by Lisa Jackson
With every ounce of effort, she tried to move. Couldn’t. It was as if she were strapped down, weighted to the mattress with its crisp, uncomfortable sheets. She could not even raise one finger, and yet it didn’t matter . . .
“I want to talk to the doctor.” Alex was forceful. His words clipped. “I don’t see any reason why she can’t be taken home and cared for there. I’ll hire all the people she needs. Nurses. Aides. Attendants. Whatever. We’ve got more than enough room for round the clock, live-in help in the house.”
There was a long pause and she sensed unspoken disapproval on the nurse’s part . . . well, she assumed the woman was a nurse . . . as she struggled to force her eyes open, to move a part of her body to indicate that she could hear through the pain.
“I’ll let Dr. Robertson know that you want to see him,” the nurse said, her voice no longer coddling and patient. Now she was firm. Professional. “I’m not sure he’s in the hospital now, but I’ll see that he gets the message.”
“Do that.”
Marla drifted off again, lost seconds, maybe minutes. Her sluggish consciousness discerned voices again, voices that interrupted her sleep.
“I think Mrs. Cahill should rest now,” the nurse was saying.
“We’ll leave in just a minute.” Another voice. Elderly. Refined. It floated in on footsteps that were clipped and solid, at odds with the age of the woman’s voice. “We’re family and I’d like a few moments alone with my son and daughter-in-law.”
“Fine. But please, for Mrs. Cahill’s sake, make it brief.”
“We will, dear,” the older woman agreed and Marla felt the touch of cool, dry skin on the back of her hand. “Come on, Marla, wake up. Cissy and little James, they miss you, they need you.” A deep chuckle. “Though I hate to admit it, Nana isn’t quite the same as their mother.”
Nana? Grandma? Mother-in-law?
There was a rustle of clothing, the sound of soft soles padding across the floor and a door opening as, presumably, the nurse left.
“Sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever wake up,” Alex grumbled. “God, I need a cigarette.”
“Just be patient, son. Marla was in a horrible accident, and then suffered through the surgeries. She’s healing.” God, why couldn’t she remember? There was another long, serious sigh and a kindly pat of fingers on the back of her hand. A waft of perfume . . . a scent she recognized but couldn’t name.
Why was she in the hospital? What kind of accident were they talking about? Marla tried to concentrate, to think, but the effort brought only an ache that throbbed through her head.
“I just hope there won’t be much disfigurement,” the old woman said again.
What? Disfigurement? Oh, please, no. Disfigurement? For a second she was jolted out of her haze. Her throat, already parched, nearly closed in fear and her stomach felt as if it had been twisted and tied with rubber bands. She tried to remember what she looked like, but it didn’t matter . . . Her heart was racing with dread. Certainly someone somewhere watching her monitors could see that she was aware, that she was responding, but no loud footsteps pounded outside the door, no urgent voice yelled, “She’s stirring. Look, she’s waking up!”
“She has the best doctors in the state. She . . . she might not look like what we expect, but she’ll be fine, beautiful.” Alex sounded as if he was trying to convince himself.
“She always was. You know, Alexander,” the woman who called herself Nana said, “sometimes a woman’s beauty can be a curse.”
An uncomfortable laugh from this man who was her husband. “I don’t think she’d agree.”
“No, of course not. But she hasn’t lived long enough to understand.”
“I just wonder what she’ll remember when she wakes up.”
“Hopefully, everything,” the woman said, but there was an underlying tension to her words, a pronounced trepidation.
“Yes, well, time will tell.”
“We’re just lucky she wasn’t killed in the accident.”
There was the tiniest bit of hesitation before her husband replied, “Damned lucky. She should never have been driving in the first place. Hell, she’d just been released from the hospital.”
Another hospital? It was all getting fuzzy again, the words garbled. Had she heard it right?
“There are so many questions,” her mother-in-law whispered.
Yes, so many, but I’m too tired to think of them right now . . . so very tired.
Whistling sharply to his three-legged dog, Nick Cahill cut the engine of the Notorious and threw a line around a blackened post on the dock where he moored his fishing boat. “Come on, Tough Guy, let’s go home,” he called over his shoulder as the boat undulated with the tide of this backwater Oregon bay. Rain drizzled from a leaden sky and the wind picked up, lashing at his face. Whitecaps swirled and danced in counterpoint to the seagulls wheeling and crying overhead. The distinctive odors of diesel, rotting wood and brine mingled in the wintry air of Oregon in November.
Hiking the collar of his jacket around his neck, Nick grabbed his bucket of live crabs and stepped onto the pier just as his dog shot past in a black-and-white streak. A shepherd mix of indecipherable lineage, Tough Guy hurled his body onto the slippery planks and, paws clicking, scrambled up the stairs to the parking lot on the bluff. Nick followed more slowly, past sagging posts covered with barnacles and strangled by seaweed.
“There’s somebody here ta see ya,” grunted Ole Olsen, the old coot in the window of the bait shop located at the landing. He jerked his chin toward the top of the stairs but didn’t meet Nick’s eyes, just kept working at tying a fly, as he always did.
“To see me?” Nick asked. No one, in all the five years he’d been in these parts, had ever dropped by the marina looking for him.
“Ye-up. That’s what he said.” Seated on his stool, surrounded by lures and coolers holding bait and Royal Crown Cola, Ole was a fixture at the marina. A burned-out stub of a cigar was forever plugged into one corner of his mouth, a ring of red hair turning gray surrounded his bald pate, and folds of skin hid his eyes more effectively than the magnifying glasses perched on the end of his nose. “Told him you’d be out awhile, but he wanted to wait.” He clipped off a piece of thread with his teeth, turned over a bit of orange fuzz covering a hook that looked suspiciously as if it would soon resemble a salmon fly. “Figured if he wanted to, I couldn’t stop him.”
“Who?”
“Never gave his name. But you’ll spot him.” Ole finally looked up, focusing over the half glasses. Through the open window, his face framed by racks of cigarettes, tide tables and dozens of the colorful flies he’d tied himself, he added, “He ain’t from around here. I could tell that right off.”
Nick’s shoulders tightened. “Thanks.”
“Enny time,” Ole said, nodding curtly just as Tough Guy gave a sharp bark.
Nick mounted the stairs and walked across a gravel lot where trucks and trailers and campers were parked with haphazard abandon. In the midst of them, looking like the proverbial diamond sparkling in a pail of gravel, a silver Jaguar was parked, engine purring, California plates announcing an intruder from the south. The motor died suddenly. The driver’s door swung open and a tall man in a business suit, polished wingtips and raincoat emerged.
Alex Cahill in the flesh.
Great. Just . . . great.
He picked one helluva day to show up.
“About time,” Alex said as if he’d been waiting for hours. “I thought maybe you’d died out there.” He hitched his jaw west toward the sea.
“Not so lucky this time.”
“Maybe next.”
“Maybe.”
Alex’s intense eyes, more gray than blue, flashed. “So you’re still an irreverent bastard.”
“I keep workin’ at it.” Nick didn’t bother to smile. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
“Shit, Nick, that’s all you’ve ever done.”
“Probably.”
In a heartbea
t Nick decided his mother must’ve died. For no other reason would Alex be inconvenienced enough to wear out some of the tread on his three-hundred-dollar tires. But the thought was hard to believe. Eugenia Haversmith Cahill was the toughest woman who’d ever trod across this planet on four-inch heels. Nope. He changed his mind. His mother couldn’t be dead. Eugenia would outlive both her sons.
He kept walking to his truck and slung his bucket into the bed with his toolbox and spare tire. Around the parking lot, a once-painted fence and fir trees contorted by years of battering wind and rain formed a frail barricade that separated the marina from a boarded-up antiques shop that hadn’t been in business in the five years Nick had lived in Devil’s Cove.
Alex jammed his hands deep into the pockets of a coat that probably sported a fancy designer label, not that Nick would know. Or care. But something was up.
“Look, Nick, I came here because I need your help.”
“You need my help?” he repeated with a skeptical grin. “Maybe I should be flattered.”
“This is serious.”
“I suspect.”
“It’s Marla.”
Son of a bitch. Beneath the rawhide of his jacket, Nick’s shoulders hunched. No matter what, he wasn’t going to be sucked in.
Not by Marla.
Not ever again.
“She’s been in an accident.”
His gut clenched. “What kind of accident?” Nick’s jaw was so tight it ached. He’d never trusted his older brother. And for good reason. For as long as Nick could remember, Alex Cahill had bowed at the altar of the dollar, genuflected whenever he heard a NASDAQ quote and paid fervent homage to the patron saints of San Francisco, the elite who were so often referred to as “old money.” That went double for his beautiful, socialclimbing wife, Marla.
His brother was nothing but a bitter reminder of Nick’s own dalliance with the Almighty Buck. And with Marla.
“It’s bad, Nick—” Alex said, kicking at a pebble with the toe of his polished wingtip.
“But she’s alive.” He needed to know that much.
“Barely. In a coma. She . . . well, she might not make it.”
Nick’s stomach clenched even harder. “Then why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with her?”
“Yes. I have been. But . . . I didn’t know how else to reach you. You don’t return my calls and . . . well . . .”
“I’m not all that into e-mail.”
“That’s one of the problems.”
“Just one.” Nick leaned against the Dodge’s muddy fender, telling himself not to be taken in. His brother was nothing if not a smooth-talking bastard, a man who could with a seemingly sincere and even smile, firm handshake and just the right amount of eye contact, talk a life jacket off a drowning man. Older than Nick by three years, Alex was polished, refined and Stanford educated. His graduate work, where he’d learned the ins and outs of the law, had been accomplished at Harvard.
Nick hadn’t bothered. “What happened?” he asked, trying to remain calm.
“Car accident.” To Alex’s credit he paled beneath his tan. Reaching into his jacket, he found a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Nick, who shook his head, though he’d love to feel smoke curl through his lungs, could use the buzz of nicotine.
Alex flicked his lighter and drew deep. “Marla was driving another woman’s car. Over six weeks ago now. In the mountains near Santa Cruz, a miserable stretch of road. The woman who owned the Mercedes, Pamela Delacroix, was with her.” There was a long pause. A heavy, smoky sigh. Just the right amount of hesitation to indicate more bad news. Nick steeled himself as a Jeep with a dirty ragtop sped into the parking lot, bouncing through the puddles before sliding to a stop near the railing. Two loud men in their twenties climbed out and opened the back to haul out rods, reels and a cooler. They clomped noisily down the stairs.
“Go on,” Nick said to his brother.
“Unfortunately Pam didn’t make it.”
A coldness swept over Nick. “Jesus.”
“Killed instantly. There was another vehicle involved, a semi going the opposite direction. Long-haul truck driver. Charles Biggs. He’d been at the wheel sixteen hours and there’s talk that he might have been on speed, meth or something. Who knows? The police aren’t talking. The trucker might’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. No one knows for certain. Except Biggs and he’s in the burn ward. Burns over sixty percent of his body, internal damage as well. It’s a miracle he’s holding on, but no one expects him to make it.”
Nick wiped the rain from his face and looked out to sea. “But Marla survived.”
“If you can call it that.”
“Son of a bitch.” Now Nick wanted a smoke. He shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets and warned himself not to believe his brother. Being older and smarter, Alex had taken delight when they were children to play him for a naive fool. There had always been a price to pay. Today, he suspected, was no different. “So the guy fell asleep and the truck wandered into Marla’s lane?”
“That’s just one theory.” Alex took a drag on his Marlboro. “The police and insurance companies are looking into it. Had the highway shut down. The vehicles never hit each other, at least that’s what they think. The Mercedes ended up off one side of the road, the semi further down the hill on the opposite side. Both vehicles broke through the guardrails, both ended up smashed into trees, but the truck exploded before the driver could bail out of the cab.”
“Damn,” Nick muttered under his breath. “Poor bastard.”
Alex snorted his agreement. “There’ve been detectives all over the place, asking questions of everybody, waiting for Marla to wake up and tell her side of the story.” He scowled darkly at the waters lapping in the bay. “She could be charged with negligent homicide, I suppose, if she was the one who crossed the center line. I . . . I haven’t gotten into the legalities of it all. Not yet. This . . . it’s . . . well, it’s been a nightmare. Hard on everyone.”
That, Nick believed. If the situation hadn’t been grim, Alex would never have made the trip. Hell. Rainwater ran down his face as he opened the cab door and reached inside, found the remains of a six pack of Henry’s, ripped one from its plastic collar and tossed it to Alex, then popped the tab of a second for himself.
“If Marla does pull through—”
“If, Alex? If? She’s the strongest, most determined woman I know. She’ll make it. For Chrissakes, don’t put her in the grave yet. She’s your damned wife!”
A beat. Unspoken accusations. Memories that had no right to be recalled—seductive, erotic and searing with hot intensity. Nick’s throat turned to dust. The wind slapped his face. He drank a long gulp while Tough Guy whined at his feet. But his thoughts had already turned the dark corner he’d avoided for years, the narrow path that led straight to his brother’s wife. Forbidden images came into play, taboo pictures of a gorgeous woman with a lilting laugh and mischief in her eyes. He heard the gentle lap of the water against the dock below and the traffic on the highway, the dull roar of the sea pounding the coast on the other side of the jetty, the call of the seagulls, yet nothing was as loud as the thudding of his own heart.
Nick nodded to his brother, encouraging Alex to continue. Taking another pull from his can as he tried and failed to push Marla from his head. Rain dripped off his nose. He thought about suggesting they sit in the pickup’s cab but didn’t.
“If she makes it, there’s a chance she won’t remember anything or that portions of memory will be lost. I don’t really understand the whole amnesia thing, but it’s weird. Eerie.” Alex smoked in the rain and seemed unaware that he was getting drenched. His brown hair was plastered to his head, his Italian leather shoes soaking up Oregon rainwater from the puddle collecting at his feet. “God, Nick, you should see her. Or maybe not.” Alex’s voice actually quavered and he hesitated for a second, sucking so hard on his Marlboro that the tip glowed red in the gloom. “You wouldn’t recognize her. I didn’t and I’ve lived with her for nearly fi
fteen years. Jesus.” He shot a plume of smoke from one side of his mouth, popped the can of his beer and took a long swallow. “She was so beautiful . . . well, you remember . . .” Alex’s voice cracked as if in deep pain.
Nick didn’t believe him and, sipping his beer, tried to push aside the image of a woman who had nearly destroyed his life. He stared toward the suspension bridge that spanned the narrow neck of the bay and allowed traffic to rush along the rugged Oregon coastline, compliments of Highway 101, but in his mind’s eye, he saw Marla . . . gorgeous, full of fun and laughter Marla. “Aside from the memory loss, will she be okay?”
“You mean other than the fact that she won’t look the same?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It will to her.”
Nick snorted. “You can afford plastic surgery. I’m talking about damage that would make it so that she couldn’t function.”
“We don’t know.”
“And she will regain her memory eventually?”
Alex lifted a shoulder and glanced toward the sea. “I hope so.”
For a split second, a mere heartbeat, Nick felt a tiny prick of pity for his brother’s wife.
“Time will tell.”
“So they say.”
“But she’ll be changed.”
“Too bad,” he said sarcastically as he studied the watersaturated gravel and the muddy pools beginning to run in rivulets toward the cliff.
“It is.”
Nick took one last swallow from his beer, crushed the can in his fist and tossed the crumpled empty into the back of his truck. Marla’s image slipped on illicit wings into his mind again. Alex wasn’t exaggerating. Marla Amhurst Cahill was a gorgeous woman. Seductive. Naughty. Sexy as hell. With silky skin that was hot beneath a man’s fingers and a come-hither smile that put Marilyn Monroe to shame. She had a way of getting into a man’s blood and lingering. For years. Maybe forever.
