you okay?” Dawson squatted next to her. “Want me to call the nurse?”
“No, as long as I can breathe, I’m okay.” Deep green eyes blinked open and widened. “Who are you? You aren’t armed with a pillow, are you?” She leaned to the side to peer around him.
“No pillow, just me, Dawson Gray.” He held out his hand. “I’m your bodyguard, and if anyone asks … your fiancé.”
“Bodyguard? Fiancé?” Her green eyes widened. “Which one is it?”
“Officially, your bodyguard.”
Savvy shook her head. “And I didn’t think this day could get weirder. Well, thanks for coming to my rescue.” Her forehead crinkled into a frown and she winced. “Ouch. Remind me not to frown. It hurts.” She looked at the outstretched hand, but didn’t take it. “Should I know you? I mean, you being my fiancé and all.”
“No. We’re meeting for the first time.”
“Good, because I don’t remember you. Still, how could you be my fiancé if I’ve never met you? Am I a mail-order bride or something? I’m confused.” She pushed up on her elbows and closed her eyes. “Is it me, or is the room spinning?”
“It’s definitely you.” He nodded toward her head. “You’ve got a head wound and someone just tried to smother you. I’m sure neither is helping. Other than that, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I think so. Although my legs didn’t give me any warning before they gave out.” Her lips twitched.
“Give yourself a break. You’ve been through a lot by the looks of it.” He shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you, maybe we could get you into the bed.” He scooped his hands beneath her legs and lifted, straightening. For as tall as she was, she couldn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds.
“Hey!” Her eyes widened and she wrapped an arm around his neck. “Not so fast.”
“Sorry.” He laid her back against the pillows and adjusted the hospital gown around her, his fingers brushing against the silky skin of her thigh. What was he doing? Dawson snatched his hand away and stuffed it into his pocket.
Savvy lay still, her face pale. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
The urge to protect hit him so hard, he stepped away. He had no right to be her protector. Qualifications for this job included a proven success rate.
His record stunk. He’d lost his wife, lost a soldier and almost lost his mind. Dawson turned toward the door, retreat foremost in his mind. “Excuse me. I have a call to make.”
“Please,” she called out in a small, scared voice.
The one word halted his forward progress and made him turn back. Big mistake.
She leaned toward him, her wide-eyed gaze darting from him to the door. “Do you have to leave me—” her voice faded, and she shrank back against the sheets “—alone?”
With his hand in his pocket already fishing for his cell phone, he paused. “I’ll be right outside the door. I won’t let anyone past me.”
“Please …” Her fingers plucked at the hospital gown, bunching it, causing the hem to inch up her legs. “I don’t even know how I got here.”
Dawson clutched his cell phone, his brain telling him to leave. Now. But his misguided instincts pulled him back toward the bed and its occupant. “You don’t remember how you got here because you were unconscious.”
Savvy shook her head slowly and winced. “No, it’s worse than that.” Her full, bottom lip trembled and she turned away from his gaze.
Dawson’s chest squeezed tight and he forced himself to hold back—not to reach out to her. The woman needed someone to talk to. That someone was not him. “How so?”
“I don’t remember where I was.” She looked to him with those trusting green eyes. “Can you tell me?”
Dawson sighed. He couldn’t leave her when she looked at him like a lost puppy. Calling himself every kind of fool, he retraced his steps to the foot of her bed. “You were found in an alley behind a bar.”
She reached up to brush away a tear slipping from the corner of one eye, her shoulders straightening. “What bar?”
“The one where you worked.”
A frown lined her forehead and she pressed a hand gently to the bandage on the side of her head, closing her eyes. “I don’t remember working. Are you sure I worked at a bar?” Eyes as green as a forest of pine blinked up at him, the shadows beneath them making her appear more like a waif than a fully grown young woman.
“So they say.” Dawson tore his gaze away from those eyes and glanced toward the door. God, he didn’t want to be responsible for another living soul. The way things were going, Savvy would threaten more than his confidence. The curves of her calves, the swell of her thighs peeking out from the edge of the cotton hospital gown, the way her eyes glittered with unshed tears, spelled disaster to everything male and primal inside him.
She leaned forward and touched his arm. “Tell me something, please.”
“What?” he growled, anxious to get outside the room, away from Savvy and her green-eyed gaze. He had to make a call to Audrey before he made the biggest mistake of his life.
A soft sniff made him freeze.
Two fat tears rolled down Savvy’s cheeks and plopped onto the sheet. “I know your name is Dawson Gray.” Her fingers tightened on his arms convulsively. “Do you know mine?”
She held her breath and waited for his answer.
Dawson’s gaze dropped to where her hand clutched at his sleeve. “Savvy,” he said, his voice hoarse, gravelly, as though he had to strain to say the one word. He cleared his throat. “Your name is Savvy Jones.”
“Savvy.” She let go of his arm and lay back against the pillow, her frown deepening. “Savvy.” She rolled the name off her tongue, closing her eyes and willing her memory to return. The more she tried the more her head pounded. At last she dragged in a deep breath and admitted, “I can’t remember.” She opened her eyes and stared at him through a glaze of moisture. “I can’t remember anything before waking up in the hospital.”
“You’ve had a head injury. The memory lapse could be temporary. At least you didn’t forget the basics.”
She snorted softly. “Basics? I don’t remember my entire life? How old am I? Are my parents alive? Where did I grow up? Am I—” Her gaze dropped to her ring finger and her breath caught in her throat. Was the skin around her ring finger a shade lighter than the rest of her hand? Or was it her imagination? She stared up at him, her heart a big lump in her throat. “Am I married?”
Dawson shrugged. “I don’t know. The D.A. didn’t mention it.”
“The D.A.?” She stared up at him.
“District Attorney Frank Young.” Dawson frowned, clearly uncomfortable with her questions.
