Slow Burn

by Jamie Denton

  He frowned. “What on earth for? No one was shooting at you, Maggie. It was just a car backfiring.”

  She cleared her throat and unwaveringly held his gaze. “Because, Cale. I’m pretty sure there’s a really good chance that I’m a criminal.”

  IF CALE LAUGHED one more time, she just might haul off and slug him one in the arm. Hard, too. Really, really hard.

  She found absolutely no humor in the knowledge she might be a hardened criminal. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was downright appalled. Maybe the knock on her head wasn’t such a bad thing after all, especially if it had made her realize she was a less-than-stellar member of society. Perhaps she’d just been handed the opportunity for redemption.

  No doubt about it, her emotions were in a messy tangle. Not only was she disgusted by her possible profession, she was equally astounded at her little brazen act on the beach with Cale. It hadn’t been as if she hadn’t enjoyed every sensual second of that kiss. No, what really had her confusion mounting faster than the national debt was the simple fact that she hadn’t wanted it to end. Right there in front of Mother Nature and all her minions, she’d have been an extremely willing participant in the horizontal mambo.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it, either. She might have been an extremely willing participant, but in the past few days, her actions with Cale had felt absolutely, one-hundred-percent right. Not sure if she believed in happily ever afters did absolutely nothing to help her current quandary much, either. About all she knew for certain was that there was definitely some mystic force at work regarding her attraction to Cale which defied reason or common sense.

  Since she’d first laid eyes on the man, she’d been experiencing a serious case of lust. A crook she might be, but she didn’t believe for a second she had the capacity to lie to herself. Which left her with one more problem on her growing list, what did she do now?

  By the time they’d reached the ugly turquoise staircase, she hadn’t come to any conclusions where Cale was concerned. In fact, she was feeling more than a little irritated with him. She’d been honest with him, told him what could very well be the truth about who she might be, and he had the audacity to behave as if she’d just told him she was the next in line to the throne of England.

  “I don’t know why you think my being a criminal is so damned funny,” she muttered as she waited for him to open the door.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her as he reached for the doorknob. “Because it is funny. If you’re a criminal, then I’m a Russian spy.”

  He twisted the knob, but nothing happened. “Did you lock the door?”

  “Of course.” In her mind, she thought she heard the distinct jingle of keys. Were they hers? She had no idea. “Don’t you always lock the door when you leave the house?”

  He rattled the doorknob again. “Not when I’m only taking Pearl for a walk, I don’t. I’m more worried about losing my keys on the beach than about anyone breaking into this place.”

  “You must have a spare key hidden somewhere.”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  Maggie stepped in front of him and held out her good hand. “Give me one of your credit cards.”

  He frowned, but dug into his hip pocket and retrieved his wallet, slipping a gold card from the holder. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Watch, Agent-Perry-ka-nova, and learn.” It took her all of two seconds to trip the lock and hand him back his card. “You were saying?” she added smugly as she opened the door.

  Cale followed her, let Pearl off her lead then slipped out of his leather jacket without a word. He stared at Maggie as if seeing her for the first time. She had no idea where or how she’d learned to pick a lock, but in her opinion, it only confirmed her suspicion that she and the justice system operated on opposing sides.

  Eventually, Cale shook his head. “No,” he said. “You could’ve learned that anywhere.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted with a shrug. “But I don’t think so.”

  “If you were a crook, would you really be so willing to contact the authorities?”

  She thought about that for a second while she removed the jacket Cale had lent her. Would she?

  There were no easy answers, and the ones she continued to come up with weren’t exactly what she wanted to hear, either.

  She dropped down on the sofa and toed off her sneakers. “Maybe because that bump on the head put me in my right mind.”

  Cale chuckled again. “I think you’ve been watching too much daytime television.”

  She tucked her feet beneath her and reached for the closest throw pillow to hug to her chest. “Why is it so hard to believe?” she asked him again. “You just saw for yourself what happened on the beach. And, why would I be having these dreams if there wasn’t some truth to them? Nothing else makes any sense.”

  He walked to the sofa and sat beside her. She wished he’d sit elsewhere. When he was so close, she had a hard time keeping her thoughts in order.

  “You mean you’ve had more than just one?”

  She nodded. “In the hospital. All I can remember are bits and pieces, but there is a connection.”

  She explained the images she recalled from the dreams, reluctantly admitting to him about the safe and her knowledge of high-tech security systems, as well as the strange red-silk hankie business. However, nothing explained her reaction to the backfiring car.

  She looked over at Cale. “I can still hear it. That sound, like a loud crack or maybe a gunshot. It’s constant, almost timed.” This time, though, she knew it was only in her mind, teasing her memory. Except now the sound was more rhythmic, familiar and nowhere near as threatening.

  Cale moved closer to her side.

  “There’s a rhythm.” She tried to grasp the visions teasing her subconscious, but they remained hidden in souplike fog. “A beat. No. Wait. It’s more like a constant clicking.”

  His hand slid down her arm, stopping at the ridge of her cast. “Do you know where you are? If you close your eyes, can you recognize your surroundings?”

  The minute she lowered her lids, the crackling noise stilled and slipped back into the shadows of her mind, into that place the doctors assured her would reopen in time.

  She tossed the pillow aside then pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her calves. Resting her chin on her upraised knees, she looked back at Cale. A frown sharpened the lines of his handsome face, a look more angular and rough than she’d seen.

  “It’s gone,” she told him, fighting back an unexpected wave of self-pity and irritation. Dammit, why couldn’t she remember anything? “Whatever it is, it’s gone now.”

  “We’re pushing too hard,” he said gently. “It’ll come to you when the time is right.”

  Irritation nipped at her. Hard. She pulled away from him and stood, circling the coffee table before coming to a stop. “How much time, Cale? A week? A month? How about a year, or maybe two or three?” She struggled to hold on to a temper she hadn’t even realized existed. What she really wanted to do was rail in frustration.

  Compassion lined his gaze. “You don’t know that.” The reasonableness of his tone set her teeth on edge.

  She pulled in a deep breath in an effort to calm herself. “If I can’t rediscover my life, I’m going to have to create a new one. I’m going to need a legitimate job, a place to live, although that’s a little hard when I don’t even know my last name. I haven’t a clue if I’m educated or if I wasn’t any more ambitious than the fry girl at a fast-food chain. And who exactly do you think is going to hire me? Even burger joints would be a little suspicious of an applicant over the age of sixteen without an employment history.”

  “You’re not going to remember this way,” he argued, not the least put out by her sarcastic rant. “You can’t keep beating yourself up every time a memory, if that’s what they really are, slips away from you.” The man even had the gall to grant her another one of his sexy little smiles, which only served t
o start her pulse revving again.

  “It’s getting late,” he added. “Why don’t we get you settled for the night and we can worry about the missing pieces later, okay?”

  More irritating than his logical tone was the way he continued to humor her. Okay, so maybe he was right, and she wasn’t going to recover her memory by standing in the middle of his living room having herself a well-deserved snit. That didn’t mean she had to like it.

  “Missing pieces,” she muttered and shook her head. “How about a missing life?”

  “You can’t force something that isn’t there, Maggie. And worrying about it won’t bring it back any sooner, especially when it only upsets you. Speaking as a medical professional—”

  “It’s more than just pieces,” she interrupted. “My life, my entire history is gone.”

  He let out a long breath. “You have to give it time.” His voice was the epitome of calm. She vaguely recalled the moments after the explosion. Cale’s soothing voice reassuring her she’d be fine, that he’d take care of her. Well, she was tired of calm. She was tired of reassurances. Dammit, she wanted answers that made sense.

  She attempted to cross her arms, but the cumbersome cast made it too uncomfortable, so she gave him a steely look instead. “You have family, right?” she asked, indicating the half dozen or so framed photographs artfully arranged on the wall above a beautifully crafted rolltop desk.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So? Who are they? What are their names?”

  He gave her a questioning look before he stood and crossed the room. “This is Drew. He’s my younger brother,” he said, pointing to a photograph of himself with two other men sharing a strong family resemblance. All three of them were in uniform, standing in front of a bright red fire truck. “And Ben, he’s the oldest.”

  He pointed to another photograph depicting a middle-aged woman, handsomely dressed with gently graying hair and soft blue eyes filled with laughter. She stood proudly beneath a Grand Opening sign in front of a bookstore. “That’s my aunt who raised us after my folks died.”

  He pulled down a photograph and handed it to her. It was a black-and-white wedding photo Maggie gauged to be close to forty years old by the way the bride and groom were dressed. They stood on the beach, barefoot, with their backs to the ocean. Cale’s mother wore a white, gauzy gown and a floral wreath in her long, dark hair, and his dad was dressed casually in jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, a couple of strings of love beads around his neck. But what struck Maggie hardest was the sheer happiness on the couple’s faces. Something nudged her mind, but the harder she attempted to grasp the memory, the farther it slipped away from her.

  “There are a couple of uncles I haven’t seen in years,” he said, returning the photograph to its place on the wall. “You want to tell me what your point is?”

  “Humor me a minute,” she said. “What about grandparents? Did you know your grandparents?”

  A deep frown furrowed his forehead. “Only a grandmother on my mom’s side that we used to visit about once a year when we were kids. My dad’s folks passed away before I was born. I don’t understand what you’re looking for.”

  She ceased her rapid-fire interrogation and hoped she could make him understand how alone she truly was in the world until her memory came back to her. “You know all those people in these pictures,” she said with a sweep of her hand. “Can you try for just one minute to imagine what it would be like to know nothing about your family, not even to know if you have a family? How do you think you’d feel if you knew absolutely nothing about yourself or where you came from?”

  He stared at her for the space of a few heartbeats, then slowly closed the distance separating them. Gently, he lifted his hand to slip a lock of hair behind her ear. “I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

  The care in his touch stirred something deep inside her, stroked that place where she knew her attraction to Cale was a good thing, no matter what condition her life might be in at the moment.

  His palm cupped her cheek, warm, comforting. And distracting as hell.

  “When you keep trying to force yourself to remember,” he said, “and then you aren’t able to, you’re not helping yourself. I know I pushed you earlier, and I shouldn’t have. I should know better, and I’m sorry.”

  The urge to turn into the warmth of his hand was strong. Right or wrong, no matter how much she yearned for the comfort, she restrained herself. Allowing herself to become dependent on Cale was nothing short of emotional suicide, and she’d already pushed the boundaries of what remained of her emotional well-being with that kiss.

  With more reluctance than she thought possible, she pulled away from him. Her world had been turned upside down enough for one night. With her life already being such a puzzle, and with a whole host of missing pieces yet to be found, she refused to compound her problems by relying on anyone other than herself. At least emotionally. For the time being, she did physically need his help, and while that made it hard to be independent, she had little choice in the matter.

  For now.

  With luck, she’d find the remaining pieces of her life on her own, and she deeply suspected those odd dreams were the key to only one small segment of her former reality. If she failed to find the pieces, she’d simply have to create new ones.

  Again. Part of her knew she’d had to do it before.

  She attempted to push that last disturbing thought aside for the moment. “Then please, stop telling me to relax and not worry. I am worried. I have two choices right now. I can either attempt to reconstruct my previous life, or I’ll have to make up a new one. I don’t even know where the closest cemetery is to go traipsing among the headstones looking for…”

  Oh, my God. Looking for what? A name? An identity she could…steal?

  Cale stared at her, disbelief etched all over his handsome face. He blew out a long breath, then shoved his hand through his black hair. “What are you talking about?”

  The caution in his voice didn’t surprise her in the least, but she was too stunned by her own revelation to give much thought to his reaction.

  She took several steps backward until her fanny brushed against the front door. Breathing suddenly took eons of effort, becoming more and more difficult with every breath she attempted to drag into her lungs. Her legs went weak and nearly gave out on her. Using the flat of her palm of her good hand, she braced it against the smooth wooden door for support.

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I want to know any more about Maggie,” she murmured. “I don’t like what I’m learning.”

  If the glimpse she’d just caught was any indication of her true identity, maybe losing her memory was the best thing that had ever happened to her. The more she discovered, the less she liked herself. First she was a thief of some sort, and now she might have a false identity? How on earth was she supposed to find herself if all she had to follow was a list of aliases?

  She wrapped her arms around her middle and leaned forward, the cast on her arm pressing painfully into her stomach. Jeez Louise, she was confused. Was any of it real? It had to be, the memories were simply too clear to be anything else.

  She glanced at Cale. He hadn’t moved, just stood there in the middle of the living room, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. Not that she blamed him. She could hardly believe what she’d just learned herself.

  “Back up a minute,” he said, his voice filled with caution. “Are you implying you know how to create a false identity?”

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention.

  Dread filled her body as she slowly nodded.

  “LaRue,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  She cleared her suddenly clogged throat. “LaRue,” she repeated with more force. “My name is Maggie LaRue.”

  “How do you know?”

  She straightened and gave him a level stare. “Because I got it off a headstone.”

  7

  AFTER
SPENDING a restless night haunted by his own bizarre dreams, Cale slowly stepped into his jeans then pulled a T-shirt from the basket of unfolded laundry. He still hadn’t come to terms with Maggie’s strange revelation. In fact, he couldn’t even say that he believed her. Truth, as the saying went, may indeed be stranger than fiction, but Maggie was no crook, no matter what strange and unusual scenarios popped into her head. That she’d been appalled by the revelations spoke volumes about her sense of morality and character.

  As he left his bedroom and headed into the kitchen in search of much-needed caffeine, the soft, gentle sound of feminine laughter caught him off guard. Finding her in a light and happy mood was nowhere near what he expected after last night’s discussion about her creating a false identity or two in the past. He’d figured she might be feeling more than a little morose this morning. Contemplative and worried, definitely. But cheery? Not in a million.

  The enticing aromas of frying bacon and blessed coffee met him as he crossed the living room in his bare feet. He couldn’t help the smile that tugged his lips. Apparently Maggie possessed other talents, as well. Thank heaven for both of them, cooking had made the list.

  He slipped into the kitchen and stopped when he spotted Drew in front of the stove shuffling a fry pan filled with potatoes, onions and bell peppers. Maggie leaned against the counter, smiling at Drew with a definite sparkle in her eyes.

  The sharp twist in Cale’s gut was not jealousy, he told himself. So what if his brother was smiling like a fool at his…at Maggie?

  He shoved his hand through his hair. “What are you doing here?” he groused at his brother.

  Drew glanced over his shoulder at him and his smile deepened. “Fixing breakfast. What does it look like?”

  It looked as if he was flirting with Maggie.

  Cale glanced at the clock above the sink. Seven-thirty? In the morning? On a Saturday? “I meant what are you doing here so early?”

  Drew set the pan back on the stove, covered it with a lid, then lowered the flame. “I brought groceries.” He produced a carton of eggs from the refrigerator as proof. “You don’t want your houseguest starving to death, do you?”