Heir to Secret Memories

by Mallory Kane

  He held out the stack of paper.

  Glaring at him, she took it.

  Son Follows in Father’s Footsteps.

  Her breath caught. There it was, picture and all. The first time she’d ever known who Johnny really was.

  It stunned her just like it had the first time she’d seen it. Heartbreak and the empty horror of abandonment rushed through her again, ringing with the awful truth.

  He had never loved her. He’d never meant to come back for her. How had she let herself forget that?

  She had come so close to trusting him when she’d watched him look at Katie’s picture in her bedroom. The combination of awe, yearning and joy that had lit his sharp features as he gazed upon the image of his daughter for the first time had surprised her, as had her own reaction.

  It had hurt, seeing him looking at Katie like that. Hurt in a primal, inexplicable way, as if he were stealing some of her daughter from her. That was why she’d taken the picture out of his hands.

  But then he’d made his amazing offer to trade himself for their child. A totally unselfish offer that had melted her heart with its sincerity.

  She pressed her lips together. That was a different man than the one who had left her. When he remembered who he really was, he would also remember that he hadn’t cared enough to come back for her.

  She stared at the newspaper article that had dashed her naive hopes, and felt betrayed all over again. As much as she hated to admit it, her mother’s bitter words rang true. They echoed down the corridors of Paige’s memory.

  You can’t trust a man, Paige, honey. It’s just in their nature. Just look what your daddy did to me.

  She’d heard it all her life. As soon as her father had found out she was on the way, he’d walked out, back to his wife and the children he really wanted.

  Paige thrust the printouts back at Johnny, but he pointed to Madison Yarbrough. “Is that really my father?”

  The wistful hope in his voice scored another gash into her bleeding heart. “Johnny, he’s dead. I’m sorry. He died a couple of years ago, after you disappeared.”

  He held her gaze for a second, then looked down.

  Hurting for him, Paige shuffled the pages, looking at the other articles he’d found. There were several references to the kidnapping, the articles varying from front-page news to small snippets as information dwindled and hope died.

  The last big article, featuring Madison Yarbrough in a final hopeless interview, begging for his son’s life, included a picture of the businessman and his second wife and her infant son.

  Paige looked more closely at the image. There was something familiar about the woman.

  “Johnny!” Paige whispered loudly. “Look at this!”

  He leaned over her shoulder.

  “See that woman? That’s her.”

  “Who?” Johnny leaned closer, until Paige could smell the combination of clean skin, soap and maleness that she was coming to associate with him. She held her breath and focused on the picture.

  “Remember?” she asked. “The woman I told you about, at Sally’s party. The one with the white streak in her hair. I think she’s Serena Yarbrough!”

  “She’s not my mother?”

  Paige heard the strain and guarded hope in his voice. Oh, Johnny. How much disappointment could he take? She shook her head. “Your stepmother. Your mother died when you were young. You gave me this ring that had belonged to her.”

  He took her outstretched hand in his, touching the sapphires that shaped the Yarbrough logo. He spoke without looking up. “I don’t remember them. It shouldn’t bother me to find out they’re dead.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. “But somehow it does.”

  Paige wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him. She wanted to give him reassurance, and absorb his strength. But even though he held her hand, there was something remote about him. He seemed distracted.

  His thumb caressed her ring. “You’ve worn my ring all this time?”

  She pulled away, not wanting to talk about why she’d kept the ring. Why she’d never taken it off her engagement finger.

  “If that was your stepmother at the party, and she saw the drawing, she must have realized it was yours.”

  He retrieved the printout and studied the picture. “You didn’t recognize her at the party?”

  Page shook her head. “This picture was taken after you were kidnapped. She didn’t have that white streak in her hair back then, and she must have lost at least thirty pounds since then.”

  “Do you think she kidnapped Katie?”

  Paige thought about the woman’s hostile gaze and shivered. “She watched me.”

  “My stepmother,” he said thoughtfully. “We should talk to her.”

  “I think we need to talk to Sally first. Make sure the woman at the party was really your stepmother. We can find out if she asked about the drawing or about me.”

  “I’m not sure we can trust Sally,” Johnny said, studying the picture. “Is the baby my father’s child?”

  “Your half-brother. He’d be about four years old now.”

  Johnny looked at the picture a few moments longer. His half brother. A disturbing thought occurred to him. If he and his daughter were dead, then this child would be the only heir to the Yarbrough fortune.

  He couldn’t forget for a second that whoever had kidnapped Katie wanted him dead, and because of that, he and Paige and Katie were all in danger. His gaze darted warily around the room. “Let’s get out of here.”

  SOMETHING WASN’T RIGHT. Jay had felt safe in the library all night, but suddenly he was jumpy.

  He didn’t like the fact that their pursuers had found them twice already. Fearing they might have planted a tracking device on his car, he’d abandoned it. It had seemed they’d evaded them, until the van had shown up right beside them in the middle of Canal Street. How had they found them there?

  They’d evaded them again by going to the library, but the prickling sensation on the back of his neck that he’d lived with for so long had doubled, maybe tripled.

  He urged Paige toward the stairs as the library began to come to life. Everyone appeared absorbed in what they were doing. Nothing seemed amiss.

  But a warning tickled Jay’s mind like the sensation tickled his nape. He’d missed something, and he was afraid his carelessness might cost them their freedom, if not their lives.

  As they stepped into the stairwell, Paige asked him, “Are we going to the Yarbrough Building now?”

  Jay rubbed his neck, then his temple, where a headache was building. “No. Not there.” He heard the stairwell door open, but it was just a middle-aged woman with neat gray hair and a briefcase.

  “I just want to get out of here. Did you find anything on where they—where I lived in the archives?”

  Paige nodded. “There was an article about your family home up the Mississippi Coast. I think that’s where you grew up.”

  “How far is it?”

  “About thirty-five miles. But Johnny, from what I saw in a recent article, Serena Yarbrough apparently lives in an exclusive community up around Diamondhead, Mississippi.”

  Paige pushed open the exterior door. “She’s Chairman of the Board of Yarbrough. I guess she commutes the fifty miles or so to New Orleans for board meetings.”

  They walked out into the morning sunlight. Heat settled on them like a bright hot blanket. Jay liked it. He loved sunlight and heat and even rain. What he couldn’t stand was darkness and close places.

  As they walked across the brick terrace in front of the library, Jay saw two men out of the corner of his eye. He urged Paige in the opposite direction, hurrying toward a streetcar stop where he saw a car approaching.

  “Come on, we’ve got to catch that car.” He increased his pace and pulled Paige along until she was running to keep up. Angling his head, he used his peripheral vision to assess the men. Both of them had white bandages on their noses, and the smaller man’s arm was in a sling. The picture t
hey made sporting their twin nose bandages was almost comical.

  “What is it, Johnny?” Paige asked.

  He took her arm. “Don’t look back. Hurry.”

  The streetcar was just pulling away. Jay grabbed Paige and lifted her into the car. He swung up into it as it rolled away, its wheels clattering on the metal tracks.

  As he fumbled for change, he saw the two men running toward the car. The beefy guy reached behind his back, but apparently thought better of pulling his gun out in the open.

  “Where does this car go?” he asked, still watching the two guys as Paige sat down.

  “I think it’s heading out toward Carrollton,” she said, following his gaze. “Are those the same men? I thought you shot one of them.”

  A woman with a toddler sent an alarmed look their way.

  He leaned close to her ear. “Careful what you say. Watch for a rental car place.”

  She grabbed his sleeve. “Are they the men who followed me?”

  He looked down at her, then sat beside her. “Yes. One had his arm in a sling, and both of them have bandages on their noses.”

  Paige raised a brow. “That should make them easy to spot.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Paige’s mouth lifted in a tiny smile and Jay’s insides twisted. She’d had so little to smile about. For an instant the cloud of worry lifted just slightly and she looked like an angel. It reminded him of her face from his dreams.

  But her smile faded, and she frowned, considering something. “If we rent a car, won’t they be able to trace us?” she asked.

  He rubbed his temple. “Only to the rental car agency. We’re not going to file a trip plan.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  His head pounded. They’d found them again. He needed to think, but his brain wasn’t cooperating. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Where are we going to go? We can’t just keep running. Look.” She held out the cell phone. “The battery is half gone. They said I—” She stopped on a dry little sob. “They said I only had until the battery ran down.”

  “I know. Don’t worry. We’ll think of something.”

  The cell phone. In the bright sunlight he could see crystalline droplets on the case. He stared at it, frowning. The tiny droplets looked like glue.

  He stared at the shiny little beads as his tired brain processed the information.

  Glue. Someone had used instant glue on the phone. Why? Had they glued the buttons just to make the phone useless except as a one-way communication device? It was impossible to dial out, impossible to open it up, and impossible to turn it off. Or was it something more than just a phone?

  Paige looked back toward where they’d left the men behind.

  “How do they keep finding us?” she muttered.

  Johnny grimly took the phone from her and picked at a fleck of glue with his fingernail.

  She followed his fingers then raised her gaze to his. He watched her face change as the realization that had already come to him dawned.

  He nodded. “The phone.”

  Chapter Seven

  Paige used her credit card to rent a car. While she signed the papers and deflected questions from the friendly agent about where they were going, Johnny walked across the street to a hardware store.

  When he got back, he was stuffing a small bag into the pocket of his windbreaker.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Since you rented the car, you drive.”

  Paige got in on the driver’s side and started the car. “Where are we going?”

  “First to a restaurant. I’m starving.”

  She almost smiled. Right then he’d sounded like the Johnny she’d known so long ago.

  “Any particular direction?”

  “Yeah. Head toward Interstate 10.”

  She turned the car toward the interstate and drove until she saw a small coffee shop. “How does that look?” she asked.

  “Fine. Any place is fine.” Johnny grabbed the printouts from the library computer and jumped out of the car as soon as she pulled into the parking place.

  Following him in, Paige watched him walking and remembered the last time, when he’d walked away down Urselines Street. He still had the same easy grace. He was thicker, more muscular, but still lean and long. Once she’d known every inch of his body. Once she’d felt his lips along every inch of hers.

  As he held the door for her, she had to steady herself against it for an instant. Her legs were wobbly. She’d have liked to attribute the liquid feeling to hunger, but she knew it wasn’t that simple. His touch had always had the power to melt her defenses. Now he exuded power. Her mind fed her a vision of him coming to her, all that power unleashed as passion.

  “Paige?”

  She blinked and realized she was still standing at the door. Feeling her face heat up, she headed for a booth. What was she doing having erotic fantasies about the father of her child—her kidnapped child? She shook off the feeling. There was no time for anything but Katie.

  They ordered, but when Paige looked at the huge sandwich, her stomach turned over. She wasn’t hungry. She took a sip of iced tea.

  Johnny glanced up from the printouts he was perusing as he ate. He nodded at her plate. “Eat,” he said around a mouthful of sandwich.

  She shook her head.

  “Paige, eat.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his, his thumb rubbing the ring he’d given her. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Not even in the next hour. We don’t know when we’ll get a chance to rest. You’ve got to eat when you can. You have to be strong for Katie.” He squeezed her hand.

  Paige dutifully took a bite and chewed, forcing it down over the lump that seemed to perpetually reside in her throat.

  As she ate she watched Johnny, allowing her mind to venture back over the forbidden territory of erotic memories as she studied his features, the changes that time and trouble had wrought in him.

  “You’re very different,” she said as she prepared to take another bite of sandwich.

  Johnny finished his sandwich and wiped his hands on his napkin. “Am I?” He took a last swallow of tea. When the waitress appeared with the pitcher, he nodded to her. “Different how?”

  Paige shrugged. “You were so sweet, so gentle.” She looked at his corded neck, his broad shoulders, his callused fingers. “Now you’re—not.”

  He was the man she’d once thought he could be, if he could ever get out from under the influence of his domineering father.

  He raised a brow at her comment, drawing her attention to the scar that marred his hairline.

  “What happened to you, Johnny?”

  He pinned her with his sapphire-blue gaze. “I don’t know.”

  Paige didn’t say anything else, stopped by his intensity.

  “The first memory I have is of river water closing over my head. My first thought was that I had to find light. Not that I was drowning. Not that my head hurt like a son of a bitch. I had to find light, somewhere.”

  He clenched his fist and his knuckles turned white.

  “So I fought for the surface and caught hold of something. I hung on to it and stared up at the stars until the sun came up and I could see where I was.”

  His face had blanched, and Paige wanted to stop him, to pull him back from the horrible scene he was reliving. But more, she wanted to know everything he remembered about what had happened to him. She needed to know what had made him the man he now was.

  “It was a while before it dawned on me that I didn’t remember anything. I was just relieved not to be suffocating in darkness any longer. Then I realized my head hurt like hell, blood was dripping down my face, and I was really cold.” He shuddered.

  “The only thing I had were the clothes I was wearing. The shirt had a monogram on it. The letters J-A-Y and a funny symbol. So Jay became my name. The label on a tube of ointment in the free clinic where I ended up gave me my last name, Wellcome.

  “I had ca
sh in my pocket. Not much, but enough to get a room. I took jobs working places where they didn’t ask questions. And I waited for the people who had tried to kill me to come back. I knew they would, someday.”

  Paige’s heart ached for him. So lost, so alone. “What made you draw the pictures?”

  He shrugged. “I’d pick up a pen or pencil anywhere, doodle on anything. I realized the doodles were turning into pieces of the past, so I bought a pad and let my fingers tell me what my brain couldn’t remember. Sometimes when I’d try to draw, my head would hurt so bad I couldn’t see.”

  She reached out to him. He covered her hand with his for a brief moment.

  “But through it all, there was this one vision. One beautiful face that eased the pain, that stopped the nightmares.”

  He paused, tracing her palm with his fingertip.

  “Why did I leave you?” he asked, his gaze on their hands.

  Paige closed her eyes and sat back, pulling her hand away. “You asked me to marry you. You gave me your mother’s ring, and you promised you’d be back the next day. But you never showed up.”

  She rubbed her sore shoulder. “I imagined all sorts of horrible things. A car wreck, a mugging. I even imagined you might have been hit on the head and have amnesia.”

  He looked up at her with an expression so ironic and sad that it cut her like a knife.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “No problem.” He pushed his plate aside. “What did you do when you found out you were pregnant?”

  “I have an aunt in east Texas. I spent several years there before I decided to come back to New Orleans.”

  “And you never married?”

  She shook her head.

  Johnny frowned at her for a second, as if debating whether to ask another question, then dropped his gaze to the stack of printouts he’d brought in with him.

  “What’s this?” he muttered.

  Paige tore off a bit of bread and ate it. “What?” She looked at the printout he held. “Oh, that’s an article about Yarbrough Shipping reorganizing. It was a few months after your dad’s death. I thought you might find it interesting.”

  He read for a few moments. “Interesting to say the least,” he commented. “Yarbrough acquired several small companies and reorganized. Most of the companies were support or supply acquisitions for the shipping side of the business. But they also acquired a couple of technology companies. One of them was a small outfit called Data Sentinel.”