Her car plunged into the river.” Thomas didn’t have time for this. His wife was in the other room. He needed to see her. Find out what happened. How she’d ended up out here and why she was pretending he was some kind of stranger. “Please,” he said. Desperation cracked his voice. “They told us she was dead. I have to talk to her. Need to know what happened. She... We have a daughter who needs her.” His control was starting to slip. Six months of pain rose back to the surface in a groan.
“It’s all right, lad. I think you need to sit down.”
McKringle tried to lead him back to the table, but again Thomas broke from the contact. “Dammit, why is everyone trying to keep me from seeing my wife?”
“We don’t know if it is Rosalind,” Linus said. “I think we should hear him out.”
“I promise you she’s not going anywhere,” McKringle said. “But there’re a few things I think you ought to know. Please, Mr Collier. Take a seat. I’ll get you a drink.”
Thomas didn’t want a drink. He wanted his wife, but he allowed himself to be led back to his chair. Something in McKringle’s eyes said he needed to do as the man said.
“Let me ask you a question,” the old man said once they’d all settled in their seats. “Have you ever heard of the term dissociative fugue?”
She couldn’t stop shaking. Hunched over the bathroom sink, her fingers clutching the vanity edge for support, she could feel her legs trembling beneath her.
Rosie. He’d called her Rosie.
She’d always thought that when she met someone from her past, she would know. Instinct would kick loose whatever it was wrapping her brain in blackness and the memories would be set free. But when this man—this stranger—called her Rosie, she’d felt nothing.
Well, not completely nothing. Her heart had practically beat itself out of her chest when he hugged her. But he could have called her Jane or Susan or Philetta for all the name meant.
Maybe he had her confused with someone else. That must be the answer. What woman could forget a man that devastatingly handsome? Those eyes, blue-gray like the northern sea. If she closed her eyes, she saw them clear as day. Surely, such an indelible couldn’t be wiped from her mind.
She looked in the mirror and studied the heart-shaped face that was familiar yet foreign. Dissociative fugue, the doctor at the hospital called it. A type of amnesia brought on by trauma. All she knew was...nothing. Her mind was a void of memories older than a few months.
At first the blankness had terrified her, but lately she’d started to grow comfortable with her empty past. Until the stranger with blue-gray eyes had walked in.
There was knock on the ladies room door. “Lammie?” Chris’s gentle voice sounded on the other side. “You doin’ all right?”
She warmed at the tender nickname, a term Chris used because he said she was a little lost lamb. “I’m fine,” she replied. “A little shaken up, is all.”
Hearing his voice made her feel better. Chris would keep her safe; he’d been keeping her safe since the day she’d stumbled into his headlights.
“Do you feel up to stepping outside? We’d like to have a chat.”
By “we,” she prayed he meant him and his wife, Jessica, not the stranger with the unnervingly warm embrace.
“I’ll be right out,” she told him.
Ignoring how badly her hands were trembling, she retied her ponytail and wiped the smudges from under her eyes. If she did have to face the stranger again, she was going to look composed, dammit. For some reason it was important he see her pulled together.
When she finally opened the door, she found Chris leaning against the bar. “Better, Lammie?” he asked in a low voice. She nodded, and he gave her an encouraging smile.
She didn’t have to look to know who the other half of “we” was. The man’s presence hung in the air.
“This is Thomas Collier,” Chris said, “and his brother, Linus.”
“Like the soap.” The comment was automatic. A bottle of Collier’s lemon soap sat by the sink in the restaurant’s kitchen. Jessica swore by it, and she’d developed an immediate fondness herself.
“That’s right. They’re up from London.”
She looked to her left where both men sat at a nearby table. Both men were far more subdued this time around. The stranger was perched on the edge of his seat, his lanky body resembling a coil fighting not to spring. “Mr Collier’s wife, Rosalind, is missing,” Chris continued. “She disappeared following a car accident. He’s pretty sure she’s you.”
He’d called her Rosie.
Hoping that if she focused hard enough she might conjure up some spark of recognition, she took a better look at her so-called husband. When she’d first approached their table, before the craziness started, she’d thought both men attractive. Upon second take, she amended her opinion. One was attractive. Thomas Collier was handsome as sin. If they were married, she had fantastic taste. Taller and lankier than his companion, he had the kind of features that separately were nondescript but together formed an arresting picture of angles and slopes. And again, there were those eyes. She could almost imagine white caps dotting their blue-gray depths. A slow whorl of awareness unexpectedly twisted through her midsection.
Attraction aside, however, she might as well have been admiring a stranger. “I told him about your condition,” Chris told her.
“And you believe him?” A moot question if ever there was one. Chris wouldn’t have asked her to join them if he didn’t think Collier’s claims had merit.
“Think it’s worth you hearing him out,” Chris said. “Then you can decide for yourself.”
She chewed her lip, unsure what to do. On the one hand, if this man’s story turned out to be true, she’d finally have the answers she’d been seeking. On the other hand, everything she did know would be turned upside down, and while she didn’t know her past, her present was a good one.
“I promise I’ll behave myself,” Collier said. “You have my word I won’t do anything to frighten you again. Please,” he added, gesturing to the seat next to him.
Damn those eyes. How could she say no when they were imploring her?
Chris’s whiskers brushed her ear as he leaned close. “No need to worry, Lammie. I’ll be right over here at the bar if you need anything,” he murmured, before adding in a louder voice, “Mr Collier, might I interest you in something to eat?”
“Don’t have to ask me twice. I’ll take a giant Scotch, as well.” The other man, who she’d already noted was a younger, less arresting version of her “husband,” rose to his feet. As he headed past, he stopped to offer a warm smile. “I can’t believe it’s really you, Rosalind. Thomas is right—it’s a miracle.”
“Come along, Mr Collier. Let me pour you the best double malt in the Highlands.” Taking him by the elbow, Chris led the man to the far end of the bar.
Leaving
