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“Because I don’t want to hate anything about Christmas.”
“What about last Christmas? Did you like it then?”
“I had a cold and couldn’t really taste or smell it. Besides, disliking eggnog isn’t the worst part. When I realized that it was indeed the day after Thanksgiving and that I had been Christmas shopping, I actually shuddered with revulsion.”
As she finished speaking, a tiny tremor shook her slender form.
Matt smiled. “You zeem to have a very zerious zyndrome, young lady. You are afraid zat in your past you ver Ebenezer Scrooge, or ze Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Is zer a cure for ziz, Doctor Zeffarelli?”
He turned to Zoe, but she didn’t look at him.
“Jane,” the woman said softly. “I have spoken with many people who have issues with Christmas. Most feel overwhelmed at the idea of adding shopping, wrapping and parties to already incredibly busy lives. Some feel that commercial aspects overpower the spiritual meaning of the season. And many are plagued with childhood memories of Christmas involving deprivation or, worse, abuse. Sometimes, the effort to put on a show of good cheer is such an effort for these people that they end up resenting everything about the holiday.”
Matt felt his smile grow tight.
“That makes no sense,” Jane said, “I had a wonderful time last Christmas with your cousin’s family in Maine, tromping through the forest to chop down the tree, then decorating it with the popcorn and cranberries I’d helped string, wrapping the gifts I’d made and walking over glittering snow on the way to midnight Mass.”
Matt was relieved when Jane brought her Currier and Ives reminiscences to an end. With each new jolly image, his muscles had tensed further. The smile faded from his lips and he glanced away from Jane’s features, where the glow of remembered joy warred with an expression of annoyance.
“Yes,” Zoe replied. “But we were in a very small town, not a large city. She turned to Matt. “Does this description sound like any of the Christmases you remember?”
He forced his smile to widen. “Well, certainly not the snowy part. However, my McDermott cousins do have a party every year, where whoever wants to can string popcorn.”
Zoe’s sharp glance suggested she was going to ask him another question. Instead, she gave her head a little shake and turned to Jane.
“When you insisted on going downtown today, I warned you about the crowds. That might be what set you off, so it is best you put your worries out of your mind until you remember more of your past.”
“I’ve got a question about that, Zoe,” Matt said. “I think I might be familiar with the beach Jane described. Do you think it would help her to remember more if I took her there?”
“Well, the senses, that of smell in particular, are known to have a powerful effect upon the memory. Jane, how do you feel about a trip to the beach with Matt?”
Jane wasn’t sure how she felt about anything at that moment. Other than completely exhausted. A profound sense of weariness had banished the tension in her muscles, leaving her with barely the strength to remain upright with her eyes open.
“That would be fine,” she replied at last.
Matt stood. Jane managed to look up just as he smiled and said, “Good. I need to speak with Jack on a few matters in the morning, but I can be here at eleven.”
On the one hand, Jane told herself as she pulled the door to her studio apartment behind her, it had been wonderful seeing Matt Sullivan again. Aside from the fact that he was every bit as handsome as she remembered, she’d yet to meet anyone with the same knack for making her laugh, even when she didn’t particularly want to. But still, her insides were in knots over the idea of going anywhere with him.
Jane took a deep breath as she started down the flower-print runner that carpeted the stairway.
On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to read her all that well. When Manny’s death and Matt’s injuries had pulled those two men out of her life, she had looked for someone to take their place—someone she could trust with her thoughts, hopes, fears. The person she had chosen had used those things against her, so now the idea of trusting anyone made her stomach twist and brought a sour lump to her throat.
And, after the way she’d behaved in Maxwell’s, she wasn’t even sure she could trust herself.
When Jane reached the foyer, she moved to the small window to the left of the front door and stared at the street below. She wouldn’t want to even know the tense, dismissive person she had become for those few moments the day before, let alone be like that. How would Matt Sullivan feel about her if today’s trip to the beach happened to bring out that “dark side” of her personality?
“Ah, there you are—”
Jane turned as Zoe stepped out of her office.
“You look like someone who was about to be led into the lion’s den, or some other horrible fate, instead of what is supposed to be, as they say, a day at the beach.”
Jane drew a deep breath and released it in a quick whoosh. “I know. I am looking forward to spending some time at the ocean again. It’s just that I have some figures to finish, special orders I got when I stopped in at The Gift Box yesterday, you know, and I want to get to work on that new line of elves I started.”
“And you are frightened of what you might remember, of what you might learn about yourself.”
Jane hesitated, then nodded.
Zoe placed a hand on Jane’s shoulder. “My girl, I see patients every day who are afraid of the same thing. People with perfectly good memories, you understand, who have nevertheless built up layer upon layer of fear and denial, until they no longer know where they begin or end—in other words, who they are. They come to therapists like me when they discover that ignoring their pain has become more frightening than facing it.”
“How do they do that?”
“One step at a time. I tell them what I will tell you now. Life tests you only when you have enough strength to rise to the challenge.”
The sound of a car engine drew Jane’s attention to the window. In the driveway below, she saw Matt get out of his black Jeep. Her heart began to pound as he started up the stairs. She turned to Zoe.
“How do you know if you have that strength?”
The corners of the woman’s eyes crinkled. “When life tests you, of course.”
Jane surprised herself by laughing. “Dabbling in Zen, are you?”
“Whatever works,” Zoe replied with a shrug.
At the solid knock on the door, Jane pivoted and pulled it open, then froze—just as she had when she’d seen Matt yesterday, framed in the doorway leading to Maxwell’s security office.
He was, as the saying went, larger than life. Not just because his height topped six feet by several inches, that his shoulders were broad, or that his nearly black hair intensified the sea-green of his eyes. Those physical attributes were formidable, certainly, but the element that sent her heart racing had more to do with the quiet power in his stance, the undeniable cocky tilt to his mouth, and the sudden light of appreciation that swept her form, washing her body with heat.
“Looks like you’ve decided to rise to the challenge,” he said.
“Challenge?”
Jane cringed inwardly at the breathless way the word came out, but Matt’s simple nod suggested he hadn’t noticed.
“You appear to be dressed for a day outside. I assume that means you’ve decided to accompany me and see if we can’t track down the source of that memory of yours, and perhaps scare up some more.”
Although Jane felt a shiver coming on, she found herself giving him a wry smile. “I guess so. Scare being the operative word.”
Matt stepped forward and took her hand in one swift motion. As Jane looked into his eyes, she was aware of the strength of his grip, the warmth of his skin on hers and the reassuring determination in his gaze.
“No matter what happens today,” he said quietly. “I have no doubt that you’ll rise to the occasion.”
“Have you and Zoe been comparing notes on how to handle me?”
When Matt looked quizzical, Jane explained. “She was just bolstering my courage with very similar words. So—” she drew a quick breath “—yes, I’m ready to see if we can find the gate leading to memory lane.”
“All right. Get your jacket and we’ll be off.”
“A jacket? It’s beautiful out.”
“Sun or no sun, the wind on the coast can be quite chilly. You need a jacket.”
With a nod, Jane turned. Matt watched her cross the foyer and start up the stairs, then noticed the way her sneaker-clad feet bounced off each step as she lightly ran up. It seemed like yesterday that he and Manny had escorted Jane, enveloped in a navy sweat suit that only served to emphasize her extreme thinness, to the hospital’s physical therapy department.
Lying in bed for a month, comatose, had given the pelvic fracture she’d suffered in the accident time to heal, but the inactivity had left her as weak as a baby—she was going to have to learn to walk all over again. He and Manny had watched like proud parents as she gripped waist-high parallel bars, then wobbled like a newborn colt as she slowly made her way down the length of the track.
There was nothing spindly or wobbly about Jane now, Matt noticed as she neared the landing. The cut of her faded jeans hugged slender but shapely legs, and her hips had rounded into decidedly womanly curves.
“She has grown much in the past year.”
Zoe’s words made Matt realize where his thoughts had been leading. He turned to the older woman, aware his face had grown uncomfortably warm.
“It seems she has done exactly what she said she would,” he said. “Created a life for herself, on her terms.”
“Yes, she has. She has turned her lack of memory from a handicap to a strength.”
“How so?”
“With no preconceived concept of what she could or could not do, she approaches each challenge with an open mind, along with the assumption that she can succeed.”
Matt mulled this over. “After her accident, one of Jane’s doctors told a reporter that the bruising her brain took may have resulted in permanent memory loss. Do you agree with that assessment?”
Zoe shook her head. “No.”
“Well, Jane mentioned that you haven’t been pushing her to regain her memory. Do you think it’s wrong for me to encourage Jane to remember her past?”
“Not at all. Jane was disheartened when the hypnosis sessions in the hospital were unsuccessful. It would have been cruelty on my part to force her repeatedly to search her memory, only to encounter emptiness. But yesterday’s incident indicates that her mind, and perhaps her spirit as well, has recovered to the point that she can access and, more importantly, accept whatever she remembers.”
Hearing the sound of feet on the stairs above, Matt asked quickly, “Do you have any suggestions about how to handle this? Do I get her to relax, like you did yesterday? Or should I try to push her into remembering?”
Zoe seemed to consider his question for several seconds before she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Try one first. If that doesn’t work, try the other.”
“All right, now,” Matt said. “I want you to close your eyes and keep them that way until I tell you differently.”
It had taken Matt and Jane over an hour to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and drive up Highway One. After turning on a road leading west, Matt had pulled onto the side of the road, then turned to face Jane before issuing his order.
“Close my eyes?” she repeated.
“Yes. And keep them shut.”
“I thought we came here so I could identify the beach I saw in my memory. I can hardly do that with my eyes closed.”
“No, the prime objective here is to provoke further memories. Although your description was pretty sketchy, I’m fairly certain I have the right place. Remember, I grew up surfing these beaches.”
“So, you think it will be more effective to lead me to the area, then spring it on me all at once.”
“Exactly. Ready? Close your eyes.”
Once Jane had obeyed his order, Matt put the Jeep in drive. Several minutes later, he turned onto the road that would lead them to Limantour Beach. It took him beneath a canopy of cypress trees, then wound down through a sea of golden grass and a crescent of sand that arched to the right, ending at the foot of a sheer cliff that jutted out to the sea.
“Tell me,” he said, “just how do you create these magical dolls of yours.”
“Well, I sculpt the faces, hands and feet from a polymer clay, which hardens in the oven. The bodies are made of wire and stuffing, held together with fabric bodies. But they aren’t meant to be played with, like dolls. They’re collectibles.”
Matt glanced at her. “People collect elves?”
“People collect all sorts of things, it seems. Zoe’s cousin Clara in Maine makes very realistic little men, women and children. She creates three or four new characters each year, and collectors from all over the country buy her numbered pieces.”
“Nice of her to teach you to do this.”
“Well, actually, she’s published a book on her technique. I used it as a jumping-off point to create my own little world, and I assume others do that, too.”
Matt downshifted as he neared the dirt parking lot. “I had no idea there was such a market for…”
“Fantasy figures?” Jane finished for him. “I didn’t, either, but Clara took a few of my pieces to one of the stores that carry her things, and mine sold out right away. So, I made more when I got back to San Francisco, got a few specialty shops to carry them, then participated in a couple of craft fairs this summer, and the thing just mushroomed. Since July I’ve been really busy. I decided to adapt my faces to create special Santas and his little helpers in place of woodland elves and make angels instead of fairies. That’s one of the reasons I was downtown yesterday. I delivered some of these to a place called The Gift Box, and they asked me to make even more.”
“It seems you’ve become quite the businesswoman,” Matt said as he pulled into a parking space overlooking the beach, then added teasingly, “I hope you have someone you trust keeping your books.”
He switched off the engine and turned to Jane.
“I suppose,” she said in a mock huff, “that crack was a veiled reference to my mathematical abilities.”
“No,” Matt said as he opened his door. “It’s a direct reference to your decided lack of said abilities.”
Before Jane could respond to this allusion to what he and Manny had termed her “numerical dyslexia,” Matt slid from his seat and said, “Stay where you are,” before snapping his door shut and stepping around to her side of the car.
“I’ll have you know,” she said the moment he opened her door, “that I have managed to master math. The important stuff, at any rate. I can add, subtract, divide, multiply and figure fractions with the best. The rest is superfluous. The idea of adding a’s and b’s and coming up with x’s is an exercise in futility, if you ask me.”
Matt hooked his hand over the top of the door’s frame, noticing the way Jane’s closed eyes wrinkled as she blindly reached for the buckle of her seat belt. That intense concentration of hers was a wonder to behold. It was the secret, he suspected, behind her swift recovery from the sort of injuries that had kept muscular linebackers out of commission far longer than they had this delicately boned girl.
Woman, he corrected himself when, freed of her seat belt, Jane pivoted toward him, slid out of her seat, then stumbled into his arms.
For the second time in two days Matt found himself holding her close to him. For one moment, he wondered if he could somehow absorb the joy that seemed to emanate from her, even when she was frightened. He had once responded to life that way, too, thrilled by the surge of adrenaline that came with walking the tightrope between safety and danger. He hadn’t experienced that since leaving the hospital.
Until yesterday—when he’d walked into Maxwell’s security office and gone to Jane’s defense.
And now, the idea that Jane had begun to remember, that there was a chance he might solve a crime that had its origins back in the days before Manny died, before he had given up the career he loved, seemed to promise that he could reawaken the passion he’d brought to his old job.
Slowly, as Matt continued to hold Jane, he became aware of the awakening of a different sort of passion, the kind that heated his body, tempted him to tighten his arms around the woman he was holding, to lower his mouth to kiss lips that were still softly parted with surprise.
He just as quickly became aware of how inappropriate it was to feel this way toward the subject of an investigation.
After checking to see that Jane had gained her footing, he released her and stepped back in one quick motion. Instantly, her eyes flew open, surprised and tinged with hurt.
A second later she shut her eyes and muttered, “Sorry,” in a voice more husky than usual.
Damn. Matt’s jaw tightened. Keeping his distance from Jane Ashbury was going to be a challenge, and today it might even prove to be a conflict of interest.
