Private Vows

by Sally C. Berneathy

  For a long moment she gazed at him, long enough for him to see that she was lucid though terrified.

  “I saw someone,” she finally said. “From my bedroom window. I heard a noise and I looked outside and saw…a man.”

  He reminded himself that it was possible they had had a prowler. It was even possible someone was pursuing her and that person had somehow found his house. “Where was this man?”

  “Right over there.” She pointed to the wooded area a few yards away. “He came out from behind a tree.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He didn’t have a face.”

  Cole tensed. As if she sensed his disbelief, she shook her head and explained, “It was like he had a stocking over his face or something. And there was blood. Blood on his chest and stomach.” She trembled, and he pulled her closer, wrapping both arms around her.

  She felt so incredibly good in his arms, a perfect fit, her head resting on his chest, her fingers entangled in his mat of hair. All he wanted to do was hold her, make the fear go away. But he knew that wasn’t possible. He had to voice his skepticism. “You could see it was blood? At night, from that distance, you could see it was blood?”

  She lifted her face to meet his gaze unflinchingly. “The moon’s very bright. But, no, I can’t swear it was blood. It was a dark stain. It looked like blood.”

  So rational. He wanted to believe her.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up? Why did you come out here alone?”

  She hesitated for a long moment, her gaze drifting toward the woods, no longer meeting his. “I needed to do this myself.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or a bad one that she’d taken matters into her own hands. He held her more tightly, and she again tucked her head against his chest. Her delicate floral fragrance filled his senses and her breath was warm on his bare skin. Her hair captured and enhanced the moonlight, and he fought the urge to run his fingers through the silky strands, to know how moonlight felt.

  “If you see anything else, please come get me,” he said. “If somebody had been out there, you could have been hurt.”

  Again she pushed away just enough to look up at him. “If somebody had been out there? Somebody was there. I saw him. And when I came down, everything was quiet, like it is now, like an intruder had disturbed the night creatures the way we have. Then I saw something moving in the bushes.”

  “Mary, I just meant if somebody had still been out there. I didn’t say I don’t believe you saw something.”

  “But you don’t believe me. Nobody believes me!” She blinked then backed completely out of his arms, and he could tell by the confused expression on her face that she wasn’t sure why she’d made the last comment.

  “Let’s go inside and sit down,” he suggested.

  She let him lead her into the kitchen where she waited silently while he locked the door and reset the alarm. They started for the living room, and she rubbed her bare arms, then, as if suddenly realizing she wore only the revealing gown, blushed.

  “I need to go put on something.”

  “I’ve probably got an old shirt in the hall closet. Sit down and I’ll get it.”

  She waited on the far side of the living room until he brought her the shirt. She slipped it on then darted to the window and closed the drapes.

  As she curled in one corner of the sofa, her fair skin and pale hair provided a glowing contrast to the dark blue fabric. The shirt covered the gown but left the long length of her legs exposed.

  No more than if she’d been wearing a pair of shorts, he reminded himself, but it seemed like a lot more.

  He took a seat in the chair, not trusting himself to sit even as close as the other end of the sofa. Wearing his shirt, and with her legs tucked under her, she was just as tempting as she’d been in the revealing gown. What the hell was the matter with him that he couldn’t keep his head on straight around this woman? Why did he have such a hard time remembering that she was fragile and breakable and that she was engaged to another man?

  Unless it had been that man’s blood on her gown.

  “That comment was something from my past,” she said, and for a moment he didn’t know what she was talking about. For a moment the reason they were sitting in his living room in the middle of the night was totally eclipsed by the sight of her. “I’m not getting any real memories with it,” she continued. “Just the frustrating feeling of trying very hard to convince people of something and having nobody believe me.”

  “People you worked with?” He’d been able to elicit memories before with questions, drawing from her vivid details of her childhood.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “Everybody. If my parents had been alive, they’d have believed me, but nobody else did.”

  “What didn’t they believe?”

  She shook her head slowly, dismay written across her delicate features. “I don’t know. I can feel the frustration and the anger, I can see the expressions of disbelief, I can even see the faces of some of the people, but I don’t know who they are or what they won’t believe or who I am.”

  Maybe the questioning only worked with happy memories. That would make sense. Nobody wanted to recall the bad times of their lives.

  “There was something else strange when I saw the man outside my window. I thought I smelled roses, and I felt suffocated by the scent.”

  “There are some wild roses around here. Did you have your window open?”

  “No, of course not. I’d be too frightened, even on the second floor. I don’t think it was a real smell, more like the memory of one.”

  “Could be there were roses in the area when you had your traumatic experience.”

  “Which isn’t a very helpful clue, is it?” She stood wearily. “We might as well go back to bed.”

  For one crazy instant his mind skittered around that comment, imagining she was inviting him to her bed. Of course, she wasn’t. His hormones were just spilling over because of the way she looked standing there in his shirt, the way she’d felt in his arms on the patio.

  “You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.” No point in standing and letting her see how he’d interpreted her innocent statement, how much he wanted her in his bed.

  She nodded and walked toward the stairs. Ignoring the pull of common sense, he watched every movement…the swing of her hips, the sway of her hair, the flash of her legs.

  At the foot of the stairs she stopped and turned back to face him, and he felt suddenly guilty, as if she could read his mind.

  “Why did you get out of bed?” she asked. “Your bedroom is on the opposite side of the house, so you couldn’t have heard the noises I did. What woke you?”

  Her words took him back to that instant when he’d awakened, knowing someone was walking around in the house. He couldn’t have said what sound he’d heard, if any. Maybe it was only the vibrations. Living with Angela, his senses had become so sharply attuned for that sort of thing, he hadn’t questioned those senses. “The stairs creaked when you walked down them,” he lied. They might have.

  “You were sleeping at the far end of the hall. You must have excellent hearing.”

  “Yes, I do.” He’d been forced to develop it, and once again it had stood him in good stead. But nothing he had done or could have done was enough to save Angela, and the ache returned with full force. He’d just kept Mary from rushing into the woods in the middle of the night with a butcher knife, but that was a temporary fix. He hadn’t changed the final outcome.

  “Would you check on that man tomorrow, the man who had my pictures on his walls?”

  “Sam? Yeah, sure.” He was surprised by the exultant feeling that washed over him at the thought that Sam Maynard might have tracked him down, ignored his warning and tried to peek inside Mary’s window. That would mean she really had seen somebody, that she wasn’t imagining the whole thing, that the threat to her was tangible and real, something he could fight.

  “Ye
ah,” he repeated. “I’ll check on Sam, and if he was out there last night, I can promise you, when I’m through with him, he won’t be back.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  His gaze followed her slim legs as she climbed the stairs until she disappeared from his sight. Then he rose and went into the kitchen to get a beer.

  Mary Jackson was messing with his head big-time.

  She was engaged, not available for spending the night in his bed. But even beyond that, she’d just admitted to him that she’d had emotional problems before the amnesia. She’d been depressed over her parents’ death, and she’d tried to convince her friends of something they didn’t believe. He understood only too well how those friends must have felt, wanting to help her yet unable to.

  Well, unless he could find a tangible, living, breathing enemy, he couldn’t help her, either. All he could do was become as frustrated as they had, beat his head against a brick wall and end up hating himself for his failings.

  But apparently that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He’d visit Sam tomorrow and, in spite of knowing he shouldn’t, he’d be hoping Sam would confess to spying on Mary tonight. Hell, if he did, Cole would probably be so pleased, he wouldn’t even beat the lousy pervert to a bloody pulp.

  “OF COURSE they didn’t sell me that dress,” Mary said with a sigh as they left the third bridal boutique the next day. “I can’t even imagine myself shopping in a place like that. My family didn’t have that kind of money, and I sure didn’t make it teaching school.”

  Cole grabbed her arm and whirled her around. The midday sun glared down, but even his squinting against it didn’t detract from the huge smile on his face. “What did you just say?”

  “I said my family—oh!” She hugged him impulsively in her excitement…and wished she could go on hugging him. His body felt so big and strong and secure, just as it had last night when he’d held her on the patio.

  She backed out of his embrace reluctantly. “I teach school! Little kids. Grade school.” She fought the impulse to hug him again because she wanted to celebrate the excitement and because it felt so good to hug him. But this was neither the time nor the place…and she wasn’t sure either of those would ever come.

  “I can see their faces,” she said, concentrating on the memory, “the whole room of them. Of course, they’ll be different faces next year, but I’ll see my kids around the school in their other classes, and they always come back to talk to me.”

  Cole watched her expectantly, but the images had stopped.

  “What’s the name of the school?”

  She shook her head and turned away. “I don’t know. It’s like all the other memories. My brain filters out the details.” Effectively keeping her from discovering her identity, keeping the secrets of her past hidden.

  Cole draped an arm around her shoulders, and she reveled in the touch. “That’s okay. You’re making progress. I haven’t given up trying to find something about the death of your parents, we still have two more shops to visit about the dress and now we have another clue. I’ll get a list of all the grade-school teachers in the area, and we’ll track down every one of them until we find you.”

  “That’s a lot of teachers if you include the suburbs. Six grades in every school.”

  “We only have to check five grades because you said you’ll see them next year in the same school.”

  “That’s still a lot.”

  He squeezed her shoulder. “I’ve solved cases with smaller leads. Let’s get some lunch before we visit the last two shops.”

  “And check on Sam Maynard.”

  He nodded, his jawline suddenly granite. “I’ll check on Sam.”

  “And I’m going with you this time.”

  He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. She knew he wasn’t planning on taking her, but she also knew she was going along. How could she be expected to deal with her fears if she couldn’t face the enemy?

  They stopped at a fast-food place for a burger, then drove on to the next expensive bridal boutique. As he’d done before, Cole repeated his fabricated story that they were looking for the woman who’d purchased the dress, Mary’s twin sister, then flipped his P.I. badge so rapidly the clerks probably thought it was police ID.

  But once again the manager shook her head as she scanned the photo Cole had successfully altered to erase all signs of blood.

  “Could you check your records, just to be sure somebody else didn’t sell it?” Cole asked, as he had at the other shops.

  Predictably, the short, dark woman drew herself up haughtily and whipped off her half-frame reading glasses. “I can assure you, I’d have known if this gown had been purchased through our store, and I’d have remembered the bride-to-be.” Her glance told Mary the woman shared her belief that neither Mary nor her fictitious sister belonged there.

  “I understand,” Cole said, “but just for the sake of the forms I have to fill out, could you check anyway?”

  With a disgusted look, the woman disappeared into the back room.

  Cole picked up a business card from the elegant gold holder on the table that held large books containing pictures of wedding apparel and swatches of fabric. He started to slip the card into the pocket of his sports coat where he’d put the others, but then stopped and studied it, his forehead creasing in thought.

  Mary reached for a card to see what he found so interesting, but before she could look at it, the woman returned.

  “We have never sold that particular style from this shop,” she assured them with a dismissive smile.

  “Your card indicates you have other shops,” Cole said. “In San Antonio and Houston.”

  “That’s correct.” Her tone suggested the matter couldn’t possibly be of any interest to them.

  “And these other shops carry the same dresses?”

  “We all order from the same designers.”

  “Could you check to see if the Houston store sold this style recently?”

  The woman sighed, but returned to the back room.

  “You think I went to Houston to buy a wedding dress?” Mary whispered the moment the manager was gone.

  “Maybe,” Cole said. “Remember when we went through the Galleria Mall and you said it was familiar and not familiar at the same time? Well, there’s a Galleria in Houston. Maybe you’re from the Houston area and that’s why nobody has seen your picture and come forward to tell us who you are. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to find anything about the death of your parents in this area. Does Houston ring any bells? Call up any images?”

  Mary shook her head. “Big city. Hot and humid.”

  Cole shrugged. “Things every Texan knows. Still, it’s worth a shot.”

  “What would I be doing up here if I live in Houston? It’s four hours away.”

  “Forty-five minutes by plane. Maybe your wedding’s going to be here. Maybe your fiancé or his family lives here. Maybe he flew you up in his private jet. You said you didn’t have enough money to shop in these places, but obviously somebody did, and I’m betting on the guy who gave you that ring with a stone big enough to throw in the World Series.”

  Mary could feel the tension mounting inside her again, tightening her chest and sending anxiety surges along every nerve in her body. “Maybe I don’t want to marry him,” she blurted. “Maybe that’s what this is all about.”

  Cole looked at her for a long moment, but she couldn’t read what was going on behind his dark eyes. “Prewedding amnesia? I don’t think I’ve heard of that one before.”

  Neither of them mentioned the blood on her gown. They didn’t have to. They both knew there was more to her problem than a reluctance to get married.

  She was relieved to see the manager return from the back room and end that topic of conversation.

  “Our Houston store did sell a dress of that design recently. It was delivered to the customer two weeks ago.”

  Mary’s heart clenched.

  “What was the customer’s n
ame?” Cole asked.

  “I can’t give out that information.”

  “I understand. Thanks anyway.”

  Mary almost sagged with relief as they walked out of the store. “Since we didn’t get a name, I guess that means this is a dead end.” She knew she should be upset rather than relieved. Obviously she was still running from her past, glad of any delay in facing it.

  “Not at all. Now that I know where the information is, I’ll get it. In this day and age, if you have the resources, you can find out anything you want to know. By this time tomorrow, we’ll know who bought your wedding dress.”

  The afternoon was hot, and passing cars gusted the heated air directly against them as Mary stood on the sidewalk looking into Cole’s eyes. Even if she was terrified at the idea of facing her past, Cole should be jubilant. But he wasn’t. His gaze was shuttered and noncommittal, dark with no hint of green. She had no idea what lay behind it. Was he, too, worried about what they would find hidden in the dark corners of her mind?

  They were halfway home before Mary remembered Cole’s promise to check on Sam Maynard.

  “After I get you home,” he said when she reminded him.

  “No. I’m going with you.”

  “Why would you want to see this creep? He’s a disgusting specimen.”

  “To know if he’s the same man I saw last night.”

  “You said that man had something over his face.”

  “I might be able to tell by his size or the way he moves.” She turned sideways in the seat and appealed to his stony profile. “It’s the same reason I had to go outside by myself last night. If I don’t learn to confront my fears, how am I ever going to confront my past and get my memory back?”

  Cole didn’t answer, but he turned at the next block and headed toward the part of town where Sam Maynard lived.

  “That was foolish, what you did last night,” he said. “You could have been hurt.”

  “I had a knife.”

  Cole snorted. “It took me less than a second to get that knife away from you.”

  “I let you take it!” she protested. “I’d have fought a stranger.” She knew that for a certainty. Last night when she’d stood on the patio and heard someone behind her, in the instant before she realized it was Cole, she’d been prepared to plunge the knife into an attacker.