Jay watched him, her deep blue eyes mirroring
the pain he felt, but he was improving daily, and seeing the improvements
filled her with heady joy. The swelling in his face was subsiding; his lips
were almost normal again, though dark bruises still stained his jaw and throat.
She could almost feel his impatience. He
wanted to talk, he wanted to see, he wanted to walk, to be able to shift his
own weight in the bed. He was imprisoned in his body and he didn't like it. She
thought it must be close to hell to be cut off from his own identity as he was,
as well as being so completely constrained by his injuries. But he wasn't
giving in; he asked more questions every day, trying to fill the void of
memories by making new ones, maybe hoping that some magic word would take him
back to himself. Jay talked to him even when he didn't ask questions, idle conversation
that, she hoped, gave him basic information and perspective. Even if it just
filled the silence, that was something. If he didn't want her to talk he would
tell her.
A movement of his arm alerted her, and she
began the alphabet.
When
married?
She caught her breath. It was the first
personal question he'd asked her, the first time he'd wanted to know about
their past relationship. "We were married for three years," she
managed to say calmly. "We divorced five years ago."
Why?
"It wasn't a hostile divorce," she
mused. "Or a hostile marriage. I guess we simply wanted different things
out of life. We .grew apart, and finally the divorce seemed more like a
formality than any wrenching change in our lives."
What did you want?
Now that was a twenty-thousand-dollar
question. What did she want? She had been certain of her life up until the
Friday when she had been fired and Franlc Payne had brought Steve back into her
life. Now she wasn't certain at all; too many changes had happened all at once,
jolting her life onto a different track entirely. She looked at Steve and felt
him waiting patiently for her answer.
"Stability, I guess. I wanted to settle
down more than you did. We had fun together, but we weren't really suited to
each other."
Children?
The thought startled her. Oddly, when they had
been married, she hadn't been in any hurry to start a family. "No, no
children." She hadn't been able to visualize having Steve's children.
Now... oh God, now the idea shook her to the bones.
Remarried?
"No, I've never remarried. I don't think
you have, either. When Frank notified me of your accident, he asked if you had
any other relatives or close friends, so you must have stayed single."
He'd been listening closely, but his interest
suddenly sharpened. She could feel it, like a touch against her skin.
No family?
"No. Your parents are dead, and if you
had any relatives, I never knew about them." She skated around telling him
that he'd been orphaned at an early age and raised in foster homes. Not having
a family seemed to disturb him, though he'd never given any indication that it
bothered him while they had been married. He lay very still and the line of his
mouth was grim. She sensed there was a lot he wanted to ask her, but the very complexity
of his questions stymied him. To get his mind off the questions he couldn't ask
and the answers he wouldn't like, she began to tell him about how they had met,
and slowly his mouth relaxed.
"...and since it was our first date, I
was a little stiff. More than a little stiff, if you want the truth. First
dates are torment, aren't they? It had been raining off and on all day, and
water was standing in the streets. We walked out to your car, and a passing
truck hit this huge puddle just as we reached the curb. We were both drenched,
from the head down. And we stood there laughing at each other like complete
fools. I don't even want to think what I looked like, but you had muddy water
dripping off your nose."
His lips were twitching, as if it hurt him to
smile but he couldn't stop the movement.
What
did we do?
She chuckled. "There wasn't a lot we
could do, looking the way we did. We went back to my apartment, and while our
clothes were washing we watched television and talked. We never did make it to
the party we'd been going to. One date led to another, and five months later we
were married." He asked one question after another, like a child listening
to fairy tales and wanting more. Knowing that he was reaching for the part of
himself that was lost due to the blankness of his memory, she tirelessly
recounted places they had gone and the things they'd done, people they had
known, hoping that some little detail would provide the spark needed to bring
it all back. Her voice began to grow hoarse, and finally he managed a small
shake of his head.
Sorry.
She pressed his arms, understanding.
"Don't worry," she said softly. "It will all come back. It will
just take time."
But the days passed and still his memory didn't
return—not even a glimmer of a link to the past. She could feel his intense
concentration on every word she uttered, as if he were willing himself to
remember. Even now, his control was phenomenal; he never allowed himself to
become frustrated or lose his temper. He just kept trying, keeping his feelings
under control as if he sensed that any emotional upheaval could set his
recovery back. Total recovery was his aim, and he worked toward it with a
single-minded concentration that never wavered. Frank was there the day they
took the trach tube from Steve's throat, and he waited in the hall with Jay,
holding her hand. She looked at him questioningly, but he merely shook his
head. Several minutes later a hoarse cry of pain from Steve's room made her jerk,
and Frank's hand tightened on hers. "You can't go in there," he said
softly. "They're removing his stomach tube, too." The cry had been
Steve's; the first sound he'd made had been one of pain. She began to tremble,
every instinct she had screaming at her to go to him, but Frank held her still.
There were no other sounds from the room, and finally the door opened and the
doctors and nurses exited. Major Lunning was last, and he paused to talk to
Jay.
"He's all right," he said, smiling a
little at her tense face. "He's breathing just fine, and talking. I won't
tell you what his first words were. But I want to warn you that his speaking
voice won't be the way you remember it; his larynx was damaged, and his voice
will always sound hoarse. It will improve some, but he'll never sound the way
he did before."
"I'd like to talk to him now," Frank
said, looking down at Jay, and she understood that there were things he wanted
to tell Steve, even though Steve didn't remember what had happened.
"Good luck," Major Lunning said,
smiling wryly at Frank. "He doesn't want you, he wants Jay, and he was
pretty autocratic about it."
Knowing just how autocratic he could be, Frank
wasn't surprised. But he still needed to ask Steve some questions, and if this
was his lucky day, the questions just might trigger some return of memory.
Patting Jay's hand again, he went into Steve's room and firmly closed the door
behind him.
Less than a minute later, he opened the door
and looked at Jay, his expression both frustrated and amused. "He wants
you, and he isn't cooperating until he gets you."
"Did you think I would?" a raspy
voice demanded behind him. "Jay, come here."
She began trembling again at the sound of that
rough, deep voice, so much rougher and deeper than she remembered. It was
almost gravelly, and it was wonderful. Her knees felt rubbery as she crossed
the room to him, but she wasn't aware of actually walking. She was just there,
somehow, clinging to the railing of his bed in an effort to hold herself upright.
"I'm here," she whispered. He was silent a moment; then he said,
"I want a drink of water." She almost laughed aloud, because it was
such a mundane request that could have been made of anyone, but then she saw
the tension in his jaw and lips and realized that, again, he was checking out
his condition, and he wanted her with him. She turned to the small Styrofoam
pitcher that was kept full of crushed ice, which she used to keep his lips
moist. The ice had melted enough that she was able to pour the glass half full
of water. She stuck a straw into it and held it to his lips.
Gingerly he sucked the liquid into his mouth
and held it for a moment, as if letting it soak into his membranes. Then,
slowly, he swallowed, and after a minute he relaxed. "Thank God," he
muttered hoarsely. "My throat still feels swollen. I wasn't sure I could
swallow, and I sure as hell didn't want that damned tube back."
Behind Jay, Frank turned a smothered laugh
into a cough.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"Yes. Kiss me."
When she opened the door to Steve's room the
next morning, he turned his head on the pillow and said, "Jay." His
voice was harsh, almost guttural, and she wondered if he'd just awakened.
She paused, her attention caught as she stared
at his bandaged eyes. "How did you know?" The nurses were in and out,
so how could he have guessed her identity?
"I don't know," he said slowly.
"Maybe your smell, or just the feel of you in the room. Maybe I recognize
the rhythm of your walk."
"My smell?" she asked blankly.
"I'm not using perfume, so if you smell me from that distance something's
wrong!"
His lips curved in a smile. "It's a
fresh, faintly sweet smell. I like it. Do I get a good-morning kiss?"
Her heart gave a giant leap, just as it had
the day before when he'd demanded that she kiss him. She had given him a light,
tender kiss, barely brushing her lips against his, while Frank, in the
background, had pretended to be invisible; but it had taken her pulse a good
ten minutes to settle down afterward. Now, even while her mind shouted at her
to be cautious, she crossed the room to him and bent down to give him another
light kiss, letting her lips linger for only a second. But when she started to
draw away, he increased the pressure, his mouth molding itself to hers, and her
heart slammed wildly against her rib cage as excitement shot through her.
"You taste like coffee," she managed
to say when she finally forced herself to stand upright again, breaking the
contact.
His lips had been slightly parted, with a
disturbing sensuality, but at her words they took on a smug line. "They
wanted me to drink tea or apple juice—" he made it sound like hemlock
"—but I talked them into letting me have coffee."
"Oh?" she asked dryly. "How? By
refusing to drink anything until you had your coffee?"
"It worked," he said, not sounding
at all repentant. She could imagine how helpless the nurses were against his
relentless will.
Despite the fact that she no longer needed to
communicate with him in their old way, her hand went to his arm in habit, and
she was so used to the contact that she didn't notice it. "How are you
feeling?" she asked, then winced at the triteness of the question, but she
was still rattled from the effects of his kiss.
"Like hell."
"Oh."
"How long have I been here?"
To her surprise, she had to stop and count the
days. She had become so involved with him that time had ceased to mean
anything, and it was difficult to recall. "Three weeks."
"Then I have three more weeks in these
casts?"
"I think so, yes."
"All right." He said it as if giving
his permission, and she felt that he would give them three weeks and not one
day longer, or he would take the casts off himself. He lifted his left arm.
"I'm minus a couple of needles today. They took the IVs out about an hour
ago."
"I hadn't even noticed!" she
exclaimed, smiling a little at the note of pride in his ruined voice. She
wondered if she would ever get used to its harshness, but at the same time tiny
shivers went down her spine every time she heard it.
"And I refused the pain medication. I
want my head clear. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask before, but
it took so much time and effort, and my brain was so foggy from the drugs, that
it was just too much trouble. Now I want to know what's going on. Where am I?
I've heard you call the doctor Major, so I know I'm in a military hospital. The
question is, why?"
"You're in Bethesda," she said.
"A naval hospital?" Astonishment
roughened his voice even more.
"Frank said you were brought here for
security reasons. There are guards posted at every entrance to this wing. And
this was a central location for all the surgeons they pulled in for you."
"Major Lunning isn't navy," he said
sharply.
"No." It was astonishing that he
could lose the most basic of memories, those of himself, yet retain the
knowledge that Bethesda was a naval hospital and that major wasn't a navy rank.
She watched the stillness of his mouth as he studied the implications of what
she had just told him.
"Then someone with a lot of influence
wanted me here. Langley, probably."
"Who?"
"Company headquarters, baby. CIA."
She felt a chill of dread as he continued, "Maybe the White House, but
Langley is the most likely bet. What about Frank Payne?"
"He's FBI. I trust him," she said
steadily.
"Damn, this is getting deep," he
muttered. "All these different departments and military branches
coordinating just isn't normal. What's going on? Tell me about the
explosion."
"Didn't Frank tell you?"
"I didn't ask for or volunteer any
information. I didn't know him." Yes, that was like Steve. He had always
held back, watching cautiously, though she had already married him before she
began noticing that particular trait. He used his charm like a shield, so that
most people would have described him as outgoing and spontaneous, when in fact
he was just the opposite. He had held people away, not trusting them and not
allowing anyone close to him, but they never noticed, because he was such an
actor. Now she sensed that the shield was gone. People could take him as he was
or leave him; he didn't care. It was a hard attitude, but she found that she
liked it better. It was real, without pretense or subterfuge. And for the first
time, he was letting her get close to him. He needed her, trusted her. Perhaps
it was only because of the extenuating circumstances, but it was happening, and
it stunned her.
"Jay?" he prompted.
"I don't know exactly what
happened," she explained. "I don't know why you were there. They
don't know either."
"Who is 'they'?"
"Frank. The FBI."
"And whoever else he's working for,"
he added dryly. "Go on."
"Frank told me that you weren't doing
anything illegal that they know of. Perhaps you were only an innocent
bystander, but you have a reputation for sniffing out trouble, and they think
you might know something about what happened to their operation. They had set
up a sting, or whatever you want to call it, but someone had planted a bomb at
the meeting site. You were the only survivor."
"What kind of sting?"
"I don't know. All Frank has said is that
it involved national security."
"And they're afraid their guy's cover was
blown, but they don't know, because the players on the other side were
disintegrated, too," he said, as if to himself. "It could have been a
double double-cross, and the bomb was meant for the others. Damn! No wonder they
want me to get my memory back! But all that doesn't explain one thing. Why are
you involved?"
"They brought me here to identify
you," she said, absently stroking his arm as she had for so many hours.
"Identify me? Didn't they know?"
"Not for certain. Part of your driver's
license was found, but they still weren't certain if you were... you, or their
agent. Apparently you and the agent were about the same height and weight, and
your hands were burned, so they weren't able to get your fingerprints for identification."
She paused as something nagged at her memory, but she couldn't bring the
elusive detail into focus. For a moment it was close; then Steve's next
question splintered her concentration.
"Why did they ask you? Wasn't there
anyone else who could identify me?
Or did we stay close after our divorce?"
"No, we didn't. It was the first tune I'd
seen you in five years. You've always been pretty much a loner. You weren't the
type for bosom buddies. And you don't have any family, so that left me."
He moved restlessly, his mouth drawing into a
hard line as he uttered a brief, explicit curse. "I'm trying to get a
handle on this," he said tersely. "And I keep running into this
damned blank wall. Some of what you tell me seems so familiar, and I think,
yeah, that's me. Then part of it is as if you're telling me about some
stranger, and I wonder if I really know. Hell, how can I know?" he
finished with raw frustration.
Her fingers glided over his arm, giving him
what comfort she could. She didn't waste her breath mouthing platitudes because
she sensed they would only make him furious. As it was, he had already used up
his small store of energy with the questions he had asked her, and he lay there
in silence for several minutes, his chest rising and falling too quickly.
Finally the rhythm of his breathing slowed, and he muttered, "I'm
tired."
"You've pushed yourself too far. It's
only been three weeks, you know."
"Jay."
"What?"
"Stay with me."
"I will. You know I will."
"It's... strange. I can't even picture
your face in my mind, but part of me knows you. Maybe biblical knowledge goes
deeper than mere memory." His harsh voice gave rough edges to the words,
but Jay felt as if an electrical charge had hit her body, making her skin tingle.
Her mind filled with images, but not those of memory; her imagination
manufactured new ones—of this man with his harder soul and ruined voice,
bending over her, taking her in his arms, moving between her legs in a more
complete possession than she had ever known before. Her own breath shortened as
her breasts grew tight and achy, and her insides turned liquid. Another tingle
jolted her, making her feel as if she were on the verge of physical ecstasy,
and merely from his words, his voice. The violence of her response shocked her,
scared her, and she jerked away from his bed before she could control the
motion.
"Jay?" He was concerned, even a
little alarmed, as he felt her move away from him.
"Go to sleep," she managed to say,
her voice almost under control. "You need the rest. I'll be here when you
wake up."
He lifted his bandaged hand. "How about
holding my hand?"
"I can't do that. It would hurt
you."
"It would blend in with all the other
pain," he said groggily. He was losing strength rapidly. "Just touch
me until I go to sleep, all right?" Jay felt his request go straight
through her heart. That he should ask anything of her still staggered her, but
his need to be touched was almost more than she could bear. She stepped back to
the bed, folding her hand over his arm. At the first touch she felt him begin
to relax, and within two minutes he was asleep.