“Tuesday. The twenty-third of September.”
Slowly, he scanned the room, searching. The curtains and comforter, while a yellow plaid, were both trimmed with white lace. The latter was draped over a pine-slotted sleigh bed that sat more than three feet off the floor. Positioned across the room were its matching dresser and mirror.
Jacob studied his image. The blade-sharp cheekbones, the strong, not-quite-square jaw, covered with no more than a day’s worth of whiskers. He rubbed his knuckles against the stubble on one cheek, hollowed more from fatigue he imagined than from pain. A bruise dominated the high forehead, spilled over in a tinge of purple by the deep set eyes of vivid blue.
No flashes of recognition. No threads of familiarity. Nothing more than the image of a stranger staring back.
His focus shifted down. Assorted lotions and powders cluttered the top of the dresser, along with a few scattered papers and a stack of books.
Packing boxes sat opened on the floor. Some were full, others half-empty, but most lay flat, their sides collapsed.
“You’re moving?”
“Yes—”
“You’re awake.” A man entered the room, the black bag in his hand and the stethoscope around his neck identifying him as a doctor.
Grace met the older man halfway across the room. Jacob deliberately said nothing and waited. But his hand shifted closer to the gun beside him.
Her father was on the smaller side of sixty, with a leanness that came with time on a tennis court, not a golf course. His hair was white and well groomed, combed back from a furrowed brow.
After a few murmured words, he patted her shoulder, then approached the bed. “Jacob, my name is Doctor Renne. Grace tells me you don’t remember what happened.”
“That’s right.” Since the older man didn’t ask Jacob if he remembered him, Jacob assumed they’d never met.
“How’s the headache?” Doctor Renne pulled a penlight from his pocket and clicked it on. He shined the light in Jacob’s eyes. First one, then the other. The bright flash set off another series of sledgehammers. He winced. “Bearable.”
“Look up…now down.” Another flash, another jolt of pain.
“How did I get here?”
“Since there was no car, we assumed you walked. Grace discovered you on her porch last night.” The doctor clicked the light off and tucked it back into his inside pocket. “Stay focused on my finger without turning your head.”
Jacob followed the doctor’s finger, this time ignoring the pull of discomfort behind his eyes.
“There’s definite improvement.” The doctor waved his daughter over to the bed. “Grace, I’ll need your help. I want to check his shoulder.”
They eased Jacob back against the headboard. The doctor examined the bandage. “There’s blood. You’re moving around too much. I didn’t spend hours stitching you up for you to take it apart in five minutes.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ll remember that,” Jacob commented wryly. “I’d tell you where to send the bill if I knew where I lived.”
“Your driver’s license says Los Angeles, California,” Charles answered. “Seems you’re a long way from home.”
Home? Why did the address, even the word, sound so foreign?
Grace leaned over to adjust his pillow. A light floral scent drifted toward him. For a moment he tried to identify the flower, but came up with nothing. Still the fragrance was distinctive. Feminine. Clean.
“Do you remember a woman named Helene Garrett?” Grace asked without looking up.
Frames of shadow and light passed through Jacob’s mind, but nothing he could zero in on, nothing to bring into focus. “No, but…” Suddenly, a snapshot—vivid but brief—flashed across his mind. A woman laughing. Her cheeks and nose pink from the falling snow. Her smile wide, her eyes brimming with…happiness?
No, he realized suddenly. Not happiness.
Love.
“You.” Jacob nodded slightly toward Grace, then frowned. “I see you.”
“From last night or this morning?” The doctor asked, then took Jacob’s wrist and checked the younger man’s pulse against his watch.
“From a ski trip.” Jacob closed his eyes, for a moment, trying to bring the image back. “I remember her hovering over me.” When he opened them again, he caught the surprise in the doctor’s features.
The doctor didn’t know about me. Jacob decided not to mention how the scent of her shampoo triggered the memory. Not until he understood more.
“You were skiing? Where?”
Grace nearly groaned aloud at her father’s questions. When she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d told him the father of the baby was no one he knew. Just someone she’d met skiing.
Lifting her chin, she met her father’s glare head-on. “In Aspen. A few times.”
When her father said nothing, her gaze shifted from him to Jacob. But her smile was forced, her teeth on edge. “You fell the first time we were there.” What she didn’t add is that he had faked the fall, pulled her into the snow and spent the next twenty minutes kissing her breathless.
She hugged her arms to her chest and walked over to the window.
She didn’t want to see the anger—the disappointment—emanating from her father.
“Who’s Helene Garrett?” Jacob’s question snapped the thread of tension between father and daughter.
“A business associate of yours. And my partner. Ex-partner. She introduced us,” Grace admitted reluctantly, but she continued to stare out the window. The bay’s waves crashed against the sand and dock, not quite over its temper from the night before. She’d stayed awake all night helping her dad, jumping at every sound the wind and rain made. But no one came after her. No one pounded on the door or jumped from the shadows.
Hide, Grace. Before they kill you. The words floated through her mind for the thousandth time. But was the threat real or a side effect to his amnesia?
“Someone shot and killed Helene last night outside our bar.” Grace could feel Jacob’s eyes on her, studying her like some specimen in a jar. Something he’d done while they dated. Before his habit unnerved her, now it just annoyed her.
Amnesia. Her nerves endings snapped and crackled. She didn’t believe him at first, but that lasted only a few moments. Admittedly, she had expected Jacob to clear up the confusion—the fear—that plagued her all night. How can you fight your enemies when you have no idea who they are? Or hadn’t known they even existed until only hours before?
“And you assume because I took a bullet, I was there, too,” Jacob said coolly.
He wasn’t asking a question, but her father answered anyway. “It’s a logical assumption.”
“Did Helene have a gun on her?” Jacob asked, his tone flat.
“Yes, but you didn’t shoot her. And she didn’t put that bullet in your shoulder, either. The two of you were very close,” Grace insisted, but she didn’t face him. Not yet. Not when her emotions could be seen in her expression. The doubt, the fear. Everything in her being told her he wouldn’t harm Helene. She had to believe that, for now. “You might not remember who you are, but I know what kind of man you are. And you aren’t a murderer.”