Can You Forget?

“Pretend I want you? You think I’m going to have to pretend?”

She stood speechless, unable to move or breathe, or think of anything but the sweet ache building in her, wanting, hoping….

“You think it will be an act?” Tal pressed her, his voice soft, dangerous.

Mary-Anne managed a shaky whisper. “Don’t lie to me, Tal. Lie to the world if you need to, but not to me.”

“All right—you want the truth?” He took a step closer to her, his sudden grin half-savage, highlighting his scars. “I’ve forced myself to think about kissing you, touching you and pretending to want you, oh, about two hundred and forty times since I saw you yesterday. Just in case I needed the scenario for a mission, of course.” He smiled at her, his eyes dark, unfathomable—his body too close. “I must have been training for this mission for a long time, honey, because I’ve been pretending to want you ever since I was fifteen.”

Dear Reader,

What better way to start off a new year than with six terrific new Silhouette Intimate Moments novels? We’ve got miniseries galore, starting with Karen Templeton’s Staking His Claim, part of THE MEN OF MAYES COUNTY. These three brothers are destined to find love, and in this story, hero Cal Logan is also destined to be a father—but first he has to convince heroine Dawn Gardner that in his arms is where she wants to stay.

For a taste of royal romance, check out Valerie Parv’s Operation: Monarch, part of THE CARRAMER TRUST, crossing over from Silhouette Romance. Policemen more your style? Then check out Maggie Price’s Hidden Agenda, the latest in her LINE OF DUTY miniseries, set in the Oklahoma City Police Department. Prefer military stories? Don’t even try to resist Irresistible Forces, Candace Irvin’s newest SISTERS IN ARMS novel. We’ve got a couple of great stand-alone books for you, too. Lauren Nichols returns with a single mom and her protective hero, in Run to Me. Finally, Australian sensation Melissa James asks Can You Forget? Trust me, this undercover marriage of convenience will stick in your memory long after you’ve turned the final page.

Enjoy them all—and come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance reading around, only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Can You Forget?

Melissa James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MELISSA JAMES

is a mother of three living in a beach suburb in New South Wales, Australia. A former nurse, waitress, store assistant, perfume and chocolate (yum!) demonstrator among other things, she believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. She’ll try almost anything at least once to see what it feels like—a fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, “I can do that!” Years later, she found her niche at Silhouette Intimate Moments. Currently writing a pilot/spy series set in the South Pacific, she can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kids’ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, belaying down a cave or over a cliff—anywhere her characters are at the time!

To all those who love Beauty and the Beast stories, and to those who prefer healing and peace to war, yet know the realities of this life demand that some of us give our lives to protect others—I hope you enjoy this one. And to Maryanne, my dearest friend and natural healer, this is for you.

Special thanks must go to some of my dearest friends in the world, for making this story what it is: my critique partners, Maryanne Cappelluti and Diane Perkins, for putting aside a month of their lives to help me through my first deadline with style, grace and love, and a little cyber champagne at “the end.” Thanks also to my dear friends Olga Mitsialos and Anne-Louise Dubrawski for reading, encouraging and making suggestions. Very special thanks to Tracey West, reader, fan and suggestion person extraordinaire. And big, big thanks to Susan Litman, my editor, and to Gail Chasan and Leslie Wainger, for taking a chance with this book when it had so very much wrong with it at the start!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Prologue

Tumah-ra Island, Arafura Sea

“There’s fresh blood in this.” Flashing a torch around the top of the cliff face, Tallan O’Rierdan, Nighthawk code name Irish, pointed out the stain to his team partner: a skidding footprint with a small dark pool near the heel.

Braveheart, the enormous bear of a man beside him, grinned, his teeth startlingly white against the camouflage-darkened face. “So you nailed him. That was one hell of a shot in the dark, Irish.”

Tal shrugged, squelching the instinctive surge of guilt. “Nowhere vital, by the looks of it.” Yet his gut roiled. Shooting people went against all he believed in. Even hitting scum like Burstall, a renegade Fed who’d committed murder and almost killed a fellow Nighthawk, cut deep in a place he didn’t want to analyze right now. But his objectives were clear: treat anyone injured by the rebel militia’s free-for-all attack, find Burstall and bring him in—or down. “He’s still on the move—toward Ka-Nin-Put.”

Braveheart nodded. “Let’s go.”

The black camouflage paint on his face drove him nuts, but his training forced him to not scratch. He had to be invisible, unrecognizable in the jungle fatigues Nighthawks wore on recon in Search and Rescue assignments: just another soldier in a faceless army.

But the people in his secret army were SAR experts, nonofficial hunter-gatherer spies in a network only the top brass of any government knew existed, in a world few dared enter. The shadowy world of the Nighthawks.

“I’ll go this way. You take that path and get to the village from behind. That way we cover our bases and block off escape.”

Braveheart looked doubtful, but Irish’s word was law on the field. “Meet in the middle?”

Tal nodded in detached interest, thinking how he’d treat the injured left to rot by the rebels. “ETA fifteen minutes.”

The whining of bullets came closer as he ran, half crouching, toward the village, slinging his assault rifle behind him. Mortar bombs dropped not far off, thunder-filled quakes beneath his feet. The night sky blazed with the hail of silver and bloody fire, harbingers of death outshining the stars.

Sudden eerie silence all around Ka-Nin-Put told him the rebels had bolted. The brave, strong rebel army walked the walk and talked the talk with harmless villagers and young girls, but bolted when a few men with guns came near.

Just as well. If I found any of the little bastards now… He kept the rifle firmly behind him. Temptation clawed at him as it was, the gnawing need to avenge what couldn’t be avenged.

Keep it together, O’Rierdan. You’re Search And Rescue, not search and kill.

From house to ravaged house, he found them all burned, with fallen and hanging doors and shattered windows bearing mute testimony to the rebels’ attack—almost no evidence remained of the lives that once filled this quiet jungle village.

Please, let the Navy have got them out first. He didn’t know if he could handle seeing any more people left for dead in a gaping, rubble-covered hole, or to find half-starved shivering kids hanging on to a cliff shelf until they fell into the sea. He had the skills to save them—and he would—but the nightmares the rescues engendered left him sleepless for months.

A pall of gray smoke hung beneath the night air, obscuring the stars. The stench of blood, fire and death lay everywhere. Casualties of war, they called this. Collateral damage. “What a load of crap,” he muttered. There was no acceptable number of dead when you walked in the shoes of the people who’d lost acceptable family members or you found the bodies of the casualties of war hanging from trees or hacked to pieces. He couldn’t let it happen if he could do anything to change it.

A long, quiet groan alerted him. He wasn’t alone here.

“Kumusta po kayo? Doktor po ako,” he called in Tagalog, hoping he got the words right and wasn’t asking for something stupid like an umbrella or a cat skin. Hello, are you okay? I am a doctor. “Gusto ko kayong tulungan.” I want to help you.

“Ai,” came a weak call to the left.

The man was old, frail, very thin. His sallow dark skin hung in loose folds all over him. His almond-shaped eyes held no pain. “I cannot move,” the old man said in his native language.

A puncture wound in the upper stomach, deep and lethal. The powder around the wound told him they’d shot this defenseless old man at close range: enough to have a near-identical wound coming out his spine, leaving him crippled. His vital organs would empty themselves out as he bled internally to death.

Tal didn’t dare move him. “I will help you,” he said in Tagalog, and gave the only help he could: a whopping shot of morphine. Then he sat beside the poor old guy and held his hand as he talked about his family and his lifetime in Ka-Nin-Put.

Ten minutes later Tal closed the man’s eyes, got to his feet and punched the tree the body rested against. It shouldn’t be like this! It was so bloody wrong to—

Sudden rustling let him know he had company in the steaming, acrid darkness. Probably Braveheart. But it could also be a villager hiding until the danger passed…maybe a child, injured, or dying… “Kumusta po kayo? Doktor po ako,” he called again, unpacking the rest of his kit in case of serious injury. Yeah, he’d blow his cover if it was Burstall or even a Nighthawk, but this was why he’d left the Navy to join the elite spy-rescue group. It wasn’t the worst risk he took on assignment. If the rebels found him, they’d take him as hostage to tend their injured—then barter him for a very high price. If he lived.

But the only answer was silence: no one called back, not in any language. “Hello? Who’s there?”

In the quiet punctuated by the whine of bullets, his scalp prickled. No time to pack up his kit. Even if it was a Nighthawk out there, he’d blown his cover as a burned-out ex-Navy guy turned beach bum pilot, with mountain climbing and rappelling experience. Only Anson knew he was a doctor. He was so fanatical about Nighthawk security no operative knew anything about each other’s life or background.

Except Songbird. An imp inside him gave the reminder. She knows more about you than Anson ever will.

Damn it, would he never stop thinking about her?

“G’day.” A man dressed in black limped out from the tangled undergrowth around the village. With the night goggles, Tal saw the blood flowing down the man’s left leg, and his savage grin. “Nice greasepaint on the face. Are you the bastard who shot me?”

“Yeah, and I can do it again.” Tal scrambled up to come face-to-face with him. He whipped his night rifle from behind, praying Burstall wouldn’t take up the challenge. In automatic mode, he checked Burstall’s injury. Crikey, was that a cracked patella? Knees were so tricky to repair—

“Don’t move.” His eyes glittering in the darkness, Burstall held a grenade right in front of Tal’s face. “Don’t move, all you painted-up boys playing spies in the bush, or this one’s dead meat. You shoot me, the pin’s gone.”

Despite the dank, sultry heat, Tal broke out in cold sweat. One year of psych training was enough to tell him this guy had a serious mental problem. He had to convince Burstall they were alone, then talk him down. “There’s no one there.”

Burstall sneered. “If you think I can’t hear your mates belly-crawling through the undergrowth, you’re even dumber than you look in your flak jacket and war paint, Rambo. So tell them to stay where they are,” Burstall said softly, holding the grenade right in front of Tal’s sweat-soaked face.

A lightning second to weigh his options, then he yelled, “Do as he says.” If Anson or Linebacker tried to play the hero, or Braveheart did something smart with one of his pyrotechnic gadgets—talk Burstall down, now.

Tal spoke with quiet persuasion: the soothing tone he’d always used for his unstable or distressed patients. “You’re surrounded. Give up, while you can. You may have some legal leverage now, but if you kill someone—”

“Yeah, I have leverage after trying to kill one of yours. I was a Fed, Rambo,” he sneered. “All you emergency service and government goons stick together. You’re one of them, this Mission Impossible group McCluskey’s involved with. You kept me from getting to McCluskey, and taking Lissa.” Burstall’s eyes narrowed in the dark. “I don’t like losing.” He took another step back, pulled the pin on the grenade, threw it and a smoke bomb to the ground right beside him. “’Bye, Rambo.” He laughed as he dove out of sight.

Tal bolted, but the grenade was already exploding beneath his feet. He flew through the air, feeling the flesh on his thigh sear, his bone crack and burst through the skin. His cheek tore apart when he hit the low branch of a tree face-first.

There’s no other doctor to patch me up, no chopper close enough to here to take me to Darwin in time. I’m gonna die.

And strangely, only one regret stabbed him about his pitiful circus of a life: he should never have given in to Anson’s dictate about leaving Mary-Anne alone, even for the sake of her safety. He should have kept asking about her. He should have found her, gone to her…made things right. Now it was too late.

I’m sorry, Mary-Anne. I’m sorry for everything.

When he landed on the ground, he was already out.

Chapter 1

Queen Victoria Theatre, Sydney

Fourteen months later

She took the massive bunch of dark red roses with a gracious smile, to the beat of thunderous cheers. Turning to her backup singers and the dancers, she handed each a rose and took her bows with them, knowing they’d resent the hell out of her for the audience’s enthusiastic response to her generosity.

Oh, Verity West is so magnanimous…

They’d all kill to have her life.

And all she wanted was to kick off the heels making her feet ache, go home, make a hot chocolate, curl up with her faithful dog Charlie Brown and sleep. Invite the family to stay. No hellish workouts or starving herself. No long hours in rehearsals and with stylists and couturiers. No adulation, groveling or saccharine-sweet impertinence from agents or producers, reporters, wannabe socialites or begging visits, letters, emails or tapes from singer-songwriters in her mould.

And best of all, no men showering her with compliments and gifts, all hoping to be the one to brag that they’d broken the Iceberg’s famous cold shell and gotten her in the sack.

Final night of the Sydney tour. Here we go. Party time…

Backstage, she donned a simple white sheath. The famous twisted curls glowed with flame, so the media said—better than the schoolkids’ taunts of “better dead than red”—pulled up in a clip, tumbling down to her waist. A gold rope pulled in the dress at her waist and showed off her breasts…and no one knew how much unflagging discipline it took to keep her glorious figure.

Fat girl, fat girl!

She plastered a smile on her face and headed for the limousine, smiling and waving, signing autographs. Wishing Gil was here to laugh at the absurdity of her life, to help her survive the predators—to hold her when she cried. For cool-as-ice, touch-me-not Verity West was a marshmallow inside. A shy girl living in the public eye. A stranger inside her own life.

The heart of the girl who hid from the world was still beating within the slender, lovely shell. Still sickly sweet, trusting and vulnerable Mary-Anne Poole somewhere deep inside, seven years after becoming Verity West.

She spent the evening encouraging hopeful singers, talking to kids who’d won contests to meet her and fending off men’s smug I-know-you-want-me advances with her trademark cool smile and quiet wit, counting the minutes until she could leave.

Then a waiter passed her. Inconspicuous; there one moment, gone the next. Pressing a note into her hand.

Change your key, songbird. In the shadows of the alley, a ghost from your past awaits.

Escaping through the kitchen and service elevator of the exclusive hotel, she ran past the blinding glare of flashing bulbs in her face and slipped inside the leather-lined luxury of the darkened car. “Thank you,” she sighed. “What’s the deal?”

Nick Anson, her secret boss, smiled at her. “Sorry, darlin’, but you’re getting a throat infection. You need a fortnight off.”

She sighed with the intense relief she always knew when she had to drop work for a mission. “My agent and manager will have collective heart attacks. Could be fun. Where am I going?”

“This is the most vital mission I’ve ever given you, Songbird.” Nick threw it at her, hard and blunt. “You’ll spend the first few days in Mekalong Island in the Torres Strait—and you know why, since you stole his file when my back was turned.”

Her heart stalled, then kicked again. All she could think of was, What can I say to that—sorry, yes, it was me? But she didn’t think she could speak right now. God help her, even in shock her body was primed already, pounding with excitement. She had to fight to get one croaked word out. “And?”

“And we need Irish back pronto. He’s refusing to answer my calls or messages. It’s up to you. Make him want to do it.”

She jerked up in the seat. “Me? But…his wife—”

“He’s been divorced for three years.” He slanted her an odd, probing look. “Wasn’t that in the file I let you steal?”

She kept her mouth clamped shut. He knew damn well it wasn’t on file. Nick Anson was too much a rabid perfectionist to leave it off file—unless he’d had a damn good reason to do so.

No point in drawing this out. “So you know about our past.” She drummed her fingers on her leg, the only visible sign of the internal explosion of her heart. “The tabloid stories, right?”

“It’s how I came to recruit you in the first place. I saw the possibilities in case a mission like this ever came up—and so I sought you out.” Silence filled the car as she absorbed, then accepted, her ruthless boss’s reasons for first contacting her to join the Nighthawks. Then he went on in his smooth-as-molasses Southern drawl.

“The future of the Nighthawks depends on this mission. No one else can possibly handle it, so the American office sent the request to me.” He hesitated. “Irish broke into the office several times to access your file, after you two ran into each other at headquarters that day. I believe you two have a mutual chemistry that, together in one place, would create an explosion big enough to rock the planet.”

God help her, Nick was right, and she didn’t know if Earth was ready for the explosion. Nick Anson had to be the gruffest, most irascible and unwilling Cupid ever to plague man and woman. She’d thought she’d never want to see Tal again, nor he her, yet it seemed neither of them could forget…

“Will you do it?” Nick asked quietly. “Will you work with him? This mission won’t be an easy one, on any level.”

Was she shaking with excitement, or fear of what seeing Tal again would do to her? “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“You’re not Mary-Anne now. You’re Verity West, and aside from your phenomenal talent, you’re a brilliant, brave and beautiful woman whose skills have saved more than one operative in the past. I’m proud to have you on my team. I know you can do this.”

“A penny looks pretty when you shine it up, but it’s still a penny.” She bit her lip, feeling rimmed by shadows of the past. Going to Tal would mean inflicting deeper cuts on old scars…and exposing her long-hidden heart—being Mary-Anne again. But Nick couldn’t know that: only Tal would ever know. She took a harsh breath, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “All right.”

He nodded, having expected no less. “This is going to be harder than you know.” He pulled a bundle of photos from a folder and passed them to her. “I kept more than his divorce out of that file I let you steal. I’ve kept a secret from you about Irish for the past fourteen months.”

Mekalong Island, Torres Strait

No time left! No time! The typhoon’s gonna knock them off the cliff shelf into the sea. There’s only one chance now! If I don’t get the kids into the bird in time—

Tal woke with a start and a hard, guttural curse.

Would he ever be able to put the memories behind him?

Rolling jerkily off the lounge, he laid a towel over the sweaty plastic before he resumed his position, hat over his eyes to block out the violent sunlight. Not bad, the deal Anson made with him. For the hardship of hiding out under an assumed name—finally being the beach bum pilot his cover had always been—he got a massive payout and all operations paid for, past, present or future. Only two left to go to finish the muscle layering on his leg, and one to inject more collagen and massive doses of vitamins beneath the slow-fading scars on his face.

After the last op, he’d be almost as good as new…ready to face Mum and Dad with his new look. He couldn’t go home yet. The folks had all been through enough with Kathy’s sickness and death. Sending a few postcards from nonexistent Navy ships in different “postings” was better than telling them the truth.

The squeaking sound of feet shuffling over the hot, creamy-white sand gave him thirty seconds’ warning. Someone was here. Time again for the stares, the sidelong looks and whispers. “The poor thing, he must have been so handsome once…”

To add another twist to the rack, the stranger had a CD player on—there was no radio station on this remote island—and of course, it was that song.

“‘I never thought we’d break up, at least not for good. When it came to goodbye, I never thought we would. But I was wrong about you, you found someone new, and you were wrong about me, I found someone too…’”

“Farewell Innocence.” Her song…perhaps their song. Would he ever know? The jackhammer hit his guts with the first wistful refrain. Words and voice, so strong and incredibly pure, woven together like the strands of harp and violin and transposed into human sound. Sheer perfection. There was no way in hell he’d ever forget that voice—or the girl who’d owned it.

Had they made a new version of the song, without background music? Seemed even more haunting without harmony. She sounded so scared, so lost. As she had ten years before when—

He couldn’t escape her, no matter where he went. Even without the constant dreams of her, with constant radio airplay of her nine worldwide hits from three albums, avoiding the memories was the impossible dream. Her first smash hit—“Farewell Innocence”—had taken up permanent residence inside him from the first time he’d heard it…wondering every time if she’d written about their life and his betrayal of her ten years ago.

Mary-Anne, oh, honey, it wasn’t like that!

The singing stopped the same time the foot-squeaking ended. “Hello, Tal. Nice shorts—more casual than the Flying Doctor, Navy or Nighthawk getup. You do get around, don’t you?”