Stolen Memory

“Thank you.” He waited politely for her to drop into a chair and then folded himself on her couch, trying not to feel like a psychiatric patient.

“You know, if your memory’s coming back, you should talk to Detective Palmer,” Laura said.

“My memory’s not coming back.”

“No?”

“No. In fact…” Could he afford to tell her? Could he afford not to? “There’s a lot I don’t remember.”

“Define ‘a lot.’”

He drew a deep breath. “Quite a lot.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Was there a reason you decided to track me down at my apartment on my day off? Or do you just like yanking my chain?”

“Are you always this direct?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “Good.”

She didn’t smile back. “Are you always this evasive?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said. His heart jackhammered in his chest. “Or maybe I should say… I don’t remember.”

Her eyes jerked to his. She held his gaze for a long, slow moment.

Her breath hissed in. “You don’t. You don’t remember…anything?”

She believed him.

Simon’s mouth went dry with relief. Or terror.

“I know enough to function,” he said stiffly. “I think in time—”

“What about people?” she interrupted. He was grateful she didn’t take out her notebook. He would have felt even more like a psychiatric patient. “What about your brother? You introduced him.”

“Did I?”

Her eyes widened. “Quinn announced him. And then he introduced himself.”

Simon nodded. “God knows what I would have done if he’d walked in without warning.”

“Wow.” She slumped back. “I bet you’re having a hard time.”

She understood. For a second, he didn’t feel quite so alone.

“Yes,” he admitted. “That’s why I need your help.”

She shook her head. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry, but you don’t. You need a professional.”

They’d been over this before.

“You mean a doctor,” he said flatly.

A shrink.

“A doctor would be good,” she agreed. “But actually, I was thinking more along the lines of a private investigator. Somebody attacked you. Not only can’t you identify whoever it was, you can’t identify the people around you who might have a motive. You need someone who can make inquiries within your company and investigate your personal life.”

He was pleased she understood his requirements so precisely. “That’s why I need you.”

“You need a security firm that specializes in executive protection or industrial espionage or something. Not me.”

“I have a security firm that specializes in all those things. And they failed to do their job.”

“But if you confided in them… If you explained…”

He stood. “E.C.I.P. has over three hundred employees working for almost twenty corporations. How long do you think I could keep my memory loss a secret if I confided in them?”

“They’re not amateurs. Nobody’s going to send out a company memo saying you’ve lost your mind. Memory,” she corrected, blushing.

Trust Laura to put his worst fear into words.

“Mind will do,” he said wryly. “Technically, amnesia is brain damage.”

“But you’re still Mr. Wizard Genius Guy, right?”

“I don’t know,” he said. His recent answer to everything. “I have journals, detailed journals, but recent ones appear to be missing. I can grasp the process, but I’m wasting time retracing my steps. And that could set my company back by months.”

“Don’t you have other researchers working on the same projects? Do you really think you’re that irreplaceable?”

God help him, he did. His house might be devoid of family photos and childhood memorabilia, but there were enough clues to the scope and nature of his accomplishments to make him both profoundly proud and deeply uneasy. The past few days had taught him how much he had lost.

And how much he had left to lose.

He walked to the window, staring sightlessly out at the street. With his back to her, he said, “I dropped out of MIT when I was twenty. I took a stake from my father to finance my first foray into research, inventing a new technology that increases the amount of information that can be distributed via fiber optics. Before he died, when I was twenty-seven, I was already a multimillionaire. My stock started trading publicly five years ago and my company is currently one of the hottest tech properties on the market. I received a National Medal of Technology for my work on laser surgery. The Pentagon has expressed interest in a nonlethal phaser device we have in development. If we’re going to accept a Department of Defense grant, we can’t afford the slightest doubt about my company’s security or my abilities.”

“You remember all that?” She sounded impressed. Too bad it wasn’t justified.

“No. I read about it on-line. From an ABC News special report and a profile in Newsweek.”

A Google search had yielded 1,378 pages of sources citing his education, inventions, patents and awards—and not a single personal fact beyond his birthdate. He was profoundly alone.

Laura’s eyes narrowed. “At least it wasn’t your obituary.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking. He had a feeling—based entirely on his recent interactions with Quinn and his brother—that not many people teased him.

“Not yet,” he said.

She frowned. “People are going to suspect something if I start hanging around asking questions.”

A flare of hope, of excitement, shot up inside him. She was going to do it. At least, she was considering it.

Simon turned from the window, careful to keep his face and voice neutral. “Not if we give them a plausible reason for your presence.”

“What reason? I’ve been removed from your case.”

There it was. The sixty-four thousand dollar question.

His pulse jumped, an annoying reminder he wasn’t as much in control of himself or the situation as he’d like to be. “We could allow people to believe we have a relationship.”

“A relationship.”

She was back to repeating things. Simon refused to take that as a bad sign. “Yes.”

“A personal relationship,” she clarified.

“Yes.”

“A sexual relationship.”

Not good, he thought.

“That was the idea.”

“Your idea. Not mine.” She got jerkily to her feet. “I wouldn’t even go out with you. Why would I agree to pretend to be your—your…”

“Companion,” he supplied. “And of course you would be compensated.”

Warning flags flew in her cheeks. “Do it for the money?”

“You wouldn’t have to do ‘it.’ Unless of course you wanted to.”

Mistake, he thought instantly. She was already suspicious of his motives. He had to reassure her. Persuade her. Not antagonize her further.

“Please,” he said. “This isn’t simply a matter of questioning company employees. I need someone who might reasonably be expected to have an interest in my personal life. I need a woman.”

“You must know plenty of women.”

“No one I can trust.”

No one he could remember.

No one else he wanted.

He took a step closer, moving in on her carefully. He didn’t want to spook her into saying no. The woman had scruples. Defenses. Pepper spray.

“It won’t work.” Her voice was breathless and distracted.

“What?” He was watching her mouth, distracted himself.

“I can’t help you.”

Another step. “Why not?”

Her hair wasn’t really brown, he decided, but bronze and gold and copper and rust, the colors running together like liquid metal.

“Conflict of interest,” she said.

“What conflict? You’re not investigating me. You’re not even on the case.”

“For good reason.”

Her tension filled the air like static electricity, raising the hair on the back of his neck. “What reason?”

She drew back her head and looked him straight in the eye. “The guard—the missing guard—the one who disappeared the same night as the rubies? He’s my father.”

Simon went as rigid as a fighter absorbing a blow.

No wonder, Laura thought bleakly. She’d just delivered a whammy.

He didn’t crumple. But he did move back a step. “When did you find out?”

She curled her hands into fists to hide their trembling. “When you told me his name.”

“Good to know,” Simon said.

She was shaking with relief and anticlimax. In her experience, men did not respond to damaging personal revelations with calm acknowledgment.

“That’s it? ‘Good to know’?” Her mimicry was savage.

Simon raised his eyebrows. “It certainly helps explain why your chief removed you from the case.”

“Yes, it does,” she said flatly.

She didn’t blame Jarek Denko one bit for yanking her from the investigation. She could accept his reasons. She could abide by his decision. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. She couldn’t shake the feeling that her chief ultimately hadn’t trusted her to do her job. He’d placed a higher value on the appearance of propriety than his belief in her integrity. And it stung.

“Did he do it?” Simon asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Your father,” Simon said patiently. “Do you think he emptied the safe?”

She didn’t know what to think. But she felt, in her bones and her soul, that her father could not be guilty. “No. The man I remember was a hardheaded, ham-handed son of a bitch, but he wasn’t a thief.”

“Fine,” Simon said.

“What do you mean, ‘fine’?”

He shrugged. “If you’re right, there’s no conflict of interest.”

“And if I’m wrong?” She couldn’t believe they were even having this discussion. He should have stormed out by now.

“Would you protect him?”

“Protect my father?”

“Yes. If you found out he was guilty, would you cover up for him or turn him in?” His odd, light eyes were opaque. Laura didn’t have a clue what he was thinking.

“I guess I’d try to talk him into turning himself in,” she said slowly. “But I’d have to know. I want to know.”

Simon nodded. “Then we want the same thing.”

His brain was more rapid than hers. Or maybe, Laura thought with a flash of resentment, his mind was clearer because his emotions weren’t involved.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The truth.” He gave her a thin smile which made her heart beat faster for no reason at all. “We both want the facts. As long as you don’t let your hypothesis stand in the way of our reaching a logical conclusion, there’s no reason we can’t work together.”

“How can you trust me?” The words burst out of her.

“Have you lied to me?”

“No, but—”

“No.”

“But Dan—the detective assigned to the case—is operating on the assumption that my father did it.”

“And you are operating on the assumption that he didn’t.”

“Pretty much.”

“I can accept your assumption,” Simon said slowly. “As long as you can accept the possibility of his guilt.”

Everything inside her recoiled.

But Simon’s offer was fair. More than fair. He trusted her to do the right thing. And that meant almost as much to her as the chance to clear the old man.

“You do have one advantage over Palmer in this case,” Simon said.

“Because I knew my father?”

“That, of course,” Simon agreed coolly. “But also because, as the woman in my life, people will talk to you. You have the inside track.”

She was trapped. Tempted. Torn. “Nobody is going to believe that I’m the woman in your life.”

“My brother already does.”

“Your brother was trying to annoy you.”

He didn’t deny it.

Laura scowled. “Anyway, nobody else will.”

Simon’s austere face never changed expression. But there was a brief flash of—something—in his eyes that made her shiver. Triumph?

“Then we’ll have to do our best to convince them.” He bent his head.

Her heart pounded. He was going to kiss her again. Unless she jumped out of range, unless she said no, unless she told him firmly and flatly he was out of his mind and she had no intention of going along with his schemes, he was going to kiss her.

She didn’t move.

“This is a really bad idea,” she said.

Simon stopped, his mouth a whisper away. “It’s a kiss. Just one kiss. To seal our bargain.”

She hadn’t agreed to any bargain. But one kiss… She swayed toward him. How big a deal could one kiss be?

His mouth brushed hers, softly, gently, warmly. He smelled delicious, like cool sheets and hot male, and he tasted even better. He pressed his lips to hers, still gently, still warmly, without urgency and with only a hint of tongue. And she realized, with an odd sense of abandoning herself to her fate, that one kiss wasn’t going to be enough.

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