“I’m on a beach,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, you are.”
“With a wolf,” he added, as he studied the dog and his large, exposed canines warily.
“Technically he’s a wolf dog. Mostly husky, though. He won’t bother you unless you mess with me.”
“Noted,” the man murmured and turned back to look at her. “I’d probably bite any man that messed with you, too.”
Willow winced and reached out to examine his head wound. It must be worse than it looked for him to talk like that. “Can you tell me how you got out here?”
He shook his head gently. “I wish I knew. I don’t even know where here is. What beach am I on?”
“You’re on Shaw Island,” Willow explained. “Off the coast of Washington State.”
“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. He wrapped his arm over his ribs and pushed himself up from the sand and rocks until he was sitting upright. “I’ve never hurt so badly in my whole life. My ribs feel like someone has taken a free shot at me with a baseball bat.”
“Is that what happened?” Willow asked. Her island wasn’t exactly an epicenter of hard crime. With less than three hundred year-round residents, you couldn’t get away with much. The last newsworthy occurrence on the island had involved a rebellious teenager and a joyride in the sheriff deputy’s car. But nothing violent that she knew of.
“I have no idea.”
Willow frowned. She couldn’t understand how a guy could be in this kind of shape but have no clue how he’d gotten that way or where he even was. He must’ve hit his head pretty hard. “What’s your name? Maybe I could call someone for you.”
The man opened his mouth to answer and then stopped with a puzzled expression on his face. “I don’t know that, either,” he admitted.
Maybe he had a concussion. What was she supposed to do for that? Ask questions? “Do you know what day it is?”
“Not a clue.”
“Do you know what two times two equals?”
“Four,” he answered without hesitation and then shook his head. “I don’t get it. I know my alphabet and who the president is. How to tie my shoe... I think. But anything about myself or what happened to me seems just out of my reach.”
Willow nodded. “I think we need to get you to a doctor.”
A large crack of lightning lit up the sky over the water, followed by a deep rumble of thunder. They also needed to hurry before they got caught in the incoming storm. This beach wasn’t accessible by road, so their best shot was to go back to her place.
“Do you think you can stand?” she asked. “My house isn’t very far away. If we can get back there, I can call someone to come look at you. We don’t have a hospital here or I’d take you there instead.”
“I’m not sure, but we can try.”
Willow put one of the man’s arms over her shoulder and helped slowly hoist him to his feet. He continued to lean heavily on her as they made their way down the beach together. Shadow trotted happily beside them with a piece of driftwood in his mouth.
They had to take their time, but they reached her back deck just as the first few drops of water fell on their heads. Willow unlocked the door and brought him inside, forcing Shadow to leave his prize outside before he could come in.
She helped him to the living room and over to her recliner. The chair had been a lifesaver on long nights when chemotherapy or surgery pains kept her awake and uncomfortable. “Let’s put you here,” she said.
He lowered gently into the old, squeaky recliner and sighed in contentment. “I think this is the most comfortable chair in the whole world.”
“How do you know?” Willow asked, curiously. “You don’t even know your own name.”
“I know,” he insisted. “I know a good chair when I sit in one.”
Willow shook her head and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call the local doctor and see if he can come by.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
“Let me just check one last thing...”
The only doctor living on Shaw Island—a retiree who went by Doc—pressed his fingers against his rib cage, and it was like daggers exploding in his chest. He jerked away and made an involuntary screech like an injured animal as tears welled in his eyes.
“Yeah, if they aren’t broken, they’re at least badly bruised.” The older man narrowed his gaze at him and nodded. “Two, probably three of your ribs are cracked is my guess without an X-ray to look at.”
He groaned and clutched his abused chest with his hand. “I could’ve told you that without the jabbing.”
“Do they need to be wrapped or something?”
He turned his attention to the woman who’d saved him as she spoke up. She’d told him her name was Willow once she returned after calling the doctor. He didn’t think she looked like a Willow. She was very thin, waif-like in figure, with short, dirty blond hair and large, dark brown eyes. She was intriguing to look at, with thick eyelashes and faint freckles across her cheeks. She just didn’t look like a Willow to him. Then again, he didn’t know what he thought someone named Willow should look like.
“No, it’s best to just leave them be,” Doc explained. “The muscles of the chest are strong enough to hold the bones in place until they heal. They’re not at a risk of puncturing his lungs or anything serious. Really, it’s a good break to have.”
He flinched at the doctor’s words. “Are you serious?”
“Well, it won’t feel great at first,” Doc said with a small chuckle. “No, you’re going to feel like you’re being stabbed every time you try to move for two or three days. The pain medicine will help, but you’ll do good to just lie still. But then, surprisingly, you’ll wake up one morning and be mostly okay. Just a little sore. Ribs are funny that way.”
“I’m not laughing,” he quipped.
“Good,” Doc said with a serious expression. “It’ll hurt like hell if you do.” He turned to Willow. “I thought I might call Ted and see if he had room at his place to take our John Doe in until we can get him transported to the mainland.”
As if on cue, a large flash of lightning lit the picture window and the corresponding rumble of thunder shook the walls of the house a moment later.
“He may be stuck here a few days. It’s supposed to be a hell of a storm. Early in the season for it, too.”
“Don’t bother Ted. He has enough going on with Linda sick. I’ll keep him here. I have a guest room he can stay in until we can get him to a hospital.”
He watched Doc frown at him with concern.
“I don’t like the idea of leaving you here alone with a stranger,” the doctor said to Willow.
“What’s he going to do to me? He can barely lift an arm without crying. I’ll be fine. I have Shadow and a shotgun, and if he doesn’t have all the sense knocked out of him, he’ll stay in bed and behave.” Willow turned to look at him. “Are you going to give me any trouble?”
He started to shake his head and winced. Every movement seemed to send a painful shock wave through his whole body. “No, ma’am. I’ll be a saint. A very still, very cautious saint.”
“See?” She turned back to Doc. “It will be fine. I’ve faced more dangerous things in my life than John Doe here.”
“Okay, but I’ll be checking in regularly just in case.” Doc peeled off a prescription from his pad and handed it to Willow. “This is for some pain medication, muscle relaxants and an antibiotic to keep his cuts from getting infected. I put it under your name since he doesn’t have one.”
She looked up from the pad and seemed to eye him warily. “What about his head? He says he doesn’t remember anything.”
Doc walked back over to where he was sitting and eyed the lump on his head. It felt like he had an egg trying to break through his forehead. “He
took quite a blow to the head. But aside from the amnesia, he seems coherent. I’m no expert on head injuries like this, but I’m confident that once the swelling goes down, he’ll remember who he is and how he ended up on our little island. In the meantime, though, you’ll need to ice it on and off, and may not want to leave him alone just in case he passes out and falls.”
The wind whistled loudly past Willow’s home, announcing the storm was getting closer. “I’m going to head on out,” Doc announced. “I need to put some plywood over my front windows. You’ve probably got enough time to run to the general store and get these scrips filled before the worst of the storm comes ashore. An hour at the most.”
Willow nodded and walked the doctor out. When she came back into the living room, she eyed him in the chair.
“I’m going to run to the store and get your medications. I won’t be gone long. I’m leaving you here with Shadow.”
He looked over at the dog. It was deceptively fluffy, hiding big blue eyes and even bigger teeth. It had lain on the hardwood floors and watched him since he arrived. No growling or anything. But the husky watched, and he got the distinct impression that Shadow didn’t care for him as much now that he was in his home with his mama.
“Can I go with you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s probably a bad idea. The road isn’t paved on my property and you’re going to get jostled around.”
“That’s okay.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before forcing himself up out of the chair. “I want to go.”
Willow shrugged. “Okay. We’ll get some supplies and some clothes for you while Eddie fills these.” She held up the prescriptions in her hand before shoving them into a messenger bag and pulling out her keys.
They went outside together where she had a big red pickup truck waiting. It had a step and a handle he used to pull himself up and into the seat. She drove as slowly and carefully as she could on the way to the store, but he felt every divot in the road as they went. He probably should’ve stayed in the recliner with the wolf dog, but he didn’t want to be alone. For some reason, the thought of Willow leaving his sight bothered him. She was his savior, and he was going to stick to her side until he didn’t need saving any longer.
To distract himself from the pain, he turned his focus from the road to Willow. He studied the interesting angles and curves of her face as she watched the road...the intricate shell of her ear with the single diamond stud piercing in its lobe... Anything was better than thinking about the pain.
The truck finally met with what seemed like a main, paved highway, to his relief. They’d seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere up until this point. Without the bumps torturing him, he was able to entertain other thoughts—like what a woman like her was doing out here alone. She was young, attractive, self-sufficient, thoughtful...but alone. He was a mystery, but she seemed to be equally confusing.
“You need a name,” she said.
“What?” he asked as her words jerked him from his thoughtful trance.
“A name. You don’t look much like a John Doe,” she said, probably making small talk to distract him during the drive. “But I need to call you something while you’re around.”
He supposed she was right. He needed a name and John didn’t suit him at all. “I guess so. Until I get my memory back, we should pick a name to use. But which one? Most people don’t get to choose their names.”
Willow made a thoughtful sound as she gripped the steering wheel. “How about... Mark? Allen? Henry? When I was in high school I lived next door to a guy named Jeremy. He was pretty cool.”
None of those fit at all. He knew instinctively. But the odds of landing on the right name were slim. They could flip through a baby book, even speak his actual name aloud, and with his head beat to hell, he probably wouldn’t know it. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’ll let you pick since I’m in your capable hands. What do you want to call me, darling?”
Her gaze met his for a moment before she turned back to the road with a rosy blush on her cheeks. Apparently men didn’t call her “darling” very often. The words had slid from his lips easily, as did the hint of a Southern accent he didn’t know he had until that moment.
“Um...since none of those other names seemed to thrill you...what about instead of John, we call you Jack? You look like you could be a Jack.”
He didn’t hate that. It was simple and easy to remember. “I can live with Jack. Now, all I have to do is remind myself to answer to it.”
“Jack it is,” she said as she slowed and gingerly turned the truck into a small parking lot. “Now, let’s hurry up here so we can get home, give you some pain medicine and get you out of those clothes.”
Jack’s brow went up suggestively on instinct. “If I wasn’t in such rough shape, I’d take you up on that.”
Her dark eyes got big as she turned off the truck. “Apparently Jack is a flirt,” she said, climbing out.
Jack nodded and took off his own seat belt. He didn’t know much about himself, but that seemed to be true enough. At the moment, flirting came easier than breathing. He wished everything else was as simple right now.
Two
Willow left her new patient to wander through the small general store while she headed straight for the pharmacy. There wasn’t much trouble he could get into on his own in a place like this. Especially with the store’s owner, Mrs. Hudson, watching over everything from her perch at the register.
At the back counter, as always, was Eddie McAlister, Shaw Island’s only pharmacist. He was always polite and professional, even helping her with research for her books from time to time when she needed a nontraditional poison to kill off a character or some other medical assistance. As an author, she always wondered if he enjoyed knowing everything about the island residents’ private medical matters. Most people, for example, had no idea about Willow’s past medical history aside from Doc. It had all happened prior to her moving here. But Eddie knew. He took care of all her hormone replacements. Unless someone handled all their appointments and medical issues off the island or via mail order, Eddie knew.
Small-island life was just like that, she supposed. She’d traded anonymity and privacy for quiet when she moved out here from Seattle.
In her mind, she could easily devise a plot where a small-town pharmacist was murdered to cover up a secret only he was privy to. For a second, she could envision him sprawled out on the floor, papers and pills littering the ground all around him and a knife buried into his chest. A Prescription for Murder. Not bad, she thought.
“Afternoon, Willow. Heck of a storm heading this way.”
She handed over the prescriptions Doc had written out and shook the disturbing images of Eddie’s corpse from her mind. Occupational hazard. “Hey, Eddie. You guys closing up early?”
“Perhaps.” He glanced down at the papers curiously and back at her. His weary eyes looked over her with a furrowed brow of concern. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Yes.” She realized that the kind of medicine she was requesting wasn’t the norm for her. Or for anyone who hadn’t been in a car wreck or washed up on a beach. “Those aren’t mine. Doc put them in my name, but they’re for a John Doe that washed up on the beach. He’s pretty banged up but in this weather, we can’t get him to the mainland for a few days.”
Eddie eyed the prescriptions and then looked out into the general store at the only other person shopping. Willow followed his glance to the tall, blond man who was studying a Snickers bar as though he’d uncovered the holy grail.
“He’s had a bump on the head and doesn’t know who he is. Doc took a look at him and thinks he may have cracked a few ribs, too. You can put Jack or John Doe on the label if you need to. I know this isn’t exactly a normal situation. I’ll pay cash for his medicines. I don’t know if he has insurance or not.”
He looked like he did. Or if he did
n’t have it, he just paid cash for any medical expenses because he could. Her shipwrecked visitor didn’t exactly look like a homeless drifter. The main character of all her books, Amelia Hayes, would note those details about him immediately. Yes, his suit needed to be burned. It was ripped beyond repair, soaked with seawater and crusted with dirt and blood. There were bits of sand and wood stuck to the fabric here and there, likely from his beach nap. But beneath all that, it was a nice suit. When Jack had gingerly slipped out of the suit coat for Doc’s examination, she noticed the tag was for Brioni.
A quick Google search on her phone during his exam had uncovered that the custom-tailored Italian suits started at over six grand and went up from there.
Willow was a successful mystery writer. Amelia’s Mysteries did well for her. But she estimated her entire wardrobe, shoes included, had cost less than his jacket alone. Her heroine would have a field day trying to determine who this mysterious man really was. The Case of the Amicable Amnesiac? Meh. She’d give that some more thought.
Eddie continued to watch Jack as he wandered through the store like he’d never been in one before. He kept picking up things and studying them before putting them back with a visible wince of pain. “Sure thing,” Eddie said at last. “These aren’t too expensive without insurance, anyway. It will just take me a few minutes to pull it together.”
“Thanks, Eddie. Just give me a shout when it’s ready.” Willow was eager to return to Jack. She told herself it was because she was worried about him being alone with his head injury. But she also found she just liked being around him. Yes, he was handsome and a bit of a shameless flirt, but she liked his smile and his sense of humor. She wasn’t sure what he had been through, exactly, before he showed up in her life, but she wanted to do what she could to help him.
“Washed up on the beach, you say?” Eddie, too, seemed entranced by their unusual visitor. Jack had a commanding presence that demanded it of others, somehow. That or he just stood out like a sore thumb on her boring little island.
Promises from a Playboy--A secret billionaire with amnesia romance Page 2
