Again, he found nothing.
“Yes.” She turned back to the curtain, took a moment to tuck the edges together until the sun disappeared. “We were friends. Once.”
Her voice trailed in a husky murmur. A familiar bite caught him at the back of the spine. He swore under his breath.
“Once. We’re not friends now?” He wasn’t in the mood for cryptic answers or a prod from his libido. Obviously, his body needed no memories to react to its baser needs.
Sledgehammers beat at his temples, splitting his skull from ear to ear. He used the pain to block out her appeal.
“I’d like to think so,” she responded. “What do you remember?”
“Not sure.” Admitting he remembered nothing was out of the question. Clumsily, he shoved the thick, plaid comforter off him. Immediately the cool air took the heat and itch from his skin. She’d stripped him to his boxer briefs, he realized. Bruises tattooed most of his chest and stomach in dark hues of purple and brown.
He tried again, searching his mind until the headache drove him back to the woman for answers. “A bullet didn’t do all this damage,” he remarked even as the void bore down on him with a suffocating darkness. He took a deep breath to clear his head, paid for it with a sharp slice of pain through his ribs.
“Feels like I’ve been hit by a train.” Anger antagonized the helplessness, but something deeper, more innate, forced a whisper of caution through his mind.
“Someone tried to kill you last night.” She spoke the words quickly, as if simple speed would blur the ugliness of them. “They almost succeeded.”
Frustrated, he swung his legs over to the side of the bed before she could stop him. He fought through the vertigo and nausea. But the effort left him shaking.
“Where are my pants?” If he needed to move quickly, he didn’t want to be naked doing it.
“You don’t need them right now. You have a concussion.” She glanced toward the door. “You need bed rest.”
“What I need is my pants.” He glanced up at her, saw the anxiety that tightened her lips, knit her brow. But once again, it was the fear dimming the light brown of her eyes that bothered him. He hardened himself against it.
The woman was definitely on edge. He tried a different tack. “Now,” he ordered. For a moment, he was tempted to raise the gun, point it at her, but something inside stopped him.
As if she read his mind, she glanced from the weapon to his face, then surprised him by shaking her head. “You won’t shoot me over a pair of pants.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he growled. Right now, for two cents, he’d put a bullet through his own forehead just to relieve the pounding behind it.
“Then go ahead,” she said before she swung around, leaving her back exposed. The movement cost her, he could see it in the rigid spine, the set of her shoulders. He’d scared the hell out of her but she didn’t give an inch.
“Damn it.” She had guts for calling his bluff, he gave her that. “All right, it seems I’m more civilized than I thought.”
When she faced him, she didn’t gloat.
She had smarts, too, he thought sarcastically.
He placed the gun on the nightstand beside him and ran his free hand over his face, ignoring the whiskers that scraped at his palm. “Look, for the time being, I’ll accept the fact that you and I are…friends. But whoever did do this to me is still out there somewhere. And I assume they’ll try again. Agreed?”
“Yes,” she replied, if somewhat reluctantly.
“If I have to face them with no memory and very little strength, I’d at least like to have my pants on when I do it.”
“Your pants and shirt were covered in blood. I burned them in the fireplace.”
When he raised an eyebrow, she let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. There is a change of clothes for you in my closet.”
She waved a hand toward the double doors beside a connecting bathroom. Another good idea, considering the state of his bladder.
But he’d be damned if he’d ask for help. He’d wait a moment for his legs to stop shaking. “Do I usually keep clothes in your closet?” he asked, knowing the answer would explain the pinch of desire he felt moments ago.
“You forgot them here,” Grace explained and glanced toward the open bedroom door.
“And here is?”
“Annapolis.” She paused for a moment, the small knit on her brow deepened. But when she brushed a stray hair from her cheek, the slight tremble of her fingers gave away her nervousness. She tucked her hands in her pockets. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
“Right now, I don’t even know what the hell my name is.”
“Jacob Lomax.”
He searched his mind for recognition. Found nothing that was familiar. His headache worsened, making it difficult to think. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“Since midnight last night.” She glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Ten hours.”
“Which makes today, what?”
“Tuesday. The twenty-third of September.”
Slowly, he scanned the room, searching. The curtains and comforter, while a yellow plaid, were both trimmed with white lace. The latter was draped over a pine-slotted sleigh bed that sat more than three feet off the floor. Positioned across the room were its matching dresser and mirror.
Jacob studied his image. The blade-sharp cheekbones, the strong, not-quite-square jaw, covered with no more than a day’s worth of whiskers. He rubbed his knuckles against the stubble on one cheek, hollowed more from fatigue he imagined than from pain. A bruise dominated the high forehead, spilled over in a tinge of purple by the deep set eyes of vivid blue.
No flashes of recognition. No threads of familiarity. Nothing more than the image of a stranger staring back.
His focus shifted down. Assorted lotions and powders cluttered the top of the dresser, along with a few scattered papers and a stack of books.
Packing boxes sat opened on the floor. Some were full, others half-empty, but most lay flat, their sides collapsed.
“You’re moving?”
“Yes—”
“You’re awake.” A man entered the room, the black bag in his hand and the stethoscope around his neck identifying him as a doctor.
Grace met the older man halfway across the room. Jacob deliberately said nothing and waited. But his hand shifted closer to the gun beside him.
Her father was on the smaller side of sixty, with a leanness that came with time on a tennis court, not a golf course. His hair
