Until Spring

by Pamela Browning

  In other words, she wanted to spend the night with him but wasn't looking for anything more than comfort.

  Duncan wavered, one part of him wanting to put her out of temptation's way by gently telling her that she should go back to her own room. The other part of him was more human. He didn't relish being alone, either.

  "Never mind," Jane said resolutely, correctly reading his uncertainty for what it was. She turned, but he reached out and caught her shoulder. She spun around, her quickness taking him by surprise.

  "I overstepped my bounds," she said stiffly. "I'm sorry."

  "No," he said, desperate that she understand.

  "I'm going," she said, twisting so that he had to capture her in his arms to make her stay.

  Her face was no more than five inches from his as he held her there, and he could have kissed her if he'd wanted to. Instead he chose to hold her eyes with his for a long moment, and the communication delivered almost as much impact as something more forceful.

  "I want you to stay," he said. "I'm lonely, too."

  "Please, I—"

  "Nothing will happen that you don't want to happen," he said firmly. "You can sleep on the couch. It makes into a bed."

  She only looked at him, and slowly he released her from the circle of his arms. She was breathing hard, as though she'd just run a couple of miles, but so was he. In order to regain control of his emotions, he walked over to the couch and opened it out. It was already made up with sheets and a blanket, so he took a pillow from the other bed and tossed it onto the thin mattress.

  When Jane saw that he was serious about her sleeping there she hesitated for a moment, but then she walked around the end of the couch and crawled under the covers without taking off her robe.

  Duncan got into bed—the big bed that seemed even bigger now that she was only a few feet away—and switched off the light.

  "Good night," he said softly into the darkness.

  She shifted slightly, and he heard the springs creak beneath her.

  "Good night," she answered, and when, after half an hour or so of staring into the darkness he levered himself up on his elbows to see if she was awake, she didn't move. She was already asleep.

  * * *

  Jane woke up before Duncan the next morning and lay quietly, trying to determine exactly where she was. The draperies with the splashy print, the thin mattress, the king-size bed and the nightstand attached to the wall on the other side of the room... It took her a few moments to recall that she was in the Prairie Rose Motel in Tyree, Illinois.

  And Duncan was asleep in the bed across the room.

  She might have a faulty memory, but she certainly remembered the events leading up to her being there in this sleeper sofa in the same motel room with him. He must think she was crazy. First going all to pieces when she remembered the blue van and the Coke, and then rushing over here like a wild woman last night and practically accusing him of running off and leaving her. Her behavior embarrassed her.

  She heard a noisy group of guests tramping down the hall and slid upward against the back cushion of the couch so that she could sneak a look at the sleeping Duncan.

  He lay on his side, his hands pillowing his cheek. He didn't look much different now from the way he did when he was awake. More peaceful, maybe, but that wasn't saying much because Duncan was one of the most peaceable men she'd ever known. Not that she had known many men, but she doubted that most dealt with the other people in their lives the way Duncan did, accepting them as they were and going out of his way to help them, if that was what they needed. She liked that about him and felt incredibly lucky to have him in her life.

  He stirred in his sleep, and she quickly slid out of bed. She didn't want him to open his eyes to find her inspecting his face so closely. She groped in the pocket of her robe for the key to her room, and it was still there. Carefully she unlatched the chain lock and slipped out, closing the door silently behind her.

  A man stepped into the hall from the room next door. He was carrying a suitcase and seemed taken aback when he saw her standing there in her robe with her hair mussed. Then he smiled conspiratorially, and Jane flushed deeply as she realized what he must be thinking. With shaking hands she unlocked her own door and closed it securely behind her.

  She had the satisfaction of knowing that what their neighbor was thinking wasn't true, then realized that it might have been true if Duncan were another kind of guy. He could have taken advantage of her in the state of mind she'd experienced last night. What if he did want more? Was she prepared to give it?

  Shaken by her own thoughts, she went into the bathroom and ran the shower until the water was warm enough to get in. She adjusted the flow of the shower nozzle, her body slowly coming to life. As the soapsuds slid down her neck, into the crevice between her breasts and past the cleft between her legs, it was easy enough to think about the way she'd felt when she and Duncan danced. The attraction between them that night had definitely been physical.

  She was rinsing off the last of the soap when the phone rang. Wrapping a towel around herself as she walked, she hurried to answer it.

  "Jane," Duncan said. "I was worried when you weren't here when I woke up. Are you all right?"

  "Oh," she said, "sure. I came back to my room to take a shower. I didn't want to wake you."

  "Let's meet for breakfast. Say, in half an hour or so? We can try the coffee shop attached to the motel."

  "Okay," she agreed, and they hung up.

  He'd mentioned nothing about last night. She knew from experience that he probably wouldn't. He would go out of his way to avoid embarrassing her because that's the kind of nice guy he was.

  She dried herself on the big towel and studied her assets in the mirror. She was small-boned and delicate, and her skin tone looked alabaster pale in the harsh overhead light. Legs: slender. Hips: could be narrower. Breasts: small but well proportioned to the rest of her. All in all, she wasn't bad. Duncan thought she was beautiful. Was she? She certainly couldn't compare with any of the women on the soap operas she'd watched. But she didn't think she was impossibly ugly either. Beautiful. A bountiful word and one that she was pleased to have applied to her by someone like Duncan Tate. She dressed quickly.

  When she met Duncan in the motel coffee shop, it was business as usual.

  "Since it's still too early to call Detective Schmidt, I want to ride out to Carlton Jones's field and see if it jolts my memory," Jane told Duncan as they finished eating breakfast. "I'd like to see it early in the morning, which is the same time of day that I was found there."

  His eyes searched her face. "Are you sure you really want to go?" he asked.

  "I have to," she told him, and he nodded slowly in silent acceptance.

  After Duncan paid the check, they climbed into the rental car and headed out of town. Duncan drove competently, sure of the way to the field where the Joneses had stumbled across her so many months ago. Jane stared out the window, trying with all her might to remember something, anything about this place.

  Snow glistened on either side of the blacktop highway, and as they left behind the town of Tyree, they drove past widely scattered houses with smoke curling from the chimneys. Not many people lived on this highway, Jane observed as she studied the landscape. No wonder there weren't any witnesses to what had happened the night she was left in the ditch.

  Duncan slowed the car as they passed the Jonesdale Farm sign. Carl had told them that the place where Jane was found was about a mile down the highway south of a small red billboard. Sure enough, there was the billboard, and as Duncan pulled the car off the road, Jane stared at the billboard long and hard, hoping that its message would mean something to her.

  "Anything look familiar?" Duncan asked, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

  She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. Coming here was something she felt that she had to do, and yet it was shaping up into an emotional ordeal. Here was the place where she had effectively left her identity behind
; here was the place where Jane Rhodes, aka Jane Doe, had come to be. She was surprised to feel a great revulsion for this field and the ditch beside it. She didn't want to get out of the car.

  "Jane?" Duncan was saying in a tone of concern.

  She bit down hard on her bottom lip to keep it from quivering.

  "Jane," Duncan said more forcefully, and she heard a great roaring in her ears, as though she were losing consciousness. She saw spots whirling before her eyes and thought, I shouldn't have come here. Then Duncan's voice pulled her back to reality.

  "Are you all right?" he asked anxiously. He was still holding her hand and looking more concerned than she'd ever seen him.

  She threw him a panicked look. "I—I'm not sure," she said finally.

  "Want to leave? We don't have to do this."

  She stared at the ditch, its contours rounded by drifts of snow, and let her gaze roam the field beyond. A small straggly woods stood to one side of the field, and the leafless branches of the trees rattled in the wind.

  "I want to get out of the car," she said unsteadily.

  Duncan hesitated, then squeezed her hand again. "All right," he said finally before sliding out of the car and coming around to open the door for her.

  They walked to the edge of the ditch and stood there. The wind was blowing briskly, twitching the ends of Duncan's scarf. Jane dropped his hand and walked slowly along the edge of the ditch, willing her mind to stillness in readiness for some sort of impression to form. Her boots crunched in the snow, the sound echoing eerily back at them from the woods on the other side of the field. When she had walked about twenty feet, she stopped and peered down into the gentle white contours of the ditch.

  Was it here that she had lain in the night, bloody and unconscious? Or had she been conscious part of the time, trying to scratch her way up the steep sides of the ditch? She tried to home in on a memory of that night. Surely she must remember it. How could she go through an experience such as that one and not remember it? She clenched her hands into fists in frustration.

  "Well?" Duncan said.

  She turned to face him, a bleak smile on her face. "I can't recall anything about this place. I might never have been here before. Funny, isn't it?" Her words shattered the stillness surrounding them.

  He shook his head and walked over to her. He touched the sleeve of her coat. "No, it's not funny. It's sad."

  She wasn't ready to be comforted yet. Somehow she wanted to experience this place for a little longer. And she wanted to be alone.

  "I'm going to walk over toward the woods. Maybe something will occur to me," she said.

  He understood that she didn't want him to walk with her.

  "I'll go back to the car," he told her.

  He dug his hands deep into his pockets and walked quickly toward the highway, head bent against the wind. He could only imagine how hard this was for her. He stopped once and turned, watching her as she picked her way in the direction of the woods, a small forlorn figure in a coat that was too big. His heart went out to her. He was worried about her and would have made everything all right if he could have, but he couldn't. No one could.

  Jane stopped at the edge of the woods and looked back across the field. Of course, snow wouldn't have been on the ground at the time of year when she had been found because it had been autumn. She must have been cold lying there in the ditch. Why couldn't she remember?

  She brushed the snow off a fallen log and sat down on it, hunching her shoulders against the cold. She thought about the aftermath of being found in the ditch, kind Dr. Bergstrom and that friendly little nurse. What was her name? Rosemary. Rosemary Sanchez. Rosemary had been so helpful in looking for clues to Jane's previous life, but nothing had helped, just as nothing was helping now.

  She sat on the log until her nose began to grow numb, then stood up. It was no use, she thought in despair. She didn't remember anything at all. She might have been standing in this field for the first time in her life.

  When Jane trudged up to the car, Duncan was waiting. He was leaning against the fender with his arms crossed.

  "It didn't work," she said broodingly.

  He uncrossed his arms and put them around her, folding her against his chest. His heart beat reassuringly beneath his coat.

  "Let's get into the car where it's warm," he said.

  He started the car in silence, and when they were headed back toward town, he turned to her and asked, "Now what?" He was surprised to see that she was silently crying, her small hands clasped and held to her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

  He pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road, nearly getting annihilated by a tractor-trailer rig in the process. He left the engine on and drew her into his arms.

  "I can't help it," she cried, weeping against his shoulder. "I want to know who I really am. And I don't know if I'll ever find out."

  "Shh," he said soothingly, stroking her hair away from her face. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter."

  She swallowed and pulled slightly away. "Of course it matters," she said. "That's the whole point of this search."

  "What I mean is that you'll still be the same to me even if I never know your real name. Why, even if I found out that your name was Mehitabel or Wilhelmina or Esmeralda—"

  "Esmeralda!" she exclaimed, wiping her eyes.

  "—or whatever, I'd still feel the same way about you. I'd want to—"

  She lifted stricken eyes to his and placed a gentle fingertip over his lips. "Please," she said. "Don't talk about—about feelings."

  He shook off her hand. "Why not?" he demanded. "I want you to know that I do have feelings for you, that I do care about you."

  "You shouldn't care too much," she said brokenly.

  Duncan stared at her for a long moment. Jane self-consciously resettled herself on her side of the seat. Figuring that he'd be better off not to say anything at all, he threw the car into gear and pulled back onto the highway.

  Considering their uncertain future together, he couldn't say she was wrong.

  But it was possible that she wasn't right, either.

  And as far as caring too much, he'd been doing that all along, hadn't he? And now when he'd finally found the knack of talking about the way he felt, she didn't want to hear about it.

  At that moment he agreed with Rooney. Women were strange creatures.

  Chapter 13

  Later, over lunch, Duncan said, "Do you still want to talk to Schmidt?"

  Jane, who hadn't been able to summon much appetite, stirred the vegetables at the bottom of her bowl of soup and thought about it. Since her visit to Carl Jones's field, she'd had an urge to do something else this afternoon and figured it might be a good idea to follow her urges.

  "I think it's important to check on blue vans—for instance, we need to know if there were any traffic tickets given on that night to a van like Ollie saw. Or if anyone in this county owns one like it. Or—well, Detective Schmidt will know how to check it out. But what I really want to do is pay a visit to the hospital. I want to see Rosemary Sanchez again."

  "Then I'll call Schmidt. Unless you'd rather do it yourself later."

  "If I go to the hospital now, I might not be able to get to Schmidt until tomorrow. I think it would be best to explore every area we can in Tyree as soon as possible and then, if our search isn't productive, I'll feel free to move on to someplace else. Although where, I don't know."

  "Perhaps Rosemary or that doctor who treated you will know something," Duncan said, mostly to be encouraging. This elicited a more hopeful look from Jane, and on that note they parted, he to pay a personal visit to Detective Schmidt, she to return to the hospital where she had been treated and released into her new and ultimately unhappy life.

  The hospital was an easy walk from the Prairie Rose, so Jane set out at a fast clip. She was surprised at how alone she felt as she made her way down the street past the city park and the grocery store. Lately she'd begun to think of Duncan and herself as a team, a partnershi
p. A twosome. She shook her shoulders, trying to rid herself of that feeling. If she were to survive on her own later, she couldn't keep thinking that way.

  The low red brick building that was Tyree Township Hospital hunkered behind a parking lot full of cars. She slowed her steps as she walked up the curved driveway to the main entrance. Funny, she didn't remember this part of the hospital. She had been taken to Emergency when she was admitted, and her life here had been lived on the ward and in its environs.

  She approached the receptionist on duty behind the wide desk, hoping for a sign of recognition. When she realized that the receptionist was a new one whom she didn't know, she asked if Dr. Bergstrom was in the hospital.

  "Sorry, but Dr. Bergstrom is out of town and won't be back for two weeks. Can someone else help you?" The receptionist regarded her with an expression that said, "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

  Jane didn't feel like taking time to explain who she was and what she was doing.

  "Um, no thanks," was all she said, and when the woman was distracted by a ringing telephone, Jane followed the directional arrows on the wall until she arrived in Wing A, the place where she had first come to think of herself as Jane Doe.

  "Rosemary?" she said softly when she stood in front of the nurse's station.

  Rosemary Sanchez, the little nurse who had been so kind to her, looked up from a patient's chart. For a moment she stared as if confronted by a ghost. Then her face flushed with pleasure.

  "Jane!" she exclaimed. In a matter of seconds, Rosemary had rushed around the desk to administer a quick hug. It felt good to be welcomed so warmly, but Jane had a sensation of not being able to get her bearings. She clung to Rosemary for a minute, then inhaled a deep, shaky breath and laughed self-consciously.

  Rosemary patted her arm. "I'm about to take my break," she said to Jane as another nurse, someone Jane didn't recognize, arrived behind the desk. "Come with me into the solarium," Rosemary suggested with an encouraging smile. She entwined her arm through Jane's and propelled her along the corridor.