Virgin without a Memory

by Vickie Taylor

  “Why not, when you have such a quaint old doc that still makes house calls?”

  If she hadn’t been about to crawl out of her skin at his poking and prodding, she might have laughed. No one who knew Gigi described her as “quaint.”

  She winced as he worked his fingers around her scalp, tangling in her hair. She wasn’t used to rough handling; she wasn’t used to any kind of handling at all. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

  When he reached the site of the lump, his hand went still. His brows drew down into a frown. Then he slowly circled the area with his fingers.

  “I—I don’t need a doctor. I just don’t remember exactly what happened.”

  He slid his hands back up to cup her face, looked carefully into her eyes, studying intently as if he could see the truth there. “Have you been sick since then? Nauseated? Dizzy?”

  For a moment, she almost thought he cared. “No.”

  “But you don’t remember anything.”

  “No.”

  He pushed her away and started pacing again. “It’s just a little knot. Not even enough to cause a concussion. Certainly not enough to cause amnesia.”

  And that, she thought, was that. At least as far as he was concerned. People didn’t realize what a fragile thing memory was, or how easily it could be lost, much less how terrifying that loss could be.

  “And exactly what do you know about amnesia?” she asked, her pulse galloping out of control. “Have you ever experienced it? Have you ever had an empty place inside you so wide and black that you couldn’t see over it or around it or through it? So deep that you thought it might suck you in and take what little bit of yourself you had left?”

  He stared at her, unblinking.

  “Of course not,” she said, and turned away.

  “Even if I believed you, that doesn’t explain why you helped me last night, or why you didn’t turn me over to the sheriff.”

  “I wouldn’t have left a dog out in that storm.”

  “And after?”

  “I told you it was because—”

  “Don’t say it! Don’t tell me it was because I asked you to. Not now.”

  “I helped you because you were Mike’s brother.”

  He slammed his fist into the wall just inches from her ear.

  “And because... because as frightened as I was—as I am—of you, I’m more afraid of this empty place inside me. So yes, I took you in and I bathed you and tended your injuries. Because you were his brother, and I thought you might know what had happened. I thought you might be able to tell me...” Her words died out, her energy gone as she realized what a fool she’d been. Eric Randall didn’t know what had happened to his brother. He was searching for answers, just like her.

  Eric’s shoulders hunched. The pain lines on his face had pulled tight again. “You’re saying you helped me because you thought I could tell you what happened that day?”

  She nodded hesitantly. “I want—no, I need—to know what happened as much as you do. And if you weren’t so obsessed with the idea that I’m responsible for whatever happened, you’d realize that the only chance either one of us has of figuring out what really happened is each other.”

  He seemed to stop breathing. “Are you suggesting that we look for the truth together?”

  “You don’t want the truth. You want revenge.”

  He stepped back and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m not convinced my brother is dead. But if he is, you’re right,” Eric finally admitted, his eyes bleak. “I would want revenge. But I’d settle for justice. I won’t be judge, jury and executioner. But what about you? Are you sure you really want the truth? What if he is dead, and we find out you had something to do with it?”

  The question hung like a noose around her neck. Could Mike have been on the mountain that day? Maybe. Somehow she had been responsible for what had happened to him, although she couldn’t see how, or why. Maybe she’d been the one at fault twelve years ago, too. Lord knew, some people in town still whispered that she was. And she knew, with the kind of certainty that only comes from experience, exactly what kind of violence she was capable of, if pushed far enough.

  She faced him, her head held high. Guilty or not, she had to know. “I don’t think I had anything to do with what happened to Mike. But if I did, then who better to make sure I don’t get away with murder than the victim’s brother? I’ll tell you everything I know about that day. In return, you tell me exactly what you’ve learned. Maybe between us we can piece together the truth. Deal?”

  Her heart pounded as she waited. Tempting an angry man with a promise of information probably made her six kinds of a fool, but she’d risk anything for the truth, even her life. What kind of a life was it, anyway, if it could be chipped away, an hour, a day, a week at a time?

  Eric studied her, his expression unreadable. When he finally spoke, his voice was just as flat. “All right, Mariah Morgan. We have a deal.”

  Chapter 4

  Eric wanted to hate her, but he couldn’t. Lying on the narrow bed with his heels hanging over the end, he closed his eyes. His body rolled on waves of pain, but it was manageable now, not like before, when it had threatened to overwhelm his senses. He could focus now, think clearly. Only every path his thoughts wandered seemed to circle around to one place: Mariah Morgan.

  He didn’t know what part, if any, she had played in his brother’s disappearance, or why she was hiding the truth from him with this amnesia story, but he couldn’t see her as a killer. Besides, Mike was six foot one. At ten years Eric’s junior—just twenty-one years old—he was too young to have much sense, but he was in his prime as an athlete. What did he think, that little Mariah Morgan had snapped Mike’s neck with her bare hands? Or that she’d moved his body down the mountain and thrown his motorcycle over a cliff?

  She was no murderer. Eric supposed he’d just been looking for someone to blame, when in truth, be knew exactly where the blame lay—squarely on his own shoulders. If Mike was dead, then Eric had let his family down. Again.

  He swallowed hard. Mike wasn’t dead. There was no proof. No proof.

  A light rap sounded from the hall. Mariah poked her head around the door, then shouldered her way through, balancing a steaming bowl and a soft drink on a tray.

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  He shook his head tiredly.

  “I brought you some soup.”

  He wanted to tell her to take it away. He didn’t want her food or her service, but his stomach rumbled when his nose caught a whiff of vegetables and herbs. Something deeper rumbled when, in the wake of the soup’s aroma, he caught the scent of soap—something plain, not flowery or cloying. She’d showered, he realized. Her hair was still damp at the ends, and delicate tendrils framed her face.

  He spooned up a mouthful of soup, quickly diverting his thoughts from one hunger to another. “Doesn’t taste like canned soup.”

  “It’s homemade. The vegetables are from my garden.”

  He reached for the soda, and she picked up a straw and extended it to him. He stopped, disarmed. What kind of a woman thought to bring a straw to a man who had all but called her a liar?

  He was supposed to be angry, but she made it hard, perched on the edge of the bed clutching that straw, looking so...what?

  Small? He knew from experience what a punch that strong little body of hers packed.

  Helpless? Hardly.

  Then what?

  Virginal. That was it. Every time she looked at him, her eyes held a wide-eyed combination of curiosity and caution, like she’d been thrown in the cage with some rare new species on a trip to the zoo. Her innocence called to mind something primitive deep inside him, triggered some instinctive male need to protect. And to possess.

  A growl built in his gut just thinking about it.

  Even in the feverish throes in which he’d spent the better part of the last night and day, he’d felt it. When she’d brought him relief in the form of a cool drink and leaned over him so
that her flannel work shirt fell forward, exposing the tops of her soft, fleshy mounds and the lacy edges of her bra, he’d felt it. And when her cool fingertips had brushed the hair from his forehead and her thumb gently swept away a stray drop of water from the corner of his mouth, his body had reacted in a way that was hardly possible, much less practical, in his condition.

  He’d looked forward to those brief interludes in the pain. She’d been his angel of mercy, or so he’d thought.

  He studied the seductive arch of her eyebrows, the curve of her breast covered by her soft flannel shirt, the firm thighs molded by old denim, worn so thin it was more white than blue.

  No, Mariah Morgan was no angel. And if she’d spent much time with his brother, chances were slim she was a virgin, either. Much less a virgin without a memory.

  She stood up. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Yeah. I need to know what you and Mike were doing up on that mountain. You promised to share, or don’t you remember?”

  “It can wait. You should rest—you’re hurting.”

  “It hurts to breathe, not to listen. How did you meet him?”

  She sat again, balanced precariously on the edge of the mattress as if afraid to encroach any farther on his territory. Or maybe just plain afraid of him.

  “I was out riding.” With a shrug she added, “Taking pictures and enjoying the spring weather. I saw him on his motorcycle on the hillside below me and stopped to watch for a while. I snapped a few shots. He spotted me and came up to talk. I shared my picnic lunch and...”

  Eric spooned up more soup. The taste was amazing. Like nothing he’d ever had, even in restaurants that boasted the freshest of ingredients. “And what?”

  “We talked. Later he asked me to come back in a few days. He wanted to take more pictures.”

  She seemed troubled.

  “Was that a problem?”

  “I have a lot of work around here. I didn’t think I’d have time.”

  “Mike usually got what he wanted.” Especially with women.

  One corner of her mouth curled up and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “He was very persistent.”

  “So you agreed to meet him?”

  She nodded slowly. “Thursday.”

  The day he died—supposedly died.

  She slid off the edge of the bed and backed up a step, seeming more comfortable with a wider space between them. She picked up his jeans and underwear. “I’ll wash these for you.”

  “You said you were taking pictures. Where are they?”

  “I gave the film to him to have it developed.” Cocking her head, she frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “I didn’t see any pictures or film lying around in the cabin he was renting, but I haven’t had a chance to go through everything yet.” He slurped another spoonful of soup and was surprised to see that he’d finished the bowl. “Tell me what happened that day.”

  She took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the bed again. His thigh brushed hers, and she slipped closer to the edge, away from him. “I was supposed to meet Mike near Fannin’s Run—a dry gorge on the southwest slope. I got there early and climbed up some rocks to take pictures while I waited. And then I think...I think I heard a motorcycle, and fell.”

  Her fingers reached for the lump on her head. “I woke up here, in my own bed, in the middle of the night. My head was pounding and my stomach hurt. I couldn’t remember what had happened or even how I had gotten home.” She lowered her head.

  Eric’s heart thumped painfully as his lungs reached ever deeper for oxygen. He couldn’t believe her amnesia story, even though while she’d talked he had looked into her amazing eyes as deeply as he had ever looked at anyone and hadn’t found a trace of guile, a hint of deception.

  Which was why he had to test her. Because a woman with eyes like those could pull a man under in no time. Have him believing all kinds of lies. She could wrap her fist around his heart and then squeeze it dry, leaving nothing behind but a handful of scorched, iron-red dust when she left.

  He had to know exactly what she’d been to Mike, and what he’d been to her. And he knew only one way to find out.

  “Were you sleeping with him?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  Eric read the struggle for calm in the depths of her violet eyes and wondered why she bothered, why she didn’t just slap him.

  “I hardly knew him!”

  “Yet you left your work and rode all the way up a mountain to meet him.”

  “To take pictures.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he asked me to.”

  He sneered. “Tell me, Mariah Morgan, do you do everything anyone asks you to?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Weren’t you afraid, being alone with a man you hardly knew way out in the wilderness?”

  “Mike never scared me.”

  “He never came on to you? Pushed you?”

  “He flirted.”

  “And that didn’t frighten you?”

  She tilted her chin defiantly. “Maybe I liked it.”

  “I doubt that.” He could tell by her eyes that he was right. Mariah Morgan wasn’t a woman who was used to flirting, or any other sexual games from what he could see.

  It didn’t matter. Eric didn’t want to flirt with Manah. He wanted to taste her, to feel her. He wanted to take all that fire inside her into himself.

  With his index finger he lifted her chin. She held her lower lip between her teeth. When she released it, the lush bud flooded with color, darkening from summer strawberry to deep red wine, so intoxicating he knew he could get drunk with just one taste.

  He tried to tell himself that this was only a test—that—he didn’t really want her. And it was only half a lie. Because even though he did want her, he didn’t want to want her.

  He slid his hand around to the baby-soft hair at the back of her neck and urged her down.

  She stiffened. “Please don’t.” The warm light in her eyes dimmed. Bright violet faded to cold gray ash.

  Damn, she was sensitive. Could she feel what he’d been thinking?

  He dropped his hand. A hot rush of shame washed through him, eating his gullet from the inside out like someone had poured acid down his throat. What was wrong with him? He’d never, ever thought about using a woman like that—in some sort of sick test. Even if he’d never found sex to be the soul-shattering bonding of mind and body that romantics claimed it to be, at least he’d always known that when he made love to a woman it was a mutually gratifying affair. He took pride in the fact that he always, always gave as much as he took.

  How far he’d fallen, and how fast.

  The acid infusion of self-loathing spread through his body, threatening to bum away the last shreds of his selfrespect. The way she was looking at him, like he was some serial killer, didn’t help any. He had to stop this now, while he still could

  “Where is the gun?” he asked.

  She flinched as if he’d pinched her awake. “In the kitchen.”

  “Get it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think you need it.”

  She shook her head in confusion, then apparently understood. Her frown deepened. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  Slowly, with his eyes fixed on hers, he opened the drawer of the nightstand beside him and groped inside. When his hand withdrew, he held six dusty brass cylinders. “For the record, the flour can is not the most original place to hide the ammunition.”

  Her eyes bleached to an even lighter shade of gray, almost the color of ice. “You had the bullets all along?”

  He nodded.

  Her tongue lashed across her lips and his eyes followed its path with far too much interest.

  “Why didn’t you reload the gun?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.” He laid the bullets in her palm and curled her fingers around them. “Take them. Put them back in the gun and ke
ep it with you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot you?”

  He allowed one comer of his mouth to curl up. “A woman doesn’t bring a man homemade soup and offer to wash his underwear and then shoot him in his bed.”

  She clutched his crumpled clothes against her body as she stood. “I’m still not afraid of you.”

  He could fix that. As she walked toward the door, he reached out to the nightstand and thwacked his palm on the flat surface as hard as his sore ribs would allow him. Mariah jumped and pivoted toward him at the same time, dropping the laundry. She blinked hard, then her chest lifted in a starving breath.

  “That was mean.” Embers smoldered in her eyes as she bent to pick up his clothes.

  Mean? She ought to be cursing like a sailor.

  “Go to bed, Mariah Morgan,” he said softly, shaking his head. “And take the gun with you. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “I hope so.” She turned and left. On her way out the bedroom door, she threw his shorts in the general direction of the bed. “In the meantime, you can wash your own darned underwear.”

  He almost smiled as the door slammed behind her. Yes, he definitely liked her better all fired up.

  Mariah tiptoed out of the house, grateful for the first blush of dawn lighting the eastern sky. Morning meant an end to another night’s suffering, an escape from her dreams.

  She cringed at the creak of the door as she eased it shut behind her. She’d been meaning to oil those hinges for months.

  With each step down the drive, gravel crunched under her boots. Funny how everything sounded so loud when you were trying to be quiet. The mares in the pasture spotted her. Molly, the ringleader, trotted down the fence line, nickering her usual morning greeting.

  “Oh, no, girl, shh,” Mariah whispered.

  She hoped to spend a couple of hours in the bungalow before she faced Eric again. A lot had happened in the last two days. She needed some time alone to work through it all. In the bungalow—her private place—she could channel her anxiety into something productive. Something beautiful, at times. There was no better therapy in the world.

  She glanced back to the house, still quiet and dark. She could throw the mares some hay and still get to the hut for a while. Opening the door to the barn, she stepped inside to get the mare’s oats from the feed room. Another round of whinnies greeted her from the horses in the stalls. Mariah groaned, knowing she’d have to feed them, too. She began scooping grain into her wheelbarrow. Manipulating the wheelbarrow in a tight circle, she turned to take the oats outside but stopped short.