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“Silly girl. You scared me.”
“Mama scared?” Shelby sat up, scooping a handful of bluebells in her fist and dropping them into Julia’s lap.
Julia peered into the shadows and crevices of the rocks and shook her head. “No, I’m not scared…anymore.”
The fear that had enveloped her when she first found herself in Silverhill had dissipated over the past four years, driven away by friendly neighbors, soothing words and warm suppers. But sometimes it descended on her with no warning, dropping like an anvil in the middle of the night or silently stealing over her, one uneasy moment at a time. Like today.
She twisted her head over her shoulder to study the trail she and Shelby had just traversed. A sense of doom dogged her on the hike, a feeling of being watched and followed. It started with the stranger in the car and picked up with the flowers left on her porch two days ago and then again today. Most women would be thrilled with a secret admirer. She wasn’t most women.
The flowers could’ve come from a neighbor. Julia massaged her temples. And she didn’t own this trail. Locals and tourists alike took the mile hike up to the rock formations known as “The Twirling Ballerinas.” Anyone could’ve been hiking behind them.
Why didn’t they answer when she called out?
Julia cradled the bluebells in her palms and buried her face in their fresh fragrance. Too bad the flowers weren’t forget-me-nots.
Maybe then she could remember who she was, remember Shelby’s father, and remember what shadowy menace stalked her.
Shelby’s hands, smelling of moist dirt, pulled at Julia’s fingers. “Peekaboo.”
Smiling, Julia spread her fingers wide. “Peekaboo to you.”
Whatever happened in her past, it brought Shelby into her life so it couldn’t have been all doom and gloom. Her daughter’s laughter acted like a ray of sunshine capable of piercing the solid block of ice, which was all that remained of Julia’s memory despite Dr. Jim Brody’s best efforts.
Shelby shrieked, “No, peekaboo to you.”
“Can anyone play this game?”
Gasping, Julia dropped her hands and pulled Shelby against her body before the intruder’s voice registered. Shelby squirmed in her arms, and Julia loosened her grip as Clem Stoker came into view, his shaggy gray eyebrows drawn together over his nose.
Shelby scampered toward Clem and threw her arms around his legs. “Uncle Clem.”
Julia swallowed the lump in her throat. Of course Clem wasn’t Shelby’s uncle. Shelby didn’t have an uncle or a family or a father, at least none that Julia could remember, but Clem treated them like family as did many of the residents of Silverhill after Julia’s accident.
“How’s my buttercup?” He lifted her up in the air and swung her around, shifting his gaze to Julia. “Are you okay, Julia? I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. Just when the residents of Silverhill had stopped tiptoeing on eggshells around her, she had to jump at rustling leaves. “Did you just come up the trail behind us?”
“No.” Clem hoisted Shelby on his shoulders. “I’m on my way back from The Twirling Ballerinas. Are you headed that way or do you want to hike back to town with me?”
“We’ll go back with you.” She hated the tremor in her voice. She knew she had a backbone. It came in handy when she recovered from the injuries she sustained from the car wreck and gave birth to Shelby six weeks later amid strangers.
She fingered the gold chain around her neck with Julia written in script, the only clue to her identity and a past she couldn’t reclaim, not even with the help of a hypnotist in Denver, Dr. Jim, her psychologist in Durango, and local media coverage.
She stopped her search when the marriage proposals started pouring in and strange people cropped up to claim her as family.
A sense of dread smothered her each time someone called professing to be her husband, mother, sister or fiancé. She knew in her heart she didn’t want her past to find her. The car accident hadn’t caused her black eye.
“Come on then.” Clem extended his weather-beaten hand to her, and she gripped it. “Good thing I came along. You’re too frail to carry Shelby back, and I think she’s getting tired.”
“I’m not frail,” Julia snapped and then covered her mouth.
“I didn’t mean it like that, honey.” Clem patted her shoulder.
“You’ve got more gumption than most men twice your size, but you don’t have much meat on your bones and this little lady is getting bigger every day.”
He tickled Shelby’s calf, and she plowed her heel into his chest.
“Shelby, be careful. If you want to ride on Clem’s shoulders, sit still.”
Clem laughed. “See what I mean? She’s a rambunctious buttercup.”
Shelby loved the word and repeated “bumptious, bumptious, bumptious,” each time Clem bounced her on his shoulders.
By the time they reached the end of the trail, which spilled onto Silverhill’s main street, they were all singing a made-up song about bumptious buttercups. Julia took deep, cleansing breaths of the mountain air, stuffing her previous panic on the dusty shelf of her former life.
They rounded a corner onto the street, and a tall man in jeans and a white cowboy hat glanced up after smacking the back of another man getting into a car.
Julia’s pulse ticked up a notch. Strangers. She pulled in a breath and rolled her shoulders back. Tourists.
“Lordy, lordy.” Clem stopped beside her, giving Shelby one last bounce on his shoulders. “Look who the cat dragged in. You look like hell, boy.”
If that tall, rangy man with the wide shoulders and tight jeans looked like hell, send her straight to the devil. She grinned at her visceral response to the stranger. It had been a long time since she felt that gut-wrenching lust for a man.
“Sorry, Julia.” Clem covered Shelby’s ears a little too late.
The man took a step forward, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. His tanned face blanched and he reached forward with an unsteady hand.
He looked like he was seeing a ghost…and he was staring right at her.
THROUGH THE ROARING in his ears, Ryder McClintock heard Clem’s voice saying his name, but he couldn’t respond. All his muscles seized up and his feet felt rooted to the ground.
A crease formed between Julia’s eyebrows and she tilted her head to the side, long brown hair sliding across her shoulder. She had different hair and different clothes, but unless he was in the middle of a dream, Julia Rousseau stood before him in the flesh.
“Ryder, what’s the matter?” Clem ambled forward and shook his hand, slapping him on the back. Then he reached up to steady the little girl on his shoulders. “You been away so long, the altitude got to you?”
The fog lifted and pinpricks of excitement raced up his spine. She had come to him. Julia had come to him.
“Julia, you’re here.” Ryder twisted away from Clem and reached for her.
Stumbling back, Julia put her hands up. “Who are you?”
Her words punched him in the gut and he nearly doubled over. Was this some kind of game? Did she want to punish him for leaving her? She, more than anyone, knew he had no choice.
“Julia, it’s me, Ryder. Why didn’t you write to me? Why didn’t you answer my letters?”
Clem choked and grabbed his shoulder. “Are you telling me you know Julia?”
Ryder swiveled his head around. Clem regarded him with the same open-mouthed astonishment that Ryder had bestowed on Julia. Didn’t Julia tell the residents of Silverhill that she knew him?
“What the hell is going on?” Ryder shook his head and swept off his hat. His gaze darted between Julia and Clem, and he plowed his fingers through his hair. “Didn’t you tell them?”
The blankness of her face pierced his heart. She didn’t recognize him. Three and a half years, and she didn’t recognize him. Something else in her expression twisted the dagger even deeper—panic. Julia feared him.
“Don’t you recognize me? Ryder McClintock.” He felt like a fool introducing himself to the woman he loved with a burning, searing passion—even when he thought she’d deserted him. He took another step forward, and she took a matching step back.
“Ryder.” Clem gripped his arm. “Julia doesn’t know you. She lost her memory over three years ago when her car took a dive off Highway 160.”
Clem’s words sucked the air out of Ryder’s lungs and a vice squeezed his chest. He searched Julia’s face for a glimmer of recognition, for the smile that used to curve her lip, when he told bad jokes, the light in her eyes. Nothing. Worse than nothing—wariness, doubt…fear.
If she didn’t recognize him, how’d she wind up here? She must have been coming to him, or rather his family, when she had that accident. What compelled her to seek sanctuary with his family? Did she know about Jeremy?
“I—I, Julia may not know me,” he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes to blot out Julia’s look of bafflement, “but I know Julia.”
Clem laughed and did a little jig in the street. “That’s a miracle, Julia. Do you know who Ryder is? He’s Ralph’s boy come home. You must’ve been coming to see Ryder when your car took that tumble. Now you can get your life back all right and tight.”
Ryder shifted his gaze to Julia, twisting her hands in front of her. She didn’t look happy about the prospect of getting her life back.
“I don’t get it.” Ryder rubbed his knuckles along his jaw. “Didn’t Julia have any ID on her? Didn’t the police check the registration on the car?”
“Let’s not talk about this in the middle of the street.” Clem shifted the little girl on his shoulders. “We’ll go back to my place and Millie can make us some lunch. She still makes the best lemonade in Silverhill, Ryder.”
Clem’s granddaughter whinnied and patted Clem on the head. “Let’s go. Ride ’em, cowboy.”
The tightness of Julia’s face smoothed out a little. She must know his family. Who didn’t know the McClintocks in Silverhill? They practically ran the town. Ryder took a deep breath. This might not be so bad. How could it be when he’d found Julia again?
Ryder smiled at the little girl. “Another granddaughter, Clem? Has to be Maddy’s with those blond curls.”
Clem swung the girl off his shoulders. “No, not one of mine. This here’s Julia’s daughter.”
The smile froze on Ryder’s face as he gritted his teeth. The girl ran to Julia and wrapped her arms around her legs, smiling shyly at him over her shoulder.
She must be about four years old, and if his guess was right…she belonged to him.
Chapter Two
Clem filled the stranger’s ears with local gossip as they ambled toward his house, covering the awkwardness that hung in the air like one of those heavy Native American blankets sold from roadside campers.
The truth of her past hovered right around the corner and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps this stranger…no, Ryder McClintock…didn’t know her that well. Wouldn’t his family have recognized her name as one of Ryder’s friends? Of course, they knew only her first name.
His father and stepmother didn’t mention him often and he hadn’t been to visit them in over three years. She recalled talk of the McClintocks’ middle boy working overseas on some kind of a secret mission. How did she know a spy? Perhaps they had some brief acquaintance.
If she didn’t know him well, why was she on her way to see him that fateful night when her car skidded off the road in a snowstorm? That couldn’t be a coincidence. She must’ve been seeking out Ryder when she crashed, but where had he been the past three years?
As Ryder chatted with Clem, his responses terse, he avoided looking at her but seemed fascinated by Shelby. Julia’s heart skittered in her chest. He could probably tell her all about Shelby’s father, where he was and why he never came looking for them.
“Hat, please.” Shelby strained away from Julia’s tight grip, leaning toward Ryder.
“You want my hat?” Ryder grinned down at Shelby, a gleam lighting his blue eyes.
“I’m sorry. Everyone spoils her around here.” She tugged Shelby back to her side. “Don’t be rude, Shelby.”
“Her name’s Shelby?” Ryder shoved his hands into his tight blue jeans. “That was my grandmother’s name.”
“I know. Ralph, your father, told me that after I named her.”
She folded her arms, gripping her elbows. “Do you think…?”
“Hat.” Shelby stomped her feet before planting them firmly on the dirt road.
“Young lady,” Julia crouched next to her, “I’m going to tell Aunt Millie not to give you any sugar cookies unless you behave yourself.” She secretly thanked her daughter for the distraction. After almost four years of having a blank slate for a memory, she didn’t think she could handle someone filling up that slate too quickly.
Julia looked up at the man who held the key to her identity and rolled her eyes. “She’s stubborn.”
“Just like…” Ryder stopped and clenched his jaw. Then he lifted his hat from his head and placed it on Shelby’s. “There you go, a real Colorado cowgirl.”
Shelby squealed and holding her hands in front of her as if gripping reins, she trotted around the three adults, as the hat slid down to her nose.
“Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that.” Julia stood up next to Ryder as a breeze lifted the ends of his brown hair, touched with gold. She flinched at the pain lurking in his eyes and it took a physical effort for her not to reach up and smooth her palms across the creases at the sides of his mouth.
She couldn’t be Ryder McClintock’s wife. His family would’ve known if he had a wife. Ryder could give her a husband and a father for Shelby, it just wouldn’t be him. Her throat tightened and tears pricked behind her eyes.
Her knees trembled at her response to this tall, broad-shouldered man—the McClintocks’ son. She slipped her arm through Clem’s, leaning on his shoulder.
“R-Ryder and I have to talk, Clem.”
“I know that, honey.” He patted her shoulder. “Let’s just make it back to my place, and Millie will get some lunch for Shelby and you two can have some privacy.”
Clem’s neat ranch house appeared all too soon. His wife, Millie, waved from the porch, a dish towel in her hand. She called out, “I heard Ryder was back in town. How’d you get him first?”
“Just luck.” Clem strode to the porch as fast as his old bones could carry him and mumbled something to Millie.
Julia overheard her name, Ryder’s name, and something about her memory. Word would spread as fast as a Colorado brushfire. It always did.
“Mercy me.” Millie covered her mouth with the dish towel, her eyes wide above it. She scurried down the steps and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Ryder’s cheek. “I hope you can help our Julia.”
Clem grabbed Shelby’s hand. “C’mon, buttercup, cookies and lemonade for you after lunch and then I’ll take you out to see Missycat’s kittens.”
Millie placed a plump arm around Julia’s shoulders. “You and Ryder can have the patio out back. Plenty of privacy there.”
Julia’s stomach churned and she stumbled on the top step. Ryder placed a steadying hand against the small of her back, beneath her backpack, his warmth seeping through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. Her hyperawareness of him had to be due to their connection in her previous life.
She always referred to her past as her previous life, as if it had no bearing on the life she led in Silverhill. The foolish phrase allowed her to ignore the terror she always felt when she groped in the shadowy darkness of her past for answers. Now a collision between her past and present loomed before her. Was she ready for the fallout?
“Behave yourself and don’t be greedy.” Julia settled Shelby at the Stokers’ kitchen table, while Millie handed Ryder two glasses of lemonade.
Ryder led the way to the patio and Julia followed, her gaze clinging to his tight jeans molded to his behind—a pleasant distraction from the uncertainty that lurked around the corner.
Too bad Ryder didn’t rush in claiming to be her long-lost husband like so many others had. She might have accepted Ryder’s story without question.
