She felt alone.
Abandoned.
Frightened.
To calm herself, she closed her eyes and pictured her room at the ranch with its cozy furniture and friendly colors.
As soon as she closed her eyes, however, she was nodding off to sleep. She dragged herself to her feet, stripped off her clothes and tugged on her nightgown. With a prayer that things would look better in the morning, she crawled beneath the silk covers of the king-size bed and fell asleep.
SUNLIGHT SLANTING THROUGH an uncovered window awakened her the next morning. One bright beam fell on a sandstone sculpture of a Yorkshire terrier, curled on the marble hearth of the fireplace, so lifelike that for a moment she thought she saw it breathe.
She had always wanted a dog, but Ray wouldn’t have one in the house.
She bolted upright in bed and gazed around the room. Her memories were returning. Not clear, crisp images with names and identification, but feelings and impressions. She recalled, for example, that she had detested this room with its satin draperies and ornate furnishings.
Throwing back the covers, she rose and went to the closet, a walk-in the size of her Montana bedroom. Row after row of designer dresses and expensive shoes lined the wall. She had disliked the clothes, too. Like her bedroom furnishings, all the choices had been Ray’s.
Ray, her husband. Where was he?
Turning her back on the extravagant clothing, she hurried to the luggage she’d brought with her and pulled on a pair of jeans and a pale blue T-shirt. She slipped her feet into tennis shoes, tied the laces and headed for the door.
As she descended the wide staircase, she realized her memory of the house was returning. Downstairs at the end of the entry hall was a terrace where she and Ray had always had breakfast in good weather. Floating through the open French doors was the sound of voices, one male, one female.
Was it Ray? She wondered again why he hadn’t been there to greet her last night. He’d always been there, critically overseeing her every move.
Her heart thumped with jittery anticipation, and she sighed with relief when she stepped onto the terrace. Wade, not Ray, sat at the wrought-iron table. In his faded jeans, chambray shirt and scuffed boots, he looked out of place on the formal terrace, but he appeared unintimidated by his posh surroundings. Marie had served his breakfast and was filling his coffee cup. As Rachel approached, he looked up with a warm smile that made her heart flip-flop with regret that she was married.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
“Yes, and I’m amazed to find I’m starving.” She eyed the steaming blueberry pancakes he was devouring. “Any of those left?”
As if on cue, Marie returned, bearing a tray filled with pancakes, orange juice, coffee—and a large, bulky scrapbook.
“What’s that?” Rachel indicated the thick volume.
Marie set the dishes before her and wiped her hands on her apron. “Mr. Lacy sent it over. Said you were to look at it. He figures it might stir your memories before he meets with you at ten this morning.”
Intrigued, Rachel reached for the book, but Wade grasped her hand and shook his head. “Eat first. The memories can wait until later. Besides, I want to talk with you before I leave for the airport.”
“Leave?” Rachel dropped her fork in alarm. “You’re not really going?”
Wade looked around and shrugged. “I don’t belong here…”
Rachel couldn’t have agreed with him more. She didn’t belong there, either. But unlike Wade, she had nowhere else to go.
“And I have a ranch to run,” he added. “I can’t impose much more on Leo.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat at the thought of his departure, she dug into her breakfast. Her appetite, however, had disappeared. She sipped her juice and toyed with her pancakes before pushing her plate away.
“Please,” she said, “I know it’s asking a lot, but can’t you stay at least another day?”
He sighed. “You know I’d like to, but under the circumstances…”
“My memories are coming back in bits and pieces.” She suppressed a shudder. “It’s very unsettling, and I could really use a friend right now.”
Watching emotions scud across his face like storm clouds, she pleaded, “I have no right to ask you—”
“Ah, Rachel, you have every right. If you need me, I’ll stay.” His smile faded and he grimaced slightly. “I’d just rather not be around when Mr. Reid shows up. I think he’s a heel for not being here last night to welcome you home, and if I run into him, I’ll tell him so.”
“Thank you. I owe you a great deal.” She reached for the heavy volume Marie had laid beside her place. “I’d better get started if I’m to go through this before Mr. Lacy arrives.”
She pulled the book toward her and flipped open the cover. Snapshots stared back at her from the first page.
Familiar faces that made her smile with elation.
“These are my parents,” she cried. “I recognize them.”
“The people from the dream you had on the mountain?” Wade asked gently.
Remembering the frightening dream, Rachel nodded, and turned the page with a shiver. She knew what was coming.
“Here’s a picture of the house we lived in, and this one is of me and my dog, Scooty-poot.” A Yorkshire terrier like the statue on the hearth upstairs. “I was only about five years old.”
“Did you have brothers and sisters?” Wade asked.
She shook her head. “I was an only child.”
She turned another page and was flooded with memories and nostalgia. In the photo, she stood with her parents on the steps of a mountain cabin. “This was the last vacation we ever took together, at Casey’s Cove in the Smokey Mountains. Aunt Emily took me back there a time or two after my parents died, but it was never the same.”
On the following page was a yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline, “Plane Crash in Chicago Kills 129.”
“My parents died in that accident,” she told him, feeling the pain of loss again as if for the first time. “I was only six. My great-aunt Emily took me in and raised me.”
She turned the page. A studio portrait of a stiff, unsmiling woman glared up at her. “Yep, that’s Aunt Emily. I don’t think I ever saw her smile.”
Memory after memory cascaded into her consciousness, one tumbling over the other until she had difficulty making sense of them. The scrapbook helped her place her recollections in chronological order. “See that big Victorian monstrosity?”
Wade glanced obliging at the photo.
“That was Aunt Emily’s house. We lived there alone, just the two of us. The place terrified me.”
“I can understand why,” Wade said. “It looks haunted.”
“I thought it was. It was full of creaks and squeaks and bumps in the night. I wanted to sleep with a night-light, but Aunt Emily wouldn’t let me. Said it was a waste of electricity. She grew up during the Great Depression. It must have made her frugal.”
“Is this you?” Wade pointed to a picture of a young woman in a prom dress. Admiration glinted in his eyes, and she remembered that he’d looked at her the same way the night of the barn dance, the night he’d held her in his arms….
Rachel blushed at the path her thoughts had taken. “That’s me, right before the senior prom. Raymond Reid was my date.”
“You were beautiful,” Wade said, and she had to look away from the heat in his eyes. “You still are.”
His compliment touched her, but it was taking them in a dangerous direction. Without responding, she turned another page. “Wedding pictures. Ray proposed after the prom. We were married a year later.”
Wade’s eyes held a hungry look as he gazed at her bridal photograph. “Raymond Reid is a damned lucky man.”
Rachel flipped through a couple more pages. “That’s funny. I can remember Ray’s parents, the first house we lived in, the fact that Ray used to work for a courier company as a driver, but my memories stop there. This house is familiar, but I don’t rem
ember moving here.”
Wade whistled. “For a delivery man, he made a hell of an income to afford a place like this.”
Rachel frowned. “I don’t remember anything about money, either.”
Wade leaned closer, his eyes dark as if with pain. “Do you remember if you love him?”
“Ray? When I met him, I was just a kid, and I was crazy about him. Thought he was the handsomest man on earth and that I was the luckiest girl when he proposed. But now? It’s puzzling. When I try to recall my feelings for Ray, there’s nothing but this huge void.”
Wade glanced at his watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock. Maybe Mr. Lacy can fill in the blanks when he gets here.”
She closed the album without looking at its final pages. “I’m anxious to hear what he has to say.”
Carrying the scrapbook, she walked inside with Wade and down the long corridor toward the front of the house. The doorbell rang as they approached the entry, and Marie admitted Harold Lacy.
“We can talk in the study,” Rachel said, after they’d exchanged greetings.
“I’ll clear out while you two discuss business,” Wade said.
“No!” Rachel grabbed his arm. “Please. I don’t have anything to hide.”
Besides, she figured it would be easier for Wade to hear the facts from Mr. Lacy than for her to repeat them to him later. She knew that what she felt for Wade wasn’t one-sided. She’d seen the burning look in his eyes too many times to doubt that he cared for her. Wade deserved to hear the truth about her life as much as she did.
Wade’s mouth twisted into a crooked grin. “Are you sure there’s nothing to hide? Maybe there’s something you haven’t remembered.”
“I can vouch for Jennifer,” Lacy said in his cultured Southern voice. “There are no skeletons in her closet. If she has no objections to your sitting in on our conference, neither do I.”
With a shrug, Wade acquiesced and followed Rachel and Lacy into a study at the front of the house, but she could tell from the tension in his shoulders he was as anxious as she was about what Lacy had to say.
Rachel surveyed the dark, heavy paneling and leather furniture with a shudder. She’d always felt uncomfortable in this room. Ray’s room.
Lacy sat behind the massive desk, and Rachel and Wade settled in front of it in club chairs.
“First things first,” the lawyer said. “When Sheriff Howard informed me, Jennifer, that your identity might have been assumed by a Ms. Rachel O’Riley, I was alarmed. I immediately had my clerks check your credit card and bank accounts. I am happy to report that Ms. O’Riley, however desperate she may be to elude her ex-fiancé, is obviously honest. There has been no activity in any of your accounts since the day before the train wreck.”
“If she needs my money to escape him,” Rachel said, “I hope she’ll use it. I feel an affinity for someone trying to avoid a man she doesn’t love.”
“As well you would,” Lacy stated cryptically.
“And Larry Crutchfield is lower than a snake,” Wade said. “The woman’s well rid of him.”
“Despite your generous attitude, Jennifer,” Lacy said with a smile, “Ms. O’Riley will be unable to access your accounts. I had them closed immediately.”
“I wish her well,” Rachel said. “My memories of her are starting to return—a pretty, vivacious woman with amazing strawberry-blond hair and a smattering of freckles. I thought her overtalkative at the time. In retrospect, I believe she was just nervous, with Crutchfield on her trail.”
Lacy nodded toward the album she had laid on the desk. “Did you have time to peruse this?”
“I got as far as my wedding pictures and the first house Ray and I lived in. My memories up till then are clear. Afterwards is still pretty fuzzy.”
“Then let’s pick up where you left off,” the attorney said, “and see if the rest of your memory can be restored.”
He opened the album to the page where Rachel had ended her examination. “Shortly after you and Ray moved into your first house, your aunt Emily died suddenly of a stroke.”
Rachel nodded sadly. “I remember. As strict as she had been with me, she loved me. She was my last living relative. Her death left me totally alone.”
“What about your husband?” Wade asked softly, and Rachel smiled at him sadly. She knew what effort it had taken for him to ask the question, and how much he feared her answer. She wished she could show Mr. Lacy out, forget her past and lead Wade upstairs to the king-size bed—
“Raymond Reid.” Lacy made a tsking sound and shook his head. “At the time Emily died, I made a terrible discovery. Raymond Reid had a cousin who had worked in my office. Long before Ray met you, Jennifer, this cousin divulged to him the details of your fortune.”
“My fortune?” Rachel asked in surprise. “I don’t remember that.”
“When your parents died,” the attorney explained, “they left huge life insurance policies, with you as the beneficiary. Your Aunt Emily and I were named as guardians and trustees in their will. Your aunt was an astute investor. By the time you were a senior in high school, your trust had grown into several million dollars.”
Rachel felt as if she’d been socked in the stomach. “That much?”
“What did Rachel’s—” Wade broke off, catching his mistake. “Er, Jennifer’s fortune have to do with Ray?”
“Everything, unfortunately,” Lacy said sadly. “The man wasn’t interested in Jennifer. Only her money. Emily and I, however, were unaware at the time of his courtship that Ray knew of her fortune. No one else did except us.”
A muscle ticked in Wade’s jaw. “You’re saying this Ray married Jennifer for her money?”
“Most definitely,” Lacy said. “And his subsequent behavior proved it.”
“What subsequent behavior?” Rachel asked breathlessly.
The attorney gazed at her with sad eyes. “Raymond Reid was a very controlling man. Apparently afraid that someone else might steal you, and especially your money, away, he kept you on a tight leash. Dictated everything about your life—where you would go, what you would wear, how you would furnish your house, who your friends would be—”
“And I let him?” Rachel asked in horror. She noted Wade’s hands gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles whitened. “What kind of a wimp was I?”
“Keep in mind, dear,” Lacy said, “that when you married, you were only nineteen, all alone in the world and head over heels in love. Ray was older, bigger, stronger—and the only family you had. At first you gave in to his demands in an attempt to please him.”
“At first?” Rachel asked. “And later?”
The attorney cleared his throat. “You wanted a divorce.”
Wade leaned forward in his chair, and Rachel found breathing difficult. “Did I get it?”
“No.”
“Why not?” The entire conversation had taken on a surrealistic cast. She remembered vaguely the things they were discussing, but she didn’t feel them. It was almost as if they were talking about someone else.
“Ray refused,” Lacy said. “He threatened to kill you if you left him.”
“My God,” Wade muttered under his breath, but loud enough for Rachel to hear.
“And Ray?” she asked, fearing the answer. “Where is he now?”
The attorney stared at her with searching eyes. “You really don’t remember?”
Rachel shook her head.
Lacy took a deep breath. “Raymond Reid is dead.”
Chapter Fourteen
Rachel sank back in her chair. Her initial reaction was relief. She was free. She could marry Wade, if he still wanted her. Then her confusion returned. “Ray is dead? Why can’t I remember that?”
Lacy cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t remember his death?”
She shook her head. “I only vaguely remember this house. Nothing after that.”
“How did Mr. Reid die?” Wade asked quietly. Rachel could almost feel the dormant strength radiating from him, and was thankfu
l again that he hadn’t left her to handle these revelations alone. She wondered if he was as elated as she over her freedom, then realized with horror that she wasn’t free at all until she learned the manner of Ray’s death.
The attorney propped his fingertips together. “Let me back up a bit. It may help Jennifer remember.”
“Please,” Rachel agreed with a gesture that encompassed her surroundings. “Start with this monstrosity.”
“Monstrosity?” Lacy asked.
“This ostentatious house.” She caught Wade’s grin from the corner of her eye. Evidently he shared her assessment of the mansion. “Start from the time I moved here.”
Lacy nodded. “That was several years ago. Ray had wanted a larger house from the day you were married. You finally convinced me to release enough money from your trust fund to purchase this place.”
“I wanted this house?” she asked in disbelief.
The attorney smiled, and she felt a rush of affection for the old man. Uncle Harold. Her memories of him had returned in full, reminding her that he had been like a father to her since her parents’ death.
“You hoped,” Lacy said, “that if you gave Ray this house in the settlement, he would agree to divorce you.”
“Apparently Ray wasn’t buying that,” Wade said dryly.
Rachel wondered if Wade was thinking what she was, wondered if he wanted her as badly this minute as she wanted him. She was free to love him, but she’d have to wait for his reaction until Uncle Harold had finished his story.
“You’re absolutely right, Mr. Garrett. Raymond Reid was more avaricious and power hungry than any man I’ve ever met—and I’ve seen plenty of his ilk in my business. He didn’t want part of your wealth, Jennifer. He wanted it all.”
She shook her head slowly, trying to recall, but without any luck. “Why can’t I remember this?”
“We’ll call Dr. Sinclair,” Wade suggested. “Maybe she can explain what’s going on with your memories.”
Rachel shot him a look of gratitude, but had to turn away from the heat in his eyes before she forgot herself and embarrassed Uncle Harold.
“Excellent suggestion, Mr. Garrett,” the lawyer said. “Now to return to our saga. As the stock market boomed in the nineties, your fortune, Jennifer, grew geometrically. The more money you acquired, the less inclined Ray was to grant your divorce.”
Montana Mail-Order Wife Page 17
