that the woman might have been carrying had been destroyed by the fire, and her body and face had been shattered by the impact.
When a check of fingerprint files, dental records and missing persons lists all came up blank, the woman was tagged with the designation normally given to unidentified bodies—Jane Doe—and given the number thirteen to distinguish her from those who had come before and those who would follow. When she came out of her coma, in the middle of June, she had no idea who she was and didn’t recognize the face the plastic surgeons had created for her.
He and Manny had elicited the aid of the media, and Jane’s story was widely covered by newspapers and television. Numerous people came to see her, hoping she might prove to be their missing sister, daughter, wife. What few people knew, however, was how devastating both her celebrity and the subsequent disappointments had been for Jane. Matt knew, though. He had witnessed the last of such visits, had held Jane in his arms as she mourned the fact that, yet again, all parties concerned had been disappointed and she still was left without an identity.
However, when she pulled away from him that day and dried her eyes, a new Jane had emerged.
That quietly self-controlled person stood in front of Matt now—more or less. She wasn’t as painfully thin as he remembered; the hair that had been shaved prior to the emergency operation on her bruised brain had grown out to frame her slender face in a chin-length cap of light brown; and the scar at the left corner of her mouth had faded to the palest of pinks.
But her smoky gray-brown eyes held the same mixture of vulnerability and determination he’d seen the day she declared she was ready to move forward, that she would never search for her past again. However, from what the security guard had said, it seemed that today Jane’s past had come searching for her.
“So,” Matt said. “You remembered something.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “No. I didn’t.”
Matt gave her a small smile. “Jessup just told me you thought it was May. That was the month your car went over that embankment.” It hadn’t been her car, of course. The vehicle subsequently had proved to be stolen. Glossing over the inaccuracy, Matt got to the heart of the matter. “Don’t you think there might be some connection?”
“No.” She took a step back as she spoke, and broke eye contact. Her gaze fell on the scarf. “I was looking at this scarf one minute, then hearing some Christmas tune the next, and suddenly wondered why the store would play that kind of music so early in the year.”
From the evasiveness in her whiskey-toned voice, Matt knew there was more to the story. He considered pressing the matter, then thought about Wilcox’s attitude and decided to hold off, for the moment. Instead, as Jane slowly met his gaze again, he lifted the scarf from the center of the table.
“Good taste,” he said, then let it fall back into a soft puddle as he looked into Jane’s eyes. He tried to lend some lightness to his next words. “Well, for the record, I don’t believe for one moment that you’re some shoplifter making up a story to escape apprehension.”
Jane stared at him. Her wide mouth began to twitch, as if she was fighting a smile. “You still talk like a cop.”
Matt shrugged. Some of the tightness eased from his shoulders. “Force of habit. Besides, I’m still in law enforcement, sort of. I’m a private detective now.”
Jane lifted one brow. “Did you come here thinking I might need your services?”
There was no missing the almost desperate note in that low, throaty voice of Jane’s, a sexy quality that was the direct result of injuries sustained in a crime unsolved. Temporarily unsolved, Matt reminded himself. Now Jane Doe Num—Jane Ashbury—was no longer a half-forgotten part of his life. She was here, in front of him, a bit of unfinished business that had too long been pushed to the back of his mind by events that had turned his own life upside down.
His assessment of the crash made him doubt the theory that Jane had sent the car over the embankment herself, either accidentally or as a suicide attempt. When he and Manny were temporarily pulled off the case, they were certain that they’d eventually be able to prove that Jane’s “accident” had been a murder attempt.
Matt frowned. It was obvious that Wilcox had done nothing with the case the man had inherited. And maybe it was just as well. No one had ever been punished for Manny’s murder, or for the damage that had been done to Matt’s body and life. The idea of justice denied ate at him daily. Maybe he would feel better if he caught the person responsible for the attempt on Jane’s life and brought him, or her, to justice.
But first there was this matter of shoplifting to deal with.
“Well, to be honest,” Matt said, “I don’t consider this much of a case. I’d be very surprised if Mr. Jessup doesn’t return with an apology for having doubted you.”
Jane looked deeply skeptical, but before she could say anything, the door opened and the security guard entered the room. Wilcox followed him, but stopped just inside the door.
“Miss Ashbury,” Jessup said as he approached Jane. “I’m sorry for the…misunderstanding.”
Pure relief softened Jane’s features as she came around the desk and faced the security guard. “I’m free to go, then?”
The man nodded. Jane gave him a wide smile, then opened her arms and gave him a quick hug. When Jane stepped back, the guard blinked and straightened the cap that had been knocked askew by her enthusiasm.
Matt fought a smile. The Jane he remembered had seemed to be far younger than her estimated late-twenties to early thirties. The doctors explained this was because she had no memory of the personal experiences that forge maturity. However, the Jane he’d met upon entering this room had seemed wary and suspicious in a most adult way. He was glad to see that she’d managed to keep at least some of the childlike openness he’d found so refreshing.
“And thank you, Matt.”
Jane had turned toward him. Still smiling, she crossed the room and, before he could anticipate her intent, she went on tiptoe, threw her arms around his shoulders and drew him into a tight embrace.
Automatically Matt’s arms went around her slender body. In an instant he realized this wasn’t anything like the hugs he’d exchanged with Jane before, when she’d been as thin as an eleven-year-old girl. The woman he now held was still slender, but had developed gentle curves that seemed to melt into him, warming him, stirring him in ways he hadn’t allowed his body to experience in far too long. Without willing them to, his arms tightened around her.
For the second time that day, Jane felt the life she’d spent a year carefully building shift beneath her feet. As she found herself drawn into Matt’s embrace, a strange heat washed through her body, and although she had no memory of ever experiencing this particular sort of knee-weakening warmth, she knew what it was. It was the moment she’d read about in all those romance novels, when the woman’s body responds to a man’s. To the man. The one she is meant to be with, now and forever.
But real life, she heard a voice say, isn’t anything like a romance novel. The voice was Matt’s, she realized, echoing from a moment when he’d stood over her hospital bed. He’d tried to explain that there were better ways to fill the blanks in her knowledge than watching movies and television or reading fiction, then he’d handed her a book about the science of the brain and another on world history.
But today
