“You didn’t.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. Just when the residents of Silverhill had stopped tiptoeing on eggshells around her, she had to jump at rustling leaves. “Did you just come up the trail behind us?”
“No.” Clem hoisted Shelby on his shoulders. “I’m on my way back from The Twirling Ballerinas. Are you headed that way or do you want to hike back to town with me?”
“We’ll go back with you.” She hated the tremor in her voice. She knew she had a backbone. It came in handy when she recovered from the injuries she sustained from the car wreck and gave birth to Shelby six weeks later amid strangers.
She fingered the gold chain around her neck with Julia written in script, the only clue to her identity and a past she couldn’t reclaim, not even with the help of a hypnotist in Denver, Dr. Jim, her psychologist in Durango, and local media coverage.
She stopped her search when the marriage proposals started pouring in and strange people cropped up to claim her as family.
A sense of dread smothered her each time someone called professing to be her husband, mother, sister or fiancé. She knew in her heart she didn’t want her past to find her. The car accident hadn’t caused her black eye.
“Come on then.” Clem extended his weather-beaten hand to her, and she gripped it. “Good thing I came along. You’re too frail to carry Shelby back, and I think she’s getting tired.”
“I’m not frail,” Julia snapped and then covered her mouth.
“I didn’t mean it like that, honey.” Clem patted her shoulder.
“You’ve got more gumption than most men twice your size, but you don’t have much meat on your bones and this little lady is getting bigger every day.”
He tickled Shelby’s calf, and she plowed her heel into his chest.
“Shelby, be careful. If you want to ride on Clem’s shoulders, sit still.”
Clem laughed. “See what I mean? She’s a rambunctious buttercup.”
Shelby loved the word and repeated “bumptious, bumptious, bumptious,” each time Clem bounced her on his shoulders.
By the time they reached the end of the trail, which spilled onto Silverhill’s main street, they were all singing a made-up song about bumptious buttercups. Julia took deep, cleansing breaths of the mountain air, stuffing her previous panic on the dusty shelf of her former life.
They rounded a corner onto the street, and a tall man in jeans and a white cowboy hat glanced up after smacking the back of another man getting into a car.
Julia’s pulse ticked up a notch. Strangers. She pulled in a breath and rolled her shoulders back. Tourists.
“Lordy, lordy.” Clem stopped beside her, giving Shelby one last bounce on his shoulders. “Look who the cat dragged in. You look like hell, boy.”
If that tall, rangy man with the wide shoulders and tight jeans looked like hell, send her straight to the devil. She grinned at her visceral response to the stranger. It had been a long time since she felt that gut-wrenching lust for a man.
“Sorry, Julia.” Clem covered Shelby’s ears a little too late.
The man took a step forward, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. His tanned face blanched and he reached forward with an unsteady hand.
He looked like he was seeing a ghost…and he was staring right at her.
THROUGH THE ROARING in his ears, Ryder McClintock heard Clem’s voice saying his name, but he couldn’t respond. All his muscles seized up and his feet felt rooted to the ground.
A crease formed between Julia’s eyebrows and she tilted her head to the side, long brown hair sliding across her shoulder. She had different hair and different clothes, but unless he was in the middle of a dream, Julia Rousseau stood before him in the flesh.
“Ryder, what’s the matter?” Clem ambled forward and shook his hand, slapping him on the back. Then he reached up to steady the little girl on his shoulders. “You been away so long, the altitude got to you?”
The fog lifted and pinpricks of excitement raced up his spine. She had come to him. Julia had come to him.
“Julia, you’re here.” Ryder twisted away from Clem and reached for her.
Stumbling back, Julia put her hands up. “Who are you?”
Her words punched him in the gut and he nearly doubled over. Was this some kind of game? Did she want to punish him for leaving her? She, more than anyone, knew he had no choice.
“Julia, it’s me, Ryder. Why didn’t you write to me? Why didn’t you answer my letters?”
Clem choked and grabbed his shoulder. “Are you telling me you know Julia?”
Ryder swiveled his head around. Clem regarded him with the same open-mouthed astonishment that Ryder had bestowed on Julia. Didn’t Julia tell the residents of Silverhill that she knew him?
“What the hell is going on?” Ryder shook his head and swept off his hat. His gaze darted between Julia and Clem, and he plowed his fingers through his hair. “Didn’t you tell them?”
The blankness of her face pierced his heart. She didn’t recognize him. Three and a half years, and she didn’t recognize him. Something else in her expression twisted the dagger even deeper—panic. Julia feared him.
“Don’t you recognize me? Ryder McClintock.” He felt like a fool introducing himself to the woman he loved with a burning, searing passion—even when he thought she’d deserted him. He took another step forward, and she took a matching step back.
“Ryder.” Clem gripped his arm. “Julia doesn’t know you. She lost her memory over three years ago when her car took a dive off Highway 160.”
Clem’s words sucked the air out of Ryder’s lungs and a vice squeezed his chest. He searched Julia’s face for a glimmer of recognition, for the smile that used to curve her lip, when he told bad jokes, the light in her eyes. Nothing. Worse than nothing—wariness, doubt…fear.
If she didn’t recognize him, how’d she wind up here? She must have been coming to him, or rather his family, when she had that accident. What compelled her to seek sanctuary with his family? Did she know about Jeremy?
“I—I, Julia may not know me,” he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes to blot out Julia’s look of bafflement, “but I know Julia.”
Clem laughed and did a little jig in the street. “That’s a miracle, Julia. Do you know who Ryder is? He’s Ralph’s boy come home. You must’ve been coming to see Ryder when your car took that tumble. Now you can get your life back all right and tight.”
Ryder shifted his gaze to Julia, twisting her hands in front of her. She didn’t look happy about the prospect of getting her life back.
“I don’t get it.” Ryder rubbed his knuckles along his jaw. “Didn’t Julia have any ID on her? Didn’t the police check the registration on the car?”
“Let’s not talk about this in the middle of the street.” Clem shifted the little girl on his shoulders. “We’ll go back to my place and Millie can make us some lunch. She still makes the best lemonade in Silverhill, Ryder.”
Clem’s granddaughter whinnied and patted Clem on the head. “Let’s go. Ride ’em, cowboy.”
The tightness of Julia’s face smoothed out a little. She must know his family. Who didn’t know the McClintocks in Silverhill? They practically ran the town. Ryder took a deep breath. This might not be so bad. How could it be when he’d found Julia again?
Ryder smiled at the little girl. “Another granddaughter, Clem? Has to be Maddy’s with those blond curls.”
Clem swung the girl off his shoulders. “No, not one of mine. This here’s Julia’s daughter.”
The smile froze on Ryder’s face as he gritted his teeth. The girl ran to Julia and wrapped her arms around her legs, smiling shyly at him over her shoulder.
She must be about four years old, and if his guess was right…she belonged to him.
Chapter Two
Clem filled the stranger’s ears with local gossip as they ambled toward his house, covering the awkwardness that hung in the air like one of those heavy Native American blankets sold from roadside campers.
The truth of her past hovered right around the corner and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps this stranger…no, Ryder McClintock…didn’t know her that well. Wouldn’t his family have recognized her name as one of Ryder’s friends? Of course, they knew only her first name.
His father and stepmother didn’t mention him often and he hadn’t been to visit them in over three years. She recalled talk of the McClintocks’ middle boy working overseas on some kind of a secret mission. How did she know a spy? Perhaps they had some brief acquaintance.
If she didn’t know him well, why was she on her way to see him that fateful night when her car skidded off the road in a snowstorm? That couldn’t be a coincidence. She must’ve been seeking out Ryder when she crashed, but where had he been the past three years?
As Ryder chatted with Clem, his responses terse, he avoided looking at her but seemed fascinated by Shelby. Julia’s heart skittered in her chest. He could probably tell her all about Shelby’s father, where he was and why he never came looking for them.
“Hat, please.” Shelby strained away from Julia’s tight grip, leaning toward Ryder.
“You want my hat?” Ryder grinned down at Shelby, a gleam lighting his blue eyes.
“I’m sorry. Everyone spoils her around here.” She tugged Shelby back to her side. “Don’t be rude, Shelby.”
“Her name’s Shelby?” Ryder shoved his hands into his tight blue jeans. “That was my grandmother’s name.”
“I know. Ralph, your father, told me that after I named her.”
She folded her arms, gripping her elbows. “Do you think…?”
“Hat.” Shelby stomped her feet before planting them firmly on the dirt road.
“Young lady,” Julia crouched next to her, “I’m going to tell Aunt Millie not to give you any sugar cookies unless you behave yourself.” She secretly thanked her daughter for the distraction. After almost four years of having a blank slate for a memory, she didn’t think she could handle someone filling up that slate too quickly.
Julia looked up at the man who held the key to her identity and rolled her eyes. “She’s stubborn.”
“Just like…” Ryder stopped and clenched his jaw. Then he lifted his hat from his head and placed it on Shelby’s. “There you go, a real Colorado cowgirl.”
Shelby squealed and holding her hands in front of her as if gripping reins, she trotted around the three adults, as the hat slid down to her nose.
“Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that.” Julia stood up next to Ryder as a breeze lifted the ends of his brown hair, touched with gold. She flinched at the pain lurking in his eyes and it took a physical effort for her not to reach up and smooth her palms across the creases at the sides of his mouth.
She couldn’t be Ryder McClintock’s wife. His family would’ve known if he had a wife. Ryder could give her a husband and a father for Shelby, it just wouldn’t be him. Her throat tightened and tears pricked behind her eyes.
Her knees trembled at her response to this tall, broad-shouldered man—the McClintocks’ son. She slipped her arm through Clem’s, leaning on his shoulder.
“R-Ryder and I have to talk, Clem.”
“I know that, honey.” He patted her shoulder. “Let’s just make it back to my place, and Millie will get some lunch for Shelby and you two can have some privacy.”
Clem’s neat ranch house appeared all too soon. His wife, Millie, waved from the porch, a dish towel in her hand. She called out, “I heard Ryder was back in town. How’d you get him first?”
“Just luck.” Clem strode to the porch as fast as his old bones could carry him and mumbled something to Millie.
Julia overheard her name, Ryder’s name, and something about her memory. Word would spread as fast as a Colorado brushfire. It always did.
“Mercy me.” Millie covered her mouth with the dish towel, her eyes wide above it. She scurried down the steps and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Ryder’s cheek. “I hope you can help our Julia.”
Clem grabbed Shelby’s hand. “C’mon, buttercup, cookies and lemonade for you after lunch and then I’ll take you out to see Missycat’s kittens.”
Millie placed a plump arm around Julia’s shoulders. “You and Ryder can have the patio out back. Plenty of privacy there.”
Julia’s stomach churned and she stumbled on the top step. Ryder placed a steadying hand against the small of her back, beneath her backpack, his warmth seeping through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. Her hyperawareness of him had to be due to their connection in her previous life.
She always referred to her past as her previous life, as if it had no bearing on the life she led in Silverhill. The foolish phrase allowed her to ignore the terror she always felt when she groped in the shadowy darkness of her past for answers. Now a collision between her past and present loomed before her. Was she ready for the fallout?
“Behave yourself and don’t be greedy.” Julia settled Shelby at the Stokers’ kitchen table, while Millie handed Ryder two glasses of lemonade.
Ryder led the way to the patio and Julia followed, her gaze clinging to his tight jeans molded to his behind—a pleasant distraction from the uncertainty that lurked around the corner.
Too bad Ryder didn’t rush in claiming to be her long-lost husband like so many others had. She might have accepted Ryder’s story without question.
He clicked the glasses down on the glass-topped table, and then pulled out her chair. The legs scraping against the flagstone jarred her from her pleasant reverie back to the present…back to the past. She perched on the edge of the chair and wrapped her hands around the sweating glass.
Settling beside her, Ryder sipped his lemonade and then turned his blue eyes to her. His gaze meandered over her face and hair and skimmed her shoulders. A sinuous warmth suffused her skin, his intimate inventory feeling like a caress.
“You look…different.”
“Let’s cut to the chase, Ryder.” She rubbed her damp palms on the thighs of her jeans. “Who am I?”
A quick grin split his face. “Not so different after all.”
His smile took her breath away, and she gripped the edge of the table to keep from sliding beneath it. Damn, if this man wasn’t her husband in her previous life, she must’ve had a hot fling with him. Or should have.
“Okay.” He planted his hands on his knees. “Your name is Julia Scott, although after you and Jeremy separated you started using your maiden name, Rousseau. How’d you remember your first name?”
“Wait a minute.” A dull pain thumped behind her eyes as she held up her hands. “You’re going too fast. I’m divorced?”
Dragging in a breath, Ryder raked a hand through his thick brown hair and the sun glinted off the golden streaks. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not very good at filling in someone about her life. You were married to Jeremy Scott for less than a year. Things didn’t go so well after he got back from Afghanistan, and you split up.”
“Afghanistan? My husband was in the military?” Maybe the military deployed him again, and that’s why he never looked for her.
“Yeah.” Ryder shifted his gaze and took a long swallow of lemonade.
“And my parents? My family? Why didn’t anyone else look for me?” She held her breath as she watched Ryder trace beads of moisture on the glass with his fingertip.
“I don’t think you have close family in the States, Julia. Your father, Girard Rousseau, was a diplomat with the U.S. Embassy in France. He passed away about five years ago. As far as I know, your mother, Celeste Rousseau, still lives in Paris.” A smile quirked the edge of his mouth. “And you and your mom were never close. When I called her, she said the two of you had had a falling out. She hadn’t seen or heard from you in years and figured you’d headed out for parts unknown.”
Yeah and who would figure those unknown parts would be her own mind? She slumped back in her chair and exhaled. Her father was dead. Her estranged mother lived in Paris. Her ex-husband was probably fighting overseas.
That explained the deafening silence when she tried to search for her identity. She clasped her hands in her lap. It didn’t explain her black eye or what she was doing in a stolen car with mounds of cash in the trunk and no ID.
Ryder’s large hand covered hers and his warmth soaked into her bones. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Julia. Didn’t you have any ID? Whose car were you driving?”
She met his gaze. His touch, his presence calmed her, making her feel as secure as those mountains that ringed her world for the past three and a half years.
“I didn’t have a purse, a suitcase or any identification with me. I was driving a stolen car. The police found the owner of the car in Washington, but he didn’t know me. Th-there was a lot of money in a bag in the backseat of the car, but the owner didn’t know anything about it. The police held on to the money for almost a year, tried to trace the serial numbers and then released it to me. It totaled about three hundred thousand dollars.”
His glittering blue eyes narrowed and he squeezed her hands before releasing them. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Why would I have that much money?”
“Your mom’s rich.” He lifted a shoulder, but his face tightened as if she’d transferred her anxiety to him.
“And the stolen car?”
“Did the police charge you with any crime?” he asked.
“No, they put it down to a mystery in my past, besides I was injured and pregnant. The owner of the car didn’t want to press any charges.”
“God, I wish I could’ve been there for you.” Ryder jumped up from his chair, knocking it to the ground.
His concern caused her heart to thump against her rib cage. He knew her…Julia Rousseau Scott…and he cared about her. That knowledge gave her strength, the strength to examine her past and unveil its secrets.
She took a deep breath. “How did you know me? It seems as if I didn’t have any friends who cared about me enough to search for me.”
“Oh, you had lots of friends.” He stopped pacing and shoved a hand in his pocket. “In Paris. I heard you’d followed Jeremy to Tucson, but if you landed here almost four years ago I don’t think you had time to form a circle of friends in Arizona.”
Circumstantial Memories Page 2
