you in pain?” He didn’t dare look away. Something different in her expression bothered him—some level of detachment he’d always expected to see. Wives detached themselves, no matter what you did to keep them with you. “Caroline, get the doctor.”
As Caroline left, Cate’s gaze followed her. She studied each person around her bed. Nothing that made her the Cate he loved was in that gaze. She eyed her aunt and uncle, her son and her niece with the same strange, dreamy look until she focused on Alan again.
“Who are you?”
The courtesy in her tone chilled him.
Trying to ask her what the hell she was talking about, he choked on his first breath. Confusion threaded the air, like a piece of twine that slipped from body to body. Strangling them all.
Aunt Imogen finally cried out, but then she covered her mouth. Uncle Ford’s cane clattered to the floor. Alan reached for both older people, steadying them with hands that shook hard enough to remind him how his father felt about men who gave in to their emotions.
But even his dad would understand this. Cate had left him after all.
THE LOVELY WOMAN with copper hair had raced out of the room, and the others, except for the dark man, poured after her. Just as well. Breathing took such an awful effort, and that many people must use a lot of oxygen.
Why would a hospital let such a crowd mill around a patient’s room? She stopped in midthought. She must be the patient. She was in bed.
How she’d come there escaped her, although she felt as if someone had welded a hot metal plate to her right leg. Nausea hovered, as if she were on a boat that refused to stop rocking.
She willed her queasiness away and concentrated on the man. Watching her from wide, dark-green eyes, he was clearly waiting for her to speak. As if he knew her.
She didn’t know him.
She must have been in an accident. Had she interrupted a family reunion? That many people in the same place had to be a family.
She took a deep breath that seemed to fill her head. The truth rocked her. Strangers didn’t hang around a hospital bed, even if they’d banded together to rescue an accident victim.
She didn’t remember what had happened to her. She remembered—nothing.
At her shoulder, a monitor’s steady beep grew more rapid. The sound drew her gaze as she tried to pry her own name out of her blank memory. She didn’t seem to have a name.
She knew her name. Everyone knew her own name. It was—She could feel it on the tip of her tongue. She ought to know. The monitor began to ping like sonar.
She didn’t know.
Suddenly aware of the man’s harsh grip on her hand, she turned toward him. “I don’t know you.”
“I’m your husband. I’m Alan.”
He terrified her. She tried to sit up in bed, but a powerful, formless weight held her down.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
He wrapped his large hands around her upper arms, but his strength made her feel weak, and she pushed him away.
“I don’t need your help.”
Stung, he straightened, looking impossibly tall. “What’s the matter?” He reached for her again, but something in her eyes must have shown him how seriously she wanted him to keep his hands off her. He fisted them at his sides.
“You act as if you have some right to touch me,” she whispered. “Who am I?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“My wife,” he said. “Cate…Palmer.”
“Why don’t I know you?” She darted a glance at the window. Low clouds hung above a sandstone building. It all looked completely unfamiliar. The glass offered a faint reflection, but she couldn’t see the details of her face. “Let me see what I look like. Maybe I’ll rememb—”
Before she could finish, he whipped open the top of the table at her elbow. A mirror was mounted inside. With the man’s help, she twisted the table toward her, so she could see.
Wild blue eyes stared at her from beneath a mass of dark red hair. She gasped. That other woman—the one who’d gone for a doctor. She had the same face.
The mouth in the mirror opened, and a scream tore the air.
“Cate.” His fear-drenched voice scared her, but he tucked her against his body, and she seemed to fit into the hard contours of his chest.
She closed her eyes. Darkness and the man’s faint, spicy scent blotted out the mirror, the room, the world as far as she knew it. She didn’t want to see herself. She’d lost everything, her past, her sense of identity.
Her life.
CHAPTER TWO
“ALAN, GO HOME. Get some sleep and have a shower.” Dr. Barton’s voice woke Cate.
She opened her eyes. She’d hardly been out of the coma for a full day, but the doctor’s visits interested her. Unlike her family, he wanted nothing from her. She looked from him to the husband she didn’t know.
Alan straightened in a metal-and-vinyl chair. “I don’t need sleep or a shower.”
She lifted her hand to him, but he shook his head, obviously aware she was going to second Dr. Barton’s suggestion. She continued anyway. “You need to rest.” She shouldn’t have buried her face in his manly chest. Her momentary weakness had apparently convinced him she needed a bodyguard. “Nothing bad will happen to me if you leave my room.”
He shot a wary glance at Dr. Barton, who nodded. Alan stood, but tension built as he hesitated. Cate didn’t know how to respond to him. His deep concern touched her. She found his stubbled chin attractive, his brooding green eyes appealing. She liked the way he smelled, but Alan expected more than the gratitude and simple attraction she felt.
“Do you want me to come back?” he asked.
She’d like to remember why he seemed as uncomfortable with her as she was with him. Had their marriage been happy? “After you rest, if you feel like coming back, I’ll be here.”
He turned toward Dr. Barton, but his gaze lingered on her as he spoke. “You know where to reach me?”
The doctor moved to Cate’s bed, an impresario, showing off his brightest talent. “Cate is awake and healthy and on the mend. We won’t need to dive into that pool of phone numbers you gave us.”
With a wry expression, Alan trudged to the door, and most of the pressure left with him. Cate sank against her pillows. The gruff doctor shut her door and dragged a chair to her bed.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
His urgency alarmed her. “Did you find something in the tests?”
“No—well,
