Private Vows

Pete’s dark eyes bored into her, and she trembled slightly. “Is that your name?” he demanded. “Are you Mary Jackson?”

She looked down to the pavement and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Mary Chapin Carpenter sings country music. So does Alan Jackson. I just put them together. 1492 Main Street. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And every town has a Main Street. I made it all up. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Home.”

“Where might that be?”

Her eyes widened and tears again glistened. “I don’t know.”

Involuntarily, Cole reached over and squeezed her hand where it clung to his arm. Her skin was smooth and silky, like her dress, and her fingers were long and delicate. The only contrast was a large diamond ring that pressed with sharp cold edges against his fingers.

“The way I see it,” Pete continued “you’ve got two choices, the hospital or the police station. You’re going to have some questions to answer when you come out of this fugue state, and we need to run some tests on that dress, see what kind of blood that is.”

She swallowed, the sound audible over the traffic and crowd noises as if the three of them stood in their own little universe. “What kind of blood?”

“Could be human. Or could be chicken. Maybe you were cooking for your own wedding reception. Could be goat. Maybe this was some kind of voodoo ceremony.” He stared pointedly at her hand on Cole’s arm, at the huge diamond solitaire. “Apparently the wedding wasn’t over. You don’t have the band to go with that rock.”

She held out her hand, studying the ring as if seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she tugged it off and extended it to Cole. “It’s not mine!”

“It is unless somebody else claims it,” Pete told her. “So what’s it gonna be? The station or the hospital?”

Her eyes, the pupils so shrunken they were lost in the silvery-blue mist, silently asked his advice, trusting him to make the right decision, to lead her in the right direction.

Couldn’t she tell just by looking at him that the only place he could lead her was straight into hell?

“If I were you, I’d choose the hospital,” he growled. “I sure wouldn’t voluntarily go with the cops.” And certainly not with an ex-cop who had the scent of death following him like a shadow.

She studied him a moment longer, her hand still outstretched with the ring winking on her palm. “All right,” she said. “But only if you take me in your car. Only if I don’t have to get into that…that thing.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he agreed against his better judgment. She certainly did seem to have a phobia about the ambulance. Of course, she seemed to have a phobia about everything.

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you better let us take care of the lady.”

Cole flinched at his buddy’s words. Pete was only following procedure, but it hit Cole hard, like a direct attack, an affirmation that this frightened, confused woman would be better off with anybody in the world except him.

Pete knew his story. So maybe he was saying exactly that.

“Are you arresting me?” the bride asked, lifting her chin defiantly, that unexpected burst of strength again surfacing.

“No, ma’am. We’d just like to know where that blood came from. I didn’t find any more in the vicinity and I didn’t find a weapon, but you could have wounded the guy you were struggling with. If you did, he’s not around to press charges, and he did accost you first, according to your friend here. We’re not arresting you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital because I have nowhere else to go, but only if Mr. Grayson takes me.” She spread her hands several inches away from the dress as if she didn’t want to touch it. “And you’re more than welcome to have this…this thing as soon as I get other clothes to wear.” She shivered in the warm summer evening. “I don’t want it. It makes my skin crawl.”

She had amnesia…or a fugue state, as the paramedic called it. She had an aversion to ambulances and hospitals and cops. She was wearing a wedding gown but no wedding band, which probably meant she’d skipped out on her own wedding…after somehow getting blood all over the front of that gown…a gown that made her skin crawl. The only normal things about her were her knowledge of country-music singers and the date America was officially discovered.

She had problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she was looking to him to take care of her. What a joke!

“I can get her to the hospital, Pete,” Cole snapped. “I can handle that.”

“Please take this,” she whispered, still holding out her hand.

Pete reached toward her, but she jerked away from him. “I’ll take your jewelry in for you, ma’am,” he said. “Give you a receipt and you can have it back as soon as you get out of the hospital or anytime you want.”

“No. Not you. Him.”

“Look, lady,” Cole said, “I’m a complete stranger. The only thing you know about me is that I ran you down with my car. Give the ring to the police officer. You give it to me and you may never get it back again. You may never see me again.”

“I don’t want it back.”

“Take it, Grayson,” Pete snapped irritably. “We haven’t got all night. I’ll see that he doesn’t run off with it, ma’am.”

Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.

Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.

He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Chapter Two

Jane Doe.

That’s what she’d heard the doctors and nurses calling her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she hated it. Bad enough she’d lost all memory of self, but everyone’s insistence on using that generic, no-identity name stole any remaining sense of self.

They said it was normal that she could remember dates from history and the names of country singers but not whether she liked those country singers, not who she went to concerts with, nothing about the classroom where she’d learned those historical dates. Nothing personal. Nothing that made her anything more than a zombie with no soul and no name.

She tucked the hospital sheet more tightly around her as if that thin material could keep out the demons. She couldn’t remember their names or faces, but she knew they were there, watching from dark, soulless eyes, waiting to snare her with twisted claws.

The man who said he’d hit her with his car, Cole Grayson, the one person she’d felt connected to in this strange world, had brought her to the hospital and turned her over to the others then left. They had poked, prodded and examined every inch of her mind and body. She’d hated it, hated the invasion, hated and feared the strangers…medical personnel and police officers…with their questions she couldn’t answer and their sly insinuations that she might be lying.

Finally they’d put her in her own room and left her alone, and that was the worst of all. She was alone without even herself for company. But at least she was out of that horrible dress that had imprisoned her with its endless yards of fabric and the sticky blood that stained the front and clung to her skin like some foul creature. Even now, bathed and wearing a clean hospital gown, the metallic scent seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her tongue.

As she lay staring into the darkness, the door to her room opened. It made no sound except for a whisper of a sigh when it moved through the air, but she heard it and a nameless terror rose inside her. Pressing her nails into her palms, she fought the urge to bury her head under the sheet.

Instead, she forced herself to sit up and face the intruder.

He hesitated half in and half out of the doorway, the light from the hall turning him to a dark silhouette, unrecognizable except that he was the only recognizable element in this shadow world she’d been thrust into.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said. Cole Grayson, the man who’d caused her to be in this hospital in the first place, yet the only person her heart trusted even while her mind warned her against such insanity.

“No. I wasn’t asleep.”

He moved inside, closed the door and flipped the wall switch, flooding the sterile room with light. He was tall with wide shoulders that stretched the fabric of the blue knit shirt as it molded to clearly defined muscles. Faded jeans hugged muscular thighs. His brown hair was shaggy, had seen too many weeks between haircuts, and his square jaw was accented by the dark shadow of a man who needed to shave twice a day and hadn’t.

His appearance said he observed the rudiments of a civilized dress code but actually didn’t much care what he looked like. He bordered on disreputable and was surely someone she shouldn’t trust at all.

Yet there was a desolate emptiness somewhere behind his brown eyes that reached inside her and drew her to him, a sadness she suspected most people didn’t see. It was that desolate emptiness, an echo of what she felt inside herself, that had made her trust him while she was still in the middle of the street, virtually under the wheels of his car.

No, that wasn’t all of it. Behind her emptiness lay fear; behind his lay a stone wall strong enough to support that emptiness, to keep it from devouring him. She was drawn to that strength, to that stone wall, to the only security she’d seen so far in this unknown world into which she’d awakened.

“I brought your engagement ring back.” He walked over to the bed and laid the shiny object on her night-stand. She looked at it, somehow expecting it to take on a life of its own, to coil and snarl and attack her.

“I must have loved the man who gave it to me,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, you must have. I don’t think men go around giving that kind of jewelry to women who hate them.”

In vain she searched her memory for a picture of that man, for the love she must have felt for him, for some reason that would explain why she had such an aversion to the ring.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt badly,” Cole continued. “I talked to the cops, gave them my statement, and the officer said you were okay except for a little bruising, especially around your wrists. That guy you were struggling with must have grabbed you pretty hard.”

She lifted her hands and looked at the black-and-blue marks that marred the arms she didn’t recognize. Had she always been this thin or had she been sick? What event had occurred in her life to cause that small scar? Did she break that fingernail when she fell or when she grappled with the man on the street…or during whatever struggle had left all that blood on her dress?

“I guess he must have grabbed me hard. I don’t remember.”

“The doctors think you will, though. Soon.”

She nodded. “I know. They told me. Officer Townley said they’re checking missing-persons reports and they’ll put my picture in the paper and on the news. Somebody will recognize me. The doctor said as soon as I see a familiar face, that could jog my memory.” It all sounded quite logical. So why didn’t she believe it? Why did she fear being stuck in this foggy land of nowhere for the rest of her life?

“Yeah. The guy who gave you that ring is probably frantic right now. As soon as he sees your picture, he’ll come to take you home.”

“Yes,” she said. “If he’s still alive. If he’s not the man whose blood was all over my dress.” A memory beat leathery bat wings against the dark, closed windows of her mind.

“I don’t want that thing,” she blurted, scooting as far away from the diamond and from the almost-memory as she could in the narrow bed.

Cole looked as her as though she were nuts. Well, wasn’t she?

He rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture causing his biceps to bulge so that the sleeve of his shirt seemed certain to tear. He was a big man, a strong man. He could hurt anybody he chose to hurt, especially someone as defenseless as she.

Yet she felt no fear of him. Instinctively she knew that he would use that strength to protect her, and she desperately needed protection right now…from the dark, unknown terrors hiding in her mind, as well as from the unknown world around her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I told you, I’m Cole Grayson.”

“That’s not what I mean. They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. That might even be my name, or maybe it’s Sarah Smith or Mary Jackson. But whatever it is, a name doesn’t tell anything about who I am or who you are.”

He gazed down at her for a long moment then finally turned away and angled a hip onto the windowsill, studying their reflections in the dark glass. “I’m nobody you want to know.”

A gray veil of desolation emanated from him. She could see it, feel it in the weight of the air, smell the leaden scent, taste the bitter agony. Perhaps because her mind was completely empty of her own emotions, his came to her, strong and clear.

“I don’t have a choice right now,” she said. “You’re the only person I know.”

“What do you know about me, other than the fact that I ran you down in the street?”

“You said I darted in front of your car. If you hadn’t acted quickly, I could have been killed. So I guess what I know about you is that you saved my life.”

His lips twisted upward in a cynical imitation smile. “That’s a nice theory. I’ll try real hard to buy into it.” His gaze retreated into the shadowed depths of his own soul for a moment, then he shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”

He was getting ready to leave, taking with him the only connection, tenuous and brief though it was, that she had to herself, to the person she’d been before the accident, the only familiar element in this unfamiliar world.

“Tell me about the man I struggled with,” she entreated, interrupting him before he could declare his intention to leave, thereby making it irrevocable. “What did he look like? The police kept asking me, and I don’t know. They asked if I knew him, and I don’t know. They asked if the blood on my dress belonged to him, if I wounded him, and I don’t know.” She bit her lip as she realized her voice was rising, panic spilling over the edges of her words.

He moved to sit beside her on the bed, the mattress sinking with his weight, creating the sensation that, if she relaxed, she could slide against his body, into him, let herself be swallowed up in his strength.

She held herself rigidly against the temptation to do just that.

He gazed at her for a long moment and she saw that his eyes were actually hazel, the brown streaked with green like a tree in April, dead from winter’s cold but ready to burst into bloom with the warmth of spring. However, the torment that welled up from the depths gave the lie to that green promise.

He raised his hand and for a second she thought he was going to take hers, but instead he raked his fingers through his shaggy hair then dropped them to his denim-encased thigh. “I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. Average size, average height, dark hair. I think he was probably a homeless person, looking for a handout. They sleep in the parks around the area. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”

“Then I must have had the blood all over me before. Did I? When you first saw me, was there blood on my dress?”

“I don’t know.” He grinned wryly. “You see? You’re not the only one who has to admit that. If you want my opinion, though, I’d say you did. The blood was several minutes old by the time I got to you. That could be one reason that guy approached you. He could have been trying to help a beautiful woman who might be hurt.”

An involuntary, unexpected thrill darted through her and she touched her face, examining the unfamiliar contours. “Am I beautiful?”

“You don’t know what you look like? No, I guess you don’t.”

“Nobody had a mirror in the emergency room. They told me to wait until I got up here, but I haven’t looked yet. I’m not sure I can deal with seeing a stranger staring back at me.” Even as she said it, she felt shame for her cowardice, for being so frightened of everything, even her own face.

“To answer your question, yeah. You’re beautiful.” His words were complimentary but his tone was cold. For a brief instant, green fire seemed to flicker in the depths of his eyes, a fire that could heat a woman to the boiling point, past that and beyond, a fire that brought her body to tingling awareness. But that green flame died as quickly as it came.

If it had ever truly been there in the first place and not just her imagination, something she wanted to see.

“You’re beautiful like one of those cups with flowers painted on them that you see in antique shops,” he continued, his words so detached she was sure she’d imagined that brief spurt of flame. “The kind a guy’s afraid to pick up because it might break if he held it too tight.”

It was a pretty accurate description of the way she felt, but she bristled anyway. “Wouldn’t you be feeling a little fragile and a whole lot scared if you suddenly lost yourself?” She blurted the defense as much for herself as for him.

“Yeah, I guess I would be.” His square, black-stubbled jaw and the straight line of his lips contradicted his words.

With the clarity about others that must have come when she lost herself, she knew that Cole Grayson had met the devil and challenged him on his own turf. Considering the torment that lived behind his eyes, he might have lost the battle, but even so, he’d survived and nothing frightened him anymore.

“Would you hand me that other hospital gown from the foot of the bed?” she asked. “It’s the only pretense of a robe they could give me and I want to see what I look like.” She wasn’t sure whether her sudden courage came from the fact that Cole had enough strength for two people and she was able to absorb some of it, or whether his stoic demeanor shamed her into the action.

He rose from the bed, handed her the gown and waited.

She wrapped it around, covering the open back of the first gown.

Even so, when she stepped out of bed, she felt naked and exposed…and acutely aware of Cole’s masculine presence in the small room.

That was silly. The gowns, one tied in the back and the other in the front, hid her body effectively. Anyway, Cole was there as a rescuer. He had certainly not given her any reason to think he was interested in her body. He’d all but said she looked as if she might break if a man held her too tightly…and he looked like a man who would hold a woman very tightly.

She moved around the bed, carefully avoiding the mirror above the sink in the corner of the room. Facing herself wasn’t going to be easy.

Cole came up behind her, so close she could feel his body heat, smell his masculine scent combined with something else…something dark and dangerous and scary and exciting.

He flipped on the light above the sink then put both hands on her shoulders. “Go ahead,” he urged, his voice as startlingly gentle as his touch. “Maybe when you see yourself, everything will come back. You said the doctors thought the sight of a familiar face might help. You can’t get much more familiar than your own.”

She lifted her gaze slowly, as if she could sneak up on the strange woman she knew she would find in the mirror.

It was a pale, thin face with prominent cheekbones and overly large eyes. Long blond hair failed to add any color.

The image belonged to her, housed the brain she used to speak and walk. It was the woman other people saw when they looked at her. She ate with that mouth, smelled with that nose, saw through those eyes, combed that hair.

Though she couldn’t say the features were familiar, the tight, frightened expression somehow was.

She raised her eyes to Cole’s, looking for something—reassurance, courage, answers he couldn’t possibly have.

What she found instead was a flaring of the green flame she’d seen so briefly before, a fire that reminded her he was, after all, a man, an attractive, virile man, and she was a woman wearing nothing underneath the short hospital gowns.

For an instant, inappropriate thoughts and feelings flooded her mind and her body. Though Cole didn’t move, she could feel his heat against her skin, tracing down her spine and over her bottom, warming her thighs just as his breath warmed the nape of her neck.

He blinked, took his hands from her shoulders and stepped backward. “Recognize anybody?” he asked, his voice gruff with angry overtones. Anger at her? At himself?

“No.” Her answer came out on a breathy sigh and she was appalled to find her body yearning for him to return, to stand behind her, to touch her again. Her memory might be gone, but her hormones were working overtime.

Stress, she told herself. A reaction to the accident, to everything that had happened. So much stress that she’d imagined for a second time the brief flicker of desire in Cole’s eyes, imagined it and overreacted.

She cleared her throat and tried again to answer his question. “If I’d seen a picture, I wouldn’t have been able to identify it as me, but I would have known it was familiar.” At least, the expression was.

“That’s a good start.” He walked away, giving her plenty of space to return to the bed without getting close to him.

She hurried back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Thank you,” she said. “For being there just now, I mean. And for saving my life.”

He nodded, compressed his lips and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Well, I just came by to see if there’s anything I can do for you, anything you need, other than your memory, of course. I took that away from you, but I’m afraid I can’t give it back. No matter what you say, I blame myself that you’re here.”

“I don’t need anything.” She tried to sound more certain than she felt. “I’ll probably wake up in the morning with all my memories intact.” Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t still be terrified.

“I hope so. I hope that by this time tomorrow you’ll be home with the man who gave you that diamond.”

The sparkling ring looked incongruous lying on the nightstand between the plastic tray and plastic water pitcher. She swallowed hard and fought back the resurgence of unreasoning terror and disgust it evoked.

“You need to put it on,” he said. “Jewelry has a bad habit of disappearing in hospitals.”

She continued to stare at the ring, unable to force herself to move closer, to reach for it.

Cole picked up the diamond with one hand and took hers with the other.

His hand was warm and big and capable and she fought down a rekindling of that inappropriate response to his touch that she’d felt while standing in front of the mirror. He was being considerate and kind. That was all.

He touched the tip of her finger with the ring, and terror suddenly overwhelmed her again, a black void that drove out any other emotions and threatened to swallow her up, a nameless, pervasive fear that encompassed everything because she couldn’t recognize its face.

She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to divert herself, to maintain contact with reality. It was only a ring, not some instrument of torture, nothing to cause her breathing to become labored and her mouth dry.

The metal burned as he slid it onto her finger, then stopped at her second knuckle. “Your finger’s swollen, probably from the accident. You’d better wear your ring on a smaller one.”

“No!” She snatched her hand away, curling it to her chest and leaving him holding the ring. “It’ll fall off,” she improvised desperately. “I’ll lose it. You take it.”

Cole sighed and stepped back. “Lady, do you have any idea how much this ring is worth? Way too much for you to entrust it to a stranger.”

“You’re no more of a stranger to me than I am to myself. I trust you.”