Private Vows

by Sally C. Berneathy

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I told you, I’m Cole Grayson.”

  “That’s not what I mean. They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. That might even be my name, or maybe it’s Sarah Smith or Mary Jackson. But whatever it is, a name doesn’t tell anything about who I am or who you are.”

  He gazed down at her for a long moment then finally turned away and angled a hip onto the windowsill, studying their reflections in the dark glass. “I’m nobody you want to know.”

  A gray veil of desolation emanated from him. She could see it, feel it in the weight of the air, smell the leaden scent, taste the bitter agony. Perhaps because her mind was completely empty of her own emotions, his came to her, strong and clear.

  “I don’t have a choice right now,” she said. “You’re the only person I know.”

  “What do you know about me, other than the fact that I ran you down in the street?”

  “You said I darted in front of your car. If you hadn’t acted quickly, I could have been killed. So I guess what I know about you is that you saved my life.”

  His lips twisted upward in a cynical imitation smile. “That’s a nice theory. I’ll try real hard to buy into it.” His gaze retreated into the shadowed depths of his own soul for a moment, then he shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”

  He was getting ready to leave, taking with him the only connection, tenuous and brief though it was, that she had to herself, to the person she’d been before the accident, the only familiar element in this unfamiliar world.

  “Tell me about the man I struggled with,” she entreated, interrupting him before he could declare his intention to leave, thereby making it irrevocable. “What did he look like? The police kept asking me, and I don’t know. They asked if I knew him, and I don’t know. They asked if the blood on my dress belonged to him, if I wounded him, and I don’t know.” She bit her lip as she realized her voice was rising, panic spilling over the edges of her words.

  He moved to sit beside her on the bed, the mattress sinking with his weight, creating the sensation that, if she relaxed, she could slide against his body, into him, let herself be swallowed up in his strength.

  She held herself rigidly against the temptation to do just that.

  He gazed at her for a long moment and she saw that his eyes were actually hazel, the brown streaked with green like a tree in April, dead from winter’s cold but ready to burst into bloom with the warmth of spring. However, the torment that welled up from the depths gave the lie to that green promise.

  He raised his hand and for a second she thought he was going to take hers, but instead he raked his fingers through his shaggy hair then dropped them to his denim-encased thigh. “I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. Average size, average height, dark hair. I think he was probably a homeless person, looking for a handout. They sleep in the parks around the area. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”

  “Then I must have had the blood all over me before. Did I? When you first saw me, was there blood on my dress?”

  “I don’t know.” He grinned wryly. “You see? You’re not the only one who has to admit that. If you want my opinion, though, I’d say you did. The blood was several minutes old by the time I got to you. That could be one reason that guy approached you. He could have been trying to help a beautiful woman who might be hurt.”

  An involuntary, unexpected thrill darted through her and she touched her face, examining the unfamiliar contours. “Am I beautiful?”

  “You don’t know what you look like? No, I guess you don’t.”

  “Nobody had a mirror in the emergency room. They told me to wait until I got up here, but I haven’t looked yet. I’m not sure I can deal with seeing a stranger staring back at me.” Even as she said it, she felt shame for her cowardice, for being so frightened of everything, even her own face.

  “To answer your question, yeah. You’re beautiful.” His words were complimentary but his tone was cold. For a brief instant, green fire seemed to flicker in the depths of his eyes, a fire that could heat a woman to the boiling point, past that and beyond, a fire that brought her body to tingling awareness. But that green flame died as quickly as it came.

  If it had ever truly been there in the first place and not just her imagination, something she wanted to see.

  “You’re beautiful like one of those cups with flowers painted on them that you see in antique shops,” he continued, his words so detached she was sure she’d imagined that brief spurt of flame. “The kind a guy’s afraid to pick up because it might break if he held it too tight.”

  It was a pretty accurate description of the way she felt, but she bristled anyway. “Wouldn’t you be feeling a little fragile and a whole lot scared if you suddenly lost yourself?” She blurted the defense as much for herself as for him.

  “Yeah, I guess I would be.” His square, black-stubbled jaw and the straight line of his lips contradicted his words.

  With the clarity about others that must have come when she lost herself, she knew that Cole Grayson had met the devil and challenged him on his own turf. Considering the torment that lived behind his eyes, he might have lost the battle, but even so, he’d survived and nothing frightened him anymore.

  “Would you hand me that other hospital gown from the foot of the bed?” she asked. “It’s the only pretense of a robe they could give me and I want to see what I look like.” She wasn’t sure whether her sudden courage came from the fact that Cole had enough strength for two people and she was able to absorb some of it, or whether his stoic demeanor shamed her into the action.

  He rose from the bed, handed her the gown and waited.

  She wrapped it around, covering the open back of the first gown.

  Even so, when she stepped out of bed, she felt naked and exposed…and acutely aware of Cole’s masculine presence in the small room.

  That was silly. The gowns, one tied in the back and the other in the front, hid her body effectively. Anyway, Cole was there as a rescuer. He had certainly not given her any reason to think he was interested in her body. He’d all but said she looked as if she might break if a man held her too tightly…and he looked like a man who would hold a woman very tightly.

  She moved around the bed, carefully avoiding the mirror above the sink in the corner of the room. Facing herself wasn’t going to be easy.

  Cole came up behind her, so close she could feel his body heat, smell his masculine scent combined with something else…something dark and dangerous and scary and exciting.

  He flipped on the light above the sink then put both hands on her shoulders. “Go ahead,” he urged, his voice as startlingly gentle as his touch. “Maybe when you see yourself, everything will come back. You said the doctors thought the sight of a familiar face might help. You can’t get much more familiar than your own.”

  She lifted her gaze slowly, as if she could sneak up on the strange woman she knew she would find in the mirror.

  It was a pale, thin face with prominent cheekbones and overly large eyes. Long blond hair failed to add any color.

  The image belonged to her, housed the brain she used to speak and walk. It was the woman other people saw when they looked at her. She ate with that mouth, smelled with that nose, saw through those eyes, combed that hair.

  Though she couldn’t say the features were familiar, the tight, frightened expression somehow was.

  She raised her eyes to Cole’s, looking for something—reassurance, courage, answers he couldn’t possibly have.

  What she found instead was a flaring of the green flame she’d seen so briefly before, a fire that reminded her he was, after all, a man, an attractive, virile man, and she was a woman wearing nothing underneath the short hospital gowns.

  For an instant, inappropriate thoughts and feelings flooded her mind and her body. Though Cole didn’t move, she could feel his heat against her skin, tracing down her spine and over her bottom, warming her thighs just as his breath warmed the nape of her n
eck.

  He blinked, took his hands from her shoulders and stepped backward. “Recognize anybody?” he asked, his voice gruff with angry overtones. Anger at her? At himself?

  “No.” Her answer came out on a breathy sigh and she was appalled to find her body yearning for him to return, to stand behind her, to touch her again. Her memory might be gone, but her hormones were working overtime.

  Stress, she told herself. A reaction to the accident, to everything that had happened. So much stress that she’d imagined for a second time the brief flicker of desire in Cole’s eyes, imagined it and overreacted.

  She cleared her throat and tried again to answer his question. “If I’d seen a picture, I wouldn’t have been able to identify it as me, but I would have known it was familiar.” At least, the expression was.

  “That’s a good start.” He walked away, giving her plenty of space to return to the bed without getting close to him.

  She hurried back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. “Thank you,” she said. “For being there just now, I mean. And for saving my life.”

  He nodded, compressed his lips and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Well, I just came by to see if there’s anything I can do for you, anything you need, other than your memory, of course. I took that away from you, but I’m afraid I can’t give it back. No matter what you say, I blame myself that you’re here.”

  “I don’t need anything.” She tried to sound more certain than she felt. “I’ll probably wake up in the morning with all my memories intact.” Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t still be terrified.

  “I hope so. I hope that by this time tomorrow you’ll be home with the man who gave you that diamond.”

  The sparkling ring looked incongruous lying on the nightstand between the plastic tray and plastic water pitcher. She swallowed hard and fought back the resurgence of unreasoning terror and disgust it evoked.

  “You need to put it on,” he said. “Jewelry has a bad habit of disappearing in hospitals.”

  She continued to stare at the ring, unable to force herself to move closer, to reach for it.

  Cole picked up the diamond with one hand and took hers with the other.

  His hand was warm and big and capable and she fought down a rekindling of that inappropriate response to his touch that she’d felt while standing in front of the mirror. He was being considerate and kind. That was all.

  He touched the tip of her finger with the ring, and terror suddenly overwhelmed her again, a black void that drove out any other emotions and threatened to swallow her up, a nameless, pervasive fear that encompassed everything because she couldn’t recognize its face.

  She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to divert herself, to maintain contact with reality. It was only a ring, not some instrument of torture, nothing to cause her breathing to become labored and her mouth dry.

  The metal burned as he slid it onto her finger, then stopped at her second knuckle. “Your finger’s swollen, probably from the accident. You’d better wear your ring on a smaller one.”

  “No!” She snatched her hand away, curling it to her chest and leaving him holding the ring. “It’ll fall off,” she improvised desperately. “I’ll lose it. You take it.”

  Cole sighed and stepped back. “Lady, do you have any idea how much this ring is worth? Way too much for you to entrust it to a stranger.”

  “You’re no more of a stranger to me than I am to myself. I trust you.”

  “You don’t have any reason to.”

  “I don’t have any reason not to. You asked if there was anything you could do for me. You can take that thing away. Please.”

  He shook his head then reached inside his pocket and withdrew a battered leather wallet.

  “I’ll tell you what. I just cashed a check and I’ve got—” He counted out bills. “Three hundred eighty-five dollars. It’s probably not even close to what this rock is worth. But I’ll take the ring with me and leave you this so you’ll have some money in case your fiancé doesn’t show up immediately and so you can have some reassurance that I’ll get your diamond back to you.”

  “All right.” She refrained from telling him that she didn’t want the money, didn’t care if she ever saw the ring again. That would sound crazy.

  Besides, she probably would want it back when her fiancé found her, when her memory returned.

  Maybe.

  Though wanting the vile thing on her finger seemed an impossibility right now.

  He gave her the cash then took out a business card and a pen. “Here’s my home and office numbers in case you leave before I get back to you. The home number’s unlisted.”

  She took the card and read it, memorizing both numbers. Just in case.

  He studied the ring again then slid it into his pocket. “Try to get some sleep, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Good night and good luck, uh—”

  She held her breath. Was he going to call her Jane Doe the way the nurses had, let her know that he didn’t consider her a real person either?

  “Mary Jackson.” His lips quirked upward in a semblance of a smile. “Good thing you’re not a rock-music fan. You might have called yourself something really off the wall.”

  She tried to return his smile. “Sure. Things could always be worse. Right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Well, I’m sure it’ll all work out for you. Good night, Mary. Call me if you need anything.”

  He spun on his heel and left, taking his aura of sadness and desolation with him, but instead of feeling lighter, the air seemed heavier and more oppressive than before he’d gone, darker, even though the light still blazed from the ceiling.

  Chapter Three

  For the next two days and nights Cole saw her haunted, frightened, alluring face on the six o’clock news broadcasts, in the local papers and in his dreams.

  Despite all the publicity, however, her groom had not appeared to claim his bride. No one had come in to identify her, to take her home. Every afternoon Cole checked with Pete, and every afternoon the word was the same. Nothing.

  She remained a woman with no past, adrift in a world she couldn’t remember. And no matter that she genuinely didn’t seem to blame him for it…he blamed himself. The accident had been unavoidable, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d been the one driving the car, the one who’d caused her problems and, ironically, the only one she’d trusted to help her. He couldn’t help her. He knew that.

  Yet the memory of the way she’d lifted her chin and lied so bravely about remembering her name and address to keep from going to the hospital, the startled, pleased way she’d looked when he told her she was beautiful…the memory of her…stayed in the forefront of his mind and made him wish he could help her.

  Pete had told him that she’d insisted on leaving the hospital the next day. Using the money he’d loaned her on her engagement ring, she’d rented a hotel room as close as she could get to the scene of the accident, hoping she’d recognize something familiar. He knew the place she’d chosen. It wasn’t luxurious nor was it seedy. It was mediocre. Institutional. Not a place where he could imagine Mary, with her air of fragility and dignity, being comfortable.

  Cole tried to get the image of her in that hotel out of his mind as he pulled off the street and into his winding, tree-lined driveway a little after midnight. It was a dark, moonless night and, without the reflective strip on his mailbox, he might have missed the turn.

  That driveway had been one of the things Angela had liked about the place, that the casual passerby wouldn’t be able to find them. On the outskirts of Dallas, the heavily wooded lots were large and had offered the requisite city residence for his job on the police force as well as seclusion and safety for Angela.

  Which only proved that nobody could ever really be safe.

  Not Angela and Billy in their secluded house and not Mary Jackson in her rented room in a mediocre hotel. But he couldn’t do one thing to change that, so why was he even stewing about it?


  He pulled into the garage and got out of his car—not the beloved T-bird he’d been driving when he ran into Mary, but a dark blue, midsize sedan, the one he drove when he didn’t want to stand out, didn’t want to be noticed, when his job called for him to blend into the crowd, as he’d done tonight, infiltrating a society party dressed as a waiter.

  He left the garage, closing the door behind him, and crossed his yard. The porch light had burned out a couple of years ago and he’d never replaced it. He liked the darkness.

  A cricket chirped, his song loud in the quiet. Something scurried through the underbrush…a raccoon or ’possum, maybe. Too small for a deer. All sorts of wildlife shared the acres of dense woods that surrounded and separated the half-dozen houses in the development.

  He strode onto the porch, unlocked the front door and went inside, crossing the entryway and climbing the wide wooden stairs without turning on a light. There was no need. He knew where every piece of furniture was located. He hadn’t moved anything in the last three years.

  The only thing he’d changed was the room he and Angela had planned to use for a nursery, though the need had never arisen. He’d bought bedroom furniture and that was where he slept. He never entered the room he’d shared with Angela or the one that still held Billy’s twin bed surrounded by his stuffed animals and football posters.

  The red light on his answering machine blinked in the darkness as he entered. He flipped on the light and pressed the button to retrieve his messages.

  “This is…the woman who ran in front of your car two days ago.” Her hesitant voice emerged from the plastic machine like a soft spring breeze, and he could almost smell the white flowers with satin petals.

  “I thought you might have tried to call me. Someone did—a man, the operator said. But when I answered, no one was there and whoever it was never called back. I thought perhaps it was you since you’re the only person besides the police who knows where I am. Although I don’t suppose you know, do you? I’m staying in room 428 at the Newton Arms.”