Her Secret Past

by Amanda Stevens

  Con and Amy took a booth by the plate-glass window that looked out on the street. A woman glanced inside as she walked by, then did a double take when she saw Amy. She was still looking over her shoulder as she hurried down the street, no doubt eager to tell someone of the sighting.

  Con muttered, “Maybe you’d like something a little more private.”

  “No, this is fine.”

  He saw her hands trembling and glanced up at her. “What really happened back there? You looked as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe I did. There was this man on the courthouse lawn. He was huge. I couldn’t really see his face, but he wore a baseball cap and denim overalls, and he pulled a little red wagon full of aluminum cans. I thought for a moment that I recognized him.”

  She’d looked scared to death, although she was trying to cover it now. He wondered if something more had happened that she wasn’t telling him. Amber always did have her secrets. He studied her curiously. “Frankie Bodine pulls around a wagon like that.”

  “Frankie Bodine?” A look of alarm flitted across her features, then was gone. She shook her head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me. Does he live around here?”

  “Not in town. I think he has a place way back in the sticks somewhere.”

  “Did I used to know him?”

  Con shrugged, still watching her. “You knew of him, I guess. But he’s always kept to himself.”

  “Then why would I remember him?” she asked, almost to herself.

  An uneasiness Con couldn’t explain came over him. He leaned slightly toward her. “Did he bother you back there? Say something out of line to you? Because if he did, I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

  But even as he said the words, Con was asking himself, What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?

  Amber had never asked for or wanted his protection in the past. Why would she do so now?

  “That isn’t necessary,” she said, as if reading his mind, and Con swore under his breath as a waitress appeared at their booth.

  “Evening, folks.” She took a pencil from behind her ear. “What can I get for you?”

  “A glass of iced tea, please,” Amber told her.

  “A beer for me. Whatever you have on tap.” After the waitress left, Con said, “Sure you don’t want something to eat?”

  “No, tea is fine.”

  An awkward silence fell over the table, during which time a dozen thoughts flashed through Con’s mind. What the hell was he doing here with her? Why couldn’t he leave her alone? It wasn’t as if they’d shared some great love affair back then. They weren’t star-crossed lovers, forced apart by circumstances. He and Amber were never meant to be together. It was as simple as that.

  But he couldn’t deny she still had a powerful effect on him, even after everything she’d put him through. And now that she was back, without a memory of what had happened to her, without a memory of him, Con was torn by a myriad of conflicting emotions.

  He still wanted to hurt her, as she’d hurt him, almost as much as he just plain wanted her.

  As if sensing his dark thoughts, Amy said almost tentatively, “I haven’t seen you down by the river in a few days.”

  Had she been looking for him? Con tried not to read too much into her words. He shrugged. “I’ve been out of town on business.”

  “I heard you were working for a development company in Memphis.”

  Con frowned. “Who told you that?”

  “James Birdsong.” Something flickered in her eyes, a tiny little flare of doubt, as if maybe she’d said more than she meant to. As if maybe she didn’t want him knowing she’d consulted an attorney.

  He glanced at her coldly. “I wouldn’t trust James Birdsong with my phone bill, let alone anything legally challenging.”

  Amy’s brows raised. “Why? What’s wrong with him?”

  For one thing, he used to hang all over you, Con thought grimly. For another, he was the kind of lawyer, and suitor, that Judge Tremain had always relished—overly eager and easily controlled. “I think he may have an ethics problem.”

  Amy looked suddenly alarmed. “You mean he may be…indescreet?”

  “Let’s put it this way. I wouldn’t trust him with my deepest, darkest secrets if I were you.”

  She looked as if she wanted to challenge him, then she shrugged. “I’ll keep that in mind.” As if eager herself to change the subject, she pointed to a flyer that had been tacked to the wall near their table. “Why are they having a Fourth of July barbecue on the third of July?”

  Con barely glanced at the poster. “The fourth falls on a Sunday this year. Most people around here think that beer and fireworks are a little too unseemly for the Lord’s day.” A judgment call, he reckoned, but then, folks around here always had been big on judging.

  “Is it a big event?” Amy asked him.

  “By Magnolia Bend standards, I guess.”

  “Do you go?” Her voice sounded hesitant, almost shy.

  Con frowned. “I usually skip it.”

  “Is that where we got the fireworks that year?”

  And suddenly, without warning, the old memories flooded through him. The bright green fire of the roman candles against the night sky, the sparkle of moonlight on water and his arms around Amber, his lips nuzzling her neck as he whispered to her how much he loved her, how much he wanted her. What he wouldn’t do if he couldn’t have her…

  The waitress returned with their drinks, and as she placed Amy’s tea before her, she said, “Say, aren’t you Jasmine Tremain’s big sister? I heard you were coming back, but I never expected to see you in this dump. Wait’ll I tell Cherée.”

  Amy gave a shaky little laugh once the waitress had departed. “Being back here is a little like waking up in Oz. All these people know who I am, but I don’t have a clue.”

  Con took a drink of his beer, trying to clear his mind, but it was like walking through cobwebs. The memories clung to him. “So what was your life like down in Houston?”

  “It was…quiet. Ordinary.” She gave another little laugh, but her tawny eyes were clouded. “All those years, I thought I was Amy Calloway from Iowa. I lived my life accordingly. I did what was expected of me. I went to college, made good grades and after graduation, I got a job with an advertising firm where I did quite well, I guess. But looking back, I didn’t…flourish. I never really threw myself into anything. My work. My friendships…” She paused, and something that might have been guilt flashed in her eyes. “There was always a part of me that I held back, and now I realize why. I think I was scared to find out about my past. All that time, I should have been trying to discover who I was and where I came from, but instead I was…hiding.”

  “From what?”

  “Myself?”

  He lifted a brow in skepticism. “Do you really believe that? Do you really think you stayed away all those years because you couldn’t face being Amber Tremain?” She’d once relished the role. She’d been spoiled, impulsive and wild, getting away with a bad reputation because she was a Tremain. Whereas Con had never gotten away with much of anything, though God knows it wasn’t for lack of trying. His old man used to beat him with his belt buckle at the slightest provocation, but rather than subduing Con, it had made him want to fight back. So he’d joined the army, where he could.

  “So what about you?” Amy was saying. “What was your life like these last nine years?”

  He shrugged. “Quiet. Ordinary.”

  She laughed at his imitation, and a soft glow lit her beautiful eyes. She looked very young, all of a sudden, as if the past nine years hadn’t touched her. Con felt as though he’d crammed a hundred years of living in that space, and he knew it showed in his face. He would be thirty next month. He looked at least ten years older than that.

  “Jasmine told me you were in the service,” Amy said. “The special forces.”

  “I was in the army for a while. And then I got out and came back here.�
� That was all she needed to know. All he intended on telling her.

  “I heard your mother was sick for a long time. Is that what brought you back to Magnolia Bend?”

  Another taboo subject. Con shrugged. “Partly, I guess. And partly because I had nowhere else to go. When I found out how sick she was, I decided to stick around for a while.”

  Until after she was gone, Amy thought. He didn’t say the words, but she knew, instinctively, that he’d stayed in town to be with his mother, so she wouldn’t be alone when she died.

  Of all the things Amy had learned about Con—that she’d married him to spite her father, that he’d once been accused of murdering her, that he’d been a trained killer by profession and that he was now a ruthless businessman—none seemed as dangerous to her as the knowledge that he’d come home, wounded and changed, to be with his dying mother.

  The other Con was cold, remote, almost untouchable, but this Con…

  She lifted her gaze to his. “Why did you stay on, after everything that happened? Why are you still here?”

  “I guess I still don’t have anyplace else to go.”

  Amy realized suddenly, devastatingly, that she had nowhere else to go, either. She couldn’t go back to Houston. The city seemed foreign to her now, the job she’d once enjoyed hardly more than a distant memory. Her friends and business associates—had she ever really known any of them? And Reece?

  He was her one regret, not because she’d left him, but because she’d hurt him. But sitting across the table from Con, a man who was hardly more than a stranger to her, Amy had never been more certain of her decision.

  The two of them had shared something once, something more than Con was willing to admit. Amy’s amnesia didn’t weaken the potency of those emotions, didn’t dilute the power of the past, which hovered over them like a storm cloud waiting to burst.

  “Can I ask you something else?” she said.

  He glanced at her.

  “Why did you keep our elopement a secret all these years?”

  “You were the one who wanted to keep it a secret. After you were gone, I didn’t see the point in telling anyone.”

  Even if it had helped clear the suspicions surrounding him? He’d been that willing to keep her secret? “Why did you never divorce me? You would have had grounds. You probably could have even gotten an annulment.”

  “There didn’t seem much point in that, either.” His tone was cool, measured. “I wasn’t ever going to marry again.”

  Amy’s heart turned over. “You could be that certain at nineteen?”

  “Some things never change.”

  Their conversation seemed almost surreal. Amy couldn’t believe she was sitting here talking about divorce and annulment, when a few days ago, she hadn’t even known a man named Conner Sullivan existed.

  She tore her gaze from his and studied her glass. “There must have been someone else. In nine years?”

  When he didn’t say anything, she glanced up to find him watching her with eyes that had seen too much of a dangerous world and now gazed upon her with a glimmer of emotion that might have been longing.

  He reached across the table and took her left hand, holding it up. In the light from the window, Amy glimpsed the faint white circle left by her engagement ring, but it was too late to snatch her hand away.

  “I guess there was someone for you.” His voice was edged with something that made Amy tremble.

  She removed her hand from his. “I was engaged for a while, but it didn’t work out. I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “Why not?” The glint in his eyes hardened. It didn’t seem so much like longing now as…what? Anger? Resolve? Or just plain hurt?

  Amy chose her words carefully. “We weren’t right for each other. I knew that all along, I think, but once I found out about my past, I realized what a mistake marrying him would be. How could I expect to make a marriage work when I didn’t even know who I was?”

  “Not to mention the fact that you were already married,” he said.

  “But I didn’t know that.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Amy thought about the countless pictures she’d drawn of Con, the nights she’d lain awake, wondering about him. Had there been some ethereal bond, some spiritual communication with him that had told her she wasn’t free to marry Reece? Was that why Con had invaded her dreams?

  Or was she reading too much into a teenage marriage that would probably have ended long ago if she’d stayed in Magnolia Bend? Maybe James Bird-song was right. The real reason Con had never divorced her was purely monetary, and not some sort of fatal romanticism Amy wasn’t even sure existed outside of storybooks.

  “Maybe a part of me did remember,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t marry Reece. But I’ll never be sure of that, or anything else, until I get my memory back.”

  “Then you’d better get it back, hadn’t you?”

  Amy stared up at him, surprised by the harshness of his words. “It isn’t that easy. I’ve tried to remember.”

  “Have you?” He leaned toward her slightly. “Do you really want your memory back, Amber?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Anger shot through Amy. “Are you saying you still don’t believe I have amnesia?”

  He shrugged. “No, I believe that, all right. What I don’t believe is that you’ve tried as hard as you say you have to get your memory back.”

  “Oh, and you’re an expert suddenly on amnesia?” She barely recognized the tone of her own voice. She sounded hard, aggressive, like Amber Tremain.

  “I’ve done some reading,” Con told her.

  He surprised her again. She gazed at him almost resentfully. “And?”

  “There may be something we can do to jolt your memory.”

  Amber’s heart started pounding inside her. The way he was looking at her…the way he’d said “we.” With one simple pronoun, he’d joined them together. Made them a pair.

  Before she could comment, he said, “We could try to reconstruct that night.”

  Their wedding night.

  How far was he suggesting they go?

  She lifted her chin, gazing at him almost defiantly. “Why would you, of all people, want to help me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because of what you told me last night.” She studied him for a moment, wondering if his motives were sincere. Could she trust him? Did she dare? “You said the reason I married you was to get back at my father. If that’s the case, I don’t understand why you’d want to help me. Why would you even care what happened to me?”

  “Because you’re not the only one whose life was affected by that night.” His jaw hardened as he turned to stare out the window. “I’ve spent all these years wondering if you were really dead, or if…”

  “What?”

  He still wasn’t looking at her. His gaze, cold and remote, was focused on the street. “I’m sure you’ve heard about your old man’s accusations.”

  And suddenly it hit her why Con was still angry with her after all this time. Why her return had generated such contempt in him. If she wasn’t dead, then he’d been forced to believe she’d run off of her own free will, leaving him to face her father’s allegations, a whole town’s blackest suspicions. He’d even been arrested, and she still hadn’t returned to set the record straight. She’d let everyone in Magnolia Bend believe him a murderer.

  Or so he’d thought.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered, almost too herself. “I couldn’t have known.”

  Con turned to face her, his features implacable. “Maybe you didn’t know,” he said. “I’m willing to give you that. But it still doesn’t change what happened. I got away from here as fast as I could that summer, but my mother stayed on. This was her home, such as it was, and she had her pride. She wouldn’t let them drive her away. But having a son suspected of murder did things to her. The whispers, the stares. A
ll that took its toll.”

  On him, as well, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He had his pride, too.

  Tears stung behind Amy’s lids suddenly. She wanted to reach out and take his hand, but she didn’t think he’d welcome her touch. Not now, maybe not ever.

  “It’s like this, Amber. Your disappearance changed a lot of lives, for better or for worse, and I don’t think either of us will ever have any peace until we know the truth about that night.” His dark gaze challenged her as his voice deepened. “That’s why I want to help you. That’s the only reason why.”

  * * *

  AMY’S HEAD SPUN in confusion on her way home. She’d stayed in town far longer than she’d meant to, and now twilight had fallen. The sky deepened to purple, and the first star twinkled on the horizon as she followed the blacktop road through the cotton fields.

  A sense of impending doom settled over her. Con had promised to help her unravel her past, but Amy knew she would have to be careful. She was vulnerable in a way she never had been before, and her feelings for Con were turning out to be far more complicated than she could ever have dreamed.

  Shivering in the growing gloom, she tried to concentrate on her driving. A huge tractor loomed on the road in front of her, and she slowed, waiting for a chance to pass. When the double yellow lines vanished on a stretch of pavement, she pulled into the other lane and accelerated around the tractor, easing back into her own lane when she could see the vehicle’s lights in her rearview mirror.

  Glancing back again, she saw another set of headlights dart around the tractor. But instead of pulling into the lane behind Amy, the driver hit the gas, and a dark, four-wheel-drive truck, with huge tires and blacked-out windows, shot around her. Almost instantly, the vehicle’s taillights disappeared from her view.

  After a few moments, Amy could no longer see the tractor lights, either. There was no one in front of her, no one behind her. She was all alone on a dark, unfamiliar road, and as the strange scenery whipped past her, she began to grow uneasy. What if she had a flat tire or her car stalled? How long would she have to wait before help came along?

  But then, as she rounded a curve, she saw the cherry glow of taillights ahead of her. Somehow the knowledge that she wasn’t completely alone made her feel a little better, and Amy accelerated, trying to catch up to the lights.