Angus's Lost Lady
Page 1
Both Rebecca and the bed were looking more and more tempting by the moment.
Letter to Reader
Title Page
Also by
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
Both Rebecca and the bed were looking more and more tempting by the moment.
Angus desperately needed some air. Or a cold shower. Maybe both.
“What would you like to do first?” he asked her, trying to distract himself from his thoughts.
Make love with you, she thought. Now wouldn’t that shake him up?
But instead she said, “I don’t know.” Rebecca turned her face up to his, the shining soul of innocence. “Why don’t I just put myself in your hands, and you can take it from there?”
Angus wondered if there was a special place in heaven for detectives who resisted temptation when it came in such pretty wrappings. Ever so lightly, he brushed a wayward hair behind her ear. It was all he would allow himself.
“Becky, you’ve got to stop saying things like that. A man can be noble for only so long.”
Dear Reader,
Have you noticed our special look this month? I hope so, because it’s in honor of something pretty exciting: Intimate Moments’ 15th Anniversary. I’ve been here from the beginning, and it’s been a pretty exciting ride, so I hope you’ll join us for three months’ worth of celebratory reading. And any month that starts out with a new book by Marie Ferrarella has to be good. Pick up Angus’s Lost Lady; you won’t be disappointed. Take one beautiful amnesiac (the lost lady), introduce her to one hunky private detective who also happens to be a single dad (Angus), and you’ve got the recipe for one great romance. Don’t miss it.
Maggie Shayne continues her superselling miniseries THE TEXAS BRAND with The Husband She Couldn’t Remember. Ben Brand had just gotten over the loss of his wife and started to rebuild his life when...there she was! She wasn’t dead at all. Unfortunately, their problems were just beginning. Pat Warren’s Stand-In Father is a deeply emotional look at a man whose brush with death forces him to reconsider the way he approaches life—and deals with women. Carla Cassidy completes her SISTERS duet with Reluctant Dad, while Desire author Eileen Wilks makes the move into Intimate Moments this month with The Virgin and the Outlaw. Run, don’t walk, to your bookstore in search of this terrific debut. Finally, Debra Cowan’s back with The Rescue of Jenna West, her second book for the line.
Enjoy them all, and be sure to come back again next month for more of the best romantic reading around—right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Yours.
Leslie J. Wainger
Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator
* * *
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
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* * *
MARIE FERRARELLA ANGUS’S LOST
LADY
Books by Marie Ferrarella
Silhouette Intimate Moments *Holding Out for a Hero #496
*Heroes Great and Small #501
*Christmas Every Day #538
Callaghan’s Way #601
*Caitlin’s Guardian Angel #661
‡Happy New Year—Baby! #686
The Amnesiac Bride #787
Serena McKee’s Back in Town #808
A Husband Waiting to Happen #842
Angus’s Lost Lady #853 Silhouette Romance The Gift #588
Five-Alarm Affair #613
Heart to Heart #632
Mother for Hire #686
Borrowed Baby #730
Her Special Angel #744
The Undoing of Justin
Starbuck #766
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Father in the Making #1078
The Women in Joe Sullivan’s Life #1096
‡Do You Take This Child? #1145
The Man Who Would Be Daddy #1175
Your Baby or Mine? #1216
Books by Marie Ferrarella writing as Marie Nicole
**The Baby Came C.O.D. #1264 Silhouette Special Edition It Happened One Night #597
A Girl’s Best Friend #652
Blessing in Disguise #675
Someone To Talk To #703
World’s Greatest Dad #767
Family Matters #832
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‡Baby’s First Christmas #997
Christmas Bride #1069
Wanted: Husband, Will Train #1132 Silhouette Yours Truly ‡The 7lb., 2oz. Valentine
Let’s Get Mommy Married
Traci on the Spot
Mommy and the Policeman Next Door
**Desperately Seeking Twin...
The Offer She Couldn’t Refuse
Silhouette Desire ‡Husband: Optional #988 Silhouette Books Silhouette Christmas Stories 1992
“The Night Santa Claus Returned”
Fortune’s Children
Forgotten Honeymoon
†Baby’s Choice
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*Those Sinclairs
**Two Halves of a Whole
Silhouette Desire Tried and True #112
Buyer Beware #142
Through Laughter and Tears #161
Grand Theft: Heart #182
A Woman of Integrity #197
Country Blue #224
Last Year’s Hunk #274
Foxy Lady #315
Chocolate Dreams #346
No Laughing Matter #382 Silhouette Romance Man Undercover #373
Please Stand By #394
Mine by Write #411
Getting Physical #440
MARIE FERRARELLA
lives in southern California. She describes herself as the tired mother of two overenergetic children and the contented wife of one wonderful man. This RITA Award-winning author is thrilled to be following her dream of writing full-time.
To Rocky,
67 furry pounds of
completely unqualified
love
Chapter 1
“Do you know who I am?”
She’d startled him. Angus MacDougall was just opening his office door, ready to call it a day—a hell of a long day—when he found the woman standing in his doorway, her hand poised to knock.
Recovering quickly, he took a step back. Some of the weariness that cloaked him began to slip away as he studied the woman. Interest stirred. Unconsciously, Angus straightened his six-foot-three frame.
With her trench coat hanging open on either side of her, the woman had a windblown, wet look from head to foot. And she seemed a little off balance until he realized the lady was wearing only one shoe. But though she looked dazed, like a game show contestant stumped for the prize-winning answer, at first glance she di
dn’t appear to be hurt or bruised.
Angus smelled a setup. Okay, he was game for a riddle. Riddles came with the territory, especially if one of his friends was looking to play a trick on him.
His lips parted in a minimal smile. “No, who are you?”
Angus wasn’t prepared for the look of dejection that entered her eyes at his response. And certainly not for the depth of disappointment that he saw there. The woman paused, as if trying to shore up some inner resource before she replied.
“No, I’m serious.” She moved closer to him, so close that he could smell the rain in her hair and on her skin. And the faintest whiff of something else. Smoke? He wasn’t sure. Her eyes scanned his face, a dying ember of hope glimmering faintly there. “Do you know me?”
She was pretty, even with her hair plastered to her face. Dry, she might even be beautiful. He would have remembered if he’d ever met her. He rarely forgot a face, and hers would have been etched on his brain.
It was a trick.
Leaning out into the hall, Angus looked around to see where the person responsible for this was lurking. Probably hiding in a doorway, he guessed. Everyone knew he had a weakness for damsels in distress. This one had all the earmarks of one. Maybe a little too much so, now that he took a closer look. Whoever had put her up to this had overplayed his hand.
A quick scan of the hall told him there was no one else there. A smattering of doubt began to surface, but he ignored it for now. Angus turned his attention back to the woman.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Where are they?”
“They?” she repeated, confused.
“They. He, she, whoever put you up to this.” Angus looked out again, with the same results. Nobody. When he looked back at her, the woman’s expression remained unchanged. The uncertainty within him spread out a tiny bit more. “This is a joke, right?”
The air and the light seemed to go out of her at the same time. She looked as if she’d just lost her best friend. The words slid past her lips in a whisper that bordered on defeat.
“Then you don’t know me.”
Any other time, Angus would have been more patient with her. But today had been a hell of a drawn-out day, stitched haphazardly onto an even longer night. A night in which he had sat up with Vikki and a bellyache that wouldn’t go away. Small wonder. Vikki had consumed enough junk food for three seven-year-olds her size.
Running on coffee the consistency of mud, and several lukewarm burritos, Angus wasn’t in the mood for elaborate games played at his expense, no matter how inherently sexy the lady might be.
Gently moving the woman back, Angus stepped over the threshold, his hand on the doorknob.
“No, lady, I don’t know who you are,” he said wearily. “Now if you don’t mind, it’s been a damn long day.” The day’s events flickered through his mind like an old-fashioned silent movie. “The kind that makes me want to turn in my license and my weapon and get a nine-to-five job with insurance benefits and a fat pension plan at the end of the line.”
He’d been thinking about it more and more lately, ever since Vikki had turned up in his life. He didn’t have just himself to consider anymore.
But deep down, he knew he really wouldn’t want to change his life. The thought of a nine-to-five job by any name still chilled him. Angus had had security and turned his back on it before it permanently anesthetized him. That was the danger with security. It dulled the soul.
Angus shut the door behind him and heard the lock click into place. What he needed right now was a little time to unwind. That and a tall, cold beer. He tried to remember if there was any left in the refrigerator.
The woman remained where he had moved her, looking for all the world as if she intended to stay there, not out of any sort of stubborn perverseness but just because that was where she was.
He had seen hopelessness before. It was there, in her eyes, though she seemed to be struggling against it. Struggling and losing. Against his better judgment, Angus paused, waiting. She still made no effort to go.
“I’m leaving,” he announced, as if the fact might not have registered. Angus turned squarely to face her. What did he have to do, push her into the elevator? “The game is over, so why don’t you just go home?”
Looking back later, he figured that was the moment she’d actually hooked him. The woman turned her eyes—eyes that were as close to violet as anything he’d ever seen—up to his.
“I can’t.”
The two ends of the conversation, such as they were, just didn’t seem to be fitting together. “You can’t what?”
“Go home.” She fit her mouth around the word. Home. It had no substance for her, no texture. No feelings. Nothing. “I can’t go home.”
Angus wondered why, but told himself he wasn’t going to get sucked into this. He had enough real cases to keep him busy. That, and Vikki. After six months, he was still getting used to her. And, he knew, she to him.
“Well, then maybe you should go somewhere else.” Turning, he took a step toward the elevator.
And stopped.
The look in her eyes seemed to be holding him in place. Even without facing her, he could feel her eyes on him, silently entreating him to stay.
Surrendering to the curiosity that was as much a part of him as breathing, Angus gamely turned around again. “All right, why can’t you go home?”
She wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t, she thought frantically. It was just that she felt as if everything was caving in on her. And she didn’t even have the vaguest idea what that “everything” was.
It was the void that frightened her most of all. The huge, horrible nothingness that threatened to swallow her up if she let it.
She pressed her lips together hard, hoping that would somehow keep down the hysteria that was building within her. It made her chest ache to hold back, but at least she wasn’t crying in front of a stranger like some pathetic fool.
In her world, there were nothing but strangers. Even she was a stranger, she thought helplessly.
“Because I don’t know where home is.” Her voice hitched, threatening to break. She pressed her lips together again.
Angus peered into the woman’s face. He thought of himself as a pretty good judge of people. He saw the struggle for control going on in her eyes.
And then he knew.
His voice was kind, gentle, as he lightly touched her shoulder. Angus felt like a heel adding to her anguish. “This isn’t a joke, is it?”
A ray of hope flickered. She wasn’t even sure why. There was something in his voice that reached out to her, gave her comfort. She shook her head in reply. Her lashes were moist and she blinked, pushing the strands of wet hair out of her eyes.
“I wish it was a joke, but I really don’t know where home is.” She raised her eyes to his face again. “Or who I am.” There, she’d said it out loud. Fear leaped in and spread webbed fingers through the void that was wrapped around her. “I don’t know who I am,” she repeated.
It didn’t seem possible. “Just like that?” Angus had certainly heard about people getting amnesia, but the only time he’d ever seen it happen was on some movie-of-the-week. He’d never come across anyone with it in real life.
Until now, he amended. Amnesia. That would certainly explain the lost, waif-like quality he detected about her.
The woman nodded. Damp, dark blonde hair fell into her face again. She brushed it aside mechanically.
“Yes, just like that.” At least, she assumed that it had come over her suddenly. She couldn’t swear to anything with even a grain of certainty.
“What happened?” Sympathetic now, his tone was the one he used whenever he comforted Vikki after she’d had one of her nightmares.
Frustration filled her, barely manageable. “I don’t know. I came to in an alley. The rain woke me up.”
This wasn’t the kind of conversation that should be conducted in a hallway, Angus thought It looked as if he wasn’t through for the day after all. He knew that Jenny
would stay with Vikki until he got home. His seventy-year-young, motorcycle-riding neighbor had all but adopted Vikki as her granddaughter. Angus dug his key out of his pocket and unlocked his office door.
“C’mon back inside. Let’s talk about it.”
Reaching inside for the lights, Angus switched them on and gestured for the woman to enter. He followed, closing the door behind him. She stood beside the chair as if she wasn’t certain what to do.
“Sit down,” he urged gently.
Obeying, she sat down on the very edge of the chair, her hands gripping the armrests.
It was a bare-bones office. The walls were painted a neutral beige, with a couple of file cabinets placed against one and a good-sized window directly opposite. There were two doors off to one side—behind one was a tiny bathroom, behind the other an equally tiny darkroom. The room was dominated by a wide, well-polished desk that stood in the center. The view was great. When the smog and the fog weren’t jockeying for position outside his fifth-floor window, he could see the ocean.
She’d pulled herself together again, he noted. Rigid, she was perched on the edge of the chair like a hunted bird that was ready to take flight at the slightest unfamiliar sound. And she was shivering.
“You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”
Without waiting for her answer, Angus went to the closet-sized bathroom and filled the coffeepot with water. Placing it on the hot plate, he switched the coffeemaker on. All he had left was instant.
Could she use coffee? she wondered, watching him. Did she like it? Did she even drink it? She had no idea. Frustration gurgled through her like water from a freshly dug well, flowing out into the dirt. Creating mud.
“Thank you,” she murmured. It wasn’t for the coffee, it was for his thoughtfulness. For letting her stay for a little while when she had nowhere to go.
Angus nodded, then looked at her over his shoulder as the water began to brew. She was clutching her hands together in her lap like a schoolgirl waiting to have detention assigned. He looked on either side of her. “No purse?”