“Oh, my dear child.” Emma’s eyes glimmered with tears. “You were hurt. Hurt terribly, weren’t you?”
“There’s no easy way to say this.” He looked away, then back. “They worked me over pretty good. Stole everything I had on me, including my ID. As close as I can piece it together, they must have driven me out of the city, dumped me in the jungle and left me for dead.”
Even Grant winced at the last statement.
“But you didn’t die.”
“No.” He met Grant’s eyes, gave him the benefit of the doubt that he saw more shock than disappointment. “I didn’t die.”
He tossed back the rest of his drink, let out a long breath.
“I know this is hard to swallow. The rest is even harder. Long story short, a man by the name of Vincente Santiago found me on the other side of the mountain range. He and his wife, Maria, nursed me back to health. Maria is a healer.”
Michael read the speculation on the faces in the room and knew that his voice had warmed as he talked of the two people who had not only saved his life, but had taken him in as one of their own. There would be time enough later to explain his special relationship with the Santiagos.
“You’ve been recovering all this time?”
Grant again. Michael thought grimly that he’d have made a good D.A.
“No. It was… I don’t know…maybe six months before I recovered physically from the injuries.”
“Six months? That was eighteen months ago. Why the hell didn’t you come back when you were well?” Grant had moved past stunned and was edging well into anger.
“Why didn’t you at least contact us? Tara was half out of her mind with grief. You had to know we were all worried!”
“Grant, if I could have contacted you, I would have. But the problem was I didn’t know.” He met each pair of eyes, lingered, at last, on Tara’s. “I didn’t know you were worried. I didn’t know anything. I took some pretty good shots to the head in the beating.”
He touched his fingers to the scar on his temple, unconscious of the gesture.
“When I finally came around, I didn’t know up from down. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, didn’t know where I’d come from. Didn’t know my own name.”
“Amnesia,” Ruby muttered. “Lord above.”
She marched with single-minded intent to the bar, uncorked a bottle and helped herself to a shot of her employer’s very old and very pricey brandy.
“Yeah, amnesia,” Michael echoed. “And you thought it only happened in the movies.” Hell, he’d thought it only happened in the movies.
“Two years. Two years, Michael? You expect us to believe you just wandered around down there for two years not knowing who you were?”
“Grant,” Emma admonished gently. “The boy has been through a harrowing ordeal. For goodness sake. Let him finish.”
Michael smiled a thank-you to Emma then addressed Grant.
“As I said, I was a good six months recovering, and learning Spanish,” he added with a tight smile. “The Santiagos spoke very little English at that time. The fact that I did was my only link to my identity. I figured I was American, but it didn’t narrow things down much.
“And I didn’t wander,” he added as Grant’s frown deepened. “The Santiagos took me in. I worked for them. And then I worked with them, as a partner in their lumber business.” There was much more to that story but Michael figured it could wait for another time.
“When…when did you remember?” Tara asked, her brows pinched together. She’d pulled her hands away from Emma’s and locked them tightly together in her lap.
“Two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks?” Grant’s tone and expression made it clear he was still at odds with the story. “What? You just suddenly woke up one morning and remembered you had another life?”
“Look, Mr. Connelly, I know this is hard to accept. Hell, I still have trouble sorting it all out.”
“Just take your time, dear.”
Michael smiled at Emma again, grateful for her support.
“What did prompt the return of your memory?” Tara asked.
“You,” he said without hesitation.
Her face drained to pale.
“You did,” he repeated. “You have to know that like the Kennedys or the Trumps, the Connellys are American royalty to the rest of the world. What you do, where you go makes the news—even the international news.
“I was in a Quito equivalent of a supermarket.” He paused, rocked, as he was always rocked when he thought of that day. “I was checking out and spotted this trashy tabloid.
“Your face—” He stopped again, drew a bracing breath. “Your face and Brandon’s were splattered all over the front page, along with the announcement of your engagement to John Parker. My picture was there, too—complete with the gory details of my death.”
“My God.” Emma rose shakily and joined Ruby by the sideboard. Ruby poured her a glass of brandy, refilled her own. “How horrible for you.”
“Horrible? Yes and no. I’ve got to tell you, it scared the hell out of me at first. The rush of memories it triggered was staggering. Everything just came slamming back—I apologize for the expression—like a train wreck.” Along with an excruciating pain in his head.
“I passed out cold. Must have been quite a sight,” he added with a slight lift of the corner of his mouth. “When I came to, I was laid out flat in the aisle along with the contents of three sacks of groceries, and I started to remember. Everything.”
He looked pointedly at Tara, knew by the expression on her face that she was thinking about their last conversation. If possible, her face grew even paler.
“I suspect that right now you’re all feeling something close to what I felt that day,” he continued. “It…it felt like I’d been hit by a two-by-four.”
He touched his fingers to his temple again. A sharp, intermittent pain that had become his recurrent friend stabbed through his head.
“Michael!” Tara shot to her feet, raced to his side and touched his arm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He shook it off, made himself focus, smile for her. “Just a little reminder of the past two years.”
“A long two years,” Grant put in. He looked from Tara to Michael, appeared to be not altogether pleased that she’d rushed to his side. “I can’t tell you how sincerely glad we all are that you’re alive.”
“But,” Michael said, offering the opportunity for the other shoe to fall.
Emma looked pained and apologetic.
“But it’s been two years, Michael. Two years,” Grant restated for emphasis. “We’ve heard nothing. Nothing.” He paused dramatically for emphasis. “Life has gone on. Tara has moved on.”
Michael watched Tara while her father spoke. Despite what Grant maintained, Michael could see that she hadn’t moved anywhere. Not yet. And if he had anything to say about it, the only direction she was going to move was toward him.
He was back. And he was prepared to fight. For