While the people around me laughed and shouted out funny remarks and went quiet for poignant photographs of funerals and newborns, I sat in silence, hands balled in my lap.
Scott Marshall had what everyone longed for: love, a happy family, memories to be proud of. All the things that I might have, somewhere, with someone else.
But as long as I was hiding out with Drex pretending my life just started last week, I’d never know.
As I watched film of Baptisms and European vacations, one thought kept pounding through my head. I was a coward. A coward who wanted her sexy little fantasy to go on forever. Who wanted to forget that anything existed but right now.
I glanced at Drex, who was consumed in the film along with everyone else. There were video snippets of him and Scott at openings and publicity events, and Brooke was always in the background or on Drex’s arm. He looked in his element, surrounded by other good-looking, successful people. And Brooke was one of them. She might not be the best at her job, but she had absolutely nothing to hide. And with her long legs and raven hair, she looked amazing standing next to Drex.
What did I have to offer him? Nothing but a pile of lies and an unknown past. The future was even murkier. If things continued like this, we’d always need a story, a load of crap we told people so they didn’t think we were crazy.
I felt Drex’s strong, reassuring hand on my thigh. My body responded instantly, every nerve flaring at his touch. As we sat here, I might have a family like Scott Marshall did, but they had no idea where I was. Or they’d lost track of me years ago. Maybe I was a hole in someone’s life, an empty space that would never be filled.
And what if – my heart spasmed at the thought. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Whatever had happened to me might have happened to someone I loved. We might have been victims of a crime, or a terrible accident. It could have separated us, or even – killed one of us. If it was severe enough to affect my memory, there was telling how bad it had really been.
Or…maybe we were criminals ourselves. Wanderers, preying on the innocent and trusting. I sounded educated, but there were plenty of well-spoken con artists out there. Maybe I had no partner and I was a one-woman crime spree, stealing and manipulating my way around the South. No wonder I could steal food and tie up truckers like a pro. One day it had caught up with me in the Texas desert, but even with amnesia I’d managed to avoid capture.
And now here I was, dressed to the nines among Houston’s wealthiest citizens, a thief in a thousand-dollar dress. And Drex was the most believable part of my disguise.
No wonder I didn’t want to know the truth. The possibilities were endless, and awful. They might be better than I feared, or at least as bad.
But there was only one way to find out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Something wrong?” I whispered.
“No,” Jane said. “Nothing.”
Nothing? Right. I knew nothing when I saw it, and this was definitely something. Her hands were trembling and she was nibbling at her plump bottom lip as if she wanted to tear it open.
Maybe tonight was too much. I’d thrown her into a black tie event and expected everything to go just right, because that’s what I was used to now – things going right, because I worked hard and wanted them to.
“I’m sorry about Brooke,” I said. “I didn’t think she’d interrogate you like that.”
Jane shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. I should have been there with you.”
“You had people to talk to. It’s fine.” She smiled tightly and pushed back her chair. “I’ll be right back.”
Getting up abruptly, she walked off toward the restroom. Her slim, bare shoulders looked pale against the glittering black of her dress. She glanced back at me for a second, then turned left. I knew from many nights at Scott’s house that the guest bathroom was to the right.
I didn’t know where she was going, but I wasn’t about to lose sight of her.
“Excuse me,” I said, and got up. Luckily, everyone at the table was absorbed in conversation and hardly noticed that Jane and I were abandoning our passion fruit soufflés.
By the time I caught up with her, she was halfway out the front door. “Hey – where are you going?”
“I need some air.”
She didn’t even break stride. I followed her down the wide steps to the brick walk. Several yards away, two valets stood talking by a podium hung with car keys.
I took Jane’s arm gently. She shook me off and whipped around like a cornered lioness.
“Whoa,” I said, backing off with my palms raised. “What’s with the attitude?”
“Attitude?” she shot back. “I just need some space, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all? You weren’t about to take off?”
She laughed. “Me?” she said, spreading her arms wide. “As you’ll remember, I’m completely under your thumb. I couldn’t take off if I wanted to. I don’t even have two dollars for the bus.”
Here it was, the shitstorm I’d been waiting for. “Why would you want to take the bus? Is there another place you’d rather be?”
“No. But there’s another place I should be, and we both know that.”
“We don’t know anything, Jane. You might have a family, or you might belong here with me. That’s what we need to find out.”
She took three steps, stopped, and turned around to face me. “Is this really worth damaging your reputation? You have a public life, and public is the last thing we need.”
Anxiety seethed in my gut. “This isn’t about me and you know it. You’re the one having doubts.”
Suddenly, tears were streaming down her face. “Of course I’m having doubts. You saw everyone in there with their families, their husbands and wives. How do you think that makes me feel?”
I dropped my head back. All I’d thought about was how proud I was to show Jane off. I hadn’t thought about how it was affecting her.
I looked at her, feeling as selfish as I ever had. And that was saying something. “I’m sorry. I know it’s been tough.”
“You don’t know,” she said sharply. “I haven’t even told you.”
“You haven’t told me what?”
She threw her arms up. “Everything. How much I try to keep from thinking and feeling. I love being with you, but… it isn’t right, Drex. We can’t keep going like this.”
My stomach bottomed out and I wanted to throw something hard into something breakable. This was how it always ended up. I gave and gave, and in the end I got screwed. One thing I’d learned way too many times – sometimes it was better not to give at all.
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind,” I said. “So what’s your plan? Where are you going to go?”
“Drex…”
“No, really. I’d like to know what you’re going to do. You want to be with me, but you can’t because you might have a husband. But you don’t know and you don’t want to find out. Which leaves us in total limbo.”
Her face twisted in disbelief. “Us?”
“Yes, Jane, us. You’re not alone in this anymore.”
With a long sigh, she sat down on the curb in her dress. Chin propped in one hand, she stared straight ahead.
I sat beside her and took off my jacket. “Cold?”
“No,” she said. “Thanks.”
Minutes passed. A group of three came out, smoked cigarettes, and then went back into the house.
I watched Jane’s beautiful face until she finally spoke. “It’s time,” she said in a resigned voice. “It’s been time for days, actually.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “What is it time for?” I asked.
When she looked at me, her eyes were resigned. “To get in that Town Car and take it where it’s probably never been before.”
I must have been having the strangest dream of my life.
It was surreal to see Jane, with the clothes and manner of a movie star, in a dingy police station surr
ounded by cops. They were all in love with her, from the skinny blonde rookie to the barrel-chested detective in his mid-sixties with the gray handlebar mustache. It wasn’t just her story, either. She could have been reading from a cereal box and they’d have been standing in a circle around her, riveted to her every soft-spoken word.
After he listened to her, the detective brought us into a small, windowless room and asked her some questions. A little while later, a petite woman wearing a gray suit joined him. His name was Souter and hers Hughes. Apparently, these detectives didn’t have first names, or they weren’t telling us what they were.
I sat on a concrete bench bouncing my leg, ready to crawl the walls. The police were just as clueless as we were. How could nobody know anything, ten days into this? How could an amazing woman drop into a Texas border town without even a trace of a past?
But there it was again – that powerful feeling of relief. She was still mine. And the longer I had her, the harder it would be to let her go.
Jane answered their questions with a patience I’d never had and never would. I sat watching her, admiring how serene she was, even when the police started digging and sounding suspicious.
What had happened in the three days before I’d found her? How had she survived? Where had she gone? Over and over again, the same questions posed twenty different ways.
So this was why she’d avoided the police. It wasn’t just her run-in with the trucker, which she hadn’t mentioned and the detectives knew nothing about. It was the way she was being treated right now.
She knew how the story sounded. There were crazies out there who faked their own disappearances and kidnappings. In some ways, memory loss seemed even more far-fetched, like something that happened in crime novels and overactive imaginations.
After an hour of responding in a cool, even voice, her patience started to fray. It was late and the lights were glaring in her face. If I hadn’t spent the last week with her, I wouldn’t have known she was about to snap. She wasn’t under arrest, so why did it feel like she was?
“Yes, for the third time,” she said quietly, but her eyes were a venomous shade of blue. They brought her water and a can of soda she didn’t touch.
“Usually in cases like this, the family files a missing persons report,” Detective Hughes said. “Sometimes with runaways and prostitutes, relatives won’t know they’re gone for –”
“I’m not a prostitute,” Jane broke in.
Hughes sat back and sighed, her forehead wrinkling. “With all due respect, Ma’am, how do you know?”
Jane gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I wasn’t dressed like one, to start with.”
The detective shrugged. “That’s not much to go on. Prostitutes dress pretty much like the rest of us on their down time.”
Jane’s smile was cold. “So let me get this straight. You’re saying no one’s looking for me because I’m a hooker?”
“No. I’m saying it’s a possibility we need to consider.”
“Well, it’s fucking ridiculous,” I said. It was the first thing I’d said in half an hour. They all turned their heads to stare at me. “I mean, isn’t it? Look at her. Listen to her. She’s obviously not a whore who works the truck stops.”
“And even if I were,” Jane said, looking back at the detectives. “Does it make a difference? I’m trying to find out who I am. If I’m somebody I wish I weren’t, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Detective Souter laced his thick fingers across his stomach. “We can send around your photograph and description, but we can’t make somebody want to find you. I’m sorry.”
“Could someone be looking and we just don’t know?” Jane asked. “Maybe they went to a rural police station, or no one would listen. There might be a misplaced report on somebody’s desk.”
“Might be,” he said, with a vague shrug that made my fist itch for contact with his cheek. “We can’t rule anything out.”
“You know,” Detective Hughes said, “you can always publicize this story yourself. Every TV station in the country would pick it up. A woman who looks the way you do? Reporters would run with it.”
Jane’s jaw tightened and she started shaking her high-heeled foot. She couldn’t have been signaling “no” more emphatically if she’d screamed it out loud.
“That’s out of the question,” I said. “We’re not going the tabloid route.”
“Don’t be so quick to say no,” Hughes said. “It just might work.”
“It might. And it would be a nightmare, no doubt.”
Jane slid her eyes from one detective to the other. “So, publicize my story. That’s all you can offer me.”
Souter shook his head slowly, as if Jane just weren’t getting it. “Look, we’ve found bodies that nobody’s ever claimed. A few of them kids. Still breaks my heart when I think about it. You’re lucky to be alive given what you’ve told us tonight. I know it’s tough, but try to see the upside if you can.”
She glanced at me and in that split second, our intense connection crackled and burned in the air. This was the upside – us.
It might be all we had, but it mattered. A lot.
It was dangerous and risky and neither of us knew how it would turn out. And maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I’d left everything reckless behind years ago, and now I had a taste of it again. A piece of the impulsive, live-by-my-wits shark I’d thrown aside when I became a respectable businessman.
I’d forgotten how much I liked living on the edge. And the edge was even more exciting with Jane by my side.
Eventually, they ran out of repeated questions and garbage advice. Detective Hughes left and Jane went to the restroom, leaving me alone with Detective Souter.
“Funny how you met her,” he said, closing the file in front of him. Jane’s file.
“Yeah,” I said. “Not something that happens every day.”
He scraped back his chair and stood up. “She really saw a doctor?”
“Yes. Twice.”
“And they found nothing at all, huh? Weird.” Shifting from foot to foot, he dropped his voice. “Listen, uh – does her account of things sound credible to you?”
I took a step toward him. “Credible?”
“You’re the one who found her. You’ve spent what, ten or twelve days with her?”
“Yup. About that.”
“And I gather the relationship has been… romantic?”
“What gave you that impression?”
“I read folks for a living, and you two aren’t fooling anybody.”
“We’re not trying to,” I said flatly. “And to answer your question, yes, she sounds credible. You didn’t see her walking down the street in Chimayo, the way she looked. You can’t fake something like that.”
He gave me a hard little shrug. “You’d be amazed how easy it is for some people.”
If he implied she was lying one more time, I was going to fuck him up. “I’m sure it is. That’s not what’s going on here.”
“Funny, no problems at all with her short-term memory. Just the memory that lets her play little-girl-lost with one of the richest guys in the state.”
“She’s not playing anything, especially me.”
Souter gave me a doubtful smirk. “You sound awfully confident, considering you haven’t even known her two weeks.”
“What can I say. I’m pretty good at reading people, too.”
He grinned. “I bet you are, successful guy like you. I’ve read about you in the papers. You got a real empire, don’t you?”
His slimy tone more than pissed me off. It made me want to throw him to the concrete floor and rub his face in all the shitty, cynical ways he was wrong about Jane.
“It’s a business like any other,” I said.
“Is it really? Imagine that.” He gave me a clammy handshake and walked off, cowboy hat tipped back. Someday, I hoped to hell I got the chance to knock it off his head.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The shark
didn’t retreat when Jane and I got home. He was hungrier and hornier than ever, and the last two hours had only inflamed it.
It wasn’t just that I wanted to give her pleasure, I had to show her how much she was wanted. Goddamnit, she wasn’t alone in the world as long as she had me.
I pulled off my tux jacket and tie, leaving on the shirt and pants. I’d never wanted to lick a woman so badly. After the tease of tasting her earlier in the bathroom, I had to go down on her. I had to make her climax very loudly in my mouth at least once or I’d never sleep. Of course, turned on as I was, I probably wouldn’t sleep anyway.
“Come here,” I said, patting the edge of the bed. “Now.”
She sat. In her slinky dress and stilettos, she’d never looked better, even if she had just spent two hours in a police station. The second our eyes locked, I felt it – that serious spark that flamed in my gut. I didn’t feel this way for anybody. Anybody except Jane.
She was strong, smart, beautiful, and she needed me. The thought made me so achingly hard I almost groaned out loud.
But I had control of myself – barely. Raising a hand to her cheek, I stroked her velvety skin. She closed her eyes and kissed my palm, making my blood roar and my possessive instinct erupt.
This was intimacy. A woman giving herself to me. A woman with nothing left to hide.
What I usually got was nervous, dolled-up girls telling me what they thought I wanted to hear. Turning themselves inside out trying to impress me, when what I wanted was something real. What I wanted was this.
Maybe Jane belonged to somebody else. A woman of her caliber wasn’t usually single for long. But every day that passed, I felt more like she belonged to me.
Her breath was hot against my hand. “Thank you for coming with me tonight,” she whispered.
I kissed her, soft and slow. “Of course,” I said. “I’m here. You know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
I knelt down on the carpet in front of her. “Good,” I said. “Now, lie back.”
With a long, quivering sigh of surrender, she stretched out on my bed like a sensual little cat. Lifting her dress around her thighs, I hooked my thumbs over the strings of her panties and pulled them off over each pretty high heel.
Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) Page 16
