I'LL REMEMBER YOU

by Barbara Ankrum

  His words stunned her, but deep inside she knew they were absolutely true. She had always expected perfection of herself. It wasn't that she hadn't lost patients. She had. Every doctor did. But losing Adam was different. "If I wasn't his wife, if I hadn't been so emotionally involved, if I'd thought more clearly, if I'd loved him better maybe I could've saved him. I don't know. I'll never know."

  "I know," Jack assured her softly. "I know you did everything that could be done, because that's who you are. You saved my life. And God knows, you did it without a hospital. You didn't give up on me, and you didn't kill Adam. Whoever fired the bullet from that gun killed him."

  Tess pressed her cheek against Jack's chest and held him, finally letting the tears come. Oh, how she needed someone to just hold her… Why did she feel so safe here with this man who had the power to break her heart again?

  Crazy. You're crazy, Tess. That's what. Crazy to think this could ever be for you again. It couldn't, and deep down, she knew it.

  She pulled away, brushing her hair back out of her puffy eyes, and held up one palm when he tried to pull her back. "Why don't you go and lie down now? I'll fix you a bowl of soup."

  Indecision held him there for a protracted moment. "Tess—"

  She pressed two fingers against his lips. "Please." It wasn't like her to beg, but she was doing just that. She needed a moment to gather herself back up again without him so close.

  "Okay. How long has it been since you've eaten?"

  She brushed a knuckle along her damp cheekbone. She couldn't remember.

  "Bring in some for yourself when you come," he said. "I could use the company. And no more questions. Deal?"

  A smile jerked at her lips. "Deal."

  * * *

  Jack refused her help this time, insisting on feeding himself. The mug made drinking the soup easier, and for a time they sat in companionable silence, eating. Finally, he glanced up at her over the rim of the cup. "I don't think I've actually thanked you."

  She shrugged. "I just threw some precooked chicken and some rice—"

  "I didn't mean about the soup, although it's actually good." Lowering the mug, he studied her. "I mean this." He glanced down at his shoulder. "I never thanked you for saving my life."

  She dismissed it with a shake of her head. "You did all the work."

  He shook his head. "Say, 'you're welcome,' Tess."

  "You're welcome, Tess," she repeated, grinning in spite of herself.

  He smiled back. "I'd be six feet under if you hadn't come along."

  She couldn't think about that. Couldn't even contemplate it now that he'd become real and vital; not some stranger on her ER table, but a man who'd made her imagine what it would be like to live again.

  She ran a finger over the rim of her mug, watching the steam rise. "You know, I practiced emergency medicine for a long time. I saw patients who were much better off than you die. Many of them. For no logical reason. I came to believe eventually that it was the strength of a patient's will to live that kept them alive.

  "When you were sick, even then, I felt it from you – the burning need to live. You saved yourself, Jack. Whoever you are, whatever you did before, there's a reason you want – very much – to live."

  He looked lost when she said it, as if she were talking about someone he hadn't met.

  Before pondering the wisdom of it, she reached out and put her hand atop his. "It'll come back. Just give it time." She realized her mistake, but it was too late. His fingers curled around hers, sending a tingle up her arm.

  "That's one thing I don't have. Why can't I remember? How can my whole life … go away?"

  "It's probably just temporary." She wanted to comfort him, but didn't know how.

  "Probably? You mean this could be permanent?" His eyes took on a deer-in-the-headlights quality. "You mean I could never remember my name or who I was before?"

  She wished she could swallow back the word. "That's very unlikely."

  He pulled his hand away. "Stop talking to me like a doctor. Give it to me straight. What are the odds I'm going to get my memory back?"

  "I'd say the odds are in your favor. It's very unusual for amnesia patients to never regain what they've lost. Most often, after a temporal-lobe trauma like you've had, some memory loss is expected. The minutes or even hours surrounding the accident will often vanish, never to return. It's as if it never happened."

  Jack's knuckles whitened around the bedsheet.

  "Occasionally, for reasons we don't fully understand, a head injury will more profoundly damage memory. More, and perhaps all memories are erased. I can assure you, that's very rare. And I think because you seemed to have some memories while you were unconscious—"

  "Memories?"

  "The names Joe and Benedicto."

  "What if they weren't real, just dreams?"

  "Do you remember anything about those dreams?"

  He stared past her out the window. "Fragments."

  She shook her head. "Can you tell me?"

  Running a hand down his face, he looked ready to jump out of his skin. "You're not gonna like it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because all of them involve guns."

  He was right. She didn't like it. She cleared her throat. "How … exactly do you mean?"

  "I mean I know things – about guns. I don't know how I know. I can load and unload a gun faster than you can say 'where do you come from?' And I'm not just talking about Glocks or Saturday night specials. I'm talking automatic, serious weaponry. I know them. I remember the weight of them in my hand."

  "Military?" she suggested, watching him for a reaction. His lips parted as he searched for a connection. "A soldier?"

  "Not a uniformed one, at least, but you might have been on leave, or maybe you've already mustered out." She reached out, took his left arm and turned it over so he could see the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. "Does this ring any bells for you?"

  Staring down at the blue marks on his skin, he began to sweat. He shook his head. "I don't—"

  "I knew a man once with a similar tattoo, Jack." It was a lie. A white lie, but a lie nevertheless. "He was in the Gulf War."

  A muscle in Jack's jaw jumped as he stared at the tattoo.

  "It makes perfect sense," she said, leaning toward him again. "Look at you. You're in amazing condition. But you don't look like you got there at a gym. And if you were in the military you would know about guns."

  "The Gulf War?" He shook his head. "I can't … it doesn't mean anything to me."

  "Okay," she said softly. "Don't worry now. It was just a thought."

  He couldn't stop staring at his arm. "How could I forget a whole war? How could my whole life just disappear this way? I was somebody. I had a goddamned life."

  She could only imagine how he must feel. No, she amended. No one could honestly imagine losing everything – every memory, every mental photograph. It was too awful to contemplate, and she realized she'd just piled his plate one helping too full.

  He turned his face away so she couldn't see the frustration and doubt written there. It was her fault for pushing him so hard. She moved to sit on the bed beside him. "You're tired. Don't think about it now."

  As if just remembering she was there, he returned his gaze to her. His emotions were naked on his face, laid bare by her. "What if I never remember?"

  "Shh." Shaking her head, she brushed her fingers across the ink stain as if to erase the memory of the tattoo and all the loss that went behind it.

  His eyes searched hers as if he were looking for his own soul. She'd been looked at by plenty of men in her time, but never with the singular intensity that Jack had in his eyes right now. "What if this—" he gestured at the room and at himself, as if he were a stranger in a foreign body "—is all I ever get?"

  The possibility echoed with the finality of a drumbeat. "It won't be," she told him, praying it was true. "We'll figure it out. I promise." Instinctively, she reached out and touched his cheek. The dark stubbl
e there prickled her palm, but before she could even think to move it, he covered her hand with his and leaned into the comfort of her touch.

  The raw look in his eyes made her pulse stutter moments before he pulled her palm against his mouth and pressed a heart-stopping kiss there. The sensation coiled somewhere deep inside her. All she could do was stare at the way his dark lashes cast a crescent of shadow across the rugged contours of his cheekbones. And the way her hand seemed to fit there as if it were designed for it.

  He looked up at her then, the need in his hooded eyes as ragged as the rhythm of the blood pumping through her veins. Lowering her hand, he waited for her to stop what was about to happen. Tess's lips fell open – denial poised there – but in the next instant, he changed his mind about asking permission.

  She forgot to breathe as he pulled her toward him and slanted his mouth possessively against hers with the skill of a man who did this often and well. There was nothing gentle about this kiss. It was primal and hungry, and his fingers splayed against the back of her head as he dragged her closer. She was too stunned to fight him as he breached the seam of her mouth with his tongue and invaded. The small sound of need, she realized too late, had come from her own throat, and her hands, despite their all too obvious tremors, were clinging to his upper arms. She felt his whole body tighten in reaction to her surrender. His breath came in ragged, uneven bursts and his fingers dug into the back of her skull.

  Dimly, through this haze, came the realization that this could not happen. He was her patient and she was … she was … oh, mercy … she was drowning. He deepened the kiss, slanting his mouth more firmly against hers and delving into her with his tongue. Panic crept past the haze of desire that coiled more tightly with each passing second. She seemed to have no control over the tremors that tumbled through her.

  She wrenched her head away, breaking the kiss. "Jack—"

  Undeterred, he turned his attention to her jaw, then down her neck. "What?" His lips moved against her throat.

  "Don't," she breathed, but her neck arched upward without her consent.

  Effortlessly, he turned her head back to him so his mouth hovered just above hers. But his lips merely brushed hers as he spoke. His warm breath heated her already flushed skin.

  "Don't what?" he whispered against her mouth. "Want you?"

  She needed him to stop doing that. She couldn't think when he did that. "No. I can't – you aren't—"

  He hesitated, his lips lingering over hers, his gaze searching her eyes for what she wasn't saying. When he found it, he eased back with a frown. "Are you … afraid of me?"

  Yes. Oh, yes… "Let me go. Please."

  His hesitation lasted only a moment – long enough for her to glimpse something more than disappointment in his eyes – before he did so. Tipping his head to one side, he didn't look at her, but stared hard at the rumpled sheets on the bed.

  Tess scrambled to her feet, straightening her blouse and hair and backing toward the bedroom door. Her legs were shaking along with the rest of her. "That … that can never happen again."

  "Why not?" His eyes were steady on her.

  "Because," she said slowly, "it's not what you think it is. You're … confused."

  He sat up straighter, looking anything but. "I may have lost track of my whole life, but I'm not confused about what just happened between us."

  Crossing her arms across her chest, she tried to rid herself of the chill that had taken hold of her. "It's very common for patients in situations like this to think they feel something for their doctors. It's misplaced gratitude. Classic transference."

  He sent her a sexy, indolent grin. "So, I guess that 'transference' thing must go both ways then, huh? I mean, I wasn't the only one doing the kissing."

  She looked away. "You caught me off guard. Believe me, Jack, it's better if we just forget this ever happened."

  His expression darkened and his slow, assessing gaze slid over her. "You always do that?"

  "What?"

  "Pull your professional ethics around you like a goddamned winter coat whenever you're threatened with a real emotion."

  She winced as if he'd struck her. "And what emotion would that be? Lust?"

  "God forbid you should allow yourself to enjoy a kiss from somebody other than your dead husband."

  The blood fled from her face. "This has nothing to do with—"

  "Maybe it's safer to hide behind a ghost than admit that a kiss from a man like me could turn you inside out, make you shake like you're shaking now."

  She tightened her arms around her and swallowed hard, wanting to deny it all. But she was too busy trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

  He slanted a shuttered look up at her. "Is it me you're afraid of, Tess? Or the fact that I made you feel something?"

  His words hung in the air between them for the moment it took her to regain the power to move. Then she simply turned on her heel and walked out of the room. And she didn't stop moving until she'd put a mile between herself and the stranger in the cabin who threatened everything she knew to be true about herself.

  * * *

  Jack jerked the top two quilts off his overheated body and stared at the ceiling. If there had been something to hit, he would have knocked it across the room. As it was, he settled for pounding his fist against the pillow.

  That kiss echoed across his mouth and sent a shaft of desire through his still-hard loins. How the hell had that happened? he asked himself. One minute he was looking at her, and the next he had her practically underneath him. He'd scared her. But, hell, it had come as something of a shock to him, too. Particularly the way she'd responded – as if she hadn't been touched in a very long time.

  And she needed to be touched. That much was clear.

  He swore silently, scrubbing a hand down his stubbled face. Who was he kidding? He was trouble, and she didn't need him trying to drag her any deeper into it. She hadn't gotten through medical school by being stupid. And apparently she'd learned the art of marshaling her needs better than he had. He had to admire the iron will it must have taken for her to walk away from what they'd both been feeling.

  Well, so be it. He'd stay away from her and shove any ridiculous ideas about her out of his mind. Yeah, he thought, that and a cold shower oughta just about do it.

  Jack jerked to a sitting position, unable to tolerate the inactivity that was leaching his strength. He had to get moving if he was going to get well. But even as he moved, the room took an odd turn and the flash of another room, in another time, spun before him.

  The images lacked color and definition, but he could almost reach out and wrap his hand around the coat of the man standing in shadows before him, the one who spoke in low, edgy tones about a man named Ramon.

  "You got a problem with meeting him at nine?" the shadowed man asked, apparently immune to the rhythmic sound of metal slapping metal.

  "No," he heard himself say. "The only problem I've got is waiting that long." Like a camera, his gaze panned down to the 9 mm gun in his hands as he inserted and ejected the clip over and over again.

  "Don't worry. It'll all be over soon," said the shadowed man, turning toward him.

  Then, like a blinking screen, the scene flicked off and eluded his every attempt to call it back.

  Jack sat gripping the edge of the bed, breathing hard, staring at the rough log walls before him. The fleeting memory had merely teased his unwilling brain into daring to hope there was more. That same elusive something told him that whatever it was, it had been important enough to risk his life over. Some business he'd left undone. But what? What had he been involved in that had brought him to this?

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  «^»

  She couldn't sleep. Tess glanced over at the clock beside her bed: midnight. Another midnight in a long string of midnights. She hadn't slept well in years. But the reason for her insomnia this night was different from all the others. Tonight the reason was lying downstairs on his bed.


  Well, they were a pair, weren't they? He with no memory, her with too many?

  What had made her pull away? Why hadn't she just let him kiss her?

  The honest answer was that his kiss had scared the hell out of her. Oh, she'd been kissed since Adam died. Her boss, Daniel, had kissed her that time he'd brought her home from a late night dinner he'd forced her to go to at Kiki Rader's house. But that kiss had been a simple meeting of the lips. It hadn't made her knees go weak, or stalled the air in her chest. It hadn't made her question her loyalty to Adam's memory or even wonder if she still owed it to him.

  But Jack did. Jack did all that and more. And it terrified her.

  Propping the pillow behind her, she leaned back, stared up at the darkness and wondered what had become of the Tess she used to be. The one who used to laugh. Had she lost that part of her that made her a woman?

  And who was he to make her question herself like this? Wasn't her life just fine as it was? After all, she was functioning, wasn't she? All without a bit of help, thank you very much. And then Jack had to go and mess it all up.

  She flicked the light switch on and reached for her purse. Taking out the cell phone, she punched in Gil's number and hoped he was awake.

  A rough voice answered the phone on the first ring. "Hello?"

  "Gil?"

  A sigh reverberated from the other end of the line. "Well," he said impatiently, "there you are. It's not afternoon anymore, but at least it's not tomorrow yet. Oh, wait. Check that. It's 12:05. Morning, Tess."

  "I know you're upset."

  "I'm not upset. Do I sound upset?" His voice rose two decibels. "I'm worried as hell about you and you're gonna give me an ulcer!"

  Her mouth went dry. "What's wrong?"

  "Oh, nothing. Except for the goons I had on my tail all day. I managed, however, to ditch them once I located the numerous surveillance devices they'd tucked into my car, my squad-room phone and my home phone. They've been inside my house." He stopped and let that sink in for a minute. "Aside from that, my day was peachy. You were right. About all of it."

  "Oh, Gil—" she shut her eyes "—I'm sorry. I've made such a mess of things."