between her breasts to her waist. Just her fingers working the small buttons. Just enough to know that he wanted more.
She turned her back. When she faced him again, the last button was securely fastened and her face was tinged pink. She held the screen door open a few inches. “Hello.”
He took hold of the handle, but didn’t pull, didn’t step inside. Instead, in a masterpiece of clumsiness, he blurted out, “Before we start, I think you should know that someone tried to kill me.”
“Today?”
“No. Several years ago.” When she looked puzzled, he explained, “I don’t know who I am—who I used to be—but apparently it was someone with enemies. Someone who did something worth killing over.”
For a long time, she simply looked at him. Then abruptly she shrugged, making her hair sway. “Or maybe you were the victim of some crazy with a gun. Lord knows, there are enough of them around. Come on in.”
He went inside, then flipped the hook on the jamb into the eye on the door. By the time he turned, she was already in the room on the right.
It had once been a formal dining room and still held dining room furniture. The pieces were old and oak—an oval table big enough to seat six, four chairs that matched, two office chairs on wheels and a china cabinet. The oak was heirloom quality, suited to a country house with a family to fill the chairs. Here it did duty as a desk, supporting her computer and printer. The shelves of the china hutch held books, flash-drives and printer cartridges. Packages of paper were visible in the cabinet underneath before she shoved the door shut as she passed.
She sat in a bright blue chair in front of the computer but made no effort to turn it on. We’ll talk, she had said, and that was apparently all she intended to do. Doing it here, he assumed, instead of the living room where they would have been more comfortable was her way of keeping it strictly business.
“I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon, and I’m not really sure I can help you.”
He didn’t want to hear that, pretended he didn’t hear it as he circled the room. There were blinds on the windows, no curtains and nothing on the walls but a corkboard directly behind her. From across the room, he couldn’t make out any of the notes thumbtacked to the board. When he pulled out the chair beside her, he still couldn’t read them. Her writing was atrocious.
“Exactly what was Terry doing?”
“We went through old newspapers and school yearbooks, checked town records, looking for something I might remember.”
“You think you’re from here.”
“I know I’ve been here. From the start, I’ve had this feeling…” He wasn’t one to talk much about feelings, or if he did, he disguised them with other words. Instincts. Intuition. Intuition told him he’d been in Grand Springs long enough to gain a familiarity with the place. Too often he knew what was around a corner he’d never turned. He’d known in September about the eighty-foot-tall pine that would be decorated for Christmas in December. There were places—the high school gymnasium, a restaurant downtown, a clothing store—where he knew he’d been at some time in the forgotten past.
“But if you had lived here or spent any length of time here, don’t you think someone would recognize you?”
He scowled at the logic of her argument. “Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I’m not that noticeable.”
Juliet had to bite her tongue to stop from snorting scornfully at that last comment. Not noticeable? In what galaxy? She’d seen his effect on the females in the library, from giggly teenagers to white-haired grandmothers. There was no way he could have spent any time here and the women of Grand Springs not notice him. “When you appeared in Grand Springs, you didn’t remember anything?”
“I remembered who was president of the United States. I knew that I’ve always liked Italian food. I knew I spoke fluent Spanish. I remembered plenty of things. Just nothing important, like who I am or where I’m from.” He slumped in the chair, his feet stretched out so that they nearly touched hers. She swiveled her chair a few inches to the right.
“What happened the night of the accident?” She knew there’d been a wreck, that he’d suffered a head injury and now had amnesia, but the rumor mill was short on details, and details were desperately needed if she was going to help him.
“The first thing I remember is waking up with a hell of a headache. I guess I lost control of the car in the storm and hit the guardrail.”
The storm. That was how the town referred to that weekend last June. Rains had saturated the area, and the downpour that Friday evening had been more than the ground could bear. There had been massive mud slides, closing the highways and causing a blackout that lasted into Sunday.
“Besides banging your head, were you hurt?”
He shook his head. “I left the car and started walking. The town was completely dark, so when I saw lights, I headed for them. It was the hospital. They examined me, gave me a name—”
“After the soap opera hunk,” she said, and he scowled again. Which offended him more—the soap opera part or the hunk part?
“And called the police. They were busy with the blackout and the mayor’s murder, but eventually they got around to me. They took my fingerprints and sent them to the FBI and the state. They didn’t know who I was, either.”
“So we know you’re not a cop, you were never in the military, and you’re not a crook.”
“At least, not one who’s been caught.”
She ignored his mutterings and went on. “Before the accident, were you coming to Grand Springs or going away from it?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Which direction was your car facing when you regained consciousness?”
“I don’t remember. I’d hit my head. I was disoriented.”
“What happened to the car?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Once things settled down and the roads were reopened, Stone Richardson took me out to find it. We couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t remember where I left it, but wherever that was, it was no longer there. We drove all the way to the interstate and found nothing.”
“So someone stole it.”
“Or it got swept away by the mud slides.”
“Is that possible?”
His look was dry, his voice even drier. “Have you ever seen a few tons of mud and rock come rushing down a mountainside?”
“I’m from Dallas. We don’t have mountainsides. We don’t even have many hillsides.”
“A mud slide can uproot trees, tear down guardrails and destroy chunks of roadway. It can move a building off its foundation and carry it away, breaking it into splinters along the way. It can destroy a town, kill anyone in its way, and, yes, it can wash away a car.”
