The Sheriff & the Amnesiac

by Ryanne Corey

  “Are you warm enough?” Tyler asked Jenny, still watching Rosie’s car pull away from the curb. “We could go sit out back on the deck for a few minutes. A little fresh air might do you—might do us—a world of good. Yes?”

  “Shertainly,” Jenny said.

  Tyler rolled his eyes and effortlessly scooped her up into his arms. She weighed nothing; she was a fragrant bundle of bruises, bandages and abrasions. He had an overwhelming urge to nuzzle her neck with his mouth, to work his way up to her lips and discover what it would be like to kiss this woman who constantly haunted his mind. But oh, no. He was the good guy, the one forever wearing the white hat and currently nursing a bad case of “poor me.” He couldn’t escape the feeling of being torn in two different directions. He wanted to be her caretaker, and he wanted to be her man, sweet and simple. How caveman-like was that? Every moment he spent with Jenny, whether she was starry-eyed medicated or not, was another twist on the old pressure valve. Her proximity to him made it all the harder to remember his good intentions. He had the sense of a time bomb ticking off, set in perfect rhythm to the meter of his hard-jumping heart.

  “Hey!” Jenny said suddenly, in the tone of someone who had just discovered a cure to a terrible disease. “I remember something!”

  Tyler’s arms tightened around her, a sudden, burning heat curling in his belly. She remembered? Not yet, not yet, he thought. He wanted to be the only memory in her life for just a little while longer. He deliberately avoided looking down at her to hide the panic in his eyes. “What did you remember? Don’t tell me—you really are Ophelia Detweiler.”

  Jenny looked up at him, her glazed eyes chiding. “Silly man. I meant I just remembered that you wanted to talk to me about something.”

  “Oh.” Tyler let out a deep breath, telling his pulse to slow down. “Okay, that’s all right. I mean, yes, I did want to talk to you. Where do you want to sit, madam? Lounger, chair or swing?”

  Jenny realized he had already carried her all the way around the house. My, time was flying tonight. “Sure.”

  “Sure,” Tyler muttered. “Okay. Madam wants to sit on her sure.”

  In the end they shared the white-fringed porch swing. It was padded with deep cushions, sinfully comfortable and just a fraction too small for two adults. Fortunately, Jenny was more the size of a child than an adult.

  It was an evening identical to a thousand other summer evenings in Bridal Veil Falls. Soft, warm, sweet-smelling and peaceful. There had been so many times when Tyler had sat out here on the old back porch alone, feeling more restless than soothed by the eternal quiet. Somewhere in the world, there were new roads to explore, fascinating things to experience, mysterious challenges to meet. Though he had never regretted accepting responsibility for his family, he could never completely escape the sense that he was missing something vital in life.

  But he didn’t feel he was missing out on anything right now. There was a fiery-haired amnesiac rebel sharing his swing, a woman who hummed softly beneath her breath while staring up at the fat butterball moon in the sky. It took Tyler a moment to place the tune—“Starry, Starry Night.”

  His shoulder brushed softly against hers. He felt the brief contact as if it were something vaguely erotic, inexpressibly tantalizing. Jenny’s profile was polished by the moonlight, adding an ethereal beauty that took him by the heart. Her lashes were star-tipped, as well, long and silky and ultrafeminine. In the shadows her bruises were muted, almost invisible. There was a bandage on her arm where she had had an IV in the hospital. For some reason that little flesh-colored bandage touched him as deeply as her beauty did. She was flesh and blood, regardless of how desperately she tried to be in-vulnerable. His protective instincts were hounding him, constantly pushing him to take a stand between Jenny and the rest of the world. John Wayne rides again.

  He noticed her eyelids were growing heavy. “Jenny…if you’re tired, we can call it a night. I shouldn’t have kept you up this long. You’re fresh from the hospital.”

  She waved her hand dismissively in the air, rejecting the suggestion. “I’m recovered, Sheriff. Really, I feel fine. And I had a wonderful time with your family. Hey!”

  “Here we go again.”

  “You said you wanted to talk to me about something. I keep forgetting.” Then, in a slightly different tone, “Did you find out something? About me, I mean.”

  Tyler stared at her expressionlessly. “Isn’t that what we’re hoping for?”

  “Sure,” she said. Then she tilted her head back against the cushion, staring at the stars. “That’s what we’re hoping for. Did you run a check on my Harley’s plates or something?”

  Tyler flushed. He knew damn well why he hadn’t done that exact thing. Subconsciously he’d been putting it off. It was a clear dereliction of duty, and he wished he were ashamed of himself. Sadly, he was not. “I’ve been sort of preoccupied with everything that’s gone on. I’ll do that first thing Monday morning. Still, I might have found something that will help. When I picked up your duffel bag today, I went through it. I know I should have waited until you were with me, but I wondered if I might find some clue as to why you were riding a big, bad motorcycle through a strange little town all by yourself. It’s kind of an unusual situation, especially for someone like you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Someone like me?”

  “Well…a woman. A beautiful woman. A woman who looks more like she belongs in a limo than on a Harley. You’re a puzzle, Jenny, a puzzle I can’t solve.”

  She absorbed this quietly. Then she turned her head toward him, a tiny furrow etched between her brows and a faint smile on her lips. “And a pain in your neck?”

  “Oh, no,” Tyler whispered, matching her smile for smile. “A surprise in my neck, maybe. A really nice surprise.”

  “Like having your house toilet papered on a Saturday night?”

  “Oh, way better than that.” They settled into a gentle silence, still looking, still smiling. Neither of them seemed to want to talk for the moment, and Tyler took the chance to drink her in. Tonight, tomorrow, it could all go away. She would turn and look at him and say, I remember. I remember my life, and you weren’t part of it, were you?

  But fanciful, dreamlike moments lived only for a short while; then reality intruded and facts had to be faced. Tyler forced himself to do just that, though he would have preferred to look at her till sunrise and not say a single word. “I did find a business card. There was no address book, no cell phone, no proof of reservations, nothing to indicate where you were going.”

  “Or where I came from,” she replied softly.

  Tyler had to force himself to continue. It wasn’t easy, especially when he was so afraid this little tidbit could trigger her memory. “Actually, the business card had a California area code. You may have just been visiting there, you may live there. I don’t know.” He cleared his throat, but it didn’t seem to ease the uncomfortable tightness there. “He may be a friend, he may be your lawyer.”

  Jenny was starting to feel a little cold. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “A lawyer?”

  “That’s what the card said. Eliot Dearbourne, out of Los Angeles. Does that ring any bells?”

  Jenny played that back in her mind. Eliot Dearbourne. An attorney from Los Angeles. Suddenly she became conscious of a sickening feeling in her stomach, and for the first time that evening, a headache started up. Eliot Dearbourne didn’t ring any bells, but he didn’t do her any good, either.

  Eliot Dearbourne. There was something there, but she couldn’t pin it down. Something less than pleasant, something her mind jumped away from like a red-hot stove.

  “I don’t want to think anymore tonight,” she said abruptly, surprised at the panic in her own voice. “Okay? I just don’t.”

  Tyler stared at her curiously. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”

  She spoke quietly, urgently. “Then help me. Help me not to think.”

  The expression on her face shook him.
She didn’t look away from him, she didn’t even blink. In the shadows her eyes were dark as midnight, shimmering with an intense, unreadable emotion. The cool night breeze was rife with confusing, conflicted feelings. It was a moment that could go either way—cautiously skirted or seized with blind hunger. The sort of moment that could change the course of someone’s life.

  “I can do that.” He wasn’t aware that he was speaking his thoughts aloud until he heard his own voice. That was when he knew he was through being a good boy.

  She remained perfectly still, a silent storm in her dark eyes. Her gaze slowly slid down to his mouth, lingering there. Her own lips parted softly with a silent sigh. All around them shadows rustled in the moonlight, enclosing them in a rose-scented garden. For a moment time stood still…until Tyler gently framed her face with his hands, gently urging. They came together by inches, his hand slipping over the silky column of her hair. So soft, cool to the touch and exquisitely textured. His palm tingled and a sensual thrill shivered through his nerves. He brought a shining dark tendril of hair to his lips and kissed it, his eyes closing briefly. It was an innocent enough gesture, but the end result was a man whose thoughts were anything but innocent. What was left of his unimpressive self-control went up in flames.

  Falling into the kiss was like falling into a surreal, graphic fantasy. For Tyler it was everything he had known it would be—her lips were softer than the touch of moonlight, parted and hotly responsive. He held her face in his hands and slanted his mouth to deepen his sensual assault, drinking fully with ravenous hunger. His mind urged gentleness in deference to her injuries. His body told him something else altogether: Now, now, while you still can. Taste her and touch her and remember it all.

  He broke from the kiss, breathing hard and staring into Jenny’s fire-bright eyes. Like Tyler she was gasping and her body trembled. Her palms were splayed against his chest, feeling the delicious warmth beneath. The night wind played gently through her hair, draping long, curling tendrils over his arms and shoulders, cocooning them together. He had been unprepared for the heavenly softness of her lips, the sweetness of her moist, silky flesh. There was so much to remember, so much to assimilate. He said nothing, just looked at her while he memorized every little thing—the light, rapid meter of her breath, the slightly swollen curves of shining lips, the way she stared right back at him with a dark confusion in her eyes.

  He softly kissed her nose at the tip, unintentionally disturbing the waking dream. When Jenny blinked the world into focus and tucked her hands self-consciously in her lap, he took both of them in his, patiently untangling the knot of shaky fingers. Then his left hand spread open against her right, palm to palm. “Holding hands,” he murmured softly, staring at their intertwined fingers. He didn’t want her to be afraid of the magic they had made together. “Just like two little kids in grade school. You see? Very innocent.”

  Surprisingly, her mouth crooked in a small, shaky smile. “If this is how you acted in grade school, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  He grinned, adopting a heavy Western twang. “Probably should, but I can’t say as I am, ma’am.”

  A strange silence fell between them, taut with new rules and tantalizing mysteries. It was not so much awkward as it was surprising. Not since adolescence had Tyler suffered a loss of self-confidence when it came to women. The fact was, he’d simply never had time to be humble. He was always too busy running away from determined females who kept him looking over his shoulder like a deer during hunting season. But he was thinking hard and fast right now, desperately trying to come up with the right thing to say, the right thing to do. The more he thought, the further away the answers got. It had never mattered this much before. In fact, it had never mattered at all before.

  “This is strange,” he said finally. “You’re the one who has amnesia—why am I the one suffering from brain cramps?”

  Jenny attempted a little smile. “Maybe my ailment is contagious. Have you ever thought of that?”

  “Maybe you’re contagious.”

  She stifled a little yawn. Her euphoria had settled into a weightless, dreamy lethargy. “There’s a scary thought. Poor Sheriff Cook. Saddled with contagious me.”

  She looked, Tyler thought suddenly, absolutely exhausted. What was he thinking, keeping her up this late? This woman had just survived an attack by a Pontiac. He stood up immediately, scooping Jenny into his arms with the ease of experience. It seemed he had been carrying this woman hither and yon since the first moment he’d met her. “Jenny, I loved kissing you and I’m going to kiss you again really soon, but not tonight. It’s time for all good little amnesiacs to be in bed. Besides, having you anywhere near me is turning out to be damned masochistic while I’m responsible for your welfare.”

  “What about that lawyer person, Dearbourne?” Jenny asked, oddly reluctant to call it a night. “What should we do?”

  “We’ll worry about Dearbourne tomorrow.” The shadows hid Tyler’s guilty flush. “I probably should have called him today, but I was really busy doing…sheriff things. I barely had time to think. But tomorrow is Sunday, so we’ll have plenty of time to get ahold of him. I can also run a check on the Harley if you’d like.”

  “If I like? Don’t you want to get rid of me?”

  Oh, if you only knew how much I don’t want to get rid of you. “What I want isn’t the question. And believe me, you’re not ready to hear the answer yet.” Tyler paused at the kitchen’s slightly ajar back door to kick it open with his foot. “You’ll just have to trust me on this one.”

  She was quiet for a minute, staring myopically at the small cleft in his stubborn chin. Up to his lashes, which were indecently long for a man and curled at the tips. His lips were also in her line of vision, and she had no choice but to stare at them, too. And remember what they had felt like on hers. Cowboy, she thought. Rugged, tough…sweet.

  At that point a brazen spirit entered her body and took possession. This particular spirit was very bold, a hussy in fact, immediately planting a smacking kiss on Tyler’s Cary Grant chin. The kiss was aimed at his mouth, but the brazen hussy could only reach his chin.

  Her lovely face lifted up to Tyler like a flower to sunlight. A bright-eyed, brown-eyed Susan. He stood frozen in the doorway, looking down at her with comical disbelief. “What was that for?”

  Her smile broke through the night shadows, impish and captivating and totally unrepentant. “I have no idea. Maybe you’re contagious. Or I might have had too many pain pills and too much wine with dinner. Or maybe a combination of all of the above.”

  “It’s a distinct possibility,” he said flatly, sensual urgency singing bright notes in his blood. Wasn’t this the damnedest thing? Here he was holding an alluring, albeit overly medicated woman in his arms, figuring out how to take her to bed while not taking her to bed. “You don’t make this easy, Jenny. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

  “Am I making it difficult?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, then. Truly. It’s just that…I have this feeling…” Her wistful voice trailed off into silence. Her expression was pensive, almost bewildered.

  “A feeling…?” Tyler prompted.

  Softly she said, “That this night is a dream, a fantasy. That nothing matters right now, because somehow tomorrow everything will be very real and very different. Do you understand?”

  “I wish I didn’t,” he said quietly. He dropped his chin, his face nestled in her hair. “Sweet girl…I wish I didn’t.”

  Six

  As Tyler stood under the shower Sunday morning, he deliberately turned the water temperature to heart-attack cold. He was trying to wake up, which wasn’t easy. He’d been wide-eyed and restless most of the night, creeping around his bedroom like a reverent little church mouse, afraid if he made the slightest noise he might wake Jenny up. She needed her rest. Finally, around 6:00 a.m. he’d dozed off. One hour later his alarm went off and he’d fallen out of his bed trying to kill the thing before the s
hrill buzzing disturbed his beautiful guest. On Sunday mornings he usually got up early to work in his yard and wash his car. Suburban Sundays, he called them, often wishing he had something more exciting to do.

  He’d never suffered from insomnia before, but he wasn’t surprised. Since meeting Jenny, there had been a lot of brand-new experiences in his life. It was his first time arresting a woman in a Mexican restaurant. First time stealing bowling shoes. First time terrorizing an entire hospital, not to mention his best friend Grady. First time riding a Harley straight through the middle of town at close to 130 miles an hour. Awesome. When he was on that machine, he’d wanted to head for the stars, to feel the wind whipping his face and the summer sun heating his back. He’d wanted to give in to each and every tantalizing, self-gratifying urge he had, just like in the old days. But more than anything, he wanted to do it all with a copper-haired adventuress nestled behind him, her arms looped around his waist. He wanted to share the ride.

  Still, it hadn’t all been a rush. Other firsts had been as enjoyable as a root canal. It was the first time he had carried a woman to bed, tucked her in and, at her bright-eyed insistence, read from an old, dog-eared copy of Reader’s Digest until she started snoring. She had a really cute snore, high-pitched and almost soundless. He couldn’t leave the room for a full ten minutes; he stood beside her bed with his hands pushed safely in his pockets and lusted for all he was worth. Snore, lust, snore, lust. He no longer knew what to expect from himself anymore. A chaste little bedtime story after their soul-searing kiss had been almost more than he could handle. Had Jenny been completely lucid, she would have noticed the beads of sweat gathering on his brow.

  Even as he shivered under the cold water, he felt fire shooting right through him as he replayed the events of the night before. Prior to meeting Jenny, a kiss had never had that effect on him. A woman had never had that effect on him. And Lord knew a criminal had never had that effect on him. He’d been powerfully drawn to her from the moment they met, despite the highly unusual circumstances. And ever since then, he’d fallen deeper and deeper every time he looked in her warm-brandy eyes. The thought of ever saying goodbye to her was anathema to him.