“Well, let’s see… I saw him in your office a week ago. Everyone in town knows about the little incident with Jimmy Ray at the Saloon. My aunt—your neighbor—has seen him coming and going from your place practically every day. Her best friend—his landlady—saw you at his place one day. My brother-in-law Tom says you were in the hardware store together on Saturday, and—”
“Enough already. You have quite a little network of informants, don’t you?”
“What can I say? My life is nothing, so I live vicariously through gossip and innuendo.”
Juliet wasn’t fooled. Tracey needed so many informants because she was much too busy herself to snoop. She’d dated every eligible man in town except Martin, and she’d tried with him, she admitted, but he just wasn’t interested. Further proof, along with his attraction to her, that the man was certifiable. “You used to date Hal Stuart, didn’t you? Tell me about him.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to trade Martin for Hal. Martin’s gorgeous, mysterious, dangerous. Hal is…” She shrugged. “Hal.”
Martin wasn’t hers to trade—though he wanted her to think he could be—but even if she wanted to move down to someone more her type, Hal wouldn’t make the list. No man who was capable of telling anyone over the age of two to toddle off ever could. “I met him the other day, and I was just curious about him.”
“Yeah, we dated for a while. He’s not a bad guy. He’s handsome. He takes his dates to the best places in town. He has money and likes to spend it.”
“Family money?”
“Investments. He takes risks, and sometimes they pay off big time. No, his family never had a lot of money. His father died when he was just a kid, and his mother worked and scraped to support them and put herself through school. She was a lawyer, you know, but she never went after the big-bucks business. She wanted to help people who needed it, and then she went into politics. But you don’t want to know about his family. You want the personal stuff, right? Let’s see… He’s the best kisser I’ve ever met.”
No way. That title already belonged to Martin. Any kiss better than the one he’d given her in her bedroom last night couldn’t be survived.
“He was engaged to Randi Howell last year, but the marriage didn’t happen. He was in his tux, all the wedding guests were waiting, and she disappeared—wound up with a rancher someplace. It was all for the best, because it was on their wedding day that Olivia was attacked, which certainly would have made for some lousy anniversaries. The funny thing about it, though—about Randi running off—is that Hal wasn’t really upset. I mean, she was about twenty minutes from being his wife, and he never acted the least bit heartbroken.”
Maybe he hid his troubles well, or maybe he hadn’t been heartbroken. Maybe he’d had reasons other than love for proposing marriage. “How did he get along with his family?”
“Eve didn’t live here, you know. She left before Molly was born and came back when Olivia died. I guess they got along fine. He admired his mother. She was the reason he became a lawyer and got involved in politics himself.”
“Was there anything about him you didn’t like? A quick temper? An attitude? Any quirks?”
Tracey gave it a moment’s thought, then shook her head. “He’s a nice guy. Maybe a little overbearing with people he considers subordinates, but no attitude, no temper.” Her smile was quick and teasing. “If you’re through with Martin, how about tossing him my way? And put in a few good words on my behalf. Tell him I’m every woman he ever dreamed of, all wrapped up in one. I’ll make him forget his name—oops, too late for that. Tell him I’m the best time he’ll ever have.”
“No, thanks. I don’t need the competition.”
“I don’t believe you have any—except maybe his past. You know, there’s something exciting about a dangerous man who doesn’t know who he is. But from his viewpoint, it must be scary as hell.”
Scary and restrictive. He wouldn’t ever be free to fully commit himself to anything—or anyone—as long as he couldn’t remember. And what if he did remember and couldn’t deal with it?
No, he could deal with it. Knowing the worst was better than not knowing anything. Besides, maybe there was no “worst.” Maybe the worst thing in his past was that he had a wife and children who loved him dearly and wanted him back—which would be the worst only for her. It would be heaven for him.
Murmuring about the time, she left Tracey and returned to her office, but the morning seemed to crawl. She couldn’t keep her mind on work. The mundane task of writing and adapting software to the library’s specific needs couldn’t begin to compete with the more intriguing questions of Martin, Hal Stuart and Olivia’s murder. After the third time she came out of a daze to find herself staring at garbage on the computer screen, she left her desk and headed for the reference desk.
One of the more interesting items she’d been shown in her initial tour of the library was a series of yearbooks put together by one of the women’s clubs in town. They were nothing fancy—scrapbooks, basically, with newspaper articles, photos and personal remembrances. They represented a fairly comprehensive history of the city for the last thirty years, according to the head librarian. She had advised Juliet to look them over when she had time.
Mrs. Hilburn surely hadn’t meant on library time, but since her mind wasn’t good for much else this morning, that was what Juliet intended to do. She would make it up to the library by working late today and coming in early Thursday.
She selected five of the yearbooks from twenty years ago, returned to her office and closed the door. The turning point in Olivia’s life had been her husband’s death and her son’s disappearance. Those two events had given birth to the woman whose death both interested and frightened Martin, and Juliet wanted to know more about them.
The books were divided into sections: local news, births and deaths, social news and an honor roll that included everything from the winner of the citywide spelling bee to the high school basketball champs to Maxwell Brown’s young businessman of the year award. In the first book she paged through, she found the news of Roy Colton Stuart Sr.’s death in one section and Roy Colton Stuart Jr.’s disappearance in another.
The death announcement was accompanied by a photograph of a handsome man with blond hair, a strong nose and a narrow jaw. He didn’t look like a man who would beat his wife and son. Of course, if wife-beaters looked like wife-beaters, they would never have wives to beat. There was no mention of the beatings in the obituary, of course, or of the drinking that he had no doubt used as an excuse. Just a simple sanitized version of the way he had died: in an accidental fall at home. It went on to list his surviving family—Olivia and the three children, his parents and two brothers in Denver and a grandmother in Colorado Springs. It also gave the time and place of his funeral—Grace Tabernacle, the church where Martin was working.
Could one of the Stuarts in Denver be responsible for Olivia’s murder? It wasn’t uncommon for an abusive man’s parents to free him of responsibility for his actions, to place the blame instead on his victim. If Olivia had been a better wife, if she hadn’t made him angry, if she hadn’t failed him so miserably, he wouldn’t have drunk, he wouldn’t have hit her, and he wouldn’t have died. Over the years, they had grieved for their son even as they watched Olivia go to college, become a lawyer and make a better life for herself and her children. They had seen her prosper, becoming the most influential person in the city of Grand Springs, all while their son and brother lay dead in the ground. Such grief could easily become hatred. Sorrow could fester into vengeance until finally they had to do something or die.
But according to the phone bills, Olivia had been in regular contact with the Stuart family right up until her death. Maybe one of them had fooled her into believing they were still friends.
Or maybe Juliet was grasping at straws.
With a sigh, she turned to the news section. Local Boy Missing, the headline read, with a smaller subhead: Police Seek Help. There was a photograph acco
mpanying this article, too, a school picture of a stern-faced sixteen-year-old boy. He’d had his father’s blond hair, straight nose and thin jaw. Had he also had his father’s temper? Had Roy Stuart Jr. grown into a bully like Roy Sr.? Had his abusive tendencies put him in an early grave, like his father?
According to the story, Roy Jr. had run away following a fight with his father. It sounded so simple and stereotypical—a rebellious teen, a strict father, a disagreement over curfew, use of the car or grades. It didn’t mention that the fight had been physical, that it had involved fists, pain and the violation of the most sacred trust—a child’s trust in his parents.
Who had dictated the slant of the story? Roy Sr., who’d probably considered the beatings for his son’s own good? Or Olivia, who’d spent sixteen years of her marriage protecting her husband instead of the son who was her first responsibility?
Juliet studied the photograph, finding a faint resemblance to Hal Stuart, an even fainter one to Eve Redtree. The picture gave her a chill. She could go out there to the high school yearbooks and find thousands of pictures of how sixteen-year-olds should look. Even among thousands, this one would stand out. Roy Jr. had been old beyond his years. Why hadn’t anyone noticed? A teacher, a neighbor, a pastor—some adult should have stepped forward and said No more. His father wouldn’t do it, and his mother couldn’t, so someone else should have.
Instead, the teenage boy had been left to do it himself, by running away to live—and possibly die—on the streets.
Martin had been right, she thought with a sad sigh. Olivia had owed her eldest son so much more than that.
Chapter Seven
Martin stood two dozen feet in front of the window that looked into Juliet’s office and tried to talk himself into leaving without speaking to her. After a half-dozen hours of dream-ruined sleep, he’d awakened making deals with himself. He could get out of bed if he didn’t leave the apartment. He could leave the apartment if he stayed away from the library. He could go to the library if he didn’t go to her office. He could see her if he didn’t speak to her.
Plenty of agreements, and every one of them broken. Hell, he couldn’t even keep a promise to himself. How the hell could he be expected to treat Juliet fairly?
Treating her fairly, in light of what he now knew, translated to one thing: staying away from her. She deserved better. With what little he knew of himself, he deserved nothing.
But here he was, a few strides away, watching her like some kind of lovesick—or just plain sick—fool. She hadn’t noticed him. Ever since he’d arrived, her attention had been focused on something on her desk. She seemed a thousand miles away, and he wished she was, literally as well as figuratively. Then she would be out of his reach. He would never know she existed, and she would be safe from him.
Abruptly, she looked up, her gaze locking with his. He tried to look away, but instead, for one long, greedy moment, he continued to look at her, to study her, to want her. She was so sweet, so innocent. He was neither and suspected he had never been.
Finally he forced himself to break the eye contact, to turn his back to her. He still felt her gaze, though, even when he crouched on the pretext of finding something on the shelves, even when solid wood and a forest of paper blocked him from her sight. He stared blindly, wishing she’d never come to this town, wishing he’d never come, wishing he’d gone over the side of the mountain with his damned car if this was what he had to live with. Pain, fear, doubt. Ugly truths and impossible wants. He wished—
She crouched beside him, her pale summer dress brushing the floor, the faint scent of her fragrance competing with the smells of papers and inks. “Can I help you find something?” she asked, her voice impossibly soft, her tone unmistakably hurt.
“No. I can find—” He pulled a book from the shelf, but he couldn’t read the title because his peripheral gaze was on her, a soft blur of colors, scents, sensations.
“Interested in college? Since part of my salary is paid by the local college, I feel obligated to recommend them first. However, that one’s good, too. I believe you’re a little old to become a cadet or to think about a career in the military, but since you can’t prove your age…”
Finally he forced his gaze to the book. It was a catalog for the U.S. Naval Academy. His face burning, he let her pull it from his hands, then sank back to lean against the bookcase behind him.
“What’s wrong, Martin?”
“Nothing.”
“Has something happened? Did you find out anything?”
“I don’t want to know anything. I don’t want to know who killed Olivia—” because damned if it might not have been him “—and I don’t want to know anything else about myself.”
She sat down, too, gathering her skirt close. “You remembered something, didn’t you?”
He shook his head.
“What is it? What do you remember?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. The doctor says I may never remember anything. The shrink, however, says these things usually resolve themselves. One minute I know nothing, and the next I know it all. One minute I’m the freak, and the next I’m—” He clamped his jaw shut to keep from finishing the sentence, but he couldn’t stop the words in his mind. A murderer.
“One minute you’re a man with amnesia, and the next you’re a man with a full set of memories. The amnesia doesn’t define you, Martin. It’s a condition you have. It’s not who you are.”
No, the memories determined who he was, and the few he had now weren’t pretty. His only comfort was that anything else he remembered could only get better. After all, what could possibly be worse than killing a man?
Only one thing that he could imagine right now: telling Juliet that he’d killed a man. Last night he’d thought he could do it, and she would understand. She would make excuses that they both could believe in. She would say that was another life. He’d been a different man. That past was ended. It had nothing to do with the man he was today.
But that was in the night, in the shadows where he’d lived too much of his life. In the hard light of day, the truth and his wishful thinking were about as far apart as they could get. The truth was, a woman like Juliet should stay hell and gone from a man like him. She shouldn’t have an affair with him. She sure as hell couldn’t be allowed to fall in love with him. They didn’t stand a chance, not in the long run. Better to accept that now, while he could, while he might survive it, while she would survive it.
“Martin, talk to me, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He looked at her, so pretty, so worried, and smiled bitterly. “Everything’s wrong, darlin’. You’re wrong. I’m wrong. This whole damn relationship is wrong.”
A woman walked past on the opposite side of the low bookcase, giving them a curious look, distracting him for one blessed moment from the hurt that turned Juliet’s eyes liquid blue. The moment passed, though, and he had nothing to look at but her. Nothing to think about, nothing to feel, nothing to regret but her.
“Would you come in my office, please?”
“No.”
She had started to get up but sank back again at his blunt answer. “So you’re giving up.”
Giving up hope. Giving in to the past.
It was possible, the shrink had told him ten months ago, that there was a hysterical aspect to his amnesia. The head injury he’d suffered in the accident hadn’t been severe. Medically they wouldn’t have expected such a blow to cause anything more significant than a headache, certainly not full-blown generalized amnesia. Dr. Jeffers had suggested that his subconscious had seen the blow as an opportunity to be free of a life he no longer wanted to live and so had blocked off all those memories, giving him a chance to start over.
Some chance, when he remembered just enough to keep him trapped in that past he’d no longer wanted.
“I don’t have anything to give up,” he said flatly.
She opened her mouth as if to speak—to offer herself?—then thought better of it. After a momen
t of awkward, hurtful silence, she murmured, “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, darlin’—”
“Don’t call me that. My name is Juliet.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. Endearments at a time like this were more than a little cruel. “I don’t want to know anything. What’s hard to understand about that?”
“Why don’t you trust me enough to tell me what’s happened?”
“I trust you. It’s me I don’t trust. You shouldn’t, either.”
“I do trust you.”
“You do, huh? Well, hell, what do you know? You’re a timid little librarian who lives her life with her computers, who doesn’t do well face-to-face and whose only friends use fake names and live somewhere out in cyberspace.” Who was looking at him now as if he’d struck her. Whose eyes were so full of unshed tears that he was drowning in them. Muttering a curse, he scrambled to his feet. “Do yourself a favor, darl—Juliet. Stick to your computers and stay the hell away from me.”
He left the library, feeling sicker than he’d ever been. Leaving the sidewalk for the shelter of a weeping willow, he leaned against the trunk and ground his palms against his stinging eyes. He was one hell of a bastard who didn’t deserve to even know her…which was the point of this whole ugly mess. He needed to know that Juliet was safe, and the one thing in the world she needed to be safe from was him.
There was a soft rustle of sound, followed by the certain knowledge that he was no longer alone. Gritting his teeth on a curse, he dropped his hands from his eyes and slowly opened them. Juliet was standing primly a few feet in front of him. She still wore a wounded-angel look, but she wasn’t crying. Her lip wasn’t trembling, and she didn’t look as if she might dissolve into a sorrowful pool of tears.
“Most people I meet never get to know me well enough to figure out what hurts most. You did it in only a week.” She didn’t wait for him to speak. It was just as well. There was nothing he could allow himself to say—no deliberate insults, no apologies, no pleas for forgiveness. “I suppose this was for my own good. Better to hurt me now than later?”
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