Angus's Lost Lady

by Marie Ferrarella

  The only way he could win at this game was if he didn’t play at all.

  It sounded good in theory. Execution was another matter.

  A smile curved his mouth. If he couldn’t allow himself to have her, he could at least enjoy her in other ways. There was no harm, he told himself, in looking. From what he could see, a lot of other men were indulging already.

  “The clerk probably took one look at you and wished himself in my place.”

  The smile she tendered in response to his words began in her eyes and quickly spread to all parts of her, like the rays of the early morning sun on the land. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  He couldn’t see why, if she’d taken even so much as a cursory glance at herself as she passed a mirror. She couldn’t be oblivious to the way she looked, no matter how overwhelmed she was by her amnesia. When they’d walked through the lobby, men’s heads had turned, their glances simultaneously admiring and envious.

  A beautiful woman who wasn’t aware of it. The hoofbeats he was hearing really did belong to a zebra, he thought, ushering her into the elevator. Maybe even a unicorn.

  Madison had obligingly left the curtains open, allowing the bright Southern California sun, and Angus, access to what was going on inside the room.

  From the looks of it, what was going on was exactly what Angela Madison had suspected.

  “Looks like you don’t have to wait,” Rebecca commented as they walked into their room.

  From where she stood, all she could see were the shadowy figures of two unclothed people apparently wrapped around each other. Their identities, if she hadn’t known, would have been anyone’s guess.

  “I love a cooperative subject.” This made his work easy for him.

  Angus put the camera case on the bed and snapped open the dual locks. He took out a miniature tripod. When he released the three locks along the legs, three lengths of metal came shooting out, tripling the tripod’s height.

  Tuning out the passionate nude couple across the way, Rebecca watched, fascinated, as Angus began to set up his equipment by the window. “Do you think you can get a clear shot?”

  Angus unscrewed the lens from his camera, then carefully took out a second one from his case. The latter looked like a small telescope.

  “I think so,” he said mildly. When he raised his eyes to hers, she saw the amusement.

  Moving away from the window, she crossed to the bed.

  “That looks as if it would give you a clear shot of two people making love on Mars.”

  He laughed as he attached the lens to his camera. The equipment represented a sizable investment, but it was necessary for the kinds of cases coming his way. He had enough of the latest technology to be a state-of-the-art Peeping Tom, he thought wryly.

  “Maybe not Mars,” he said, “but I could certainly get a clear shot of the fly on the wall that’s watching our two friends in room 1109.”

  She watched as he mounted the camera. She had her doubts about it remaining steady. “Do you need any help holding it up?”

  A grin teased his mouth and he bit his tongue so as not to quip. “I’m fine. The tripod can support it.”

  Angus propped up the center of the lens with something that looked like another, more sophisticated tripod. Set, he peered through the viewfinder. Perfect. Angela Madison was going to be one very satisfied client, he mused.

  Positioning himself, Angus took careful aim. For the next twenty minutes, the only sound within the room was the soft click the camera made as Angus shot photograph after incriminating photograph. He used up two rolls of film, just to play it safe.

  Though she couldn’t see clearly without the benefit of Angus’s lens, Rebecca felt like a witness to a desecration of something precious. An odd feeling slithered through her.

  Moving away from the window, she crossed her arms in front of her to ward off the chill she felt. How would she have reacted, finding the man she loved in bed with someone else?

  And then she knew the answer. She would have reacted with hurt and anger and an enormous sense of betrayal if her man had so wantonly violated something that meant so much to her.

  “I hope she rakes him over the coals.”

  Angus could imagine the subjects of his photographs rolling straight into the fireplace in their passion—but he assumed that wasn’t what Rebecca meant.

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Madison.” Unable to stop herself, she glanced back at the couple. They were back on the bed again. She felt indignation for a woman she’d never met. “He deserves everything he’s getting.”

  Angus laughed. “Right now, I think he’d tend to agree with you.”

  She flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

  He nodded, getting her off the hook. “I know what you meant.”

  Angus removed the camera from its support. He had two complete rolls, thirty-six shots each. There were bound to be enough clear photographs there to put the nails into Madison’s coffin.

  Sitting down on the bed with the camera next to him, he glanced Rebecca’s way. She looked uncomfortable, he thought. Angus gestured toward the television set. “They get several of the movie channels. Why don’t you put one on?”

  She was being silly, she thought. But there was this cloak draped over her. This sudden, oppressive feeling mocking her when she looked at Madison flagrantly breaking his marriage vows.

  Still cold, Rebecca ran her hands along her bare arms. “I’m sorry, it’s just that, watching him, I—”

  Angus stopped disassembling the camera. “What? Are you remembering something?”

  “Something,” she agreed. It was such a nebulous word, used to describe such a nebulous feeling. “But I don’t know what.” She couldn’t pin down the feeling, much less the memory it generated. Stymied, Rebecca shrugged. “Maybe it was just a program I saw on TV.”

  But maybe it was more than that, Angus thought. Setting the camera aside, he got up and crossed to her. Maybe she wasn’t married, but divorced. Maybe she had caught her own husband cheating on her just the way Madison was cheating on his wife. It would explain why her reaction was so vehement.

  Now he knew for sure that he wouldn’t be partaking of any “afternoon delight” with Rebecca. It was for the best in the long run, he told himself. No complications.

  Like hell there were no complications, he thought, looking down at her face.

  Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders. The anguish in her eyes had returned. He couldn’t stand for her to look like that—especially when he couldn’t do anything about it.

  “I’ve got enough on film,” he told her. “Why don’t we get out of here?”

  Rebecca took a deep cleansing breath. If she couldn’t remember, then she didn’t want to dwell on a half memory. Especially one that felt so unpleasant.

  “I’d like that.”

  Angus offered to take her home before he went to his office, but she turned him down.

  “I’m all right, really,” she assured him again.

  Rebecca was already feeling foolish about the way she’d acted in the hotel. There was no reason to become upset over what a stranger was doing. And if it echoed of something else, something in her lost life—well, until she could put a name to it, there was no reason to behave this way. Or to disturb Angus with it. The last thing she wanted was to be a millstone around his neck.

  Where were these sayings coming from? she wondered again. She wasn’t even sure she knew what a millstone was.

  “I’m sorry about before,” she apologized as they walked up the stairs to his second-floor office. “It was just that I got such a strange, strong feeling of déjà vu when I was watching him. Or imagining what he was doing,” she amended, feeling a slight tinge of color creeping up to her face. “But I don’t even know if I was feeling bad for his wife, or reliving something.”

  Hiking the camera strap farther up his shoulder, Angus put his key in the lock. His guess was that it was probably the latter. Sympathy entered his eyes as he looke
d at Rebecca. This had to be hell for her. “It would be nice if you could just snap your fingers and have it all come back.”

  Would it be nice? she wondered. When she’d come to his office the first time, she would have said yes immediately. But now, she didn’t know. Did that life hold something better for her than what was happening here? Or something worse?

  “Maybe,” she allowed slowly.

  He thought she would have adamantly agreed with him. Angus held open the door for her. “Maybe?”

  She walked inside. “As long as everything that was happening now didn’t go away. I’d hate to forget these last few days.”

  Maybe that sounded pushy, she realized. But she couldn’t be anything but honest, especially after watching that exercise in dishonesty at the hotel.

  He flipped on the lights, telling himself not to read too much into her words. “Maybe it would be an even trade.”

  She looked at him. There were feelings rippling through her that she didn’t quite understand yet. Feelings that were related to him. “I don’t think so.”

  Suddenly awkward, Rebecca looked away from him and at the office. She hadn’t been here since that first afternoon.

  Angus watched as she looked around. Was she looking for something? “Trying to remember?”

  She wasn’t sure what she was doing right now. She felt like a time traveler trapped between two worlds—one she didn’t know and one she wanted to know.

  She moved toward the window and leaned against the sill. She felt the dust beneath her fingertips. It made her smile. In his own way, the man was in desperate need of help himself.

  “I’m thinking something might hit me that hasn’t before,” she explained. She turned around to face him, mechanically wiping one hand against the other to get rid of the grit. “You know, like déjà vu that widens like the rings in a pool?”

  He took out his handkerchief and offered it to her, nodding at her hands. A hint of a smile slipped over her lips as she accepted it. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but I think you just mixed your metaphors.”

  “I also didn’t come up with anything.” Rebecca handed the handkerchief back to him. “Thanks.” This time, when she looked around, she saw the office as it was. A small fifteen-by-eighteen room that stood like a wobbly survivor in the aftermath of a hurricane. “How do you function in a place like this?”

  He took no offense. He knew he was far from neat. “Well enough to pay the rent on the office and the apartment and eat every other Tuesday.” He saw the way she was eyeing his desk. Like Biordi’s desk at the precinct, there wasn’t a single inch on it that was uncovered. “An empty desk is the sign of an empty mind.”

  She raised an amused eyebrow. “Does that saying extrapolate to a messy desk?”

  He saw where she was heading with this. “It only goes as far as I want it to.”

  For a moment, humor receded as she looked up at him. “Does that go for you, too? Do you only go as far as you want to go?”

  Was he that in control, that in charge of himself? Or was he like. her—the way she found herself to be right now? Not quite in control of what she felt unfolding inside of her.

  “Sometimes.” The air within the office suddenly seemed in short supply, he thought. And he was once more fighting off urges that were steadily wearing him down. “Maybe you could straighten up a few things.”

  The moment, with its tension and promise, was gone. Her grin flashed. “I thought you’d never ask.” As she turned her attention to the blizzard of papers on his desk, he started to leave. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Developing photographs,” he said. He held up the rolls of film.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked, surprised.

  “Only to the next room. The closet, actually.” He nodded toward a recessed door in the rear. It was next to the bathroom. “Otherwise known as my darkroom.”

  The man had a multitude of talents. “You develop your own photographs?”

  She said it as if he’d just told her he enjoyed strolling across the ocean to Catalina every afternoon at three.

  “I took an extension course at the university taught by that photojournalist who got all those awards. Callaghan, I think his name was. Anyway, developing my own film is a lot faster than taking them to the corner pharmacy. This way, if I want to enlarge something I find in one of the photographs, I don’t have to waste time going back and forth and waiting for some lab to process it.”

  She had another suggestion for him. “You could do that with a good software package. If you had a digital camera, you wouldn’t even have to bother with any chemicals.”

  He turned to look at her, the rolls of film and what was on them temporarily forgotten. He gauged by her expression that she was just as amazed as he was to hear the advice she was giving.

  “How do you know about digital cameras and software packages?”

  She had an eerie feeling, as if someone was channeling through her.

  “I don’t know, I just do.” She concentrated, exploring this new avenue that had opened up. The words came without any conscious effort on her part. “I know that they’ve made great strides in utilizing computers when it comes to touching up photographs and basically making anything you want appear on the page. You can make composites, create scenes by merging images.”

  Excitement began to undulate through her. She was remembering.

  For the first time, she noticed the computer that was standing off to the side on a rickety card table, like an uninvited guest who had crashed a party. “You’ve got one there.”

  Crossing to it, she ran her fingers along the keyboard. Despite the layer of dust on this, too, she felt a sense of homecoming.

  Angus deposited the rolls of film into his front pocket, more interested in tapping further into her mind. “One of my clients gave me that in lieu of payment. I figured I’d eventually take it home for Vikki.”

  She pressed the “on” button, but there was no response from the machine.

  “It’s not plugged in,” he told her.

  Rebecca looked at him incredulously. “You don’t use it?”

  He had no burning desire to join the swelling ranks of the computer world. “Other than as a giant paperweight, no.”

  Spying an outlet, she plugged the computer in. “You could input all your files on it.”

  The thought had no appeal for him. “I like the feel of paper.”

  That was no excuse. “Get a printer.”

  He laughed, playing this out, seeing just how much she could recall without his pressing the issue directly. She did better when she was relaxed.

  “Why should I go through all that trouble when all I need is just a piece of paper to begin with? And maybe a file folder,” he added, although he had to admit that a lot of his papers hadn’t found their way into folders yet. But he had a system. Not an orthodox one, but it worked for him.

  “Storage, for one,” she answered his question. “You could definitely do with the extra space that getting rid of all this would afford you.” She saw the resistance in his face. “You don’t like progress, do you?”

  He saw the way she looked when she touched the keyboard. That was definitely progress, he thought. Computers obviously figured into her life and not in a small way.

  “Depends on the kind you mean. If it’s with a small p, then yes, I do.”

  He’d lost her. “Small p?”

  Angus elaborated. “Progress in a case. Progress in understanding something. Progress with Vikki, with a relationship.” He stopped before he went too far, said something that was better left unsaid. “As for ‘progress’ as in the advance of technology—no, I can’t say I’m crazy about it.”

  She curbed the desire to play around with the computer, see what sort of programs were on it. His desk was what needed her attention first.

  “Why? The computer’s a wonderful tool.” She picked up a handful of paper from the top. It started a miniland-slide as several dozen sheets cascaded
to the floor.

  They both stooped down to pick up the papers. “It’s a depersonalizing tool.” He shoved the papers back on the desk, only to have them rain down again on him. “It separates people from people.”

  She stifled a laugh and regathered the strewn pages. “Chat rooms,” she countered. Making a neat pile, she decided to set it aside on the floor for the time being.

  He sat back on his heels, watching her. “If I’m going to ‘chat’ with somebody, I want to see them. I want to be able to look into their eyes and see what they’re thinking.”

  The corners of her mouth rose. “You don’t use the phone?”

  He hadn’t meant that. “Okay, at the very least, I want to hear their voice.”

  Still on her knees, she stretched to reach for several sheets of paper that had fallen under his desk. “They have accessories that do that.”

  He knew he should be the one crawling under the desk instead of watching her and enjoying the view. But a man had to allow himself some small pleasures.

  “I’d rather have flesh and blood.” As she snaked back out, he covered her head with his palm to keep her from hitting it on the desk above. “My senses can handle it from there.” His senses, he thought, were doing a lot of handling lately.

  “Just where is all this knowledge coming from?” he prodded.

  She was no closer to knowing that now than she’d been when she started down this road. “Beats me. It’s just something I know.”

  Rising, he offered her his hand. “Like cooking.”

  She curled her fingers around his, then got to her feet. “Like cooking,” she agreed. “Speaking of which, what are you in the mood for?”

  Humor glinted in his eyes. “After watching Madison and his lady, you don’t want to know.”

  She felt color streak up her neck as an image flashed through her mind. Angus, his body hard and lean, holding her in his arms, making love with her. Slowly, she exhaled a long, slightly shaky breath.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  But it was a lot safer if she didn’t respond to that look. “I meant for dinner tonight”