Slow Burn

She snatched her hand away. “No—”

“Just until you get your memory back.” He moved from the chair and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. He braced his hands on the mattress to bracket her hips, his body stirring at the closeness. Momentarily distracted by the shape of her mouth, he simply stared.

“I couldn’t,” she said, but she didn’t sound convincing.

“Yes, you can. Look, aren’t your doctors saying it could only be a few days until your memory returns? Do you really want to go to a long-term care facility?”

She shook her head, and a hank of fiery hair fell over her shoulder. The wavy ends teased the slope of her breasts beneath the cotton hospital gown. “Or maybe a few weeks, or months, or even never. You’ve already been so kind to me, Cale. I won’t ask any more of you.”

“You aren’t asking,” he argued. “I’m offering.”

He understood her fear, or at least he liked to think he did. The truth wasn’t that simple. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like not to know where he came from or the members of his own family. Of course, when his brothers learned he’d brought home a total stranger, they’d be convinced he’d taken leave of his common sense for sure this time.

Where Maggie was concerned, they were probably right. Didn’t he have enough disastrous relationships in his past to prove their arguments? Okay, so maybe there was some truth here. But, none of those women was Maggie. She genuinely needed his help. He wasn’t offering a permanent solution, only a temporary one.

“Cases that last that long are the exception, Maggie, not the rule,” he said gently.

“I don’t know…”

“Come stay with me, just until we can figure out where you really belong. I’ve got a quiet little place near the beach and a bedroom to spare. You’ll be perfectly safe there, and it’s a hell of a lot better than some sterile environment where you’ll just be another name on a chart.”

“I might not even live in L.A.,” she argued. “Or California for that matter. Maybe I was just passing through and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe I was visiting someone.”

“Then why hasn’t anyone else come to see you? And why wasn’t anyone else at the scene when we found you?”

She dropped her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes, but not before he saw defeat pass through them.

“It’ll give you a quiet, peaceful place to recuperate and when I’m off duty, maybe I can help you find out who you really are.”

She opened her eyes. “But…how can I?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’re a complete stranger. I don’t even know you.”

“You don’t even know yourself at this point,” he said dryly.

“Exactly.” She sat up again. “What if I’m a serial killer or something equally horrible? How do you know I won’t rob you blind? You wouldn’t even know who to tell the police to arrest.”

Cale chuckled. “The perfect crime.”

“It’s not funny.”

Lifting his hand, he gently smoothed his knuckles over her satiny cheek. “What other choice do you have, Maggie? It’s either me or a state facility.”

“You’re not giving me much by way of options, are you?”

“You don’t have a lot of options,” he said truthfully, lowering his hand. “It’s me or the funny farm, babe.”

“I don’t think I’m used to being told what to do.” She shot him a frustrated glance. “Because I sure don’t like it now.”

2

SHE WORE BLACK. Simple. Basic. Elegant. Of course for a woman in her line of work, black was always the most appropriate color. She considered it her signature color, with one small exception—the red silk hankie with an embroidered V done in an elegant, delicate script. She preferred to think of it as her calling card.

She pretended mild interest as her bore of a host preened over his most prized possession: a priceless, yet little-known Carracci painting he’d presumably acquired at an estate auction…or so he claimed. She knew better. The Carracci failed to garner her attention, for now. There was only one reason she was in Rome, and it had zilch to do with priceless art.

Slowly and deliberately, she slid her hand over his arm in an unmistakable gesture. He had what she wanted, and before the night drew to a close, she’d have what she came for…

MAGGIE AWOKE with a start, heart pounding, breathing ragged. The thin cotton hospital gown clung to her sweat-moistened body as she struggled to recall the details of the dream. She wasn’t sure what it all meant, but she suspected there was some clue to her identity attempting to rise to the surface. Not just her identity, she thought, pulling in a deep breath that did little to calm her, but her life.

Who was she? Where did she come from? And more importantly, what exactly did she do for a living? From the misty visions of the dream, she almost dreaded the answer.

A quick glance at the clock on the wall next to the television reminded her that Cale would be arriving to take her home shortly. Not home exactly, but away from the hospital and the threat of the unknown. He really was an angel. What kind of guy took in not just a total stranger, but someone who didn’t even know herself. Obviously, Cale was one of the good guys, and for reasons she had no nope of comprehending at the moment, she wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel an enormous amount of gratitude for his unconditional generosity, but what if the nagging sensation in the back of her mind was true? What if she wasn’t what he believed her to be, just some poor schmuck in the wrong place at the wrong time? The dream…

“No,” she said in a firm tone. She had to stop thinking about it, or she’d end up with another one of those horrendous headaches again, the kind that had sledgehammers, jackhammers and a cacophony of chain saws all vying to be the loudest. The doctors may have told her not to force her memory, but in her opinion, that was easy for them to say. What were their chances of getting lost in their own neighborhoods?

She sat up and cautiously swung her feet over the side of the bed to the small footstool. Following a breakfast of stale toast, saltless scrambled eggs and cold coffee, the morning nurse had removed her IV as promised, eliminating at least one cumbersome attachment. Unfortunately, the cast on her right arm wouldn’t be so easily discarded, at least for another six to eight weeks while her wrist healed. One thing she had learned about herself, she most assuredly was right-handed.

The call she’d placed to the social worker had been simple. As Cale predicted, all Mrs. Sutter had asked for had been an address and telephone number in case she needed to contact her. The call to Detective Villanueva had been relatively painless, as well, except his coolness made her uncomfortable. Still, he’d thanked her for the call and promised to be in touch, which sounded more like a threat than an offer of assistance.

She pressed the button to turn on the television to a cable news network for background noise. While the reports of current events were vaguely familiar to her, none of the clips that flashed across the screen of the various cities through the U.S. gave so much as a tiny nudge to her absent memory. She did recognize certain landmarks and buildings from New York City and Chicago. Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the Kodak Theater in Hollywood were both familiar sights when she spotted them in a couple of tourism commercials. An advertisement for Disneyland didn’t hold any special meaning or spark a single memory of childhood. She just knew of these places, the way she knew the succession of color in a rainbow or the caloric difference between chocolate cake and a granola bar, and which of the two she preferred.

In a determined effort to stop stressing herself into another migraine, she shoved her encased arm into the plastic bag and used the white medical tape the nurse had left her so she could seal the bag closed around her cast, hoping to make it watertight. Moving slowly, she managed to make her way across the room to the bathroom she shared with the patient in the next room. She wasn’t setting any speed records, that was for sure, but at least she was able to shower and wash her hair, albeit awkwardly. Drying herself off wasn’t quite the sideshow she’d expected, and she’d even managed to apply lotion to most of her body.

Cale had thoughtfully brought her some clothes to wear since her own had been ruined. He’d proven quite resourceful, too, checking her tattered garments for the right sizes. His choices left little to be desired, but a woman in her situation had no room for complaints, especially since he’d footed the bill. She’d made him give her the receipt and as soon as she found a job, or better yet, herself, she’d pay back every cent.

She slipped into a pair of panties and tried not to think about Cale purchasing something so intimate for her. A blush stained her cheeks even though the plain white cotton panties to match the plain white cotton bra didn’t exactly scream sexy. She didn’t know whether she had Cale or a saleswoman to thank for the thigh-high comfort of the panties, but as she stared at the freshly laundered, button-fly jeans, she couldn’t help wondering what on earth he’d been thinking.

She stepped into the heavy denim and pulled them up her legs without too much trouble. Before even fastening them she knew they’d be a comfortable fit, but the dancing around on her toes as she struggled with each button had her not only breaking out in a sweat, but near tears. As much as she appreciated his thoughtfulness, couldn’t he have brought her some leggings or even a pair of sweats? She’d be happy with a pair of pull-on pants made by Poly and Ester, the tacky fabric twins, just so she could avoid buttons, snaps or zippers.

Dammit, she would not cry. She’d been doing far too much of that lately.

She sat on the edge of the commode to catch her breath and stared at the bra on the little stool next to the shower as if it were a two-headed snake. With nothing else to do but try, she reached for the bra and entered a new realm of humiliation. Slipping her arms through the shoulder straps and hooking the back was out of the question, so she decided to put the evil contraption on backwards, fasten the ends together in front, then twist it around her body.

After several failed attempts, her stern lectures about not crying came back to taunt her as her eyes filled with more tears of frustration. There was no way around it. She’d have to swallow her pride and ring the nurse for assistance.

Her hand stilled over the little pull chain in the small, semiprivate bathroom when she heard the door to her room open. “Nurse?” she called out in relief. “If you have a minute, I could really use your help.”

Without a sound, the heavy door swung open. Maggie gasped when she turned to find Cale instead of the nurse she’d been expecting.

His expression instantly shifted from concern to desire right before her eyes. The man was definitely good for her ego. Not five seconds ago she’d managed to convince herself she looked like an idiot incapable of doing something as simple as buttoning up a pair of Levi’s. Now she was only behaving like one as she stood and stared at him, shocked into utter silence by the not-unpleasant sensation of warmth uncurling in her belly and spreading outward with languid heat through her limbs.

He cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he murmured as he spun around quickly to allow her a modicum of privacy.

Still feeling decidedly confused and definitely aroused by her reaction to him, she made a hasty grab for the towel she’d tossed on the edge of the sink earlier. With a hard snap, she swung her cast against the white porcelain. Tears sprang to her eyes as pain shot up her arm. She reached blindly for the wall to steady herself, but instead of touching the cool ceramic tile, her good hand came in contact with a solid wall of masculinity.

His arms were around her, steadying her and holding her close. Don’t cry, she thought.

But one whispered word of comfort, one large male hand gliding over the exposed skin of her back in a gentle, soothing motion, and tears of pain and frustration poured from her eyes like a busted water main.

“It’ll get better, Maggie. I promise you, it will.”

She pulled back slightly to look up at him. “How can you say that?” she asked around a sob. “You know as much about me as I do, and we’re not talking a wealth of knowledge here, either.”

His incredible smile was as kind as the expression that softened his intense blue eyes. “You’re in pain.” He slid the pad of his thumb across her cheek to dry her tears. “I’ll call the nurse.”

The tenderness he showed her stirred something deep inside her, a wealth of emotion she had no hope of truly understanding until she acquired at least some recollection of her past as a comparison.

She sniffled and shook her head. What she really wanted to do was scream. Between her faulty gray matter and the delicious tingling sprinting through her body, she figured she was more than a little entitled.

No doubt she was suffering with some twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome. Cale might not be her captor, but she had come to depend on him, if only slightly. Although she’d actually started looking forward to his nightly visits, that little piece of reality saddened her. Did she really have no other person in her life that cared about her? Wasn’t there someone, somewhere, missing her? Parents, grandparents, an uncle or an aunt? What about siblings, an employer? A cat or a pair of goldfish?

She pulled in a steadying breath only to be swamped by the unique scent she’d come to associate with Cale. That sensual blend of spice and pure male any woman in her right mind, or not as her case might be, would have difficulty resisting.

She used the edge of the towel clutched to her chest to dry her eyes. “My mind is foggy enough.” She managed what she hoped was a brave smile and tried not to think about that musky, masculine scent giving her most feminine senses a sharp jolt. “Adding pain-killers to the confusion is the last thing I need.”

He didn’t look that convinced. “You were calling the nurse for a reason.”

Keeping the towel clutched to her chest, she took a step back. “I needed assistance.”

“Assistance…?” he prompted.

She let out a sigh. “Yes. With getting dressed.” Her gaze dipped pointedly to the bra lying on the tiled floor at her feet.

A questioning frown tugged his eyebrows low over his eyes a half second before they arched upward as realization dawned. “Ah,” he said. That killer smile returned to his handsome face, kicking her pulse rate up a couple of notches.

He stooped to pick up the bra and handed it to her. “Slip into it and I’ll fasten it for you.”

With the bra dangling from her fingertips, she stared at Cale in fascination. He couldn’t seriously be offering his services for something so…so intimate, could he? Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the man hadn’t only offered a total stranger a place to live, he’d bought clothes for her to wear and had even gone to the trouble of digging through her ruined garments to find out her sizes.

He turned around and stood with his back to her, giving her a sense of privacy. If she refused, she’d feel petty and foolish. The man wasn’t making a pass at her. He was offering to help her dress since she obviously couldn’t do it for herself. There wasn’t anything sexual about it. Well…hardly anything sexual about it.

She turned her back to him, dropped the towel and slipped into the bra. Holding the cups awkwardly in place, she said, “Okay.”

The first brush of his fingers against her sides as he took hold of the ends of the bra nearly had her jumping out of her skin. His touch was gentle and completely impersonal as he worked the fasteners, but that didn’t stop a delightful shiver from glancing down her spine.

He reached around her and bent to snag the navy-blue cotton top from the stool. “Arms up,” he ordered.

Oh, no. This part she could handle on her own. She took the top from him, knowing she’d go just a little more nuts if he put his hands on her body again. “Thank you,” she said, “but I think I can take it from here.”

“I’ll wait outside.” With one last look, he quietly closed the bathroom door behind him. Alone, she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her lips at the obvious disappointment in his gaze.

Once she’d finished dressing, she took a moment to check her appearance in the mirror. She might not know who she was or where she came from, but there was one thing she understood completely—sexual chemistry and attraction, especially since her hormones went into overtime whenever Cale was around.

CALE KNEW trouble when he saw it, and trouble definitely had arrived in his life in the form of the mysterious Maggie with her sexy little smile, eyes that changed color with her mood and rich cinnamon hair that had his fingers itching to touch the silky strands. Those reddish-brown tresses weren’t the only thing soft about her, either. His testosterone had shot through the roof for those few seconds his fingers had brushed against her silky skin.

He added a new shade of eye color to his list, too. Turquoise—the color of Maggie’s eyes when she was aroused. Always one of his favorites, this particular shade ranked at the top of his list, especially since he knew without a doubt he was solely responsible for it.

He paced around the hospital room while he waited for her to emerge from the bathroom. Like his brothers, he was no stranger to relationships, although he did like to think his held at least a modicum of meaning in comparison.

His little brother, Drew, hardly ever dated the same woman more than three times. In fact, Drew gave new meaning to the term little black book. He had more of a big black binder. He wasn’t cruel, and he never led a woman on, but no one doubted Drew’s bedroom did indeed boast a revolving door.

As for his older brother, other than a few short-term relationships, Ben tended to steer clear of the opposite sex. Or more accurately, Cale thought, from any form of relationship that remotely resembled a serious or lasting affair.

By comparison, Cale figured he was the most normal of the three. At least he dated. He even had relationships that lasted longer than a week, which was more than he could say for Drew. To his way of thinking, taking the time to get to know a woman was all a part of the fun. For him, there was something satisfying about unraveling all those intimate secrets and feminine mysteries.

So maybe that had something to do with his interest and attraction to Maggie, because she absolutely had plenty of mystery. Sure, his brothers would no doubt consider her another of his damsels in distress; the woman had more secrets than the CIA. But she needed his help, not just in offering her a place to live, but in rediscovering her past. So what if he’d known her less than a week and already was more than intrigued by her? Was it his fault she was sweet and feisty, a combination he found incredibly sexy and damned hard to resist?

She was tiny, almost helpless at first appearance, but he’d seen her handle her own against those two surly detectives last night. And although her situation indicated otherwise, he’d hardly slap a weak or dependent label on her. In fact, stubborn and determined applied to her all too well, telling him whether she knew it or not, Maggie wasn’t just a fighter, but a survivor, as well.

Oh, yeah. Maggie was a mystery all right, but an exciting one. And he’d always been a sucker for a little excitement, not to mention a good mystery, even if he did know what his family would have to say about it.

Ever since he was a kid he’d collected strays. He didn’t need another two-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink to warn him he was about to repeat the pattern all over again. Although, even he had to admit, sparrows that had fallen from their nest were a hell of a lot more innocuous than a living, breathing woman without a past. But he’d been saving lives ever since his mother had died in the line of duty when he was only eight years old. He couldn’t very well change now. To his way of thinking, there was nothing wrong with being a nurturer. In fact, it had made his becoming a paramedic the obvious career choice.

Okay, so this time he didn’t have a bird with a broken wing that needed to be cared for until it healed. Maggie wasn’t an abandoned kitten, but she did need his help. He wasn’t the kind of guy to turn his back on something—or someone—in their hour of need.

Besides, he reasoned, weren’t his strays always placed in good homes eventually? Okay, except for Pogo, the three-legged dog he’d rescued from a beating by the mean old SOB who had lived in his childhood neighborhood. The dog had been of such mixed heritage, even the vet had been hard-pressed to put a breed label on the poor mutt. It hadn’t mattered to Cale. He and Pogo had remained inseparable until the day the old dog had finally passed on, shortly after Cale graduated high school.

Maybe if he had listened to the psychobabble of the child psychologist who’d treated him and his brothers when their father had died shortly after their mother, he might be a little worried about taking a stranger into his home. He wasn’t helping Maggie because of some misguided or misplaced need to save the world because he hadn’t been able to save his mother or even his father. He really wasn’t. Maggie needed someone, even if she did jump-start his libido with a simple little smile or a teary-eyed, gratitude-filled look in her intriguing eyes.

He stopped his pacing when the bathroom door finally opened and Maggie walked into the sterile hospital room. His breathing nearly halted, as well, or was that his heart that had stopped beating?

He couldn’t be sure, mainly because he couldn’t help staring at the way the dark-blue denim clung enticingly to her legs and outlined the gentle swell of her hips. She approached the metal nightstand and bent over to peer into the drawer. The sight of her curvy backside had him struggling for breath again.

“I’ll be ready in a sec,” she said, tossing the few personal items into the white plastic bag the hospital had provided.

His vocal chords refused to function, and all he could manage was a brief nod of his head. His gaze zeroed in on the lightweight fabric of the plain cotton top as it hugged her very full breasts and outlined her slender waist, leaving him with an almost uncontrollable urge to slip his hand beneath the serviceable fabric and explore every inch of her skin.

Oh, yeah. Cale Perry knew trouble when it saw it, all right. And her name was Maggie.

3

FROM THE passenger seat of Cale’s red four-wheel-drive pickup, Maggie watched the passing scenery along Ocean Boulevard. Regardless of how thin a chance, she’d still hoped something—a building, a tree, maybe even a street sign or billboard—would pull her memory out of hiding.

“Nothing is familiar,” she told Cale as he came to a stop behind a line of cars waiting for the traffic light to turn green.

He glanced her way, then took her by surprise when he reached across the bench seat to slip his hand over hers, as if touching her was something he did all the time. Her body said otherwise. When he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, delightful little shockwaves traveled up her arm and shot straight to the tips of her breasts with electrifying accuracy.

“Did you expect otherwise?” he asked, his voice one of concern, not lust.

Too bad.

“Hoped is more like it.” She removed her hand from beneath his to slip a nonexistent stray lock of hair behind her ear. She didn’t think she was unaccustomed to being touched, which left only one other option. Her desire for physical distance, however minute, stemmed from something much more basic…like an inexplicable sexual attraction to a total stranger. Her life, such as it was, was complicated enough and she should definitely not compound her problems by allowing her hormones to run amuck. Just because her guide in an unfamiliar world was sexier than any man had a right to be, and was able to make her breath still with one slanted look or a gentle touch, did not put him on her agenda.