Carbon Copy Cowboy

“Your memory’s apt to return on its own at any time,” the doctor added helpfully.

“But what if it doesn’t?” she had to ask.

“George will figure it out,” Jack reassured her, “or somebody will come looking for you.”

She gulped, wishing that made her feel something less than terrified.

* * *

Well, that was that. Jack stepped out onto the graveled parking lot of the medical center. Car wrecks and amnesiac blondes made for an exciting first Monday of the month. He hoped this wasn’t a sign of how the rest of September would go, though. July and August had been dramatic enough, what with his mother’s accident, his sister Violet meeting her previously unknown twin Maddie, his own still-unknown twin Grayson off on an undercover assignment, their supposed father disappearing, a half brother he’d never met overseas with the military... Jack had more questions now than he’d had the day of his mother’s accident.

If all that weren’t enough, Violet had become engaged to Maddie’s former fiancé, and now Maddie was going to marry the Colby Ranch foreman, Ty. Jack couldn’t imagine why anybody in his right mind would get entangled in a romance under such circumstances—or any other, when it came right down to it. That way, as he well knew, lay heartache.

Automatically, his thoughts went to his former girlfriend Tammy Simmons, but then another face flashed before his mind’s eye. Taking out his phone, he tapped the photo icon. Her image instantly came up. She looked small and frightened with that bandage on her forehead and her big, deeply set hazel eyes begging him to tell her who she was. He didn’t think he’d ever forget how horrified she’d looked when she’d realized that she couldn’t recall her own name.

He knew a little of what she was feeling. He and his sisters had gone to Fort Worth in search of answers about their past. They all needed to understand why their parents had split up the family and kept it a secret from them. According to an old neighbor, Patty Earl, her late husband, Joe, was his and Grayson’s real father. It didn’t make sense for Brian to raise Grayson in that scenario, but Brian’s disappearance felt awfully convenient to Jack. A doctor, Brian had supposedly gone to South Texas on a medical mission trip and had somehow fallen off the face of the earth—just when there were questions to be answered.

If only his mother would wake from her coma and give them those answers. Jack doubted that he could accept them from anyone else, not even Brian Wallace. Now Jack had more questions than ever, and he had to wonder if he even knew who he was. Obviously, his last name wasn’t Colby, but it might not be Wallace, either. Jack found the whole situation maddening.

But maybe not as maddening as amnesia. Jack gazed down at the blonde whose photo he’d taken with his phone.

His heart went out to her. Even if she turned out to be a car thief or an escaped mental case, not knowing the truth had to be awful. And there again, he could relate.

He dropped the phone back into his pocket and walked out to the truck that he’d driven in from the ranch. After the accident, he’d ridden Tiger back to the barn at the main compound then come straight here to the Grasslands Medical Clinic.

Everyone around town referred to the clinic as a hospital, but in truth, it was nothing more than a converted house with a pair of examining rooms, a small lab, a couple of offices and four or five beds in a dormitory-type setting. Serious cases got transferred to Amarillo with long-term ones going to the skilled nursing center here in Grasslands, otherwise known as Ranchland Convalescent Home. It was more or less an old-folks’ home, a place where his vibrant, forty-three-year-old mother did not belong, but he was glad to have her closer to home now.

At least he and his sisters could function somewhat normally, and one or the other of them visited Belle almost daily. Jack stopped in there as soon as he left the clinic, anxious to tell her about his unusual day.

He could only hope that she would hear him.

Chapter Two

They had seen to it that Belle had a private room with all the monitoring equipment and nursing care that she needed, but if she even knew those things, no one could tell. Jack spoke to her as if she could hear him, telling her about the day’s adventure. She appeared to sleep peacefully through his monologue, her long auburn hair spread out on the pillow beneath her head, the gentle rise and fall of her chest the only sign that she lived. As always, Jack sat beside her bed and prayed.

Oh, Lord, please let her wake up and be well. Please. And the blonde lady, too. She obviously needs a helping hand right now.

He added pleas for clarity on the issues troubling the family before rising to kiss his mother’s smooth forehead.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispered, for perhaps the thousandth time. “Please come back to us. We need you more than ever.”

Feeling low, he trudged out to his dirty, white pickup truck and slid behind the steering wheel. Then he started the engine and drove out to the ranch. As he turned the truck through the massive gate with its rock columns and metal arch displaying the Colby Ranch brand, Jack thought again of the lovely blonde back there in the hospital.

No doubt, she worried about where she would stay and how she would live until her memory returned. Without money, she really had no options. Grasslands didn’t have a homeless shelter because it didn’t have any homeless. She couldn’t stay at the clinic for long, either, but someone would surely take her in—someone with plenty of room.

Sighing as the imposing ranch house came into view, Jack mentally cataloged the house that he, his mom and two sisters occupied. There was room for her. That didn’t mean that he had to offer a bedroom to the pretty amnesiac, though, even if he had been the one to rescue her from a car wreck.

Of course, it didn’t mean that he shouldn’t, either.

He supposed they could open one of the old, unoccupied cabins on the place, but it didn’t seem wise for a woman with a head wound serious enough to cause amnesia to stay alone. Too bad the hotel in town was closed temporarily because the couple who owned and operated it had been called away on a mission of mercy to help family members who had been burned out by wildfires in the central part of the states. Jack went so far as to consider calling the pastor at the Grasslands Community Church to see if he could find a host for the woman, but in the normal course of things when temporary shelter was needed, the first phone call that the good reverend would make would be to the Colbys.

“Aw, come on, Lord,” Jack grumbled aloud. “Don’t we have enough trouble as it is?”

Unfortunately, the Lord, as was His habit, didn’t say a word. Jack heard Him, nevertheless.

Jack turned the truck through the gate in the wrought-iron fence that separated the main house from the rest of the compound, parked and climbed out, trudging into the house through the carport door. He’d barely set foot in the back hall before Lupita, the housekeeper and cook, stuck her head out of the kitchen.

“Dinner in five minutes.”

“Already?” he asked, hanging his hat on a peg fixed to the wall. He pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time. Man, this day had flown. “I’ll wash up,” he muttered, heading for his room.

For some reason, he swiped his thumb across the bottom of the screen on his phone and watched as the blonde’s photo popped up again. He stopped in the dining room, aware that his sisters—he still couldn’t get over the fact that there were two of them and how alike they looked now that Maddie had taken to jeans and boots—busily laid the table for the evening meal.

“Oh, good, you’re home,” Violet said, smiling as she placed a napkin beside a plate.

“Uh-huh.” Disturbed by his compulsion to stare at the picture on his phone, he tossed the small device down at his regular place. “Y’all ought to know that we could be having company soon.”

“Oh?” Maddie said, closing a drawer in the breakfront. “Who? Have you heard from Grayson?”

Jack made a face at the mention of his brother. “No, I haven’t heard from Grayson, and I don’t expect to. Why would I?”

“He is your twin,” Violet pointed out.

“So? I’m not talking about him. This is someone different.... A person was in a car wreck today.”

“Oh, wow!” Violet exclaimed. “Anyone we know?”

“Some woman who didn’t make the curve at the bottom of Blackberry Hill,” Jack answered carelessly. “She’s going to need a place to stay when Doc says she can leave the hospital.”

“When will that be?” Maddie asked.

He shrugged. “Soon, I expect.”

“Will she need nursing?” Violet queried apprehensively.

“No, nothing like that,” he assured them, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I’ll explain later. If it comes to it, I mean. She might stay somewhere else. Now, I better wash up.”

He walked off toward the back staircase. The very moment that he rounded the corner, he heard Violet say, “I might have known.”

Drawing to a halt at the note of concern in her voice, he retraced his steps to the doorway and saw that she’d picked up his phone and unlocked the screen. She and Maddie stood huddled together beside the dining table, as alike as two peas in a pod, staring down at the photo of the blonde woman now at the clinic.

“She’s probably tall and leggy,” Violet muttered, putting down the phone.

As a matter of fact, she is.

“What makes you say that?” Maddie asked, and Jack mentally echoed the question. Yeah, what makes you say that?

“Because,” Violet answered, “that’s the type Jack goes for.”

Jack darted up his forehead as Maddie surmised, “You’re describing the girl that broke his heart last year, aren’t you?”

Violet nodded. “Long legs, long blond hair, blue eyes.”

Hazel, Jack corrected silently, then he remembered that Violet was describing Tammy, not his car-wreck victim in the wedding veil.

“What happened there, anyway?” Maddie asked.

Jack leaned a shoulder against the door frame and prepared to listen to Violet’s thoughts on the subject, intrigued primarily because they’d never discussed the issue.

“Jack and Tammy dated all throughout high school,” Violet reported. “Then when Jack went off to college, she broke up with him.”

Not exactly. It had been a mutual decision at that point. Jack had wanted the freedom to enjoy his college experience, and Tammy hadn’t wanted to sit home waiting for him to graduate. It had seemed sensible at the time to give each other some freedom. They’d dated off and on over the next four years, then Tammy had gotten involved with someone else. They had broken up when he was transferred. Jack had assumed that she’d objected to moving away from Grasslands, but it had turned out that she’d been unwilling to trade one “nothing town” for another, as she’d put it.

“For a long time, everyone thought Tammy would marry the manager at the ranch supply store,” Violet went on, “but after he left town, she and Jack started dating again. When Jack started fixing up the old Lindley house, everyone thought for sure that they would get married.”

From the moment he’d seen that place as a teenager, Jack had thought he’d like to live there when he grew up and got married, and he’d said as much when his mother had bought the acreage after old man Lindley had died. He hadn’t realized how seriously his family had taken his plans to heart until now.

“That’s the one he’s been working on since I came here, isn’t it?” Maddie asked sadly, and Violet nodded.

Jack had taken refuge at the old house off Franken Road. Gutting the kitchen, replacing floorboards and squaring up the doorways had taken his mind off the turmoil that Maddie’s arrival in their lives had engendered, but he hadn’t meant to make her feel bad by disappearing. It was just his way. He wasn’t used to having two sisters, let alone his mom in a coma and all these questions about a family he hadn’t even known he had. Staying to himself and working hard kept his mind off those problems. He’d rebuilt the staircase after Tammy had left town, but that’s where he’d left it until his mother’s accident. Once it had become obvious that Belle would remain in a coma, Jack had torn out and replaced the bath fixtures at the old house.

“Yes, Jack’s always intended to live there,” Violet went on, “but apparently Tammy didn’t get that. Her parents, Gabe and Gwen Simmons, down at the coffee shop, say that Tammy had been telling them that she was getting out of Grasslands, either with Jack or someone else. Apparently, when Jack asked her to marry him, she told him that she’d marry him only if he took her away from Grasslands. He wasn’t about to leave here, so they broke up.” She sighed. “Not long after, she left town with a trucker who was passing through. We’ve heard that she’s in Houston now.”

It wasn’t quite that simple, Jack mused. He’d been fixing up the house as a surprise for Tammy. He’d bought a diamond ring and staged his proposal in front of the newly rebuilt rock fireplace in the front room, but when Tammy had realized that he’d meant for them to live there, she’d laughed at him.

“I’m not going to stay around here any longer than I have to,” she’d said. “Just tell your mother that you want your inheritance now, and let’s go someplace fun.”

Shocked, he’d informed her that he would never leave the ranch, at which point Tammy had declared that he could keep his ring. She’d been seeing the trucker all along, it seemed, and the guy had promised to take her somewhere exciting, someplace where “cowboys and cows were not the be all and end all.” She’d left him that day saying that she’d wasted enough time on him.

“No wonder Jack wants no part of love,” Maddie observed.

“I don’t know,” Violet said, staring down at his phone. “Maybe he’s ready to move on, after all.”

A picture of the girl in the hospital bed suddenly shimmered through Jack’s mind. He saw her beautiful eyes open, her gaze flicking around the room and coming to rest on him. She had smiled slightly, as if she’d recognized him. He’d had to restrain himself from stepping forward to touch her. Every protective instinct he possessed had risen to the fore, and he couldn’t have stopped himself from trying to reassure her.

He recalled the moment when she’d realized that she’d lost her memory. The panic and horror in her eyes had pierced him. He’d wanted to wrap her in his arms and promise her that all would be well. He’d never felt that way toward Tammy or any other woman outside of his mom and Violet.

Chills ran down Jack’s spine. He shifted away from the door frame and stepped back. What was he thinking? What was Violet thinking? Just because he felt a little protective toward an injured woman and had taken a picture of her for the local police, that didn’t mean he was interested in her personally. No way. Even if the woman hadn’t been in dire straits, the timing couldn’t have been worse. With his mom in a coma and all this upheaval in the family, romance was simply out of the question.

“We don’t know anything about this woman,” he heard Maddie caution. Jack snorted. No one knew anything about this woman. She didn’t even know anything about herself! “We need to pray about this,” Maddie added.

Sounded like good advice to Jack, very good advice. He’d pray for the mysterious young woman in the wedding veil and blue jeans and ask the Lord to meet her needs before the Colbys had to step in. That would be one problem solved, at least. The rest would resolve in time. Or not. He truly wasn’t sure that he even cared anymore.

Did it really matter why Belle and Brian had split up the family, including two sets of twins? His mother had been determined to keep the secret, and he should have let her. He shouldn’t have insisted that she tell him why they had no contact with any extended family. If he’d let it alone then, his mom might not be lying in that hospital bed now. As far as he was concerned, the whole matter should just be dropped.

Turning, he went to clean up before Lupita could catch him eavesdropping.

* * *

Sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, she curled one leg beneath her and smiled at the fashion dolls “walking” across the coverlet in the hands of little Emily Wilmon, the only other patient in the dormitory.

“I think you look like a Julia,” the child said, as if amnesia was some sort of game.

“Julia?” She laughed, shaking her blond head. “Why do you think that’s my name?”

Emily looked at the male doll in her left hand and changed her mind. “Kenna!” she decided. “I want your name to be Kenna!”

Struck by how right that sounded, she sucked in a deep breath, murmuring, “Kendra, maybe?”

“Yeah, Kendra.” Emily beamed.

“Who is Kendra?”

The husky, masculine voice shivered through her with welcome familiarity. She looked up to find Jack Colby standing in the break between the curtains surrounding her bed. Hatless, his rich brown hair fell forward haphazardly, giving him a sweetly boyish air. Much as the day before, he wore scuffed brown boots, comfortable jeans, a utilitarian belt with a palm-size buckle engraved with the initials J. C. and a long-sleeved shirt. He held that disreputable, sweat-stained straw hat in his hands. Only the shirt seemed to have changed. The faded but sunny gold of this one made his light brown eyes glow.

“I guess Kendra is me for the time being,” she told him, winking at Emily. “Seems as good a name as any.”

“So still no memories?” he asked casually, stepping closer.

“Obviously I remember how to speak and how to walk and how to brush my hair, but I can’t recall a thing about me personally.” She shook her head. “It’s as if yesterday was the first day of my life.”

Nurse Hamm had graciously laundered her clothing the previous night, so she had been happy to change out of the hospital gown and into her own things that morning. The dark jeans, pale yellow T-shirt and white athletic shoes felt familiar and safe, but she couldn’t recall purchasing them. Were they favorite items or merely garments to wear? She just did not know.

“Met George outside,” Jack stated offhandedly.

George Cole had been by earlier to tell her that he hadn’t found any reports of a missing person or vehicle that matched the descriptions he’d put out county-wide, so he was broadening the scope of his search. Meanwhile, she was not to leave the area. As if she could do so on foot without a penny to her name.

“He’s, um, running the Vehicle Identification Number on the car and contacting police departments within the odometer range.”

Jack nodded. “So he said. Since no one within the mileage on the odometer of the car seems to know you, he’s searching the state database for the VIN.”

“What if it’s not there?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I guess the car would have to be from out of state. Could’ve been brought in by a new-car dealer.”

“A new-car dealer,” she murmured, feeling uneasy.

“What?” Jack asked.

She searched her mind for some reason to explain her feeling but found nothing, so she shook her head. “I don’t even remember the car, let alone where I got it.”

The curtain slid back, and Dr. Garth entered the space. “Emily,” he said, taking the child by the shoulders and bodily turning her, “you’re supposed to be in bed. Nurse Hamm has medicine for you, and your mom’s off work now. She’ll be here any minute. Scoot.”

Uncowed, Emily tucked her dolls into the curve of one arm and waved. “Bye, Kendra!”

“Bye, sweetie.”

“Kendra?” Dr. Garth asked, sliding his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat.

“Emily named me after her boy doll.”

“Ah. The amnesia hasn’t alleviated, then?”

She shook her head, sighing. “No.”

Jack Colby chuckled, watching Emily scamper across the room to her own bed. “Could’ve been worse,” he noted drily. “I can think of a few toys and cartoon characters I wouldn’t want to be named after.”

“Kendra” shared a wan smile with him. It was true that she preferred that moniker to a number of other possibilities, but what she wouldn’t give to merely know her own name. Choking back a fresh threat of panic, she squared her shoulders and faced the doctor.

“Am I ever going to remember?” she asked.

He pulled in a deep breath before carefully saying, “It’s impossible to know. Amnesia has no rules. Your memory may never return. On the other hand, you could wake up one morning with everything in place, or something could trigger full recall. Or your memories could come back bit by bit.”

“Kendra feels familiar somehow,” she reported, excited to think that might mean something significant.

“But it doesn’t trigger anything definite?” he asked.

Deflated, she dropped her gaze. “No. Nothing.”

“Worrying about it won’t help,” he told her kindly.

“What does?” she asked, feeling glum again.

“Time. Hopefully.”

She spread her hands. “Seems I have plenty of that.”

“Do you have any idea where you’re going to spend that time?” the doctor asked. “There’s really no reason to keep you here any longer, and we have so few beds....”

Alarm rose in her chest again. “I—I’d hoped you might have a suggestion.”

“Actually,” Jack said, shifting his weight from foot to foot, “I do. My sisters and I would like to invite you to stay out at the ranch.”

“There you go!” Doc said with obvious relief. “Problem solved.”

On one hand, she wanted to throw her arms around Jack Colby and sob with gratitude, but what did she know of this man, really? Of anyone here? Even herself.

“I—I wouldn’t want to impose on anyone.”

“You won’t be imposing,” Jack insisted. “The house is plenty big, and there’s a room in the same wing with my sister, Maddie. You won’t be in anyone’s way.”

“But... You don’t know me.” And I don’t know you, she thought.

“The Colby Ranch is a good place for you,” Doc said. “The Colbys are good Christian folk, and Violet and Maddie are about your age. Now, I’ll want you back in about ten days to have those stitches removed,” he proclaimed, as if that settled the matter, and she guessed it did. What other option did she have, after all?

“Thank you,” she said to Jack, but he just looked away with a slight shrug.

Dr. Garth stepped forward to pull a pair of gloves from a container fixed to the wall above her bed. “I’ll just take a gander at this before you go.” After donning the gloves, he peeled away the bandage. “Looks fine. Wait another forty-eight hours before you shampoo your hair. Then just keep dirt out of the incision.” He applied a large adhesive dressing and peeled off the gloves. “Normally, we’d have you sign some papers and arrange payment before you go, but in this case, we’ll wait a bit. We’ll take care of it when you’ve figured things out.”

“Sounds good,” she said, greatly relieved. “Thank you.”

The doctor nodded, first at her, then at Jack. “Wait here. I’ll send Nurse Hamm over with a few things—a kind of parting gift we give our patients. Toiletries, mostly.”

“Thanks again,” she murmured.

“See you soon,” the doctor told her, adding pointedly, “Kendra.”

She smiled because of his kindness but also because she found it surprisingly easy to think of herself as Kendra. Now, if she only knew what kind of a person “Kendra” was.

* * *

I ought to let Doc examine my head while I’m here. Jack was walking beside “Kendra” across the clinic parking lot. His mood pretty much matched the overcast day. He couldn’t help feeling somewhat responsible for her, and with the only hotel in the area temporarily closed, he had no choice but to take her home with him until George said she could leave. That didn’t mean he was happy about it, though. He would have felt better about the underling if he hadn’t had her on his mind the entire day long. For once, he couldn’t seem to focus his thoughts where he focused his energies, and that bothered him. He told himself that it was because of the unusual circumstances. Amnesia! How often did that happen? At least she wasn’t in a coma.