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Who was she to argue with the doctors? Except this plan seemed backward to her. Wouldn’t her own space and belongings trigger a memory or two? And what about her parents or brothers or sisters?
All dead, Carl had told her, and then he’d folded her in his arms as though comforting her, but how was she supposed to mourn people she couldn’t even remember?
Her sweater wasn’t warm enough for the wind and she fought her reluctance to go inside. She needed better clothes if they were going to stay on the coast. A Windbreaker, for instance. She apparently wasn’t much of a packer or maybe her suitcase had been lost in the accident.
She could remember absolutely nothing about the crash. It was as though her head was the inside of a pumpkin: mushy, stringy. The irony of being able to recall the look and smell and taste of a squash but not have a sense of self seemed absurd, and she thought more kindly of Carl. It couldn’t be very pleasant to be saddled with a wife in such a befuddled state. She should be grateful to him for standing by her.
But why wouldn’t he help her out a little? Why wouldn’t he show her pictures or tell her stories about her past or explain what she did for a living, what she liked, what she didn’t like?
The doctors. That’s why. He was following their orders.
The door opened behind her. Carl stood half in, half out, the wind whipping his hair. Her own short brown locks barely stirred.
“Time to come inside,” he said, standing aside to allow her to pass him.
He didn’t try to touch her, and for this she was grateful. As she heard the door slide closed behind her, she paused in front of the TV. An announcer was offering details of a homicide, the cameras scanning a weeded lot as a gurney topped with a body bag was wheeled toward a waiting ambulance.
The picture disappeared as Carl clicked the remote. “I was watching that,” she said as she turned to face him.
“It happened a long way from here, Eleanor.”
“But—”
“I don’t want you to watch upsetting, unpleasant things.”
She took a deep breath. Was the man always this calculating or had her new vulnerable state aroused his protective instincts? “How long are we staying here?”
“Through Thursday,” he said, moving toward her. He put a hand around her arm and, leaning forward, gently kissed her forehead. “You can rest tomorrow. Then the next morning we’ll continue on our trip.”
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Wherever we want,” he said with a smile.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“We’ve been through this a dozen times today,” he said.
“Then let’s get the map and choose somewhere else to go. I don’t like the beach.”
“We’re staying through tomorrow,” he snapped, his eyes flashing even as he resurrected a smile. “Why don’t you let me do the planning? You just rest and get better. Are you hungry?”
“Not really. I think I’d like to take a bath.”
“You got chilled staying outside so long, didn’t you? Well, don’t get the bandage on your forehead wet, okay? I’ll order dinner from room service.”
She resisted nodding, knowing from experience the motion would make her nauseated, then escaped into the bathroom, where she quickly flicked the lock.
Chapter Two
Simon knew he was looking for a blue car with chrome hubcaps, two years old. He knew the license plate number and the fact that it had a green rental sticker in the left corner of the rear window.
Thankfully, Rocky Point wasn’t a big town, but it relied heavily on tourists, and as Simon drove into the city, he saw more motels and hotels than he could count. Before the light disappeared altogether, he wanted to cruise parking lots looking for the blue two-door coupe. If the car was parked underground or in a controlled parking lot, he’d be out of luck.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he shouldn’t ask for police help. Or maybe he could march up to every front desk in town and demand to know if there was a Carl and Eleanor Baxter registered. But all of that came with official ramifications, and for now he didn’t want anyone else involved. He knew if he started waving his badge around in a town this small, it wouldn’t be long before the local cops came looking for him—no, thanks.
The beginning letters on the plate he sought were YSL. He pulled into a motel on the beach and drove each row as though looking for a parking place, slowing down at every blue car. Who knew there were so damn many of them?
An hour passed, then two. He drove through a fast food restaurant and ordered a hamburger and black coffee, then went back to his task, gradually working his way north through town.
The task seemed impossible and more than once he was on the brink of taking a room, getting some sleep and heading home in the morning. But he kept at it, more out of perverse determination than because he thought his plan held merit.
A dozen lots later, his eyes burning like red-hot embers, his headlights picked up the letters YSL attached to a blue coupe. He pulled into a spot a few cars away and walked back. The rest of the plate checked out, too; the green sticker was right where it belonged. He used his pocket flashlight to briefly scan the interior. There was nothing in the car he could see except a road map.
He grabbed his overnight bag from his truck and walked into the hotel. It was eleven o’clock by now and the place was all but deserted. He toyed around with asking the clerk who gave him a room if they had a couple named Baxter registered, but held off—he didn’t want Baxter alerted to his presence until he got a feeling for what was going on.
A few minutes later, he let himself into his room with the intent of taking a shower and then casing the hotel. He sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes.
If Ella was the woman in the car, then she was here, in the same building as he. Was her memory completely gone? Before that had happened to her, had she really left clues in the hope he would figure out she needed him, or had he jumped to a bunch of conclusions?
No. She might have lent her car to someone else, but she certainly hadn’t willingly lent her identity. So who was the man acting as her husband and why had he brought an amnesic woman on a vacation instead of taking her home?
He took the snow globe out of his overnight bag and turned it in his hands, remembering the day a few months before when he and Ella had bought it at a gift store less than a mile from here.
Back when they’d been a couple.
Rubbing his eyes, he fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She was here. He could almost feel her presence. When he’d walked out on their argument just days before, he’d intended it to be permanent, but here he was and so was she.
Which added complicated dimensions to the question burning in the back of his brain: What in the hell was going on?
He woke up hours later, still lying on his back, gray morning light filtering through the sheer curtains. “Damn,” he muttered as he tore off his clothes on the way to the bathroom. Five minutes later, he’d taken the fastest shower since his stint in the navy and caught an elevator to the lobby. He immediately crossed to the windows to see if the blue car was still in the parking lot. If he’d slept through their departure, what would he do next?
What could he do?
ELEANOR STARED AT THE PLATE of food Carl had ordered against her wishes and felt a wave of sickness rise up her throat. Thank goodness they were in their room and not the dining room.
“What’s wrong?” Carl said.
She didn’t have time to answer. Throwing her hand over her mouth, she ran to the bathroom and was sick. Sometime later, after she’d washed and brushed her teeth, she wandered back.
“I thought you could eat,” he said.
“My stomach—”
“The doctor warned you’d be sick off and on again due to your head injury,” he said.
“Well, the doctors were right.” The smell of the congealing eggs was making her stomach tumble again. She grabbed her handbag off the chair. She’d searched her purse; she knew she had credit cards in the wallet. “Give me the car keys. I need different clothes and I need to get out of this room,” she said, her hand on the knob.
He was grabbing his jacket. “I’ll go with you.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to add, I need to get away from you most of all! Instead she said, “I remember how to drive. The town didn’t look that big yesterday—I can make my way.”
She stopped talking because he’d put on his jacket and held the keys in his fist. “No, Eleanor, you will not drive yourself around with a head injury. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Besides, mine is the only name on the rental. You’re not insured.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
And because her head throbbed and her stomach roiled, she opened the door and left the room, Carl close on her heels.
It was a drizzly day outside. As Carl went to the front desk, she perused the lobby. Several people were standing or sitting in chairs in front of a big, hooded fireplace. She longed to be one of them, longed to go stand by the fire without Carl hovering nearby.
Her gaze met the gray eyes of a man in his thirties. He was tall and solid-looking, wearing boots, jeans and a black sweater. His hair was dark and thick, combed away from his face. His features were attractive, his mouth perfectly formed, but it was the intensity of his gaze that held her, that sent her left hand up to her cheek. His gaze grew even more piercing and a trill of excitement sputtered along her skin.
She looked away at once, but for some reason looked back. He had turned to stare at the fire.
“Ready?” Carl asked.
She startled.
“The clerk at the desk told me there’s a nice clothing store less than a mile from here. Come on.”
SIMON WAITED UNTIL HE SAW the taillights go on in their car before he left the building and ran to his truck. Within a few moments he’d caught up with them on the main drag.
A brisk, overcast Tuesday morning in April wasn’t exactly high tourist time, he discovered, and wished there were a few more cars around. He’d already announced himself by allowing Ella to notice him staring at her. He couldn’t afford another sighting.
But he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her hair was short and dark, a fringe of bangs somewhat obscuring bruises and a bandage, framing her deep blue eyes. She’d looked wistful, vulnerable in a way he’d seen her look so few times. He’d wanted to walk up to her, talk with her, see if she knew who he was, ask her to explain what was happening.
Of course, he hadn’t, and when she’d raised her hand to her face in an almost shy gesture, he finally noticed the sparkle of gold on her finger.
She wore a wedding ring. And the man who had come up to her wore one, too. A tall man with long fair hair, chiseled features and a hustler’s tilt to his head.
Damn.
Simon hung back a block until he saw the turn signal on the rental. By the time he turned the same corner, the man was helping Ella out of the car. Simon pulled up to the curb half a block away and watched as they entered a building.
The man. Ella’s husband. Carl Baxter. Call him what he was. But why had Ella dyed her hair? She had to have done it before the accident; surely she wouldn’t use dye with scratches and wounds on her head, but again, why? Her hair was a source of pride for her, at least it had been, so why whack it off unless to disguise herself?
After getting rid of you, maybe she just wanted a change, an inner voice suggested.
Simon pulled his sweater over his head and put on the denim jacket he kept in the backseat, then snatched a green baseball cap out of a side pocket. As disguises went, it wasn’t great, but it was as good as he could do without risking losing them, and he wasn’t going to chance that. He darted across the street.
The inside of the store wasn’t exactly booming with customers, but it was jammed with racks of clothes that seemed to go from floor to ceiling. The clutter made lurking a little safer. He’d just make sure they were in here to actually look at clothes, and then he’d leave and stake out the exterior.
Cap pulled low on his forehead, he caught sight of Ella fingering a rack of blue-green sweaters. It was his favorite color on her.
She took one of the sweaters off the rack and held it up against her supple body, the soft material at once clinging to her breasts and evoking a million erotic memories. It was a long garment and as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, he felt his breath catch in his throat. The night they first met came stampeding into his head and heart like a locomotive off its tracks.
Carl Baxter chose that moment to take the blue sweater from her hands and thrust a yellow one at her.
Simon immediately turned around and left the store, retracing his steps to the truck, where he took out his cell phone. He made two calls. One to work to request a few days’ vacation and the other to an old friend. Then he hunkered down to wait.
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,” Carl said, placing his hands on her shoulders and leaning down to kiss the nape of her neck. He was standing behind her as she faced the mirror, trying to arrange her hair to hide her abrasions and bandages.
She didn’t really like the look of the yellow against her skin, and Carl’s lips left her cold, which made her ashamed of herself. As he raised his head and their gazes locked in the reflection of the mirror, she said, “Do we have a good marriage, Carl?”
He smiled. “Of course we have a good marriage.”
“Then why won’t you tell me about it? You know, about one of our days, maybe. A Saturday, for instance. Tell me what we do on a Saturday when I don’t have to go to work at the…”
He laughed. “Trying to trick me into telling you what you do for a living?”
“Can’t you just throw me a bone? What do you do for a living?”
“Why this preoccupation with jobs?”
“I don’t know, I just feel so lost waiting around, I want to do something. I want to know what I used to do, what we did as a couple.”
He moved away toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Carl—”
“You haven’t eaten all day. You must be starving.”
“But the reservation—”
“Is for an hour from now, I know, but they serve wine and cheese before dinner in the lobby. A little wine will do you good.”
“With my head injury?” she said.
“One glass won’t hurt.”
There was just no point in arguing with him. The man never said or did one thing he didn’t want to say or do, seldom let her out of his sight. We better have a good marriage, she thought as she walked past him into the hall, because if we don’t, I’m going to divorce him when I get my memory back.
Though she would hardly admit it to herself, there was someone she was hoping to see again and that was the man from the morning. He wasn’t in the lobby, however. She took a seat near the fire, the gray late-afternoon skies pressing against the tall windows at her back. Carl walked over to the informal buffet as she looked around the spacious room, glancing at the half dozen other guests sipping wine and laughing.
What would it be like to laugh? Did she laugh a lot? Was she morose or happy or contemplative?
One thing Carl was right about was the return of her appetite. It was back with a vengeance, and as she accepted a small plate covered with cheese and crackers and grapes, she noticed a tall man walk into the lobby from the outside and veer toward the front desk.
“Wine?” Carl said, and she accepted a glass of chilled white wine and set it on the table next to her plate. He stood by her seat, looking down at her as he sipped a dark red Cabernet and she tried a cracker slathered with creamy Brie. Why didn’t he sit, why did he hover? She looked surreptitiously toward the desk, but the tall man was gone.
It had been the man from the morning, she was sure of it, the one with the gray eyes.
At that moment, a woman approached Carl. “Are you Mr. Baxter?” she asked.
He looked down his long nose at the woman who was wearing a hotel uniform identifying her as an employee. “Yes.”
“Sir, we’ve been alerted your car has two very flat front tires. Would you come with me?”
