I didn’t know what to say. It seemed so awkward.
I reached up to run my fingers through my hair, surprised to see the tremor that made them shake almost violently. I pressed my hands into my armpits, hiding the tremor that felt like a weakness exposing itself.
“Was Rose good to you? Did she treat you well?”
Mention of Rose’s name made something break open inside of me. I pushed away from the wall and stepped toward her. Only one step, but it was enough to make her jump a little.
“How could you send me to her? Why Rose? Why send me away at all? We could have gone together. We could have run away!”
“He would have found us, and he would have killed us.”
She said it calmly, almost coldly, but with conviction.
“You don’t know that.”
She looked at me. “Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how he came after us every time we left him? Don’t you remember how he stood outside that women’s shelter and harassed the other women until we finally left? Don’t you remember how he sent his friends after us when he couldn’t come after us himself?”
“All I remember is hearing the two of you argue at night. And him hurting you. And the night I tried to help you and he hit me, too.”
Tears filled her eyes. She reached up and pushed her glasses up her nose.
“He was a cop, Heather. He could have found us anywhere.”
“But why send me away? Why couldn’t you have kept me with you?”
“They would have put you in the system the moment they arrested me. You were better off with Rose.”
I snorted. “Rose was not ideal.”
“Rose was the only person I knew who would protect you if he’d survived. She had her downside, but when she made a commitment to something, she never let anything stop her from fulfilling it. Nothing. I knew she would keep you from him if he somehow survived.”
I nodded. She was right about that.
“I had to protect you, Heather. When he turned on you that night, I knew that he would hurt you if something happened to me. I hadn’t cared up until that moment if he killed me. But when I saw him turn on you, I knew that the moment I was out of the way you would simply take my place. I couldn’t let that happen.”
She turned, leaned back against the wall where she stood and studied me.
“You’re pregnant?” she asked with a little catch in her voice.
“Yes.”
“Is he a good man?”
I bit my lip, amused that she assumed there was a man in my life. But, again, she’d been locked away for more than a decade.
“He is. He treats me like a queen.”
“Good.”
“We’re talking about getting married. But we’re not in a hurry.”
“Don’t be. I married your father three weeks after I met him. I believed he was perfection. That he would take me away from my controlling parents and give me the life that I had always wanted. And he did, for the first year. He was kind and gentle and so excited when he learned that you would be coming along. But then … I don’t know why it started. I don’t know what I did or what happened to him to make him do it. But things got really dark really fast.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Mom.”
She looked up at me, surprise on her face, tears spilling from her eyes. I went to her and she hesitated, but then she hugged me, her hands moving over my skull like she used to do, like she was searching for injuries, or just assuring herself that I was solid. She held me for a long time, longer than the guard had said we should touch. But no one came rushing in to separate us. No one seemed to notice.
“I was ashamed of myself, Heather. I was ashamed that I stayed all that time, letting him hurt me that way. I was ashamed that I didn’t stand up to him sooner, that I didn’t try to protect you. And I was ashamed that I wasn’t smart enough to find a better way out. That’s why I sent you away. To protect you, but also because I was so ashamed of myself. I didn’t want you to have to share my shame.”
“I hated you for sending me away. I thought you didn’t love me.”
“Oh, darling …”
She sobbed softly. I was crying, too. It was not what I’d expected. Suddenly I was a little girl again and my mom was trying to make things better in the only way she could. We sat at the table and she held my hands and told me everything I didn’t realize I’d wanted to know.
Our twenty minutes came and went, but no one interrupted us until more than an hour had passed. When they did come, they seemed apologetic. Kind. I was relieved that this was the sort of respect my mother had finally found.
When I stepped back out into the lobby, Peter was there. He gathered me in his arms and managed to get me out to the car before I fell apart in his arms. He held me silently while I cried. And then he took me to the hotel and took care of me in a way that only Peter could do.
“I love you,” I whispered against his chest. “You make me feel so lucky. How did I get to be so lucky?”
He didn’t answer me. He just ran his hands slowly over my back and kissed the top of my head. But I knew he felt the same way.
Chapter 25
Luke
I saw him walk through the door and I thought my heart would shutter to a stop. I never thought I would see that face again. I put the CIA behind me seven years ago, and again five years ago, after Edgar and his evil schemes were uncovered. And for five years we’d been safe.
I checked in from time to time, made sure Edgar was still where he belonged, made sure everyone else involved was keeping to their own business. I wasn’t about to allow what had happened to touch my family again. I knew Hayden still didn’t trust me. I knew Peter was still wary of me. But they were coming around. Everything was better now.
And then he walked through the door.
He said he had no memory of who he was, said he’d woken in a hospital over a year ago with no knowledge of how he’d gotten there or why. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
Was he looking for me? Was he looking to stir up new trouble? I wasn’t sure, but I managed to sneak into Megan’s office and check out his file. Hayden had assigned his case to Rhett Dennings. She was a good operative. Too good for this case, maybe. I’d have to see what I could do to make sure she wasn’t too helpful.
I had to protect what was mine.
RHETT
Prologue
????
He opened his eyes and looked around the room and then had to close them again. The light was so bright. He lifted his arm to rest it over his eyes, but it was suddenly so very heavy. He peeked and found himself looking at a huge plaster cast on an arm that was dangling from some sort of contraption right above his body. His leg was in the same condition, wrapped in plaster and hanging from a series of ropes and some sort of canvas.
What the hell?
He tried to think back, to figure out what had happened to him. Was he in an accident? Did he fall from some height? Was it … what else could it be?
Instinct told him he was in danger. But he didn’t understand why.
The door opened and he instinctively reached for a weapon. Under his pillow. Why would he have a weapon under his pillow?
“Well, you’re awake,” a woman in a white lab coat said.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital. You’ve been here for quite some time.”
“How long?”
“A little more than a month. You’ve been in a coma, but you began coming out of it several days ago.”
“A coma? Why? What happened to me?”
“You were in an accident. You sustained some very serious injuries. It’s actually quite amazing that you survived.”
“And you? Who are you?”
The woman held up the badge that was hanging from her jacket. “Dr. Wistmore. We spoke yesterday.”
I shook my head. I didn’t understand any of this.
“You suffered significant head trauma, Mr. Chandler. It’s q
uite possible that it’ll take time for your memories to come back.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. It differs from patient to patient.”
I reached up with my other hand—this one was free of obstacles save the IV line—and brushed my forehead. There was a bandage there. I touched my cheeks, my jaw, looked down at the line of my chest.
“You had to have surgery on your belly,” Dr. Wistmore informed me. “Your spleen had to be removed and your small bowel was repaired. There was a laceration in your liver, too. You broke your arm in four places, your leg in two. You snapped several ribs. There was a skull fracture, and your eye socket was shattered. We’ve been able to set your leg and arm. Your face will require a few more surgeries, but we should be able to get you back to your handsome self.”
“You called me Chandler?”
She nodded. “It was on the ID you had with you when you came in. A security pass on a lanyard around your neck. Richard Chandler.”
“What kind of security pass?”
The doctor shrugged. “I don’t know. They’d have that done in admitting.”
She turned to the machines beside the bed and flicked her finger against the IV tube running down to my arm.
“We should be able to move you down to the surgery floor in a day or two. Prepare you for your next facial reconstruction surgery.”
“Okay.”
She smiled. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Chandler. And in a week or more you’ll know exactly who you are and you can call your family to come rescue you. In the meantime, you’ve got most of the staff around here talking non-stop. I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of nurses willing to cater to your every need.”
She paused at the door, looking back at me over her shoulder. “You came in with a duffle bag, too. That’s in admitting as well, but I would suggest you call down and have it brought upstairs. It seemed to be extremely important to you when you came in.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You were screaming for it. We had to sedate you to get you to calm down about it.”
She left, but I wasn’t alone for long. Several nurses came in to offer me whatever service I might possibly want fulfilled. I waited until they were gone before I made the call Dr. Wistmore recommended. When they brought it—it was a simple black bag that I did not recognize—I had them set it on the bed beside me. The moment they were gone, I managed to open it with one hand. Just a little. Just enough to peek inside.
Money. The damn thing was packed to the gills with money. Cash. Millions of dollars in cash.
What the hell?
Who the hell was I?
Chapter 1
Hayden
I rolled over, thinking I should probably get my ass out of bed and to work. But it was so incredibly comfortable. The idea of sleeping on silk sheets seemed almost pornographic. But whoever put that idea in my head was full of crap. This was so luxurious, I couldn’t even begin to explain.
“These had to have cost a fucking fortune.”
“Half my sign-on bonus. But they were worth it, don’t you think?”
I rolled toward Waverly, my hand automatically sliding over her breast. Those nipples were so beautiful, the way they stood straight up as if they were saluting the ceiling. She was long and thin and … damn, her body turned me on in ways that I didn’t think I’d ever considered before. I ran my hand over both breasts, watching them dance under my palm. She grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand up to her mouth, running her tongue along my lifeline.
“That’s nasty,” I said, pulling my hand away.
She laughed. “You like my tongue on every other part of your body. Why not there?”
“Because that’s just … weird.”
Any other woman probably would have been offended by that, but she wasn’t. She just laughed again as she pushed me back and climbed on top of me.
“We have fifteen minutes before we won’t have time to get dressed and be on time to work. Do you want to screw here or in the shower?”
“There’s a romantic question.”
“Who said this had anything to do with romance? You hate me, and I just barely tolerate you.”
“I don’t hate you.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. I ran operations at Dragon Security and Waverly ran the computer information section. Seeing her every day reminded me of the woman who’d preceded her in the position, my fiancée, Sam. My dead fiancée. Seeing Waverly in Sam’s old office perpetually evoked her memory. Every time I turned a corner at Dragon, there was always the chance that Waverly would be standing there discussing the same computer things that Sam had been fluent in.
I hated that Waverly wasn’t Sam, but I couldn’t hate the woman herself. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t who I longed for.
Waverly watched my thoughts whir past, her almond-shaped eyes soft and knowing. “Maybe you only hate me a little bit.”
Maybe I did. And that cruel knowledge made me hate myself even more than I already did. The only way I knew to hide from sadness and self-awareness was sex, and luckily Waverly was always eager and willing.
I grabbed her around the waist and tried to pin her to the mattress, but Waverly refused to be moved. She was strong, despite the fact that she was half my size and weighed no more than a couple of sacks of potatoes. I gave up and let her pin me to the bed, sighing as she leaned down and kissed me with a determination that only Waverly could possess.
She moved her hips and captured my cock in one nice thrust, swallowing me whole so quickly that it stole the breath from my lips. I slid my hands over her ass and tugged her down against my hips, raising them so that I was buried as deep as I could possibly go.
She sighed against my mouth, sitting still for a long moment. But then she untangled herself from my touch and sat up, bracing herself on my chest before she began to do that dance that only a woman could do.
I watched her, admiring the way her body moved in one easy wave, the way she ran her hands over her belly and her breasts before touching her own face, lifting her hair off her neck as she raised her hands high into the air.
It was like a performance, one designed for my enjoyment only. But then there was the sense that Waverly was in this all on her own, that my body was just the instrument she used to make the performance whole.
God help me, I liked watching her in those moments. I liked the pleasure that danced on her face, the way she took control and did things to me that no other woman had ever done without a little coaxing, a little pushing. Waverly enjoyed sex in a way no woman I’d ever been with did.
Not even Sam.
I closed my eyes, pushing that thought away.
My cock was throbbing almost painfully. I moved my hips and she slapped my side, reminding me she liked me to remain perfectly still while she was rushing toward her orgasm. But today I just couldn’t.
I grabbed her hips and lifted her off of me, throwing her against the headboard of the bed. She cried out—which was unusual in itself since Waverly rarely made noise during sex—as I moved up behind her and thrust roughly inside of her. Now she was the one pinned, her body caught against the headboard with my cock as her stake.
I grabbed hold of the headboard and thrust hard. With another woman it might have felt like I was demanding submission, but Waverly was more than my equal in bed, as she was in all other things. She cried out again, her hand moving over the back of mine.
Her fingernails raked me, drawing blood as a third scream slipped from her lips. But it wasn’t anger or pain that inspired her scream, her attack. It was an orgasm that made her thighs quiver and her knees grow weak. She pushed back against me, her ass cradled in my pelvis, her muscles shivering against my cock, tugging at it, pulling me deeper inside of her.
It was more than I could take, more than any man could take. I came in a rush, the pain and the pleasure taking the strength from me. I collapsed against her, causing us both to fall in a heap on her silk-covered pillows.
>
“Get out now,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “My boss doesn’t like it when I’m late for work.”
“I’m your boss.”
“Yeah. So?”
I bit her shoulder. Then I got up, tugged on my pants, and headed for the door.
“Thursday morning, right?”
She tossed a pillow at me, but she was smiling when she did it. For once, I didn’t feel like I’d broken her heart—or mine—when I walked away.
***
There was a man standing at the reception desk when I walked into Dragon Security’s main offices a little over an hour later. He was tall and dark. He was wearing a leather jacket and his shoulders were slumped a little, like he was used to trying to disappear in a crowd.
I walked past, intent on the elevators, when the receptionist called to me.
“Mr. Dubois? Could you help me out here?”
I turned around, forcing a smile as I approached the desk.
“What’s up, Lily?”
She gestured to the man standing in front of her. “This man would like to hire us to help him find himself.”
My eyebrows rose. “To what?”
The man cleared his throat. “I have amnesia,” he said in a quiet but deep voice.
I looked him over, noting a fairly intense scar along one side of his face. It went from under his hairline to the corner of his eye, clearly created by a surgeon’s knife. An accident?
“He’s been asking to see Megan, but I don’t think she intended to come in today. In fact, Mr. Murphy is upstairs getting some things for her, so I think she was intending on working at home.”
“It’s no problem, Lil.” I gestured for the strange man to follow me. “We’ll go to my office and see what we might be able to do for you.”
“Thank you,” the man said, a lack of gratitude in his voice. He simply sounded relieved.
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