by Lee Magner
“It’s...a new experience,” he muttered. Her dark green eyes were pools of rich color. Darker now, because she was feeling some strong emotion. He wondered which one. His whole body tightened. He shouldn’t open up his life to her, he thought. If he were thinking clearly, like he normally did, he’d cut off the flow of information about himself right now. Divert her attention to something else.
“Owen?” she whispered, reaching out and laying her hand on his. “I really want to know you better. I know it’s...” She hesitated. Color washed across her cheeks. She swallowed a little nervously. “I know you’re going out of your way to look after me and I don’t want to take advantage of that....”
He frowned thoughtfully. “You’re not taking advantage of me,” he growled.
“I just, well, I’d like to hear about your life.” She laughed, a soft, hesitant, embarrassed laugh. “You’re the only friend I have. And I don’t know a thing about you.”
He expelled a breath and pressed his lips together. This probably was not a good idea, he told himself. But he couldn’t refuse her. It was that look in her face when she pleaded. A woman as attractive as Mariana could not have escaped the notice of his sex. Why the hell wasn’t some man raising a storm of inquiry looking for her? Owen knew he would. He reluctantly picked up the thread of his story where he’d left off.
“I went along with her plans, not really expecting anything to come of it. She sent in the applications to the schools after she got them from me, filled out.” Owen grinned wryly. “You can’t imagine how shocked I was when acceptance letters started showing up in my mailbox! Just when I got over that, I got a letter from a foundation saying that I qualified for a special full scholarship... if I was willing to agree to the obligations attached to it.”
“What obligations?” Mariana asked, fascinated.
“That all my weekends and holidays would be spent working in the employ of Miss Portia Willowbrook. Whatever tasks she gave to me, I had to perform. It was stated in writing that nothing illegal would ever be required of me, but that’s all. It was a blank check. My education in exchange for being Portia’s all-purpose employee.”
“Portia had a foundation?”
“She had just set it up. She used it for a variety of educational and charitable purposes, including sending a couple of other young people on to higher education.”
“She must have been very wealthy,” Mariana observed, as the magnitude of the money involved began to add up.
“She inherited quite a bit from her grandmother, but she invested it well from the time she was a student at Bryn Mawr. Most of the money that she had by the time she died had been earned through her own canny instincts.”
“You really admired her, didn’t you?” Mariana said softly.
“Yes. She could be stubborn and opinionated, but she was one hell of a great woman.” He half smiled, remembering Portia.
“I assume you accepted the deal that she offered? I mean...you look like you’ve left that starving teenage boy behind long ago.”
Owen nodded pensively. “Yeah. I was a little annoyed, though. I was rebellious and independent, or so I thought. I didn’t like the idea of being bought like a slave at auction, being an indentured servant of some sort serving the whims of some old high-society lady for five years.”
“Five?”
“Yeah. I had to agree to spend one year and a day in her employ after graduation. I wasn’t sure what she was going to get out of it that could possibly be worth a four-year education. I kept looking for the string...the catch.”
“Was there a catch, then?” Mariana asked, a hint of concern flickering in her expression.
“Yes. But I didn’t see it until years later. I got my education. And I worked my butt off for Portia Willowbrook. I carried furniture. I cleaned bathrooms. I was her delivery boy, her errand man. If Portia needed something picked up at midnight for a Saturday brunch, I hauled my butt out of bed and took the subway across town to fetch it for her on time. That woman got her money’s worth out of me, all right,” he said with an admiring laugh. “At the rates people charge in New York for all that personal service, I was a bargain. I was a doorman when she felt like putting on airs. I was a gardener when she decided to replant the postage-stamp garden behind her brownstone house.”
“You learned a lot of trades.” Mariana observed ruefully.
“True. I learned to work hard. To be dependable. And how to deal with any level of society that crossed her front door.”
Owen stopped for a long moment, remembering. “I learned manners from her. Serving her guests seemed like an insult to me at the time, but after a while, I realized I’d learned all the arbitrary rules of etiquette while filling all those crystal goblets with ice water. When she had her literary friends come by for wine and cheese, I met the people that my university professors were talking about with such excitement in their seminars. Actually, I think the education I got directly from Portia was almost as valuable as the one she paid for at the university.”
“So, eventually you graduated?”
“Yes.” He grinned wryly. “With a degree in history and minors in archaeology and criminal justice.”
“And paid back the five-year commitment?”
“Yes.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “With pleasure. There wasn’t much of a demand for my particular credentials. History majors were a dime a dozen, a fact I had chosen to ignore for four years. In the eclectic company that Portia Willowbrook kept, pursuing your own interests had seemed reasonable.”
“But you kept in touch with Portia, after the fifth year,” she prompted.
Owen lifted his brows. “Portia wasn’t about to cut loose her investment.” Owen’s mouth twisted in a smile that looked more rueful than amused.
Mariana looked at him curiously. “Are you certain that Portia thought of you as...an investment?” she asked hesitantly.
“I’m certain.” He shrugged philosophically. “She’d be incensed to hear it described that ruthlessly,” he conceded. “In her own way, she came to think of me as a member of her extended family. But she always felt that I owed her. And that she could call in the favors when she needed them.” He glanced at Mariana. “And I did owe her,” he said firmly. “She’d opened doors for me that I was only too happy to walk through. I was happy to pay her back. Any way she wanted it.” His eyes darkened, however, recalling the final price he’d had to pay.
Mariana wondered what dark memories were suddenly silencing him. From the way he’d fallen silent, it was obvious he wasn’t inviting her into that part of his life. Not yet, anyway, she thought.
She cast about, trying to pick up the thread of their conversation again.
“But she left you this house, Owen. Doesn’t that seem more like something she’d have done for...a son?” Mariana asked with innocent curiosity.
Owen blinked, then turned to stare at Mariana. Their eyes held the gaze for a long, intimate moment. He was tempted to tell her the rest, he realized. That surprised him. That surprised him a very great deal. He shoved the impulse away and concentrated on answering the question she’d asked.
“Eventually, I was as close to a son as she had, I suppose,” he conceded. “But all those years that I worked for her, I felt more like a trusted, increasingly relied-upon junior business partner. I was a known commodity. She knew she could count on me. She could assign me any task she liked,” he said at length. “And I would do it.”
“And that was all right with you?” Mariana asked, sensing his conflicting feelings yet unsure what the conflict was about.
“Most of the time. Portia was usually frank and aboveboard about her plans for people. When she wanted me to do something, she came directly to me and stated it in plain English. If I wasn’t interested in going along with it, she let it go.”
“She was usually frank and aboveboard?” she echoed cautiously.
Owen frowned. Mariana was an astute listener, he realized. She was hearing things he was lea
ving intentionally unsaid. It was like she was attuned to him and sensed what he meant whether he actually said it or not. He felt an unfamiliar surge of self-recrimination. He didn’t normally let people see into his soul like this. What the hell was happening to his defenses? he wondered. If only he could lay to rest that old bitter memory, he thought. Damn Portia and her matchmaking plot. If he kept talking, Mariana would instinctively ferret it out of him.
Mariana watched his face darken and his lips tighten into a flat, thin, angry line. What terrible memory brought that unhappy shadow across his expression? Did it involve a woman? Someone other than Portia Willowbrook? Mariana felt the burning of jealousy in her heart and was startled into silence. She told herself that she had no right to feel upset about some unhappy love affair, if that was what made him look so distant and morose all of a sudden. Still...
“Did you stay in New York, then?” she asked casually, picking absentmindedly at the sleeve of her shirt.
“Some of the time. I’d met a lot of people in a lot of different businesses while I lived in Portia’s home in New York. One of them was a private investigator who specialized in insurance fraud. He had more work than he could handle. So, I hired on. I had to travel a lot for the first six years. That’s when Portia became more like a friend than a benefactress.” Right up until she started playing matchmaker, he thought. “I’d drop into her soirees and salons when I was in town. She enjoyed hearing what I was doing. And introducing her newest pet projects.”
“Portia never had any children, then?” Mariana guessed.
“No.” Just protégés, he thought grimly.
Mariana paused. She hesitated to state the obvious twice in less than a minute.
Owen looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “You think she groomed me to be her son.”
Mariana nodded.
“Not exactly,” he muttered, looking at her morosely. “But...she eventually had some personal agendas for me.”
Owen realized the conversation was heading relentlessly into a sea of very bitter memories that he preferred not to dredge up if he could avoid it. It surely could do Mariana no good to hear about the tragedy that had resulted from Portia’s matchmaking.
“Personal agendas?” Mariana breathed the question so softly he barely heard it.
But he did hear it.
His expression became distant.
“You’re warning me off this subject, aren’t you?” Mariana said with a half smile.
“Very astute of you to notice,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s not pleasant to talk about.”
Mariana looked into his eyes. His shuttered gaze made it difficult to read what he was thinking.
“Maybe some other time...” she murmured. She truly didn’t want to pry into areas of his life he didn’t want to share with her. She respected privacy. She told herself quite firmly that she respected privacy. But she wondered what had wounded him and left this scar.
“Look, you’ve heard the story of how I met Portia,” he concluded abruptly. He got up and rubbed the back of his neck as if to rid himself of unwanted tension. “Why don’t we call Sergeant Lefcourt and ask if he’d like to see that drawing you made of the mystery man.”
He looked down at her, his gaze serious. “I’d feel better if we knew who that guy was,” Owen muttered.
Mariana swallowed hard and rose to her feet. She shivered just thinking about the face of the man in the drawing. But she gamely smiled at Owen and nodded.
“Then we could drive over to Maryland and see if anything seems familiar,” Owen offered.
“Fine.”
“Owen?”
He kept looking at her, waiting for her to tell him whatever it was.
“What if...?” Mariana lost her breath. She gathered her courage. “What if I never remember any more than I have?”
He wanted to draw her into his arms and comfort her so badly he ached with it He was drowning in those liquid green eyes of hers.
“You’ll remember,” he swore softly. “If not everything... you’ll remember enough.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, hating the tremulous sound of her voice. Listening to him talk about his memories had made her ache to recapture her own to share with him.
He moved closer to her and reached out, against his better judgment. He knew he was making a big mistake, but he couldn’t seem to hold himself back from it. His hand brushed her cheek, slid across the soft, warm skin of her neck, and he splayed his fingers into her silky hair.
“I can’t stand that being between us,” he reluctantly admitted in a harsh whisper. “We’ll find out who you are, Mariana. I promise you.” He bent his head and kissed her cheek. He heard the soft, sighing release of her breath, felt the sweet warmth flutter across his ear. His whole body clenched, and heat flowed through him in waves.
He lifted his head and looked into her half-closed eyes. There were no tears there. Just a confused and uncertain longing.
“Thanks, Owen,” she whispered. And after you’ve helped me locate my misplaced memories, perhaps you’ll let me discover some more of yours, she thought wistfully.
Sergeant Lefcourt wasn’t at his desk when Owen called. He was out with an insurance investigator who’d been combing the wreckage site for evidence related to the truck driver’s liability for the crash.
Owen hung up the phone and turned toward Mariana, who was lounging against the kitchen doorjamb and sipping her mug of hot tea.
“It seems they may have found something important up in the mountains,” Owen said evenly.
“What?” Mariana asked, her heart beating faster in anticipation.
“The truck’s insurance company sent an investigator up there to take a close look at the scene of the accident a few days ago. The investigator used his cell phone this afternoon to call Lefcourt and suggest he meet him at the accident site. It seems he may have found a purse that could belong to you.”
Mariana stared at him. holding her breath, hardly daring to let herself react to the bombshell.
“Lefcourt will call us after he retrieves it from the accident site,” Owen went on.
“Oh. Owen...” She said his name with all the anguished hope burning in her uncertain heart. She blinked away unexpected tears and laughed tremulously as she hastily wiped them away. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight if he doesn’t call!”
Owen glanced at the artist’s pastels and drawing paper lying on one of the kitchen counters. He nodded toward them.
“Why don’t you work out your frustrations with your talents?” he suggested.
“Draw?” she asked, startled by the unexpected suggestion.
“Yeah.” He walked over to one of the unopened boxes and began unpacking it. He lifted out a fax machine and hooked it up. “Maybe more things will come back to you. Meanwhile, I think I’ll fax that drawing you did of the man of your dreams to the police.”
“Man of my nightmares,” she corrected him, looking uneasily at the sketch, which lay with the art materials.
Owen frowned slightly. The hair was standing up on the back of his neck every time Mariana looked at that sketch. He could sense the uneasiness bordering on fear that simmered within her when she thought of the man in the picture. He’d spent many years honing his instincts, and right now, they were all telling him that Mariana’s life wasn’t all moonlight and roses. Something was wrong. And until she got her memory back, she wouldn’t know what that was. Or who was causing the problem. Or just what kind of difficulty she faced.
Mariana saw the darkness descend over Owen’s expression.
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” she asked softly.
“Professional habit,” he muttered. He plugged in the fax and punched in Lefcourt’s fax number. He fed the picture into the machine, watching as it slowly passed through.
“What profession makes worry a habit?”
“Investigation.”
“Insurance investigation?”
she asked doubtfully.
He didn’t look at her.
“Yes.” But it sounded unpersuasive, even to him.
“Are you still working as an investigator? I mean...you’ve spent so much time with me, it’s almost like you don’t have a job.”
“I freelance.”
“What happened to that job you told me about? The one Portia’s friend offered you?” Mariana crossed the room and put her mug down in the sink, coming to stand just a few feet from Owen.
“I retired,” he said, his mouth twisting in bitter amusement.
“So young?” she asked softly.
“It wasn’t my choice. It was part of a settlement. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Mariana frowned slightly and chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. What was he being so evasive about? she wondered. What dark secret was he reluctant to share?
The sketch emerged from the other side of the machine, having been transmitted to its destination.
“there. Now Lefcourt can try to figure out who Mr. X is,” Owen said grimly. He laid the picture back down. Then he pinned Mariana with a very direct gaze. “Weren’t you going to draw?” he said pointedly. “It might jog some memories.”
“Yes, but—”
“You know, I think I’d better not wait until tomorrow to see Hempbill,” Owen interrupted, deraiting any further questions she had planned to ask about his old job. “I’ll just drop in on him now. He should be catching up on paperwork in his office at this hour. A few more things occurred to me since I talked to him. They might affect his legal strategy.” He slanted a strange glance at her. “I think sooner would be better than later.”
“Oh. Of course. That’s important,” she conceded. Suddenly, she felt guilty. “You go right ahead,” she said with a confident smile. “I keep forgetting, you’ve got a life to keep up with,” she langhed, a little embarrassed.
Owen nodded and headed for the front of the house. He glanced back at her, and for a moment, their eyes met and that warm, sultry feeling pervaded every inch of his body.
