Книга - Father Found

Father Found
Muriel Jensen


Three identical sisters, three handsome bachelors and one enchanted night–nine months later, one woman is about to become a mother, but WHO'S THE DADDY?Finally, the father is revealed!Augusta Ames woke up in a hospital room with no memory of who she was–or how she'd gotten pregnant! Then one night a handsome stranger came to her, stated they were married and whisked her away. It was for her own good, he'd said. She had to trust him. But trusting him meant giving her heart to a man she didn't remember….Bram Bishop couldn't tell Augusta the truth–he wasn't her husband, but he was her baby's father. Somehow he'd have to remind her of all they'd planned for their future. But if her memory never returned, he had to make her fall in love with him–all over again!









“You lied to me.”


“Some of it was true,” Bram disputed.

“You told me I proposed to you,” Augusta said, “and that isn’t true. I remember clearly that you proposed, and I turned you down because I was afraid we’d be incompatible.”

“Yes, the schoolteacher and the spy. It seemed like it shouldn’t make sense. But love isn’t a logical thing. Remember the night before I left? We had just made love and you were crying because I had to leave. Remember what you said to me?”

She tried to put the scene together. “I don’t think I could live without you now,” she said aloud, hearing their voice in her head and repeating the words.

“That’s right. And what did you say after that? It was very direct.”

Augusta groaned. “I asked you to marry me.”

“Yes, you did,” he said with obvious satisfaction. “I didn’t lie about that.”

“But you did lie when you told me we were married three days after we had our blood tests.”

“I dreamed,” he corrected….


Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harlequin American Romance…where each month we offer four wonderful new books bursting with love!

Linda Randall Wisdom kicks off the month with Bride of Dreams, the latest installment in the RETURN TO TYLER series, in which a handsome Native American lawman is undeniably drawn to the pretty and mysterious new waitress in town. Watch for the Tyler series to continue next month in Harlequin Historicals. Next, a lovely schoolteacher is in for a big surprise when she wakes up in a hospital with no memory of her past—or how she’d gotten pregnant. Meet the last of the three identical sisters in Muriel Jensen’s WHO’S THE DADDY? series in Father Found.

Bestselling author Judy Christenberry’s Rent a Millionaire Groom launches Harlequin American Romance’s new series, 2001 WAYS TO WED, about three best friends searching for Mr. Right who turn to a book guaranteed to help them make it to the altar. IDENTITY SWAP, Charlotte Douglas’s new cross-line series, debuts with Montana Mail-Order Wife. In this exciting story, two women involved in a train accident switch identities and find much more than they bargained for. Follow the series next month in Harlequin Intrigue.

Enjoy this month’s offerings, and make sure to return each and every month to Harlequin American Romance!

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance


Father Found

Muriel Jensen






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Patricia Teal, agent and good friend


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muriel Jensen and her husband, Ron, live in Astoria, Oregon, in an old Four-Square Victorian at the mouth of the Columbia River. They share their home with a golden retriever/golden Labrador mix named Amber, and five cats who moved in with them without an invitation. (Muriel insists that a plate of Friskies and a bowl of water are not an invitation!)

They also have three children and their families in their lives—a veritable crowd of the most interesting people and children. In addition, they have irreplaceable friends, wonderful neighbors and “a life they know they don’t deserve but love desperately anyway.”




Books by Muriel Jensen


HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

73—WINTER’S BOUNTY

119—LOVERS NEVER LOSE

176—THE MALLORY TOUCH

200—FANTASIES AND MEMORIES

219—LOVE AND LAVENDER

244—THE DUCK SHACK AGREEMENT

267—STRINGS

283—SIDE BY SIDE

321—A CAROL CHRISTMAS

339—EVERYTHING

392—THE MIRACLE

414—RACING WITH THE MOON

425—VALENTINE HEARTS AND FLOWERS

464—MIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW

478—ONE AND ONE MAKES THREE

507—THE UNEXPECTED GROOM

522—NIGHT PRINCE

534—MAKE-BELIEVE MOM

549—THE WEDDING GAMBLE

569—THE COURTSHIP OF DUSTY’S DADDY

603—MOMMY ON BOARD* (#litres_trial_promo)

606—MAKE WAY FOR MOMMY* (#litres_trial_promo)

610—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MOMMY!* (#litres_trial_promo)

654—THE COMEBACK MOM

669—THE PRINCE, THE LADY & THE TOWER

688—KIDS & CO.* (#litres_trial_promo)

705—CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY

737—DADDY BY DEFAULT** (#litres_trial_promo)

742—DADDY BY DESIGN** (#litres_trial_promo)

746—DADDY BY DESTINY** (#litres_trial_promo)

756—GIFT-WRAPPED DAD

770—THE HUNK & THE VIRGIN

798—COUNTDOWN TO BABY

813—FOUR REASONS FOR FATHERHOOD

850—FATHER FEVER** (#litres_trial_promo)

858—FATHER FORMULA** (#litres_trial_promo)

866—FATHER FOUND** (#litres_trial_promo)










Contents


Chapter One (#u54f022b7-3b22-59ea-81ec-dac0306a07c6)

Chapter Two (#udcc4782e-f146-5598-ba62-d6c94813ad03)

Chapter Three (#u7e8423f9-e296-5cad-a602-f7f1d4c42d00)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


She was going to go insane.

Augusta Bishop stood on the cabin’s porch and looked out at the broad green meadow and the evergreen forest beyond, peppered with the crimson and gold of oak and quaking aspen leaves in autumn dress. If she didn’t remember who she was in one minute, she thought, she could not be held responsible for what happened. After more than three weeks of this confusion, she had enough pent-up frustration to cut down the forest with her teeth.

“It’s like being in the womb,” she told herself aloud, rubbing her swollen belly. “An uncertain future stretching out there somewhere, but inside, no past to light the way, just the darkness and the indistinguishable sounds outside.”

Dr. Lane had diagnosed the problem as amnesia. She might remember everything tomorrow, he’d said, or she might never recall more than she did at the moment. She retained all her personal skills and her life knowledge, she just didn’t remember who she was, where she lived or whom she loved. She thought of it as a Life Saver existence: it could sustain her, but there was a giant hole in the middle.

She walked down the porch steps and part of the way across the meadow, remembering her husband’s caution that she not go into the woods.

Her amnesia was the result of an attempt on her life by someone he’d sent to prison, he’d told her, and he’d brought her here to hide in a friend’s summer cabin in the mountains of central Oregon.

She looked around her at the magnificent mountains enclosing them in a cozy little valley and was astonished that her mind could ever forget this beautiful image, no matter what kind of injury she’d sustained.

But when Bram had brought her here just over two weeks ago, she’d been certain she was seeing it for the first time.

“We honeymooned here,” he’d told her in the rich, quiet voice that seemed to soothe her fears. Unfortunately, it also raised new ones, because she didn’t remember him, either.

She’d struggled for weeks to go back as far as her mind would take her, but it refused to go any further than that night three weeks ago when she’d surfaced in the Columbia River, spitting water and wondering what on earth had happened to her. She’d been cold and terrified.

Then the running lights of a boat had appeared and strong male hands had pulled her out of the water.

“What happened?” the man demanded, wrapping her in a jacket. “I saw your car go in! Were you alone?”

It was as though the questions had struck her ear and then bounced off. She wanted to answer, but she couldn’t.

Even as he questioned her, he was on the radio, calling the police. “Astoria police, this is Captain Burgess, pilot boat Rainbow. I just fished a young woman out of the water. Saw her car go in right by the church on the Washington side of the river. Have an ambulance meet me at the Red Lion Marina.”

He turned the boat around and headed not for the near shore, but for the opposite one, where she saw a mound of lights on the other side of a big bridge.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, apparently providing information to the police.

But that was another question that bounced.

She remembered the sense of panic, the jolt to her feet off the cushion in the cabin where he’d placed her. Then the surprise she’d experienced at her sudden awareness of the weight she carried. She was pregnant! More panic blossomed out of itself.

Her name! How could she not know her name?

“Whoa!” The captain had put the radio down and caught her arm, urging her to relax. “It’s all right. You’re just in shock. Sit down and put that jacket back on. They’ll warm you up at the hospital and everything will come back to you.”

That had been three weeks ago, and so far, nothing earlier than that moment of surfacing from under water had come back to her.

She sat down awkwardly in the middle of the fragrant grass and listened to the silence. The insects were gone now that it was the second week in October, and all she heard was the rustle of leaves and the steady, staccato sound of Bram’s ax against the firewood. Half a mile out of Paintbrush, a town of four hundred, their four-room cabin was on the city water line, but power was iffy depending upon the elements. The only source of heat was a fieldstone fireplace.

The nights were cool now, and Bram said that soon it would snow. He’d been chopping wood for half an hour.

If she was surprised that she’d forgotten the scenery surrounding this mountain meadow, she was astounded that she’d forgotten her husband. When she’d awakened in the hospital the morning after the accident, the hour so early her room was still in shadows, he was leaning over her bed, a finger to his lips asking her to be quiet.

“I’m taking you home,” he’d whispered.

Now that she looked back on it, she thought it strange that she hadn’t been afraid. She’d looked into his dark brown eyes and seen something there that had reassured her, despite the threatening situation. And the word “home,” when she couldn’t remember where she belonged, had sounded so inviting.

He’d taken her left hand and held it up to her face, pointing to the simple gold band on her third finger. It had shone in the shadows. He’d placed his hand beside it, to show her that he wore a matching ring.

“I know you don’t remember anything,” he’d said. “But I’m your husband. You’re in danger here, and I want to take you to safety.”

The sight of their rings, when she felt so alone, had been a ray of light in her black panic.

Then he’d wrapped her in a blanket, leaped nimbly out the open window and reached in for her.

He was a private detective, he’d told her as they’d driven into the night, and she was a teacher. He’d been working on a case on the Oregon Coast and she’d flown out from their home in northern California to meet him to celebrate his birthday. When it was time for her to return home, they’d left in separate cars, she to drive to Portland and fly home, he to return to work.

He’d been following a small distance behind her on the narrow, winding road along the river, a row of rocks the only protection against the water. He’d seen a car speed out of a side road, then bump the back of her vehicle at high speed. At a low point in the rock wall, the car hit hers again and she went into the river.

Her rescue and resultant amnesia were all over the news.

Bram recognized the car as belonging to the brother of Nicanor Mendez, a trafficker in drugs and women, sent to jail by Bram’s testimony.

Bram had been hired by Mendez’s wife, who’d suspected infidelity. His surveillance had taken him to Mexico, and when he realized what Mendez was doing, he’d called the DEA.

Certain the man’s motive was revenge, and that he’d see the news and be after her again, Bram had spirited her out of the hospital and they’d been in hiding ever since.

The whole scenario had an unreal quality because she could remember none of it. All the personal things she’d had with her at the time had been lost at the bottom of the river with the rental car.

He’d taken her to their home in Pansy Junction, California, hoping familiar surroundings would help her remember. But they hadn’t.

They’d lingered several days for Gusty to rest, but when there’d been two telephone calls with no response on the other end of the line, they’d left stealthily during the night. They’d flown back to Portland, then driven east.

They’d been here ever since in a curious state of suspension. At least, that’s how it seemed to her. He’d suggested they occupy separate bedrooms, since she couldn’t remember having been intimate with him, and they lived as friends in a state of uncertainty.

As she watched him appear with an armload of wood from around the side of the house, she wondered if their marriage had been in trouble before the accident. They were such different people—or so it seemed to her. He was organized and confident with a tendency to order rather than ask.

And she…well, that was hard to say. She knew so little about herself and her abilities. She’d held her own with him, though she tried to accede to his wishes because of the danger and their unique situation. But she suspected she might be someone who’d never been self-confident. It didn’t feel as though that was part of her makeup. She worried about that sometimes, with a baby just five weeks from birth.

What if her memory returned one day and she discovered her marriage had been in trouble? What if she recalled that she’d been about to leave him, or he’d intended to leave her? Then she’d be alone with a baby to support. Then what?

Bram said she’d been a teacher, but with no knowledge of her past, how could she return to her old job, or sell herself and her skills to a new school board? No. She’d have to think of something else.

She could cook. She’d learned that over the past few weeks. It didn’t seem to matter how little the cupboards held, she apparently had a gift for making something delicious out of nothing.

She was also good in the garden. Bram’s friends had planted all kinds of greens, tomatoes, peppers and a veritable field of pumpkins. Then a sudden change of plans had required that they return to the city before Bram and Gusty arrived. Gusty had harvested everything but the pumpkins, which continued to grow.

She’d stashed the vegetables in an old-fashioned root cellar, put up the tomatoes, made green tomato relish with those that hadn’t ripened and pepper slaw with the green and red peppers.

She wondered with a hint of black humor whether she’d been a survivalist at some point in her life. Or been stuck alone somewhere in the wilderness.

“A dandelion for your thoughts.” Bram squatted down beside her in the grass and handed her the woolly weed.

She looked into his face and thought, not for the first time, that he was something special. He was tall and muscular, with a presence of strength that had as much to do with internal toughness as with well-defined pectorals and softball-sized biceps.

He had the rugged good looks of a Bogart or a Bronson, his handsomeness defined by harsh features tempered by that reassuring strength. And a bright smile that came seldom and was always a surprise.

Except for the tendency to be a little overprotective and to consider himself in command of their tiny family, he’d been all kindness and consideration since the moment he’d appeared in her hospital room.

He held the dandelion to her lips. “Make a wish,” he said with a smile, “then blow on it and tell me what you wished for.”

She complied and the cottony wisps flew all around them. Several caught in his side-parted dark hair and she reached up to brush them away. It was strange, she thought, that though she didn’t remember their life together at all, she often felt the need to touch him. She wondered if the baby in her womb remembered him and that somehow translated itself to her as her own need.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that,” she admonished gently. “Or the wish won’t come true.”

His dark eyes roved her face, clearly looking for something. “You remember that?”

She tossed the dandelion stem onto the grass. “That’s probably one of those things the doctor said I’d remember, like brushing my teeth, or knowing language.” Then something else came to her, unbidden. “Did you know that the word dandelion is from an old French phrase meaning lion’s teeth. Dent de lion?”

He looked surprised. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes. Because the spiky leaves on the underside of the floret are like the teeth of a lion.” She felt momentarily encouraged by that knowledge, then realized it wasn’t technically a memory. She smiled ruefully. “I wonder what my third-graders thought of that information. I must have bored them to death.”

“I doubt that very much,” he disputed, getting to his feet. Then he reached under her arms from behind her to help her up. “Come on. It’s getting too cool for you to sit on the ground. Ready?”

“Bram, I’m fine,” she insisted, trying to push his hands away. “There won’t be many more days like this, and I’d like to take advantage of it. Did you know that the leaves, roots and flowers are edible, and that they contain calcium and vitamins?”

He ignored her question and her protest and lifted her so that she had no choice but to brace her feet under her as he brought her upright.

“I can’t believe I married you,” she said with a groan of exasperation, “if you pushed me around like this when we were engaged.”

“We were never engaged.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her toward the cabin. “We went straight from fighting over everything, to being married. And it was your idea, by the way.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Never engaged?” She looked at her ring finger with its simple gold band, then added, “I don’t mean with a diamond, but there must have been a period after you proposed.”

The breeze ruffled his hair as he shook his head. “Well, if you count the three days we waited for our blood tests and marriage license. And—once again—you proposed to me.”

Bram thought the surprise on her face was almost comical. Not flattering to him, of course, but this time in their lives was not about his ego but her survival. So he’d been demanding and cautious and she didn’t always like it, but that was the way it was.

“You’re just trying to make me believe that,” she said suspiciously as they walked back toward the cabin. “I would never have proposed to you.”

He took her arm where the ground was uneven. “Why not? You were wild about me.”

She slanted him a suspicious glance. “I was?”

“You were. Followed me all the way to Portland where I was doing surveillance on a divorce case.”

She stopped again, stubbornly folding her arms over her mounded stomach. He stopped with her, his expression one of indulgent impatience.

“One of the first things I asked you when we went to our house in California was how long we’d been married.”

“Right. And I told you eight months.”

“You also told me we didn’t get married because I was pregnant.”

“Right again.” He grinned. “You got pregnant because we got married. Must have happened on our wedding night. I’m good.”

She was trying hard to hold back a smile. “So, I chased you down and proposed to you just because.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe I’m like that. I mean, I don’t feel like the kind of woman who’d follow a man five hundred miles and risk rejection by proposing. I don’t think I’m that brave.”

He propelled her gently toward the cabin. “That’s because you don’t remember what it’s like to be in love. It gives you power you can’t imagine if you’ve never experienced it—or can’t recall it.”

“Why did you say yes?” she asked.

He squeezed her shoulders. “Because I was in love, too. And you make the best cookies I’ve ever tasted.”

“Then why didn’t you propose to me?”

“I had, but you’d turned me down.”

They were climbing the porch steps, and through a hanging basket of ivy the sun dappled her face. It was a beautiful peaches-and-cream oval, plumped a little by her pregnancy. In it were wide, deep blue eyes, a small, nicely shaped nose, and an expressive mouth that was now parted in interest. Her hair was deep red, and there was lots of it mounded loosely atop her head. The sunlight made it look molten.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’ve been a cop, a soldier, a CIA agent and now a detective, and you said I must have suicidal tendencies to be that reckless. That you wanted a home and children and a husband with a nine-to-five job.”

She thought that all over, frowned as though trying to remember it and finally shook her head. “Well, what changed my mind?”

He pushed the cabin door open and ushered her inside. “I like to think it was my winning personality.”

She teased him with a smile. “No, really,” she said.

He laughed as he picked up the wood he’d dropped onto the porch table and carried it inside. “If that’s not the reason, I guess I don’t really know. You didn’t say. You just asked me to marry you.”

She held the door open for him. “Then we were happy?”

She followed him inside and perched on the arm of the pink-and-green-flowered sofa as he lowered the wood into a copper box. That question concerned him. He wanted the circumstance surrounding the birth of their baby to be perfect. He didn’t want her to worry about anything.

She hadn’t asked that many questions since they’d been here, had mostly occupied herself with preserving the garden’s bounty. In fact, she’d dedicated herself to it as though relieved to have something she obviously understood to occupy her mind.

“Yes, we were,” he assured her, turning to face her. “Why? Don’t you feel happy? Despite the amnesia, of course.”

She looked him in the eye for a long moment and he held her gaze, determined she would read nothing to the contrary there.

She finally shrugged a shoulder and said, almost with apology, “I don’t know what it is. Something makes me feel that this…” She waved a hand between him and herself. “That it isn’t right. That one of us is—” She gave up trying to explain and shook her head. “I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.”

He made an airy stack of three logs, stuffed kindling and rolled-up newspaper in the pocket underneath, then lit it and gave her a quick smile as he reached for the poker.

“You’ve always had good instincts,” he said, giving the top log a slight nudge to open up the air space. “Things aren’t right between us. We’re usually very affectionate and physical and we have a lot of fun together. This having to sleep apart and treat each other like strangers probably seems wrong to you on some level other than memory. We understand why it has to be, but something elemental in you recognizes it as wrong behavior.”

He couldn’t tell if she was encouraged or discouraged by his reply.

She got to her feet and came closer to the fire, spreading her hands out as it began to catch. “And I’m affectionate and physical with you even though you’re always telling me what to do, or getting in the way of what I want to do?”

He replaced the poker. “You appreciate it as my concern for you.”

“That’s the honest truth?”

He avoided her eyes as he put the wrought-iron gate back in place. “Yes, it is.”

“I’m very tolerant.”

“Yes, you are.”

She walked into the kitchen on the other side of the fireplace and shouted back at him, “Coffee?”

“Please,” he replied as a breath that had been caught in his lungs escaped in a soundless sigh.

“What kind of cookies do I make you?” she called as puttering sounds came from the stove.

“Chocolate chip with pecans are my favorite,” he shouted back, turning his back on the small twinge of guilt. “Peanut butter, date bars, this candy thing you call a ‘buckeye’ that’s a peanut butter ball half-dipped in chocolate.”

Her head appeared around the doorway. “How come you’re not fat?”

He went to lean in the doorway to answer. He pointed to her stomach. “Because you also help me burn the calories.”

Her cheeks pinked and she looked just a little flustered. “Insidious of you,” she said. “So I get fat instead of you.”

“You’re always eager to cooperate.”

“Says you.”

“There again,” he said, putting a hand gently to the curve of her stomach, “you bear the evidence.”

He should not have touched her. It shocked both of them—not the shock of surprise, but the electrical charge of a powerful connection.

She’d had a lot to deal with during the past few weeks, and though she’d been very concerned about her memory when he’d taken her to California, the garden had helped relax her when they’d arrived.

But he’d known something had been changing inside her the past few days. She’d been thinking about her place in life as an individual, and about the two of them as a couple. She was worrying about their relationship.

And that worried him.

Her fingers fluttered in the air between them, as though she wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. He caught them in his hand and kissed her knuckles, needing to break this spell.

“I’ll get the coffee,” he said, and walked around her to the coffeemaker.

Though he knew things could not go on forever as they had since he’d taken her from the hospital, he couldn’t help wishing they would. She knew only what he wanted her to know.

But the harder she thought, the more likely she was to remember.

Then she’d know what had really happened.

And that would not be good.




Chapter Two


All right, maybe they did have a good thing going.

Gusty examined that likelihood as she added chocolate chips and pecans to the smooth cookie batter. She and Bram had gone into town for plumbing supplies, and she’d picked up a few additional groceries before they headed home. She had game hens and a casserole dish of dressing baking in the oven, potatoes boiling on top of the stove, cauliflower steaming and ice cream in the freezer.

She wasn’t sure why she was making the cookies. She couldn’t recall having made them for him in the past, but she did have very recent memories of his consideration and his determination to keep her safe, of his taking her to old Dr. Grayson the first day they arrived in Paintbrush, and establishing her last-trimester care. At this point in time there was little she could do to pay him back but provide him with a favorite treat.

Her hands slowed in their work as she remembered the sexual sizzle that had taken place earlier when Bram had touched her abdomen. She’d felt something ignite inside her and had seen a small explosion in his eyes.

He’d walked around her into the kitchen easily enough, but he had to have felt as affected as she—and she didn’t even remember anything they’d shared.

He’d suggested they’d been eager lovers. With what she’d come to know of him—his kindness, despite his insistence on her compliance in matters of her safety—she found that notion both exciting and daunting. She must have had to fight constantly to protect her individuality. And yet she’d married him, so she must have accepted that and found a way to deal with it.

She shifted a little uncomfortably and put a hand to the small of her back as a twinge there reminded her that she’d stood too long.

Sounds of metal clanking on metal came from the bathroom as Bram worked on the plumbing. The iffy nature of the shower had been the cabin’s only inconvenience. The water trickled weakly rather than sprayed, and she’d grumbled about it that morning, telling him she longed for a good solid spray against her aching back.

She was touched that he seemed anxious to grant her the wish.

She put more chocolate chips in the batter and, with one hand rubbing her back, folded them in with the other.

Gusty was placing the first pan in the oven when a male voice behind her said in pleased wonderment, “I thought I smelled cookies!”

She turned to find Bram behind her, a wrench in one grubby hand and a rag in the other.

“I’d give you a bite,” she said apologetically, “but they’re too hot.”

“How about a bite of batter?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “Raw eggs can carry salmonella.” She took a few chocolate chips in the tips of her fingers. “Will this do?”

He shrugged. “Better than nothing.” He held his dirty hands away from her as she popped the chips into his mouth.

“How’s the shower coming?” she asked, offering him a sip of her coffee.

“Mmm. Thanks. I’m just about finished. It was mostly lime buildup. I soaked the head in cleaner and I’m about to reconnect it. If it works, you can have a shower after dinner.”

“That sounds wonderful. And the cookies will be cooled by the time you’re finished. If it won’t spoil your dinner.”

“Cookies never spoil anything,” he said over his shoulder as he returned to his task.

He had second helpings of everything at dinner, and while she enjoyed her meal also, she knew she’d probably pay for the pleasure with heartburn during the night.

“It seems you married me for my cooking,” she observed, sipping at a glass of milk while he carried their plates to the sink.

“That,” he said, “and because you were on my mind constantly.”

She wondered about that. “Is that the same as love?”

He scraped the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Coming back to the table for bowls of leftover dressing and potatoes, he gave her a quizzical look. “I thought so. I’m usually very focused and on track. Until I met you and you consumed my life.”

She had to ask. “Has that been good or bad for you?”

He grinned and headed for the counter with his burden. “Mostly good,” he said.

She laughed lightly. “Mostly?”

She reached for the cauliflower and the rolls, intending to help clear, but his hand came down on her shoulder to hold her in her chair.

“I said I’d clean up.” He took the vegetable and rolls from her, then started to cover everything and put it in the refrigerator.

“Mostly,” he went on as he worked, “because I used to be focused and on track,” he repeated wryly, “and since you came along, I’ve had to adjust to having my attention split between my work and my life.”

“And your life didn’t come first when you were a CIA agent?”

Everything put away, he took the ice cream from the freezer and brought down two bowls. “No.” He answered matter-of-factly, as though he’d accepted it and didn’t particularly regret that now. “Everything about you is secondary to the work. But I was young then and it didn’t matter. The men I worked with became my family.”

“You told me you’d already quit the CIA when we met.”

“Yes.”

He scooped ice cream into the bowls, put the carton away, then brought them to the table, going back for the plate of cookies she’d prepared.

“Then you didn’t quit on my account and don’t resent me for that?”

He raised an eyebrow as he took his chair again. “No. Why?”

“Because,” she said for the second time, “something isn’t right between us.” When he rolled his eyes impatiently, she raised a silencing hand. “I know, I know. You told me it was because I can’t remember, that we’re usually very physical and this celibacy is unnatural. But I think it’s something else.”

SHE PROPPED HER ELBOW on the table and studied him with the disturbing concentration of the innocent. He tried to look back at her with the same innocence.

But he had a feeling she wasn’t buying it.

“How can you be so sure,” he asked, pushing the cookie plate her way, “when you can’t even remember us?”

“It’s something I feel now,” she said, choosing a cookie and taking a dainty bite out of it. She chewed and swallowed. “I feel as though it’s me. There’s something about me that you’re upset with, or displeased with. Did I do something awful?” She studied the cookie in her hand then looked up at him again, her expression reluctant. “Did I have an affair, or something?”

Even a hesitation before he answered the question would have given him a break, but he couldn’t do that to her. “No, you haven’t had an affair. You’ve been a wonderful wife.”

She looked somewhat relieved, though not entirely convinced that there wasn’t a problem between them. “You’re not just saying that because I can’t remember anything?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I’m saying it because it’s true. We have a good, strong marriage. We’re in love.”

“Okay,” she said finally, then finished off her cookie. “You told me you have one sister.”

He nodded. “Lisa. She’s in Kansas where her husband’s a doctor.”

“Is she older than you?”

“Younger by a year and a half. I have three little nieces.”

She spooned ice cream into her mouth. He took advantage of her distraction to eat some of his own before her interrogation began again. She seemed to be marshaling every detail from their conversations over the past three weeks in a new attempt to force the data to help her remember what had gone before. He managed two bites before she continued.

“And your parents are gone?”

“My father died in jail,” he replied briefly, trying not to sound bitter or flip. But it was difficult. He was bitter about them, and he always sounded flip when he tried to pretend that it didn’t matter. “My mother was an alcoholic and finally died of liver failure about ten years ago.”

She looked stunned. He hated that. Then her eyes filled and he was torn between being touched by her sympathy, when she didn’t even remember him, and annoyed with himself for upsetting her.

He reached across the table to catch her hand. “It’s all right. Lisa and I adjusted to it long ago. She got married at sixteen, but to a great guy and they managed to make it work. He got a scholarship, she got a job and they both worked day and night until he finally graduated from medical school. He joined a clinic, and then they had their family.”

“And you joined the army after she got married?”

“I was a cop first, then joined the army.”

She smiled at that, then frowned again, squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry about your parents. I can’t remember mine, but I don’t think I went through anything that awful. You said that I told you they’ve been gone for some time.”

He ran his thumb over her knuckles. “That’s right. You liked your father, but didn’t get along well with your mother. She was sort of a prima donna, I gather.”

She frowned over that and drew her hand back. It occurred to him for the first time that since she had no memories of them, knowing they were gone closed a door she’d never have a chance to reopen.

She drew a deep breath, clearly regretful. “I don’t remember anything about them, and it makes me feel a little like an orphan.”

He felt a desperate need to cheer her up. “You still have your sisters.”

She straightened in her chair, suddenly smiling. “Yes. I’m a triplet. That’s different, isn’t it? In the photos on my bedside table in Pansy Junction, they look like two clones of me, yet I don’t remember them. Where are they again?”

“Athena lives in D.C.,” he replied. “She’s a lawyer. And Alexis, the artist, lives in Rome.”

She turned the names over on her tongue, saying them over and over, closing her eyes as though that could form an image in her mind. When she opened them again, her eyes were troubled, her bottom lip shaky. “I don’t remember them. Neither of them. And they’re probably wondering where I am.”

He hated to tell her the truth here, but he knew he had to. “I’m sure they are,” he answered. “You were all over the news when you were pulled out of the water and didn’t know who you were or where you’d come from.”

“That’s cruel, isn’t it?” she said urgently. “They don’t know that I’m safe.”

He nodded. “That was the choice we had to make to keep you safe. Any attempt to call either one could result in our being tracked.”

She settled down, apparently accepting that that made sense.

“I like knowing I have somebody.” The statement was plaintively made, as though she desperately needed someone—besides him.

It was interesting, he thought clinically, that no one had been able to hurt him since his mother’s ugly drunkenness when he’d come home from school, anxious to tell her about a success only to find her passed out on the sofa. No one, that was, until now.

He’d die without question or hesitation for Gusty and their baby, but she couldn’t remember their relationship, was certain there was something wrong with it, and that she needed something more than he could give her.

On some intelligent level, he knew it was foolish to be jealous of her sisters. He loved his own sister very much. They’d sustained each other through the worst times in their lives.

Gusty had turned him inside out over the past eight months, but her safety and the safe arrival of their baby into the world was all he dreamed of, was the reason he’d abandoned everything to hide away with her and keep her from harm.

It was selfish and egotistical, he knew, to want to be her everything, but knowing that and changing how he felt were two very different things.

“You ready for that shower?” he asked, pointing to her abandoned bowl of ice cream. “You can even turn the head now to adjust the spray.”

She ignored his question and nibbled on another cookie, looking more composed.

“Am I a good teacher?” she asked.

“There’s a Teacher of the Year plaque in your office at home. I pointed it out to you, remember?”

She frowned and gave one nod. “I do, sort of. But home was kind of overwhelming. All those things I’d hoped I’d remember when I saw them, and didn’t.”

“I think you’re good at everything you do,” he assured her. “You seem to know all about gardens and cooking.” He held up his cookie. “And you’re thoughtful. Always trying to help someone, or comfort someone.”

She frowned over that. “Am I wimpy?”

He laughed. “As the man who’s had to argue with you over just about everything, I can say no to that with authority.”

She pushed away from the table. “I guess I’ll clean up and have that shower.”

He went around the table to help her up. “I’ll clean up, you go ahead.”

SHE SHOULD HAVE ARGUED, but the prospect of a stream of hot water beating on her sore back was too delicious to delay. She went to her bedroom for the flannel nightgown Bram had bought her in town, then doffed her clothes in the bathroom.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she stepped into the shower stall and was a little startled by her size. It was one thing to see herself clothed, and quite another to see her naked, pregnant self.

She stepped into the shower stall, closed the door on the mirror, modulated the water temperature carefully to hot but not too hot, then turned the water on full force. She groaned at the instant relief provided when she turned her back to the spray.

She let it beat for long moments, then got serious about washing. With that accomplished she took the shampoo from the shower caddy and set about the major production of washing her hair. She scrubbed at her scalp, then brought her hair over her shoulder and, starting with the bottom few inches, slowly scrubbed her way up.

She rinsed slowly and carefully, combing her fingers through it to make sure she was rid of all the shampoo. After giving her body one more rinse, she turned off the water.

She put both hands to the sides of the shower as sudden dizziness overtook her. It was almost as though the thrumming of the water had kept her upright, and now that it had stopped, her own rhythms seemed at odds with the universe. She felt as though she might fall at any moment.

She waited for the moment to pass. When it didn’t, she forgot all reluctance to be seen naked and shouted for Bram at the top of her lungs.

She heard the bathroom door open in an instant, then the shower door was yanked open and he stood there, a dish towel over his shoulder, his face grim with worry.

“What?” he asked urgently, reaching in for her.

She leaned heavily against him, her head still spinning. “Dizzy,” she said.

He pushed the bathroom door all the way open, yanked a bath towel off the rack and wrapped it around her. “Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“You didn’t fall?”

“No. But I was…afraid I would. That’s why I called you.” Leaning against him was a little like lying on a firm mattress. There was solid support against her weary body, and a sense of security that made her want to close her eyes and go to sleep.

“It’s like a sauna in here,” he said, rubbing her back through the towel to dry it. “You might have just gotten a little carried away now that the shower-head works. The heat built up in this little room and made you feel faint.”

“The shower,” she said slowly, enjoying the massage, “felt sooo good. My back was hurting.”

“Let’s get you dried off, and I’ll call the doctor.” Holding her with one arm, he reached for her robe with the other and put it on her shoulders. Perfunctorily he dried her breasts and belly with the wadded towel.

She didn’t know whether to admire or be offended by his clinical detachment when she was suddenly very much aware that she was large and grossly unattractive.

She drew a deep breath of the cool air coming in from outside the room and felt suddenly better. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You were probably right about…” She hesitated, the breath stuck in her throat as he swiped the towel down her thighs.

“About…the heat in here,” she finished haltingly as he tossed the towel aside and drew her robe together.

As he did so, the baby delivered a strong kick to her abdomen that Bram must have felt against the inside of his arm. He reached inside her robe to flatten his hand against the beach ball of her belly.

She drew in a small breath, aware of every fingertip in touch with her skin, of his intensity as he leaned slightly over her in concentration.

As though recognizing the touch, the baby delivered several more staccato kicks right against the palm of his hand.

“Wow,” he said simply, quietly.

His excitement surprised her. “Haven’t you felt the baby before?” she asked.

He ignored her a moment, apparently distracted as the baby kicked again. He straightened and helped her out into the living room and onto the sofa.

“It never fails to amaze me,” he said, putting a pillow under her head and lifting her feet onto the cushions. “I’ve watched you grow with the pregnancy, but to actually feel life in there boggles my mind. Still dizzy?”

He covered her with a blanket from his bed, then sat on the edge of the sofa and put a hand to her face.

“No,” she said with a sigh. “I’m much better. A little drowsy, maybe. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

“I noticed.” He disappeared for a moment, then returned with two towels. He placed one under her hair on the pillow, and the other he used to begin to dry it. “I can hear the springs in your bed at night, your trips to the bathroom or the kitchen. You’re very restless.”

She smiled wryly. “It’s tough to carry around all this weight and not know who you are.”

“You’re my wife,” he said, rubbing at her hair, “and the baby’s mother. Try to hold on to that until your memory comes back.”

“You told me we don’t know if the baby’s a boy or girl.”

“Right. We didn’t want to know.”

“What are we hoping for?”

He cast her a smiling glance as he continued to rub. “One or the other. We’re not particular.”

“Did we want a baby this soon?”

“It was a surprise,” he replied, “but we’re very happy about it.”

“I feel happy about it.” She patted her stomach. A little kick patted her in return. “I just feel sorry that I can’t remember learning that I was pregnant, that I can’t remember telling you, that I can’t remember being excited and shopping for things and…”

“You told me,” he said with a laugh, “by putting booties in my shoes.” When she looked puzzled, he explained. “I came out of the shower one morning, got dressed and sat on the edge of the bed to put on my shoes and found an obstruction in one of them. It was a yellow bootie trimmed with yellow ribbon. I’m a little thick,” he said with a self-deprecating roll of his eyes. “It wasn’t until I discovered another bootie in my second shoe that I realized what you were telling me.”

“What did we do then?” she whispered, desperately wishing she had that memory.

“We held each other and laughed and cried and I picked you up at school that night and took you out to dinner. We bought a baby names book on the way.”

“Have we chosen names?” She struggled to sit up, the weariness falling away.

He helped her and propped a few pillows behind her. “Ah, no. I think you jotted down a few names in the book, but we couldn’t come up with anything brilliant and you thought inspiration might strike when you got closer to delivery. But, nothing so far. You’re sure you’re all right?”

She nodded, then yawned. “I should get up and dry my hair.”

“Stay there, and I’ll brush it dry for you.” He stood to leave and she caught his wrist.

She felt his energy surge through her fingers. “It’ll take forever,” she said, both touched and alarmed that he’d offer to do that for her. How could she not remember a man who was so devoted to her, whose touch made her feel as though she swung from high-voltage wires?

Or was she right about this unsettling suspicion that all wasn’t right between them, and this was intended to convince her that everything was fine, either to speed her recovery or for purposes of his own?

Their gazes locked for an instant. She saw only attentive kindness in his—then the sudden awareness there that she was uncertain about him. She caught a glimpse of his disappointment before he went into her bedroom and returned with a brush.

“I’ve watched you do this a hundred times,” he said. “It’s a brush designed to be easy on wet hair. Close your eyes and think about baby names, and I’ll brush.”

HE WAS SURPRISED when she complied. He knew she didn’t entirely believe him, and he didn’t know how to reassure her convincingly. Maybe it was the hormonal riot caused by the pregnancy.

He ran the brush from her scalp, through the fiery length of hair that fell past her shoulder blades when she was standing. It shimmered in the firelight like the darkest part of the flame.

“What about Bailey for a girl?” she asked, her voice quiet.

He made a negative sound. “I hate those last-name first-names.”

“Something more ordinary? Like Margaret or Alice?”

“I like Margaret.” He remembered a caseworker from some point in his childhood whose name had been Margaret. She’d been middle-aged and a little frumpy, and very kind. “You had talked about using your sisters’ names. But you were afraid it might cause too much confusion in the family to have two people with the same name—particularly if a girl turned out looking just like the three of you.”

“Alexis and Athena,” she thought aloud.

“If we combined them, what would that give us?” she speculated while he brushed. “Athexis?” She laughed.

Her amusement made him smile. She’d had so little to be amused about. “Alena?” he asked. “Lexena?”

“Alena,” she repeated thoughtfully. “That’s not bad, is it?”

“No, I kind of like that. What if we have a boy?”

She sighed. “A boy. Well, we’d have to name him after you, wouldn’t we? Bram…” She stopped, then asked, “What’s your middle name?”

“Bramston is my middle name.” He combed his fingers through her hair to test if he was making progress. Her hair was drying but still damp. “First name, John.”

“John Bramston Bishop Jr., if it’s a boy?”

“No, I think that causes confusion, too. I think he should have a name that’s all his own.”

“Okay. Is there anyone you admire that you’d like to name him after?”

“I have a couple of friends who are very important to me. David Hartford and Trevyn McGinty.”

“Your CIA friends?”

“Yes.”

“David Trevyn Bishop,” she said. “Trevyn David Bishop. Sounds pretty good either way. Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then, let’s nail that one down if it’s a boy. Maybe with the Trevyn first.”

“Works for me. And Alena for a girl? What about a middle name?”

“Alena Marie? Alena Elizabeth? Alena Theresa?” She tried several more combinations that failed to inspire her until she said, “Alena Leanne. Alena…Leanne. Leanne.”

“I take it you like that one?” he asked, drawing the brush along the underside of her hair. It was drying now and growing lighter, the copper highlights against the dark red magnificent.

“Bram!” she exclaimed, snapping him out of his sensual study. She reached a hand back to him. “Help me sit up!”

He moved around her to support her to a sitting position. “Dizzy again?” he asked anxiously. “Pain?”

“No.” She held on to his arm and pulled him down beside her, her eyes focused on something he couldn’t see. “Leanne.”

“What about Leanne?” She was making him nervous. He rubbed her back gently.

“I think…I know one. In my classroom.” She turned to him suddenly, her eyes brightening, a wide smile forming. “I have one in my classroom!”

Oh God. She was remembering. He tried not to panic. “Leanne who?”

She closed her eyes tightly, the smile becoming a frown. “I don’t know. I can’t get that part. I can just see…ooh!”

“What do you see?”

“Just…” She fluttered her fingers around herself. “Lots of blond hair. But no face. She always has her hand up. Leanne. Bram! I remembered something!”

She threw her arms around him, laughing and crying simultaneously. “I remembered something!”

“That’s wonderful.” From somewhere he found the enthusiasm to force into his voice. “It’ll all come back in no time.”

She drew away from him, a frown replacing the smile. “But that’s so little. No face, no last name, just hair and a hand raised in the air.”

He rubbed her shoulder gently. “It is just a little, but if you don’t try to force it, it’ll come when you’re ready.”

She made a face at him. “I’m ready now.”

That was so her. “Your heart is, but your mind apparently isn’t. Let it take the time it needs.”

She slumped unhappily, absently patting the baby as though certain it must share her disappointment. If he hadn’t loved her before, that gesture would have done it for him.

“Am I usually patient?” she asked

“Yes,” he replied. “You teach little children. You have boundless patience.”

“Am I patient with you?”

“You don’t have to be. I’m the perfect husband.” He said it with a straight face.

He thought it might bring a smile to her troubled expression, but it brought a deeper seriousness instead. She studied him closely and he could almost hear her trying to remember something…anything.

“Are you patient with me?” she asked finally.

“Yes. I’m the perfect husband.” He couldn’t deliver that line twice without cracking a smile.

He was relieved when it finally made her smile.

“Okay, you are very patient with me, though we’re basically very different. And I try—”

“How are we different?” she interrupted.

He had to be grateful for at least one question that was easy to answer. “I had a childhood that forced me to grow up with few illusions,” he said. “And then I was a cop, then a soldier and then a spy. I saw the underside and the back of a lot of things that don’t even look good from the front. I’m cynical and hard-nosed with a real preference for things done my way.”

She looked genuinely puzzled. “I haven’t gotten that impression at all. Except for the things-done-your-way part.” She added the last with a grin.

“I’ve been on my best behavior.” That was true. If she caught a glimpse of the real Bram Bishop, it might trigger the return of her memory sooner rather than later and he’d be dead in the water. “You, however, are gentle and kind, trusting, optimistic, a Pollyanna for the new millennium.”

She winced. “It’s generous of you to exaggerate my good qualities. I’m sure I have some bad habits.”

He shrugged. “You love to argue with me.”

That seemed to deepen her amusement. “Maybe that’s a good quality, too. Maybe it’s a way to defend myself against your need to control. Even if I love you, maybe I don’t want to be taken over by you.”

“I don’t want to take you over,” he insisted. “I just want to keep you safe and happy.”

“Maybe what you want for me isn’t the same thing I want for myself.”

She knew that was it. She saw it in his face, though he averted it instantly to retrieve the afghan that had fallen to the floor when she’d sat up. They were at odds somehow, in some way he didn’t seem to want to explain at this point in time.

She wished she knew what it was.

“All I want for you,” he said gently, pushing her back to the pillow and covering her again, “is for you to stay safe and deliver a healthy baby while remaining healthy yourself.”

“And what do you want for you?” she asked.

He patted her cheek and then her tummy. “I’ve got it right here. Rest while I finish the dishes.”

With his touch lingering on her, she closed her eyes, trying to remember what the obstacle was between them.

Whatever it was, she’d be willing to bet that it was a problem he had with her and not the other way around. She couldn’t remember their past together, but she was falling in love all over again.




Chapter Three


Gusty stared at the small travel alarm on her nightstand. Illuminated green letters read 3:06 a.m. She was wide-awake.

She’d napped last night while Bram tidied the kitchen, then slept off and on while he replenished the fire and made notes in a leather folder he said held some of his detective agency’s paperwork. She’d awakened an hour ago safely tucked in bed, and had been unable to fall asleep again.

She struggled out of bed, pulled on a flannel shirt Bram had given her to keep her warm during the cool evenings, then waddled quietly into the kitchen. She turned on the light over the stove, put the kettle on to boil, then pulled sandwich-makings out of the refrigerator. She slathered cranberry sauce on bread, added chunky pieces of game hen and a generous portion of dressing. She had to push down on the sandwich to make sure it held together, then carried it into the living room.

She settled into the scratchy old upholstery of Bram’s chair and turned on the parchment-shade lamp on the table beside her. A little pool of light fell on her, the only bright space in the dark house.

It felt strange, she thought, to be all alone with herself when she didn’t know who she was. So far, she’d defined herself by things Bram had told her, but certainly the true reality of a person could never be understood by someone else, even someone as close as a husband.

She imagined herself in a classroom talking to third-graders about wildflowers. She closed her eyes and tried to picture herself at a chalkboard, eager little faces watching her.

Leanne watching her.

Leanne with lots of blond hair but no face.

On her head was a cardboard crown with gold stars all over it. Gold stars. Gusty struggled to focus, wondering if the crown was something she remembered, or something her tired mind had simply put there.

Perhaps the crowns were a way she’d developed of scoring achievement. Maybe each star indicated something accomplished.

But she didn’t know. She was only guessing. It might mean nothing at all.

In her mind, her eyes panned to the other children. Something reacted inside her. She felt happy. She liked children. She loved them.

She ran a hand over her baby and closed her eyes against her classroom, frustrated at her inability to remember.

But her baby was ever-present. She didn’t have to remember. Every day her belly swelled a little more as though trying to help her prove her own existence. I’m here! it seemed to say. Even if I don’t know who I am!

The baby moved subtly as Gusty rubbed. She wished she could remember his conception. She was beginning to think of it as a boy because of his swift and sudden movements, his determination to keep her up nights with wild dancing, his tendency to push against her spinal column as he took up more and more space.

She wondered if he’d begun as the happy aftermath of a party, the warm afterglow of an intimate dinner or a spontaneous response to the passion in Bram’s eyes—or his reaction to hers.

However it had happened, she thought, giving the baby another pat, she hoped he could be delivered in safety. The threat to her life seemed unreal—probably because she couldn’t remember the incident that had prompted it—but when she considered the threat to her baby’s life, the whole thing took on a terrifyingly real aspect.

Her sandwich half-finished, she put the plate aside and dropped her arm over the side of the chair, as she leaned back, trying to get comfortable. The baby seemed to resent her sending food down to take up his already cramped space. It felt as though he was stretching, feet braced against her spine, hands pushing at her ribs.

She stretched her legs out in an attempt to relieve pressure and tried to flatten her back against the back of the chair, dropping her other arm over the side.

This was a mistake, she knew. It would take a crane to get her out of this chair when she was ready to go back to bed.

Her left hand encountered leather. She peered over the side of the chair and saw Bram’s backpack tucked into the shadows between the small table and the chair. Thinking Bram might have misplaced it, she lifted it and leaned it against the front of the chair.

And as the pouch gaped when she caught it by the sides, she spotted what appeared to be the pencil-shaped antenna of a cell phone. She pulled the bag up into what was left of her lap and pulled out the instrument.

She stared at it in disbelief.

“We have no way to contact anyone unless we go to town,” Bram had said when she’d asked how they would call for help if they needed it. “We could give away our location by making calls. So we have to depend upon ourselves.”

No way to contact anyone and there’d been a cell phone in his backpack all along.

She looked deeper into the bag and saw a floral, very feminine looking address book. She pulled it out and opened it, guessing it was hers and not his. Or maybe one she kept for both of them.

She opened it and the first two names leaped out at her. Alexis Ames. Athena Ames.

She read them again, greedily searching for clues to her sisters’ personalities and possibly her own in the simple letters of their names.

Alexis had a European address and phone number, but Athena lived in Washington, D.C. Her eyes ran over the numbers.

“Interesting reading?” Bram asked. He stood in the living room doorway, long legs in sweat bottoms braced a foot apart, muscular arms crossed over a formidable chest clad in a simple white T-shirt.

“It’s our address book,” she said unnecessarily, to hide her guilt. Why did she feel guilty, she asked herself impatiently. She was rummaging through his things, but he’d been guilty of lying.

“Yes, it is,” he said.

She held up the phone. “You told me we had no way to contact anyone,” she accused, “unless we went to town.”

He held her gaze intrepidly. “I didn’t want you to try,” he replied calmly. “I was afraid that if you started remembering things and tried to call your sisters or a friend, Mendez would track us down.”

“You could have trusted me to understand that,” she said with an air of injured dignity, “and to behave accordingly.”

He raised a rueful eyebrow. “I might have if I didn’t know you better. You have a tendency to do what you want to do regardless of the possible consequences.”

“Then how do we get along,” she asked, her chin at a testy angle, “if you don’t trust me?”

He grinned. “I keep an eye on you.” He indicated the backpack with a jut of his chin. “You’re welcome to dump everything out and look through it. I have nothing to hide.”

“Except the phone you lied about.”

He nodded with no apparent guilt. “Which you found by looking through my bag. I think that makes us even.”

Indignant because he was right, she tried to pull herself out of the chair. She imagined she looked a little like a whale attempting a backbend.

Bram came to help her.

She tried to slap his hands away. “I can manage.”

“Let me help you,” he insisted. “I’m fond of that chair.” Placing one hand on her arm and his other arm around her back, he pulled firmly and drew her to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said with precarious dignity. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Good idea.” He walked her to her bedroom. “What woke you? Are you warm enough?”

“I was hungry,” she admitted, rubbing her knuckles against the back of her waist. Or where she used to have a waist. “And the baby loves to stretch out when we sleep and push against my backbone.”

She was walking into the room as she spoke, but Bram caught her arm and splayed his other hand against the small of her back. “Here?” he asked.

She felt several things at once—a little frisson of sensation that seemed to bounce from one vertebra to another, then the simple comfort of his broad, warm hand against her aching back.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice barely there. She reached to the doorjamb for support as both the sensation and the warmth began to spread.

“Let me see if I can encourage him to move.” He went to her bed, drawing her with him, and sat down on the edge. He patted his knee, encouraging her to sit on it.

She eyed him skeptically, concerned on several levels. She could explain only one. “I’ll cripple you,” she warned.

He laughed. “I don’t think so. I’ve been running five miles a day for twenty years.” He pulled her between his legs and sat her on his right knee. “And there’s not that much to you, even with the baby.” He placed his hand over the spot she’d indicated before and rubbed gently but firmly.

She pitched forward at the strength of the first stroke and he put his free arm around her to anchor her.

In a matter of seconds she became his willing slave. She couldn’t help the “aah” of relief as his left arm supported her uncomfortable weight and his right hand rubbed that pressure point until she felt like a puddle of oatmeal.

“Better?” she heard Bram ask.

She considered answering no, because if she said yes, he’d stop.

Reluctantly she made an affirmative sound and pushed herself to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered, the air suddenly electric around them. They should be sharing a bed, a life, a baby. But there were too many unknowns here for her to settle comfortably into life as it should be.

All she knew about herself was what he’d told her—and if he’d lied about the phone, he might have lied about anything else—or everything else.

He stood, also, and gestured her into bed. “I’ll tuck you in,” he offered.

She complied and he lifted her feet for her, pulling the blankets over them, then over her.

She lay on her side, the only position that was comfortable, and he tucked the blankets in at her neck.

He turned out the light. “Sweet dreams,” he said into the darkness.

“Thank you for the massage,” she replied.

“All part of the service.”

The door closed quietly and she expelled a deep sigh of relief. When she knew who she was, she wondered, would she know what to make of him?

BRAM WAS ALMOST GLAD to see rain the following morning. It was cold and damp and they went through a lot of wood, giving him something to do that afternoon.

He chopped enough wood to replace the power of Bonneville Dam. He was frustrated on so many levels he was about to implode. But he had to bide his time.

In his other life, the government had directed him to a point, but he’d been the best security officer they had and they’d let him do things his way.

When he’d hooked up with Dave and Trev, they’d worked together like a well-maintained machine, each moving in harmony with the other, each mind reading the others’ so that there was seldom a bad move.

Until Afghanistan and Farah’s death.

Bram remembered explaining to them why they shouldn’t use her, that while she was valuable as a translator, she was outside the unit and therefore a potential danger.

But they’d needed her, and he’d fallen under the spell of her intelligence and her sweetness just like Dave had—though neither of them had fallen as hard or as far as Trevyn.

When they’d closed in on Raisu to stop his terrorism of American installations all over the world, Trev had told her to stay behind. But she’d had some scheme about distracting the camp so that the three of them could approach unnoticed, and she’d ignored Trevyn, determined to do what she thought would help.

He remembered hearing her scream when her traitorous brother had mistaken her for them and shot her. Then he remembered seeing her lying there, arms flung out and motionless.

Bram cleaved a wide log of cedar in half with a clean stroke of the ax as he remembered Trevyn’s primal scream.

The mission gone bad, they had no choice but to retreat. Trevyn wouldn’t leave without Farah’s body, and Bram covered their escape while Dave helped Trev carry her down the mountain.

They’d decided to quit after that, each weary of the business for his own reasons. Staying together in civilian life, at least until they’d all found another road, seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Then David had inherited the house in Dancer’s Beach from their CIA radio contact, code-named “Auntie.” He’d saved her life during an African uprising, and in gratitude, she’d left him her home.

That was where Bram had first met Gusty at a costume party. He and his friends had been dressed as the Three Musketeers, and Gusty had worn a velvet bonnet and a dress with petticoats and she’d caught his eye right away.

He’d excused himself from the group he’d been talking with and taken her aside so they could talk.

She hadn’t wanted to talk about herself, had tried instead to make him talk about the house, about how they’d come by it and which one of them owned it.

He’d told her about his sister, his nieces, his years looking for something to validate his existence. With a father who was a felon, and an alcoholic mother, he’d grown up wondering how he could be of any value.

Only his younger sister’s dependence upon him had forced him to try, and her gratitude and her reliance on him finally taught him that they were both better than the genes that made them up.

He’d joined the police force when she’d gotten married at sixteen and developed into just the kind of young man who could fit into the military. He had what it took, he could rise above, learn that adversity could strengthen and not destroy if a man was determined to be a winner.

And that was when Gusty had opened up a little about herself, though he’d learned later that it hadn’t all been the truth.

She’d told him she was a teacher, and that she lived in northern California in a small town called Pansy Junction, but she hadn’t mentioned her sisters. She’d told him she was visiting friends in Dancer’s Beach.

She was always trying to find her place, too, she’d said. That she had a tendency to be cowardly, to avoid risk and danger and heartbreak.

He’d pointed out that dealing with children every day seemed very brave to him.

Then she’d smiled and he’d seen something final in her eyes.

He’d pulled her toward him and kissed her, then he’d lifted her mask and looked into the sweetest face he’d ever seen.

She’d looked back at him with undisguised longing, then run off when Mayor Beasley had come in search of him to introduce him to a guest.

He’d run after her as soon as he’d been able to get free, but there had been a storm outside and there’d been no sign of her.

He’d had a surveillance job the following day, and during the long, tedious hours of waiting and watching, he’d called Information for Pansy Junction, California, and gotten the telephone number for the school.

With that, it had been a simple thing to check the roster of teachers at the Pansy Junction Elementary School, then to call Information again with her name. He’d gotten her telephone number and her address but knew he’d get nowhere calling her. So he’d hopped a plane the following weekend.

She’d been working on flower boxes and, when she’d turned to watch him climb out of his rental car, he’d seen both delight and surprise in her eyes.

And then she’d run into his arms.

As his closed around her, he’d known that she was what his life was supposed to be about, that his search was over.

And somehow, over the intervening eight months, that delicious discovery had turned into this desperate hiding out from the man who wanted to take it all away from him.

GUSTY LISTENED to the rhythmic strikes of Bram’s ax and felt as though she would cheerfully give up a year of her life if she could remember just a minute of her life with Bram before she’d surfaced in the river. It was becoming as important to her to know who he was as to know herself.

He was her husband, and the baby tied them to each other inextricably, but was he the caring, gentle person he seemed to be? Or had she glimpsed something else last night when he’d caught her going through his backpack?

He hadn’t shouted or accused, but she was sure she’d detected anger. Because she’d been snooping, she wondered, or because she’d caught him in a lie?

The uncertainty put her on edge.

Her back aching from a morning spent baking cinnamon bread, she went into the bedroom, intent on lying down for a few minutes. Then she saw herself in the three-way mirror on the old-fashioned vanity near her bed.

She groaned as she approached the mirror and sat down on the small stool. She looked like an obese bag lady, complete with big, loose dress topped with the flannel shirt. She’d braided her hair to keep it out of her face while she was cooking, but she’d done it quickly because she’d overslept, and now she looked disheveled and pathetic, like Pippi Longstocking on a bender.

Pippi Longstocking. Was that knowledge or memory? She was tired of asking herself that question.

Quickly she unbraided her hair and ran a brush through it, determined to pile it up into a tidy knot. This afternoon she wanted to clean kitchen cupboards. She felt both exhausted and frenzied, as though she was too tired to do anything, but had to or die.

She was drawing the brush from the crown of her hair through the long, rippled mass to the ends when she caught her triple reflection and felt something akin to a lightning strike right between her eyes.

Crack! Sizzle! Truth! Triplets. She was a triplet. Bram had told her that. She’d known it, but she hadn’t understood, hadn’t remembered it until this moment.

She was Gusty Ames. Triplet! And the other two images she saw were Lexie and Athena. But in her mind, she couldn’t see them as adults. All she could remember were three little girls peering into this mirror, pouting, crying.

Why?

“Disneyland!” Lexie said. She threw something. Gusty could see it flying but couldn’t tell what it had been.

She remembered suddenly that they’d been promised a trip to Disneyland but something in their parents’ schedule had changed and they took off for some other destination without them and left them with Aunt…Aunt…Sadie! Aunt Sadie!

Excited by the memories, Gusty pursued them, trying to remember more.

And as her mind chased those few details, it was as though a mist fell between her and them, closing them off.

She wanted to throw something but forced herself to calm down. She’d been warned this would be a slow and unpredictable process. She had to be patient.

Briskly she brushed her hair and wound it into a loose knot. She pulled out a few tendrils at her ears and her temple, then studied her reflection in surprise.

Why had she done that? Was that memory or habit? At least it was a new variation on the old question.

Momentarily tired of that worry, she brushed the sides up tidily, retied the knot and looked in her closet for something more stylish to wear.

But there was nothing. Bram said she’d lost everything she’d had with her when the rental car sank with her luggage. They’d left home quickly after the mysterious calls and she’d brought only the clothes on her back—this dress. He had bought her a few things—the overalls she wore all the time because they were comfortable, and a pair of black maternity slacks and a big white sweater that hung in the closet beside the overalls.

That was it.

And for reasons she couldn’t explain, that made her dissolve into tears.

She ripped off the offending flannel shirt and the dress.

GUSTY WAS STANDING in front of her closet in a long slip and a very no-nonsense white cotton bra when Bram found her. He’d stacked the wood and had gone looking for a cup of coffee when he’d seen the pot was empty and she wasn’t in the kitchen cooking or in the living room, working on the baby sweater she was knitting.

“What?” she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. Her large belly rested under her breasts like some globular support. She looked tearful and cross. “What do you want?”

He advanced into the room with some trepidation. She was the dearest woman he’d ever known, but she had a temper to rival his own when it was aroused. What had done it this afternoon?

“A cup of coffee,” he said carefully. “But the pot’s empty. What’s the matter?”

“Just because I can cook,” she said angrily, snatching up his old flannel shirt off the bed, “It doesn’t mean I have to, does it? I mean, you’re perfectly capable of making coffee!” She jammed an arm into a sleeve.

“I didn’t mean you had to make it. I just…”

“You just wondered why I hadn’t!” One sleeve on, she reached behind herself for the other, growing testier as it eluded her. “Well, maybe I didn’t feel like cooking! Maybe, if we’re going to be stuck out here for all eternity, I’m giving some thought to spinning yarn and weaving cloth and making myself something to…damn it! Where the hell is the…”

Knowing he was risking life and limb, he came behind her, put her arm into the sleeve and danced back quickly as she rounded on him, yanking the fronts of the shirt together. Or trying to. They gaped over the baby.

That made her cry.

He shifted his weight and analyzed the situation, knowing touching her wouldn’t be safe. This was new territory for him. He’d faced her temper before, but not without a valid reason behind it. He had to find out what the problem was.

“Gus?” he asked reasonably.

“I don’t want to be Gus!” she snarled at him, then stomped out of the bedroom and into the living room, where she didn’t seem to be able to decide where to go from there. She turned in circles.

He stood aside and waited.

“I don’t want to be huge and ugly and completely unfamiliar to myself.”

“You’re not unfamiliar to me,” he put in quietly.

That didn’t help. “Well, you’re unfamiliar to me!” she shouted back tearfully. “I don’t know my own husband! Can you have any idea what that feels like?” She put a hand to her stomach, her voice quieting a decibel. “I don’t remember making this baby. If I could, it might make up in some way for the fact that I look like a polar bear with a red wig! A polar bear with nothing to wear!”

Well, now he knew what the problems were—and there were several of them—but he couldn’t do anything about most of them.

He concentrated on the one for which he had a solution.

“He was conceived after we went dancing,” he said. She’d stopped at the window looking out onto the rainy meadow, an amusing picture in tennis shoes, a long slip, and a flannel shirt that didn’t close. “We’d had a little champagne and the orchestra played a tango.”

She turned to him in surprise. “We can tango?”

He grinned. “No, we can’t. And we proved it that night. We were at the American Legion dance in the Baptist church’s community hall and ended up in a very undignified pile at the foot of the stage.”

She winced. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “As I recall, it was a physics problem. I had swung you out and was reeling you back in when you tripped, crashed against me and we both went down.”

“Did they throw us out?”

“No, they applauded. I think they appreciated our guts. Or our stupidity. I’m not sure which.”

Her smile crumpled suddenly and a tear fell. “I wonder what happened to my guts,” she asked plaintively. “I’m scared and tired and…” She lost her last shred of composure. “Really, really fat!”

He wrapped her in his arms, half-expecting her to resist, but she stood docilely against him, weeping as he rubbed her back.





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