Bridal Reconnaissance (3 page)

She never intended to see him again.

The D.A. jerked at his tie. “Let me help you find a place to stay.”

“No!”

He winced at her shout.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t trust anyone now. How did he find me? You made up this last name for me and helped me find this house—”

“You think I sold you out?” Red flooded up from beneath his wilted collar.

“No, not you. But somebody did. His family has money, connections. You told me that. I saw it in court with the high-powered attorney he had. And now he’s bought himself an early release.”

The D.A. sighed. “The truth is that until we find the guy from last night and confirm the threat, I can’t offer you much protection.”

“What can you offer me? Can’t you keep him behind bars?”

“Not unless we find this guy, Amanda. But I could try for a restraining order.”

She swallowed a bitter chuckle. “As if he would abide by it.”

He nodded. “You’re right. But once he’s out, the minute he violates his parole, we’ll get him back behind bars.”

“Violates parole? And exactly what does that mean?”

The D.A. wore his earnest face. “Missing appointments with his parole officer. Owning a firearm. Associating with known felons.”

“Hurting a child? Assaulting a woman? Or murder?” She shuddered. “Once he’s out, any parole violation he commits will be against me. And putting him back behind bars will be too late to help me.”

The D.A.’s forehead furrowed as he grimaced, reflecting her frustration. He couldn’t argue with her and they both knew it. “Amanda, I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” On impulse she pressed a kiss against his cheek. Except for her son, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched anyone.

That was something else she was sure
he’d
stolen from her. Affection, the desire to touch and be touched. By anyone but her son. “Thank you, Mr.—”

“Peter,” he corrected her. “How many times have I told you to call me…”

He squeezed her shoulder. “You take care. When are you leaving?”

“Soon.” She had more to pack, one gown to finish sewing for the bridal shop, hoping to be part of someone else’s memory if only in the fit of a dress. After almost six years of no one finding her, she had accepted that no one searched or Mr. Sullivan would have found a missing person’s report on her. He’d kept looking, had kept in contact with other police departments. But then in all these years, she hadn’t gotten close to anyone, hadn’t ever used this caring man’s first name. “I’ll miss you, Peter.”

He nodded and pulled open the door. “Be careful. And check in with me, so I can tell you when it’s safe to come home.”

Come home.
She had waited years for someone to show up on her doorstep and make that request. No one had come. And she had nowhere to go. But that hadn’t stopped her all those years ago and it wouldn’t now. She’d run and she’d hide and she’d make a home for her son, even though she doubted she’d ever find one for herself.

F
ROM THE PASSENGER’S SEAT
of Royce’s SUV, Evan stared at the small vinyl-sided house. He briefly noted the departure of a gray-haired man who climbed into a nondescript sedan and backed it from the narrow drive.

“A visitor.”

“Wasn’t there long,” Royce pointed out. “Not as long as we’ve been sitting here.”

Evan smiled at the impatience in Royce’s tone as he continued to study the plain little house with its white siding and simple black roof. No flash of color. Nothing to distinguish it from the dozens of others lined up the same distance from the curb on the block.

He laughed and shook his head. “There’s no way that Amanda’s living here.”

“You’re probably right. This one was a long shot. She uses the name Amanda Smith, really unoriginal. And as you pointed out with your wife’s birth certificate and marriage license,
her
real first name isn’t Amanda. Hell, Amanda isn’t even her middle name.”

“Her real first name is Caroline, after her paternal grandmother. But when the inevitable divorce happened, her mother stopped using that name and started calling her Amanda. Probably another husband’s mother’s name. I don’t know. I lost count of my mother-in-law’s marriages.”

“Her parents haven’t heard from her?”

He shrugged. “So they claim. She and her mother rarely spoke. Her mother was always too busy even when Amanda was a child. Neither of her parents was talking to her at the time she took off, so they haven’t even looked for her. She’d had a fight with her father, and he had disowned her when she quit working for him. I hadn’t even known about it. Probably wouldn’t have, but I tracked them down when I couldn’t find her. They weren’t surprised that she had left me.”

As they had gone from relationship to relationship,
they had believed Amanda would do the same. Maybe she had.

“But you were married to this woman?”

Evan ignored the disbelief. “Still am.” For now. “At least I never received any divorce papers.”

Royce snorted. “Doesn’t mean much. Marriage doesn’t mean much to some people. You don’t have to be separated this many years to file for divorce on grounds of desertion. You could have divorced her pretty easily without ever seeing her again in person, if that’s what you’d wanted.”

From the corner of his eye, Evan caught his friend’s intense stare, but he didn’t turn his head. He couldn’t comment; it wasn’t about his wants anymore. Maybe if he hadn’t wanted so much six years ago, she never would have left.

No, she would have left. Leaving was all she knew.

“You’re not going to know how wrong I am about your wife living here until you knock on that door.” Candy wrappers crinkled in accompaniment to Royce’s words.

Evan sighed. “Yes.”

He swung open the door and stepped onto the quiet street. “I’ll be right back.”

“Whatever.”

Evan slammed the door and startled some birds from the barren trees. With a hand on his lapel, he pulled his overcoat closer to guard against the brittle cold early-spring air. Despite the bright sunshine, patches of dirty snow stood curbside and the grass was brown and dead.

As dead as he sometimes felt inside…

He might as well get this over. Knock, offer a token
apology for the mistake and continue the search for Amanda. Purposeful strides carried him across the street and up the narrow walk to the front door of Amanda Smith.

He pressed a leather-gloved fingertip against the bell and winced at the distorted sound echoing behind the door, which after a few moments opened.

“Mr. Sullivan—” The breathless voice stopped and green eyes widened behind black horn-rimmed glasses, the type of reading glasses only available at a chain drugstore. “Who are you?”

He glanced down her body at the shapeless sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants sagging on her small frame. Nondescript gray. Amanda had never owned anything in that color.

He lifted his gaze to her face, peripherally taking in the shaggy tangle of dark blond framing it. Except for the slight crook of her small nose, the high cheekbones and rounded chin bore a resemblance to the photo lying on the table in his hotel suite. But that was all.

She was hardly the glamorous woman who had worn designer gowns and jetted around the world. But with one look of her green eyes she still jump-started his pulse.

“I asked who you are. What do you want?” Fear trembled in her voice and she stepped back, swinging the door forward.

Like a pushy salesman, he positioned his foot in the jamb, so she couldn’t shut him out. But if she’d hit him square in the jaw with the solid wood, he wouldn’t have been more stunned than he was by her altered appearance.

Even her voice was different, deeper, and her tone diffident, something he never would have expected from his wife. “Amanda?”

“I—I don’t know who you are—” Fear and confusion shook her voice and blurred her green eyes.

“Amanda…”

A diesel engine drew his attention toward the street and she gained an opportunity to push the door closed. But then she stopped and stepped over the threshold to stand beside him, trembling in the cold.

A yellow school bus, lights flashing, pulled to the curb across from Royce’s SUV. The door opened and a child skipped down the stairs and up the walk.

Evan’s knees weakened and his heart jumped in his chest. The boy had curly black hair and dark eyes; the exact features Evan saw when he looked in the mirror every morning.

He’d not only found his runaway wife. He’d found his son, too. The son he’d never known he had.

Chapter Two

Amanda contained her scream of panic by sinking her teeth into the fleshy part of her bottom lip. And she didn’t let up the pressure. Another pressure built behind her eyes in a blinding headache. But unfortunately she still had her vision and could still see the devastatingly handsome man who bore such a striking resemblance to her son.

Christopher stopped in front of the stranger, his little mouth falling open as he looked way up at the man. “You’re tall.”

She swallowed a hysterical giggle over his habit of stating the obvious.

Despite the shock that had stolen the color from the man’s face, he found his voice. “And you’re not.”

“I’m five. How old are you?”

The man chuckled and bent his knees to lower himself closer to the boy’s level. Amanda resisted the urge to snatch Christopher into her arms, run into the house and bolt the door behind them. But she couldn’t frighten Christopher. Not as she was frightened.

When she’d first opened the door to the stranger,
her pulse had raced, her breaths had grown shallower, what few she’d been able to take…

Who was this man that her body knew even though her mind had no recollection of him? Was he her child’s father?

“I’m thirty-five.”

Startled by his delayed response, she turned to find his dark stare on her face. Questions raced through the depths of his eyes. He’d come to the wrong person if he wanted any answers.

And he’d come at the wrong time for her to ask any questions of her own. She had no time for the past when she had to secure her future.

“Christopher, what did I tell you about talking to strangers?” The wobble of fear in her voice negated any sternness she’d attempted.

Christopher lifted his head toward her, his dark gaze questioning. “Mom?”

“Go in the house, okay? I’ll be there in a minute.” She held her breath while he hesitated before the man, then turned to dart around her.

The stranger’s gloved hand came up, as if to grab her son, then dropped back to the side of his expensive camel-hair overcoat.

“I don’t know who you are, but you better leave!” She backed toward the open door on trembling legs.

“Amanda…”

The tortured sound of her name in his strangled voice stopped her retreat.

“I had no idea…” His deep voice trailed away.

Confusion compounded the headache throbbing behind her eyes. “That’s right, you have no idea. And I don’t have time to explain anything to you.”

His gaze swung around her to the boxes littering the living-room floor. “You’re running again? Or still?”

Had she run from this man? Was he someone else she needed to fear? Was that why her heart beat faster in his presence? Fear? She squeezed her eyes shut and lifted a trembling hand to her forehead. “I can’t talk to you. You have to leave. Or I’m calling the police.”

“And tell them what, Amanda?”

Tell them what? She had no clue who or what this man was to her and her son. If she called, would they remove him? Or her?

Tears of pain from the pounding headache and the burning frustration welled in her eyes. “Please, please, just leave…”

“You think I’m going to just walk away? That was your routine, not mine.” Anger blazed in his dark eyes.

“I’ll tell the police you’re harassing me. I’ll call…” The quaver of fear weakened her threat.

“Harassing you? You think this is harassment?”

He stepped so close that the world turned dark as she shivered in his long shadow. His disturbingly familiar scent, rich with wood and leather, teased her senses. But she knew no one who could afford such expensive cologne. And how could she know the cost of the tantalizing fragrance?

Her teeth clanked together. The cold. She’d been standing outside in only her sweats. Had to be the cold that had her trembling uncontrollably.

“Mommy?” called a small voice from within the house.

She jerked back, stumbling over the threshold.
Strong, gloved fingers locked around her upper arm. Holding her upright or just holding her?

“Please…”

She stared up into his dark unrelenting eyes and implored. “Please, go.”

The fingers slid from her arm, scorching even through the jersey of her sweatshirt and the leather of his gloves. Branding her. Had she once been his?

No, not a man like this. Too big, too powerful, too much…

“It’s not over, Amanda.”

His warning hung in the air as she pressed the door closed and leaned against the hard wood, her knees shaking so much they barely supported her.

She closed her eyes against the pain raging inside her head. It was over.

If he returned he would find she’d done just what he accused her of. Ran. But now she ran from two fears, the fear of the animal that had stolen her memory and now the fear of whatever she’d lost with her memory.

E
VAN STARED AT THE CLOSED DOOR
for several moments, fighting the urge to knock it down and demand answers from this woman who barely resembled the one who had left him nearly six years ago. But that would scare her…and the child.

The child?

He drew in a couple of deep calming breaths. He wasn’t in control, not enough to talk to her. Or see the boy again.

He turned toward the street. His friend leaned against the dusty side of his silver Avalanche. In a
few long strides Evan crossed the distance between them and grasped the lapels of Royce’s sheepskin-lined jean jacket.

Arms straining, he lifted his friend off his heels, gritted his teeth and fought for control of the emotions surging through him. “You knew.”

Royce shook his head. “Not that she was your wife. What was the sense in mentioning the kid? Come on, Evan, ease up!”