Unforgettable

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to the babies: Myranda Sequoia Adams, Matthew Eugene Goepfert and Ashleigh Morgan Edwards—last, but not least—with my love.

And to Debra Matteucci, Bonnie Crisalli and Barbara White-Rayczek, the kind of editors who help a writer keep the faith. Thank you.

And to my very first official fan, Cindi Loudermilk.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

The scene shimmered and blurred and then came into focus. There was a road that seemed to go on forever and along the side, a sign.

She tried to read the sign but found her vision too blurred to make sense of the letters. She looked around.

There was a twisted tree near the sign and its branches brushed the ground like fingers searching for hold. Stacy felt herself walking along the road, could feel the gravel crunching beneath her feet, smelled the goldenrod waving in the breeze. But when she looked down at herself, she couldn’t see her body, nor the feet that trod the road. She turned in a circle. Turned, turned, turned. Dizziness. She fell and in the falling...

* * *

STACY GRASPED the next rung of the ladder and laid her forehead against her hand. One, two, three... She lifted her head, forcing herself to focus. She was in her own studio, standing on a ladder, a long-handled, paint-laden brush in her hand, working on her latest painting, a huge, detailed landscape created from the watercolor studies she’d done on-site the previous summer. She slid down the ladder on rubbery legs and stuck the brush in a can of turpentine before she stumbled over to the old davenport across the room beneath the wall of windows. Warm sunlight caressed her hair, and she waited for it to obliterate the chill that seemed to form from within even as she wiped the dampness of perspiration from her face with the paint-stained rag she kept in her overalls pocket.

There was a phone on a wobbly three-legged table next to the sofa. When it rang, she jumped. She leaned to the side and grabbed the receiver, knocking the table over in the process.

She swore vehemently as she bent to retrieve the table and almost dropped the phone.

“A simple hello would do it for me,” her agent, Beth Harri, drawled.

“That’s how I’d feel about a simple goodbye,” Stacy retorted.

“Don’t hang up, Stacy,” Beth shouted as Stacy was about to do just that.

Sighing heavily, she put the receiver back to her ear. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Go!”

“I got you a show and they want to hang a dozen of your paintings and a couple of dozen studies and watercolors and you’re booked for the third of December and that means you’ll get the big holiday play in the press as well as the street traffic and—”

“Whoa!” Stacy interrupted. She sat back and stared at the receiver. Gingerly she returned it to her ear, a doubtful expression on her face. “Start over. Slow.”

Beth repeated her good news, slowly, happily enunciating every word.

“The third of December?” Stacy counted under her breath, using her fingers. “That’s nine months away.”

“Are you saying you can’t turn in a measly dozen paintings in nine months?”

Stacy frowned. “I have six finished and one on its way. I guess they’ll be dry by then.” She looked over at the unfinished seventh and shook her head. “I don’t know, Beth. Maybe if I did the last five in acrylic.”

“Do it. I’ve been telling you for years, acrylic is as compelling and expressive in its own way. You’re just addicted to the smell of turpentine.”

“I know. If I go without it for a couple of days, I start seeing things.” Another chill shook her as she recalled the strange vision she’d had. She had to force herself to concentrate on what Beth was saying.

“Hey, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you paint some of those things you see, we could offer them up as ‘fantasies of a turp-starved artist.’”

They shared laughter, Stacy’s a bit shaky.

“Hey, Stace, what’s the matter? You don’t sound as thrilled as I expected.”

It began to sink in. This was the big career push she’d worked so hard for, for so many years. And Beth had worked just as hard, always believing in Stacy’s talent.

Beth deserved a better reaction than she’d given her.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Stacy put her legs up under her, tailor fashion, and leaned against the couch cushions. She curled a lock of her red hair around her finger.

“So, Harri, how about we do the big celebration number. You can buy since you’re going to be coming into this whopping commission in December.”

“When can we stop pretending that I’m rich and you’re broke?” Beth whined.

Stacy laughed, unremorseful. “C’mon, Beth, we both know you’re sleeping on a fortune. When are you going to get up off that mattress and take the stuff to the bank?”

“If I do that, then everyone will know what I’m actually worth,” Beth said slyly.

Stacy laughed. “I knew it. Wait till I tell the gang.”

“Okay,” Beth grumbled, “I’ll treat. And you, Stacy, you keep your mouth shut and try to show up in something besides overalls.”

They set a time and place. As she hung up, still chuckling, Stacy glanced again at the landscape on the opposite wall. The remnants of humor faded from her face and she stared, puzzled, at the painting. Something was out of synch. She unfolded her legs and got up to go to her easel. The studies she’d done were taped along the sides of the tall, studio-style wooden easel. She glanced from study to painting and back again.

All of a sudden she snapped her fingers. “There it is!” She tore the study from the easel and carried it up the ladder. There was no doubt about it, the painting on the wall was slowly changing, no longer a copy of the watercolor sketch. She’d remained true to the colors but added things that weren’t there. Like a gnarled tree alongside the road, and from the highest branch...

“What is that?” She leaned forward, touching thick wet paint. “A rope?” She slid down the ladder, still clutching the watercolor, and bounded across the room to get perspective on the oil painting.

It was a rope! It dangled from the limb, but she had a sense that it was about to be knotted into a noose. And she had put it there.

“Why?” She frowned. “And when?” Her words, spoken aloud, seemed to echo in the quiet studio.

A tremor of fear swept over her skin and she staggered back to the couch.

Had someone come into her studio and played a practical joke? Was she losing her mind? She rubbed her arms and stared at the painting. It had to be one or the other, because she couldn’t remember making those changes.

Suddenly she snatched up the phone and tapped out a number.

“Kelly here,” a male voice answered.

“Millman here, and I don’t think you’re very funny, Jack! I would have thought even you would be too mature to stoop to messing with another artist’s work.”

“Whoa! What’s this all about? Someone’s done something to your work?”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“Wait a minute, Stacy. I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stacy’s breath went out of her like a balloon deflating, and she realized that she’d actually been praying this was all part of a prank played by one of her friends. Given Jack Kelly’s propensity for practical jokes, he’d been the likeliest suspect.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Her voice had lost its fervor.

“You wanna tell me what’s happened, Stacy?”

She thought about telling him, and realized that it was going to make her sound like she was losing it. She tried forming the words in her mind. Someone or something has been making changes in my painting and I have no memory of doing it myself.

She’d just as soon tell him about the strange dreams she’d been having of late.

“Forget it, Jack, it’s nothing. Really.”

“Come on, Stacy, you didn’t call me up ready to hang me from the nearest tree for nothing.”

Stacy gasped. Had his choice of words been deliberate?

“What does that mean?” she snapped.

“Look, we’re not on the same wavelength today. Maybe you want to hang up and call me back and start over.” His injured tone sounded sincere.

“No, thanks. Sorry I bothered you, Jack.”

She hung up the phone and closed her eyes, taking long, even breaths. When she opened them, the rope and the gnarled tree would be gone and she’d be able to attribute the whole scary thing to exhaustion.

But when she opened her eyes, the changes in the painting were still there. If anything, they seemed brighter, more dominating than before.

She jumped to her feet and snatched up her brush. “I’ll paint them out!” She climbed to the scaffolding, muttering affirmations as she went.

“It’s just one of those things that happen in such a large painting. However they got here, this is my painting. I’m in control, and they’ve got to go.”

She worked feverishly for hours, continuously reminding herself of the goal at the end of the year. Her own show, a chance to move her work and her name into the mainstream. Her pictures hanging in the homes of well-known art collectors and distinguished museums, feature articles on her work in the leading artists magazines.

The sun was just dawning through the windows on the east side of her studio when she stumbled down the ladder and, unable to summon up the strength to go to her bedroom, toppled onto the couch where she fell instantly asleep.

* * *

BETH HARRI made a last check in her compact mirror, tucking a stray blond wisp behind her ear and removing a tinge of lipstick from the corner of her mouth with her little finger. She was just replacing the compact in her Gucci bag when she spied Stacy getting out of a taxi at the curb in front of the garden café.

“It’s about time,” she called over the hedge that lined the sidewalk, “you’re only twenty minutes la...” Her sentence trailed away in a gasp of horror as Stacy turned full face toward her.

Clenching her fists in her lap, she waited until Stacy had seated herself at the table before leaning forward to whisper urgently, “What the hell has happened to you?”

Beth rested one fist on the tabletop, and Stacy placed her hand over it, pleading for Beth to calm down. Stacy’s hand was cold as ice.

“It’s nothing, Beth. I’ve just been working too hard.”

Beth stared at her friend, speechless for a moment. When she found her voice it was hoarse with anxiety.

“You’ve got almost nine months till the show, Stacy. Why would you be pushing yourself to the point of looking like a...”

Stacy’s laugh was a short bark of self-derision. “Like a ghost?”

“Or like you’ve seen one. Have you been sleeping? Eating? You look as though you’ve lost twenty pounds.”

“Eight. No big deal. And yes, I’ve been sleeping. Only...”

“Yes? Only?” When Beth leaned forward she could smell turpentine on Stacy, though for once her friend and client was wearing regular street clothes rather than her usual paint-stained overalls. Her nose twitched at the smell.

She might have commented at the odor but then Stacy’s composure gave way. Her mouth twisted wryly and her eyes widened as if she were seeing some horrific vision. Tears slid from them as though they’d been bottled up just behind the lids and waiting for this very moment to pour forth.

Beth reached into her bag for tissues and handed them across the table to Stacy. “Do you want to go to the ladies’ room?” she asked in a whisper.

Stacy mopped at her eyes and nose and shook her head. “Just give me a minute, Beth. I have so much to tell you and I want to think about how to start.” Her tears seemed to be abating. “How about ordering me a gin and tonic.”

Stacy was in control by the time the waiter brought her drink. After a healthy swallow of it, she began to enlighten Beth as to what had passed in the last few weeks.

“I thought I had painted all of the changes out,” she said, “but when I woke up the next afternoon, not only were they still there, but other things had been added.” She reached for her drink and took another gulp, barely noticing when Beth raised her hand to signal to the waiter for another round.

“Other things?” Beth prompted.

Stacy’s eyes were huge and round. “Another rope alongside the first one, and further into the painting a doll lying on a path and moonlight streaming down onto the path. Th-there was a group of men standing beneath the tree. And Beth...they...they had no faces.” She shuddered and drank from her glass again.

“Wait a minute,” Beth ordered. “Isn’t that painting a day scene as all the others are?”

Stacy’s voice cracked. “Yes. But the moonlight is in the interior of the painting, as if time had changed from the beginning edge to that point.”

Beth sat silent and thoughtful for a moment and Stacy automatically began on her second drink.

Finally she asked, “Have you had someone else look at the painting, dear?”

Stacy’s mouth fell open. “You mean as in ‘Maybe you’re imagining the whole thing, dear’?”

“No...no of course not,” Beth protested. “I only meant—”

“Listen, Beth, it isn’t only the painting.”

Beth waited, afraid of making another mistake with Stacy. “Go on,” she said, softly.

“I’ve been having dreams that wake me up in a cold sweat. And visions.”

“Visions?”

“You know, like daydreams, only they usually happen when I’m painting. When I come out of them, I’m dizzy and disoriented and totally wiped out.”

“Have you seen a doctor?” Beth was already searching her bag for her address book and pen. “I can give you my doctor’s number. He’s—”

“No!” Stacy took a breath and lowered her voice. “It’s not physical, Beth, I’m sure of that.”

“Honey, it’s obviously affecting your health.”

Stacy’s chin took on a familiar jut of defiance. “I don’t have time for tests and examinations, Beth. This is something I have to nip in the bud as quickly as I can.” Her voice cracked again. “I can’t go on like this.”

Beth’s common sense took hold and she sat back, her own chin lifted in a businesslike manner.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s look at your options.”

Stacy took a small sip of her drink this time and nodded.

“First, you can see a psychiatrist, in case this is some kind of little breakdown.” She ignored Stacy’s gesture of refusal and pushed on. “Or maybe this is actually some kind of occult thing...like, oh, you know, possession. In which case you could see someone at the Psychic Institute.”

“A ghostbuster?” Stacy’s laughter came out a gurgle.

“Or,” Beth continued, giving her friend a frown of disapproval, “something from your past is trying to break through and you could see a hypnotist.”

She stopped, waiting for another snort of derision from Stacy, but this time Stacy’s eyes widened with surprise and she sat back and put her hands to her mouth.

“Well?”

“I think you’re onto something, Beth,” Stacy said, lowering her hands slowly. “One of the things that happened last week is that I came across an envelope addressed to my mother. It was at the back of a drawer and the envelope was empty. But it had a clear postmark, dated 1969, from a place called Hunter’s Bay, Minnesota.”

“Hunter’s Bay? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Neither have I. But though my mother refused to ever tell me about her past, or mine, she did tell me that I was born in Minnesota.” She leaned toward Beth again, moving her place setting out of her way. “The strange thing is, when I took a magnifying glass up to the painting, I saw that I’d printed in the letters HUN on the signpost by the roadside.”

“Before or after you found the envelope?”

“Before.”

They shared a moment of troubled musing and then Beth said, “I think you should go there.”

“To Hunter’s Bay?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t just up and leave my work to go to a strange place to look for...what?”

“The answer to whatever is trying to break through your subconscious. And as for your work, you do all your studies on-site with watercolor. We’re three days from May. From what little I know of Minnesota, you ought to be able to find some gorgeous springtime landscape environments there. You can combine your painting with a little detective work. If all else fails, it seems to me it would be good for you to get away from your studio for a while.”

“My studio? Why?”

“Because that’s where you’re having these...episodes. Think about it, Stacy. It’s just possible that it’s your studio, and not you, that’s haunted.”

* * *

THE DRIVE NORTHWEST had been uneventful. Stacy took her time, enjoying the changing of the season in the various states through which she passed. At times she’d leave her car at the side of the road to snap pictures of scenery with her camera. She stopped when the driving became tiring and stayed in motels, prolonging her arrival at her final destination. The drive was so free of the visions and her sleep so undisturbed by dreams, that she hated to leave the serenity of the road.

But by the fourth day, she realized she was only wasting time, putting off the inevitable, and since her map showed her destination only four hours’ drive from the motel where she’d spent the night, she couldn’t justify delaying any longer.

A last glance in the bathroom mirror before she checked out assured her that the meals she’d eaten en route and the restful night hours had restored her to her natural healthy look. Her red hair was shiny and bouncy and her green eyes clear as spring water. The pasty look was gone from her face and she even appeared to have put back a few of her lost pounds.

She settled behind the wheel with a sigh of satisfaction. Perhaps Beth had been right. The feeling of being haunted was gone. And if indeed her studio contained some presence from beyond, she didn’t have to worry about that until she returned from her trip.

She reached the outskirts of St. Paul feeling hungry and only a little bottom sore. She checked her map and decided this was a good place to stop for breakfast.

“About two hours to Hunter’s Bay,” the waitress told her as she refilled Stacy’s coffee cup. “You going to visit family?”

Family. Almost a foreign concept to Stacy, who couldn’t remember anything about her father and who had been raised by a silent, aloof mother who had died two years before, leaving no hint of any relatives anywhere.

“No. I’m on a little traveling vacation.”

“You got lucky. We’re having a really early spring for Minnesota.”

Stacy laughed. “I know. Everyone told me to bring woollies, but so far I haven’t needed more than a sweater in the early mornings and late evenings.”

“Yeah, well, hang on to those woollies, though. Around here we could just as easily meet with a blizzard next week as anything else.”

The threat of bad weather aside, Stacy finished the last lap of her journey with an air of optimism. She found a classical station on her radio and was humming along with Vivaldi when she turned off Highway 61 onto a ramp that swung toward the river.

The road went uphill for a short stretch and then fell away to reveal a town nestled around a bay that led out to the river. For a moment she felt as if she’d ended up back on the East Coast, in one of the many small Colonial-imprinted New England towns. And then she looked to her right and saw a huge gnarled tree at the road’s edge. The shape and size were so familiar that Stacy felt a surge of the old dizziness take hold. She clung to the wheel, pushing repeatedly at her brakes as a road sign came into her view. She saw the letters HUN and then her vision blurred and she lost control completely.

* * *

WHEN SHE CAME TO, she was in an unfamiliar room. She squinted to clear her vision and saw a group of people surrounding the bed upon which she lay. A man in a white coat with a stethoscope dangling from his neck. Obviously a doctor. Beside him, a young, pretty woman also dressed in white. A nurse. Stacy didn’t need the smell of medications to tell her she was in a hospital.

She turned her head slightly, wincing at the pain at the back of her neck. There were two men and two women, all elderly, to the right of the bed and at the foot, a man in a sheriff’s uniform.

“She’s come to,” one of the women whispered.

“Shh,” someone else muttered.

“Hello there,” the doctor said, taking Stacy’s wrist in his hand. “I’m Dr. Farbish. Do you know where you are?”

Stacy made the mistake of shaking her head. “N-no,” she said, cringing at another onslaught of pain. She put her hand to the back of her neck. “Hurts.”

“Yes. You gave yourself a slight whiplash, but I didn’t find any other signs of trauma. No broken bones or such.”

He lifted her eyelids and put a light to her eyes. She could smell his after-shave and a hint of tobacco. She wanted to comment but couldn’t summon the humor.

“Do you know your name?” Dr. Farbish asked.

“Anastasia. But everyone calls me Stacy. Stacy Millman.”

A murmur came from her right. Stacy blinked and tried to focus on the faces of the older people who had gathered in her room.

A movement from the foot of the bed caught her attention as the sheriff shifted to catch her eye.

“I’m Derek Chancelor, sheriff of this county. I found your car just outside Hunter’s Bay and brought you in.”

“Did I hit someone?” Stacy asked.

The sheriff scratched his head and then shook it. “Nope. You didn’t hit anyone and your car isn’t damaged. About the only thing disturbed was the signpost you knocked down, and we can right that easily enough. But you must have thrown on your brakes awfully hard to have given your neck such a twist.”

Stacy stared at the young sheriff, a man of about her age, who, she suddenly realized, was terrifically good-looking. He had thick blond hair cut short in the back but long enough on top to fall over his brow in a careless wave. His eyes were cerulean blue and his complexion that ruddy gold that came from spending a lot of time outdoors in all kinds of weather.

He cleared his throat, distracting her from her preoccupation with his looks, and she felt herself grow warm with embarrassment. Would he believe she’d been staring at him with an artist’s eye, or was he used to women reacting foolishly to his vibrant masculinity?

“I...I’m sorry,” she stammered, putting her hand to her head as if she were confused. “What did you say?”

“I was just commenting on the force with which you hit that sign. It was cemented into the ground.”

The memory of the painting in her studio flashed into Stacy’s mind. She remembered the way it had stood up in the first version and then, a couple of days later, she’d discovered that she’d repainted it, lying on its side. A chill ran up her spine and she pulled the bed sheet up to her chin.