“Cole?” She cringed inwardly. She’d made his name sound fragile, as if she were a terrified girl instead of a grown woman.
“I know,” he said, looking up. “I’m scaring you. We can talk more in a minute. Let me see how badly you’re hurt, in case we need to get you to the hospital. Can you at least do that?”
The request sounded agreeable enough, yet the command underlying his tone left little room for argument. The current of connection running between them threatened to swamp Shaw all over again. The mysteries swirling in her mind made even less sense when she was with him. He was like the riddles in her nightmare, confusing her each time she looked too closely. And her latest enigma had come equipped with a firearm that he’d wielded with an ease that made her suspect he was intimately familiar with all manner of delivering deadly force.
But her choices were to trust him or to call Dawson so the inspector could drive up to check things out. She shuddered. Even if she needed professional medical treatment, she wasn’t certain at this point if she’d merit so much as a blip on the inspector’s radar. His likely conclusion would be that she’d been careless and clumsy. She’d panicked again for no reason. The last thing she could handle until she got her emotions under control was another condescending reminder that her neuroses were a pain in everyone else’s butt. And gun or no gun, Cole’s presence at least made her feel calmer.
He was waiting for her to decide if she wanted his help.
She gave him a hesitant nod. He pulled back the towel. They both winced. The diagonal slice across the pad of her thumb sullenly oozed blood. He prodded it with the corner of the towel, holding her wrist when she would have jerked away.
“Sorry.” He pressed the back of her hand to her lap, covering the cut with the towel, then with her other hand to apply pressure. “It doesn’t look too deep. If we wrap it tightly enough, I don’t think it’s going to need stitches.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s only one way to find out. Keep putting pressure on it. I’ll grab supplies.”
He shoved aside the table knives and forks and spoons that had clattered to the hardwood after she’d dragged the drawer from its glider. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out the first-aid kit she’d discovered while cleaning.
“How did you know that was there?” she asked, his familiarity with her unfamiliar surroundings both disturbing and oddly reassuring.
As he resettled beside her on the floor, the impressive muscles in his upper torso and thighs bunched and rolled beneath his black T-shirt and faded jeans. Talk about disturbing. Did everything about this guy have to attract her the way Esmeralda panted for catnip?
Her attention shifted to the bulge at his side near his waist, where he’d tucked his gun away. He caught the direction of her gaze and came up on one knee in front of her. From the plastic kit, he produced a packet of gauze and tore it open with his teeth.
“I grabbed my weapon when I heard you scream the first time,” he said, unwrapping the towel while he talked. “It was the middle of the night, and I was running from my home not sure what to expect. I’m sorry if I scared you, but you sounded terrified just now, and I was on the top floor, so—”
“So you thought you’d swoop into my kitchen like a one-man SWAT team? Who does that?”
He pressed a wad of gauze to her thumb and applied pressure.
“I know it hurts,” he said over her sharp inhale. “It’s the only way we’ll stop the bleeding.”
“And you know that how?” she asked through clenched teeth.
Actually, it didn’t hurt as badly anymore. Or maybe she didn’t notice as much because Cole was close again, the masculine strength of him easing her frazzled senses. As he worked on her hand, waves of brown hair were near enough for her to reach out and touch their silkiness. She didn’t, of course. But she ached to.
“The same way,” he said, “that I knew how to use the gun I pointed at you a few minutes ago, but never would have hurt you with.”
“You’re with the police?” She watched him root around the box for a second time. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to looking her in the eye.
“Not exactly.”
He pulled out a small white packet and opened it the way he had the gauze. He plucked an antiseptic towelette from the wrapper and replaced the soiled gauze with the wipe and more careful pressure, making her hiss.
Really? That was all she was going to get?
He couldn’t have been more gentle about taking care of her, this man she suspected was a force to be reckoned with wherever he went. But parting with personal information obviously wasn’t his thing. Meanwhile, her addled mind was now obsessing over the clean, outdoorsy scent of him, as if that were all that mattered when it came to trusting the guy or not.
“Okay,” she said. She pointed to the first-aid kit he had gone back to sifting through. “Let’s talk about how you knew that was under my grandmother’s sink. Exactly how close were we when we were younger?”
He produced a butterfly bandage this time. “I’m more concerned about why you don’t remember me or, according to you, anything else.” He wrapped her thumb with an economical twist of his wrist. He looked up from his handiwork. “We knew each other from the time we were little kids until we were nearly out of high school. And I have to say, you’ve never been the type to freak at things that go bump in the night. Now you think someone’s trying to kill you?” A deep frown made his rugged features and cerulean eyes impossibly compelling. “Maybe we should go to the hospital. Did you hit your head either time you fell tonight?”
At his directness and obvious concern, Shaw felt moisture flood her eyes. She glanced at the cabinet, the sink, then at the beautiful silverware scattered on the floor around them. None of her grandmother’s things felt as though they belonged to her. None of it seemed remotely as real as the nearness, the warmth, of this man looking back at her. Which only made her want to cling to him, and she’d be damned if she’d give him another reason to pity her.
“No.” She fingered the scar at her temple. “I didn’t hit my head either time. Not that it matters. Nothing matters in the end. Not when you can’t even remember yourself.”
He stilled. He was obviously curious. Confused. But the compassion that quickly eclipsed both reactions was what finally made her tears fall.
“Anything?” he asked. “Before I went upstairs, you said you’d forgotten…”
“Everything.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and gestured toward her head. “I was…hurt, and nothing before that night will come back to me.”
He collected the trash from his work, then closed up the kit, letting her cry without making a fuss about it, or making her feel childish for her loss of control. “And something about the way you were injured is making you think someone is still after you?”
He reached for her face. His finger brushed across her temple, her scar, and her memories, leaving her shivering with the almost-there sensation that he might be the first memory she could reach for, grab onto, and not watch slip through her fingers.
“I…I was shot,” she whispered. She cleared her throat. “I dream about it, but I can never see his face, the man who did this to me. They wanted to kill me and he tried. Or maybe I’m imagining all of it, and my bruised brain is hiding what really happened. Hysterical amnesia, the doctors call it. I’m supposed to be here so I can relax enough to get something of my life back. I’m told I was here every summer growing up. I guess while you lived on the mountain, too, with your family? My doctors thought it would be a nonthreatening, familiar retreat.”
“And it’s not?”
“What I keep thinking I remember about the night I was hurt is so horrible. People wanting me dead…”
Cole stretched out one powerful, jeans-clad leg and snagged a chair with the toe of his boot, draggin
g it over from the table. He rose from the floor, lifting her with him as if she were light as a doll. She stiffened in his grasp.
“I can do it,” she said, not entirely sure why she was struggling out of his arms, when the amazing feel of his hard, muscular body supporting hers was enough to make her dizzy all over again.
But he let her go, easing her onto her feet while he remained beside her until she’d settled in the chair. He took its nearest companion, turning it around before straddling the seat and propping his arms on the back. Her cat made a return appearance. Esmeralda rubbed her dainty body against Cole’s calf, purring with delight.
Shaw shook her head in amazement, trying not to take it personally, given the nonchalance the animal had always shown her in comparison. “Who knew she was such a flirt,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.
Cole scooped up Esme and placed her in Shaw’s lap, where the Siamese curled up, content to gaze adoringly at her new conquest. It suddenly struck Shaw how similar Cole’s eye color was to her cat’s. Such a beautiful, brilliant blue. It had been one of the things she’d first loved about Esmeralda when she’d been told that the beautiful, if aloof, creature was her long-time pet.
Cole touched Esme’s gold charm, then withdrew his hand. The metal disk tinkled as it swung back and forth on the cat’s collar.
“Pretty,” he said, his gaze lifting to Shaw’s face. “It looks old.”
“I think it was my grandmother’s. I found it while ransacking the house for something that might jar my memory. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t just throw it back in a dusty drawer. I figured it was special enough for even my little queen to appreciate.” She hugged her purring companion close. “Esmeralda’s been wearing it ever since.”
Cole smiled, then his attention shifted to the floor between them. With a roll of his massive shoulders, he looked back up again, his expression solemn.
“Why would someone be trying to kill you?” he asked, as if what must have sounded like raging paranoia was the most logical thing in the world.
His easy acceptance sang through her. She found herself wanting to wrap Cole around her, close her eyes, and believe him into the reality of her forgotten life.
“I run an international corporation,” she explained instead, reminding herself firmly that he was just being neighborly. “We research various technologies, mostly top-secret stuff for the government. Maybe there’s some explanation there of who might want to hurt me.”
“You mean so they can get you out of the way to steal something?”
“Or I pissed someone off. A rival, maybe. But the authorities don’t think so. They can’t find evidence of any threats against me. I was mostly a loner, I’m told. There wasn’t much to my world but my work, and most of that was done in an isolated office building where I spent the majority of my time. The doctors won’t allow the authorities to share with me too many details of my life or my shooting. They don’t want to overstress my recovery. So I need to remember on my own.”
She stopped short of telling him about the Marshals Service keeping tabs on her. Her story already sounded ridiculous enough.
“I keep dreaming about that night. I know there’s something, someone, I should be remembering. But my recall shuts down when I wake up. I’m trying to take things slow up here. You know, while I exhaust myself cleaning everything in sight, until I’m so tired I think every bump in the night is an evil man out to get me.” She sighed. “If I can’t calm down and remember more, I might never know who’s responsible for this.”
“For hurting you?” Cole took her injured hand from where she was petting Esme, his thumb soothing as it brushed her palm.
“For destroying my life. Even though I wonder how much I could have liked that world and my job, if it’s this easy to banish them from my mind.”
She’d talked to countless doctors and government officials at the hospital, in interviews and consultations that had produced nothing of value and had left her shaking and drained. Petrified. But talking with Cole about what had happened, about her confusion and fear, felt safe. Cathartic. She could breathe easier than she’d been able to since waking in the hospital.
She’d managed to wrap her fingers around his, holding on so tightly her bandaged thumb throbbed.
“I try all day,” she told him, “every day, to remember who and what I am. Nothing happens until I’m asleep, and none of that makes sense once it’s over.” She let go and wiped at the corners of her eyes. “This entire situation is turning me into a stark raving lunatic. I can’t even make coffee without freaking myself out over nothing, because I clumsily grabbed a knife instead of a spoon.”
Cole seemed poised to say something—most likely that he had somewhere else to be besides listening to her ramble on. Instead, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and reached down for the drawer that lay turned on its side on the floor.
“I wouldn’t exactly call this nothing.” He fingered inside the drawer, in the slot where the spoons were stored, then tipped it her way. Light glinted off something wedged in the front corner of the divider.
She started. “Is that…?”
“A knife blade, broken off and jammed into the wrong slot in a place you were guaranteed to come into contact with.”
“But I made chocolate earlier, when I first woke up. That wasn’t there.”
“It’s wedged in pretty good, where you’d eventually brush against it, even if you were being careful. It was only a matter of time before you were cut.”
She found herself wishing the last few seconds would rewind, so she could return to feeling silly about overreacting. Panic choked her with the thought that somehow the faceless man from her dream might actually have set a trap designed to hurt her in a very personal way.
“I love my grandmother’s kitchen,” she said, feeling violated. “Every time I’m in this room I try to remember being here as a little girl, cooking and eating with her. Tonight especially, when I came downstairs earlier, I had my hands all over this drawer, searching for my favorite spoon. That blade couldn’t have been there then. Which means…”
“This is either a fascinating coincidence and that knife broke on its own, which is entirely possible…” Cole laid the drawer on the floor. His gaze cut to her, suddenly hot with fury. “Or you’re no more a raving lunatic than I am. How long have accidents like this been happening?”
“What are you saying?” She needed to hear it. She needed to hear him believe out loud the possibility that she suddenly didn’t want to accept.
“Maybe your doctors are right. You being alone up here in the middle of nowhere with no distractions might help you remember. Then again, it might be making you a sitting duck, if someone’s really trying to hurt you.”
Chapter Seven
There still wasn’t a credible enough threat for Cole to authorize a site team investigation, not when a crew swarming the place would further agitate a witness who was supposed to be kept calm.
Not that he gave a damn at the moment about what he could or couldn’t authorize.
Even if he hadn’t already committed to spending more time in the mansion, he’d be dug in now. His gut told him that the things happening to Shaw were anything but random, even if he couldn’t yet prove it. And he always listened to his gut.
“Stay here,” he said, retracing his steps to the storage room’s back door.
“Wait.” Shaw set down the cat and ran after him. She tripped on the threshold between the two rooms, stumbling into his arms. “Stay with me.”
His breath caught.
Every time they touched, her bright eyes and the fear she kept bravely fending off pulled him in deeper. His rising compulsion to protect her was quickly eclipsing his misgivings about staying. But being this close to her also felt as if someone were stabbing vicious holes into the part of his heart that re
membered what they’d once been to each other.
When their childhood friendship had first progressed to puppy love, then in high school to the kind of combustible, unstoppable force that should have lasted a lifetime, he’d sworn he’d never let her go. It had taken her brother’s death and her subsequent betrayal of Cole to drive him away. He’d thought permanently. Now she was oblivious to the destruction they hadn’t saved each other from as teenagers. She’d thought the charm he’d given her when they’d been little more than kids was beautiful enough for a queen. She’d hung it around her beloved pet’s neck, so she’d have it with her daily.
She was undeniably the Shaw who’d once cared for him, making this assignment even more personal to Cole, and more painful, than it ever should have been. Despite the hurt and the years they’d lost, how could he not safeguard the only woman he’d ever loved? The federal justice system was planning to chew her to pieces. Even with memories of their long-dead affair ripping him apart inside, he had to do everything he could to stop that from happening.
“I’m not going far.” He pulled her arms from around him, catching her hands together between their nearly touching bodies.
He wanted to kiss them, which was ridiculous. He wanted to kiss her, which was dangerous. He needed to strengthen her trust in him, not finish scaring her to death. All while he was out-and-out lying to her. Not only about his presence on the mountain, but that all they’d ever been was friends. Both fabrications were exactly what she needed to hear to stay calm and focused on the work she had to do at High Lake. As soon as she learned the truth—on either count—she’d run as far and as fast from him as she could. But, as with all his undercover roles, his job was to play this one to perfection.
He made himself step away.
“I won’t be gone long,” he said. “I’m packing a bag, that’s all. Lock the door behind me. The rest of the place is secure, even though I think your alarm system is toast. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Her Forgotten Betrayal Page 6
