“You don’t remember?”
“No.” Her expression said she expected bad news. “Am I going to hate this?”
“Could be.” He got up, strode into the bedroom and managed to find the dress among the rumpled bedclothes. When he returned to the balcony, Carly was sitting there as though she hadn’t moved, that same almost comical look of dread on her face. Tossing her the garment, he resettled himself on the lounge and watched her.
Slowly, she picked up the dress and held it in front of her. Her mouth dropped open, then she snapped it shut. “Oh, my.” She turned to gaze at him with a look of pure wonder. “I was wearing this?”
“Absolutely.”
“But, this isn’t a dress. It’s more like a...oh, what do they call them? A slip-dress, with a built-in push-up bra. Like in the Victorda’s Secret catalog. But...I would never buy a dress like this. I’d be too uncomfortable. I mean—”
“I know what you mean. But that’s what you were wearing. What did you have on when you met Richard for dinner?”
Clutching the dress to her chest, she thought for a moment. “My blue silk suit. A white blouse. A blue and green scarf.” She looked around her. “Where’s my purse?”
“You didn’t have one last night. This—” he reached over and fingered the hem of the dress “—this was all there was. I take that back. There was one other piece of clothing, a pair of silk, uh, panties, very tiny. But I don’t see them right now. Probably mixed in with the blankets somewhere.”
Setting the dress on the ice-cream table, Carly got up, turning her back on Nick while she faced the view off the balcony rather than look at him. Embarrassment warred with an odd sense of unreality. It was all too fantastic, too strange. Surely, soon, someone would snap their fingers and she would awaken from this nightmare.
She gazed sightlessly on what she assumed was the harbor, with its blurry outlines of boats and people. “So,” she said carefully, “I have no purse, which means no credit cards, no money, no ID, no glasses. And a dress I wouldn’t be caught dead in. What do I do now? Pray?”
“Go to the police, of course. It’s the smart thing to do. I’ll—”
“No!” She whipped around to face him; then, to cover her too-strong reaction, she tried a halfhearted smile. “I mean, why go to all that trouble? Let’s see what I—what we—can find out...” It hit her suddenly. Richard! She’d hate to think he had anything to do with this, but he might know something. It was a start. “Nick, may I use your phone?”
“Sure.”
“It’s long distance, but I’ll pay you back.”
He smiled, as though amused by her good manners. “Whatever.”
Apparently, Nick found her entertaining. At the moment, Carly didn’t care. Fired with purpose, she went through the door into the kitchen, snatched up the portable phone lying on the counter and punched in the numbers. Richard’s phone rang, then his machine picked up, announcing that he was unavailable and to leave a message.
“Richard. It’s Carly. I need to talk to you, and it’s really important. I’m in California. I’m at—May I give him this number?” she called out to Nick.
He ambled into the kitchen, holding the flimsy dress in his hand. “Sure.”
After reading the numbers off the phone, she pressed the off button, then stood there, thinking about what to do next. As though he could divine her thoughts, Nick said, “Anyone else you can call? Parents?”
She shook her head, still trying to come up with her next move. “Dead. One elderly aunt who would have a heart attack if I told her a story like this.”
“Friends?” He propped a hip against the counter and crossed his arms.
He seemed so large again, and she felt so small, so intimidated, standing next to him. Some of her sense of purpose faded in his presence, so she moved away, still carrying the portable phone. “I guess I could call Margie, my friend. Oh, that’s right, she’s in Europe. But she’s due back today. I was going to go with her, but I couldn’t afford it. Boy, do I wish I had.” She nodded, feeling more confident now, again determined to take action. “I’ll leave word for her, and maybe she’ll know something, although I don’t know what.” She sighed. “I wish I could just close my eyes and have the whole thing gone.”
“All of it?”
She could tell by the deliberate way he used the phrase that he was recalling the previous night, which made her recall the previous night, too. Despite her best efforts to resist him, she met his green-eyed stare. It seemed to penetrate to her very core and sent a delicious warmth spreading all through her. It was distracting. She had to fight him, had to resist the sudden feeling of sensual helplessness this man aroused in her.
“No, not all of it,” she said candidly, then hugged the phone to her chest for protection. “But I’d be really grateful if we could switch the subject for now. It confuses me.”
He didn’t respond immediately; instead, he kept his gaze on her. It was powerful, hypnotic. She thought he was going to ignore her request by taking the two steps that would put him right in front of her, that would make him close enough to put his arms around her, to kiss her.
And the crazy thing was, she wanted him to. Or, her body did. Her mind wanted no such thing.
“Nick,” she said weakly, but as the word came out of her mouth, he put his hand up to stop her.
“You’re right.” He nodded. “First things first. Look, I’ll hop in the shower while you call your friend. I’ll leave an old pair of sweats on the bed for you to wear.” One side of his mouth quirked up again. “Unless you’d rather wear the dress.”
She shuddered. “Definitely not. But then what?”
He pushed himself away from the counter and headed for the door to the living room. “We’ll go down to the station, get the wheels in motion.”
“I’d rather not.” It came out sounding too emphatic, and she knew it.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to face her, one black eyebrow cocked. “Hey, are you wanted for something, Carly? Do you have a record?”
“Of course not,” she said indignantly.
“Then what’s the problem?”
Jail cells. Bars. Locked doors. No way of getting out. Endless terror.
She fumbled for a reply. “I just meant my memory seems to be coming back in little bits and pieces. Maybe I’ll remember everything soon. You know, maybe there’s a perfectly innocent explanation—” She cut herself off before finishing the sentence. How silly, how utterly lame she sounded. Innocent? In that dress? With “tiny” panties the only undergarment? With masses of bombshell-blond hair?
She gripped the edge of the counter with one hand as the panic threatened to overtake her again. What had happened to her in those two days? Where in God’s name had she been?
Nick strode over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. His grip was gentle but firm. “Carly, the reason we’re going to the station is because they have computers there. We can find out if anyone’s reported you missing, or if your purse has turned up. Nothing major, I promise. Then we should probably go to the hospital, get you a blood test, find out just what kind of drug you were given and if there’s anything to worry about. It’s the smartest thing to do, trust me.”
Carly stared up at him. Trust him? Trust a cop?
Still, she had to admit, he had a point. When something like this happened, the logical move was to report it to the police. That’s what most people would do. Short of asking for a miracle, in which her memory would return in one swift instant—and dreading what she might find out if it did—it didn’t seem as though she had a lot of choice.
“All right,” she agreed reluctantly.
“Good.” He squeezed her shoulders, then dropped his hands and headed off again. “Give me ten minutes to shower and shave.”
Dispiritedly, Carly lifted the phone and punched in Margie’s number. Her machine answered, so Carly left word for her, too, to call her back at Nick’s. Then she walked slowly into the bedroom.
On the bed was a pair of bright purple sweats, with the logo Beavis Butts Heads written in white across the chest. She had to smile—how totally absurd. But then, this whole morning had been absurd, hadn’t it? She picked up the clothes. They were clean and well-worn. Without thinking, she buried her face in the shirt, breathing deeply. It smelled of Nick. If she allowed herself, she could get lost again in the memory of the night before with him. But she couldn’t, not now.
When she put on the outfit, the sweatshirt came down to mid-thigh, and she was able to roll up the bottoms above her ankles. Not too terrible, she thought, squinting into the mirror over his bureau. If you favored lost-looking waifs with questionable clothes sense.
No shoes, of course. She would have to do something about that. And she sure wished she had her glasses. She was okay for one-on-one talking to people, but beyond five or six feet, objects got increasingly hazy.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she glanced around the bedroom for the first time in daylight—with all that had happened, she hadn’t really seen it. The walls were white and almost bare, the few pieces of furniture were plain dark wood. Like the kitchen, there wasn’t a lot of personality to the decorating. But the bed was huge, taking up half the space. A brass headboard offered the only brightness in the room. It looked as though Nick had bought it all from a catalog or a showroom. Functional, without any homey touches.
Carly thought of her modest apartment back home. Its walls were packed with colorful prints and nature photographs. Each piece of furniture had been handpicked at secondhand stores and refinished by her on her days off. Chairs and couches were overstuffed, there were flowers everywhere, both on the fabrics and in vases. She was a homebody, and she’d made the place into a kind of nest, the first safe, real home she’d ever had. The sudden yearning to be there, and not here, rose in her chest and practically overwhelmed her.
“Stop it!” she said aloud. No. She would not give in to self-pity.
She heard the sound of the shower being turned on. Nick was in the bathroom, about to step into the tub. She started to picture his hand pulling aside the curtain, his tall, muscular, tan, naked body, lifting his leg—
Uh-uh, she told herself. Stop that. Out of the bedroom. Now.
She wandered into the living room and noticed a tied and folded newspaper on the coffee table. Yes, she thought. Get your mind off your troubles. Read about the world and its troubles. Much bigger troubles than hers.
Dropping onto the couch, she unfolded the thick Sunday Los Angeles Times to the front page. Her gaze roamed the headlines: an earthquake aftershock, a political scandal, a lottery winner. In the far right-hand column, under the title Late Breaking News, she read, Drug King Found Dead, then,
Peter “Pete” Skouras Demeter, reputed head of a worldwide drug syndicate, was found dead on his yacht in Marina del Rey shortly after midnight Sunday morning. He had been shot three times in the head...
Demeter? The name rang a bell.
The article went on, but Carly found her eyes drifting lower on the page to a picture of the dead man. It was a studio portrait of a male with swarthy skin and thinning dark hair. The smile on his face seemed more sinister than joyous.
As Carly stared at the picture, she felt suddenly dizzy; with her head swirling, she closed her eyes. An image came to her.
The same man is lying on a wooden floor. Half his head is blown away, while blood pools all around him.
Chapter 3
The panic started up all over again. She could feel it rising through her bloodstream, making her want to scream, to tear at her hair, anything to loosen the tight knot of nerve endings that seemed to define her very being.
A dead man. She’d seen a dead man.
Or had she? Had she made it all up? Maybe she was hallucinating as a result of whatever drug she’d been given. That was a reasonable explanation-wasn’t it? Her mind sought refuge in the concept, but her senses told her no. The picture in her head, with all the details, was all too real. Somehow, sometime, she’d seen this man, this Peter Demeter, dead, in a pool of blood.
But when? Carly closed her eyes again, trying to summon more details, such as what had gone before the picture, or after, or anything. But the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears was too strong. It drowned out all other noises, all other pictures.
She splayed her hand over her chest, as though its touch could actually calm her rapidly beating heart. Think, she told herself. If this image was of a real event, if she’d actually seen this man dead, then she had to have been there, either when he was killed or shortly after. She grabbed the newspaper and read the rest of the article. They’d found him on his yacht just after midnight; the neighboring boat owner had heard shots and summoned the police.
Nick had told her she’d come into the bar around midnight. So, Carly must have been on this yacht, must have been at the scene of a murder minutes before wandering into the bar. How and why, she had no idea. Her brain wouldn’t release any more pictures, no matter how hard she tried. Richard and dinner Friday night, then nothing until the image of a murdered man late Saturday night.
After which she had slept with a total stranger.
She almost laughed out loud, but held it back. And I used to wish for something interesting to happen to me, she thought. She’d been granted her wish. In spades.
She looked at the article again, but there were no other details. If she’d been on the boat, there must be traces of her still there. Would they find her fingerprints? Her purse? Her glasses? Maybe even her clothes, the suit she had worn to dinner with Richard?
Richard. Where was he? He hadn’t called back yet. Had he had a part in this? He’d always made such a mess of his life. What in God’s name had he involved her in now?
Murder, it seemed.
Who had killed Peter Demeter? Not Carly, she knew that.
But...how did she know?
Her mind, her basic nature, rebelled at the thought of shooting anyone. She balked at killing moths, for heaven’s sake. But then, she’d thought herself incapable of going to bed with a stranger, hadn’t she?
What she needed was more information.... She snapped her fingers. Of course. The television. There was one on the opposite wall. She’d find a news station.
Just as she was about to get up to turn it on, she heard the shower in the bathroom stop. Reality hit her with the cold clarity of an ice pack. Nick. She was in Nick’s apartment Nick, who had said he would help her, get all this cleared up.
Nick...who was a cop.
Nick, who was about to come out of the bathroom all dressed and ready to accompany her to the police station. If she told him what she’d just remembered, she was done for. His impression of her would change from amnesiac bed partner to a woman who was involved—somehow—in a murder. Nick had said he’d help her, but that was before. If she told him any of this, he’d turn her in. He’d have to, it would be his duty.
Run, she told herself. Move. Now!
As though being chased by demons, Carly vaulted up from the couch and dashed to the front door, but stopped before she got there. Money. She’d have to have some money. Running into the bedroom, she glanced at the top of the dresser, then at the table on Nick’s side of the bed. Men always dumped out the contents of their pockets before they took off their pants.
Sure enough, there they were-wallet, keys, money. She grabbed some bills and change, dumped them into a rumpled cocktail napkin lying next to the lamp, debated quickly with herself, then opened Nick’s wallet and took one of his credit cards. After stuffing everything in the pocket of her sweats, she reached for a nearby notepad. “Nick,” she scribbled, “I’m sorry. Will return everything.” Then, still barefoot, she dashed out the door of Nick’s condo, into the bright California sunshine.
After using his towel to rub a circle in the steam-drenched mirror, Nick took a moment to check his appearance. His face was clean-shaven, his hair still tousled from towel-drying it. He noticed a few scratches on his shoulde
rs and back, souvenirs of the night before. He smiled. The scratches didn’t hurt. Hell, they weren’t even very deep. Even in the depths of passion, Carly hadn’t actually caused him any pain. Now, having spent time with her this morning, he knew why.
She was one of those basically gentle types, innocent about the dark side of human nature, or, at least, the dark side of her own nature. It had been that innocence he’d picked up on the night before, that had drawn him to her in a protective fashion.
The smile left his face as he felt anger building toward the scum who had set her up. Because that’s what had happened, he was sure of it now. She’d been the victim of some kind of vicious stunt. Probably initiated by that ex of hers.
Just what had happened, Nick had no way of knowing, not yet. Had she been raped? There hadn’t been any bruises on her pale skin, no redness or signs of violence on her thighs or between her legs. In fact, when he’d entered her that first time, she’d been real tight. Like it had been a while since anyone had been in the vicinity.
As though it were on automatic pilot, his body responded to the memory of that first time. He shook his head ruefully. Innocent or not, Carly sure got his blood up. But he had to use the organ between his ears right now, instead of the one below his waist. She needed him.
All right, he thought, pulling up his briefs. Not raped—he hoped—but kidnapped and dressed up as a sex toy. Had she been involved in a cheap party trick? A trophy in some sort of game? Or had Richard sought revenge, a cruel payback for divorcing him?
Nick knew nothing about the guy except his first name. Was her last name—Terry, she’d said—his, or had she gone back to her maiden name? There was a hell of a lot about the lady he didn’t know.
But he sure didn’t like anyone taking advantage of innocence. His jaw clenched as he pictured what he’d do to whoever was responsible for this. Quietly. In an alley. Good thing he was temporarily out of uniform, because if he was still on active duty he’d have to be more careful about how he taught the guy a lesson. But a lesson he would learn, one he’d never forget.
While She Was Sleeping Page 5
