by Susan Napier
NINA stood behind the wooden-slab breakfast bar overlooking the dining nook and frowned out through the rain-streaked window at the bleak, storm-grey bay. The weather had only marginally improved overnight and high winds still capped the dangerous seas. She didn’t need to listen to the marine forecast to know that there would be no ferries running today.
‘I guess it would be a misnomer for me to say good morning. It’s warm enough in here, but it looks pretty miserable out there, doesn’t it?’
The rich, deep voice sent a jolt up her spine and Nina whirled around, her eyes flying wide.
‘I’m sorry. Did I startle you?’ Ryan said, prowling silently into the kitchen on bare feet, the insincerity of his smile suggesting that he enjoyed catching her off guard.
His all-encompassing look took in her faded stretch jeans and the crisp, white cotton shirt buttoned right up to the collar, a blatant attempt to be prim, which resulted in a tempting provocation. Her hair, tortured into a fat braid, curled over one shoulder, drawing the eye to the soft rise of her breast.
‘I hope you don’t mind that I grabbed a quick shower and borrowed a razor from your cabinet.’
He passed his hand over his smooth chin, making her remember how his incipient beard had abraded her sensitive skin. She was sullenly resentful of the fact that she hadn’t yet had a chance to shower herself; to wash the scent of him from her body. Underneath her fresh clothes she still harboured his lingering touch.
‘I see you have my clothes hanging in front of the fire. Do you think they’re dry yet?’
‘I…’ Her voice briefly faltered as she met his challenging gaze, but she managed to suppress the fiery blush that threatened to betray her false composure. She had had plenty of time to pull herself together while the shower was going and she was not about to be flustered into apologising for what had just happened or—more importantly—what had not happened in the bedroom. She would just have to pray he was gentleman enough to gloss over the whole embarrassing incident. She busied herself with the coffeepot to give her an excuse for her restless hands. ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to put them on for at least an hour. I haven’t long taken them out of the washing machine and wool takes a while to dry.’
‘That was very thoughtful of you. Thank you.’
She could detect no irony in his tone and risked a cautious look under her lashes. He was leaning back against the counter, his sleek head turned towards her, his arms braced against the edge of the rich-grained wood. His expression was relaxed, but the tension in the arc of his back suggested a tightly coiled spring and his eyes were sharply appraising as they darted about the room, barely pausing on Zorro chomping noisily at his bowl. He had pushed the cuffs of the sweatshirt up to his elbows and she could see the deep bruising Dave had mentioned across the back of his forearms.
‘I’ve put out some cereal for you,’ she said, indicating the box on the table, ‘and there’s toast and coffee. You must be hungry—’
‘Toast and coffee will do,’ he said, making no move to sit down. ‘I hope your brother will forgive me wearing his things a little longer,’ he continued mildly. ‘When is he likely to come back for them?’
‘He’s not.’ Her clipped answer sounded like a snub, so she softened it with an explanation. ‘I mean, Karl doesn’t visit very often—only every couple of months or so. The company he works for has started selling a line of surf wear he helped design and it’s really taking off, so he’s pretty busy right now. He also gets plenty of free samples to wear. I don’t think he’s likely to miss his old gear so much that he’ll make a special trip back for it.’
He turned to face her, propping his hip against the kitchen cabinets. ‘Even though the sweater was a gift from you?’ he said with a hint of censoriousness.
She shrugged. ‘It’s not as if I bought it as a sentimental keepsake. I know Karl prefers to keep up with the trends where his clothes are concerned.’
Then the implications of his remark struck her.
‘I’m glad we’re not going to have to repeat everything we said to you last night,’ she said, trying to pitch her words casually, hoping to prompt a spontaneous response. ‘You’re obviously feeling a lot better this morning. It must be a relief to be clear-headed again. Dave gave me his mobile phone, so if you want to call anyone…’ He didn’t pick up the hint, so she tried something more obvious. ‘I’m sure you must want to be on your way.’
He folded his arms across his chest. ‘And which way is that?’ he demanded flatly.
The coffeepot clunked against the lip of one of the pottery mugs. ‘You don’t know?’
He began to shake his head and winced in midmotion.
‘But I thought…’ She broke off, her nerves jumping.
‘What? That because I wanted to make love with you I must therefore be in full command of all my intellectual faculties?’ He bared his teeth in a cynical smile. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but clarity of mind isn’t a prerequisite for sex. Males on the borderline between sleep and waking are usually operating on the most primitive level of human consciousness.
‘I float up out of my dreams to find a familiar warm, soft, luscious-smelling woman in my arms who’s gloriously responsive to my kisses, it stands to reason I’m not going to be racking my brains for meaningful conversation. All I could think of was that you were available and willing.’
Nina flushed at how easy he made her sound. ‘Available doesn’t always mean willing—’
‘Oh, you were willing, right up to the point you got that annoying attack of scruples—’
‘Annoying?’
‘Frustrating, then,’ he corrected himself with a shrug that pricked her like a goad.
‘You think it would have been more moral of me to go ahead and make love with a perfect stranger?’ she struck out angrily. ‘A man with no name, no personal history? That can be a death sentence these days! You seem to be more concerned about the fact you didn’t get any sex this morning than you are about your loss of memory!’
The muscles of his face went tight, his eyes dilating. ‘You gave me a name,’ he said quietly. ‘Ryan.’
Nina’s flush became one of shame for letting her temper fly with hurtful words against which she knew he could have no defence. Neither of them looked away as Zorro swiped his last bite and yipped a warning that he was popping out for his morning constitutional.
‘I’m sorry—’ she began to the accompaniment of the rattling flap on the door.
‘You think it doesn’t bother me?’ Ryan cut her off roughly. ‘You think I like being this damned helpless? You think I should weak and wailing…sit all alone beweeping my outcast state? And yes, by the way, I do know that I’m paraphrasing a Shakespearean sonnet. I’m a storehouse of useless information like that! Ask me to quote you sonnets, the names of the planets, the recipe for bearnaise sauce and Einstein’s theory of relativity and I’ll dazzle you with my breadth of knowledge. I’m full of the whole, damned civilised world—I’m just empty of me!’ He thumped his chest violently with his clenched fist.
Nina felt a faint, empathetic shudder in the smooth, high, featureless wall that sectioned off a small segment of her life. At least she had the security of knowing that her barrier, invisible yet inexorably solid, was finite. Imagine how she would feel if it stretched into infinity in all directions, preventing her from having any insight into her own personality? She had been wrong to think that Ryan hadn’t fully realised the true horror of his situation, wrong to think that he wasn’t desperate to regain everything that he had lost. He simply put up a very good front.
She had no right to try to batter it down just because she felt safer viewing him as a victim rather than a man.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated huskily. She finished preparing the coffee on automatic pilot and handed him a steaming mug as a peace offering.
He took it silently and stilled as he looked down into its fragrant contents. Nina followed his brooding gaze and then glanced uneasily at her o
wn bitter black brew as she realised what she had done.
‘Don’t you take milk and sugar?’
He slowly lifted his eyes to her nervous face. ‘I don’t know.’ He took a cautious sip and his eyebrows rose. ‘But apparently, you do.’ He took a bigger swallow and uttered a sensuous sigh. ‘Oh, yes, that tastes good—just how I like it,’ he decided, his eyes speculative above the rim. ‘Just a lucky guess?’
Nina felt a ridiculous twinge of panic. ‘I—it’s ideal for shock when it’s sweet and milky,’ she said, plucking the explanation out of the air without quite knowing why she felt the need to be evasive.
He lifted his mug in an ironic toast. ‘It must be pure serendipity, then, that it happens to be so perfectly to my taste. One sugar, was it?’
‘Two.’ For some reason, it felt like an admission of guilt, so she hurried on. ‘There’s white or brown bread for toast,’ she offered, determined to avoid a repeat of the awkwardness. ‘Which would you prefer?’
He took another savouring sip and smiled guilelessly at her. ‘Why don’t you surprise me? You’ve had such good luck so far it almost seems as if you know me better than I know myself.’
‘Well, that’s not such a difficult accomplishment at the moment, is it?’ she shot back, then put a hand over her mouth as if she could push back the words. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Why not? If it’s the truth. I can handle the truth, Nina. The question is, can you?’
The air suddenly crackled with electricity, and Nina nearly jumped out of her overly tight skin when there was a sharp rap on the door. She rushed to answer it, gratefully blotting Ryan’s cryptic remark out of her mind as she welcomed a dripping Dave Freeman over the threshold.
‘Hi, sorry about the early hour, but we have a bit of wind damage that Jeannie wants me to fix up, so I thought I’d nip over and see how the patient is doing before I knuckle down to work,’ he said, nodding at Ryan as he eased his muddy gumboots off on the doorstep. ‘I also thought I’d take a look up the road before we get any traffic coming through, see if I could find anything.’ He slid the black strap off his shoulder and held up the muddy leather travel bag that had been hanging over his back. ‘This yours?’
Ryan looked at it impassively. ‘I suppose it could be.’
Dave’s expression sharpened at the judicious choice of words.
‘He still can’t remember anything,’ Nina confirmed. ‘Where did you find the bag?’
‘I didn’t—this little guy did.’ Dave jerked his balding head sideways. ‘He was dragging it down the road when I met him. From the state of it, I’d say he probably dug it out from the ditch.’
Nina was hard put to distinguish the mud from the dog.
‘Oh, Zorro!’ The muddy ears drooped at her tone, and she hastened to correct the impression he was in for a scolding. ‘Good boy! Clever dog!’ His tail started wagging again, thick globules of mud splodging onto the concrete steps, and he danced back out into the rain, obviously intent on garnering more praise for diligent treasure hunting.
Dave had dropped the sodden bag on the kitchen floor and now sat Ryan at the dining-room table to conduct a brief examination. He checked that the sutures were holding satisfactorily and confirmed his previous opinion that there were no signs of delayed concussion or organic damage. Then he accepted Nina’s offer of coffee and joined them at the table, directing a series of questions, both pertinent and seemingly pointless, at Ryan.
‘Why don’t we just look in the bag?’ Nina asked impatiently, watching Ryan become increasingly taciturn, frustrated as he was by his inability to answer.
‘I just wanted to see how much he could recall in the absence of any retrieval cues. It’s almost a textbook presentation of traumatic amnesia,’ he told Ryan matter-of-factly. ‘Your implicit memories, that is, your learned skills, are intact. It’s your event memory that’s affected, and of course that encompasses your personal and emotional experiences.’
‘Gee, you mean I failed your exam, Doc?’ Ryan drawled, mocking his lecturing tone.
Dave took no offence. ‘There’s no pass or fail. Here, sign your full name for me.’ Pushing a spiral notebook across the table, he took out a pen from his shirt pocket and tossed it to Ryan, who, taken by surprise, still caught it easily but hesitated as soon as he touched pen to paper. ‘No? Try writing “Ryan”,’ Dave instructed and they watched as the letters traced smoothly off the end of the pen.
‘What does that prove?’ Nina asked impatiently. ‘You told him what to write.’
Dave grinned. ‘It proves that he’s naturally right-handed.’ He shrugged as they both stared at him. ‘The direct way isn’t always the best way to find pathways through the memory. While Ryan was concentrating on my question rather than on having to choose which hand to catch the pen or to write with, his response flowed naturally. His anxiety reflex wasn’t getting in the way. Now, if I’d simply asked him whether he was right-or left-handed, he mightn’t have been able to tell me.’
Just as Ryan hadn’t known how he liked his coffee—until he had tasted it, Nina thought.
‘But surely writing is a learned skill, and you said all his were intact,’ she argued.
‘Actually, most of our memory of ourselves involves some kind of learning process. Names, faces, personal experiences…something enters our short-term memory and if it does so with sufficient emotional impact, or we mentally rehearse it often enough by thinking or talking about it, it’s passed into permanent storage. Otherwise, it’s like writing in smoke on the wind.’
Nina didn’t want to hear any more. This wasn’t her problem, she told herself.
‘You said last night that this would only last a few hours!’ she protested.
‘I said it was probably temporary,’ he said. ‘And I still stand by that, but in some people the recovery comes in fragmentary bits and pieces over a period of time, rather like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, instead of conveniently all at once. Do you want to take a look in that bag now?’ he asked Ryan.
‘Sure,’ Ryan said, and got up slowly. Nina made a quick movement to follow but subsided at a discreet signal from Dave, warning her to give the man some space. She forced herself to pick up her half-finished mug of coffee and chat with Dave about the storm, all the while acutely attuned to the sounds from the kitchen.
Ryan crouched down on the floor to unzip the bag, his dark head disappearing below the line of the counter.
When he rose a few minutes later, Nina broke off her conversation and bounced up out of her chair. ‘Well? What’s in it?’ she demanded.
He shrugged. ‘Everything’s pretty wet, but…a few toiletries, some clothes, shoes—’
‘A weekend bag,’ she affirmed, impatient with his vagueness. ‘But is it yours?’
‘The clothes appear to be about the right size…’
Her heart zoomed into her sneakers. ‘Appear to be? So you don’t recognise anything?’
‘No, but then, I don’t have to when I have this.’ Ryan tossed a damp leather billfold onto the counter.
It fell open with a squelch, revealing a driver’s licence in the clear plastic window. The dark face stared up at her from the digitised photograph, and she quickly shifted her gaze from the icy blue eyes to the name printed beside the miniaturised image. ‘“Ryan Flint”.’ She lifted her head to gauge his reaction.
None was visible. His expression was impassive, waiting…
‘Ryan Liam Flint.’ He added the name she hadn’t bothered to read.
She ignored his correction, her eyes as transparent as green glass, as neutral as his own. ‘We were right about the cigarette lighter being yours, then.’
He held himself very still. ‘So it would seem.’
‘No credit cards, no business cards, very little money—’ Nina was shamelessly checking the rest of the billfold ‘—one stub of a return ferry ticket from Auckland. You seem to be travelling incredibly light for a man who must have paid a small fortune for his clo
thes.’
‘Perhaps that’s why,’ he said.
The fine tension that had spun out during their oddly detached exchange snapped when Dave stood up and held out his hand across the bench. ‘Hi, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Dave Freeman.’
‘I’m Ryan Flint.’ The ice-blue eyes glinted with wry appreciation as he completed the polite ritual and the two men shook hands.
‘How do you feel about being able to say that?’ Dave asked.
Ryan smiled thinly at him. ‘Relieved that I finally have a peg on which to hang myself.’
‘I hope you don’t mean that literally!’
The smile became one of amused confidence. ‘I don’t think I’m the suicidal type.’
Dave stroked his silver beard thoughtfully. ‘What type of man do you think you are?’
The curve of Ryan’s mouth flattened. ‘Not a quitter. I don’t quit until I get what I want.’
Nina’s fingers tightened on the edges of the billfold.
‘That’s a strong statement,’ Dave mused. ‘It sounds as if it comes from the heart.’
‘What makes you so sure I have one?’ Ryan lifted one cynical brow.
‘I just took your pulse, remember?’ Dave grinned. ‘Your resting heart rate is slightly high, but considering your injuries I’d say you’re an extremely fit young man.’
‘You’re thirty-three,’ Nina said, having done mental calculations from the birth date on the licence.
Ryan ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his injured forehead. ‘Not so young, then. Old enough to know that there may be things that I don’t want to remember about myself.’
Nina stiffened, but neither man was looking at her.
‘A pity they don’t include addresses on those things,’ Dave said, nodding towards the licence. ‘But at least now you have a name and some sort of sense of your own character.
‘We could notify the police, but you might want to wait a little before you declare yourself an official missing person. Maybe it’s a good thing that this storm hasn’t passed over yet. A couple more days of unstressed peace and quiet could be all you need to fully recover, or at least get to the point where you can slot back into your normal life without any major hassles,’ he added with the shrewd foresight of a man who was used to juggling the needs of wealthy patients anxious to avoid drawing public notice to their very private problems.
