The Amnesiac Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

  Whitney mechanically dragged a hand through her hair. “Yes, maybe I should.” At least she could take a shower. The rest of it, well, it was going to take more than water to clean that up.

  Bone weary, she turned away and began walking to the hotel without a backward glance.

  The paramedic was still busy working on his shoulder, impeding him. Zane moved his arm away. “Give me a minute,” Zane insisted when the paramedic protested.

  “But your shoulder—”

  Zane ignored him. The bandages could wait. Whitney couldn’t.

  “Whitney,” he called as he hurried after her.

  She wanted to keep walking, walking until she disappeared. But she didn’t want a scene, not in front of everyone, so she stopped. Shoulders stiff like a Marine in formation, she stared straight ahead of her.

  “What?”

  She wasn’t turning around. But she wasn’t running away, either. Maybe that was a good sign. Zane hurried over to her, holding on to his arm. It hurt with every jarring step he took. Other things hurt more.

  When he reached her, she finally looked at him. The look was cold, removed. As if she could just barely tolerate the sight of him. The trouble was, he couldn’t blame her. Zane’s mouth felt dry. Where the hell did he begin?

  With the truth, he suddenly realized. If he had any chance at all, he had to lead with the truth. Even if he started with something small.

  He searched her eyes, looking for an opening. There was none. “Whit, I don’t know what to say.”

  Her expression completely shut him out. “Obviously. You’ve already proven that. Look, unless you want to have a commendation posthumously awarded, I’d get myself back to that paramedic, if I were you.”

  He wasn’t about to die, at least not from the flesh wound Quinton had given him. “Whit—”

  She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear the sound of his voice anymore. She’d behaved like a fool and he’d been privy to that. All she wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die.

  “I’ll see you later, Russell.” With that, she walked quickly away, the sound of her heels against the concrete echoing into the night.

  Zane could feel each step as if it had been taken right across his heart.

  Sheridan came up behind him. “She doesn’t look like a woman who just narrowly escaped with her life and wrapped up an important case in the process,” he commented thoughtfully.

  Zane didn’t feel like getting into it. “There are extenuating circumstances.”

  Sheridan raised a brow. “Problem?”

  Zane stood watching, even though she had disappeared. “You might say that.”

  Sheridan didn’t believe in interfering in his people’s personal problems. And he didn’t believe in those same problems interfering with work. “I also might say fix it. And I will. Fix it. By morning if you can.” It was a direct order. “And get that thing bandaged. I can’t afford to lose any men. The department spent too damn much money training you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zane murmured, still looking after Whitney. What the hell was he going to do now?

  Zane remained standing outside the hotel door a good fifteen minutes after he’d gotten off the elevator. All fifteen minutes were spent trying to get his courage up. He’d rather have faced another bullet than the hurt look in Whitney’s eyes, knowing he was responsible for putting it there.

  He thought of knocking, but that would give her an opportunity to tell him not to come in. He used his key instead.

  Whitney jumped when she heard the door opening. Some federal agent she was, she upbraided herself, picking up the pair of shorts she’d dropped. As skittish as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie. More.

  She had one of her suitcases open on the bed and was packing. There was a pile of clothing on the bed. The closet stood open and empty, except for the wedding dress. It was conspicuously hanging there, like the one child not picked for a baseball game when sides were being divided up.

  He tried his best to sound nonchalant. “What are you doing?”

  She barely glanced in his direction. It took effort just to look cool.

  “Not very observant for a federal agent, are you?” she commented. She tucked in a pair of shoes beneath a dress in the case. “I’m packing so I can get that out of the way. I’m leaving first thing in the morning, after I make my report. What I can remember. Of course,” Whitney continued, refusing to look at him, “there’re still some gaps, like how I really got amnesia.”

  “I was supposed to place a bug in Quinton’s suite. You insisted on coming with me. We were almost done when we heard someone entering the suite. We were on the second floor. The safest way out was the balcony. When we shimmied down the side to the ground, you fell the last six feet and hit your head. You told me you were all right, but I made you go to the emergency room, anyway. The doctor there thought you were all right, too. He was wrong.” Zane blew out a breath. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”

  It was coming back to her fuzzily, but she could remember. “Last time I looked, you didn’t have any authority over me. As I recall, I’m the one with seniority.”

  He held up two fingers. “Two weeks.” That hardly qualified her to pull rank. He watched her place the suitcase beside the bed. It was now or never, before he lost his nerve. “Whitney, we have to talk.”

  She spared him a glance, but even that was too much. It hurt to look at him. To see the face of the man she had finally allowed herself to love, only to wake up and discover that it had all been a sham. And, most likely, a joke.

  “Yes, we do,” she agreed tersely. “When we get back, I’m putting in for another partner.”

  Her decision stunned him. They’d been partners ever since he’d arrived at the department. They’d shared each other’s life, been each other’s backup. She was his best friend and he hers. How could she decide to just arbitrarily throw all that away without even talking to him about it?

  “What?” he demanded.

  She wasn’t going to cry. Splitting up was for the best. If anything like the word best could be applied to the situation.

  “Well, in light of what’s happened, we can’t go on working together. Okay?”

  She was cutting him off at the knees and sending him on his way. Well, if that was what she wanted, he wasn’t going to oppose her.

  Zane nodded. “Okay. Okay,” he repeated quietly as he crossed to the door. He needed a drink. A tall one. Maybe several.

  His hand on the doorknob, Zane suddenly swung around. This was all wrong. He wasn’t going to get pushed out. Not anymore. “Damn it, it’s not okay.”

  She raised her head and looked in his direction. “What did you say?”

  Zane strode back across the room. The volume of his voice increased as he came closer. “I said it’s not okay. We’re not going to back away from this like we did before.”

  Stunned, she stared at him. “What are you talking about? What ‘before?’ There was no ‘before.’”

  If they were close, it was as friends, not as lovers on the brink of something serious. No matter what she might have felt in those secret moments when she lay alone in bed at night. She was too well-trained to have allowed anything to happen between them, to give in to her own feelings and suffer consequences. She was happy just being his friend.

  And now, they weren’t even friends.

  It was time for truth on both their parts. “Wasn’t there?” he demanded, his eyes pinning her down. “When we first met? Wasn’t there something?”

  She tossed her head, looking away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Zane circled so that she was forced to look straight at him. “Then maybe your memory hasn’t returned completely.”

  Whitney gritted her teeth. Why was he badgering her like this? What did he hope to gain? She pulled out the second suitcase and threw it on the bed. “Or maybe yours is a little off.”

  He wasn’t wrong about this. “I don’t think so. T
here was an attraction between us. At least there was on my part.”

  “Yeah, right.” Much as she had wanted it once, she would be a fool to believe him.

  “There was.”

  His voice was so low that she stopped packing and turned around to look at him. She wanted to believe him, but she knew better. “Then why didn’t you ever say anything about it?”

  The answer was simple. He’d felt her out and she had deliberately not seemed interested. “I was afraid of getting laughed at.”

  People knew better than to laugh at Zane. “By who?” she scoffed. “The guys?”

  “You.” He knew he had her there. “You were one of the guys. You worked so hard at blending in, at being ‘one of the guys’ that I thought—welt, I thought you weren’t interested.” She’d made it clear just where the lines were drawn between them and what side he was to remain on. He’d settled for her friendship and the fact that he could always rely on her.

  She didn’t believe it, not for one minute. She couldn’t let herself. That would make her twice the fool. “And you quickly drowned your sorrows in another woman.” Whitney paused, as if thinking. The figure was on the tip of her fingers at all times. Because it hurt. “By my count, you’ve had eight in the past six years.”

  And none of them had meant anything for even five minutes. He’d assumed that no woman ever would. “Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  She went back to packing. She couldn’t look at him anymore. “Yes, that you’re fickle.”

  He grabbed her by the arm and forced her to look at him again. “That I haven’t found the right one. And the reason for that was because none of them were you.”

  For a second, just a second, she had trouble catching her breath. If she were to believe that...

  But no, she knew why he was saying that. “If you’re trying to justify what happened here—”

  She couldn’t be that dense, he thought. She had to be doing this on purpose. “I’m not trying to justify it. I’m trying to make you understand why it happened.”

  He wasn’t going to talk his way out of this. The least he could do was not spin any stories and admit like a man what he’d done. Like the man she’d once believed was her friend.

  “I know damn well why it happened!” she shouted. “It happened because you were leading with your shorts again and you saw the perfect opportunity to take advantage of me.” She pressed her lips together, refusing to cry. “And I didn’t make it very hard for you.”

  It was the first truthful thing she’d said so far. “As I recall, you were throwing yourself at me.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well—”

  With his finger beneath her chin, he lifted her head. He saw the tears shimmering in her eyes. It would have hurt less if she’d hit him with a two-by-four. “And I wasn’t taking advantage.”

  She swallowed the tears that were coating her throat. “Then what would you call it?”

  “Being lucky.”

  She jerked away. She might have known. With shaky fingers, she picked up a nightgown. It was a scrap of blue gauze, meant only to be seen as a prop if Quinton had his men search their room. But she had worn it to seduce Zane. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

  “Getting lucky. Same thing.”

  “No, it’s not.” He pulled the nightgown out of her hands and threw it aside. “Damn it, stop packing and listen to me.”

  She picked up the nightgown and refolded it, then tucked it into the suitcase. “I can do two things at once.”

  “Well, I can’t.” Uttering a ripe curse, he used his good hand to jerk her around until he had her attention. When he looked into her eyes, his anger melted. “I have cared about you, Whitney, for a very long time.”

  His voice was tender. How long did he expect her to keep her heart hardened? “I know, we’re friends.”

  She was the most infuriating woman he’d ever met. And the most desirable. For both their sakes, he struggled to keep his temper.

  “Yeah, we are. And as your friend, I want to tell you that your partner’s in love with you.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “What?”

  He repeated it slowly, letting each word sink in. “I am in love with you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He’d expected this. “That’s always been your problem, running. And you’re running again.”

  Whitney drew her brows together. What was he talking about? “Again?”

  Zane nodded. “Just like you did in the beginning.” He could see the riot of words forming in her mind. He wasn’t about to allow her to let them loose. “When you lost your memory, you were different. Still you, but different. I don’t know how to describe it—it was like—”

  “I had no scruples?” she supplied. He’d made her feel wanton, reckless. And she’d loved it. But it had all been a terrible mistake.

  “No,” he continued patiently, though the denial was firm, “it was like you had this light that seemed to go off within you.”

  He wasn’t going to talk his way out of this with pretty words. Having partnered with him for six years, she knew just how glib his tongue could be. “So now I glowed in the dark?”

  “You’re doing it again, making jokes, putting up defenses again just like you did before.” He finally saw through her. Through the tough veneer, down to the woman who existed beneath. The woman he’d made love with. “What are you afraid of, Whitney?”

  She sighed; dropping the last article of clothing into the suitcase. “You want to know what I’m afraid of? All right, I’ll tell you. Getting my teeth kicked in. That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what love does—kicks your teeth in and then walks away.” She dusted her hands off and then snapped the locks into place.

  This was something she’d never shared with him. While he had told her about the women in his life, she’d never mentioned men, except for a vague reference to someone important once being in her life. “Boy, you must have had one hell of an experience.”

  “Maybe.”

  It had been, and it had branded her for life. So much so that when she’d first met Zane, she’d purposely fought the attraction she’d felt. If it blew up in her face, working together would become hell. She liked him, respected him and didn’t want to risk losing him because an affair between them hadn’t worked out. She had banked down anything she’d felt and he’d remained in her life. If that was difficult at times, well, it was still worth the trade.

  Or so she told herself.

  “If I did have an experience,” she hedged, “it taught me not to put myself on the line.”

  If she thought that, she was wrong. “You did it every day,” Zane pointed out. “With me.”

  There was a difference. “I was protecting your life, like you were protecting mine. The heart had nothing to do with it.”

  He didn’t believe her. “The heart,” he insisted, “had everything to do with it. Those four days, when you didn’t have all this baggage around to weigh you down, you were different, freer. You acted as if you loved me.” And he had believed her. Because his act had been the real thing.

  She tried to dismiss it. “I thought I was your wife.”

  He wasn’t buying it. “No excuse. Lots of wives don’t automatically love their husbands and you had nothing to fall back on, no memories. I even tried to talk you out of it when you thought we should be making love,” he reminded her.

  Whitney looked away. “More reason than ever to get another partner.”

  “Why?” he demanded angrily. “Explain this to me—I’m a little slow.”

  She blew out a breath. He was making this hell for her. Why couldn’t he just accept the break and let it go? “Because we can’t go back.”

  She was afraid, he realized. Really afraid. That was why she’d gotten so angry, because he’d made her feel things, and now she was afraid of that. His anger disappeared, replaced by tenderness.

  “Why should we?” He brushed his hand along her cheek and watched her eyes w
iden. “Why don’t we just go forward?”

  Just what was there to go forward to? “And what, be lovers?” she asked hoarsely.

  For the first time since he’d entered the room, Zane grinned. “Sounds good to me.”

  Under ordinary circumstances, his smile would have curled into her being. She shut it out. “Well, not to me. What do we do once it’s over?”

  “You’re terminating something before it’s even had time to root. This isn’t like you,” he insisted. She was usually the optimist, the one who saw a rainbow behind every storm. Why was it so difficult for her to see the rainbow here? “And who says it has to be over?”

  Just what was his point? “You’re saying you want to be my lover forever? You, Mr. Flavor of the Month?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t want to be your lover forever.”

  There, he’d admitted it. “Then why are we even having this discussion?” Exasperated, she yanked the suitcase off the bed.

  “Because I want to be your husband forever.”

  Stunned, Whitney dropped the suitcase. “What did you say?”

  With his toe, he moved the suitcase away, giving him clear access to her. He slipped his one good hand around her waist.

  Zane shook his head. “Twenty-nine years old and your hearing is going already. I hope you come with a warranty.”

  She doubled her fists and pounded him on the chest. He knew she was only kidding. Had she wanted to, she could have really hurt him. Having accidentally gotten in the way of it once, he knew firsthand that she had one hell of a punch.

  “Can the funny stuff, Russell. What are you saying to me?”

  She felt good like this. Against him. As if she belonged. “I’m saying that I don’t want another partner. Ever. I’m saying that the room is paid up until the end of the week, so we might as well make use of it. I’m saying you’ve got a gorgeous wedding dress in the closet that’s a shame to waste. I’m saying—”

  “Will you marry me?” She didn’t know if she was feeding him the line, or asking for herself.

  His eyes crinkled in a smile. “Yeah, that too.”

  He wanted to marry her. He really wanted to marry her. And she wasn’t hallucinating or struggling with another bout of amnesia. “Then say it.”