Without a Past

by Debra Salonen

  “Well, Andi Sullivan, bless my soul, we haven’t seen you in ages, have we, Jonas? You remember Andi, don’t you? She’s the girl who rescued Pooh Bear Kitty from the tree after that big windstorm.”

  Andi glanced at Harley, who gave a questioning look. Dropping her backpack in the dust, she squatted beside the door. “How’ya doin’, Jonas? Still making wooden toys? I’d be interested in selling some at the Old Bordello if you ever have any extra.”

  “Okay,” Jonas said with a wide smile. His round face and slightly slanted eyes were unlined, innocent. “Okay, Dad?”

  Ron made a broad gesture. “We’ve been donating them to Valley Children’s Hospital, but it couldn’t hurt to sell a few. Maybe we’d make enough money to buy more material.” He leaned around his son to get a better look at Harley. “Say, aren’t you the fella from the Rocking M? The one Lars Gunderson rescued.”

  Harley reached inside the car to shake hands with both men. “That’s me. Harley Forester,” he said, introducing himself.

  Andi blushed at her social gaffe.

  “What kind of wood do you use, Jonas?” Harley asked. “We have a bunch of leftover pieces at the ranch. Mostly cedar, but there’s some pretty redwood and a little bit of hickory, too.”

  Andi felt an odd flutter in her chest. Kind and generous. Two primary requirements on my Daddy List. The thought distracted her until she heard the roar of male laughter. “What’d I miss?” she asked.

  Harley accidentally brushed against her shoulder when he lowered himself to one knee beside her. “Mr. Campbell said you and your sisters used to play in the band. Somehow I can’t picture you with a tuba.”

  The merriment in his tone made her skin tingle. A sense of humor had been on the list, too. “We drew straws. I lost.”

  “She was a valiant tuba player, I’ll give her that,” Ron said. “Never missed a practice unless she was out helping with Search and Rescue. When Andi Sullivan says she’s going to do something, she does it,” he stated emphatically.

  Andi felt herself blush again. She stood up and dusted off her knees. “Well, nice talkin’ to you, Mr. C. Tell Mrs. C. I said hello.”

  After a little more chitchat, the station wagon pulled away. Andi and Harley huddled, backs to the dust until it was safe to turn around.

  “Mrs. Campbell had a stroke a couple of years ago. She doesn’t go out a lot anymore,” Andi said, suddenly feeling an odd tug on her heartstrings. “She used to make the most heavenly fudge. Whenever the band traveled, she’d send each band member little individual packages.”

  He studied her as if trying to read her mind. “It’s hard watching someone you care about suffer,” he said.

  Andi pushed away the image of Ida Jane looking confused and fretful this morning over whether today was Monday.

  “Hank told me his mother suffered a severe stroke when she was fifty-five and needed full care for nearly eighteen years,” Harley said. “He and his brother ended up having to sell the family farm to pay the bills.” He frowned. “You’re worried about Ida Jane, aren’t you?”

  Andi didn’t try to deny it. “She was the best mother any kid could have hoped for. People thought she was crazy taking on three tiny babies at her age, but Ida told me she never thought twice about it. Our mother was like a daughter to her. Our grandparents were dead. There was no one else.”

  “What about your father’s family?”

  “He emigrated from Ireland as a teenager. His parents are gone now, but he has four brothers and two sisters still living there. We met them—and a swarm of Irish cousins—when we were fifteen. Ida Jane took us to visit. Jenny and I had fun but couldn’t wait to get home. Kristin begged Ida to let her stay.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “I don’t know. Kris is different. She moved there right out of high school. Worked as a caregiver for a year or so then returned to the United States to share a place with two of our cousins.

  “But I know why Jenny and I were so anxious to get home.”

  “Why?”

  Andi hesitated. It was one thing to admit this to yourself, quite another to share it out loud. “In Gold Creek, we were the Sullivan triplets,” she stressed the word. “In Ireland, we were just three more Sullivan kids. Believe me, it was a rude awakening to find out you’re not as special as you thought you were.”

  He closed the gap between them, automatically taking the outside position like a gentleman of old. His bare arm brushed against hers. The innocent contact produced a not-so-innocent response in her body. “You are special, Andi,” he said with a rueful smile. “I knew that the first time I met you. Even without a wide frame of reference.”

  Andi was very tempted to test the boundaries of this attraction, but a relationship wasn’t part of her plan. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.” She hadn’t meant to sound so snide, but she could tell by the way he dropped back, she’d cut him down.

  Amazingly he caught up with her a few steps later and asked, “Is Ida’s memory getting worse?”

  “We’re not sure what the problem is,” Andi admitted. “A few years ago she was diagnosed with high blood pressure. We thought she was managing it with medication, but when she fell and broke her hip, the doctors discovered an imbalance in her electrolytes. They blamed the diuretic she was taking.

  “Now she’s on some other medications, but Ida got it into her head that the pills were to blame for her problems, so sometimes she simply doesn’t take them.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “Even worse, she’ll feel guilty later then take a double dose. One doctor said this could cause a stroke.” Andi couldn’t stand the thought. “That’s one of the reasons she’s been staying at the ranch. So Jenny could dispense her meds.

  “We also need to keep an eye on her toddy consumption. Ida’s always been fond of a mixed drink or two in the late afternoon. But the doctor has limited her to one glass of wine a day.”

  “What does she think of that?”

  Andi made a face. “She’s not happy about it, but at least with Jenny she’s cooperative. I don’t know what will happen now that she’s back at the bordello. Ida gets very defensive when I try to help her. We used to be close, but now she treats me like Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  She remembered too late that he probably wouldn’t know what she was talking about. But he ignored the movie reference, saying instead, “You really have your hands full, don’t you?”

  The sympathy in his tone left her slightly undone. Picking up the pace, she marched toward a turnout where a fallen bull pine rested at a sixty-degree angle.

  “That looks like a good place to stop.”

  She needed water, a snack, something to shake her out of this funk. A ten-mile run was a piece of cake compared to this slow-paced soul-searching that seemed guaranteed to stir up memories. And since he didn’t have any, she thought grimly, the entire exercise was one-sided.

  THIS TIME when she took off, Harley made up his mind to keep up—even if it killed him. He didn’t think of himself as particularly macho, but Andi was definitely in better shape than he was, and it irked him.

  When they reached the fallen tree—carved with layers of initials and funny-shaped hearts, he could barely breathe. Tiny silver dots zipped across his vision. He groped for a worn limb to keep his balance.

  “Dang,” he wheezed. “Tell me it’s the altitude. Even if you have to lie.”

  Andi dropped her backpack on to the flattened weeds at the base of the pine then hunched over, hands on her knees. Harley was gratified to see her shoulders heave. Sweat had darkened a spot on her T-shirt between her shoulder blades. After a minute, she dropped to a squat and opened the bag to retrieve a water bottle. “It is.”

  She offered it to him first.

  “Not yet.”

  Her nod seemed to hold respect, as well as understanding. Harley’s chest would have swelled with pride if he could have managed a deep breath.

  As the sound of their gu
lping air lessened, Andi rose and hopped to a seat on the log. She juggled the half-empty plastic bottle between her hands as if looking for a message in the water. An odd image struck. Harley pictured himself holding a black ball in his hands. A much younger voice called out an ambiguous, but mysterious-sounding message.

  Rolling his head to ease the tension in his neck, he pushed the image away. If it was a memory, it might bring on a headache—which was the last thing he needed here. “You didn’t want Ida Jane to move back to the bordello, did you?”

  She offered him half of her granola bar, which he declined. “The timing sucks. The roofer starts tomorrow. I have an electrician coming in next week. Ida’s not too steady on her feet, you know. She could trip again. Get hurt.”

  He sensed this was the truth, but not the whole truth. “How does she feel about all this work?”

  The look she gave him said Bingo.

  “You haven’t told her?”

  “She met Bart, the roofing contractor, this morning.” Her expression told him the meeting wasn’t satisfying. “Jenny and I have both tried to keep her up to speed, but it’s difficult. Some things we tell her don’t stick. Other times she goes ballistic for no reason. When I mentioned replacing some windows with dual-pane glass, she came unglued.” She frowned. “Wanna guess what my December utility bill was?”

  When she mentioned the dollar figure, Harley gave a low whistle. “Even if Ida doesn’t understand the rationale behind your improvements, it sounds like you have a handle on what needs to be done. For everyone’s benefit.”

  The look she gave him was filled with doubt, and for the first time since he’d met her, Andi Sullivan appeared vulnerable. In need of a friend. The thought seemed diametrically opposed to what he knew of her. But what did he know?

  He still didn’t know why she was helping him. Just to avoid a confrontation with her aunt? He didn’t think so.

  She re-capped her bottle, stuffed the granola bar wrapper into her pack, then hopped to her feet. “Shall we press on?”

  Harley stopped her with a hand to her bare forearm. The contact made her freeze. Harley felt a current pass through him. Her skin was slick from exertion, which he found incredibly sexy. He could picture the two of them naked and sweat-drenched after making love.

  “Maybe we should turn around,” he suggested, struggling to keep his voice level. The farther they climbed up this hill, the less he wanted to be there. Instinct told him to stop, but he couldn’t very well admit that to Andi—who was eyeing him as though he’d just suggested they elope.

  “It’s your call,” she told him, “but I guarantee this will be my last window of opportunity for a long time.” She made a negating gesture. “Of course, you can always hire somebody else.”

  Harley reviewed his options—as he had much of the night while tossing and turning. He reminded himself that finding his bike—if there was a bike—might lead to him recovering his memory. Which was a good thing, right?

  A sudden surge of red colored her cheeks. She looked down and kicked a stone with the toe of her hiking boot. “I’m sorry, Harley,” she said softly. “This is your life, not mine, and I don’t have any business pushing you to do something you don’t want to do.”

  She looked flustered. He liked her flustered. It made him feel as if he had a chance to get under her armor.

  “Maybe I’m just as much of a busybody as Gloria Hughes—you know, the lady who writes the gossip column. I mean, it’s not like this is my problem—I have enough of those waiting for me at the bordello.”

  She sighed. “Do you want to know the real reason I volunteered to do this?”

  No. “Tell me.”

  “Because I’ve seen your eyes glaze over when the other cowboys start talking about their rodeo exploits and bar fights. Maybe working at the Rocking M is enough for you at the moment, but you don’t belong there.”

  Harley’s male response to her sex appeal warred with his intellectual response to her challenge. He knew at a gut level he wasn’t living the life he’d lived before, but something kept him from venturing beyond the safe little world he’d created for himself at the Rocking M. Fear?

  “It’s good enough for your brother-in-law,” he argued.

  “Soon-to-be brother-in-law,” she corrected. “But Sam’s a rancher, and he knows you’re not. He told me he thinks you’re using the Rocking M for therapy—to heal and get your bearings.”

  It annoyed him to think that people were speculating about his state of mind behind his back, but Andi put her hand on his arm and said, “Small towns are like families, Harley. We talk about each other because we care. It’s only natural to worry about the people in your life. And however you arrived—crashed motorcycle or alien invasion—” her grin made her look about ten “—you’re a part of our lives.”

  Her fingers were callused. He wanted to turn her hand up to investigate, but she stepped away, burying both hands in the pockets of her fatigues. “Sorry. That was me on my high horse again.”

  “If you were suffering from amnesia, you’d have been searching for your past from day one, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  Her shoulders rose and fell. “Hard to say. I’m an action kind of girl. Downtime is pure hell for me.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  Her smile was as feminine and enticing as he’d ever seen, but the look in her eyes was serious. “This is your business, Harley. Not mine. It’s your call whether we go on or not.”

  Go on. To where? The future or the past?

  “What did you want to be when you grew up?” he asked, stalling while he tried to calm the trepidation building in his belly.

  She blinked once then said, “A veterinarian. A smoke jumper. A pilot. An FBI agent. Not necessarily in that order.”

  Her smile looked curious, but she didn’t return the question. What good would it do? he thought bitterly.

  “Lately,” he told her, “I’ve been wondering if, as a child, I might have dreamed of being a cowboy and this is my way of fulfilling that fantasy.” He took a deep breath of clean, pine-scented air. “I mean, think about it. If you woke up tomorrow with no memory or obligations—virtually a clean slate, you could pretty much pick your life, couldn’t you?”

  Her eyes opened wide, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. “We all have obligations, Harley. That comes with being born.”

  He liked the way she argued with him. “But mine belong to my old life. To the person I was. Since I can’t remember that person, he doesn’t exist, right?”

  She frowned in thought. “But you do exist.” She punched him lightly. “In body.”

  “But this isn’t the same body that woke up at Lars’s cabin with the mother of all headaches. And while I might not be much of a cowboy, thanks to my job, my body is a heck of a lot more fit than it was when I first got here.”

  Her eyes did a quick toe-to-head scan, and she nodded. “That’s true. You’ve toned up a lot. But we’re more than just muscle and bone. What happened to the old you? Where’d he go?”

  A pulse point of light flickered behind his eyes. A warning. “I don’t know. I admit there’s a whole side of me that doesn’t fit this life. Little pieces that don’t belong to this puzzle. Not memories exactly, but impressions.”

  She stepped closer. Her scent—something fresh and natural—reached him. “Like what?”

  The sharp sensation in his brain oscillated. He moved backward until his hip brushed against the log. Finding a flattened-out spot that had obviously served as a resting spot for other butts, he sat down, letting his legs dangle. His feet felt hot inside his secondhand black Ropers, now tan with dust.

  As tempting as it might have been to reel Andi into the space between his knees, the suggestion of a headache made him rest his elbows on his thighs.

  “Let’s see,” he said, trying to think of how to answer her question. “The other night at the Slowpoke. After you and your friends left. I got into an argument with the bartender.”

&
nbsp; Harley’s memory of the incident was vague. Not because he’d had too many beers, but because he’d blacked out after he’d snapped. According to the story circulating in the bunkhouse the next morning, the mouthy bartender had made a comment about Andi “screwing Ida Jane out of the antique business,” and Harley had reacted by trying to shove the guy’s tonsils down his throat.

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” she said.

  “You did?”

  She chuckled. “Probably ten minutes after it happened. Donnie stopped by for a cup of coffee and told me.” She shrugged. “Like I said, this is a small town. People talk.”

  Harley sighed. “The image I have of myself—as Harley—doesn’t include public brawls. I mean, in order to be consumed by rage, don’t you need a background, history, passion?” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking. I don’t have any of those things in my life.

  Andi lightly cuffed his shoulder. “Don’t sweat it. Rollo’s a self-medicated, undereducated idiot. Whatever he said to provoke you was undoubtedly stupid. I threw a beer in his face last fall, myself.”

  “Really?” Harley wondered if she knew what some people were saying about her motives for making the changes at the bordello.

  “Right after we started the ‘Haunted Bordello’ advertising campaign, Rollo said something like, ‘Who cares if some slut was murdered? She probably deserved it.’”

  “You tossed a beer in his face?”

  “A Guinness, no less. Broke my heart to waste good beer on a jackass.”

  He chuckled. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

  As if embarrassed, Andi suddenly dropped to one knee and dug in her bag until she produced a pair of binoculars. “Maybe I’ll just take a peek around. Since we’re here.”

  When Harley failed to acknowledge the suggestion, she paused in the process of removing the protective lens caps and looked at him. “Unless you really want to call the whole thing off.”