by Gina Wilkins
“You’re afraid she’ll ground you?” he asked, lazy amusement in his morning-rough voice.
“No, of course not. She treats me as an adult—I just think it would be easier for all of us if we don’t let this get too complicated.”
“‘This?’” he repeated, his hands doing incredibly wicked and wonderful things beneath the sheets.
He was obviously in a good mood this morning. “You know what I mean,” she said. “I’m trying to plan what we’re going to do.”
“You sound just like Molly when she’s hatching one of her schemes,” Sam teased. “Always more complicated than it needs to be.”
Serena went very still. “Molly?”
He was still concentrating on her breasts. “Mmm,” he said absently. “Shane’s little—”
“Shane’s little what?” she asked with quiet urgency.
He lifted his head with a frown. “What?”
She pushed herself into a sitting position, pulling the sheet up with her. “You said something about Molly. Shane’s little…?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “I think I was going to say sister.”
“Do you remember them?”
“I—” Rolling onto his back, he stared at the ceiling. “No. Maybe I did remember them for a moment, but it seems to be gone now.”
“Completely gone? There’s nothing left?”
He continued to gaze upward as if he could find answers there. “I can almost see their faces. A man—tanned, brown hair, blue eyes, a darker blue than my own. And a teenage girl. Red hair. Big, bright eyes. A smile that lights up a room.”
“They sound nice.”
“I think they are—if they even exist,” he added in a growl, rolling to sit on the side of the bed.
“Of course they exist. They’re obviously memories—friends or relatives. People who mean something to you.”
“Maybe. I’ve got to get ready for work.”
“You’re going to work now? Sam, you could be on the verge of a breakthrough.”
“And I could be on the verge of a killer headache,” he replied. “That’s what usually results from trying to push too hard to remember.”
“Did you tell Dr. Frank about those headaches?” she asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“I told him. He put it in my chart for the neurologist to study.”
“So you’re just going to work.”
“Right. Maybe more memories will return, maybe they won’t, but Bill Pollard’s going to want his ham and eggs and coffee.”
Serena sighed and pushed a hand through her tousled hair. There were times when she just didn’t understand this man at all.
Sam went through the motions of his job with almost mechanical efficiency that day. Business was brisk, and the atmosphere in the diner was pleasant and friendly. Though he doubted that waiting tables was his usual job, he actually enjoyed his stint here. He’d made friends and had felt useful and productive. He would miss being here when he was lying on a couch in some shrink’s office or sitting in a padded cell or wherever they stashed patients with Swiss-cheese minds.
The people he’d recalled that morning—Shane and Molly, whoever they were—seemed to indicate that his memories weren’t lost, only suppressed. And that they were beginning to surface. At least, that was the way Serena seemed to interpret it.
Maybe she was right. By this time next week he could be back in his old life, working in whatever job he usually held, interacting with people who were only fuzzy images to him now, answering to a different name. Maybe he had loved that life. Maybe he would again. But he suspected he would always miss this place.
“Are you doing okay, Sam?” Marjorie asked at one point during the lunch rush.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, wryly amused by her dramatic stage whisper. They had agreed not to tell anyone else about his amnesia—at least, not yet.
“You let me know if you need anything,” she said, patting his arm on her way to her post at the cash register. Both the gesture and her tone were quite maternal.
Thinking of his suspicions that he’d had a less than ideal childhood, he wondered what his own mother had been like. Marjorie Schaffer was exactly what he would have wanted in a mother, had he been given a choice.
As the time drew nearer to closing, Sam glanced at the glass front of the diner to see if any stragglers were on their way in. He froze for a moment when he spotted a man standing on the sidewalk outside. Tall, straight, rather stiff—buttoned down, he thought. What were the odds that Sam had seen him before, at the Independence Day celebration?
On an impulse, he started to move toward the door. Maybe this guy could answer a few questions…
“Hey, Sam. Can I get some coffee here?” someone called.
Hesitating for only a moment, Sam turned toward the kitchen. He was still on duty—and he didn’t know what he’d have said to the guy, anyway.
By the time the front door was locked and the Open sign flipped around to the Closed side, whoever Sam had spotted outside appeared to be long gone. He hadn’t come inside; he seemed to have been looking the place over.
Watching him? Sam couldn’t help wondering.
It was his turn to haul the garbage bags out to the Dumpster in the alley behind the diner. Swapping jokes with his co-workers, he gathered the bags in both arms and stepped out the back door. The door closed behind him.
It must have been instinct that made the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stand on end. There hadn’t been a sound. His reflexive flinch made the blow that was intended for his head fall across his shoulders, instead.
He hit the ground, then rolled, ignoring the pain, gathering his strength. He wasn’t sure whether he’d had a chance to fight back last time he was attacked, but he wouldn’t go down easily this time.
The man he’d spotted on the Fourth of July stood over him, holding a steel bar. He swung it again at almost the same moment Sam recognized him, the vicious blow aimed for Sam’s face.
Sam rolled again, feeling the whoosh of air as the bar missed him by less than an inch. He bumped into one of the plastic garbage bags he’d dropped, halting his momentum, trapping him while his attacker lifted the bar again.
With a grunt of effort, Sam kicked out, his foot landing solidly on the guy’s knee. Though his sneaker wasn’t as effective as a heavy boot would have been, the kick was effective, making the other guy stumble backward long enough to give Sam a chance to shove himself to his feet.
He remembered how to fight, he discovered in the next few tense moments, but fists were little defense against a thick steel bar wielded by someone who obviously knew what to do with it. The bar landed solidly against his upper left arm, making him numb to his fingertips, and then across his ribs, which hadn’t fully healed from the last beating. The pain took his breath away. It was mostly desperation and blind luck that allowed him to get in a teeth-rattling blow of his own, right against the other guy’s jaw.
Snarling in rage, the guy lifted the bar again, muscles bulging in his arms with the force of his movement. Sam braced himself.
A furious, almost animalistic growl signaled the arrival of help. In a blur of movement, a man plowed into Sam’s attacker, knocking the guy flat on his face on the pavement. The bar clattered as it fell from his hand. Sam kicked it out of the way, then dove into the struggle to subdue the guy, who was fighting wildly to escape the new arrival.
The back door opened. “Sam?” It was Marjorie’s voice. “Are you ready to—”
“Call the police!” Sam shouted, wanting her inside and out of any possibility of danger.
A moment later, he was sitting on the attacker’s legs while his rescuer restrained the guy’s arms. Sam looked at the new arrival and recognized the face as one out of his dreams. “Shane?” he asked tentatively.
“No, it’s Santa Claus,” Shane drawled sarcastically. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, Cam?”
Cam. The name sounded familiar, though i
t didn’t bring a blinding flash of revelation with it.
Dan arrived very quickly, accompanied by the two uniformed officers Sam had met before. After a few minutes of pandemonium, during which the attacker refused to utter a word, the cops left with their prisoner, and the diner employees rather reluctantly cleared out, leaving Marjorie, Sam and Shane in the place. Until that point, adrenaline had kept Sam on his feet, hardly aware of the pain of his latest injuries. Now he felt every one, particularly in his ribs and across his back where the first strike had landed, the one intended to knock him unconscious and render him helpless to follow-up blows.
He felt himself swaying on his feet and reached out to grab the back of a chair to steady himself.
“You okay, buddy?” Looking every inch the lanky cowboy, Shane placed his hands on his lean, denim-covered hips and studied him closely.
Sam drew a deep breath. “I, uh, I’m afraid I don’t remember you, exactly,” he admitted. “But thanks for the help out there.”
Shane’s dark blue eyes narrowed in confusion. “You don’t remember me? But you called me by name.”
Sam shrugged. The automatic movement sent cascades of pain from his shoulders to the pit of his stomach. He felt the room starting to sway around him. “Damn,” he muttered. “Looks like I’m going to be visiting Dr. Frank again.”
He heard Marjorie cry out and Shane exclaim something before he hit the floor. After that, he heard nothing.
Chapter Fifteen
Serena hurried down the hospital hallway with a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Without remembering to knock, she pushed open the door she’d been directed to and rushed into the room. Sam sat on the side of the bed, and there was another man in a chair close by. Judging from their expressions, they’d obviously been engaged in a serious conversation.
“Are you all right?” she asked when Sam turned to look at her.
“I’m okay. Just a few new bruises to add to that patchwork quilt,” he quipped, holding out a hand to her.
She placed her hand in his and was somewhat reassured by the strength of his grip. There were no fresh bruises on his face, as far as she could tell, but he held himself rather stiffly, turning his head with caution. “You really have to stop doing things like this,” she chided him gruffly. “You can’t take too much more.”
“It isn’t as if I’ve tried to get run down and beaten up,” he retorted. “I just seem to be good at being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Serena looked at the other man, who’d been watching them with obvious interest. Sam made the introductions. “Serena Schaffer, this is Shane Walker.”
“Shane,” she repeated, feeling her eyes go wide. “You’re Shane?”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said in an unmistakable Texas drawl. “Cam’s been telling me about how kind you and your mother have been to him.”
“Cam?” she parroted, not quite sure she’d heard correctly.
The man she had known as Sam Wallace nodded, his expression devoid of emotion. “Apparently, my name is Cameron North and I’m a reporter with a Dallas newspaper.”
Her knees weakened. She sank to the bed beside Sam—Cameron, she corrected herself—before she embarrassed herself by folding to the floor. “Cameron North,” she repeated, testing the sound of it.
“We’ve been concerned about Cam since he disappeared three weeks ago,” Shane explained, looking from his friend to Serena. “I knew he was pursuing a story that had some danger involved and I was afraid that something had happened to him. I’ve got a couple of uncles who are private investigators, and they’ve been looking for him. When Chief Meadows sent out a report about a John Doe matching Cam’s description showing up here in Edstown, I had to come check it out. A few questions led me to the diner, where I found Cameron involved in a brawl out back.”
Serena looked at Cameron. “Do you remember anything?”
He shrugged. “Some of what Shane’s been telling me sounds familiar. A few memories have surfaced, but they’re still pretty patchy.”
“I’ve promised we’ll get him the best medical help,” Shane said. “I’ve got another couple of uncles who are doctors in Dallas.”
“An uncle for every occasion,” Cameron murmured, and the dry remark sounded so much like Sam that Serena’s throat tightened. Maybe he had a different name now, but he was still the man she’d tumbled so recklessly in love with during the past three weeks.
“Shane thinks it will be good for me to go back to Dallas, check out my usual haunts there. He thinks the memories will come back faster in my natural element.”
“He’s probably right,” Serena agreed reluctantly. “You’d probably recover faster at home.”
“Home.” Sam—or rather Cameron, she corrected herself again—said the word as if he’d never heard it before. “Funny. When I think of home, it isn’t Dallas. It’s the guest house.”
A pang went through her heart. She looked at their joined hands, wondering if she would ever be able to step into the guest house again or if her memories would be too overwhelming. Something told her she would welcome a bit of amnesia after he was gone—but she knew she would remember every minute she’d spent with him.
“Your family must be frantic about you,” she murmured. And please don’t let that family include a wife or kids, she added silently.
Shane cleared his throat. “Actually, Cam’s not really close to his parents. I doubt they know he’s been gone. He’s always said that he’s closer to my family than his own.”
“That must be why he couldn’t tell whether you were a friend or a brother when he remembered you.”
Shane gave his friend a faint smile. “Yeah. Must be.”
She noticed that Shane wore a wedding ring. “I see you’re married. Is your wife’s name Molly?”
“No, Molly’s my sister,” Shane replied, confirming Cameron’s guess from that morning. “My wife’s name is Kelly.”
“I’m not married,” Cameron told her, as if he guessed her biggest fear. “Never have been, according to Shane.”
Shane chuckled. “You’ve never even come close,” he said. “Not that there haven’t been quite a few who tried to change your mind.”
Serena didn’t smile. She noticed that Cameron didn’t, either. “When are you leaving?”
His eyes were somber when he answered. “Shane has a plane waiting at the airport in Little Rock. We can leave immediately.”
“One of my cousins is a pilot,” Shane murmured.
“Of course,” she replied. “You, uh, have a large family, I take it?”
“Larger than you can probably imagine.” He stood. “I’ll go call my cousin and make the arrangements for our trip home. I’m sure you two have a few things to say to each other. And, uh, Cam—” He paused in the doorway.
“Yes?”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“What did he mean by that?” Serena asked when the other man had disappeared into the hallway.
“Apparently he has a rather warped sense of humor. I haven’t caught up with it yet.”
“Mother told me what happened. Have you found out who it was that attacked you?”
“Shane’s pretty sure he’s someone who works for the guy I was investigating for an exposé—a public official I suspected of using embezzled tax money to provide a lavish lifestyle for his wife and kids in Dallas and an equally extravagant existence for a mistress in Little Rock. Before I left Texas, I told Shane I would be in Little Rock, pursuing my hunches. Apparently, I was caught snooping.”
“You think whoever beat you up thought you were dead when they dumped you here in Edstown?”
He shrugged. “That’s a reasonable guess. If you hadn’t found me, I would have been dead by morning.”
She swallowed. “And does Shane think you’re still in danger?”
“No. Shane had his P.I. uncles follow up on my leads. They’ve found evidence that I was right all along. Once the story breaks, there will be no further incent
ive to try to get rid of me. And Dan will probably get a confession out of the guy who jumped me this afternoon, some sort of deal that implicates his employer and lessens his own punishment.”
“So you’re going back to Dallas now to solve a new mystery,” she said. “Your own, this time.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I guess that sums it up. How would you like to go along? You could be Dr. Watson to my Holmes.”
He made it sound like a joke, but something told her he was partially serious. Though she was flattered to think he wanted to take her with him, she couldn’t help wondering if he was merely clinging to a familiar lifeline in an understandably overwhelming situation.
Besides, she thought sadly, she wasn’t Kara. Serena couldn’t just drop everything and run off with a gorgeous male on a quest of his own. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “I have a few responsibilities here—a law practice, a newspaper, a mother, a dog. Unless you want to take the dog with you?” she offered with a valiant attempt at humor.
“I don’t think Walter would care for Dallas. He’s a small-town dog.”
“You’re probably right.” And she was a small-town girl. Some facts just had to be faced, no matter how difficult.
There was a heavy moment of silence and then Cameron spoke again. “Shane said money isn’t really a problem for me, so I won’t have any trouble paying my medical bills or the money I owe you and your mother. Apparently, I come from a distinguished line of attorneys, and I’ve been fondly remembered by my late grandparents.”
“Attorneys?” She remembered his distinctly negative reaction to the profession.
“Yeah. I guess even rich lawyers have been known to slap their kids around.”
“You still don’t remember your parents?”
“No. But Shane promised to give me all the unhappy details during the flight to Dallas.”
