pushed a button and with the hum of a motor her bed moved her into a sitting position. She wore no makeup, but with her porcelain skin and thick fringe of dark lashes, she needed none. Sara had definitely grown into a beautiful woman. Her black hair, styled so carefully yesterday, now formed a gently mussed frame for her high-cheekboned face. The intrusive white bandage at her temple was a stark contrast to her hair’s deep color. Jordan had an urge to touch it, but he kept still.
The sheet had fallen slightly, revealing the top of her ugly green hospital gown and the smooth, pale flesh above it. Tantalizing flesh.
Watch it, Dawes, he warned himself. This was not the time or the place to harbor lustful feelings about Sara.
As if there ever would be.
Careful not to make contact with her, Jordan reached over and pulled up the sheet.
He saw a flush pinken Sara’s skin. “I must be a sight,” she said.
“Absolutely. A lovely sight,” he said.
Her hazel eyes widened and she smiled. “You’re either very kind or very nearsighted,” she retorted.
“My eyesight is just fine,” he said with a grin. Amnesia or not, Sara remained sassy. “And you’d better remember more about me before you start calling me kind.”
Her smile froze then disappeared. “I’d love to remember more.” There was a wistfulness in her voice.
Jordan wanted to issue himself a good, hard kick in the butt for reminding her of her infirmity. “You will,” he said with more assurance than he felt. He had spoken further with her doctors. They had been uncertain as to what, if anything, she would remember—her own past, people, how to do things. It varied in different cases. If all went well, at least some things would start coming back to her soon. But they’d told him that sometimes people with amnesia never fully recalled the incident that resulted in their loss of memory.
If only he could get inside Sara’s skull, see what she had seen in that hotel room…find out the identity of the dirty scumbag who had killed Casper and had hurt her that way.
The same scumbag, he was certain, who’d been the target of their elaborate scheme that had backfired so miserably.
“Tell me.” Sara seemed to sit up straighter. One of her hands appeared from beneath the sheet and gestured plaintively toward him.
“Tell you what?”
“Everything. All that I should remember.”
“I’ll tell you what I can,” he dissembled, hoping his dismay didn’t ooze visibly from every pore. There were things he didn’t want to tell her just yet. The doctors had also said that amnesia could be the mind’s way of protecting a person from events she couldn’t, for the moment, bear to recall. That was why, for now, there were things he couldn’t mention. And why he couldn’t even consider attempting forensic hypnosis, though he had been trained in it. Still, he could hand her back a little of her present. Innocuous things that she’d hear soon enough anyway.
“Okay,” she said agreeably, her eyes wide with anticipation. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I already told you that I’m a police detective, and that your father was my boss. Did you know he was your boss, too?”
“Really?”
“You’re a dispatcher with the Santa Gregoria Police Department, Sara.”
“Oh, Jordan,” she said with a sudden intake of breath. A big tear rolled down her cheek. “I’m so glad to know—but even now that you’ve told me, I don’t recall a thing about it.”
He wanted to sit on the edge of her bed. Pull her into his arms. Comfort her.
But that could not be. For Sara was a lovely woman. He found her more than a little appealing—and a lot sexy. Contact with her, even innocently, could lead him to want more. Much more.
And that was why, for his own sanity, he didn’t dare touch his bride.
TWO DAYS LATER, Sara finally awaited her release from the hospital. The doctors had professed they had done all they could for her. They had given her the name of a private physician to see and had told her that her memory would return—sometime. They suggested hypnosis if her memory didn’t come back, but not till she felt up to it. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
But she could finally go home.
Not before facing one further ordeal, though: her father’s funeral. She had been told that the investigation details involving his body had been conducted thoroughly but fast, and he had already been prepared for interment.
As Sara dressed for the sad event in preparation for leaving the hospital, Jordan wasn’t with her. June Roehmer, dressed in a formal police uniform, was. June was a pixieish woman a few inches shorter and a year or two older than Sara.
“I’m really so sorry,” June told Sara as she handed her a deep gold blouse, long brown skirt and panty hose that Jordan had sent with her, “that you don’t remember how close you and I are.” Beneath her cap of short, dusty-blond hair, her gray eyes widened in dismay. “Of course, there are more important things going on with you now. Your dad wasn’t the easiest person for us uniform cops to get along with, but he was a fine chief of police. I’ve never heard anyone say otherwise.”
“Thanks, June,” Sara said. She wished the woman would stop talking for just thirty seconds. Sara’s head had been feeling much better—until faced with June’s garrulousness. “I’m sorry I don’t remember how close we were, too.”
She took the clothes from June and went into the bathroom to change, leaving the door slightly ajar. She felt a little dizzy, and her head still hurt. She would call for help if necessary.
“Do you remember anything about what happened in that hotel room?” June called. “I mean, all of us were upstairs at your reception. From what people are saying, you and your dad just left the reception with no explanation. Jordan was on a phone call on his cellular and didn’t see you go. And then—then…and you don’t remember any of it?”
“No,” Sara answered sadly, sitting on the edge of the closed toilet seat as she pulled on her panty hose. “I don’t recall why we went to that room…if Dad asked me to come along—anything.”
Dad. She had called her father “Dad.” Sara was sure of it.
Was that her first memory to return? She felt the corners of her mouth lift a little at this tiny milestone, but then she stopped her grin. She shouldn’t admit to anyone when any memory returned. Jordan and she had discussed that, and it made sense.
She had no idea whom to trust.
Even Jordan, though she could hardly tell him that. She certainly didn’t want to think that the handsome man who was apparently her husband had anything to do with her father’s murder and her own assault. But until she remembered who had done it, she had to be cautious.
She wondered where he was. He’d said he would be at the funeral. That June would be with her until then. But she wanted Jordan.
He had been the small bit of thread binding her
