding his right hand up and swearing his allegiance to both the state and the town, promising to do the best job he could, “So help me, God.”

And just like that, he, Gabriel Rodriguez, was a U.S. deputy sheriff.

So far, he liked it. But he had to admit, the job was far from exciting.

The rain had all but stopped. That was when he first saw it. Saw the car that appeared to be tottering on the edge of the ravine. It looked like something straight out of an action movie—and not a very good one at that.

Except that this was real.

All too real.

The closer he came to the scene, the worse it appeared to him.

He would have said that it looked as if someone had run the vehicle off the road—if there’d actually been a discernible road to begin with. But whether by design or accident, the end result was that the vehicle was precariously positioned on the edge of the ravine. It gave every indication of being on the verge of going over if there was so much as the slightest breeze to give it a push.

He had no idea how it had managed to withstand the forces of the rain. In his opinion, it had rained hard enough to send the sedan plummeting into the ravine.

He supposed the fact that it hadn’t came under the heading of a miracle. He would need another one if there was anyone inside that sedan who needed rescuing.

Gabe hoped the supply of miracles hadn’t suddenly run dry.

He’d been a deputy sheriff for less than four weeks, but he’d been a man a great deal longer than that. And as a man, he reacted a certain way.

Basic instincts, literally honed at his father’s knee, had him acting almost automatically, without needing to stop to think anything through. Seeing someone in danger, his immediate reaction was to try to help, not to “go and get help.”

Gabe brought his weather-beaten 4x4 to a dead stop less than a foot away from the precariously perched sedan.

From what he could make out through the clouded windows, there was someone inside the car.

He caught his breath. Every second counted. The smallest wrong movement on either that person’s part—or his own—and the car was going to be history. As would be the person inside.

Moving carefully around the vehicle in a wide semicircle, Gabe assessed the situation, confirming there was only one person inside the car. A woman. And she wasn’t moving.

Was she in shock, or—

Gabe pressed his lips together, contemplating his next move. He wanted to call out, to ask the woman if she was all right, but that might startle her. Much as he wanted reassurance that she was alive, he didn’t want to risk her making any sudden moves that could throw off the car’s fragile equilibrium.

The most logical thing was for him to drag the woman out of the car, but that had an extremely risky downside to it.

What he needed to do, Gabe decided, was to drag the car away from the edge and back onto solid ground again with all four tires firmly planted on a flat surface.

Easier said than done.

Gabriel pushed his hand through his hair. He had to find a way to hook up her car and his 4x4 so that he could pull the sedan away from the edge of the ravine with a minimum of risk.

He thought of calling Mick, the town’s best mechanic. The fact that Mick was also the only mechanic in town didn’t in any way affect the fact that the man could perform miracles with vehicles of all sizes and shapes. Taking out his cell phone, Gabe looked uncertainly at the teetering sedan.

How long had it been like that? More to the point, how much longer could it stay that way?

But even as he pressed one of the preprogrammed numbers on his keypad, he didn’t know if he had enough time to wait for Mick to get here.

What if the rain started up again, full force?

He glanced down at the screen and saw that he had only half the number of bars that he usually did. The storm was probably responsible for that.

A gravelly voice answered on the other end. Rather than a formal greeting, the man said, “Yeah?”

“Mick, it’s Gabe Rodriguez.”

At hearing the name, Mick’s voice softened just a touch. “What can I do for you, Deputy?” Mick asked, putting special emphasis on Gabe’s new title.

“You can get yourself out here about ten miles out of town, by Lazarus Ravine. I’ve got a car all set to go over the edge and I need a tow.”

“Yours?”

“No—”

“Belong to anyone you know?”

“No—” Again, he didn’t get time to finish.

Mick’s approach to life was very cut-and-dried. “Then what’s the problem?”

“There’s someone in it.” As he spoke, he looked into the sedan again. The woman hadn’t moved. Maybe that was just as well. If she came to—if she was able to come to—she might panic. One wrong move might prove fatal, not to mention her last. “I don’t think she’s conscious from what I can see. But if I try to get her out—”

“She’d fall into the ravine. I get it. Sit tight. I’m on my way,” the man promised. And with that, the connection was broken.

Sit tight. Ordinarily that would have sounded like good advice. Gabe thought. But in all good conscience, he couldn’t take it, not when a woman’s life quite literally hung in the balance.

He was torn.

Anything he could do might result in making it worse, he reasoned. Still, he didn’t feel comfortable about just sitting here and waiting for Mick. A lot could happen in that short amount of time.

Right about now, hauling the town drunk into one of the jail cells to sleep it off was beginning to sound like an enviable alternative to this.

He continued to stare at the sedan.

He hadn’t heard any sounds coming from the woman inside so he still didn’t even know if she was dead or alive, but went with the latter.

Feeling somewhat anxious, Gabe returned to his 4x4 and began to look through both the cab and the cargo area, searching for either a really thick, strong length of rope or, better yet, a chain that he could use to hook up to the victim’s car.

He finally found a length of chain all but hidden at the back of the cargo area. It was buried underneath a large pile of his belongings, which had been there since he’d moved into town a few months ago. He’d yet to sort through them and decide whether to bring them to his new living quarters, leave them at the ranch in case he decided to move back or just throw them out.

A triumphant, strongly voiced “Yes!” escaped his lips when he saw the chain. Pulling it out of the truck bed, he vaguely remembered that he’d used the chain to help remove a rotting tree stump on Eli’s property. That had to be over six months ago, he realized.

“That’ll teach Alma to stop nagging me about never putting anything away,” he muttered under his breath, even though there was no one around to overhear him.

At the time, he’d secured the chain around the stump and then anchored it to the back of his vehicle. Once he was sure it would hold, he slowly coaxed the stump out of the ground by driving away in almost slow motion.

It had taken close to half an hour and three separate tries, but finally the stump had come out of the ground. Most of its roots were still attached.

“Here’s hoping we have the same luck here,” he said to himself. Gabe looked into the sedan one more time. The woman inside still hadn’t moved. How long had she been like that?

He was wasting time, wondering instead of doing, he admonished himself.

Working as fast as he could, Gabe secured one end of the chain to the rear bumper of the woman’s car and the other end to his truck’s front bumper. Offering up bits and pieces of a prayer his mother had insisted that all her children learn by the time they were old enough to talk, Gabe got in behind the wheel of his truck, threw it into Reverse and ever so slowly backed up.

He never took his eyes off the sedan and its still passenger.

The ground was exceedingly wet after the storm and traction not what it could have been, but of the two vehicles, his, fortunately, was the heavier one. Otherwise, he might have found himself sliding toward the one in jeopardy, not away from it.

He held his breath as his truck continued to slowly move away from the edge of the ravine.

Little by little, inch by inch, the sedan began to tilt toward him, away from the ledge, until finally he managed to get all four of the vehicle’s wheels on the ground. Still in Reverse, he got the sedan far enough away from the edge of the ravine so that it no longer was in any danger of tumbling into it.

The second he got the other vehicle securely on flat ground, Gabe quickly turned off his engine and jumped out of the truck. Rushing over to the banged-up sedan, he found that the doors on both sides were jammed shut. Rather than attempt to wrestle with them, trying to pry one of them free, he took out the firearm that the sheriff had issued to him.

Turning it around so that the butt of the weapon was facing the window, he struck at the windshield as hard as he could. Two attempts later, the glass finally cracked. Under the forceful pressure of his hand, the small, spidery cracks began to spread out. As they did so, they weakened the glass enough so that when he swung the hilt of his weapon against it, the windshield finally shattered. Parts of it fell into the car.

Which left the rest for him to deal with. Moving quickly, Gabe removed chunks of the glass until he’d managed to clear a sufficiently large enough opening for him to snake through. He made it into the passenger seat, glass fragments clinging to his hair, casting small rainbows.

The woman was still strapped into her seat. There was blood over her right eye thanks to the head wound directly above it.

She was blonde and probably not more than about twenty-six, he judged. Her eyes were closed and for a moment he thought she was dead. Feeling her neck for a pulse, he wasn’t sure if he detected any, or if what he felt faintly throbbing was merely the pulse within his own fingers.

He moved the blonde gently back so that she was in a more accessible sitting position. Gabe put his head against her chest, straining to detect even the faintest of heartbeats.

He didn’t hear anything.

But just as he was straightening up, he thought he felt the slightest brush of material against his cheek. Stunned, he stared at her chest intently. That was when he saw it. Just the smallest hint of movement.

She was breathing.

The woman was still alive!

His pulse began to race and he grinned.

She was still alive.

Chapter Two

Gabriel was torn between leaving the woman where she was until help arrived and trying to get her out of her totaled vehicle.

Weighing pros and cons, he was leaning toward the former since the ground was wet and he had no idea what sort of internal injuries she’d sustained. Since he had no medical training, he was afraid that moving her, if he unintentionally did it the wrong way, might make things worse for the blonde.

But the silent debate ended abruptly when he became aware of the very strong smell of gasoline. It was coming from her car, never a good thing considering the kind of damages the vehicle had sustained.

Staying in the wrecked vehicle was definitely not a safe choice for either one of them. Gabriel shifted, trying first one door, then the other, hoping that at least one of them was more pliable from the inside of the sedan than from the outside.

But they weren’t. Neither door gave an inch, nor gave any indications that they could be moved if enough pressure was applied.

They remained sealed even when he attempted to kick his way out.

The force he’d exerted reverberated all the way up his leg to his thigh. The door still didn’t budge.

Since the doors appeared to be permanently sealed, he thought his next best bet was the front windshield. He’d already crawled in through the windshield to reach the unconscious woman, but that had been at a price. He’d gotten half a dozen or more cuts along his arms and torso for his trouble. Using this route to get out meant he had to do some more cleaning up. The woman was already bleeding from her scalp. He didn’t want to add to her injuries if he could help it.

Bracing himself on the seat, Gabriel raised both of his legs up as high as he could, then kicked against the windshield as hard as he was able.

It wasn’t enough.

He did it again.

And again.

With each kick, a little more of the windshield shattered and drops of glass rained down on either the hood or directly into the car. Before he’d gotten started, he’d covered up the blonde with his jacket as best he could, trying to protect her from the falling glass.

Taking his jacket back now, he wrapped it around his arm, and then swung his arm in a giant sweeping motion, clearing away as much of the broken glass fragments as he could. He wanted to be able to get her out, onto the hood, with as little of the jagged edges grabbing on to her as possible.

Gabe was well aware that the maneuver would have been a great deal easier if there was someone outside the vehicle to hand her off to. But he was fighting against the clock. Who knew how much more of a safety zone he had left to work with? He had the uneasy feeling that the car could blow up at any moment and he needed to get them both out of there and in the clear before that happened.

Besides, taking a closer look, he saw that she was still bleeding from her temple. He needed to get the blonde into town and to the doctor.

It occurred to Gabe, as he struggled to get the unconscious woman through the opening he’d created, that a year ago there would have been no doctor to take her to. At least, none in Forever and none around for a fifty-mile radius. Any medical emergency had to be handled in Pine Ridge, which boasted of a hospital within the town limits. Before Dan Davenport had arrived, Forever had been without a doctor for the past thirty years.

And now they had one.

Forever wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of progress, but they were getting there, little by little, Gabe thought. He supposed that baby steps were better than no steps at all.

Despite the fact that it was cold and the woman he was struggling to get out of the car was little more than just a slip of a thing, Gabe found himself working up a sweat. There just wasn’t all that much space to successfully maneuver in.

Pausing to catch his breath, he rubbed the perspiration from his forehead with the side of his forearm before it fell into his eyes.

“Okay now,” he muttered, positioning his hands where he knew she would have protested had she only been conscious, he squared his shoulders and shoved, “one last big push.”

Exhaling the breath he’d been holding, he experienced a surge of triumph. She was out! Time for him to be the same.

Gabriel scrambled out of the mangled death trap himself.

A small spark seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The sudden gleam reflected in the side mirror caught his eye. Gabriel instantly reacted even before the actual image even registered in his mind.

His feet hitting the ground, he grabbed the blonde up in his arms and raced to his truck. Pushing her into the passenger seat, he had just enough time to jump in behind the wheel and throw the vehicle into Reverse. His foot urgently pressing the accelerator all the way down to the floor, he put as much distance as humanly possible between his truck and the totaled sedan.

He did it just in time. The spark had multiplied, giving birth to flames that grew instantly larger and larger, as well as more insistent. By the time he’d gotten three hundred feet between his truck and the sedan, the latter blew up.

He sat in the cab of his truck, staring in disbelief at what very easily could have been his funeral pyre—or at the very least, hers.

Tension riddled his six-foot-two frame, even as he closed his eyes and exhaled.

“Guess we both just used up our share of luck for the next fifty years,” he speculated quietly, addressing his words to the unconscious blonde in the seat beside him.

His nerves badly rattled, Gabriel took a few deep breaths to try to steady his nerves. It would take more than that, but he kept at it, knowing he needed to get a grip on his emotions. People would be asking questions and he was vaguely aware that he had to put this all down in a report.

It started to rain again.

Nature was putting out the fire, he thought absently, unable to look away.

He was so completely focused on what had just happened that he remained almost totally oblivious to his surroundings for at least a couple of minutes. By the time he saw the other two vehicles, they were all but on top of him.

The weather-battered tow truck led the way. Mick had come, just as he’d promised.

The second vehicle was a Jeep. The official markings on its sides proclaimed it to belong to the sheriff’s department. As they approached, the Jeep suddenly picked up speed and wound up reaching him first.

Barely coming to a complete stop, the deputy inside the vehicle jumped out. Alma hit the ground running at her top speed.

Reaching the truck, she cried out breathlessly, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Gabriel told her, dismissing himself. “But she’s not.” And then his mind suddenly backtracked, remembering. His only call had been to Mick. He’d stated the problem. He had not asked for reinforcement. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Having a heart attack,” Alma retorted. She nodded toward the scruffy mechanic in the worn sheepskin jacket and faded overalls.

“Mick called the sheriff’s office as soon as he hung up with you. I picked up the call,” she added needlessly. Satisfied that her brother had no mortal wounds, she seemed to relax a little. For the first time, she took note of the woman slumped beside him on the passenger seat. “What happened to her?”

Gabe shrugged, his wide shoulders reinforcing his answer. “Damned if I know. I was driving into town when I spotted her car.” He nodded in the general direction of the ravine. “It was tottering on the edge, two wheels in the air and set to drop like a stone at the slightest shift in weight.”

“And she didn’t say how that happened?”

Gabe shook his head. “She was unconscious when I got there.” His eyes shifted toward Mick. The mechanic was now standing behind Alma. With the sedan burned, there was nothing for the man to tow or fix. “Sorry I got you out here for no reason, Mick,” he apologized.

Mick rubbed the ever-present graying stubble along his chin as he looked back at what was left of the sedan. “Oh, I dunno. Might take it back to the shop, anyway, and do me a little detective work on the remains. Figure out why it burned,” he explained, adding, “Things are a might slow right now. Could use the diversion.” He paused and peered closer into the cab of Gabe’s truck. “You don’t need a tow in or nuthin’, do you?”

With a pleased smile, Gabe sat up and affectionately patted the dashboard. “She handled herself just like the trouper she is, Mick.”

Mick beamed with satisfaction, like a parent whose child had remembered all his lines in the school play. “That’s ’cause she had a good mechanic,” Mick pointed out matter-of-factly. Then he nodded at the woman whose car was now a charred heap and asked, “What are you gonna do about her?”

Alma already had her cell out. “I’ll call ahead to the doc, tell him we’ve got an emergency coming in.” She looked at her brother. “Two emergencies,” she corrected. When Gabe raised one quizzical eyebrow, she said, “Have him check out both of you.”

“I’m fine,” Gabriel told her firmly. He absolutely hated being fussed over, especially when the person doing the fussing was a doctor.

With a sigh, Alma shifted the cell phone to her other hand. Leaning in, she ran the tips of two of her fingers along his bare arm. Holding up “Exhibit A” for Gabe’s perusal, she said, “Not from where I’m standing. You’ve got cuts on both your arms, big brother. You’re seeing the doctor.” There was no room for argument in her tone.

Gabe tried, anyway. “But—”

Alma leveled a pointed, silencing look at him. “You’re seeing the doctor, Gabe,” she repeated with deadly conviction, “even if I have to beat you senseless to do it.”

He laughed shortly. That was Alma. If sweet talk didn’t work, she instantly turned to verbal threats, which in turn bore fruit if necessary.

“Comforting,” he cracked.

“I wasn’t trying to be comforting,” Alma informed him crisply. “I was just trying to keep you from bleeding to death. Don’t want or need you preying on my conscience, Gabriel.”

Gabe gave up arguing the point directly and resorted to shifting the focus of the conversation.

“I’m more concerned about her,” Gabe said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped away some of the blood on the blonde’s forehead.

The handkerchief fell from his fingers when he heard the woman moan.

It was the first actual sign of life he’d gotten from her. “You’re okay,” he said to the blonde with feeling. “You’re with friends.”

“Friends she ain’t met yet,” Mick, who’d been silent for the most part, now quipped before walking away to take a closer look at what remained of the car.

It was still raining. Not nearly as badly as it had been earlier, but sufficiently enough to put out what there still was of the fire. Plumes of smoke twisted and turned in the air before fading off to become part of the atmosphere.

Alma looked at Gabe uncertainly. She knew the way he thought, knew the way all her brothers thought. Each and every one of them believed he was indestructible. It was a common family failing.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” she pressed. “Because I could—”

Gabe knew where this was going and quickly cut his sister off.

“I’m okay,” he assured her, then after a beat, added in a quieter voice, “Thanks for asking.”

For a second, Alma was speechless, then flashed her brother a tight smile. Stepping back from the truck, she told him, “I’ll drive behind you to make sure you don’t suddenly need something.”

Gabe didn’t see himself needing anything, suddenly or otherwise, but he knew there was no point in arguing. All he could do was just restate his position. “I’m okay, but suit yourself.”

“Thanks for your permission,” Alma said dryly, though he could tell she was doing her best to cover up her fear of losing him.

Gabe grinned for the first time since Alma had come on the scene. “Don’t mention it.”

Alma waved a dismissive hand at him as she walked away.

Mick was busy hooking up his tow truck to what was left of the woman’s charred sedan and Alma was getting back into her Jeep while making the call to Dan’s office to let the doctor know that he had an emergency patient coming in. Neither one of them saw the woman in Gabe’s truck suddenly sit up as he started the vehicle again.

“No!”

The single word tore from her lips. There was terror in her eyes and she gave every indication that she was going to jump out of the truck’s cab—or at least try to. Surprised, Gabe quickly grabbed her by the arm with his free hand, pulling her back inside the vehicle and into her seat.

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” he told her.

The fear in her eyes remained. If anything, it grew even larger.

“Who are you?” the blonde cried breathlessly. She appeared completely disoriented.

“Gabriel Rodriguez.” Since he knew the name would mean nothing to her, he added, “I’m the guy who pulled you out of your car and kept you from becoming a piece of charcoal.”

Her expression didn’t change. It was as if his words weren’t even registering. Nonetheless, Gabe paused, giving her a minute as he waited for her response.

But the woman said nothing.

“Okay,” he coaxed as he continued driving toward Forever, “your turn.”

The world, both inside the moving vehicle and outside of it, was spinning faster and faster, making it impossible for her to focus. Moreover, she couldn’t seem to manage to pull her thoughts together. Couldn’t get passed the heavy hand of fear that was all but smothering her, pushing her deep into the seat she was sitting on.

“My turn?” she echoed. What did that mean, her turn? Her turn to do what, go where?

“Yes, your turn,” he repeated. Then, because she looked no clearer on the concept than she had a second ago, he elaborated. “I told you my name. Now you tell me yours.”

Her name.

The two words echoed in her brain, encountering only emptiness.

The silence stretched until it was a long, thin thread, leading nowhere. Finally, just before he repeated his question again, she said in a small voice, hardly above a whisper, “I can’t.”

She was afraid, he thought. She didn’t trust him. He could accept that. Considering what she had just gone through, there was little wonder at her reaction.

He did his best to reassure her.

“Look, I’m a deputy sheriff,” he told her, adding, “I can protect you. You can tell me your name.”

Suddenly very weary, she strained very, very hard, searching, waiting for something to come to her.

Anything. A scrap.

But nothing did.

Not so much as a fragment, not the smallest of pieces occurred to her.

Nothing but darkness and formless shadows.

The terror in her sky-blue eyes grew as she turned them on him. She wet her lips before speaking. It didn’t help. The dryness went down several layers, into her very soul.

“No, I can’t,” she repeated hoarsely.

This job would take more patience than he’d initially thought. Patience and skill. It certainly was different from what he’d imagined.

He owed Alma an apology, Gabe decided, for saying that being a deputy in this county was a very slow-paced, boring job.

So much for that, he thought sarcastically.

“We’ll protect you,” he told the woman again, but he could see that no matter how he said it, it made no difference to her. Her expression—confused, frightened—didn’t change. Obviously his assurance had no effect on her. He peeled back another layer, approaching the problem from another direction. “And why can’t you tell me your name?”

“Because,” she began, then stopped herself. She could feel bars going up, safeguards rising out of nowhere, intended to keep this man out.

Why?

Was she like that with everyone, or was it just him? And was he really a good Samaritan who’d been passing by, at the right time, in the right place, just in time to “rescue” her, or was that a story he’d made up to lull her into a false sense of security?

And why would he do that?

Exactly who was he to her?

More importantly, who was she to her?

She felt suddenly hollow and incredibly empty with no clue how to remedy either.

“Because—” Her voice broke. Taking a deep breath, she pushed on again and this time finished her sentence. “Because I don’t know who I am.” Anger and frustration echoing in her voice.

She was kidding, right? Gabe thought. When she said nothing more, he pressed, “You’re serious? This isn’t some kind of a joke you’re playing?”

When she made no answer, he spared her a glance, thinking to coax the answer from her, or at least search her face for a clue as to whether or not she was actually telling the truth—although, when it came to reading people, Joe Lone Wolf, the sheriff’s other deputy and coincidentally also his brother-in-law, was a lot better at that than he was.

One glance at the blonde told Gabriel he wasn’t about to coax anything out of her, or discern anything from her expression, either.

She was unconscious again.

Chapter Three

His first thought was to stop driving and just pull over to the side. But then what? It wasn’t as if he knew what to do—he didn’t. And neither, he was fairly certain, did his sister. As for the mechanic who was behind them towing in the burned remains of the woman’s sedan, if it didn’t have an engine in it, Mick had no clue what to do or not do, so he’d be less than no help in this situation, either.

No, the best thing that he could do for this mystery woman was just to drive and get her to the doctor as fast as possible. At least Dan could cauterize her wound and patch it up. And maybe the former New York surgeon knew how to tell whether or not the blonde was telling the truth when she claimed not to know who she was.

It began to rain heavier.

Squaring his shoulders, Gabe pressed down on the accelerator and sped up. Having lived here all his life, he knew the terrain in and around Forever like the back of his hand. If need be, he could drive to town with his eyes shut, so the threat of more obscuring rain had absolutely no effect on him.

But, in an odd sort of way, the woman in the passenger seat did.

What was it like not knowing who you were?

If this woman was actually telling the truth and not just being evasive for some reason, he imagined that it had to be pretty damn scary, not knowing your own name. When life got tough, a person was supposed to be able to rely on himself or herself. But if you didn’t even know who you were, how were you supposed to depend on yourself?

“Who are you?” Gabe asked softly as he spared the unconscious blonde a long glance. “Is there someone somewhere worrying about you? Wondering why you didn’t come home, or call, or even…?”

His voice trailed off as more and more questions popped up in his head. Questions that would have to go unanswered for the time being. With any luck, most of them would be addressed when the woman regained her consciousness again.

For all he knew, there might be a missing-persons file on her waiting for them by the time he got into the office.

“I know I’d be looking for you if you were mine,” he murmured under his breath.

Even disheveled, with her light blond hair plastered against her face, he could see that she was beautiful. Genuinely beautiful, not one of those women whose looks came out of jars and containers and the clever application of makeup.

He put the windshield wipers on high and drove a tad faster.

* * *

WITH HIS WINTER COAT thrown carelessly over his shoulders to impede the bone-freezing weather from getting to him, Dr. Dan Davenport stood outside his single-story clinic, waiting for the patient that Alma had called him about. The November chill was creeping into his bones when he finally saw the three-vehicle caravan approaching.

Finally, he thought, moving to meet them.

“Slow day at the clinic, Doc?” Gabe called out as he jumped out of the cab of his truck and rounded the hood, crossing over to the passenger’s side.

“Everyone’s healthy at the same time for a change,” Dan answered.

Which, as far as he was concerned, was a good thing. It balanced out the days when it seemed as if his waiting room was stuffed with patients from first light to way beyond the last.

Reaching the vehicle, the doctor opened the passenger door before Gabriel had a chance to. He frowned as he peered into the truck, then looked at Gabe. “She hasn’t regained consciousness yet?”

“No, she did,” Gabriel said. He was unaware that he had elbowed the doctor out of his way to get to the woman, but Alma noticed as she came to join them. In the background, Mick was driving on to his garage, the barbecued sedan in tow behind him. “For about two, three minutes,” Gabe qualified, “and then she lost consciousness again.”

“Did she tell you her name while she was still conscious?” Alma asked.

Gabe backed out of the truck’s cab slowly, gently holding the woman he’d just lifted out of the seat. Earlier, when he ran carrying her in his arms, he’d been much too intent on making sure they survived to notice just how light she actually felt in his arms.

It was as if she barely weighed anything at all.

The trite saying “light as a feather” seemed rather appropriate in this case. Light as an unconscious feather, he added ruefully.

“No,” Gabe said aloud, following the doctor back into the clinic. “She doesn’t know her name.”

The answer stopped Alma in her tracks. “Doesn’t know her name?” she repeated, puzzled. “What do you mean, she doesn’t know her name?”

“Just what I said,” Gabe told her. He didn’t turn around, but continued to follow Dan once they were inside the clinic. “She said she didn’t know her name. Looked a little panicked when she said it, too.”

Dan led them straight to the only examination room that was attached to another small room in the rear of the building. The latter doubled as a makeshift overnight recovery room where people who Dan performed minor surgeries on stayed the night to recuperate.

In New York, where he’d done his residency, Dan had been a very promising up-and-coming surgeon. But because of a promise he’d made to his late younger brother, also a surgeon, he’d come out to Forever to take his place. His brother had firmly believed in “giving back.” After a while, Dan began to understand what his brother had meant. And so, what was supposed to have been just a short-term mission turned into his life’s work.

Dan was surprised to discover that he’d never felt better about himself than he had this past year.

“You think she’s telling the truth?” Alma asked her brother skeptically. She looked down at the unconscious woman as Gabe placed her on the exam table, per Dan’s instructions.

It was Dan, not Gabe, who answered.

“Very possibly,” the doctor allowed. “She took a pretty good blow to the head,” he judged, sizing up the head wound on her forehead just above her right eye. “That can really shake a person up.”

“But she’s going to snap out of it, right?” Gabe asked. “It’ll all come back to her, won’t it? I mean, she’ll remember her name and why she wound up tottering on that ledge the way she did. Right?”

Dan raised his shoulders in a wide shrug. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve heard of some amnesia cases going on for years, with the patient not any closer to getting any answers than they’d been at the very beginning. With other patients, it’s only a matter of a few hours. There’s really no telling how long it could actually take.”

Years?

The single word echoed in his head as Gabe looked at the still, unconscious face. The very idea sent a chill down his spine. He couldn’t picture enduring something like that himself. It was like a virtual prison sentence that extended to eternity.

Gabe turned to the doctor. “So what do we do?” he asked.

Dan could only give him the most general of terms. Everyone was different and healed at their own pace—if they healed at all.

“We go slow,” he counseled. “Give her some space and make sure that she doesn’t feel pressured, just secure. Sometimes, the harder you try, the less progress you actually make.” Shrugging out of his coat and switching to a clean lab jacket, Dan paused to wash his hands. “Now, if you two don’t mind, I need you to leave me alone with my patient so I can attend to her wounds.”

As Gabe reluctantly began to leave, Dan raised his voice and called after him. “Stick around, though. After I get done, I think it would be a good idea to take this woman to the hospital in Pine Ridge and get a CT scan of her head to make sure that everything’s all right.” Drying his hands, he looked from one deputy to the other. “I’ll need one of you to drive her over there.”

Gabe surprised Alma by speaking up first. “I’ll do it.

“Who do you think she is?” Gabe asked her once they were in the waiting room. For now, the room appeared to be empty.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Alma told him. “We could try going through the county’s recent missing-persons files posted on the internet. If there’s no match for her, I can widen the search. With any luck, she’ll probably get her memory back before then.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked, curious.

“Well, I’d say that having a car blow up a couple of seconds after you escape out of it can be pretty traumatizing. That kind of thing can cause temporary amnesia because the person isn’t able to deal with it right when it happened. It’s the brain’s way of protecting you,” she added by way of an explanation. Alma abruptly stopped talking when she saw the quizzical way her brother was staring at her. “What?”

Gabe shook his head, clearly impressed. “I never realized you knew so much.”

“I’m not quite sure whether to be flattered that you’re impressed, or insulted because you thought I was dumb.”

“Not dumb,” he quickly corrected, and then lost some steam as he added, “just, well, my little sister.”

“And consequently, dumb,” she concluded. Alma gave him a reproving look. “You might recall that I took college courses online and that I do have a degree in criminology.”

Going to college online had been the only way she could have gotten her degree and still worked to help pay off her father’s huge pile of bills. Both causes were equally important to her.

“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Gabe confessed, then focused on what she’d said. “So you really think she’ll remember who she is?”

“If you mean is she suddenly going to pop up like toast and have total recall, probably not right away,” Alma judged, “but in time, I think it will all come back to her.”

“And in the meantime?” he asked, sounding rather eager.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gabe,” Alma cautioned. “Just take one step at a time.”

“You’re the one who always said to be prepared,” he reminded her. “What if she never remembers who she is? Or it takes her a long time before she does? What if no one’s out there looking for her, or they didn’t have enough sense to file a missing-persons report? What’ll we do with her until then?” he asked. “There’s no motel or boardinghouse to put her up in.”

“Forever’s a nice, friendly town,” Alma pointed out and then went on to assure her brother that, “We’ll think of something. But first things first. The doc said to have her checked out at the Pine Ridge hospital once he’s finished. So we need to get her there.” Ever the protective one, especially now that her mother was gone, Alma said, “I know you volunteered, but if you’re having second thoughts, I can take her to the hospital.”

That might mean that she wouldn’t be back until morning. A newlywed, his sister belonged home at night.

Gabe laughed, turning down her offer. “And have that lawyer husband of yours with his hundred-dollar words come looking for me? No, thanks. I’ll take the mystery woman to the hospital.”

Alma’s protective streak instantly rose to defend her husband. “He only uses those words when he’s in court. You’re family.”

“And I’d like to keep on being family,” Gabe informed her. “So I’ll be the one taking her to Pine Ridge.” When he saw Alma smiling at him knowingly, it was his turn to ask, “What?”

“You’re really taken with her, aren’t you?” she asked, pleased.

Gabe stared at her. In his opinion, his sister had just made one hell of a leap—and it led to nowhere. “She’s the first person I ever rescued from a car that was about to go over the side of a ravine, and then it burst into flames, so if that’s what you mean by ‘taken,’ then, yeah, I guess I’m ‘taken’ with her.”

His eyes narrowed as he reminded her of an important point. “You were the one who thought that I should get involved in this—and by ‘this,’” he clarified, knowing how prone Alma could be to misinterpreting things if it suited her purposes, “I mean the sheriff’s department.”

“I did and I still do,” Alma was quick to agree. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You don’t usually pay attention to anything I say.”

“That’s because, up until now,” Gabe deadpanned, “you weren’t saying anything really worthwhile listening to or going along with.”

“According to you,” she qualified.

“According to me,” he agreed with the most unreadable expression he could muster.

Alma glanced at her watch and rose to her feet.

“I’m going to go and update Rick about what’s going on with our mystery woman and then I’ll be back. If you decide that you’ve changed your mind about going to Pine Ridge—”

He cut her off. “I won’t,” Gabe assured her.

“Then never mind,” Alma said cheerfully. “Call me if something comes up,” she instructed just before she left the clinic.

“Yes, ma’am,” he called after her.

“That’s ‘Deputy Ma’am’ to you,” she tossed over her shoulder with a laugh. And then the front door closed after her.

* * *

DAN FINISHED HIS examination as well as stitching up the gash on the blonde’s forehead. His patient had remained unconscious through it all. For the time being, it was better that way for her. He was sufficiently certain that she would come around by-and-by.

Stripping off his rubber gloves and tossing them into the wastebasket, he came out into the waiting room to fill Gabe in on his findings.

“As far as I can tell, other than that gash on her forehead I had to stitch up, everything else seems all right. But I still think, just to be safe, she should get a CT scan of her head, make sure that there’s no internal bleeding that we’re overlooking.”

“Wouldn’t there be other signs if there was internal bleeding?” Gabe asked. It seemed to him that there should be, but then, that was only a guess on his part.

“Yes, but not always,” Dan told him. “Like that old saying goes, better to be safe than sorry.”

Gabe shrugged. “I’m not going to argue that, but if she doesn’t know who she is and she has no ID, she sure as hell doesn’t have any medical insurance—”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this covered,” he assured the town’s newest deputy.

Gabe only accepted so much on faith, the rest he questioned. “How?”

Dan smiled. The man wasn’t very trusting. He could relate to that. He’d been the same way before he came to Forever, holding everything suspect until proven otherwise. It was an exhausting way to live.

“I pulled a few strings. Turns out the head of the radiology department graduated in my class the same year I did. We even threw back a few together at a handful of parties.” He saw Gabe’s frown and guessed what the man was probably thinking. “Don’t worry, this job keeps you sober.”

Gabe took the man’s word for it. “Did she wake up at all?” he asked.

Dan shook his head. “She’s still unconscious, I’m afraid.”

Gabe would have thought that the doctor would have looked a bit more concerned about that. “Shouldn’t we be worried by now?” Gabe asked.

“Not necessarily, she’s had—”

Whatever reassuring sentiment he was going to express was drowned out by the scream that pierced the air. It came from inside the exam room that Dan had just left.

“Maybe we should start worrying now,” Gabe commented as both he and Dan rushed back into the exam room.

They found the woman standing unsteadily before a mirror, her hands braced on either side of it to keep from falling to the floor. The expression reflected back appeared absolutely horrified.

Seeing the men coming in behind her, the woman turned to face them. The movement was just a tad too sudden and it threw her equilibrium—still wobbly—off. She looked as if she was about to fall, but Gabe reached her first, catching hold of her and helping her remain vertical.

Her eyes were wild as they went from the man holding on to her, to the slightly shorter man in the white lab coat. It was obvious that she was trying to place them—and couldn’t.

“Why did you scream? What’s wrong?” Gabe asked her sharply.

He’d come very close to drawing his service revolver. He had a feeling that would have frightened the blonde even more. She needed to trust him if they were ever going to get to the bottom of this.

In response to his question, the woman pointed at the image in the mirror as if she was pointing at someone she didn’t know. There was uncertainty in her voice as she asked, “That’s me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dan answered, his tone calm, low.

She continued staring as disbelief sank in. “I look like hell.”

“That’s because you’ve been through hell,” Gabe replied.

A shaky sigh escaped her lips. Then, unable to stand what she saw, the blonde turned away and looked at the two men who’d burst into the room, searching their faces. “What happened to me?”

“You were in a car accident,” Gabe said gently, mimicking the voice his brother Eli used when he was training the quarter horses he sold. “When I found you, your car was on the verge of going over into a ravine. You’re a very lucky woman,” he concluded.

She didn’t know about that. Tears stung her eyes, but her rising anger kept them back.

“If I’m so lucky, why can’t I remember anything?” she demanded. “Why don’t I even know my own name or who I am?”

“Hysterical amnesia,” Dan told her. Her eyes shifted toward him, waiting—hoping—for answers. Any answers. The desperation inside her needed something to hold on to. “It happens after an accident sometimes. Victims block things out until they can handle processing them.”

“Victims,” she repeated.

Was that what she was? A victim? Did she feel like a victim? she wondered, trying to examine her feelings. Nothing came to her. She honestly didn’t know. What did victims feel like?

“Am I all right?” she asked the man in the white lab jacket.

“So far,” he replied cautiously. “But Gabe is going to take you to the hospital, to make sure.”

“Gabe?” she repeated. The name meant nothing to her. Should it have? “Who’s Gabe?”

“That would be me.” Gabe raised his hand a little, drawing her attention to him as he gave her his most reassuring smile.

Chapter Four

She shifted her eyes from one man to the other and then back again, hoping for something. A glimmer of a memory, an elusive flash of recognition, anything.

But there was nothing. Not so much as a hint of a hint.

“When is my memory going to come back?” she asked the doctor.

Right now, she felt like an empty vessel. She had no memories to access, no thoughts to fill her head. Nothing but a vast wasteland stretched before her, leading nowhere, involving nothing. The loneliness of that was almost unbearable.

“That’s hard to say,” he told her honestly. “It varies from person to person. You could remember everything in a few hours, or—”

“Or?” she prompted, battling back an ever-growing sense of desperation. Was it purely due to her wanting to remember?

Or did it involve something she wanted to forget? She just didn’t know.

“Or you could never remember. But that’s rather rare,” he added.

“But it does happen,” she pressed, not wanting him to sugarcoat anything.

She did her best to find a way to brace herself for never getting beyond this moment right now, and yet how could she since she had nothing to draw upon?

“Rarely,” Gabe emphasized, speaking up. He noticed the look that Dan gave him. Probably wondering where I got my medical degree, Gabe thought. But he just couldn’t let that devastated expression on her face continue. “No point in dwelling on possible worst-case scenarios. If it turns out to be that way, you’ve gained nothing by making yourself miserable,” he explained. “And if it doesn’t, well, then you’ve wasted a lot of precious time anticipating something that turned out not to happen.”

A pragmatic thought rose to the fore—was she like that at heart? Or did this reaction just naturally evolve from her form of resignation? Again, nothing answered her silent query.

“From where I’m standing,” she told Gabe, “looks to me like I’ve got nothing but time to waste.”

“You’re not going to be wasting time,” Gabe told the blonde cheerfully. “You’re coming with me, remember? To Pine Ridge Memorial to see what they have to say about all this.”

It felt as if her head was spinning around in endless circles and she just wasn’t making any headway. Both Gabe and the doctor seemed to be nice, but were they? And why were they so willing to go out of their way for her like this?

“Do I know either one of you?” she asked, looking from one face to another again.

But her reaction to either man was just the same as it had been a moment earlier. Neither one looked the least bit familiar, woke up nothing in her depleted memory banks.

“No, you don’t,” Dan answered for both of them.

Even in her present limited state, she knew that just didn’t make any sense. “Then why are you doing this? Why are you taking me to a hospital in another town?”

“Because there is no hospital here,” Dan replied matter-of-factly.

“Because you need help,” Gabe told her almost at the same time.

It still didn’t make sense to her. “And that’s enough?” she questioned, puzzled.

Something told her that she wasn’t accustomed to selfless people. That everyone was always out for their own special interests.

“It is for me,” Gabe told her. “And for the doc,” he added, nodding at the other man.

Damn but the way this woman looked at him made him want to leap tall buildings in a single bound and change the course of mighty rivers, just like the comic-book hero of long ago. The very thought worried him. And yet, he couldn’t quite make himself back off. Couldn’t just turn her over to either Alma or Joe.

This woman was his responsibility. His to help.

“Let’s go,” he urged the woman, putting his hand lightly to the small of her back. A thought occurred to him before they’d gone two steps. “Unless you’d like to get something to eat first?” he suddenly suggested. He looked over his shoulder at Dan to see if the doctor had any objections about the slight delay in getting to the hospital. “Would it make any difference if she got a bite to eat first before going to the hospital for those tests you ordered?”

During his exam, Dan had already checked her eyes extensively, using a probing light to determine the condition of her optic nerves. As a result, he was satisfied that there was no imminent danger, no swelling as far as he could see.

“I didn’t detect anything that needed immediate attention,” Dan told both of them.

Gabe had his answer and was pleased Dan sided with him. “All right, then, why don’t we get you something to eat at Miss Joan’s and then we’ll be on our way.” It wasn’t a suggestion so much as a plan.

“Miss Joan’s?” she repeated, confused. Everything sounded like a huge mystery, a question mark to her, and she’d already become weary of the blanks that she kept drawing.

The older woman had always been known to one and all as “Miss Joan.” “Miss Joan owns the only diner in town. Best food you’ve ever had,” he promised her.

“How would I know?” she answered, raising and lowering her shoulders in a vague, careless shrug. After all, she had nothing to compare it to. She might as well have lived in a cave these last—how old was she, anyway? Something else that she didn’t know, she thought, frustrated.

“Trust me, it is,” Gabe easily assured her as he ushered the woman out the door. Turning, he called out, “Thanks, Doc.”

She took her cue from that, turning her head as well and calling out, “Yes, thank you.”

With a quick wave, Dan turned back to go inside the clinic just as he saw two of his patients heading toward the building.

Trust me.

That was what the tall, dark-haired cowboy had just said. Why did that make her uneasy? Did she know him, after all? Was he not trustworthy?

Or was this uneasy feeling generated by someone else? Someone who she couldn’t summon up in her defunct memory?

She stopped just as he brought her back to the passenger’s side of his truck.

Gabe noted the tension in her shoulders. “Something wrong?”

“Other than everything being a perfect blank?” she asked him. It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Other than that,” he allowed with a slight nod of his head.

Okay, he asked for it, she thought. “You said ‘trust me.’”

He was still waiting. “Yes?” Did the phrase have any special significance to her?

“Can I?” she asked bluntly, adding, “Should I?”

“Yes and yes,” Gabe answered easily. “Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same thing. You can trust me.”

The testimony of strangers didn’t mean anything to her. “But I don’t know anyone,” she said quietly as she got in.

“True,” he allowed, getting in on his side. “But you’re going to find that, in this world, you’ve got to let yourself trust someone. Otherwise, life gets too hard. Too lonely.”

It already was too lonely, she thought.

Suddenly a shiver danced over her, coming from regions unknown. As she tried not to let it shimmy down her spine, she heard herself asking, “But what if it’s the wrong someone? What if I trust the wrong person?”

What if I have already?

Gabe paused, his hand on the ignition key, and looked at her, trying to discern what was behind her question.

“Did you?” he asked. “Did you trust the wrong person?” Were things beginning to fall together—albeit haphazardly—for her? Or was she just tossing out questions, trying to see if anything stuck?

She pressed her lips together as tears of frustration suddenly gathered in her eyes.

Was that only frustration, or was there more to it than that? She didn’t know and she was already so sick of that phrase floating through her head.

She didn’t know.

Would she ever know? Would she ever know anything about anything?

The uncertainty was driving her crazy.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly again. “But something feels that way,” she found herself admitting.

Gabe merely nodded. This time, he turned on the engine. It rumbled to life.

“It’ll come to you,” he promised. “All of it. When you least expect it.”

She slanted a glance at him. Was he talking down to her? Or was there experience on which to base his answer?

“How do you know?” she finally challenged, not wanting to come across like a simpleton, secretly hoping to be convinced.

“I just do,” Gabe said easily. He smiled at her. “It’s called faith.”

Did she have that? Did she have any faith? she wondered. She hoped so. She needed something to hang on to, she thought in desperation. So, for now, maybe it would be faith.

Faith in the man who was sitting beside her. A man who, though she really didn’t remember it, apparently had saved her life.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll have faith.”

Her answer surprised him, but he made a point of not showing her that.

“Good.”

He’d wanted to insert her name here, except that there was no name to use. She hadn’t had any sort of identification on her—no driver’s license, no social security card, no well-creased love letter addressed to her hidden in the pocket of her black dress.

And if there had been any form of ID in the vehicle, most likely it was now burned to a crisp—as she almost was.

“I need something to call you,” he told her. Even as he said it, he began going through possible names and rapidly discarding them for one reason or another. And then he had it. Just like that. “I know, how about Angel?”

“Angel?” she repeated, testing it out on her ear. Like everything else, it didn’t seem familiar, but she liked the sound of it. “Why Angel?”

“Because you look like one,” he answered simply. “At least, like one of the angels I used to picture when I was a kid,” he told her with an affable grin.

“Angel,” she said again, and then nodded. It had a nice ring to it. “All right. I guess you can call me that.”

“Just until you remember your real name,” he emphasized. Although he had a hunch it wasn’t going to be as good as “Angel.”

She looked at him, wishing she could believe what he’d just said. Why was it so easy for him and so hard for her?

“You really think I will?” she asked him.

There wasn’t so much as a second’s hesitation on his part. He saw no point in trying to hedge or qualify his words. This woman didn’t need hesitation. She needed someone to believe for her until she could believe for herself.