Before he could answer, Uncle Ford prodded his way into the small room with the aid of a cherry cane and his great-niece Shelly’s hand at his elbow. Behind them, Dan craned for a glimpse of his mom.

Alan sidled through the others to wrap his arms around his son’s surprisingly broad shoulders. Dan hugged back, to Alan’s relief, but then he quickly pulled away. Dan preferred a handshake in recent years.

Alan met Aunt Imogen’s questioning gaze. “Barton can’t say much until Cate wakes up.”

“Until she breaks out of that coma,” Caroline said, as if the coma were an animal that had wrapped her sister in its vicious grip. “Let’s face facts.”

“I won’t face that word.” Aunt Imogen stood, her expression a faultless display of barely controlled fear. “Take this chair, Ford. Stop banging that cane.”

Her brother gave her an annoyed glance. “Good thing I’m not sensitive about having to use it.” He patted his sister’s hand. “I know you’re just worried.” Bellowing at a decibel level that compensated for the hearing loss he refused to admit, Uncle Ford nevertheless took Aunt Imogen’s seat. “Maybe the racket will wake—” he actually lifted his voice “—Cate.”

Her foot twitched beneath the blanket. Alan went back to her bed. “Cate?” Could waking her be that easy?

Her eyelids fluttered. For a horrified moment, he was afraid she couldn’t open her eyes.

“Cate,” he said, “wake up. Uncle Ford, why didn’t you shout at her before?”

“Shall I try again?” Uncle Ford struggled to his feet, maybe to lean a touch closer to Cate’s ear. He might have yelled again, except Dan appeared at his side to help him—or maybe to hold him back.

Alan flashed his son a grateful smile and took Cate’s hand. “Wake up,” he said again. “Please, Cate.” He didn’t beg easily, and his reticence had been a sore spot between them. He’d beg pretty damn freely now. “Cate,” he said again, and she opened her eyes and held them open. Her steady blue gaze made him want to shout, but he knew better than to scare her.

“Are you in pain?” He didn’t dare look away. Something different in her expression bothered him—some level of detachment he’d always expected to see. Wives detached themselves, no matter what you did to keep them with you. “Caroline, get the doctor.”

As Caroline left, Cate’s gaze followed her. She studied each person around her bed. Nothing that made her the Cate he loved was in that gaze. She eyed her aunt and uncle, her son and her niece with the same strange, dreamy look until she focused on Alan again.

“Who are you?”

The courtesy in her tone chilled him.

Trying to ask her what the hell she was talking about, he choked on his first breath. Confusion threaded the air, like a piece of twine that slipped from body to body. Strangling them all.

Aunt Imogen finally cried out, but then she covered her mouth. Uncle Ford’s cane clattered to the floor. Alan reached for both older people, steadying them with hands that shook hard enough to remind him how his father felt about men who gave in to their emotions.

But even his dad would understand this. Cate had left him after all.

THE LOVELY WOMAN with copper hair had raced out of the room, and the others, except for the dark man, poured after her. Just as well. Breathing took such an awful effort, and that many people must use a lot of oxygen.

Why would a hospital let such a crowd mill around a patient’s room? She stopped in midthought. She must be the patient. She was in bed.

How she’d come there escaped her, although she felt as if someone had welded a hot metal plate to her right leg. Nausea hovered, as if she were on a boat that refused to stop rocking.

She willed her queasiness away and concentrated on the man. Watching her from wide, dark-green eyes, he was clearly waiting for her to speak. As if he knew her.

She didn’t know him.

She must have been in an accident. Had she interrupted a family reunion? That many people in the same place had to be a family.

She took a deep breath that seemed to fill her head. The truth rocked her. Strangers didn’t hang around a hospital bed, even if they’d banded together to rescue an accident victim.

She didn’t remember what had happened to her. She remembered—nothing.

At her shoulder, a monitor’s steady beep grew more rapid. The sound drew her gaze as she tried to pry her own name out of her blank memory. She didn’t seem to have a name.

She knew her name. Everyone knew her own name. It was—She could feel it on the tip of her tongue. She ought to know. The monitor began to ping like sonar.

She didn’t know.

Suddenly aware of the man’s harsh grip on her hand, she turned toward him. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m your husband. I’m Alan.”

He terrified her. She tried to sit up in bed, but a powerful, formless weight held her down.

“I’ll help you,” he said.

He wrapped his large hands around her upper arms, but his strength made her feel weak, and she pushed him away.

“I don’t need your help.”

Stung, he straightened, looking impossibly tall. “What’s the matter?” He reached for her again, but something in her eyes must have shown him how seriously she wanted him to keep his hands off her. He fisted them at his sides.

“You act as if you have some right to touch me,” she whispered. “Who am I?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“My wife,” he said. “Cate…Palmer.”

“Why don’t I know you?” She darted a glance at the window. Low clouds hung above a sandstone building. It all looked completely unfamiliar. The glass offered a faint reflection, but she couldn’t see the details of her face. “Let me see what I look like. Maybe I’ll rememb—”

Before she could finish, he whipped open the top of the table at her elbow. A mirror was mounted inside. With the man’s help, she twisted the table toward her, so she could see.

Wild blue eyes stared at her from beneath a mass of dark red hair. She gasped. That other woman—the one who’d gone for a doctor. She had the same face.

The mouth in the mirror opened, and a scream tore the air.

“Cate.” His fear-drenched voice scared her, but he tucked her against his body, and she seemed to fit into the hard contours of his chest.

She closed her eyes. Darkness and the man’s faint, spicy scent blotted out the mirror, the room, the world as far as she knew it. She didn’t want to see herself. She’d lost everything, her past, her sense of identity.

Her life.

CHAPTER TWO

“ALAN, GO HOME. Get some sleep and have a shower.” Dr. Barton’s voice woke Cate.

She opened her eyes. She’d hardly been out of the coma for a full day, but the doctor’s visits interested her. Unlike her family, he wanted nothing from her. She looked from him to the husband she didn’t know.

Alan straightened in a metal-and-vinyl chair. “I don’t need sleep or a shower.”

She lifted her hand to him, but he shook his head, obviously aware she was going to second Dr. Barton’s suggestion. She continued anyway. “You need to rest.” She shouldn’t have buried her face in his manly chest. Her momentary weakness had apparently convinced him she needed a bodyguard. “Nothing bad will happen to me if you leave my room.”

He shot a wary glance at Dr. Barton, who nodded. Alan stood, but tension built as he hesitated. Cate didn’t know how to respond to him. His deep concern touched her. She found his stubbled chin attractive, his brooding green eyes appealing. She liked the way he smelled, but Alan expected more than the gratitude and simple attraction she felt.

“Do you want me to come back?” he asked.

She’d like to remember why he seemed as uncomfortable with her as she was with him. Had their marriage been happy? “After you rest, if you feel like coming back, I’ll be here.”

He turned toward Dr. Barton, but his gaze lingered on her as he spoke. “You know where to reach me?”

The doctor moved to Cate’s bed, an impresario, showing off his brightest talent. “Cate is awake and healthy and on the mend. We won’t need to dive into that pool of phone numbers you gave us.”

With a wry expression, Alan trudged to the door, and most of the pressure left with him. Cate sank against her pillows. The gruff doctor shut her door and dragged a chair to her bed.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

His urgency alarmed her. “Did you find something in the tests?”

“No—well, nothing new, but I’ve been trying to get you alone since you woke up yesterday. I have to tell you something I don’t believe you’ve told Alan.”

She attempted a smile. “Another man came forward to claim me as his wife.”

He gave a slight, anxious grin that put her on edge. “We only allow one family per amnesiac.” His gaze grew as intense as any of her family’s. “I wish I could prepare you for this news, but I must say it quickly before someone else comes in. You’re pregnant, and I’ve been unethical.” He patted her good leg. “What a relief to say it out loud at last.”

Cate grabbed her bed rails as the world seemed to open up beneath her. “I’m pregnant?”

“Just over sixteen weeks.” He went on, as if they should both be ready to talk facts. “You were spotting when you came in. By the time we could leave you to speak to Alan, he should already have asked us about the baby. When he didn’t, I began to worry you hadn’t told him and that you had a reason for not telling him. I asked Imogen for your gynecologist’s name.”

Words escaped her at first. “How old am I again?”

“Thirty-eight.”

Pregnant, thirty-eight, with a son of eighteen, and she hadn’t told anyone about the new baby. Why?

She slid her hands over her stomach. It was round all right. She hadn’t thought to ask why. An unexpected protectiveness caught her by surprise, and she accepted a new first priority. “Is the baby all right?”

“Yes. Your bleeding was light, and you stopped within a few hours. I still would have told Alan if I hadn’t tracked down Dr. Davis.”

“My obstetrician?”

“Right. She said you’d decided not to tell Alan yet, so I followed your wishes. However, Dr. Davis needs to see you, so you have to decide how to tell Alan. She’ll never make it in here and out again without being ambushed, considering the way your family guards that door.”

Cate’s large family overwhelmed her, too. She couldn’t see their constant, well-meant surveillance as a joke. “No one else asked about the baby? Not my sister or my aunt?”

“I wish they had.”

“Did Dr. Davis explain why I’ve kept the pregnancy a secret?”

“She doesn’t know, and I can’t promise Imogen hasn’t talked to Alan since I asked her for your OB’s name.” Dr. Barton patted her forearm. “Try not to worry. I expect Alan would have exploded by now if Imogen had told him.”

“I need to talk to Alan. What was wrong between us?”

“I’m not sure anything was wrong.”

Cate pushed her fingers through her hair. “Dr. Barton, tell me the truth.” She pressed her palms together, trying to look self-possessed. She didn’t want or need a gentle bedside manner. “Will I ever know these people again?”

He hunched his shoulders beneath his wrinkled lab coat. “All I ever say to you or Alan is ‘I don’t know.’ And I don’t. Because shock, rather than a head injury, caused your amnesia, I’d say your memory will trickle back.” Grinning, he popped his glasses from the top of his head onto his face, where they magnified his weary eyes. “Trickle. That’s a technical term.”

Cate tried to smile, but his nonanswer made her head ache. She lifted her hand between them, turning it from side to side. “I must have seen my fingers millions of times, but I don’t recognize them. I scared myself to death when I looked in a mirror and saw my sister’s face. My son makes me feel anxious, because he’s at an age where he won’t even say if he feels let down. I’m responsible for him, but I don’t feel that he’s my child, and I’m more comfortable talking to you than to my husband.”

“These are the facts. You can’t balance them with what you feel, because all your emotions are tied up in your memory loss.” Dr. Barton folded her fingers between his weathered hands. “I don’t know why you’d hide a child from Alan, but he cares about you. He stood a vigil at your bedside no matter how many times I begged him to go home. I thought we might end up having to treat him. That man didn’t stay all this time because he felt it was his duty.”

Good. She didn’t want a dutiful marriage. She wanted passion and commitment, a love that made a thirty-eight-year-old woman want to tell her husband they were having a second child.

Might she have hidden her pregnancy from Alan for a more obvious and insidious reason than a marriage that had wound down to duty? “What if Alan isn’t the baby’s father? Would you have heard rumors if I was having an affair?”

Dr. Barton sat back as if someone had tried to yank his chair out from under him. “The Talbots have a bad habit of making destructive decisions, but not you, Cate.”

“Talbots?” She found no comfort in his vehement support.

“Your father’s family. Your Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford. Before you, the Talbots have tended to live by their own reckless rules, but you’ve broken that mold, Cate. I’ve known your family a long time, and I’ve seen you make healthier choices than the others.”

“Explain, please.”

“No. You speak to Imogen or Caroline.” At his nervous glance, she imagined redheaded women who ran with wolves and men who sought the company of sinners. “You need to rebuild your relationships with your aunt and uncle and sister, not with me.”

“You’re not hurt because I can’t remember you.”

He held up both hands. “You have to jump off this cliff. Think of me as a parachute if you jump and you need help getting to the ground, but talk to your family.”

Outside her room, a woman’s voice paged another doctor over the PA system, and some sort of heavy equipment rolled down the hall on squeaky wheels. Still, Dr. Barton waited for her to behave the way she always had.

Cate covered her face with her hands, but then flattened her palms at her sides. “I can’t lie here and wait for my life to happen to me, can I?”

He slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’ll arrange for Dr. Davis to see you. Figure out what to tell Alan about the baby.”

Memory must shape a person’s sense of self. When she tried to think how she should approach Alan, she faced a mental blank. “I think I’ll try the truth.” She winced a little. “The truth as we know it, anyway.”

ALAN DIDN’T go home and sleep. Instead, he asked Dan to join him in an early round of golf at the country club they’d belonged to since Dan had begun to show unexpected talent for the game.

Alan kept waiting for the right moment to ask his son why he was avoiding Cate. Since his golf skills didn’t measure up to Dan’s, searching for lost balls usually made them talk. Today Dan helped him scour the primordial, South Georgia forest in uneasy silence. He grunted one-syllable responses to Alan’s opening gambits. Finally, after they turned in their cart, Alan suggested lunch in the club’s excessively Victorian grill room.

After they ordered, Dan sprawled in his wide wooden chair with a look that anticipated a firing squad. “What do you want, Dad?”

His sullen question surprised Alan. Normally, Cate handled these types of conversations. He didn’t know where to go when Dan was clearly saying he didn’t want to talk.

“Are you angry with your mom? Why won’t you go see her?”

Dan rubbed his chin, unconsciously pointing out a little late adolescent acne. “She only woke up yesterday. I had to do some stuff for Uncle Ford and Aunt Imogen.”

Was he serious? Did he really think the horses Uncle Ford boarded or Aunt Imogen’s errands might be more important than Cate? “But why didn’t you stay long enough to tell your mom you were glad she’s okay? I know you are.”

“You’re talking like you think I wish she was still in the coma. I’m not a kid, Dad. I’ll go see her.” He sat back as their server delivered sodas and small salads.

“Hey, Dan,” the girl said.

“Hey. You know my Dad?” Dan generally knew more of the people who worked at the club than Alan or Cate. He’d played enough golf here to earn a scholarship for college.

This time, the girl looked faintly familiar.

“Sure, I know Mr. Palmer. How are you?” she asked.

He was on the verge of losing his mind. “Fine. Nice to see you.”

Nodding, she turned away. Dan’s smirk mocked his father. “Why didn’t you just admit you didn’t know her? I would have introduced you again.”

“To be honest, I don’t have time. I need to go back to the hospital, and I wish you’d come with me.”

Dan lifted his soda for a slow sip. When he put the glass down, he wiped his mouth and looked like the kid Alan remembered. “I’ll go,” he finally said, “but I’m not sure why. She doesn’t even know us.”

Alan studied him, taken aback. He finally understood how Cate had felt when she’d been the one Dan turned to. She’d handled their family’s emotional upheavals and freed Alan to provide material support. He wanted to retire to a safe corner and wallow in his own fear, but this time he was the one who had to put his son first.

“Are you afraid your mom’s not going to get well?” He was starting from scratch with a boy he loved more than his own life.

Dan’s friend came back and slid their meals onto the table. Even after she left, Dan focused all his attention on getting ketchup to come out of its bottle.

“Son, I need you to talk to me.”

“What am I supposed to say? How does she want us to feel about her? She’s always been overprotective. She offered my little league coach tips when he yelled at me for rubbernecking. She’s chaperoned every school trip I’ve ever taken. Now, she looks at me and her bottled water with the same interest.”

Dan had avoided overt affection for about four years, but Alan dared to clip his son’s shoulder with a loose fist. “Don’t underestimate how much she needs you. I don’t think she’s forgotten us forever, and she’s still your mom. You be a son to her, and she’ll follow your lead.”

Alan felt like a fraud advising Dan when he still hadn’t decided what he was going to tell Cate about the business. As he’d chased her out of the office, he’d longed for a chance to start over. He had it now, but it was a bitter beginning.

“Dad, you look worried. I don’t want you to keep anything from me.”

Alan shook off his indecision for Dan’s sake. “Dr. Barton promised your mom will be back on her feet in time to see you graduate.”

Dan folded a fry into his mouth. “Will she want to come?”

Alan dropped the corner of his turkey club. “Yes.” Cate would have found an answer more convincing than his shocked, one-word response. He tried again. “She’ll want to see you graduate from high school.”

Dan sounded a youthful, impatient snort. “Sorry, Dad, but I can’t really take your word for it.” He tossed another fry into his mouth and talked around it. “I’ll go by the hospital after practice this afternoon.”

Alan didn’t pause to enjoy his success. “Thanks, son. I’d better get back myself. How are your aunt and uncle?”

“I stayed at Aunt Imogen’s last night after I fed the horses. Uncle Ford came over for a movie and popcorn, and then I walked Polly for Aunt Imogen.”

Imogen had recently retired Polly, her old roan mare, from farm work. She’d presented Polly with an extravagant straw hat that matched one of her own. Shocking the neighborhood, but never Cate and Caroline, who loved their aunt for her fabled eccentricity, both Imogen and Polly wore their finery for their nightly walks.

“Did you wear the hat?”

“Sure, Dad, and I took a picture so you could use it for that dorky Christmas card you send out every year.”

Cate actually sent the card, but Alan had taken pride in her annual record of their family. He pushed his chair back. “Why don’t you stay with Uncle Ford tonight? I’m sure your being there helps them.”

“Maybe I’ll pick them up after practice and take them to see Mom.”

Alan got to his feet. “Sounds good. You want to sign for lunch? I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” Dan looked up. Strands of his longish black hair made him blink blue eyes exactly the shade of Cate’s. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to talk. I’m a little scared.”

Alan held back a relieved sigh. He felt as if he were luring a wild animal into a clearing. He didn’t want to scare Dan into running for cover. “Are you all right?”

Dan immediately thinned his smile. “I just hope Mom is. Soon.”

Alan hoped male stoicism didn’t run in his family, but he’d protected his own feelings long enough to recognize the steps his son was taking.

Close off. Look tough.

“Take it easy, son,” he said, wanting to hug his almost grown boy. “I’ll see you later.” He risked a quick pat on Dan’s shoulder and then crossed the black-and-burgundy dining room.

Hurrying back to his car, he checked his watch. He needed to talk to Caroline about her budgets for the medical building, but first he wanted to see his wife. Fifteen minutes took him to the hospital.

He parked in the lot and stared up at the skeletal, half-finished building that overshadowed the hospital. His work site, the new medical building.

Wind blew sand in his eyes, blurring his vision. He wiped a film of sweat off his neck as the early May sun soaked through his clothing. Work continued on the medical center despite the troubled turn his finances had taken. Thoughts of the money he’d owe his suppliers made him sweat some more.

He wanted to tell the suppliers, just as he’d wanted to tell Cate and their employees, about the damage their CPA had done. He hadn’t known how to tell Cate he’d failed her by letting Jim steal from them. The other businessmen Jim had duped had decided not to tell their employees until they knew the extent of the problem. He’d argued, but he’d finally agreed to hold off. Deciding to lie to Cate had been shamefully easy.

Maybe her injuries gave him a real reason to hide the truth. Getting acquainted with her family again would be hard enough. Maybe by the time she remembered everything, the police would have found Jim and the funds he’d stolen. Cate might not have to know.

Her accusations came back to him loud and clear and all too accurate. He’d always followed the same pattern, trying to fix business problems before he had to tell her about them.

He climbed the slight rise to the hospital entrance. Inside, he drank in the cooler air.

The guard who patrolled the lobby stepped forward. Alan knew him and the lavender-haired woman behind the information desk. Formerly kindergarten teacher to half the adults in Leith, in retirement, she volunteered at the hospital. After a curt nod to the guard and his ex-teacher, he evaded their sympathetic glances.

Their pity turned him back into the ten-year-old boy whose mother had deserted him. As his father had disintegrated in front of his eyes, Alan had cleaned and cooked and put on a “normal” face.

After he’d set the kitchen on fire for the third time, their neighbors had stepped in. A Southern staple, the casserole, had begun to show up in its endless varieties, in the hands of their well-meaning friends.

The food, he’d thanked them for. Their looks of commiseration he’d hated so much he’d begun to pretend no one was home at dinnertime. His makebelieve often became the truth once his father decided to drink away his sorrows at a bar instead of in front of Alan.

The elevator doors wheezed open, pulling him out of the past. He glanced at the number painted on the pale-blue wall. Cate’s floor.

At her door, he knocked lightly before he went inside. To his surprise, she was sitting up, reading a magazine. She looked up, stroking the dressing that bulged against the sheet on her thigh.

“Hey,” she said, her tone lush and deep, like the dark river that ran behind her aunt’s home.

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