“Just Simon?”
He brushed her gold wedding band with his fingertip. “Just Simon. What’s yours?”
“Eleanor.”
He withdrew his hand and she swallowed. Her reactions to this guy were giving her one of the few glimpses she’d had of her gut-level personality. She wore one man’s ring and that man swore they had a good marriage. And yet she flirted with another man and wished she had no husband.
“Tell me about the woman you thought I resembled,” she said.
Simon glanced toward the front door and then back at her. “I was in love with her once,” he said.
“That sounds sad. Something happened between you?”
“Yes. Something happened.”
“What was she like?”
“Well, let’s see. She was very pretty, like you. She liked to garden, especially vegetables. Everything grew for her. And she liked to cook.”
“She sounds like a homebody,” Eleanor said.
“Kind of, yes.”
“What did she do, you know, for a living?”
“She worked at a radio station, had her own show in the afternoons on Saturday. Gardening tips, food advice, stuff like that. She also had a slew of odd jobs because she said she didn’t want to get stuck doing one thing forever.”
“What kind of odd jobs?”
“Once she painted a mural on the side of an office building and once she walked dogs and house-sat. She also taught a few classes at the junior college and volunteered at an old folks’ home. Stuff like that.”
Eleanor smiled. “She sounds nice. What happened, you know, between you two?” As he looked away from her face, she chided herself and added, “I’m sorry. That was way too personal. I don’t remember anything about myself, so maybe that’s why I’m so caught up in hearing about this woman you’re describing. Don’t tell me any more, it’s none of my business.”
He opened his mouth, seemed to think better, and closed it. “How long are you staying here, Eleanor?”
“Until tomorrow,” she said. “Carl insisted we stay through today.”
“Then where are you headed? Home?”
“I wish,” she said.
“You sound homesick. Been away long?”
“How do I know?” she said, turning beseeching eyes on him. “I don’t know for sure when we left home or even exactly where home is except for the address on my driver’s license.”
“You don’t remember anything about it?”
“No. The address on my husband’s license is different from mine. When I asked him why, he told me we’ve moved recently. That’s all he’ll say.”
“If you want to go home so badly, why don’t you?”
“Because the doctor said we should stay away until my memory returns. Carl won’t tell me anything about myself. He says it’s supposed to come back naturally.”
“Makes it kind of hard for you, doesn’t it?” he said.
“I feel lost.”
“I bet you do,” he said, his gaze once again holding hers.
“How about you?” she said softly.
“I’m not sure about my plans, either.” His gaze swiveled to the doors again, and he got to his feet quickly. “I see your husband stomping across the parking lot. He looks pretty angry.”
“I’m beginning to think he’s angry quite often,” she said, instantly awash in guilt. She added, “He’s taking very good care of me. It can’t be much fun for him.”
“You underestimate yourself,” he said, and then as Carl pushed his way through the front doors, the man with the gray eyes disappeared toward the elevators.
Simon was right. Carl looked mad enough to kill someone.
Chapter Three
“So you agree she shouldn’t be told she’s pregnant?”
On the other end of the line, his cousin Virginia, a practicing psychologist in Chicago, paused for a second before saying, “Without knowing the specifics of her case, I don’t know what to think. In associational therapy, the patient is exposed to familiar surroundings in hopes it stimulates the brain’s neural synapses. Isolation from personal recollections seems counterintuitive, but if you know she’s pregnant and sense trouble in her marriage—”
“If there is a marriage,” Simon interjected.
“You said your partner on the force is checking into that, right?”
“Not my partner, no. I can’t get Mike into a compromising position on the off chance Ella did something illegal before she left Blue Mountain.” Or since then, for that matter….
“Then who did you call?”
“A private investigator I worked with a few years back.”
“You’re sure Ella isn’t faking amnesia?”
“I’m positive. The only way the woman I know could react to things the way this woman does is if she wasn’t aware of herself or her past. She’s not faking.”
“Okay. So, for now, all you know is she’s with a man who was able to convince the police and the hospital he’s her husband, which means he either planned her abduction very carefully or he is her husband—”
“In which case there is no mystery, just me jumping to conclusions,” Simon finished for her. And yet her husband had told Ella they’d just moved to Blue Mountain, which was a lie. Ella had lived there for at least two or three years.
Virginia cleared her throat. “Didn’t your mother tell me you and Ella were no longer a couple? In fact, you broke up with her just a week or so ago, didn’t you?”
Simon stared out at the ocean and sighed. “Well, I guess you could say I broke up with her. She’d gotten even more secretive than usual and we had some words and I realized it was over.”
“So maybe what you’re feeling is guilt mixed with anger,” she said softly.
“Huh?”
“Guilt for rejecting her. Then you find she has a husband all along and so really, she’s the one who rejected you. That’s why she wouldn’t talk about her past and why you felt shut out of her life. Hence the anger.”
“My mother has a big mouth.”
“She
