by Arlene James
Cracking her eyelids open, she let the light bathe her retinas and sighed with the lack of pain from that quarter, at least. Emboldened, she opened up all the way and stared at the four heads bending over her. Two obviously belonged to medical personnel, the woman and a prematurely graying gentleman who was even then shrugging into a lab coat. A tag sewn to the white garment identified him as “Dr. Garth.” The third face, round and balding beneath a tan cowboy hat, bore the unmistakable stamp of a cop. The last face nearly took her breath away.
So handsome that he was almost pretty, despite the dark slash of his brows peaking out from behind unkempt chestnut hair and the shadow of a beard on his smooth jawline, he had unusual dun-colored eyes—light brown like the coat of a buckskin horse, ringed with dark lashes. Everything about him screamed Cowboy! From the style of his faded blue shirt to the battered, sweat-stained hat that he held in his wide, long-fingered hands.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She watched his dusky lips forming the words, and the sound of his voice told her that she ought to know him, but she didn’t. She didn’t know any of them. Suddenly alarmed, she jackknifed up into a sitting position.
“Where am I?” she began, but the pain exploding inside her head stopped all but the first word. Clapping both hands over her face, she felt the bandage that covered her forehead and held back her hair. Obviously, she had been injured. Gulping back the nausea that clawed at her throat, she fixed her gaze on the doctor and rasped, “H-how many s-sutures?”
“Ten,” he answered matter-of-factly.
She relaxed marginally. It couldn’t be too serious, then. Ten sutures in a human seemed relatively minor, though how she knew that, she couldn’t be sure. Still, she did know it. Even as she mulled that over, the pain began to recede to bearable levels. Her eardrums still throbbed, but she no longer felt as if someone had buried an ax in her skull.
“Now, then,” said the voice that belonged to George, “you up to answering some questions?”
She started to nod but thought better of that and croaked, “Y-yes. You’re police, aren’t you?”
“That’s right... George Cole, Grasslands sheriff.” He stuck out a big, soft hand, which she shook carefully.
“Where is Grasslands?”
“Why, it’s here, o’ course,” he said, glancing at the other occupants of what was clearly an examination room.
“What am I doing here?” she asked.
“That’s what we want to know,” he said, dropping his hands to the gun belt that circled his thick waist. Drawing up her knees to get more comfortable, she noticed a spot of blood on her pale yellow T-shirt.
“I don’t have a clue,” she told him, looking up. “Can’t someone tell me what’s going on?”
“You wrecked your car,” said the cowboy.
A car wreck. “I don’t remember being in an accident.”
“Jack here stayed with you until we could get the ambulance out there,” the doctor clarified.
The cowboy offered his hand then, saying, “Jack Colby.”
Just as she slid her hand into his, George prodded, “And your name would be...?”
She opened her mouth, but the words weren’t there. “Huh,” she said, frowning. “My name is...” A great void swamped her, a vast sea of absolutely nothing. “That’s ridiculous,” she muttered, straightening her legs again. “My name is...” She looked up, on the verge of panic, switching her gaze from one face to another until it came to rest on Jack Colby. “What is my name?” she asked, reaching out to clasp a handful of his shirt when he gave his head a short, truncated shake. “Please,” she pleaded, her voice rising.
“I didn’t find anything in the car with you,” he said apologetically, “no purse, no driver’s license, no registration papers, nothing.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” she exclaimed. As the full import of her situation hit her, she swung her legs off the hospital bed, letting them dangle above the floor. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I am!”
“Nurse,” the doctor directed.
The patient quickly found herself lying flat on her back again while the doctor examined her and rapped out orders.
“I’m going to need a CT and a blood workup. Let’s start an IV and administer a sedative.”
“I don’t know who I am,” she repeated, trying desperately to find a way around that awful truth.
A hand fell on her shoulder. She turned her head to find the too-handsome cowboy, Jack, gazing down solemnly.
“It’s okay,” he told her gently. “We’ll figure it out.”
“I’ll put out some feelers,” George said. “Even without a license plate on the car, we ought to get something off the VIN.”
“What? No license plates?” she asked. “How is that even possible?”
“That’s what we was hoping you could tell us,” the sheriff pointed out, adding, “you’re gonna need to stick around until we figure this thing out. I’ll see if there’s any stolen car reports or missing persons in the area that fit.”
“Stolen!” she gasped. “B-but I would never... That is, I can’t imagine...” Yet, how could she know what she’d do when she didn’t even know her own name?
“It’s just a formality,” Jack Colby assured her, looking pointedly at George, who waved a hand.
“SOP. Standard Operating Procedure. Now, why didn’t I think to bring along a camera? Doc, you got any way to take her photo so I can circulate it around?”
“Here, I’ll do it,” Jack said, pulling out his phone. While he snapped the photo, George grumbled about the city refusing to buy him and his deputies the latest smartphones. “What’s your email address?” Jack interrupted, saving the picture to his phone. George told him, and the cowboy sent the photo off with a swooshing sound.
“That’ll sure make things easier,” George told him. “Won’t even have to scan it up before sending it out.”
The subject of the photograph didn’t know whether to hope someone recognized her or not, considering that her likeness would be going out to law-enforcement agencies.
As if he sensed her dilemma, George smiled and patted her hand. Then he ruined the gesture by saying, “Just don’t leave the county, little lady, until I tell you it’s okay.”
Her eyes widened as a whole new problem emerged. “Where am I going to stay? Do I even have any money?”
“Didn’t find any,” Jack murmured sympathetically.
“You’ll be staying right here for the time being,” the doctor decreed. “I want you here for observation at least for tonight.”
“That’s good enough for now,” George decided. Turning to leave, he doffed his hat, saying, “I’ll be in touch.”
Her mind whirling, she closed her eyes. “Lord, help me,” she whispered fervently. “Lord, help me.”
She felt a warm, gentle touch at her throat and looked up to find Jack Colby fingering a small gold cross at the end of a delicate gold chain looped about her neck. Looking at that cross gave her a small sense of peace; yet she couldn’t recall ever having seen it before this moment.
“Well, you’re a believer,” Jack said, smiling crookedly. “That’s a help.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “Yes, that’s a help.”
He dropped the cross. “I’ll say a prayer for you, then.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Uh, f-for everything.”
“Aw, I didn’t do anything special,” he said, moving toward the open doorway. Pausing, he swept back his hair with one hand and plunked his hat down over it with the other. “I wouldn’t worry too much if I was you,” he said kindly.
“Your memory’s apt to return on its own at any time,” the doctor added helpfully.
“But what if it doesn’t?” she had to ask.
&nb
sp; “George will figure it out,” Jack reassured her, “or somebody will come looking for you.”
She gulped, wishing that made her feel something less than terrified.
* * *
Well, that was that. Jack stepped out onto the graveled parking lot of the medical center. Car wrecks and amnesiac blondes made for an exciting first Monday of the month. He hoped this wasn’t a sign of how the rest of September would go, though. July and August had been dramatic enough, what with his mother’s accident, his sister Violet meeting her previously unknown twin Maddie, his own still-unknown twin Grayson off on an undercover assignment, their supposed father disappearing, a half brother he’d never met overseas with the military... Jack had more questions now than he’d had the day of his mother’s accident.
If all that weren’t enough, Violet had become engaged to Maddie’s former fiancé, and now Maddie was going to marry the Colby Ranch foreman, Ty. Jack couldn’t imagine why anybody in his right mind would get entangled in a romance under such circumstances—or any other, when it came right down to it. That way, as he well knew, lay heartache.
Automatically, his thoughts went to his former girlfriend Tammy Simmons, but then another face flashed before his mind’s eye. Taking out his phone, he tapped the photo icon. Her image instantly came up. She looked small and frightened with that bandage on her forehead and her big, deeply set hazel eyes begging him to tell her who she was. He didn’t think he’d ever forget how horrified she’d looked when she’d realized that she couldn’t recall her own name.
He knew a little of what she was feeling. He and his sisters had gone to Fort Worth in search of answers about their past. They all needed to understand why their parents had split up the family and kept it a secret from them. According to an old neighbor, Patty Earl, her late husband, Joe, was his and Grayson’s real father. It didn’t make sense for Brian to raise Grayson in that scenario, but Brian’s disappearance felt awfully convenient to Jack. A doctor, Brian had supposedly gone to South Texas on a medical mission trip and had somehow fallen off the face of the earth—just when there were questions to be answered.
If only his mother would wake from her coma and give them those answers. Jack doubted that he could accept them from anyone else, not even Brian Wallace. Now Jack had more questions than ever, and he had to wonder if he even knew who he was. Obviously, his last name wasn’t Colby, but it might not be Wallace, either. Jack found the whole situation maddening.
But maybe not as maddening as amnesia. Jack gazed down at the blonde whose photo he’d taken with his phone.
His heart went out to her. Even if she turned out to be a car thief or an escaped mental case, not knowing the truth had to be awful. And there again, he could relate.
He dropped the phone back into his pocket and walked out to the truck that he’d driven in from the ranch. After the accident, he’d ridden Tiger back to the barn at the main compound then come straight here to the Grasslands Medical Clinic.
Everyone around town referred to the clinic as a hospital, but in truth, it was nothing more than a converted house with a pair of examining rooms, a small lab, a couple of offices and four or five beds in a dormitory-type setting. Serious cases got transferred to Amarillo with long-term ones going to the skilled nursing center here in Grasslands, otherwise known as Ranchland Convalescent Home. It was more or less an old-folks’ home, a place where his vibrant, forty-three-year-old mother did not belong, but he was glad to have her closer to home now.
At least he and his sisters could function somewhat normally, and one or the other of them visited Belle almost daily. Jack stopped in there as soon as he left the clinic, anxious to tell her about his unusual day.
He could only hope that she would hear him.
Chapter Two
They had seen to it that Belle had a private room with all the monitoring equipment and nursing care that she needed, but if she even knew those things, no one could tell. Jack spoke to her as if she could hear him, telling her about the day’s adventure. She appeared to sleep peacefully through his monologue, her long auburn hair spread out on the pillow beneath her head, the gentle rise and fall of her chest the only sign that she lived. As always, Jack sat beside her bed and prayed.
Oh, Lord, please let her wake up and be well. Please. And the blonde lady, too. She obviously needs a helping hand right now.
He added pleas for clarity on the issues troubling the family before rising to kiss his mother’s smooth forehead.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered, for perhaps the thousandth time. “Please come back to us. We need you more than ever.”
Feeling low, he trudged out to his dirty, white pickup truck and slid behind the steering wheel. Then he started the engine and drove out to the ranch. As he turned the truck through the massive gate with its rock columns and metal arch displaying the Colby Ranch brand, Jack thought again of the lovely blonde back there in the hospital.
No doubt, she worried about where she would stay and how she would live until her memory returned. Without money, she really had no options. Grasslands didn’t have a homeless shelter because it didn’t have any homeless. She couldn’t stay at the clinic for long, either, but someone would surely take her in—someone with plenty of room.
Sighing as the imposing ranch house came into view, Jack mentally cataloged the house that he, his mom and two sisters occupied. There was room for her. That didn’t mean that he had to offer a bedroom to the pretty amnesiac, though, even if he had been the one to rescue her from a car wreck.
Of course, it didn’t mean that he shouldn’t, either.
He supposed they could open one of the old, unoccupied cabins on the place, but it didn’t seem wise for a woman with a head wound serious enough to cause amnesia to stay alone. Too bad the hotel in town was closed temporarily because the couple who owned and operated it had been called away on a mission of mercy to help family members who had been burned out by wildfires in the central part of the states. Jack went so far as to consider calling the pastor at the Grasslands Community Church to see if he could find a host for the woman, but in the normal course of things when temporary shelter was needed, the first phone call that the good reverend would make would be to the Colbys.
“Aw, come on, Lord,” Jack grumbled aloud. “Don’t we have enough trouble as it is?”
Unfortunately, the Lord, as was His habit, didn’t say a word. Jack heard Him, nevertheless.
Jack turned the truck through the gate in the wrought-iron fence that separated the main house from the rest of the compound, parked and climbed out, trudging into the house through the carport door. He’d barely set foot in the back hall before Lupita, the housekeeper and cook, stuck her head out of the kitchen.
“Dinner in five minutes.”
“Already?” he asked, hanging his hat on a peg fixed to the wall. He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time. Man, this day had flown. “I’ll wash up,” he muttered, heading for his room.
For some reason, he swiped his thumb across the bottom of the screen on his phone and watched as the blonde’s photo popped up again. He stopped in the dining room, aware that his sisters—he still couldn’t get over the fact that there were two of them and how alike they looked now that Maddie had taken to jeans and boots—busily laid the table for the evening meal.
“Oh, good, you’re home,” Violet said, smiling as she placed a napkin beside a plate.
“Uh-huh.” Disturbed by his compulsion to stare at the picture on his phone, he tossed the small device down at his regular place. “Y’all ought to know that we could be having company soon.”
“Oh?” Maddie said, closing a drawer in the breakfront. “Who? Have you heard from Grayson?”
Jack made a face at the mention of his brother. “No, I haven’t heard from Grayson, and I don’t expect to. Why would I?”
“He
is your twin,” Violet pointed out.
“So? I’m not talking about him. This is someone different.... A person was in a car wreck today.”
“Oh, wow!” Violet exclaimed. “Anyone we know?”
“Some woman who didn’t make the curve at the bottom of Blackberry Hill,” Jack answered carelessly. “She’s going to need a place to stay when Doc says she can leave the hospital.”
“When will that be?” Maddie asked.
He shrugged. “Soon, I expect.”
“Will she need nursing?” Violet queried apprehensively.
“No, nothing like that,” he assured them, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I’ll explain later. If it comes to it, I mean. She might stay somewhere else. Now, I better wash up.”
He walked off toward the back staircase. The very moment that he rounded the corner, he heard Violet say, “I might have known.”
Drawing to a halt at the note of concern in her voice, he retraced his steps to the doorway and saw that she’d picked up his phone and unlocked the screen. She and Maddie stood huddled together beside the dining table, as alike as two peas in a pod, staring down at the photo of the blonde woman now at the clinic.
“She’s probably tall and leggy,” Violet muttered, putting down the phone.
As a matter of fact, she is.
“What makes you say that?” Maddie asked, and Jack mentally echoed the question. Yeah, what makes you say that?
“Because,” Violet answered, “that’s the type Jack goes for.”
Jack darted up his forehead as Maddie surmised, “You’re describing the girl that broke his heart last year, aren’t you?”
Violet nodded. “Long legs, long blond hair, blue eyes.”
Hazel, Jack corrected silently, then he remembered that Violet was describing Tammy, not his car-wreck victim in the wedding veil.
“What happened there, anyway?” Maddie asked.
Jack leaned a shoulder against the door frame and prepared to listen to Violet’s thoughts on the subject, intrigued primarily because they’d never discussed the issue.
