by Lori Wilde
Santa had been right. It was a “her.” Late twenties. Unconscious. Nasty laceration on the back of her head, which was almost white from gray dust. Plaster, not soot. A lot of plaster that probably saved her life. While the quiet hiss of the unit pumped air into her lungs, he measured the CO2 blood levels. He was relieved to see the red LEDs flash almost normal. With the ambulance doors shut, there were so few sounds that Eric could watch her color, the chalky gray slowly receding to show signs of recovery.
She wasn’t from Pine Crest. He would have known the face. Eric knew all the females in Pine Crest, had slept with a number of them at one time or another. As her breathing steadied and she began to regain consciousness, her hands clawed at the oxygen mask. He noticed the huge wedding ring on her finger. He didn’t sleep with the married ones, because there were some lines he wouldn’t cross, unlike his father.
He brushed at her hand, gently placing it back down at her side, and wide blue eyes stared, nervous, scared and red-rimmed from the fire.
“It’s all right. You’re in an ambulance. We’re going to Pine Crest General.”
Her mouth opened and closed, trying to talk. Too much smoke could be hell on the throat. “You don’t need to say anything,” he told her. “It might hurt.”
Once again the lips moved. “No hurt talk.”
“What’s your name?” he asked, re-checking the pulse. It was accelerated, but not alarming.
She opened her mouth. Closed her mouth. “I’m...I’m...” she started before trailing off.
“I’m...”
He shook his head. “Don’t talk. Seriously. I’m not the chatty type. You won’t offend me at all.”
“I’m...” She closed her eyes and frowned.
“You’re in pain?”
She nodded.
“Your head?”
Another nod.
Eric smoothed back the dusty hair from her face and then examined the back of her head. The plaster dust had done the same work as a bandage, and dried blood was matted to her head. Not exactly high fashion or Johns Hopkins, but it had done a fine job clotting the wound, not so great at calming the fear.
It was there in her eyes. Her pupils were dilated, her gaze fused with his as if she needed his strength. Big, sloppy tears of more than pain welled at the corners of her eyes. He could read the fear there as well, and he wished that he could take away her pain and take away the fear. It wasn’t quite the cool efficiency that he was so proud of. Not that he needed to worry too much, because once they admitted her to the hospital, his job was done. Over. Kaput. That was the beauty of EMS. Standard operating protocol: treat, transport and take off. Once she was admitted to the hospital, he’d never see her again. Not a problem, because yes, he reminded himself, she belonged to somebody else.
But what had Santa told him? That she was running away. That Eric was supposed to help her. Not that he was going to believe Santa Claus. But what if she was in trouble? Did she really need him, or had Santa been messing with more than a little pixie dust? At that moment, with her wide eyes chained to his, he could feel all her messy emotions rolling through him, like a Vulcan mind meld.
Oh, yeah, Henry would laugh about that one.
But not Santa. Santa wouldn’t be surprised at all, and Eric, who didn’t believe in Santa, didn’t believe in messing in other people’s lives, found himself deciding to help her. Because she needed him, this woman with the pleading eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asked, because he wanted to know. He wanted to know her first name, her last name, where she lived, and what she was running from. Suddenly, Eric was full of questions, just as curious as the proverbial cat—the one that got killed.
Her brows pulled together, her eyes closed, and when she opened them up, the pain was back, worse, as was the fear.
“I...don’t...know.”
* * *
THE HOSPITAL ROOM was white. Too much white. White curtains, white sheets, white walls, white tile. It was so white that it hurt her eyes, or maybe it was the construction crew that was pounding in her brain. They needed color in this room. Bright yellow curtains, or maybe a cobalt blue.
When she tried to sit up, the room started to spin and she fell back in the bed. It was only a few inches, but it felt like twenty stories onto brick. And the jackhammers in her head were back.
Ouch.
“The doc said you have a minor concussion. Not sure why they say minor. I bet it hurts like hell. But you’re here. You’re safe.”
It was the voice, the sandpaper voice from the ambulance. Her eyes felt heavy, like two grand pianos were balanced on top of each one, but she opened them anyway, because she wanted to see the face.
It was almost familiar to her, especially his eyes. Cement-gray eyes, and just as hard. He was sitting in a corner chair, a plastic thing...white, of course. And he looked tired. And wired. Like when you stayed up too late and wanted to sleep but couldn’t sleep because there was music playing and people were laughing and you weren’t supposed to stay up late, but you couldn’t look away.
He tried to smile at her, the corner of his mouth lifting, but he didn’t do it well. She wasn’t sure why he was unhappy. He looked healthy, no minor concussion, no jackhammers, and to top it all off, he probably liked the color white. She experienced a weird desire to hit him, and she wondered if that was from the headache, too. Probably.
Deciding all that anger wasn’t helping her head, she glanced down, focusing on the newspaper on the floor at his feet. “Pine Crest.”
“You remember that?” he asked, leaning forward, elbows balanced on strong thighs. He was still wearing the white medic’s shirt from last night, but there were black smudges across his chest. He didn’t belong in such pedestrian clothes. His perfectly proportioned frame needed something elegant and sophisticated. A tuxedo. He would be hot in a tux. Whoa. Waves of heat skimmed over her nerves, and she wondered if headaches inspired lust, too. If she was lucky, this was nothing more than a fever.
The cement eyes were looking at her curiously.
“What?” she asked.
“You remember where you are?”
“I’m at the hospital,” she answered, surprised at the idiotic question because he looked very smart.
“Pine Crest. You remember Pine Crest?”
She blinked, trying to place the name. It was there in her mind, but she didn’t understand why it was there. “Not exactly.”
He leaned forward. “Yes or no?”
Not a patient man, which didn’t bode well for his bedside manner. Of course, medics weren’t required to have bedside manners. They only carried patients to the hospital and then went on to the next sick person. Except for this one. It was nice that he had stayed on to be with her. Assuming that he had stayed on to be with her.
“Why are you here?”
“Paperwork. The state likes to know who rides in the ambulance so they can bill you, or your insurance company. They’re not particular.”
Oh. It was only business. She had hoped that it was something more. She closed her eyes because jackhammers didn’t belong in the brain. And now there was a hammer in her chest as well. Not just a headache, but a fever and a heart attack, too. God, she was going to be lucky to walk out of this hospital alive.
“And I made a promise to take care of you.”
Slowly she opened her eyes, one at a time, in case his words were a feverish hallucination. However, there was a sexy flush on his cheeks and she didn’t think she would be hallucinating flushes. Other things, yes. A passionate tango down the hospital hall, slipping champagne in her IV bag or throwing rose petals on the floor of the zero-threshold accessible walk-in shower. These were the sorts of hospital fantasies she would have created, not an awkward blush...or the way the cement eyes had softened, but only a bit.
“I don’t remember you promising to take care of me.” That, she would have remembered.
“You don’t remember much.”
“I remember the fire. And the h
eat. It was hot, smelting hot, like it was the end of the world, and the jaws of hell had opened to devour everything in their path.” She could still feel the heat on her face, and the flickering flames of the fire, and the fear...knowing that each breath might be her last.
“Did you see how the fire started?” he asked, ignoring the high-drama parts, and moving on to the mundane. She had thought he would have appreciated her reliving the terror of her last moments alive—but no. He was probably practical, which she supposed was a good quality in a paramedic.
When she drew in a breath, it wasn’t so easy, and she frowned.
“You saw something?” he prodded.
“No. It hurts to breathe.”
“Sorry about that. There was a four by four on your chest. That and the piece of wall plaster kept you alive.”
“A four by four?”
“A big post.”
She scoffed. “I know what a four by four is.”
“How?”
Then she blinked, trying to orient herself in the past, but nothing came to her mind. No pictures, no names, no memories. Nothing. “I don’t know.”
“You were banged up from the wall. Lots of bruises. It’s not going to be pretty for a while.”
Bruises? That explained the pain in her chest. She pulled the hospital gown away from her skin, and glanced down to see two particularly great breasts completely ruined by the ugly mass of purple that blanketed her torso. Damn. No plunging cleavage anytime soon.
“Don’t worry. Take your time. Heal. Your memory will come back.”
It was nice that he believed that it was her memory loss that was bugging her. But she hadn’t gotten that far. Right now it was the little discoveries. Relief that she had a killer body. That her brain still worked. It felt good. Powerful. Freeing. She wanted to explore that freedom. She wasn’t sure that she wanted her memories back. What if they were average? Or worse than average? What if she was boring? What if she worked in—God forbid—insurance? Somehow the bruises, the headaches, the tubes in her arm were preferable to the other, and she wasn’t sure why she didn’t want to think about who she was. It wasn’t fear, like being in witness protection, or running from the Mafia. Instead, it was the low thrum of anxiety, the fear of being discovered for who you really are. But again, these sorts of personality quirks weren’t what she was going to confess to the generous man who had just promised to take care of her. These sorts of personality quirks were what drove men away from her. “Maybe it’s better if I don’t remember.”
“You have someone back home who won’t be happy if you never remember.”
“How do you know?”
“You had a wedding ring on when they pulled you out.”
A wedding ring? Wouldn’t she remember a husband, a family, a wedding? Walking down the aisle with a twenty-yard train, and a string quartet playing the wedding march? The dress was vivid in her mind, a fitted waist, a scallop of lace over her chest, a diamond-studded veil. The dress would have cost a fortune. Over twenty thousand if done right. What if she was rich? She didn’t feel rich. Or married. “I should remember a husband.”
“Maybe you don’t want to remember him.”
She met his eyes, tried to read his meaning, but wasn’t sure. He was being deliberately vague. He liked doing that, teasing her with things just out of reach. “Don’t say that.”
“You’re right. Odds are you’re happily married, traveling to a strange town for the holidays, getting caught in a deserted house and almost killed. I completely get that.”
Sarcasm was never pretty, especially since she was the victim-amnesiac-chick with the sexy body. Men were supposed to really go for that. “Are you always like this?”
“Yes,” he answered with the sort of self-aware smile that comes from a man who knows his own personality quirks, and really doesn’t care what the world thinks about them. But people always cared. At some level, even when they pretended not to care, what the world thought always mattered.
“So how is it that you promised to take care of me? It seems out of character.”
He laughed, and not in a happy way. “It is.”
“Forget about the promise. Go home. Get some sleep. You’re officially off the case.” She jabbed at the call button next to her bed. “I hurt. I think I want to be alone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix everything.”
“No. But I’m worried about you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You’re alone. You were scared last night. You don’t remember, and what if you’re running away from something?”
“Like the Russian Mafia or a drug cartel?” She closed her eyes, drew a blank on any guns, drugs or the IRS. “I don’t think so.”
“Statistically it’s very unlikely it’s something that dramatic. Probably you had a fight with your husband. That’s why women run away.”
“You had a lot of them run from you, did you?” she teased.
“Not a one.”
“Not very smart, are they?”
An older nurse poked her head in the door, the pink flowered scrubs a happy change from the suffocating white walls. “How are you feeling?” Then she turned to the man in the chair. “Eric, you shouldn’t be here.”
Eric. His name was Eric. Eric Marshall. She didn’t know why she knew his full name. The night of the fire, she must have read it on his badge. “I’ll leave,” he was saying, unfolding himself from the chair, and she realized he was taller than she had assumed. He didn’t carry himself like other men, he didn’t stride, or pose. Instead, he always seemed to want to fade into the walls, except a man like that never could.
“Goodbye, Eric. Have a nice life.”
He moved to the door, giving her an odd look. Not angry, not insulted, more tolerant than she would have expected. “I’ll be here after dinner.”
The nurse swallowed her laugh and unwound the blood-pressure cuff from the stand. “Doesn’t sound like a good idea, Eric.”
She wasn’t sure what they meant, but she noticed the look of warning that the nurse shot the man. “You don’t have to come back. I’ll be great.”
She knew he felt responsible for her, and she wasn’t sure why, and it irked her. She knew he desired her, and she wasn’t sure why, and it thrilled her.
He looked at the nurse. “Paperwork. You ever tried to turn in a PCR without the patient’s name?” Then he turned to her and shrugged. “Sorry.”
And he didn’t look sorry in the least.
2
CHLOE SKIDMORE.
It had to be. She was older. She was a helluva lot skinnier, but the run-on mouth hadn’t changed. The wild imagination hadn’t changed either.
So was she faking the memory loss? Fake amnesia would have been exactly the sort of high-drama tactics that Chloe used to love, but Eric didn’t think so.
Chloe Skidmore.
Damn.
Her father had been the caretaker of the Price Mansion for nearly thirty years, a sort of English butler wannabe who drank too much and kissed too much green-backed ass. But not Chloe. No, that was one female who had never met a member of the town’s first families that she wouldn’t try to out-fox. Which would have worked great in a bigger place—where people didn’t know Chloe—or didn’t know Buddy Skidmore, her dad. But in Pine Crest, all the kids knew Chloe, knew that she had as much kick as a one-legged mule. And so it was written that Chloe Skidmore had been blown off every day that ended in y. Not that he was going to feel guilty, because it was Chloe’s mouth that got her in trouble, not Eric. Her lush, cherry-ripe mouth that had always opened a little bit too far.
While Eric drove to the ambulance building, he wondered what had brought Chloe back to Pine Crest. Revenge? Enough to burn down the old mansion? No. The cops had already cleared her, because whoever had started the fire had removed the accelerant.
Maybe it was the husband.
The husband.
Damn. In his triple-X fantasies, he could i
magine that pale body wrapped around some lucky man. The way she had wrapped around him that one Christmas twelve years ago in a first-class stupid move; he had sworn her to secrecy after their night in the wine cellar of the mansion. Lots of guys would have bragged about sex—lots of guys including Eric—but a man couldn’t brag about being with Chloe, because Chloe was different.
Chloe was fat.
Not that she hadn’t been hot. At sixteen, with the snowflake skin, the bodacious breasts and the cherry nipples that had budded to life under his tongue, lots of guys had joked about getting with Chloe. Nobody had, except one.
His cock remembered that night like it was yesterday, and he glanced at the car next to him, feeling a set of all-knowing eyes watching him, but there wasn’t anybody there. Only his conscience was at work.
Was there anything worse than a guilty conscience with a hard-on? No, Eric didn’t think so. His foot hit the accelerator, needing to move past this.
A car horn blared.
Eric slammed on the brakes.
The mayor was driving the tiny red Toyota, glaring at him as if he were nuts.
Because he was nuts.
He flicked a halfhearted wave of apology, then glued his eyes to the stoplight, because if he wrecked the ambulance, Henry would never let him live it down.
Once safely back at the ambulance building, Eric parked the rig in the bay, and adjusted his still-aching privates. Inside, the day crew was playing “Halo III.”
“Tracy resigned. Sucks for you.” That was from Lily, a skinny high-schooler who loved drama, especially when blood loss was involved. She was going to go into nursing. Eric figured it was better than becoming a serial killer. “She left the holiday decorating manual in your box.”
Eric frowned, knowing that, yes, he was screwed, but not wanting to go down without a fight, especially to a girl. Christmas decorations were not the job of the captain of the ambulance corps. They were the job of the hospitality secretary. A job relegated to the most junior member, like Lily for instance.
Not that she would want it, because every year the Pine Crest Ladies Auxiliary made Christmas decorations and gave them to the corps. One year’s worth of decorations would have made it okay, but no, they owned forty years’ worth of decorations. They had boxes of cottonball snowmen, most missing their balls. And who could forget the hand-painted ceramic Santas with American flags stamped on their bag o’ presents? The gold, spray-painted angels had held up well because apparently spray-paint was the world’s best preservative. When all the boxes were unpacked, the ambulance building turned into the showplace of Crafty Holiday Hell.
