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“Why aren’t you saying anything? Is it because before the accident, I couldn’t handle the fact that I wasn’t able to conceive, or something like that, and you’re afraid to bring it up to me now?”
Diana, Diana...
“Since I have no idea of how I used to be, it really doesn’t matter, does it?”
It did once, my darling. You wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of adoption.
“I thought you were going to be honest with me.”
“I want to be.” His voice grated.
“So why the hesitation?”
He rubbed the back of his neck before turning from the window to look at her. “Because I don’t want to upset you. What I’m about to tell you could do just that. I would rather have waited for your memory to return, then no explanation would be necessary.”
She laced her hands together nervously. “But we don’t know when that day will come. If ever.”
“Don’t say that!” Her words filled him with fresh anguish.
“I have to. Some people lose their memories and never regain them.”
Dear God. You can remember everything about life except your own life! It doesn’t make any sense.
“Dr. Harkness says your memory will return.” Cal had to believe that or lose his mind.
“Maybe. In the meantime, do you expect me to live in a vacuum?” she blurted. “I’d rather be dead.”
Cal groaned. “Never talk that way again, Diana. Not even in jest.”
“You’re not inside my skin.”
My wife—Where have you gone? I don’t know you like this.
He swallowed hard. “No. I’m not. I couldn’t begin to understand how you feel.”
“Thank you for saying that.” Her voice wobbled.
He wanted to wrap her in his arms and will her memory back, but he couldn’t do anything. Not one damn thing. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.
“Please—if you care for me at all, tell me the truth.”
“All right.” He placed his hands on the back of the chair. “That baby upstairs is not our baby.”
“What? But of course it is! It’s Tyler!”
“No, Diana. You say you want to hear the truth, but already you’re fighting me.”
An awkward silence prevailed. “D-did we fight a lot in our marriage?”
He swallowed hard. “Never.”
After a long silence she whispered, “I’m sorry. Please go on.”
His heart reacted like a runaway train. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. Why don’t we wait for the doctor?”
She shook her head. “Don’t do this to me. Finish telling me the truth. I have to hear it. I promise I won’t interrupt again.”
I’m damned whatever I do, aren’t I, sweetheart?
“We’re pretty sure you found him on the doorstep at your work this morning. He was lying in a grocery box. There was a note. The unwed mother who left the baby there knew you would discover him. When you saw that the baby was jaundiced, you immediately brought him to the hospital for care.
“On your way into the emergency room, you slipped and hit your head on the pavement. Some ambulance attendants found you sitting on the cement, holding him. That’s why they brought you inside. When you couldn’t remember anything, they looked in your purse, found your identification and called me.”
Her lustrous green eyes filled with tears. “Tyler’s really not my baby,” she murmured in agony.
What have I said, what have I done?
Go on, Rawlins. Finish it.
“No. An abandoned baby is a ward of the court. You called him Tyler because that was your grandfather’s name. It’s the name you had hoped to call our baby, the one you miscarried a few months ago.”
“I had a miscarriage?”
He nodded. “You’ve had three, the last one after you were four months along,” he said gently.
“Nol ” Her look of horror mixed with a hint of pleading tore him apart.
“You asked for the truth. I didn’t want to hurt you. God knows I didn’t.”
Tears gushed from her eyes, forming rivulets down her pale cheeks. Suddenly she was convulsed. Her despair was worse than anything he’d heard during the traumatic week following her last miscarriage when she’d cried nonstop for days.
“Darli—”
“Don’t call me that!” she broke in on him. “For the love of heaven. Just go away and leave me alone.”
Sick in a way he couldn’t describe, Cal left her bedside and headed out of the room for the nursing station. The nurse who’d settled Diana in was just coming down the hall.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Rawlins? You look ill.”
Cal groaned in response. He ran a shaky hand through his hair. Clearing his throat he said, “Diana figured out she didn’t give birth to the baby upstairs in the nursery, so she forced me to tell her the truth. Now she’s inconsolable and it’s my fault.” His voice shook. “My wife needs help!”
The nurse eyed him with compassion. “I know this is hard on you. While I call Dr. Harkness, why don’t you take a seat in the waiting room around the corner. I’ll find you as soon as I’ve talked to him:”
Cal nodded.
Like the shell-shocked victim of a bombing, he made his way to the lounge, trying to grasp the enormity of what had happened since his wife had left his bed earlier that morning.
“Cal?”
At the sound of a familiar female voice he turned in time to see Annabelle—one of their best friends, and a crack member of Roman’s PI team—come rushing toward him.
“Roman just told me what happened. I got here as soon as I could.”
Little as she was, her physical and emotional support was exactly what he needed right now. They reached for each other. The contact caused him to break down. In a rush of emotion everything spilled out, particularly his fears.
“Diana not only sees me as a stranger, Annie, she despises me. What if she never regains her memory? What if she has gone away from me forever?”
“Don’t think like that,” she urged him. “Roman told me the doctor said her condition was temporary.”
Cal grimaced. “But what if he’s wrong? I don’t know why, but I have this gut instinct she’s never going to remember me or our marriage.”
Annabelle’s arms tightened. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself. But if—and I say that’s a huge if—the day should come that you discover her amnesia is permanent, then I know you’ll find a way to make her fall in love with you all over again.”
Her words seeped into his soul.
If Diana’s amnesia is permanent, I know you’ll find a way to make her fall in love with you all over again.
Haunted by such a daunting prospect, he shook his head. “If you had heard the enmity in her voice when she told me to get out of her room a few minutes ago, you wouldn’t be saying that to me now.”
Annabelle let go of him and lifted her head, giving him a direct stare. “It’s too soon to talk about the what-ifs, Cal. Give it a few days. She has withstood a severe head trauma. The pain must be pretty bad. Naturally she’s not herself. Whatever she says or does right now, don’t take it personally.”
“How can I not? The doctor says that if there are no complications, she can be released from the hospital tomorrow. What if she refuses to go home with me?”
“No one can answer that question yet. Let’s wait and see what he has to say about her condition the next time he examines her. As for you, you’re coming to our house tonight Rand told me to tell you that’s an order.”
“Thanks, Annie. I appreciate that, but I couldn’t go anywhere. I’m staying here in case she remembers something and needs me.”
“Then we’ll keep the vigil with you.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering. Don’t forget. My husband and I love Diana, too. Wait here while I go say hello to her. Maybe she’ll refuse to talk to me, maybe she won’t. But since you were honest with her about the baby, then there are no secrets and I won’t have to tiptoe around her. I think it’s important that she knows she has friends she can count on, even if we are strangers to her.”
“I agree. Thanks, Annie,” he whispered.
She raised up to kiss his cheek. “No thanks necessary. I won’t be long. In the meantime, sit down and drink this.” She put some change in the pop machine and handed him a cola. “You probably didn’t eat breakfast.”
“No.”
“Rand will be here shortly. I’ll ask him to bring food for all of us.”
Like Roman, Annabelle kept a level head under stress, providing temporary calm to Cal’s tortured thoughts. He found himself praying that her appearance might trigger the mechanism that propelled Diana back to the world the rest of them inhabited. But deep inside, a part of him still feared her condition was irreversible.
How was he going to live with that?
CHAPTER THREE
“DIANA? It’s Annabelle Dunbarton. I know you don’t know me from Adam, but before the accident we were best friends. May I come in for a minute?”
Diana was lying on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow where she’d been sobbing. At the sound of the stranger’s voice she felt relief that it wasn’t Cal Rawlins. Just minutes earlier Jane had promised to keep him away until after the doctor had come down to examine her again.
Dr. Harkness couldn’t arrive soon enough for her. She didn’t care if the baby wasn’t hers. She wanted to go up to the nursery and see him. In order to do that, she would need the doctor’s permission.
Slowly she raised up enough to notice a smallboned yet curvaceous woman with a beautiful face and stylish cap of short red curls standing in the doorway of her hospital room.
One of my best friends? Another unfamiliar face.
“Yes. Of course. Come all the way in.”
She wiped her eyes with the bedsheet and sat up while the other woman approached.
“I’ve been out in the lounge with Cal.”
“I—I don’t want to see him right now.”
“He told me. Don’t worry. He didn’t send me in here, and he certainly won’t do anything you don’t want him to do. He loves you too much to alienate you.”
“I wouldn’t hurt him purposely, but he means nothing to me. It’s hard having him around because I know he’s in pain.”
“He said as much, and he’s attempting to deal with it. I also realize I don’t mean anything to you, either, but there are many people who love and care about you and Cal. You and I were colleagues as well as confidantes. In time you’re going to want to talk to someone. You’ll have a lot of questions to ask. I want you to know I’ll be here for you when that time comes.
“I’m going to leave my business card with you. I’ve written my cellular phone number on the other side so you can reach me day or night.”
Diana took the card from the other woman’s fingers and read:
Annabelle Dunbarton, Private Detective
LFK Associates International
1406 Foothill Parkway
Salt Lake City, Utah
Diana blinked and looked up at Annabelle. “You say we are colleagues?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, I’m a private detective, too?” Diana couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t comprehend it
“No. You are the glue that holds the whole place together. Roman Lufka is the boss. You’re his assistant and right hand. In fact you’re the one who screens all the calls that come in. Roman relies on your instincts to help decide which cases to take.”
My instincts?
“There are twelve PI’s, but you and I are the only two females on the premises. According to Roman, the agency would fall apart without us. You know the old cliché—ask a woman to get a man’s job done?” Her cat’s eyes smiled. “Anyway, Roman wants you back as soon as possible.
“By the way, he’s gorgeous. I mean drop-dead-handsome gorgeous and very married to Brittany, another best friend of both of ours. They have a little boy, Yuri, named after Roman’s brother, also another close and dear friend. You and I dote on little Yuri because we both want a baby so badly.”
Diana clutched the sheet in her fist. “Cal said I’ve had three miscarriages.”
