“We’re not husband and wife, are we?

You don’t even know my name. You never once called me by name. You don’t know any more about me than I do.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Eden said.

“Yeah, I trusted you. That was my mistake. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t call the cops last night when I stumbled in here. Why is that? What is it you’re after?”

“Look, give me the gun, and we’ll talk about it.”

Until he knew differently, he had to assume Eden was his enemy, an enemy from whom he needed answers. But this was a dangerous place to try to get them. He needed somewhere that was safe until he figured out what to do. Where? That’s when he remembered the painting above the fireplace.

He was getting out of here, going to that isolated houseboat on the river—and he was taking her with him.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

Those April showers go hand in hand with a welcome downpour of gripping romantic suspense in the Harlequin Intrigue line this month!

Reader-favorite Rebecca York returns to the legendary 43 LIGHT STREET with Out of Nowhere—an entrancing tale about a beautiful blond amnesiac who proves downright lethal to a hard-edged detective’s heart. Then take a detour to New Mexico for Shotgun Daddy by Harper Allen—the conclusion in the MEN OF THE DOUBLE B RANCH trilogy. In this story a Navajo protector must safeguard the woman from his past who is nurturing a ticking time bomb of a secret.

The momentum keeps building as Sylvie Kurtz launches her brand-new miniseries—THE SEEKERS—about men dedicated to truth, justice…and protecting the women they love. But at what cost? Don’t miss the debut book, Heart of a Hunter, where the search for a killer just might culminate in rekindled love. Passion and peril go hand in hand in Agent Cowboy by Debra Webb, when COLBY AGENCY investigator Trent Tucker races against time to crack a case of triple murder!

Rounding off a month of addictive romantic thrillers, watch for the continuation of two new thematic promotions. A handsome sheriff saves the day in Restless Spirit by Cassie Miles, which is part of COWBOY COPS. Sudden Recall by Jean Barrett is the latest in our DEAD BOLT series about silent memories that unlock simmering passions.

Enjoy all of our great offerings.

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Sudden Recall
Jean Barrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If setting has anything to do with it, Jean Barrett claims she has no reason not to be inspired. She and her husband live on Wisconsin’s scenic Door Peninsula in an antique-filled country cottage overlooking Lake Michigan. A teacher for many years, she left the classroom to write full-time. She is the author of a number of romance novels.

Write to Jean at P.O. Box 623, Sister Bay, WI 54234. SASE appreciated.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Eden Hawke—She is prepared to risk anything to get her son back, including the man without a past.

Shane—He is on the run and with no memory. Can he trust the alluring P.I., or is she another threat to him?

Tia—Eden’s friend is worried about her.

Nathanial—Is Eden’s son still alive? If so, what became of him after he vanished three years ago?

Roy—The caretaker is unwilling to tell what he knows.

Harriet Krause—The lab technician is frightened. What is she hiding?

Bruno and Boris—Whatever their actual names might be, the two brutes are both dangerous and desperate.

Lissie Reardon—She is prepared to sacrifice everything, including her life.

Charles Moses—Eden had once loved him, but now he’s her enemy.

Irene Moses—The daughter of Sebastian Jamison is as shallow as she is beautiful.

Claire Jamison—What family secret is Sebastian’s elegant but ruthless widow determined to protect?

Estelle and Victor DuBois—They are valuable friends, but how far are they willing to go to help Eden and Shane?

To my good friends Bev, Jane and Kathy. You’re the tops.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

A special thank you to Judy Scrimpsher, R.N.,

for sharing her medical knowledge.

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

Whatever it was, it was vital. Something he had lost and had to recover before it was too late. That part was clear, though nothing else was.

He wished his head would stop hurting. If only he could achieve that much, ease the throbbing inside his skull, he was certain he would remember just what it was he was trying to find.

Then a new thought struck him. Maybe it wasn’t a something from which he had been separated but a someone. Could that be right? Yes, he was sure of it now. Someone was waiting for him, someone who needed him. Or was it the other way around? Was he the one in need?

In his confusion he wasn’t absolutely certain of anything, only that he had to get there. Wherever there was. He was so disoriented he had no idea what this place was or how he’d gotten here. Neither the hour nor the weather were his allies.

It was late, sometime in the middle of the night. He could sense that much. And there was water off to his right. A river, he thought. He could see lights on the other side, and more lights off to his left. Between them was this strip of darkness along which he had been wandering. For how long he didn’t know.

A parkway, he decided. That was the explanation for the grassy strip. He was alone and on foot along some city parkway. A wind blew off the river, cold and wet, pelting him with needles of rain. He wasn’t dressed for the weather. Drawing the collar of his light jacket up around his neck, he turned and moved away from the biting exposure of the broad river.

That’s when he realized that more than his head was hurting. His whole body was sore, aching with the effort of each step. Had he been in an accident?

He came to a wide boulevard where the traffic at this hour was light. On the other side were the glowing lights of what looked like a convenience store, one of those places that never closed.

They would have aspirin in there. If he could get some aspirin inside him, relieve the stabbing inside his head, he was confident his brain would find the answers he was searching for.

He shuffled across the thoroughfare, and into the store. The light was dazzling after the darkness outside. It took him a moment to adjust to the glare. Then he saw that the store was deserted except for him and a young attendant at the checkout counter talking on her cell phone.

He found the aspirin at the rear of the store. There was bottled water nearby. He took both the aspirin and a bottle of water up to the checkout.

“Customer,” the attendant said into her phone. “Gotta go.”

She ended her call and turned her attention in his direction. There was a startled expression on her face when she looked at him. It puzzled him for a second, and then he remembered how wet he was from the rain. He must look as if he’d fallen into the river.

He placed his purchases on the counter and reached for his wallet in his back pants pocket. There was no wallet, not in that pocket or anywhere else on him. Had he been robbed? The young woman was staring at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Forgot something.”

He left the aspirin and water on the counter and retreated down one of the aisles. When he was out of sight of the checkout area, he stopped and searched again through all his pockets, trying not to panic, trying to understand.

But there were no funds on him anywhere, not in his pants, his shirt or in his jacket. No money, no credit cards and no identification. Nothing at all.

In desperation he clutched at the sides of his jacket. And that’s when he felt it. Something deep down inside the lining. His hand plunged again into the lower left pocket, this time finding a tear in one corner. His fingers dug through the opening, fished around, and finally closed around two small rectangles of thick paper.

Not concerning himself with how they had gotten there, whether they had slipped down into the lining by accident or whether they had been deliberately concealed there, he hoped only that they would tell him who he was and what was happening to him, if not why. He withdrew his discoveries.

One was a photograph of a young, solemn-faced boy. He didn’t recognize the child, and there was no writing on the back. There was printing on the other rectangle. A dog-eared business card. Hawke Detective Agency, it said. Under that, beside the emblem of a golden hawk, was a name and address. Eden Hawke, 99 Mead Street, Charleston. There were also a phone number and an address.

None of it triggered any memories. None of it meant anything to him. But it was all he had, and he suddenly knew that he had to go to the address on this card. That it must be the place he was seeking, and that there was someone there waiting for him.

A phone. He remembered seeing a pay phone in a corner at the back of the store. He had no money to place a call, nor any wish to make that kind of contact. No desire to do anything but reach that address. But first he had to locate it. Public phones were accompanied by city directories, and directories had maps in them. A map that could tell him how to get to 99 Mead Street.

Providing, that is, this was Charleston he was in and not some other city far away. And why didn’t he know? Never mind, he promised himself as he moved down the aisle toward the phone. It would all get sorted out.

There was a display of sunglasses with a small mirror at eye level, to see what the glasses looked like on you. He caught a glimpse of himself as he started past the display. Coming to a stop, he peered into the mirror, shocked by his image.

No wonder he was in pain and that the attendant had been jolted by the sight of him. The unrecognizable face that stared back at him looked like a battleground. One eye was bruised and so swollen it was half shut, his bottom lip split open, a raw wound on the bridge of his nose, blood smeared on his cheek.

Something had happened to him out there all right. Something very bad. No time to wonder about it. Later. He had to get to Mead Street.

Backing away from the mirror, he went on to the phone. A directory was attached to it by a chain. The cover under the heavy black binding told him what he needed to know. He was in Charleston, South Carolina. The street map inside the directory provided him with the location of Mead Street.

He would need the map. Tearing it out of the directory, he folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket along with the business card and the photograph.

He had to get out of the store before that attendant got nervous and called the cops. Maybe she already had. He didn’t want the police, didn’t consider asking the attendant for help, either with medical assistance or directions. He wasn’t sure why, but instinct told him there was a potential danger in this situation that he had to avoid.

He left the store, head lowered, and went out into the wild blackness of the night. There was a street sign on the corner. He read it and then checked the map under the streetlight. Mead Street was twelve blocks from this corner. Not far, but light-years away in this weather and in his condition. But he would manage it. Somehow.

It was a struggle. The wind had risen again, blasting rain into his face. In several places he stumbled over limbs that the storm had torn from the trees. He fell once and fought the temptation to just lie there and forget he must be oozing blood and that every step was agony. Picking himself up was an effort, moving on an ordeal. But he did it.

There were few people out in this weather, and at this hour the traffic almost nonexistent. A cab did pass by. If only he could have hailed it. He couldn’t. He had no money for a taxi.

There was another car that made him melt into an alley. A police cruiser. He didn’t know why he should fear it, but a sense of self-preservation had him blindly doing just that. He wasn’t challenged, which meant they probably hadn’t spotted him. The cruiser turned the corner and disappeared.

He emerged from the alley and went on, driven by an urgency he didn’t understand. He was worried, too. Worried that he wouldn’t make it, because both his head and his leg were hurting like hell. He was limping badly and so weak and dazed that he had trouble with his bearings.

Where was he now? How far had he come? He wasn’t sure, but it looked as if he was in an historic district. There were rows of vintage houses, most of them shuttered and all of them crowded to the edges of the brick sidewalks.

Mead Street. He saw the sign for it by the gleam of an old lantern on a post. He was almost there. Dragging himself along the length of the street, he searched the numbers and came at last to ninety-nine.

With a white frame and a narrow face, it was one of those Charleston structures known as a single house. The kind with a fanlighted door at one end of its front wall that opened onto a piazza at the side of the building. He didn’t know how he knew this, but it seemed that he did.

There was a brass plate on the door and sufficient light from a nearby street lantern to permit him to read it. He was so spent by now, so light-headed from his exertions, that he almost passed out when he leaned down from his considerable height to peer at the lettering. Steadying himself, he focused on the plate. Hawke Detective Agency, it said. He had come to the right place.

Why he should trust a private investigator any more than the police, he didn’t know. And what made him think anyone would be here at this hour?

They were questions for which he had no answers. Nor was his mind functioning with any clarity. His head was swimming now. There was only one clear emotion inside it. Relief.

He didn’t bother knocking on the door or looking for a bell, both of which might be loud enough to draw attention to him out here on the street. He didn’t want to risk that. Instead, he reached for the knob and turned it, and since the door was actually a gate and not really a door at all, it was unlocked. Just as he had figured, it opened on a piazza that overlooked a storm-littered garden at the side of the house.

Then he was inside and the door closed behind him. Inside and mercifully safe.

There were a door and windows off the front of the piazza. Probably the agency’s office. The windows were dark. But at the rear of the piazza, where the house turned in a right angle, were lighted windows. He staggered toward their welcoming glow.

He didn’t make it. Halfway along the piazza, his body finally betrayed his determination. Although it felt as though he was collapsing in a silent slow motion, he must have toppled with a crash. Because as he lay there, helpless on the wet bricks, a door banged open and light spilled onto the piazza.

There was the sound of hurrying footsteps, a little cry of alarm, and then he sensed someone kneeling beside him, caught the whiff of a fragrance. A feminine scent that was warm and comforting. Something that made a man want to sink into its sweetness.

He lifted his head and just before he slid into unconsciousness, he managed to plead in a strained, husky voice, “Am I home?”

HE WAS CONSCIOUS again but still so disoriented he was only dimly aware of his surroundings. What was this place? A bedroom apparently, since he felt a firm mattress under him and a warm quilt drawn over his prone figure.

But it was hard to be certain of that since the room was in almost total darkness. The only source of illumination was a thin strip of vertical light, which was the result of a door left slightly ajar somewhere on the other side of the room.

All right, he was in a bedroom. But whose bedroom, and where? He wanted to believe it was his own room, that he belonged here. But he couldn’t be sure of that either.

He hated his confusion. Hated this state of helplessness that prevented him from…what? He didn’t know, but it nagged at him. There was something he was supposed to do, someone he was supposed to see, but he couldn’t recall what or who.

And then he heard it. The sound of voices drifting through the crack where the door was ajar. Two people engaged in a conversation out there in another room. Voices so low that he couldn’t make out their words, only their tones. One of them intense, earnest. The other calm but equally insistent. Her voice.

He recognized it now, remembered its reassurances to him. As soothing as her hands on him, as silken as her scent. It was all right then. If she was here, close by, then he was safe. He could forget all the rest, worry about it later.

He was so damn sore and exhausted that he needed to do just that. The voices droned on and then faded altogether as he drifted back into unconsciousness.

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS, EDEN. It’s wrong. The man should be on his way to the E.R., not stretched out back there in your guest room.”

Eden watched as her friend and neighbor from the apartment upstairs placed her medical supplies back in her bag. There was an expression of pronounced disapproval on Tia’s delicate Asian face.

“He’s not at risk. Didn’t you say it yourself when you patched him up? That someone with a body that fit wouldn’t need a hospital to recover?”

“Well, I shouldn’t have said it. I’m a nurse-practitioner, not a doctor, and if there should be any complications—”

“Then I’ll see to it he has whatever attention is necessary.”

“When?” Tia demanded, revealing a form as dainty as her features when she came to her feet. It was a figure that belied her strength. Tia had demonstrated that robustness, a result of her work with patients twice her size, when she had helped Eden bear her midnight visitor into the guest room where he had been stripped and examined, his wounds treated. All of which Tia had handled skillfully, if unwillingly.

“As soon as he tells me what I have to know,” Eden promised her.

“Let the police question him then. You should have called them right away.”

“And see him taken away?” Eden shook her head obstinately. “No, I won’t risk losing this opportunity. I won’t trust hearing what he has to say from anyone but him personally.”

“Eden, this is reckless. The guy could be dangerous. Probably is dangerous. Stumbling in here out of nowhere like that, no identification on him, absolutely nothing to suggest who he is or where he came from.”

“He won’t hurt me.”

“Why? Just because at the moment he’s too weak to be a threat?”

“No, because my instincts tell me this is a decent man. Couldn’t you hear it in his voice?”

“What I heard were a few mutters that didn’t make sense. But what I saw worries me. Those injuries aren’t the result of some accident. I think he was beaten, brutally beaten. And I’ll tell you something else. He has several old scars on his body, a bad one on his right leg.”

“I noticed.”

“Then those scars should have told you this is someone with a history that might not be so good and that you shouldn’t have him here. Come on, Eden, you’re thinking with your emotions, not your head.”

“Wouldn’t you if you were me and this brought him here?” Her hand went out to the table beside her and snatched up the business card she had found in the jacket of his pocket. Her business card. “And this.” Her other hand closed around the photograph that had accompanied the business card. She could feel the painful longing deep inside her as she gazed down at it. “Nathanial, Tia. He was carrying a picture of Nathanial.”

Tia’s face softened at the mention of Nathanial. “Honey,” she pleaded gently, “be reasonable. Having red-gold hair and a pair of lavender-blue eyes, distinctive as they are, doesn’t make him Nathanial. He was what when he was taken? Less than two years old, right? It’s been almost three years now, and kids change a lot. The boy in that photo could be anyone.”

“It’s Nathanial,” Eden insisted fiercely. “I know it is!”

Because you want it to be. That was what the expression on Tia’s face told her. She knew what her friend was thinking, what all the sympathizers had thought and refrained from saying since Nathanial’s disappearance. That too much time had passed, that she would never recover him, that Nathanial was probably dead.

Let them think it. She knew better. Nathanial was still alive. She had never stopped believing it in all the agonizing weeks after his disappearance, in the months and years that had followed. She had never dared permit herself to believe otherwise, haunted as she was by his loss, frustrated as she was that none of the efforts of the professionals, including her own, had produced any results. But now… Oh, yes, now.

“He’s a link to Nathanial, Tia. Whoever he is and whatever brought him to my door, he’s a link to Nathanial. And however rash you think I’m being, I’m not letting him leave until he tells me what I want to know.”

“You’re vulnerable as long as he’s here. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I’m a mother, Tia,” Eden reminded her. “I’ll do anything to find my son. Anything.”

Tia sighed softly. “Yeah, I guess I can understand that kind of desperation. I just hope you know what you’re doing.” Medical bag in hand, she moved toward the door to the piazza and the outside stairway to her apartment. “The painkiller should have taken full effect by now. My guess is he’ll sleep the night through, but if he should wake up and you need me—”

“I won’t hesitate to call you,” Eden promised, following her friend to the door to see her out.

“I’ll come down tomorrow to check on him. Oh, damn, I just remembered. Quinn is picking me up first thing in the morning. We promised to spend the day with his parents down on Seabrook Island, and if I cancel—”

“Don’t cancel. Go, and stop looking at me like that. It’s not as if I’m entirely on my own. The Davises are just across the garden.”

Tia went, though reluctantly and with last-minute instructions about the patient, which she followed with a promise to phone Eden in the morning before she left with her boyfriend.

Eden was relieved when she was finally able to close and lock the door behind her upstairs neighbor. She shouldn’t have been relieved. She was all alone now with a man she knew nothing about, a stranger who had arrived out of nowhere in the middle of a wild night. There was everything about him to make her apprehensive, but her only fear was that he wouldn’t be able to tell her what she would give her soul to know.

She stood there for a moment in the stillness of the apartment, listening to the sounds of the wind and the rain outside. Then she crossed the parlor and went into the guest room to look in on her patient.

The light from the door she left open was sufficient to reveal the man who lay there, undisturbed by her entrance. She stood beside the bed, gazing down at him, remembering the body concealed now by the quilt that covered his length. It was a tall body, and though it had suffered, it was solidly built, with powerful shoulders, lean hips and long legs. A body that had been conditioned for—

What? She had no way of knowing. That was as much a mystery as the rest of him, including his square-jawed face. “Hard to tell,” Tia had observed when she’d been working on that face, “but there could be something worth looking at under all this battering.”

Restless, he stirred briefly, muttering something in his sleep before he became quiet again. Whatever it was, Eden was unable to understand it. Nothing he had murmured since collapsing on the piazza had been intelligible. Except for those first three words. “Am I home?”

She didn’t know what, if anything, he had meant by them or why at the time she had been so moved at hearing them. Am I home?

Eden mentally embraced those words now, clung to them, because only this way, remembering their poignancy, could she go on convincing herself that she was not making a terrible mistake by keeping this man in her home.

Chapter Two

Eden loved her adopted city. Charleston had so many things to offer, the climate being one of them. Even in midwinter like this, the weather was generally mild. Having grown up in Chicago, she appreciated that.

Last night’s frigid temperature had been an exception. But this morning, early though it still was, the thermometer had climbed to a balmy level that had prompted her to open the door to the garden where the sun was already drying the soaked and sagging vegetation.

Eden could hear the tolling of the bells from Charleston’s historic churches summoning worshipers to Sunday services. It was another thing she enjoyed about the city. Not this morning, however. She was too anxious to be soothed by their restful sounds drifting through the open doorway as she waited for the coffeemaker to finish brewing.

The phone on the kitchen wall rang. She picked it up, knowing it would be Tia, knowing, too, what her friend would immediately ask. She wasn’t wrong.

“Is he awake yet?”

Eden was careful to keep her concern out of her voice. “He’s still sleeping, but after what he must have gone through that’s to be expected, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. You check his vital signs like I showed you?”

“Yes. They’re normal.”

“You want me to come down?”

Eden heard an impatient sound in the background and realized that Tia’s boyfriend was there and not happy about an offer that would delay them. “That’s not necessary. I’ll give him another hour, and if he isn’t conscious by then, I’ll wake him myself.”

“And if you can’t revive him—”

“I’ll call an ambulance. Look, don’t worry. I can handle it. Just go and enjoy your day.”

Eden’s certainty evaporated when she hung up. She was back to wondering again, asking herself the same question that had troubled her since she had last looked in on her patient. Could he have a serious head injury, and was she denying him the treatment he needed by keeping him here?

It was the thought of Nathanial that kept her from reaching for the phone again. Smothering the threat of guilt, she glanced at the coffeemaker, saw that the brew was ready and poured herself a steaming mug. The first few sips steadied her.

Mug in hand, she headed once more for the guest room. Spreading the door inward, she stole quietly into the room. Her silence this time was unnecessary. He was awake.

Apparently sensing her presence, he turned his head on the pillow and gazed at her from a pair of deep brown eyes that were more alert than she would have expected, and far more unsettling. There was something positively intimate in the way they held her gaze.

“Hello,” he said, his voice slow and raspy.

Eden held the mug in front of her, as though she were gripping a weapon. Swallowing nervously, she made the effort to address him with a casualness she was a long way from feeling. “Good morning. How do you feel?”

He frowned, considering her question for a moment before answering her in that husky voice. “Like an eighteen-wheeler rolled over me. I seem to be aching in places I didn’t know I had.”

“Your head?”

“Not inside, but—” He broke off to raise one of his hands to his head. His fingers began to explore the wounds on his face. He looked puzzled when they encountered the bandage across the bridge of his nose. “Your work?”

Eden shook her head. “No, Tia’s from upstairs. She’s a nurse-practitioner.”

“I’ll have to thank Tia.”

“You’ll have to wait to do that. She left for the day.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t remember Tia. Is she one of our friends?”

Eden thought it was an odd thing for him to say. He sounded normal enough otherwise. In fact, he was in a far better state than she could have hoped for, but she experienced a moment of uneasiness. If he was still dazed, not entirely lucid, it could mean he had sustained a head injury after all.

He was looking at her as though waiting for her reassurance. “Well, she’s my friend, anyway. Are you sure you don’t have anything like a headache? Or some dizziness maybe?”

“Not this morning, no.”

She fought the need to ask him about Nathanial, why he had been carrying a photograph of a child she was convinced was her son along with her business card, both of which were tucked now into her purse for safekeeping. But an interrogation like that would be insensitive when his well-being had to be their immediate concern. Her urgent questions would have to wait.

“Does that mean you did have a headache last night? That you experienced dizziness?”

“I suppose so,” he said vaguely.

“You had quite a lump on the back of your skull. The swelling went down after Tia applied ice packs.”

“That’s good.”

He didn’t seem troubled by any of it, but Eden was beginning to be worried for him. How could he be so blithe about everything? His behavior under the circumstances didn’t seem altogether rational. “Do you remember last night at all? How you found your way here and passed out on the piazza?”

“Sure I do. I had a hell of a time getting here.”

“What happened to you? How did you get those injuries?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Eden’s uneasiness was beginning to deepen into alarm.

“I remember everything from the time I found myself wandering out there beside a river, but not before that.”

“Nothing?”

He pondered her earnest question for a few seconds and then shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“What about before last night? You must remember something.”

He thought about it again. “Sorry. It’s all a blank.”

Eden stared down at him, shaken by the realization of his condition. He had no memory. No past. “Are you telling me,” she asked him slowly, “that you don’t know who you are? That you’re suffering from amnesia?”

He lifted his head from the pillow, his wide mouth offering her a smile. It was a smile that was both reassuring and unexpectedly sensual. “Don’t worry about it. Now that I’m back, everything will be fine. You can tell me all about us, everything I need to know. I’ll listen, and it’ll come back to me. Even exactly what happened to me last night. That coffee smells good,” he said cheerfully, indicating the mug she was clutching. “Do you think I could have a cup?”

He couldn’t know it, but he had just given her exactly what she craved at this moment—an opportunity to escape his presence long enough to recover from her astonishment, to collect her bewildered thoughts.

“Of course,” she said.

Eden fled from the room. It wasn’t until she reached the kitchen that she realized her hand bearing the coffee mug was trembling. She set the mug on the counter and drew a steadying breath before making an effort to deal with her confusion.

He had amnesia. That was frustrating enough right there, because if he couldn’t remember who he was, how could he possibly tell her anything about Nathanial? Even more puzzling, he had somehow gotten the idea into his head that they knew each other, that she could tell him all about himself. She couldn’t begin to imagine why.

What was she going to do about him? The answer was an obvious one. If he needed professional help, and it was beginning to look as though he did, then she had an obligation to surrender him to the people who were equipped to handle this kind of thing. Except she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Not just yet. Not until she tried to find some way to unlock his memory.

Because you are professional help. That’s exactly what a private investigator is supposed to do, deal with people’s troubles.

She was arguing herself into something that was morally questionable, and she knew it. But she couldn’t help herself. She had to have those answers about Nathanial.

Her patient was waiting for his coffee. She filled a mug, then hesitated. Did he take it black or white? With sweetener or without? No way of knowing if he even remembered that much. She put the mug on a small tray and placed a spoon, sugar bowl and container of milk beside it.

He presented a disturbing sight when she returned to the guest room with the tray. He had propped himself up against the headboard in her absence, displaying an expanse of naked male flesh he seemed in no way self-conscious about.

Eden had viewed that hard body last night when she and Tia had examined him and attended to his injuries. But that had been an impersonal thing. Now, though, with him awake and aware of her standing there…

She tried not to gape at the powerful chest whose allure was not diminished by its several scars as she set the tray on the bedside table. Ignoring the sugar and milk as though they didn’t exist, he reached for the mug and brought it to his mouth. She watched him drink the coffee in eager gulps. There was something strangely mesmerizing in the way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his strong, corded throat as he swallowed.

“Ah, that’s better,” he said, lowering the mug. Leaning toward her, he sniffed the air, then demanded abruptly, “What is it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The scent you’re wearing. I don’t remember that either, just the whiffs of it I caught last night when you were helping me and my thinking how much I liked it. Something floral, huh?”

“Lily of the Valley.”

“Nice,” he said, putting the mug back on the tray.

Before she could back away from the side of the bed, he reached out, wrapping his big hand around her own hand and dragging it up to his face. Turning it over, he buried his nose into the back of her wrist, inhaling deeply.

“Yeah, very nice,” he growled softly.

Eden was so startled that she failed to react. Failed to stop him when his bold mouth covered the place where his nose had been. He planted a warm kiss on her wrist, the tip of his tongue caressing its vulnerable pulse point. The action was so unexpected, and so instantly tantalizing, that a jolt of electricity raced up her arm. Gasping, she snatched her hand away from his provocative assault.

He chuckled. “What’s the matter? Can’t a man nuzzle his own wife?”

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“Nothing, just that I was appreciating how my wife smells.” He laughed again. “Among other things.”

Eden stared down at him, so stunned that she was speechless. This was incredible, much more involved than just his impression they knew each other. He thought he was her husband! That they were actually married!

Tell him. Why aren’t you telling him?

Eden didn’t know what was holding her back from immediately and emphatically correcting his mistaken belief. Or was it that she didn’t want to know, because a remorseless little voice was already telling her that she could take advantage of this situation? Unthinkable! How could she even consider it? And yet…

“Do you suppose I could have some breakfast to go with this coffee? I’d fix it for myself if I remembered where things are.”

Eden managed to find her voice then, shaky though it was. “Do you think you’re well enough to eat?”

“My insides tell me I am.” Demonstrating his rapid recovery, he swung his long legs over the side of the bed and eased himself to his feet. To her relief, he kept the quilt wound around his hips. “See? Perfectly steady. Now, if you could point me to my clothes…”

She nodded in the direction of the adjoining bathroom. “In there. I laundered and folded them for you.”

What if he asked for a change of outfit? Clothing he hadn’t been wearing last night? What would she tell him? But he accepted her choice without question.

She watched him, making certain that he was capable of reaching the bathroom without her assistance. When the door closed behind him, she picked up the tray and retreated from the bedroom.

Her brain couldn’t be any more numbed than his had been as she moved around the kitchen, preparing a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, trusting that he wouldn’t expect cereal instead. Or, for all she knew, steak and potatoes.

Am I home?

The words he had uttered last night before passing out on the piazza floor made sense now. He’d been convinced he had fought his way home to his wife and was safe. All the rest were clear as well. The way he had looked at her so intimately, his thinking he was supposed to remember Tia, grasping her hand and kissing it like that. Those made sense, yes, but nothing else did.

Man and wife. How could he think it? What in his jumbled mind had led him to such a fantastic conclusion?

And you’re planning to make use of it, too, aren’t you? That’s why you haven’t told him the truth. You see this as an opportunity.

All right, so it was wrong of her to let him go on thinking she was his wife, even cruel. But the temptation was too strong for her to resist, because his assumption that she was his wife meant that he trusted her. Trusted her fully. And only if he continued to trust her would he willingly share with her whatever he knew about the photograph she had discovered inside his jacket.

Only for a little while, she promised herself, silencing the guilt that was gnawing at her conscience. Just long enough for her to tap into whatever memory he might still possess, and then she would set him straight. She had to know.

“I think I’m ready for action again.”

Eden swung around at the sound of his deep voice behind her. Her first thought when she caught sight of him standing there in the doorway was how appropriate his declaration was. He’d meant it as a simple assurance that he was feeling better, but no adult female with functioning vision could have failed to put a spin on his words. He was that impressive, with the kind of athletic body meant to be wrapped around a woman.

He definitely knew how to fill a pair of jeans to maximum effect. She hadn’t noticed it last night, but the cut of both those jeans and his shirt were western in character. She recognized the style because of her brother, Roark, who lived and worked in Texas. There was something else she observed. His skin was bronzed and his brown hair streaked in front to shades of blond, like a man who has been exposed to a desert sun. Did they mean nothing, or were they clues to his origin?

“Sit down,” she instructed him. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

He started toward the table she had been setting at one end of the parlor, when she noticed what the trailing quilt had concealed in the bedroom. He had a faint but definite limp.

“Your leg,” she said, voicing her concern over what she assumed was another of last night’s injuries. “If you’re in pain, then maybe you shouldn’t be on it. Maybe you should have stayed in bed.”

He stopped midway across the room and gazed down in puzzlement at the leg to which she referred. “I don’t have any pain in my leg,” he said. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Eden assured him, suddenly remembering that Tia had directed her attention last night to an old scar on his right leg. Then his slight lameness wasn’t the result of any recent injury but something that had happened in the past and become so much an accepted part of him he was no longer aware of its existence, particularly now when he had no memory of its cause.

After he’d settled himself at the table, she went back into the adjoining kitchen. When she returned with eggs and toast, she found him gazing with interest at his surroundings. She knew he was seeing for the first time all the elements of the parlor that she so loved—the delicate molding that had suffered scuffs and marks over the decades, the cracked but elegant marble surround of the fireplace, the worn boards of the polished floor.

But, of course, he didn’t know that he’d never viewed any of these things before. It was painful to watch him struggling to renew a knowledge he had never possessed. So painful that she was tempted then and there to tell him the truth. But, remembering Nathanial, she held her tongue.

“The painting,” he said, his gaze settling on the framed scene above the fireplace. “Do I know that place? Where is it?”

“It’s a watercolor of the houseboat that—” she’d been about to say I but corrected herself in time “—we keep up along the Ashley River.”

“For weekend getaways, you mean?”

“Yes, something like that.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I like it. It looks quiet and peaceful.”

“You’d better eat before your breakfast gets cold.” She seated herself across from him.

He started to pick up the glass of orange juice beside his plate and then hesitated, frowning over it as if he wasn’t sure whether he liked orange juice. And if he didn’t, would he wonder why his wife had given it to him? This deception was proving to be more difficult than she’d anticipated, Eden realized. Any little mistake could arouse his suspicion, cost her his trust, which was a good reason not to waste time going after the answers she wanted.

Apparently deciding the orange juice was acceptable, he drank it. She waited just long enough to permit him to help himself to scrambled eggs before she led into her cautious interrogation. “Do you have any recollection yet of what happened to you last night?”

“Afraid not. Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, noticing that she had nothing in front of her but her coffee mug.

“I had something earlier. No clue at all then about last night?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I figure I must have been beaten and robbed. Whoever the punks were, they got away with my wallet and everything in it.” Something occurred to him then, and he glanced at her quickly. “You report this to the police?”

“Not yet, but we should, don’t you think?”

“No,” he said, a sudden sharpness in his voice, which he amended with a softer “Let’s wait a bit and see if I can remember anything useful to give them.”

Was it her imagination, or did the idea of the police worry him? “Were you missing anything else?” she asked, hoping he would recall the photograph in his jacket.

“Keys. I must have had keys, and I suppose they took those, too. Did I have a car with me?”

It was a question Eden answered with an elusive, “The car is safe in the alley.” No lie. Her car was parked in its usual spot behind the house. “You were on foot.”

“Why was I out there?”

That’s exactly what I was hoping you could tell me. Again her reply, out of necessity, was an evasive one. “You had some business. Maybe it had to do with this.”

She had brought her purse to the table. She extracted the photograph from it and passed it to him across the table. Holding her breath in anticipation, she watched his face for a reaction as he took the picture and studied it carefully.

“They didn’t get this,” he said slowly, a faint grimness in his voice.

“You remember it then?” she said tensely.

“Yes. The photo was in my jacket along with your business card.” He looked up, meeting her searching gaze. “Who’s the little boy?”

Eden managed to hide her deep disappointment. “You don’t know?”

He shook his head. “Is the kid someone I’m supposed to remember?”

Hoping a name would make a connection for him, Eden considered telling him that she believed the boy in the photograph was her son, Nathanial. But she wasn’t ready for this step just yet, to risk the volley of questions that would be certain to follow such an admission.

“It seems that you should, since you were carrying his photograph. Look again,” she urged him. “Maybe if you try hard enough, he’ll start to look familiar to you.”

Lowering his gaze, he reexamined the photo. Once again she watched him closely, studying his face for a revealing expression. She couldn’t be sure, but his features seemed to slowly tighten into something that was guarded, something so automatic that he might not even be aware of it.

“What is it?” she pressed him.

He didn’t answer her. Something else had captured his attention, something that had apparently registered in his peripheral vision. Suddenly alert, his gaze swung in the direction of the window that overlooked the piazza and the garden beyond.

“Who’s that?” he demanded.

Eden had been far too focused on her objective to be aware of anything outside. But now, head turned, she discovered a rotund figure in the garden busy filling a large basket with the debris from last night’s storm.

“Our neighbor, Skip Davis,” she said mildly. “He’s a retired navy officer. He and his wife share the garden. That’s their house on the other side.”

“Oh.” He seemed to visibly relax, but seconds later he asked Eden, “Could you adjust the blinds? The light hurts my eyes. Guess it’s a leftover from last night’s headache.”

“Of course.”

She got up and went to the window, redirecting the light and in the process eliminating any view of the garden. She knew that his request had been an excuse, that the presence of Skip Davis out there disturbed him in some way.

The interruption lost her the opportunity to question him further. When she got back to the table, prepared to resume their session, he had lost interest.

“The face means nothing to me,” he said, placing the photograph on the table and dismissing it. “I’ll try again later, okay?”

Frustrated though she was, he left her no choice. If she pushed him too hard, he might close up altogether. She had to be patient if she was going to stand any chance of acquiring what was locked in his mind. But it wasn’t easy, particularly when those brown eyes with the golden lights in them kept casting looks at her as he went on with his eggs and toast. Looks that were as warm and tender as a pair of hands stroking female flesh. They were also unnervingly possessive.

“Why do you keep on looking at me like that?” she challenged him, returning the photo to her purse for safekeeping.

“I just want to be sure.”

“Of what?”

“That it isn’t my imagination I have damn good taste in wives.”

This had gotten risky, like that moment in the bedroom when he had fondled her hand. It was time to bring an end to the scene before it got out of control.

Eden changed the subject by indicating his plate. “Have you finished?”

“Yes, and the eggs were great, just the way I like them.” He grinned at her outrageously. “Not that I’d know, of course.”

Refusing to fall in with his playful, and she feared sexy, mood, she came to her feet and rounded the table. “I’ll clear up then.”

But when she reached for his plate, he caught her high around the waist and drew her down onto his lap, snugging her tightly against the hard wall of his chest. Alarmed by his increasing familiarity with her, she stiffened in his embrace.

“This isn’t wise.”

“You’re not going to deny your husband a chance to show his wife how much he appreciates the breakfast she cooked for him, are you?” he teased.

“I am when he’s been hurt and in no condition to fool around like this.”

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, his voice at her ear raspy and seductive, “I may have a black eye and a lip that’s still tender, but I guarantee I’m recovered enough for a little cuddling.”

She felt the stubble on his unshaven jaw as he slowly rubbed his cheek against hers, felt his warm breath mingle with hers. It was a highly charged situation, one that shook her with the sudden realization that she was susceptible to it. In another few seconds he would swing her around and, sore lip or not, fit his mouth to hers. She would taste him, perhaps even welcome his tongue on hers.

The whole treacherous business was made worse when she moved on his lap with the intention of getting to her feet. Her action aroused him. She could feel his hardness strained against her as his arm shifted in order to hold her more comfortably, grazing the side of her breast, searing her. Eden panicked.

“I don’t want this!” she commanded sharply. “Let me up!”

He went very still. A long moment passed, and then the arms that had been embracing her relaxed and dropped away. Eden scrambled off his lap and turned to face him. What she saw had her heart lurching inside her breast.

His mood had altered completely, revealing an entirely different facet of him. This was not the good-natured man who had awakened in her guest room with a smile. He had changed into someone harder, colder. She could see that change in the way his mouth had tightened and in his eyes that were regarding her suspiciously. Eyes that suddenly seemed dark and stormy.

There was something else that dismayed her. Something she had failed to anticipate until his arms had secured her on his lap, until his mouth had threatened to meld with hers. On some level she was afraid to define, she had wanted him to kiss her. It was a threat she could trust no more than the man who went on sitting there staring at her silently.

Making an effort to defuse the volatile situation, Eden began to load their dishes onto a tray. “I’ll just rinse these off and stack them in the dishwasher,” she said lightly, as though nothing had happened, as though there was no strain between them so intense it almost crackled.

Wanting to get away from him, needing a moment alone to decide on a course of action, she picked up the tray and retreated into the kitchen. But when she reached the sink, she knew he had followed her. She could feel him behind her.

Turning around, she discovered him stationed in the doorway, looking big and intimidating. He was still watching her, not with admiration this time but with a narrow-eyed, speculative gaze. There was something instinctively professional in the way he stood there measuring her, making her wonder all over again just who and what he was.

“Why don’t you lie down and rest,” she suggested. “You need to rest.”

“Later,” he said, and there was no note of gentleness now in his tone.

Eden turned back to the sink and began to rinse the dishes, knowing that Tia had been right and that she had made a serious error in judgment in her blind determination to learn about Nathanial. The man she had so eagerly taken into her house was not dependably harmless and therefore manageable. He was, in fact, potentially dangerous.

She acknowledged that now. It wasn’t just because of this sudden toughness in his manner either. There were other things. Things which, as a trained investigator, she should not only have been observing all along but also suspecting. Things that ought to have warned her.

Eden didn’t ignore them now. His nervousness about reporting whatever had happened to him to the police. His uneasiness with the presence of Skip Davis in the garden. Skip, who with his naval background, might be perceived as a figure of authority and therefore a possible threat. And, most damning of all, the realization that, since he had been carrying a picture of Nathanial, he could in some manner be responsible for the disappearance of her son.

She could sense his eyes still on her, and she knew that she didn’t dare to confront him. Couldn’t risk telling him that they weren’t man and wife for fear of how he might react. There was only one thing she could do and which, had she not been such a desperate fool, she would have done at the very beginning. She had to report his presence to the police, had to get him out of her house. But how, without igniting whatever it was that she was convinced was simmering inside him?

SHE WAS A FRAUD. He understood that now. She hadn’t liked being on his lap, had plainly not wanted him to touch her. This, together with a flash of insight that had more to do with old instincts rather than any actual memory, had finally warned him something was wrong. That this woman wasn’t what she’d been pretending to be.

No wedding bands, either on her finger or his. That small evidence alone should have alerted him of her deceit. Why hadn’t he observed this before? Why, instead, had he believed in her? Believed in her so strongly that he’d convinced himself he belonged both to her and this place? Had he in his confused state needed a safe refuge so badly that he could have so easily deluded himself?

Or, he wondered, examining her as she loaded the dishwasher, had he been beguiled by something else? Like a pair of pure blue eyes and a mane of lustrous dark hair? A full mouth and a tall, alluring figure? Or maybe a nature that had seemed warm and caring from the start.

Any of these could have been responsible for his fantastic illusion. And none of them mattered. Not now when he knew he had made a serious mistake in coming here, that he couldn’t trust this woman who had been willing to let him think she was his wife. Why? What did she want?

His mind was searching for an answer, seething with the frustration of his plight, when she finished with the dishes and crossed the kitchen, intending to return to the parlor. He continued to stand in the doorway, blocking her path.

“Let me by,” she said.

She stood so close he could smell the scent he found so tempting. Lily of the Valley. He looked down into her face, noticing the slight depression at the tip of her piquant nose. Noticing, too, that she wore a purposeful expression.

“Why? Where are you going?” He hadn’t meant the question to sound harsh, but that’s the way it came out.

“To my office.”

“It’s Sunday. Offices aren’t open on Sundays.”

“I need to check my answering machine for messages.”

That sounded reasonable enough. He moved aside in the doorway.

She slipped by him, caught up her purse from the table, and crossed the parlor toward a closed door on the other side.

“If you won’t lie down,” she called over her shoulder, “then at least sit down. I’ll only be a minute.”

She went into her office, closing the door behind her. He stood there for a few seconds, and then a warning went off inside his head. Why had she taken her purse with her? Why had she shut the door? Danger!

He crossed the parlor as swiftly as his game leg would permit, bursting into the office. He found her standing behind her desk, the phone in one hand and her other hand poised to dial. She shot him a startled look that told him she knew he knew the truth about them.

He was at the desk in a flash, snatching the phone out of her hand before her finger could punch the buttons. Slapping the receiver back into the cradle, he faced her accusingly.

“You were calling the cops, weren’t you?” He couldn’t let her turn him in to the police. Couldn’t end up being held. Although he realized now the urgency that had driven him to her door last night was all wrong, he was still convinced there was something he must do, someone he had to reach.

“I was returning a client’s call.”

She was lying. He could see it in her eyes, along with her fear. “We’re not husband and wife, are we?” he challenged her. “You don’t even know my name. You never once called me by name. You don’t know any more about me than I do.”

She didn’t answer him. She looked increasingly nervous, and that’s when he saw it. On the desk in front of her was a small key, which explained why she had taken her purse into the office with her. She must have removed the key from her purse to unlock—what?

Yes, the top drawer in the desk. It was still slightly ajar, as though she had closed it hastily with his sudden entrance. She’d noticed the direction of his gaze. Her hand swooped to the drawer, yanking it open, reaching for what was inside.

Something kicked in, old instincts and skills that had him sensing he’d handled this kind of thing before. Whatever it was, it served him well in this instance. He shoved against her, throwing her off balance. Before she could recover herself, he had taken possession of the semiautomatic in the drawer. The pistol felt familiar in his grasp.

He had to admire her. As frightened as she had to be, she faced him defiantly. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Yeah, I trusted you. That was my mistake. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t call the cops last night when I stumbled in here. Why is that?”

She didn’t answer him.

“What is it you’re after?”

“Look, give me the gun, and we’ll talk about it.”

Until he knew differently, he had to assume she was his enemy. But she was an enemy from whom he needed answers. “Oh, we’re going to talk.”

“Not until you lock the gun back in the drawer, and if it makes you feel better you can hang on to the key. At least do that much.”

He had no intention of surrendering the pistol. He might need it. “Be quiet,” he ordered her roughly. “Let me think.”

He wanted answers all right, but this was a dangerous place to try to get them. They were in the city with cops close by and neighbors all around. Neighbors like that guy out in the garden. He needed somewhere that was safe, removed from the threat of people while he figured out what to do. Where? That’s when he remembered the painting above the fireplace.

He knew now what he was going to do. He was getting out of here, going to that isolated houseboat on the river, and he was taking her with him.

Chapter Three

She had a full bottom lip that made her mouth sultry. Had the circumstances been otherwise, he would have been tempted to explore that inviting mouth with his own. But right now his only interest in her lower lip was how it trembled with emotion as those wide blue eyes of hers stared at him in disbelief. He had just informed her of his intention.

“You can’t,” she objected.

“This says I can.” He waved the pistol in front of her nose.

“You don’t want to do this,” she attempted to reason with him. “Aside from the fact that forcing me to go with you constitutes kidnapping, there’s nothing for you to gain by taking me along.”

“What do I want to do instead, Eden? Borrow that car of yours out in the alley, have you cheerfully promise me you won’t call the cops while I run for it? Assuming, that is, I have a reason to run.”

Her silence told him she realized any further argument in that direction would be useless. They both knew he couldn’t leave her behind, couldn’t trust her now out of his sight.

“It’s a houseboat, isn’t it, Eden? Well, you and I are going to play house on it while you tell me everything I want to know, and maybe before we’re through I’ll be able to decide just what the hell is going on. Oh, don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen to you. Providing,” he added, his voice slow and raspy as he leaned in close to her, “you behave yourself.”

“Look, I can help you if you let me. I will help you, but not this way, not—”

She got no further. They were interrupted by a male voice calling out to her from the direction of the parlor where she had left the door open to the piazza.

“Eden, you in there?”

“It’s Skip Davis from next door,” she whispered.

“Answer him. Tell him you’ll be there in a minute.”

“I’ll be out in just a second, Skip.” She lowered her voice again. “Now what?”

“Get rid of him. Whatever he wants, tell him you’re busy and you’ll talk to him later.”

“And what if he caught a glimpse of you and wants to know who you are?”

“Tell him your long-lost husband is back from the dead,” he said, unable to keep the sharp edge of sarcasm out of his voice. “You ought to be able to convince him of a little lie like that. You had me believing one.”

There was more than just fear in those blue eyes now. There was also healthy anger.

“Get going,” he ordered her before she could express that anger. “Make it good. And, Eden?” She paused on her way to the connecting door, looking back at him reluctantly. “Be careful. We don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

She nodded, understanding him, knowing he had the pistol and that he would be listening and watching from behind the office door. Leaving the office, she crossed the parlor, greeting her neighbor who waited in the open doorway.

Through the crack, he could just make out the heavy figure of the retired naval officer, hear him as he asked Eden to join him and his wife for lunch. There was a pause after the invitation was issued. He tightened his grip on the pistol and tensely wondered if she would do or say anything to alert her visitor.

But to his satisfaction, she was too smart to make this kind of mistake. She probably figured he was so desperate he wouldn’t hesitate to use the pistol at the first sign of a threat to him. Let her go on thinking just that. He would be safer that way, and so would she.

“I’m sorry, Skip. I wish I could, but I have to work. I’m afraid Sundays are no exception when clients come to me with troubles that won’t wait.”

He had to give her credit. She couldn’t be anything but nervous, and yet she sounded cool and without a concern. She also managed to convey in that simple reply an explanation for him, should her neighbor have detected his presence, as well as a reason for her later absence.

He was relieved when her neighbor accepted her excuse and departed, and she closed the door after him. But he was far from ready to relax. The sudden appearance of the navy man justified his decision, making it more imperative than ever that he remove them from the scene.

He waited to make certain Eden came directly back to the office before he turned his attention to her purse on the desk.

“What are you doing?” she challenged him sharply, as he appropriated the purse and began to investigate its contents.

“Looking for a breath mint. You never know, I might get lucky later on. Man and wife, remember?”

“That’s low.”

“Is it?” He lifted his gaze, coldly meeting her angry eyes. “So, just how virtuous were you being, sweetheart, when you didn’t correct me? When you let me go on believing we were married?”

“That was wrong of me, I know, and I apologize for it. But I had a vital reason, and if you’ll just let me explain—”

“Later,” he cut her off. “Right now I have some vital business of my own.”

He found no weapons in the purse, nothing that she could turn against him. There was a cell phone, and this he removed and tucked into his pocket. Making sure that her wallet held an adequate supply of cash and that the purse contained her keys, he handed the bag to her.

“Now what?” she demanded, hugging the bag to her breasts.

He didn’t answer her. His mind was busy with a mental list, checking off the preparations for this flight to her houseboat. Once again, he was aware of old skills. Training from his unknown past that urged him to be thorough, to cover all the necessities before he went into action. He didn’t understand this instinct, but he was grateful for it.

“This friend of yours upstairs—Tia. She have an answering machine?” He remembered Eden telling him Tia was out for the day.

“Yes.”

“Call it. Leave a message for her. Tell her you’re going to be gone for a couple of days on a case. That everything is fine, including the patient, and she isn’t to worry about you. You’ll explain everything when you get back.” It wasn’t the most brilliant of remedies to a potential problem, but it would have to do. He just hoped her friend would be satisfied by it. “No details, Eden, and make it convincing.”

He handed her the receiver and stood close beside her as she dialed, ready to grab the phone away from her if she tried to communicate any warnings. But again she was wise enough to do just as she’d been told. In a calm voice, she delivered the concise message he had instructed.

Of course, she wasn’t calm at all underneath that composed exterior. Her lower lip continued to betray her. It was still quivering when she hung up and faced him. He didn’t blame her. He’d be shaken himself if someone was holding a gun on him. Well, he had no choice about it.

Damn, but she had one sweet mouth, as appealing as those pure blue eyes framed by thick, dark lashes. Were the lashes real? he wondered.

“Do you have to stand so close?” she complained. Her voice was low and breathless, as if his nearness was robbing her of air. As if she was suddenly and unwillingly as aware of him as he was of her.

But his awareness of her on any sensual level was a mistake. He reminded himself that her blue eyes were not guileless and that her sweet mouth had lied to him. He stepped back away from her, forcing himself to be practical again.

“You keep any personal essentials at this houseboat? Some extra clothes for yourself, that kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Then we don’t need to waste time while you pack a bag.”

He was anxious to get out of here without understanding why. What was he running from? The police? Did the cops want him for something so bad that his mind, unable to deal with it, had shut down on him? The possibility worried him.

Or was it a much darker enemy that had his insides in knots? Someone he had to elude at all costs? An enemy for whom Eden Hawke might be working? Having her business card and the photograph of the boy, both of which had been a link that had brought him to her, didn’t make her a friend. He realized that now. Understood that she could be as treacherous as that generously endowed body of hers.

“Let’s go,” he ordered her gruffly, gesturing with the pistol in the direction of the parlor.

She preceded him from the office carrying her purse.

“Where’s the jacket I was wearing last night?”

“There,” she said, indicating a coatrack near the door.

“Get it.”

She snagged his jacket from the hook and a light coat for herself, draping them both over her free arm as she led the way through the kitchen to the back door that opened onto the alley.

“Wait,” he said, when she’d unlocked and opened the door.

He moved in front of her to check the alley in both directions. It was empty except for a dark green Toyota.

“Car keys,” he commanded.

She fished the keys out of her purse and passed them to him. He unlocked the Toyota, saw her settled behind the wheel, and rounded the sedan to install himself in the passenger seat. Only then did he return the keys to her.

“All right,” he said, buckling his belt, “let’s roll. And, Eden?”

“What now?” she asked, starting the engine.

“Don’t surprise me. Make sure it’s your houseboat that’s our destination. And if for any reason we get stopped, I’m your husband, remember. Your loving husband.”

She glared at him, but she offered no objection. Not when he reminded her of the consequences if she tried to trick him by patting the hard lump that was the pistol hidden beneath the jacket slung across his lap.

The houseboat, he thought as they swung out of the alley onto a side street. Only that wasn’t where he needed to go. It was somewhere far more important than that. This was what had driven him last night, the conviction it was urgent for him to reach something or someone. If he could remember just who or what it was…

WATER AND church steeples. They were what came first to Eden’s mind whenever she thought of historic Charleston.

The water was everywhere in the shapes of the broad harbor, countless inlets, tidal marshes and the Ashley and Cooper Rivers flowing on either side of the peninsula that embraced the original city. Clustered within its core, with their soaring spires, were Charleston’s famous churches, majestic Georgian structures outside whose doors basket makers offered their wares to passing tourists.

Radiating from this nucleus was a maze of lanes that boasted a wealth of traditional architecture with a strong West Indian influence. Narrow streets like Eden’s, where the air was scented with camellias and an exchange of Gullah could be heard by the strolling vendors from the sea islands.

It was a rich, wonderful culture, and Eden was never immune to it. Until this morning. She was far too angry to be aware of sights, sounds or smells as she navigated the Toyota through the Sunday traffic. Her current anger was directed not at her silent companion but at herself.

How could she have been so overconfident, so naive to totally misjudge this man? She was a private investigator. That meant she was supposed to be able to read people accurately, tell the good from the bad. She hadn’t. Not this time, not even when Tia had cautioned her against permitting her emotions to get in the way.

Nor had she been resourceful enough to manage any warnings for either Skip Davis or Tia. She had messed up all around and deserved to be angry with herself.

Trapped. Trapped with a man who plainly regarded her as his enemy. What now?

Stopped at a traffic light, she stole a glimpse at his profile. His features were rigid, uncompromising. And dangerous.

He turned his head and looked at her. Something tugged at her insides. She wanted to believe it was nothing but fear and was worried it might be more than that.

“The light’s green,” was all he said.

It’s not too late, she told herself as they proceeded through the intersection. You can start being the P.I. you’re supposed to be. Convince him you’re not his enemy. Your survival could depend on it.

“Will you let me explain now?” she asked him, making her voice as persuasively pleasant as she could.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“But—”

“I said no. Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you tell me? Just be quiet and let me think.”

It was no use. He was not going to listen to her. Not, anyway, until they reached the houseboat. But if there was any way to prevent it, she couldn’t let him take her there. The houseboat was isolated. She would be all alone with him in a lonely place. Anything could happen.

Help. She needed to seek help, but she had to be careful how she managed it. Trying something reckless, like alerting a passing police cruiser of her plight, was out of the question. Not when he had that gun in his lap.

But her situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. She did have one promising means of rescue, providing she could make the opportunity to use it. Not yet, though. A glance at the fuel gauge told her she would have to wait a bit. Until then, she tried to forget the desperation of the man seated beside her, tried to remember instead that he was still a link to Nathanial.

Charleston was also a city of bridges, and they crossed one of its major spans over the Ashley River a few minutes later. Then, with the peninsula behind them, came the slow crawl through the urban sprawl of the modern city.

Reaching the river road, they traveled inland, following the winding Ashley River through a region of ancient live oak, groves of palmetto, and all the other less familiar vegetation of the lush low country. As the miles passed, Eden kept her eye on the fuel gauge.

Now, she thought.

“We need to stop for gas,” she informed her companion.

He leaned over to check the gauge for himself, breaking his long silence. “How far is it to the houseboat from here?”

“Far enough that we’d arrive on empty. Anyway, if you plan on us staying there long enough to eat, then we need a few essentials. Milk, bread, that kind of thing. We can get them, along with the gas, at a convenience store just up the road here.”

“All right,” he agreed.

There was a tricky, tense moment when they arrived at the convenience store and pulled up in front of a pump. He insisted on taking the keys from her again before either of them got out of the car, then challenged her when she started to open the back door on her side.

“What are you doing?”

“I want my coat. I’m cold.”

“Feels like summer to me.”

“It’s February, and I don’t care what the temperature is. I’m still cold. I imagine being scared has something to do with that,” she said sarcastically.

“Have it your way. Just hurry up.”

Eden breathed with relief and removed her coat from the back seat, where he had allowed her to place it before leaving Charleston. His own jacket was still with him. It hung over one of his arms, where it continued to hide the pistol under its folds. He stood beside the pump and watched her fill the gas tank after she slipped into her coat.

“You pay for the gas before we shop for groceries,” he instructed her as they entered the convenience store. “Just in case we have to make a fast exit.”

He was being thorough, Eden thought. Except there was one thing he had overlooked. He had failed to check the pockets of her coat.

The store was empty of customers other than themselves. He stayed close at her side to make sure she didn’t try to signal the attendant as she paid for the gas.

Now comes the hard part, she thought when they came away from the counter.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

“That can wait until we get to the houseboat.”

“No, it can’t. I’m sorry, but being scared makes me more than just cold.”

He swore under his breath. “Okay, where is it?”

She led the way to the far end of the store where the single, unisex rest room was located off an alcove. Its door stood open, the light inside already on.

“Wait,” he said, moving in front of her to check out the interior, presumably to make certain there was no other exit or a window that would offer her a chance to escape.

“Will you please hurry?” she urged him, wanting him to be convinced it was an emergency.

There was another bad moment when he turned his head to gaze at her speculatively. Did he suspect something?

“Maybe I ought to go in there with you,” he said.

“You wouldn’t!” But she was afraid he might do just that.

“Then just make sure you behave yourself in there. When I check afterward, which I intend to do, I don’t want to find any distress message scrawled on the mirror. And don’t lock the door behind you either. I’m going to be standing right here in this alcove just outside, and if I hear the click of that lock…”

He left the rest unsaid as he moved his jacket aside to finger the pistol tucked now into the waistband of his pants. He was telling her that attendant or no attendant, he would shoot off the lock if she tried to barricade herself inside.

When Eden hesitated, wondering if he actually meant his threat, his broad shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “If you’re not sure about the lock, then I think I should go with you.”

“No lock,” she promised him.

Before he could insist on some other precaution, she scooted past him into the rest room, swiftly closing the door behind her. Damn him. She had counted on locking herself in, but now she would have to risk her action without that security.

There had been no opportunity to investigate the pockets of her coat, either back in Charleston or outside at the gas pump. He had been much too observant for her to take that chance. But now, placing her purse on the sink’s counter and hoping her memory was reliable, she plunged her hands into the deep pockets of the coat.

To her relief, her probing fingers closed around a flat, compact instrument at the bottom of the right-hand pocket. Thank God, she hadn’t been wrong. The phone was here where she had placed it after last using it.

Eden’s mother, who was the accountant for all the Hawke detective agencies at the home office in Chicago, had complained that Eden’s purchase of a second cell phone was excessive. She had withdrawn her objection when Eden explained that she was forever either misplacing her cell or forgetting to keep its battery charged. And since a P.I. often had to rely on a cell phone, a backup was essential.

Grateful for her carelessness that had made an extra phone necessary, Eden withdrew the instrument and flipped it open. Now, if only she hadn’t gone and drained its power again… Ah, good, she had a strong signal and a full battery. She was in business.

With a worried glance at the closed door, she flushed the toilet and turned on the faucet at the sink, counting on the sound of the running water to muffle her voice. Then, extending the phone’s antenna, she started to punch in a rapid 911.

The nine was all she managed before the rest-room door burst open. Her heart sank at the sight of him. Covering the space between them in two swift strides, he snatched the cell phone out of her hand. His face was like a storm. A savage one.

“You were cold, huh?” he thundered. “The hell you were!”

He was talking about her coat. That was why he had charged into the rest room. It must have suddenly occurred to him out in the alcove that he had neglected to investigate her coat.

That he would have thought of the coat at all at this stage startled Eden. Just who was this man, anyway? No one ordinary, certainly. Not when he was so careful not to overlook any potential threat to him. That smacked of a dark history, maybe even a violent one. Just what was he involved in, and how serious was her own jeopardy because of it?

“What do you do?” he growled. “Collect the damn things?”

Switching off the instrument, he thrust it into his pocket where it joined the phone he had seized earlier from her purse. Then, tossing his jacket on the floor in order to free both his hands, he advanced on her slowly. The look on his face said he meant business.

Eden backed away from him until she had nowhere else to go. She was pinned against the sink. He towered over her, a daunting figure.

“You have any more surprises in that coat, Eden? Something I should be worried about?”

Before she could stop him, he was pressed up against her, his arms on either side of her, his big hands plunged into her pockets. She could feel the heat of his fingers probing the depths of both pockets. There should have been nothing personal in that search, but there was. Eden found it difficult to breathe.

“Guess not,” he said.

Swallowing, she managed a cool “If you’re through.”

But he was in no hurry to withdraw his hands. They remained in her pockets, making an intimate contact with her hips through the fabric. His eyes were on her face, a seductive gleam in them. He inhaled slowly, deeply.

“Lily of the Valley, huh?”

Her fragrance still intrigued him. And her lower lip.

“It’s quivering again, Eden,” he said, his voice husky.

He was leaning into her so closely she was aware of the stubble on his square jaw, the heat of his hard flesh. This time he did slide a hand out of her pocket, lifting it to the level of her face where the slightly rough pad of his thumb lightly stroked her bottom lip. Eden felt a slow flame coiling deep inside her.

“Take your hand away,” she commanded, her own voice turning hoarse.

“You wanted to play husband and wife. So, all right, we’re playing husband and wife.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Maybe you’d like my mouth here instead of my thumb. Would you, Eden?”

She’d had enough of his steamy games. Whether he was formidable or not, she refused to be intimidated any longer. “You’ve satisfied yourself there’s nothing else in my pockets. Now back off. And count yourself lucky I didn’t try to grab my pistol out of your waistband.” She had considered such an action, but as quick as his reflexes were, that could have resulted in a struggle in which one of them might have been shot.

Motivated by her threat to recover her gun, he stepped away from her. His eyes never left her face. “If you had the gun, would you use it on me?” She didn’t answer him. “Maybe you think I’m some kind of monster. I’m not. At least I don’t think I am.”

“Then what are you? Just an innocent victim?”

“It’s possible.”

“If you believe that, then why don’t you turn yourself in to the police? Tell them as much as you know and let them sort it out.”

“That’s a plan. Except if it turns out I’m a wanted man—” He shook his head. “Uh-uh, I’m not bringing the cops in on this. Not until I know what’s going on and why.”

“So, instead, you’re going to go on playing the tough fugitive who kidnaps women at gunpoint.”

“And makes their lips tremble in tempting ways.”

Eden angrily tightened her mouth. It was a defensive reaction, and he didn’t miss it. He smiled. A sardonic smile.

“You know,” he drawled, “if I wanted to, I think I could make that mouth of yours do a lot more than just tremble. And not by using my thumb, either.”

“You might have lost your memory, but you’re not suffering from a loss of ego, are you?” The awful thing was, she feared there was some truth in what he claimed and that she would have to guard herself against it.

“Could be you’re right,” he admitted. “Only we don’t have the time to test your theory.” Leaning down, he recovered his jacket from the floor. “We’ve still got that shopping to do. Come on, let’s go make that attendant out there think you and I are the happiest married couple in South Carolina.”

THE HOUSEBOAT WAS exactly what she had wanted when she’d bought it a little over a year ago. A quiet getaway far enough removed from the city to guarantee her absolute privacy whenever she needed a few days’ retreat between difficult cases.

But now, looking at the gray houseboat moored at the end of its short pier, Eden regretted the remoteness of the place. There were no neighbors within hailing distance, just the thick vegetation along the shore and the softly flowing river with its reedy shallows where the herons fished.

She was aware of the man who followed closely behind her along the narrow path from the car, bearing their sack of groceries. She was alone with him in this seclusion, not knowing what he intended to do with her. It was a situation that unnerved her on every level.

He, however, was satisfied by the isolation. She could see it in his face when they reached the door of the houseboat, and she turned to him as he spoke to her.

“You’ve got electricity, huh?” he said, noticing the wire stretched from the pole on shore to the side of the houseboat.

“Yes, all the comforts of home,” she said, unlocking the door and spreading it open.

He held out his hand. Knowing what he wanted, she laid the keys on his palm. He was making certain that she wouldn’t try to escape in the car.

“Inside,” he directed her.

She looked at him again when they were inside and the door was shut behind them. His gaze was making a fast survey of the place. It was a simple arrangement. A narrow living room in the center, a tiny kitchen off one end, and at the other end a single small bedroom and bath. All of it was comfortably but plainly furnished in the warm colors that Eden favored.

“Nice and cozy,” he observed. “Just the sort of setting that makes a man think of, oh, I don’t know. An intimate weekend with his wife, maybe?”

The houseboat had never seemed cramped to her before. It did now, as if there wasn’t enough room to contain both of them. But Eden refused to let him see how that worried her. Or to respond to his mockery on the subject of a marriage that had never existed. She had more vital matters on her mind.

“Now can we have that talk?” she asked him.

“Later,” he said brusquely, dumping the sack and his jacket on the bar between kitchen and living room.

“But you told me—”

“I said later.”

He had spotted the portable TV in the bookshelves. The clock on the VCR that accompanied it registered the time as just a minute past twelve. He lost no time in settling on the sofa, the remote in his hand.

“You’re going to watch television?”

“It’s noon. There should be a news broadcast.”

Eden understood his sudden interest then. He was eager to learn of any accident or crime that might offer him a clue to his identity. Leaving him perched on the sofa, knees spread as he leaned earnestly toward the screen, she went into the kitchen area to put away the groceries.

She listened to the broadcast as she fixed sandwiches and poured them glasses of milk. Like him, she hoped to hear of something to which they might connect him, but there was nothing promising in any of the reports.

She brought him his lunch. They ate in silence, his attention focused on the news. And all the while, Eden was conscious of him, wary of his possible danger to her. She remembered he had tried to assure her he wasn’t evil, and last night her instincts had been convinced he was a decent man. But how could she trust any of that when he was driven by a desperation neither of them understood?

Well, she was desperate herself, as only a mother could be. She managed to restrain that desperation through the entire lengthy newscast of both local and national events. But by the time the program wrapped up without results for him, she’d had enough. She wanted answers, and she no longer cared how much she might be risking herself to get them.

Opening her purse, Eden removed the photograph and business card she had found in his jacket last night. His gaze was still fixed on the television screen when she came to her feet and inserted herself between the sofa and the bookshelves.

“Look at them,” she commanded, facing him with determination as she placed the photo and card on the coffee table in front of him.

He glanced down and then up. “Again? I thought I told you back in Charleston—”

“I want to know how you got them. Do you remember at least that much?”

“No.”

“Try.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing since I opened my eyes this morning? When I wasn’t worried about what you were going to try next, that is. And why are you so interested in that picture?”

Eden was prepared at this point to plead with him. “I have a good reason. The best reason in the world. It’s because—” She stopped abruptly, realizing that, unless someone was able to address an individual by name, an appeal somehow lacked strength. “Look, if you and I are going to spend any time together—”

“Ah, now you want to spend time with me?”

“I didn’t think I had any choice about that. You were the one who forced me to come here.” She was getting angry again. That wasn’t the way to reach him. “The point is,” she went on, her voice softening, “you don’t have a name because you don’t know who you are. So what am I supposed to call you?”

His gaze drifted away from hers. There was a long silence between them. Had the windows been open, she might have heard the gentle lapping of the waters against the pier, a sound that would have soothed her while she waited tensely for his answer. But the windows remained closed, and the only sound in the houseboat was the TV, which droned on behind her.

She looked at his face. Except for a slight discoloring around the eye that had been bruised and swollen shut last night, what had to be a tenderness in the lip that had been split open, and the bandage that still covered the bridge of his nose, he was healing rapidly.

There was strength and character in that face. She could see it in the square shape of his jaw, the fine radial lines at the corners of his observant brown eyes, even in the small mole high on one beard-shadowed cheek. That it was also a face with sensual qualities, to which she was regrettably susceptible, Eden preferred not to think about.

A lean face, too, like the rigorously conditioned body that carried it. Solid and athletic, even with that limp. As though it had been trained for a specific purpose.

And again the question gnawed at her. Who was he?

“Him,” he said without expression, nodding in the direction of the TV behind her.

Puzzled, Eden swung around to face the set. There was a movie playing on it now, a classic old western. She couldn’t remember its title.

“Shane,” he said. “You can call me Shane.”

Eden recalled the story now. Shane was its hero, a mysterious loner who had arrived out of nowhere. No past, no other identity beyond that single name. Shane. It was perfect. Like the character in the movie, the name suited him.

“Shane it is, then,” she said.

He nodded, satisfied. “Now let’s move on to another name. The kid in that picture. You know who he is, don’t you? Or at least you think you do. Who is he?”

Eden caught her breath, then released it in an emotional rush. “His name is Nathanial. Where is he, Shane? What have you done with my son?”

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