Without a Past

by Debra Salonen

He looked at the ground. “I like it here in Gold Creek. I like you. I don’t want to screw that up.”

  She went very still. “I like you, too, Harley. The past-few-months you. But I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of who you really are.”

  Something about her tone made him ask, “Are you saying you won’t get involved with me unless I find out the truth about my past?”

  She brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. Her shoulders lifted and fell with casual grace, but Harley sensed her answer was filled with import. “I don’t know. But whatever comes from finding your bike—if I can find it—is for your benefit, not mine. I have no idea how it will change things.”

  He crossed his arms. “But things will change.”

  “I agree, but…” She drew out the word. “Isn’t it better to find out now instead of a year from now?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHILE ANDI WAITED for Harley to make up his mind, she stepped closer to the edge of the precipice and moved the powerful binoculars in an arcing motion just below treetop level. An errant hint of color caught her eye, and she paused.

  Just as she brought the image into focus, a woodpecker peeled away from the tree he’d been about to plunder. She lowered the glasses and was startled to find Harley standing just a few inches away.

  “Did you see something?”

  His proximity sent a weird flutter through her chest. Her instinct was to shove him away—a defensive move perfected when she’d been the only woman in an office filled with horny marines, but she stifled the impulse.

  “A peckerhead,” she said, trying not to breathe in his scent. If his cologne was a popular brand, it wasn’t one she recognized. More woodsy and fresh, like soap and the great outdoors with just a teasing hint of patchouli.

  He turned his chin, a question in his eyes.

  Andi had to swallow to work up enough moisture in her mouth to speak. “A woodpecker,” she clarified. Have his eyes always been this blue or is it just because the sky is so clear at this altitude?

  “Ah,” he said, smiling.

  Oh, God, no. Don’t let him smile.

  Andi stepped back, almost tripping over the soles of her heavy hiking boots. Her clumsiness stirred up a cloud of grayish-brown dust.

  “They’re destructive birds,” she said, focusing on anything but what she was feeling. The intensity of her reaction unnerved her. She was not a chemical reaction kind of girl. She chose a man by his qualities, not by the way he made her head spin.

  And what do I have to show for that?

  “They peck holes, fill them up with acorns, then fly off and forget about them, so they have to peck more holes. Stupid birds,” she said with more passion than the subject called for.

  “Not fond of woodpeckers, I take it?” His teasing tone made her blush.

  “According to Bart, it’s going to take an extra day to repair the woodpecker damage at the bordello. Extra day means extra bucks.”

  He nodded more soberly. “I understand. It’s personal.”

  “Pretty much.”

  She put her hands on her hips and faced him. “So? Are we doing this or not?”

  He looked around, his gaze sweeping across the panoramic vista. A vast patchwork of greens and grays stretched westward with occasional scarlike lines, indicating a power line or fire trail.

  “Let’s give it another hour. I’m afraid that’s all my legs can take.”

  His honesty—and his willingness to take risks—were aspects of his personality that she found extremely appealing. Which, she reminded herself, was not a good thing.

  She turned back toward the road and set off, motioning for him to follow. She’d intended to put some space between them, but Harley dogged her heels.

  “I may have mentioned this before,” he said, “but I admire what you’re doing to help your aunt. You and your sisters are part of the Sandwich generation—young adults who are faced with raising children and caring for aging relatives at the same time.”

  Sandwich generation? Once again, Andi was struck by his intelligence. Sure, he could have heard this theory stated somewhere on the news, but it stayed with him, and he applied it to his observations.

  “What choice do we have? We’re talkin’ family.”

  He was silent a moment. “That’s one of the subjects I try to keep out of mind. If I think about people…connected to me…worrying about me…”

  Andi heard the distress in his tone. His amnesia fascinated her, but it frustrated her, too. There were so many avenues of normal conversation that were closed to them. “Where’d you grow up?” “What did you want to be when you were a kid?” “What are your parents like?”

  “I’ve noticed that you tend to think the worst about your past, Harley, but what if…you’re a scholar or a surgeon or someone vital to national security?”

  His laugh reminded her of her first crush—Bob Sanders, her junior-high-school math teacher. He’d made Andi’s secret list—Potential Husbands. Until he married Miss Jerrond, the French teacher.

  Breathing hard again, Harley pointed to a plateau a quarter of a mile ahead. “Water break. Up there.”

  They squeezed under the minuscule area of shade afforded by a scrawny oak. A lone granite boulder—probably left behind when the road went in—offered a fairly level bench for their rest stop. After graciously helping her get settled, Harley hopped up beside her.

  He slouched forward slightly, his back an attractive curve. He took a drink from the water bottle he’d pulled from the backpack, then held it out to her. Andi shook her head. She wasn’t ready for that kind of intimacy.

  “For a while when I looked in the mirror, I’d see a stranger. Now, I’ve slowly gotten to the point where my face is starting to look familiar. I work with people I’ve come to know. People in town wave at me. It’s the level of recognition a person wants in his life. The thing that worries me about digging up my past is that I won’t fit anymore. I’ll have to deal with a whole slew of strangers who know me and expect certain things of me. But I won’t know them. What if the new me doesn’t meet their expectations?”

  Andi made a fist to keep from reaching out and touching his face. Dang, he had great skin. Hardly a beard to speak of. Sandy-colored eyebrows and lashes. Even his half-moon scar was attractive.

  “Since I can’t remember anything about my past, I only know who I am now. And I like myself.” He gave her a halfhearted smile that seemed to ask for her approval. “What if I don’t like the man I was?”

  Andi made herself focus on his plight instead of his body. “I’m trying to understand, Harley. But the idea of starting a second life when the first one is still out there somewhere seems…I don’t know. Incomprehensible, I guess.”

  She put out her hands, frowning at the remnants of cherry-wood stain that hadn’t washed off. “It’s true you might have been a lobbyist for the tobacco industry in your other life,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “But what if you’re a researcher on the verge of finding a cure for cancer?”

  A flash of something that looked like pain clouded his eyes. “I was only joking, Harley. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. “There’s the rub, Andi. I could be a good guy or I could be wanted by the police.”

  “But your prints would have shown up on the police records,” she argued. “And Donnie said they were clean.”

  When he looked at her with a question in his eyes, she explained, “Donnie told Sam and Sam told Jenny, who told me.”

  He nodded. “I guess I should find the results of that check reassuring, but we both know the system isn’t perfect.”

  Andi couldn’t think of anything supportive to say that wouldn’t sound as though she was diminishing his fears. He had every right to feel this way, and she couldn’t begin to understand what he was going through. After all, her past was an open book. In fact, thanks to Gloria Hughes, much of Andi’s past was documented in the annals of the Gold Creek Ledger.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Harley. I wou
ldn’t trade places with you, but sometimes a little anonymity sounds heavenly.”

  He smiled again. “Let me guess. You’re saying it was hard to be a chameleon in the marines?”

  Andi chuckled. “There, too.”

  “How come you don’t talk about your military career?”

  Suddenly feeling restless, she sloughed off her backpack and stood up. Keeping her knees flexed, she walked the uneven surface of the boulder until she had a clear view of their surroundings.

  The mountain ridges were staggered like knuckles. A gray-blue haze softened the outline of those farthest away. Overhead, the sky was a cerulean blue that reminded her of Harley’s eyes.

  Since he’d been so frank with her, she decided to talk about her military experience. “I went into the marines for the wrong reasons. Ida and the Garden Club ladies were pestering me to transfer from junior college to the university, but I was tired of school. Burnt out. Bored.

  “Then I met a guy at a party who was on leave from the marines. He’d been all over the world. Had a cool car and money in the bank. It sounded like a great opportunity.” She looked at him and said, “And, believe me, the corps is perfect for some people. I don’t regret my experience, I just couldn’t make a career out of it.”

  “Why not?” he asked, his gaze trailing up her legs.

  Something in his all-male look made Andi glad she’d shaved her legs, even though she was wearing long pants.

  She took a breath. “I missed my old life,” she said, knowing how that might be interpreted. “I liked the order and stability of the Marine Corps, and the feeling of being one of an elite few. But in the end, I realized I needed my family.

  “At some level, I thought the Corps would take its place, but that never happened. I never had a close woman friend the whole time I was in the service. The women I worked with were extremely competitive.”

  Out the corner of her eyes, she spotted something that looked out of place. Dropping to her haunches, she put out her hand. “Pass me the glasses.”

  Harley leaned over to dig in her pack. Andi’s hand hovered an inch above the smooth white material stretched taut across his back. He was lean but not skinny. She liked the way his shoulder muscles moved—contoured and sinewy under the soft cotton. Her fingers itched to touch him, but as he straightened, she moved her hand to the right to take the binoculars.

  Standing, she lifted the small, powerful glasses to her nose but didn’t hold them to her eyes until she’d checked what had attracted her attention in the first place. Moving in minute increments, she slowly scanned between the grayish-green needles of bull pines, around the dense blue-black cluster of live oaks. The purple velvet nubs of the red bush would soon give way to glossy green leaves that would obscure even a very large target.

  “I saw something shiny. But I can’t—” Another tantalizing glimpse taunted her, but it took three or four seconds for the image to make sense. Because it was upside down. In a tree. Back wheel caught in the Y of a branch like a dead fish suspended twenty or thirty feet above the ground. “I found it.”

  “It?” Harley barked, jumping to his feet. “My bike?”

  Andi swept right and left to get her bearings before lowering the glasses. “A bike, but how many lost motorcycles have you heard of in this area?” She grimaced. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Let’s get closer so we can see if it looks new or if it’s been there since before either you or I were born.”

  “Were they making motorcycles back then?” he asked with a grin.

  Andi pretended to swing at him with her binoculars. “Watch it, fella. I may be an ex-Marine, but I survived MCT—that’s Marine Combat Training—at Camp LeJeune, so I’d be a bit more careful with the insults, if I were you.”

  “Yes, sir, ma’am.” He gave a goofy salute and a smile that looked sexy as hell.

  She felt a quiver of trepidation. What if that bike did belong to Harley? What if he turned out to be married with six kids? Then you’re doing his family a service. So shut up and get busy.

  She hopped down from the rock, hefted the strap of her backpack over one shoulder and started walking. She needed to put the attraction she felt for Harley out of her head.

  Perhaps once his past was settled, and he turned out to be a dot.com millionaire with a glam wife and three adorable kids, or an uptight lawyer with half a dozen ex-wives, she’d be able to get past this attraction. Unfortunately, none of those possibilities made her feel better.

  Andi lengthened her strides. If she was going to lose him, she might as well get it over with before she did something stupid like fall in love.

  HARLEY LAGGED behind. His brain was having trouble processing the possibilities. This find would change things. For better or worse? That was the question.

  As if attuned to his dilemma, the woman ahead of him paused. She’d charged up the steep incline like Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, and now faced him, chest heaving from the exertion. She had a lovely body—fit and trim with enough curves to make him stare—especially when a gust of wind made her nipples stiffen against the bright-orange fabric of her T-shirt.

  Bold, bright, beautiful. He liked her a lot, was drawn to her, but he’d be a complete and utter fool to think it might lead anywhere.

  Suddenly, an image made him stagger. A bleak, hostile landscape the color of bleached bones. Pockmarked craters gave it a moon-surface look. Twisted hunks of steel were scattered like children’s jacks. And at the rim of one jagged saucer was the broken body of a child. Limbs charred. Unrecognizable beyond its human form.

  “Harley?” Andi called.

  A river of ice water passed through his veins. The thrumming in his head reverberated like a drum riff run amok. Was it really so important that he find out whether the image was real or imagined? Dr. Franklin had mentioned something about “false memories.” Please, God, let that one not be real.

  “Are you coming?”

  Harley still lacked the ability to answer.

  Andi apparently put her own spin on his reticence. “When I was in Search and Rescue, my team leader used to say I had the nose of a bloodhound and the same amount of social skills,” she said as she walked toward him. “This is a huge deal for you, if this is your bike. Would you like to go first?”

  She held out the binoculars as a peace offering.

  Damn, he liked her. If only—

  Harley cut off the useless thought before it could develop. Dr. Franklin had warned him that depression was common amongst amnesiacs. It came from having too many variables outside his control.

  “I once heard a quote that might help you,” she’d told him. “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. It applies to a lot of things in life, but particularly what you’re going through.”

  “Prioritize,” she’d advised him. “Let the rest of the world catch up with you, instead of you trying to catch up with it.”

  A pain radiated under his breastbone, and Harley wondered momentarily if he was having a heart attack. He tried not to breathe too deeply. A memory—if that’s what it was—seemed to hammer at the edge of his consciousness, but it brought with it the white, consuming pain that always left him sick and humbled.

  He couldn’t handle a second headache episode in Andi’s presence. “No,” he said. “I can’t do this.”

  She stepped toward him, both hands resting on the strap of her backpack, which was slung over one shoulder. The sunlight glinted off her wind-combed bob—the richest mix of reds and gold he’d ever seen. Her sunglasses were pushed back on the crown of her head like a tiara.

  “It’s up to you,” Andi said, lifting her chin to look him in the eyes. “We can turn around right now, if that’s what you want but…”

  He was almost afraid to ask. “But what?”

  She looked down as if ashamed of her thoughts. “I know the SAR helicopter pilots who scouted the area said their infrared equipment didn’t pick up any signs of life, but by the time Lars brought you to town the whole area was und
er a couple of feet of snow.”

  Her sympathetic look made him brace for what was coming. “This question sucks, Harley, and I’m sorry. But, what if you weren’t alone that night?”

  Harley ground the heel of his hand against the tender scar at his temple. Lars had asked him that question the morning after the accident, and Harley had answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

  Andi’s hand on his bare arm pulled him back from the brink of darkness. “Harley, forget it. I shouldn’t have brought that up. Lars told us he was pretty sure you were alone.”

  Her touch soothed, but he couldn’t allow himself the intended comfort. Although he’d pushed the idea from his mind these past months, the possibility existed that he’d abandoned someone—buddy, wife or girlfriend—that night.

  “That’s what I want to believe,” he said. “I tell myself if there were someone else, I would have remembered, right? What kind of monster—”

  She cut him off. “No. Don’t do that to yourself. You can’t help it that you can’t remember.”

  But what if I can? For the past few nights, he’d had a dream. At first, he thought it was another of the gruesome nightmares that had plagued him. But unlike those, this one felt connected. Real. Maybe because the images were, in fact, memories of his accident.

  “Two nights ago I dreamed that I was falling down a deep fissure. My body bounced off rocks, rolling over and over, out of control. I didn’t know where I was or why I was there, but I opened my eyes to total blackness.

  “Cold. I was so cold I thought I was dead. But there was a red-hot pain in my head. And I could smell gasoline.” He closed his eyes, trying to reel in the memory. The image remained disjointed—mixed with the panic he’d felt upon waking up.

  “It felt like days passed. No one came. The only sound was a constant drip. Like a leaky faucet.”

  Andi’s eyes grew big. “You think it’s a memory of your accident?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Usually pain and nausea accompany any kind of memory. But this dream was so intense I woke up shivering.”

  He closed his eyes picturing the moment he’d awakened. Swamped by feelings he couldn’t decipher. “One thing that stayed with me was the sense of being all alone, and knowing that if I didn’t do something to help myself I was going to die.”