“I guess you’ve got one of these bulk-erasers at your office, huh?”
“I…” She stopped and pressed her fingers to the knot on her forehead. Her eyes scrunched shut, her face paled. “I don’t know.” She dropped her hand and looked at him, her eyes accusing him of something he wasn’t sure he understood. “Why did you ask me that when you know I don’t remember anything?”
He tossed the dishrag over the divider in the sink. “You were on a roll. You weren’t thinking about what you were saying. It was just coming out. I thought maybe more would come if you didn’t stop to think about it.”
He was right, she realized. She hadn’t had to think about it. She knew what videotape was, could see it in half-inch, three-quarter-inch and one-inch formats. In black plastic cassettes and on metal or plastic reels of various colors. She could hear the whir of tape machines, the buzzing hum of the bulk-eraser.
“Why do I know all of that, but I don’t know if I even have an office?” Frustration was eating a hole in her chest. “I don’t seem to know anything about myself, but I know it’s Sunday because there’s a stopwatch ticking on the television and I hear Morley Safer’s voice, so 60 Minutes is on. Which means it’s Sunday. Six o’clock, unless there was a ball game that ran long.”
Jack nodded. “You’re right. It’s Sunday.”
“I have to know more than this. I have to remember. My purse,” she murmured. “Maybe there’s something else…”
Jack watched, frowning, as she headed back to the bedroom in those ridiculous yellow slippers. He had a hundred questions he’d like to ask her.
If he had that many, he shuddered to think how many she had. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like not to know his own name, his family, where he was from, what he did for a living. What kind of man he was.
She returned, muttering to herself, one hand buried halfway up her forearm in her brown leather purse. With a growl like a frustrated kitten, she dumped the contents on the table.
Jack shook his head in wonder. “Why is it that women feel the need to carry so much junk around with them all the time?”
“Because we never know when we might need it,” she muttered.
“Does anything look familiar?”
She fingered a tube of lipstick, played with a black plastic comb. “I know what it all is, but…” She shook her head. “None of it means anything to me.”
“What’s this?” Jack picked up a small flat brass case.
“A business-card holder,” she muttered. Then her face lit up. “I have business cards.” She snatched it out of his hand and popped it open. The cards read:
Lisa Hampton
Broadcast Producer
Walter and Thompson, Denver
“What’s Walter and Thompson,” Jack asked.
“It’s an ad agency. A national agency—no, worldwide. They have offices all over the world. I know that, know what W&T is, so why don’t I remember anything about it? Like working there?”
When she looked up at him, Jack would have given anything to be able to answer her questions and take away that look of lost vulnerability in her eyes. But all he had to offer was a lame, “It’ll come back to you.”
“Will it?”
“Sure. Just give it time.”
“But what if it doesn’t come back?” She thumbed the business card, looked at the contents of her purse without a hint of recognition. “What if I never remember?”
“Hey,” he said softly. Without thinking, he reached out and stroked her cheek. Warm satin. “Don’t go borrowing trouble. You’ve had an accident, probably have a mild concussion, and that’s what’s causing your memory loss. Considering the other side effects of a concussion, you’re not in too bad a shape.”
“You mean amnesia is the good news?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it good, but at least you’re not suffering from nausea or double vision or fainting spells. You’re not in a coma. Your pupils look the same size in both eyes, so you probably don’t have a blood clot in your brain. Do you want me to go on?”
“I thought you were a cowboy. Why do you know so much about all this?”
“Because of those nephews I told you about. And my brothers. Somebody around here is always getting conked on the head by one means or another. You learn to recognize the symptoms.”
She just stood there, looking up at him, bewildered.
Jack had the deepest urge to pull her into his arms and hold her close, tell her not to worry, tell her everything would be all right. Tell her he would take care of her.
He fought it. Fiercely.
That he had to fight it shocked him. He couldn’t remember a woman ever pulling at him this way before. Jack liked women as much as the next guy did, but he preferred women who didn’t have hearth, home and family written all over their face, and that’s just what he read on Lisa Hampton’s face. He didn’t know what to do with women like that, except steer clear of them. They always seemed to want something from him that he didn’t have within himself to give.
Lisa finally looked away. She started gathering her things back into her purse. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like a hot bath.”
“Fine.” He cleared his throat. “That’s fine. When you’re finished, I’ll take a shower. I think I smell like my horse.”
Her smile was brief and tentative. “You smell like a very nice man to me. Thank you, Jack Wilder. I don’t know what I’d have done if I had come to and found myself alone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he told her, feeling at ease again with her. “I think you would have managed just fine.”
“I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.”
Lisa had her bath, then settled in the living room. The television programs were all right, but it was the commercials that fascinated her.
When Jack got out of the shower, he dressed in jeans and his last clean shirt, which had been in one of his saddlebags.
Belinda hadn’t anticipated that there would be anyone here but Lisa, so he took care to hang his towel on the shower rod to dry. If they were stuck here for more than a couple of days, they would have to do laundry. Which would be a problem since there was no washing machine or clothes dryer. How long would it take a sopping wet towel to dry, particularly if the electricity, thus the central heat, went off?
He didn’t hold out much hope for the electricity if this damn storm didn’t move out soon. The lines were bound to be coated with ice; it had rained before it started snowing. Enough ice on the power lines, and down they would go.
He had told Lisa what they could expect in that regard. After his shower he’d cleaned the tub and filled it with water, because without electricity, the well would shut off. While she’d been in the tub, he’d gone out to the well house and checked the old hand pump. It still worked, so they would at least be able to haul water to the house. They wouldn’t be without.
While he’d been out there, he’d filled two five-gallon buckets and carried them into the kitchen, just in case. The way he figured it, there was no sense waiting until he was thirsty to go looking for water.
Now they were as set as they could be. He’d even checked the batteries in the small boom box Belinda had left for Lisa in the living room, so they would be able to listen to the outside world if they could pick up a signal through all this damn snow.
He stepped into the living room and stopped in the doorway. Lisa was there, on the couch. She still wore those crazy slippers. But instead of the dark gray slacks and matching top, she now wore a fuzzy blue robe that was primly buttoned from her ankles to her chin. Her face was scrubbed clean of any makeup. With her fingertips, she unconsciously drew circles across her abdomen.
What would it be like, Jack wondered, for a man to have a woman like this waiting for him at the end of the day. A soft beautiful woman. A child—his child, their child—on the way. A family. His family. He would stroke her belly, feel the baby move. She would rub his shoulders. They would talk and laugh, hold
each other through the night. Face each day, the good ones and the bad, together, side by side.
Jack shook his head. What was the matter with him, thinking like that? He knew better. That dream wasn’t for him.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in love. He did believe in it, strongly. So strongly that he had practically taken matters into his own hands to make sure Ace and Belinda looked past the blinders they’d been wearing to realize they were in love.
Yeah, Jack believed in love, all right. Just not for himself. Oh, he’d tried a time or two, but it just didn’t seem to be in him to love a woman. He figured he came by that little flaw in his character naturally. Not only had he learned at an early age that his own mother resented his very existence, she hadn’t even liked herself. He never learned to receive or give love, and if there was a love gene, the woman who’d given birth to him hadn’t possessed it, and therefore had not passed it along to her only son.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream. And he had a feeling that tonight he was going to dream of auburn hair, green eyes and skin as soft as satin.
He realized he’d been standing in the doorway, watching her, for far too long. But she hadn’t seemed to notice; she was engrossed in the television.
A moment later he felt his lips twitch. It wasn’t a program that held her so enthralled, it was the commercials. Now she was reciting an automobile ad word for word along with the television.
“Was that one of yours?” he asked when the spot ended.
“Oh.” At the sound of his voice, Lisa gave a start. She hadn’t intended to stay in the living room so long and let him catch her in her robe. What must he think? She must look like Shamu the Whale, dressed by Omar the Tentmaker. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”
She started to push herself from the couch and go to her room, but instead, told herself to relax. She did look like Shamu, and her giant fuzzy bathrobe was big enough to house an entire desert tribe. There was no way he could think she was issuing any kind of invitation just because she happened to be in her gown and robe. And even if he thought she was, he would laugh himself silly at the idea of a seven-months-pregnant woman thinking she could entice a man.
Who wanted to entice a man, anyway? She certainly didn’t. Judging by the shape she was in, she’d already done that.
It troubled her greatly that she had no memory of her baby’s father. Surely if she loved him, she would feel something, wouldn’t she? Some whisper of love, of missing him?
But there was nothing. Not a shred of feeling.
Why? she wondered. How could she forget a man she loved enough to make a child with?
“Is something wrong?” Jack asked from the doorway.
“Oh. No. Sorry. What were you asking? Something about one of mine?”
“The ad. You were reciting it line for line. I wondered if it was one you’d done.”
Lisa took in a slow deep breath and told herself to relax. This constant questioning of herself made her tense, and that wasn’t good for the baby. “I don’t know,” she said in answer to Jack’s question. “I just knew the words. Silly, isn’t it? I didn’t know if I liked chicken noodle soup, but I know the entire script of a TV commercial.”
Jack shrugged and sauntered into the room. “It’s what you do. You probably spend all day every day working on commercials. I’m guessing that’s how you met Belinda.”
“How?”
“She used to work in advertising.”
“Really? Where?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Somewhere in Denver. When she came here last spring, she had her own business designing Web sites. She brought it with her. Has an office upstairs at the house.”
Lisa started to comment, but a new commercial caught her eye. “Oh, look. I know this one. Man’s best friend. The dog is going to make a sandwich, but they’re out of the right kind of spread.”
Jack wasn’t a big TV fan. He was even less of a fan of commercials. But this one was clever and funny.
It was as if the storm, too, had been watching, waiting for the spot to end before kicking in to make things more interesting. The instant the spot was over, the electricity went out. The room, the entire house, was plunged into complete darkness. And silence. Except for the howl of the wind.
Chapter Three
“Jack?”
“Stay put. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He heard the nervousness in her voice and paused. “I’m going to get the lantern in the kitchen, then I’m going to start a fire. Don’t move. It’s black as the inside of a hibernating bear in here.”
Lisa clamped her jaws shut to keep from asking him not to leave her alone. Did this mean she was afraid of the dark? How…distressing. How wimpy. She didn’t like to think of herself as a wimp. An adult who was afraid of the dark. A woman who had to have a man to lean on, to take care of her.
Maybe it wasn’t the dark that had her nerves stretched taut. At least not only the dark. There was the wind, the howling wind that sounded as if it had teeth and would rip away the walls any minute. And there was this damned black void in her head, which, on its own, swamped her with a hated feeling of helplessness.
From the kitchen came the glow of a flashlight, then, a few minutes later, the brighter glow of a gas lantern.
Jack carried the lantern to the fireplace, where he knelt and lit the kindling waiting there beneath several logs.
The light was a relief to Lisa. The heat, too, even though the room was plenty warm from the furnace that had been running. At least now she knew it would stay warm.
Crouching on one knee, Jack swiveled to face her. “You okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Thank you.”
“You already thanked me.”
Lisa shook her head. “Not for this.”
“One thanks is enough.”
“No,” she said. “It will never be enough.”
“It’s plenty.” He rose and dusted bits of bark from his hands. “You said thanks, I’ll say you’re welcome, and we’ll call it done. All right?”
“All right. For now. But I reserve the right to thank you again, the next time you do something…thanksworthy.”
“Thanksworthy?” Jack’s lips quirked up at the corners. “Is that a real word?”
Lisa smiled. “I have no idea, but if it’s not, it should be, don’t you think?”
As the flames devoured the kindling and bit into the logs, Jack shook his head at her question and turned the knob on the lantern until the hiss and glow ebbed sharply, then cut off.
“No telling how long the power will be off, and what fuel is in there is all there is. We’ll save it for when we really need it.”
The fire lent an intimate glow to the room, and the smell of wood smoke teased the air.
In direct contrast to the soft pleasant atmosphere, the sound of the blizzard pulled on Lisa’s nerves. “I wonder how deep the snow is by now.”
“When I went out to the well house, it was six to eight inches, where it wasn’t drifted up a foot or more. We’ll see a foot or two before this blows out. Does it worry you?”
“I don’t know.” She gave a slight shrug. “My driver’s license says I live in Denver. Surely I’m used to snow. This can’t be my first blizzard.”
“But it’s the first one you remember.”
She let out a slow breath. “That’s it exactly. I don’t remember being in a blizzard before. I sure don’t remember hearing the wind howl like this. At least with the TV on, I couldn’t hear it so much. Maybe…”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe we could talk so I won’t think about it.”
“Sure. If you want. About what?”
“Tell me about Belinda.”
When he smiled, it lit up his eyes. “Belinda? She’s a pistol.”
“You like her.”
“Yeah. I like her.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Hmm. Well, she’
s about five foot four, wears her hair real short. It’s black, so she fits in with the rest of us around here,” he added with a tug on the hair above his ear.
“It’s hard to believe I saw her just a few hours ago and have no memory of it. Of her.”
Jack shook his head. “You didn’t see her. You must have stopped at the house and picked up that envelope—there’s no postage or mailing address on it, so she didn’t mail it to you. But she and Ace weren’t there. They left three days ago for a belated first anniversary in Hawaii.”
“Their first wedding anniversary? In Hawaii. That sounds romantic. Palm trees, sandy beeches, luaus.”
“Have you ever been?”
“No, I—Oh, you’re sneaky. I answered without even thinking.”
“But you know you’ve never been to Hawaii.”
She tilted her head and thought about it. “No, I’ve never been.” She smiled. “Another piece of the puzzle. I know I’ve never been to Hawaii.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, watching the fire. Then Lisa said, “Tell me more about Belinda.”
“I don’t know what you want to know. She’s pretty, has big gray eyes, and Trey calls her The Fox.” He chuckled. “When Ace isn’t looking.”
“Ace is her husband?”
“Yeah. My oldest brother. Trey’s our youngest brother.”
“Wait a minute. How many brothers do you have?”
“Just the two, Ace and Trey.”
A wide grin spread across Lisa’s face. “Ace, Jack, and Trey? Don’t tell me. Your sister’s name is Queen.”
Jack let out a much-used groan. “It would’ve been if the old man had had his way. But her mother put her foot down. They compromised on Rachel, which is the name of the queen of Diamonds.”
“You’re kidding. The queen of Diamonds has a name?”
“All the face cards have names, but don’t ask me what they are.”
Jack could see that the conversation was keeping her mind off the storm. He was glad it was so simple to diffuse the tension he’d sensed in her. She was easy to talk to and seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say. What man wouldn’t be flattered? So he kept talking.
A Child on the Way Page 4