of town…the car ended up in a ravine and no one found them for hours and hours and even then no one could figure out who they were because neither one of them had his wallet. They took the boys to a small clinic while they traced the car back to Ryder’s firm. Ryder is unconscious but his brother…our Robby…oh, dear God in heaven, Amelia, Rob is dead.”
Amelia stood, stunned, frozen. The image of Ryder and Rob speeding away from the reception together was so clear in her head that she could almost reach out and touch it.
And then a profound ache pierced her heart. Ryder was badly hurt. Rob was dead.
“I’m on my way,” she whispered.
“Good Samaritan Hospital. ICU. Hurry.”
“I’m on my way.”
Chapter Two
The hospital corridor was long and straight. In her haste, Amelia had run across the grass outside, grass which was wet from a sprinkler, and now the soles of her shoes squeaked against the spotless linoleum. She stopped at the nurses’ desk to ask the way to the ICU, but before she could form the question, she caught sight of Jack Hogan leaning against a wall at the far end of the hallway. She started toward him.
He looked up when she was within twenty feet. Amelia’s pace faltered; the change in Jack’s appearance from a few weeks before when she’d bumped into him at the grocery store just about broke her heart.
He was tall like his sons, but stooped today, his skin, always pale, now waxen and dull. He stared at her with the brown eyes he’d passed along to his children, eyes he might very well have passed down to the child Amelia carried inside her. Those eyes were now blurred by unshed tears.
She took his hands and they stared at each other without speaking. His grief was so tangible, it seemed to seep through her skin. She was afraid to ask about Ryder. After a long pause, she finally whispered, “I’m so sorry about Rob.”
He nodded as the tears rolled down the creases in his cheeks. She cried along with him.
Nina came through the opaque glass doors, closing them quietly behind her. When she saw Amelia, her composure cracked. “I knew you’d come!” she sobbed as she threw her slight frame into Amelia’s arms.
Amelia mumbled, “Ryder. Is he…”
Nina pushed herself away and regarded Amelia with red-rimmed eyes. Her salt and pepper curls looked wilted, defeated, and her mouth was a trembling line of sorrow as she whispered, “He’s still in a coma.”
“He’ll be okay,” Amelia said with as much confidence as she could muster.
Nina bit at her lip. “The doctor says he’ll come out of it, but she doesn’t know when. You’ll stay here with him, won’t you? I already cleared it with the nurses. They say a fiancée is the same as family. I know having you by his side will make all the difference in the world.”
Gently, Amelia said, “But we’re not engaged anymore—”
“I know you were only engaged a few days before you broke it off,” Nina said, “but I also know you two will work things out.”
Amelia searched for a diplomatic way to say that she would stay out in the hall with Nina and Jack for as long as they needed or wanted her to, only please, not in Ryder’s room. She kept hearing him say that she was using his family to trap him, and she knew her presence in the room would accomplish nothing. Maybe she should tell them the truth….
But Nina opened her hand just then. Nestled in her palm, like a treasure, was the red rose boutonniere Amelia had last seen when Ryder swept it across her cheek.
“They found it in Ryder’s pocket,” Nina said, new tears filling her eyes. “Oh, dear God, I don’t know what we’ll do if we lose him, too.”
As Jack comforted his wife, Amelia stared at the bruised flower which had dropped to the floor. In some fuzzy way, it loomed like a sign of her complicity in this tragedy. If only she’d waited to tell Ryder about the baby in private, without alcohol around, how different things might now be.
She knew she would do what Nina and Jack wanted until Ryder awoke and asked her to do differently.
And inside her heart, she, too, mourned for Rob.
He opened his eyes slowly. His lips felt dry. One shaky hand touched the left side of his face. Rough gauze—a bandage?
Where am I?
The room was white, spare, clean…a hospital room. An IV dripped into his arm. The drapes were open and gray skies showed through the glass. Pain throbbed in his temples.
He’d been awake, briefly, once before. Half awake, half a man.
Questions filled his head like loud music, reverberating off the empty spaces in his skull. He felt cold beads of sweat pop out on his forehead and he groaned.
Cool hands touched his arm, and he turned to find a woman staring down at him with eyes as gray as the sky outside.
“It’s okay, Ryder,” she said softly. “You’re going to be fine.”
He licked his lips.
“Do you want a drink?”
He managed to nod. She gently held the back of his head as he took a sip of water from the glass she offered. He had seen her once before, when he woke the first time. She’d been asleep in the chair beside his bed then, her chin tilted toward her chest. With a jolt, he realized she must know him which meant he should know her.
But he didn’t. He’d never seen her before. Never.
She was quite lovely. Her skin was fine-textured and smooth, her eyes huge, her nose and mouth delicate. Honey-blond hair that looked as though she’d raked it with her hand a dozen times capped her head. She was wearing a roomy, dark blue shirt, the neck open, the sleeves rolled up…a man’s shirt that did nothing to detract from her bounding femininity. He was positive she wasn’t a nurse. He was just as positive that she wasn’t the kind of woman he would forget.
“I’m going to go find your folks,” she said.
His folks. Panic began to creep into his brain. He had no memory of parents. He swallowed his heart.
She frowned at him, biting her lip. Then she said, “Don’t worry, Ryder, I won’t come back now that you’re okay.”
He caught her hand as she turned away, managing to force out a single word. “Stay.”
Her eyes shifted uneasily, but at last she nodded. As his eyelids closed, he concentrated on the feel of her hand in his, the warmth of human flesh in a sea of bleached cotton, a link to the world that was quickly slipping away from him again.
Who was Ryder?
Amelia stood with her hand clasped in Ryder’s hand. As far as she knew, this was the first time he’d opened his eyes in three long weeks, and she was dying to call the doctor, to run out into the hall and find Jack and Nina and share the good news.
She
