by Julie Miller
“Maybe some water,” she said.
He got up and she took advantage of the moment to pull herself together. He certainly hadn’t signed up to have a hysterical woman on his hands.
When he came back with a glass, her hands were almost steady. “I’ll be fine,” she said, assuring both of them.
He nodded, looking thoughtful. After a minute he asked, “Want some cobbler?”
She laughed. “Maybe later.” She licked her lips. “It’s hard,” she admitted. “To just wait. Not knowing if it’s ever really going to happen.”
“It’s only been a little more than a day,” he reminded her.
“It seems much longer,” she said. “I guess it’s like watching water, waiting for it to boil.” She looked around the room. “You know what would be helpful right now?”
“Name it,” he said.
“A paintbrush?”
“Huh?”
“Can I help you paint? I need something to do. I am going to go crazy just sitting around waiting for my memory to suddenly return.”
“You should probably be resting. Letting your mind totally shut down.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “Please.”
He studied her. “I don’t like to trim. How do you feel about that?”
“I’m taking the ‘glass is half-full’ route. I’ll just tell myself that I love it. How will I know the difference?”
“There is that.”
* * *
HE DECIDED TO start painting in Bray’s room. He didn’t bother with drop cloths. The carpet was old and would no doubt need to be replaced before they put it on the market.
He had found a stir stick, a paint tray and several brushes in the bathroom attached to Brick’s bedroom. He picked up the can of paint and looked at the color.
“Summer Burst,” he said. “What kind of color is that?”
“It sounds lovely,” Stormy said.
He pried the lid up, gave the paint a stir and said, “Green.”
She peered over his shoulder. “It’s not green. Green is in-your-face, like it or not. This is lovely. It’s soft sage with a hint of violet-blue undertones.”
“That’s what I said. Green. What’s wrong with good old-fashioned white?”
She rolled her eyes and picked up a roll of masking tape. “White? I guess they didn’t have HGTV where you were.”
He feigned shock. “I know desert chic. Khaki and sand are the new neutrals.”
“And Kevlar is all the rage,” she added. “Don’t be gauche and leave home without it.”
“A gentleman is never gauche,” he said. He picked up a roller. She was being a good sport but it pained him to see the traces of tears on her cheeks. She’d lost her sister. My Mia. That sort of told the whole story.
While it was a tragedy, it was also their first solid clue as to her identity and that was important. Especially when instinct was telling him that she was still in danger. The Mercedes Men had come back to the hotel and had been persistent enough to attempt to look in the warehouse. Cal regretted that the company truck had come along. He wanted to force the altercation with the Mercedes Men, to once and for all figure out why they were in hot pursuit of Stormy. But he certainly hadn’t been willing to do that when there was a great likelihood that innocent bystanders would get hurt.
Over the next several hours, they worked in companionable silence. She slipped out of the room several times after hastily explaining that she was working up an appetite and she probably should throw something together for a late dinner.
“Something” ended up being medium-rare roast beef with potatoes and carrots. It was delicious. When he carried his plate over to the sink after dinner, he was amused to see the careful list she was keeping of all the food that she’d removed from the cupboards, the refrigerator and the freezer. One roast, 3.5 pounds. Four potatoes. The list went on.
He walked into the living room and stood at the window. He’d been right about the roads. A plow had come through around eight, which meant that the primary roads were clear or close to it, otherwise the secondary roads would not have received any attention.
The Mercedes Men would make better time now. Would they have thought to take down license plates at the hotels? He thought so. It was basic and what else were the guys in the second car doing while Dumb and Dumber were asking the questions.
Unfortunately, because he’d been out of the country for the better part of the past eight years, he’d never taken the time to establish a residence or update his driver’s license. So, when the rental company had asked to see his license and then asked if the address in Ravesville was his current address, he’d taken the easy way out and said yes.
That might come to bite him in the ass but it couldn’t be helped now.
If he and Stormy were lucky, there’d be other names that would get checked first.
His cell phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Hi Chase,” he said.
“I just wanted to make sure that you’d gotten inside and that everything was okay,” Chase said.
“Everything’s good,” Cal said. “I had a couple free hours so I started painting in Bray’s room. I figured that might help get the house ready to sell faster.”
“Was that the Summer Burst? How’s that look?”
Cal started to say that it was a lovely soft sage with a hint of violet-blue undertones but stopped. His brother would call 911, thinking the paint fumes had gotten to him. “It’s good.”
“About the house,” Chase said, his tone hesitant.
“Yeah?”
“I want it. I want to buy out yours and Bray’s shares. I want it for Raney and me.”
Cal didn’t think there was much in the world that could surprise him but this had. “Of course,” he said. “I never figured you’d want it.” He laughed. “I’ll paint more carefully, make sure I don’t get any on the woodwork.”
“You do that. Thanks, Cal.”
After Chase hung up, Cal continued to stand at the window. Chase was coming back to stay. Wow.
The fifth stair squeaked when Stormy hit it. “Did I hear you on the telephone?”
“Yeah. Talking to Chase. He wants to buy Bray and me out. He wants the house.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I think it’s great. He sounds happy. Settled.”
“That would be a nice feeling,” she said. She didn’t sound as if she was whining, just stating a fact. “I’m tired,” she said. “I think it’s an early bedtime for me.”
“Good night,” he said. “Thanks again for dinner. It was great.”
She smiled and went back upstairs. He sat down on the couch, reached for the book that was in his duffel bag and read for an hour before finally admitting that the book, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, wasn’t holding his attention. He put it down, stretched out, which meant that his feet were hanging off the couch, and closed his eyes.
He didn’t wake up until he heard the squeak of the fifth step. Immediately on full alert, he sorted through the possibilities, assessing the danger. His body told him that he’d been asleep for roughly four hours. He breathed in the air. No temperature change to indicate that a door or window had been breached. There’d been no other unexpected noises.
It had to be Stormy. Was she trying to sneak out?
He rolled over, blinked several times to let his eyes adjust to the dark and slowly sat up.
She was poised on the stairs. Enough moonlight shone through the big living room windows that he could see that her long dark hair was wild around her face, making her look both very vulnerable and very alluring. She was once again wearing his sweatpants and T-shirt.
“It’s a little early for breakfast,” he said.
“I have to tell you something
. And it couldn’t wait until morning.”
CHAPTER TEN
His heart was beating fast. He knew it wasn’t from getting awakened from a sound sleep. No, it was Stormy, in his house, becoming a bigger and bigger part of his life, that was making it speed up.
He stood up. “Have a seat.”
“I remembered how I got into the snowdrift.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. But still, he motioned again for her to sit on the couch. She looked too frail, like a good breeze might blow her down the rest of the stairs.
She sat, with her back against the pillow he’d been using and her legs bent at the knees. He tossed her his blanket.
“Let’s share,” she said, holding out a portion. “It’s chilly.”
He sat back down, a full foot away from her toes. He let the blanket fall across his lap. “I’m listening.”
“I was in the trunk of a car,” she said, her voice emotionless. “I must have been sleeping or knocked out or something because I woke up, feeling sick to my stomach. The car was stopped and I could hear some noise around me but not voices. I knew I had to get out. My hands were tied but I...I’m pretty flexible and was able to turn my body enough and get my arms in a position where I could reach the emergency trunk release. They should have disabled it,” she added, shaking her head.
He felt a hot burn in his stomach. She’d been bound and stuffed into the trunk of a car. She could have easily died. They’d probably drugged her, which was why she woke up feeling sick. It was her lucky day that the Mercedes Men had underestimated how long she’d be passed out or that she’d be able to engage the release with her hands tied.
“I got out of the trunk. I was wearing the wedding dress.” She said it as if it still surprised her.
“Where were you?”
“A parking lot. Some cars. Lots of semis. It took me a minute to realize it was a truck stop. There was a gas station and a little diner.”
“Dawson’s Diner, I suspect. You remember the apple pie you had for breakfast yesterday? I got it at that same diner.”
She let out a sigh. “I wish I’d known that you were inside. It would have made things so much easier.”
“I think we might have just missed each other. The waitress who served me mentioned that right before I’d arrived, there’d been some commotion in the parking lot. It had quieted down fast when two state troopers happened by for afternoon pie.”
She thought about that. “They probably did go a little crazy when they came back outside and I was gone. I wasn’t there to see it.”
“Where exactly did you go?” He held up a finger. “Wait. First tell me if the car you climbed out of was a black Mercedes.”
“It was.”
He’d assumed so but he’d been trained to not make assumptions. “Okay. Now tell me how you managed to disappear.”
“As I said, I was feeling really sick and it was hard to think. But I knew that I needed to get away. I assumed the people who had put me in the trunk were inside the diner. I wasn’t going there. I saw a semi that was open in the back and I was going to climb inside. But then I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t willingly put myself inside another dark space.”
He nodded. He understood.
“Then I saw the second truck. It was a big horse trailer, probably one that could carry fifteen or twenty horses. It had horizontal slats. I knew if I could get up onto the side and get my hands and feet into the slats, that I’d have a chance to hang on.”
It was a crazy idea but he liked it. And based on the little he knew about Stormy, it seemed to fit her character. And the lack of interest in another dark space was totally understandable. He’d been pinned in a cave for three days once by enemy fire and it had taken him a while before he could even tolerate a dark room.
“I kicked off my shoes. I had these little heels on and I knew that I would be able to grip better with my bare feet.”
“It was cold.”
“I know. But I figured that was the least of my problems. I wasn’t going to die of the cold, at least not for a while. I wanted away from that parking lot, from that horrible trunk. I got lucky. I wasn’t hanging on to the outside of it for more than five minutes before the driver came out. I couldn’t see his face because he was all bundled up in a hat with earmuffs and a big coat. He started the vehicle and when I could feel it vibrating under me, I suddenly realized how precarious my situation was. But before I could come up with an alternate plan, he was pulling out of the lot.”
“It’s amazing that you were able to do this without anybody seeing you.”
“The car I’d been in was parked toward the back of the lot. So was the horse trailer. If somebody had been watching, they’d have probably seen me but it was snowing heavily and the wind was blowing. I guess it was lucky that I had on that awful dress. I blended in.”
Awful dress. The irony was not lost on him. They both hated that dress. He understood his reasons just fine. And this glimpse of a memory helped him better understand her reaction. She’d been locked in a trunk. That was certainly not the way the happy bride got to the church.
Or back from the church. That was certainly a possible reality. “Do you remember anything from before you were put in the trunk of the car?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Okay. What happened after the truck driver started his rig?”
“I remember being so frightened that he was going to see me clinging to the side of his truck and stop the vehicle. But he either wasn’t a very careful driver or his mirrors weren’t adjusted at the right angle to see the back of his truck. For whatever reason, he didn’t stop and I simply hung on. I was doing pretty well even though it was much colder when we were moving. We took the exit off the highway and went around the corner. The back end of the truck slipped on the slick road. I should have been expecting it but I wasn’t prepared. I remembered losing my grip and flying...flying through the air.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I must have screamed. At least in my dream, I was screaming. That’s when I woke up.”
He considered the explanation. The room was very quiet. The only sound he could hear was the wind blowing and a stray branch from the tree scratching the back side of the house. “Is it possible that any of it was just a dream, that it didn’t really happen?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I was dreaming, yes. But my mind was reliving what had occurred. I know it.”
“Then I think we need to go back to the truck stop, back to where it started.”
Now her breath was coming fast. “I want to do that. I do.”
“It might be a dead end,” he warned her, his tone serious.
“It might be the answer to everything,” she countered. She wanted him to understand that she could handle either outcome, that she wasn’t going to fall apart regardless. “At the very least, we can score some truly excellent apple pie.”
“Well, I was happy enough with that until I tasted your cobbler.”
She blushed. He was glad that he’d been able to tease her. He didn’t ever want to see her cry again. “We’ll go as soon as we both get up.” He stood. He didn’t want her to leave. Knew that she should. “You should probably get back to bed.”
She hesitated and he almost offered to share the couch.
Then she slowly moved. “It seems as if in bed is the only time my mind is relaxed enough to remember anything.”
It wouldn’t be right of him to try to convince her to let him hold her through the night. “Your memory is coming,” he said. “Be ready,” he added.
“Is that some form of be careful what you wish for?”
He knew what he was wishing for. And now that he knew that even if she was married, it had been under duress, that should have cleared the path. But she was sti
ll bewildered, definitely off her game. He needed to keep himself in check and not add to the stresses in her life.
“Something like that,” he said. “Good night, Stormy.”
He watched her walk up the stairs. Then he held the portion of the quilt that had covered her close to his face, breathing deep. He didn’t close his own eyes again for a very long time.
* * *
SHE WAS AWAKE well before dawn but she stayed in bed. It was warm and she wasn’t quite ready to face Cal yet. Something had happened between the two of them as they’d huddled in the darkness, sharing the quilt.
He hadn’t touched her and unlike at the toboggan factory, she’d managed to keep her fingers and her lips to herself. But still, there had been a connection. It had comforted, warmed, while at the same time, it had brought her to the edge of her control.
That was why she’d gone quietly upstairs when he’d suggested it. Because she’d known that he was trying to do the right thing, trying to keep things from getting more complicated.
She was a guest in his home. He deserved that she’d at least try to leave it and him unscathed.
Perhaps if the memory of waking up in the trunk of the car had come to her in the daytime, it might have been different. Maybe she’d have been able to process it alone. But in the middle of the night, she’d needed someone else. On her way down the stairs, she’d deliberately stepped on the fifth step, knowing that it would loudly creak. It was her way of announcing that she was coming.
Her way of giving him the opportunity to decide how he wanted to play it. If he continued to lie on the couch, pretending to still be asleep, she would have gotten a glass of water from the kitchen and returned upstairs, as if that had been her whole mission.
But he’d rolled over, invited her to share his couch and listened. And she’d been very grateful. She’d needed to talk about what she’d remembered. When she’d told him about being locked in the trunk, she could feel his anger. He’d seemed almost amused by the fact that she’d chosen to hang on to the side of a truck in the middle of a blizzard. Even now, she thought she’d likely done the right thing. It had gotten her away from the men, even if getting tossed from the truck and hitting her head had caused a whole lot of other problems.