Undercover Memories (15 page)

“I can’t, either,” Paige admitted. “I’ll go see if they have a room.”

“Just one,” he said, holding up a finger. “Anatola is out there somewhere. I think we should stay together.”

She hesitated, remembering the way John had woken up that morning.

He mistook her silence. “Don’t be offended but I am entirely too tired to threaten your virtue,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t love to have a go at it another time.”

She laughed as she got out of the car, but the worry of what the morning would bring didn’t strike her as very funny.

It was obvious the bearded man who appeared out of the back room when Paige hit the bell on the desk had been asleep. He appeared disinterested in anything, including license-plate numbers and names. As Paige had taken money out of an ATM after seeing Natalie, she paid in cash. The bearded man handed her a key, warned her the vibrating bed was broken and staggered off to the back room before Paige could get out of the tiny lobby.

There were exactly two cars in the almost-empty parking lot. At John’s suggestion, they pulled around to the back of the building and tucked the car close to the probable bathroom window of their ground-floor unit.

The room turned out to be narrow and small but amazingly clean. Paige took the first shower, scrubbing her skin and hair until she felt brand new again, doing her best to put thoughts of John aside. But when she pulled on the same nightclothes she’d worn the first time they met—in her bed, no less—she had to admit he was never far from her mind.

He looked her over when she entered the room. He’d been watching TV and he switched it off. The way he looked at her made her afraid and anxious and terribly aware of him, all at the same time.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, her voice soft.

“Short answer? You.”

“Dare I ask the long answer?”

He turned off the television, smiling. “Well, I believe I may have discovered something new about myself.”

“A memory?”

“More like a suspicion. I think I may have spent my life as a leg man. And don’t get me wrong, you have a great set of legs. But seeing you in a T-shirt that clings to your body that way, well, I may actually be a breast guy.”

She laughed. “Thank you. I think.”

“You’re welcome.”

She gestured at the television. “Did you make the news?”

“Flooding in the south and a sniper attack in D.C. have pushed most regional stuff off the screen,” he said. “There were some interesting things, though.” Instead of telling her what they were, he caught her hand. “You sure tidy up nice, Ms. Graham.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It feels wonderful to be clean.”

“I’ll know in a minute when I take mine. Hell, we should have shared one and saved the water.”

She smiled. “Tell me about the news.”

“They still haven’t revealed Korenev’s name. I’m betting he’s using an alias, but a guy like that has to have prints on file somewhere. Oh, and the victim from the park is still unconscious. They also mentioned the woman identified as Paige Witherspoon in earlier reports is actually Paige Graham and has turned up safe and accounted for.”

“Well, accounted for anyway. Maybe now we should go to the cops—”

“No. Not yet. I can’t. Don’t ask me to.”

She nodded.

He took the next shower while Paige towel-dried her fine hair and spent a few minutes checking out the quick mend of her necklace with the meager tools of her cosmetic bag. The necklace John couldn’t bring himself to even touch....

How could she be attracted to a man when she knew he was known for being emotionally unavailable? That’s what Natalie had said, and she’d said it with regret. She didn’t strike Paige as a fickle woman. And Paige had a track record of falling for good-looking guys in the midst of their most vulnerable moments.

On the other hand, John had thought of her safety before he’d thought of his own. He’d also tried to talk about himself—he was just woefully short on material from which to draw.

He didn’t seem all that closed off.

Was the cost of his memory returning a change in his personality from the open, caring man she’d come to know back into a loner? Even now, there was an element of loss about him, and she’d just assumed it was because he was sailing around in his life without a rudder while being buffeted by dreadful suspicions about his character. But wait a second, wasn’t character the one thing that amnesia wouldn’t affect?

Using her teeth—the best tool in the world—she squeezed the last little link tighter. She dangled the owl in front of her face for a second, admiring its yellow eyes and the fine-tooled gold tips of its wings.

Okay, how about John’s nightmares and the over-the-top thing he had about owls? That had to go back to his childhood, and she wanted to know how. It was a mystery, that and the burns…where and why and how. She had to know.

As she dropped the necklace over her head, the bathroom door opened. The owl dropped down under her T-shirt, out of view.

He was wearing what appeared to be flannel boxers and nothing else. She’d seen him bare-chested once before, when he’d run out into the snow to keep her from driving away that first morning. She noticed once again the power of his shoulders, the muscles and well-defined abs. Now she noticed he had great legs. She bet he could run like the wind.

He smiled at her and asked if she was ready for him to turn off the lights. She zipped the cuticle scissors and tweezers back into her makeup kit and set it aside as she pulled the covers up over her legs. “Go ahead,” she said.

He lay down next to her in the dark. Paige kept to her own side, painfully aware of him, wishing she could sleep.

“Funny thing,” he said after a few minutes, “how you can be dead tired and still wide awake.”

“I know,” she said.

The tired springs creaked as he changed position. “Now I’m sorry I promised not to compromise your virtue,” he added.

She smiled, turning her head. She could barely make out his features. “So am I.”

“Are you?”

There was a tone to his voice that caught her attention and she rolled onto her side, supporting her head with her bent arm. “You sound dubious.”

He was quiet long enough for her to get a little tense. “Brian,” he said at last.

“What does Brian—”

“I was there today, remember?” he said, his voice soft. “I saw the way you reacted when you saw him.”

“He’d been hurt and it was because of me. You’re not the only one who feels guilty for involving innocent people, you know.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean when he grabbed you and buried his head against you. The expression on your face was one of pure bliss.”

She started to protest but sighed instead. “I had a moment of happiness, you’re right, I admit it,” she said.

“You thought he loved you,” John whispered. His fingers grazed her face, so she knew he felt the tear that had rolled down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he added.

“Sorry?”

“That it didn’t work out. I hate to see you crying over him.”

“I’m not crying over him,” she said.

“You’re not?”

She put her hand over his fingers and pressed them against her lips. “Oh, John. Haven’t you ever lost something or someone with such abruptness that it took your breath away? And no matter how angry you are at that person or how cheated you feel, there’s a small part of you that aches for things to go back to the way they were.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way,” he said.

“I’ll wager you have. I think everyone has. I don’t know if it’s the human reluctance to accept change, to fight for the status quo or what, but in that moment when I thought Brian still cared, it was like someone had given me back the last eighteen months of my life. Everything was right again, everything made sense.”

“And when you realized he still cared about Jasmine?”

“It gutted me. But the important thing to remember is I would have come around all by myself when good sense triumphed over weakness. Do I love Brian? Do I want a man who left me for another woman, who is capable of deluding himself and me that way? No, thanks. I don’t.”

“Which begs the question,” John said as his lips brushed her forehead, “what are you doing in bed with me?”

“I’m having a moment,” she said, raising her head a little so his lips would connect with hers. “Stop talking so much.”

The kiss was warm and sexy, romantic, actually, in a way none of their other kisses had been. Maybe it was the sense of time out of time—both the police and Korenev seemed a million miles away from this makeshift cocoon. It was as if they were in a tower, safe, alone, the whole world asleep far below them. There was just John with his shower-hot skin and lips that burned, with hands that touched her with authority, as though he’d known her forever.

She remembered the owl pendant as his hands caressed her bare stomach, and she sat up. In one determined gesture, she pulled the necklace over her head and dropped it to the carpeted floor, then pulled off her T-shirt.

His hands traveled up her waist until he cupped her breasts. “I was right,” he said, his whispered breath hot against her skin. “Breathtaking.”

She ran her hands across his shoulders. Any concern she might be hurting him as her hands glided over the satin-soft skin of the old burn scars was short-lived as he groaned in pleasure. His shorts and her sweatpants soon joined the other clothes on the floor, and for a second, they faced each other on their knees, more shadow than substance until he pulled her down on top of him. She had no illusions of forever—just of tonight. Tonight was enough.

And that was about the last quasicoherent thought she had for a while. The world went from drowsy kingdom to sensual overload as he caressed her backside and lowered his head to suck on her nipples, his mouth hot and demanding. As his fingers slid inside her, she found his erection and moments later gloried in the sensation they created as their bodies merged.

She hadn’t had that many lovers in her life, and she’d never had one like him. His passion was insatiable, and it awakened things in her that she’d caught only glimpses of before, like vague sightings of a Yeti or a starlit image of the Loch Ness Monster. He shone light on the womanly parts of her that had been buried in the dark, and when she climaxed, it was a joyous combination of release and empowerment.

It wasn’t until she was satisfied that John let go of his control and, rising to meet his needs, a true sense of power flooded her. He was lost in her body. He was hers for that moment. There were tears in her eyes as he shouted out in excitement and collapsed into her arms, his hot skin melding with her own.

They fell asleep entwined with each other, naked and satiated. In all that warm afterglow, Paige completely forgot to worry about morning.

That oversight caught up with her at daybreak, when she opened her eyes to find herself alone. The door was open and cold air blew into the room.

She dressed quickly, searching the rug for a moment, sure she’d dropped the owl necklace on the floor the night before. It must have landed under the bed—she would look for it later. She pulled on shoes and peeked out the door.

No police. No Korenev. Just one car now, a red coupe parked three doors down, right where it had been the night before.

What if John had driven off in her car and left her here?

She ran around to the back of the motel and there was her car, right where they’d parked it in the wee dark hours of the morning.

The weather had changed—the wind was driving cold, icy drops against her skin, the clouds above were dark and ponderous. She turned a complete circle, searching for some sign of John, and found nothing but a Dumpster, a few trees and, through them, the glimmer of water.

She walked around to the front of the building and perused the road and the only other building she could see. It appeared to be a gas station but it wasn’t open yet. Beyond that, the road disappeared into heavy forest.

Paige went back to their room, which was still profoundly empty. She looked for her necklace but it was gone, and all of a sudden, the fact it and John were both MIA seemed portentous. This time she grabbed her coat and the keys to the room, locking it behind her. She walked by the office just in case the bearded man was up and about, but through the window she could see it, too, was empty. She kept going around to the back. From this approach, she spied a trail leading through the trees toward the water, and for lack of a better plan she followed it.

The path ended on the shores of a small lake half-frozen-over with ice. Trees grew down to the water’s edge, their limbs dark and bare like wizened fingers hanging low over the frozen water. There was a short pier. John stood on the end, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, no jacket, fists clenched at his sides. Tree limbs over his head appeared to reach down for him.

For one instant, the graphic artist inside her reared up its inner eye, and she instantly knew she would scrap what she’d been working on for the Red Hook album and use this image instead. She’d keep all these grays and blacks, merge red into the trees, put the three musicians on the pier. It was perfect. She took her cell phone from her pocket and snapped a quick photo.

Sliding the phone back into her pocket, she called John’s name but he didn’t turn. Unsure if he was in a trance, she approached warily. The dock was slippery, and the icy cover of the lake beneath it looked as though it would break if something heavy fell on it.

When she got close enough, Paige said John’s name again and reached for his right hand. The glitter of a gold chain sparkled from between his fingers.

He turned to her; his eyes looked unfocused. This did nothing to negate the overwhelming male power of his presence, and for once dressed in his own clothes, clean and shaven, he appeared even stronger than he had before, leaner, more powerful, like a warrior. She felt a rush of desire that clouded her vision.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked. Chattering teeth were not entirely due to the cold.

He blinked but didn’t respond, and for a second she was frightened. He was a lot bigger than she was, and there was that peculiar look in his eyes....