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* * *
Hunter tried to bat away the hands that blocked him from following Brianna into the E.R. “I want to go with her. That’s my wife!” he said, sticking to the lie he’d already committed to. “Come on. She’s scared, and I promised I’d stay with her.”
“You can be with her in a minute,” a woman in scrubs told him, leading him by the arm to an office. “We just need a little information for billing purposes.”
He raked his hair with his fingers and exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Fine. What do you need?”
“Take a seat over there. I just have a form for you to fill out.”
The fear in Brianna’s voice as they took her away echoed in his mind. Poor thing. She had to be terrified. He thought of the EMT’s questions as they rode in from the accident scene. He had no idea what to tell them about Brianna’s medical history or family or billing information.
Crud. He glanced over the form, and his gut rolled. Well, he’d come this far. Might as well lean into it.
Name—Brianna Mansfield. Marital status—married. He gave them his address as hers, his phone number...his name as her spouse and emergency contact. He plowed on, filling out the form, giving the hospital the information they’d expect if he were in fact Brianna’s husband. For just an instant, he imagined that scenario. Coming home at the end of a long day to her warm embrace. Waking up to her pretty face. Having a child with her...
His heart thumped. The medical staff would assume he was the father of Brianna’s baby. He’d told the EMT as much. Though he’d savored his role as uncle to his brother’s kids, had been a father figure to his niece Savannah for the first four years of her life, the thought of being a father still gave him pause.
Of course, he wasn’t the baby’s father. He shook off the tangential thoughts and focused on the papers in front of him. This was all a ruse for Brianna’s sake...until her real family could be found and brought to the hospital. At the bottom of the sheet, he signed and dated the form, then handed the clipboard back to the admissions clerk. “Can I see Brianna now?”
“Sure. This way.”
Hunter wiped his palms on the seat of his running shorts, wishing he didn’t look and smell like a gym rat, and followed the woman to the nurses’ desk.
When a nurse finally breezed past them, Hunter grabbed her arm to catch her attention. “I’m looking for my wife, Brianna. She’s in labor.”
The nurse nodded to him without stopping. “She’s delivering the baby now. Susan, will you show him where to scrub up and find him a sterile gown?”
The admissions clerk opened her mouth to respond, but the nurse hurried off and disappeared into an exam room. By the time the admissions clerk had located the sterile head-to-toe garb and Hunter felt he’d sufficiently washed his arms, hands and face, Brianna was already cradling a red-faced baby and crying tears of joy over her new arrival.
“Better late than never, Dad,” the E.R. doctor said, waving him in. “We’re just finishing up here, but everyone’s doing fine.”
He stepped over to the side of the surgical table where Brianna lay and, behind the sterile mask covering his mouth and nose, he smiled. Realizing she couldn’t see the gesture meant to congratulate and comfort her, he winked, as well. “Sorry to be so long. Hospital business...then they made me put all this stuff on.” He tugged at the sleeve of the sterile gown.
“It’s all right.” She grinned at her baby, then angled her arms to show Hunter. “I have a son. Seven pounds, seven ounces. A healthy baby boy. Thanks to you.”
Hunter gazed at the puffy-faced bundle and felt a tug in his chest. Newborns generally weren’t what he’d call cute. Even his nieces had needed a few days to register on the cute scale for him. But somehow, knowing he’d helped ensure this baby arrived safely, he felt a little connection to Brianna’s son that put the swollen cheeks and pointy head in perspective.
“Hey, little guy. Welcome to the world.” He crooked a finger and ran it along the baby’s chin. “So what are you naming him?”
She shook her head tiredly. “I don’t know. Surely I had a name picked out, but...I don’t remember it. I can’t give him a name until I get my memory back.” She glanced up at him, and her blue eyes were dark with anxiety. “If I get it back.”
He put a hand on her arm and gave her a supportive squeeze. “What have the doctors said about your head injury? Your amnesia?”
“Not much yet. Delivering Little One here was their first priority. But they are setting up for me to get a CT scan now.” She gave her son’s head a kiss and closed her eyes. “This is crazy. I don’t even know if my son’s father is at home waiting for me, worrying. There must be someone. I didn’t get pregnant on my own.”
A funny gnawing filled Hunter’s gut—maybe because he’d been playing the role of her husband, and hearing her talk of someone else having the rightful place in her life felt off. “You’re not wearing a ring.”
She raised her left hand and stared at her naked fingers. “No. But someone meant enough to me nine months ago that I got pregnant. Where is that man? He should know his son has been born.” Her breathing grew shallow and rapid again. Her brow furrowed, and lines of distress crinkled around her eyes. “I’m scared, Hunter. Without any memory, I’m all alone. I have no home. I have no money. I have no identity or history or—”
“Hey.” He cut her off as the desperation in her voice rose. “You have me. I’m gonna help you figure out who you are and where your family is. Okay?”
A tremor shook her, and when she blinked at him, a fat tear broke free of her eyelashes. “Why? You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, well, the hospital thinks I’m your husband.”
“You told them that...for me? So you could stay with me?”
“Yeah.” He caught her tear with his thumb. “I guess I’m a sucker for blue eyes and a damsel in distress.”
The E.R. nurse came back into the room and raised the railing on the other side of her surgical table. “They’re ready for you in radiology. If you’ll give Dad the baby to hold for a moment, a nurse from the nursery will be down in a minute to take him upstairs for more health checks.”
Brianna’s eyes met Hunter’s. “Is that all right?”
His gut pitched. He’d held babies this small when his nieces had been born, but somehow this felt different. He was being entrusted with a child not even twenty minutes old, given the responsibility of a father’s care and protection. He swallowed hard, hesitating.
“It’s okay, Dad,” the nurse said, chuckling. “Baby won’t break.”
Hunter pushed out a cleansing breath and slipped his hands around the tightly wrapped bundle lying against Brianna’s chest. In the process of gathering the baby into his arms, he brushed intimately against her breasts. When her breath caught and her gaze darted to his, heat spread through him and raised a flushed prickling in his cheeks. “Sorry.”
In response, she twitched her lips in a brief, nervous grin as she released the baby to him. He could feel the heavy throb of her heartbeat against the back of his hand as he adjusted his grip on her son. His pulse drummed in his ears as he pulled the tiny life close to his chest and cradled the baby’s head in the crook of his arm.
“Hey, sport,” he crooned to the puffy-faced baby, who wrinkled his face and whimpered pitifully like a puppy. “No, no. Don’t cry. Mom will be right back.” As Brianna was wheeled out for her CT scan, her troubled gaze lingered on him. Hunter gave her a nod and a wink. “I got this. Don’t worry.”
But as soon as Brianna and the nurse disappeared, the baby loosed a plaintive wail. A bubble of panic swelled inside him. A crying baby was usually his cue to pass a baby back to mom or dad. But he was supposed to be playing the dad role for the next few hours. Yikes.
“Shh. Easy, fella.” He gave Brianna’s son a little bounce and patted the baby’s bottom the way he’d seen his brother Grant do with his daughters when they were infants. “You’re okay, dude. I’m gonna help your mom out, and everything’s going to be just fine.”
He paced the small room, trying to comfort the crying baby, wishing the nursery staff would hurry and take the baby upstairs. As he cradled the infant, rocking his arms from side to side, he flashed back on the accident that had brought him here. Brianna racing down the highway, losing control of her car. Bullet holes in the back of her flipped sedan.
A chill rippled through Hunter. Who had fired at Brianna, and why? Was she still in danger, or had she been victim to a random crime? He recalled her fear of someone hurting her when he’d first tried to help her, and uneasiness scraped through him.
No matter how he looked at it, the cards were stacked against Brianna. Amnesia, a new baby...and some unknown threat to her safety. He may have known her for only an hour, but she had no one else. She and her baby needed him, needed his support, his friendship...and his protection.
He gazed down at the new life in his arms. So tiny. So fragile. So...vulnerable.
“Don’t worry, sport. I’m going to take care of you and your mom,” he promised Brianna’s son. “I’ll help her remember who she is, where your dad is. And I will make sure both of you stay safe.”
* * *
“Where the hell are you, man? You’ve been gone for three hours!” Hunter’s older brother Grant said the minute he answered Hunter’s call.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hunter cut his brother a lot of slack for his sharp tone, and a stab of guilt also poked him for worrying Grant. His brother had been through hell in recent months, having tragically lost his wife in May. Grant was now a single father, raising his two young daughters alone, and didn’t need any extra grief on his plate. Considering the tumult of the spring and the circumstances surrounding Tracy’s death, Hunter should have called sooner so Grant wouldn’t worry.
He’d left for his jog from Grant’s country home after Sunday lunch with the Mansfield clan. He’d been expected back inside an hour to shower and watch the Saints game with their dad. Since Tracy’s death, the family had been spending a lot more time with Grant, helping with the kids and hoping to lift his spirits.
“Sorry about the radio silence.” Hunter could imagine Grant—and their mother—pacing the hardwood floors of Grant’s farmhouse, fretting about him. “I’ve been...distracted. I’m at the hospital with—”
“The hospital!”
Hunter winced. He should have led with a disclaimer. “I’m fine! Really. But I witnessed a car accident, and I rode in the ambulance to the E.R. with the woman whose car flipped.”
“Aw, skunk.” Grant mumbled the kid-safe curse he and his wife had invented when their oldest started repeating everything she heard. “Is the woman okay?”
“She hit her head pretty hard and has no memory of who she is at the moment. That’s why I’m here. She was pretty scared, but she and the baby are okay other than that, I think.”
“She had a baby with her?” Grant’s tone ratcheted up a degree on the worry scale.
Hunter raked his fingers through his sweaty hair. He really needed a shower, but wouldn’t leave the hospital until he knew Brianna was all right. “She was in labor. She just had the baby a few minutes ago.”
“Skunk,” Grant repeated. “No wonder you stayed with her. So...when do you think you’ll get back here?”
“No telling. Go on and eat dinner without me. I may swing by my apartment for a shower later, but I doubt I’ll make it back out to your place today.” He remembered then that his truck was sitting in Grant’s driveway. “Wait, my truck’s out there, and I need it.” He winced, hating to beg a favor from Grant, who had two small kids to deal with. Maybe his parents could bring him a vehicle. “Are Mom and Dad still there? Could one of them bring my truck to the hospital when they head back into town?”
“I think we can work something out between the three of us.” He heard Grant sigh. “So this woman has no idea who she is? There was nothing with her that identified her? A wallet or cell phone or piece of mail?”
“Not that I found with my preliminary search, but I plan to go back out to the car and look again.” Hunter glanced up to see Brianna being wheeled out of the radiology department. “Text me when you get here with my truck, okay? I gotta go.”
“Sure. Love ya, bro.”
“Back atcha.” Hunter tugged a sad grin, wanting to tease his brother about unmanly professions of feelings. But knowing why his brother had started telling him he loved him at the end of phone calls and visits made teasing impossible. The suddenness of Tracy’s death had shaken the whole family. Factor into that the third Mansfield brother, Connor, returning to WitSec with his wife and daughter, and the family had plenty of reasons to be particularly mindful of family bonds. They all hugged more, said frequent “I love yous” and didn’t take their time together for granted.
As the hospital aides rolled Brianna’s stretcher closer, he couldn’t help but wonder about her family. Did she have anyone looking for her? Was someone, even now, pacing the floor and waiting for her to call? A pang of sympathy prodded him and fired a sense of urgency inside him to find out who she was and where she lived.
Her eyes found his as she neared him, and he sent her an encouraging smile. “They took your son upstairs to be checked more thoroughly by the staff pediatrician. And they’re getting a room ready for you on the maternity floor.”
She nodded, then winced, her hand lifting to her temple, where her head had a new bandage.
“Any news from the CT scan?” he asked.
“Not yet.” Her sky-blue eyes clouded with worry. “The doctor is reading it now.”
* * *
“The CT scan and MRI both show what we suspected,” the staff neurologist said, his hands shoved in the pockets of his white lab coat. “You have a significant concussion, which has caused swelling in the brain. That swelling is what has caused the memory loss. I have every reason to believe that as the swelling goes down, you should get most, if not all, of your memory back.”
“Most?” Brianna gaped at the silver-haired doctor, stricken cold by the idea of losing any part of her history to permanent brain damage.
When she’d finished in radiology, Hunter had followed her up to the room where she’d been admitted to the maternity ward. He sat beside her bed now, leaning forward in the chair, eagerly taking in every word the doctor shared about her condition. As any good husband would. Except he wasn’t her husband. Before today, he hadn’t even been an acquaintance. Why was he so willing to help her, to pretend they had a relationship? Was it just so that she didn’t face her amnesia alone?
Hunter frowned. “Do you mean some of her memory loss could be permanent?”
“It is possible. The brain is a tricky and mysterious thing. But I wouldn’t worry too much about that. All indicators are you’ll be good as new in a couple of weeks.”
A couple of weeks? She swallowed the dismay that choked her. Even if two or more weeks without her memory seemed like an eternity, she needed to count her blessings. She had a healthy son, the hope of recovering her past, her identity...and Hunter. She had Hunter to help her through the scariness of amnesia. But how long would he stay? She couldn’t ask him to give up his life, his commitments, in order to babysit her. He’d already gone way above and beyond the call of duty, pretending to be her husband in order to stay beside her, allay her fears, give her moral support. All too soon she’d have to face the void of her unknown life alone. That thought brought back the chill, the prickling sense that someone wanted to hurt her. What had put her on that road where her car flipped today? Who was after her, and why?
Chapter 3
Hunter turned to her with that knock-’em-dead smile of his, pulling her out of her worrisome musings, and gave her wrist a squeeze. “That’s great news, huh? That you should recover all your memories, given time?”
Threading the sheet of her hospital bed through her fingers, she worked up a smile for him. “Yeah. Great news.”
“So how will it work?” Hunter asked. “Is there something I can do to help prod her memories?”
“Generally, no. The swelling needs to go down before the process of memory recall can happen. When it does happen, it won’t be a sudden info dump. Things will return slowly, a piece at a time. Prepare yourself to feel frustrated by the puzzlelike feel of the bits and pieces coming together, but try not to stress too much over the seemingly scattershot return of the memories.”
“So photos and bits of memorabilia won’t trigger recall?” she asked, disappointment weighting her chest. Her head chose that moment to give an almost symbolic throb. She’d refused the painkiller they’d offered her, knowing she’d be nursing her baby boy soon.
“They might serve as a prompt. But not before the swelling has decreased sufficiently. The key is going to be patience. Give your focus where it belongs. Building new, precious memories with that baby of yours.”
Thoughts of her son brought a genuine smile to Brianna’s lips. “Thank you, Doctor.”
The neurologist pulled a pen from his pocket and signed a chart that he stuck in the file holder on her door. “Now get some rest, and I’ll check in on you again at the end of my rounds.”
The doctor pulled her door almost closed to give her and Hunter privacy, and being alone with her rescuer suddenly became awkward. She glanced at him as he shifted to a more comfortable position in the bedside chair. He flicked a smile at her and drew a deep breath.
“So...” he said.
“Hunter...” she said at the same time.
His grin stretched, and he waved a hand toward her. “Go on.”
“What were you—” she said on top of him again. Now she chuckled stiffly. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “No. Ladies first.”
She took a slow breath and untangled her fingers from the knots she’d been winding in the sheets. “You don’t have to stay. I know I asked you not to leave before, but...I was scared and hurting and—”
His warm hand wrapped around her cool fingers, and her gaze darted up to his. His dark blue eyes were full of compassion and crinkled slightly as he grinned. “I’m not going anywhere. I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”
She squeezed his fingers, relishing the connection to him. Not only did his warm grip feel good around her chilly hands, but his loyalty and friendship touched a place deep inside her that she had an odd sense had been empty and cold for a long time. “I release you from that promise. I have no right to hold you here. You don’t know me. You have no responsibility for me. You’ve already done so much, and I’ll always be grateful. But I don’t want you to feel obligated to me.”
He gave her a dismissive raspberry. “I’m your husband, remember? Of course I’ll stay.”
Brianna sighed and shook her head. “We both know you’re not. That’s just the lie you told the EMT so you could ride with me when I was panicking.”
His brow furrowed, and when he stroked her knuckles with his thumb, a pleasant tingle spun through her. “Yeah, well...maybe I’m getting into the role. Maybe I want to hang around for a while to make sure you’re okay.” He cocked his head. “Would that be okay? I could help you start figuring out who you are and if you have family somewhere that should be called.”
Her heart pattered. She wanted desperately to accept his offer, but how could she impose on his kindness that way? “You heard the doctor. It could be weeks before I remember everything.” She frowned and dropped her gaze to her lap. “If I remember.”
He untangled his fingers from hers and nudged her chin up. “Hey, stay positive.” His palm cupped her cheek, and she couldn’t help but lean into his touch, his buoying comfort and encouragement. “I was thinking I might do a little investigative work. I can go back to your car and see what, if anything, I can find that would help us solve some of the mystery surrounding you.”
She raised her chin, hope lifting her spirits. “Good idea.”
“For starters, I’ll take down your license-plate number and see if the DMV will tell me who the number is registered to.”
She nodded, feeling a surge of energy in light of Hunter’s idea and optimism. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
He shot her a wickedly handsome lopsided grin. “You were a little preoccupied having the world’s cutest little boy.”
