‘Garpgh.’ Jay woke with the lightest touch on his arm, sitting up with a jerk and cursing under his breath as he jarred his shoulder. He scrubbed his hand over his face and accepted tea. ‘Must have drifted off.’
‘Not surprising.’ She pushed the biscuits towards him. ‘You need to eat. You’ll have to put as much into this as I do. You need all the stamina you can get.’
‘In that case—’ He took two biscuits, raising his brows when Madison put a set of keys on the table.
‘There’s a studio flat on this floor. It’s meant to be staff quarters.’ She made a face. ‘It’s yours, for as long as you want. There are more clothes in the hall cupboard. We’ll get whatever else you need.’ She looked pointedly at his bare feet. Jay gave her a bland look and swiped another biscuit. ‘First we get that shoulder looked at. I’ve thought of someone—’ She forestalled him when he started to shake his head. ‘Not a hospital.’ Not a doctor, either. ‘Hospitals ask too many questions, right? Like who you are and where you live?’
‘You got it.’ He shifted, not meeting her eyes. ‘Did you find anything? On the Internet?’
‘Nothing particularly useful.’ She tilted her head. ‘You know a lot of homeless people have been in the Forces?’
‘Yeah, I met a few. Mostly ex-army …’ His voice faded and his whole body stilled. ‘You think I might be a military experiment that went wrong?’
Or maybe way too right.
She studied his face, watching for a reaction, saw him reaching and coming up blank.
‘Nothing.’ A frustrated sigh. ‘An experiment – military, or whatever – that would mean I’d got away from somewhere.’ A slight but unmistakable shudder. ‘Or been turned loose. Someone may be looking for me. Or have no further use for me.’ His eyes were dark, turned inward. ‘If the amnesia isn’t natural … if it was done to me – that’s a whole new raft of who and why questions.’ Abruptly he focused on her. ‘I shouldn’t be dragging you into this.’
‘I said I’d help.’ Try keeping me out. ‘If it was done, then it can be undone.’ She hesitated. ‘The work I do – it’s a small, tight, professionally jealous world. Not exactly public, but not secret, either. I would have expected—’ She gathered the corner of her lip into her teeth. ‘If something like this was going down, I’d have expected a whisper. Rumour, gossip – something. There isn’t anything – which means it’s very well hidden, or it doesn’t exist.’
‘Which makes me a paranoid amnesiac!’
‘Not knowing who you are is grounds for paranoia.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ He held her eyes. His were very deep, dark blue. She noticed the length of his lashes again, feeling a disturbing quiver in the pit of her stomach. She looked away first, reaching to pick up the empty biscuit plate. ‘Shall we go and look at the studio?’
It was bigger than she remembered, with a large, light main room, a compact bathroom and a kitchen alcove that gave on to a tiny balcony. She showed Jay how the fold-down bed operated, and where the bedding and towels were kept. Everything was new, unused.
‘Thanks.’ He was looking round with an unreadable expression on his face.
‘No problem.’ She turned away, before he could say more. ‘Will you be ready to go in ten minutes?’
‘You brought me to a vet? A place that takes care of people’s pets!’ Jay stopped so suddenly, catching sight of the brass plate by the door, that Madison cannoned into him. She pulled back sharply. He was wearing Neil’s cashmere overcoat. The familiar feel of the soft fabric, brushing against her cheek, made her skin tingle.
‘You have a better suggestion?’ It came out sharper than she intended. She exhaled. ‘Animals have bones, same as people, and Joe plays rugby. He’s always breaking things.’
The tension in Jay’s jaw told her how much he wanted to argue. And the control as he let it go. Doesn’t take instruction well, but sucks it up when there’s no alternative. Hmmm.
Joe had sandwiched them in between an anxious poodle and a hamster with a weight problem. Madison leaned against the wall while he conducted his examination. She avoided noticing the white line of pain around Jay’s mouth by pretending to study a diagram of the feline digestive tract.
‘Well, Doc? Is he gonna live?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ Joe grinned. ‘As far as I can tell, your diagnosis is correct.’ He nodded to Jay. ‘Broken collarbone, but don’t quote me. On the basis of personal experience, if you did it three weeks ago, then it should be on the way to healing by now. But I am not a doctor. I can strap it up, make it more comfortable, but you really should see a medic. One that specialises in humans.’
‘Not possible.’ Madison reached up to kiss his cheek. ‘Thanks, Joey, you’re a star.’
‘Old boyfriend?’ Jay settled into the passenger seat with a resigned sigh as Madison leaned over to help fasten his seatbelt.
‘Joe?’
Jay narrowed his eyes as her head went back and her eyebrows soared. Either she was a bloody good actress, or she’d been genuinely surprised at the question.
‘Friend, not boyfriend; we were at university together.’
She let in the clutch smoothly. Jay found himself admiring the way she drove and obscurely glad that she and big, good-looking Joe had never been an item. On the other hand, there was the expensive coat he was wearing. And everything else. There’d been a man in the angel’s recent past. He’d walked out, and left his stuff behind. Interesting. Jay studied Madison’s profile. Chin a little tense. The angel had something on her mind. Was she going to spit it out? Yes?
‘Joe doesn’t know,’ she’d pokered up, hands stiff on the wheel, ‘about the mind reading. I … don’t broadcast it. He knows I work at the laboratory – he thinks I just do drug research.’
‘I can see it might be disconcerting. For friends,’ Jay agreed smoothly. ‘Not knowing if you were inside their heads.’
‘Exactly.’ The note of relief in her voice touched something inside him, but it didn’t last long. ‘I would never do that. Invade someone’s privacy. Uh – not if I could help it.’
But you have done. If you want something badly enough. You did it last night. To me.
The back of the angel’s neck was going pink.
‘Not to friends.’ He couldn’t resist. ‘But what about lovers?’
‘I don’t have—’ She stopped abruptly.
Jay watched, fascinated, as a delicate flush rose slowly from the neck of her severe black coat. Now why the hell should that half-admission, intriguing as it was, make Dr Albi blush? And why was the sight of that fragile rose, spreading under the pale skin, making a suspicious tightness in his groin? Shit. His angel was embarrassed, or angry. And he wanted to taste—
He pulled himself up, staring at a sign beside the road, welcoming them to Uxbridge. Madison crunched the gears. Still flustered.
That made two of them.
He took a breath. He didn’t much want to be in the car if she was planning to drive them into a traffic island, but an opportunity was an opportunity.
‘Did he know?’ He lifted his arm. ‘The owner of the coat? About the mind reading?’
‘Neil,’ she corrected automatically. She’d recovered herself. Shot him a get-back-in-your-box-and-stay-there look. Good girl. ‘He knew.’
She wasn’t going any further than that, he could see by the way she turned the steering wheel. So, back down now, buddy, before this gets sticky.
‘What’s your doctorate?’ Nice harmless change of subject. ‘Psychology?’
‘Chemistry.’ She was parking the car beside a row of shops. He looked expectantly at her. ‘Shoe shop.’ She pointed. ‘Then you can throw away those revolting trainers.’
Everything was fine, until it came time to pay. Madison bit her lip as Jay’s hand went automatically
to the pocket where his wallet should have been. She saw the recoil, then the shutters came down, leaving his face devoid of expression.
‘I’ll take care of this.’ She slid her card to the cashier. ‘Is there anything else you need?’ She turned, deliberately neutral, towards him.
‘No.’ He’d mooched to the front of the shop, eyes away from her, studying the street. ‘Thank you.’
When she left, he followed. She bit down an involuntary smile. His indecision over letting her carry the parcels, set against accepting the contents, was coming over her shoulder at her, almost strong enough to touch. The warmth of his fingers as he lifted the bags out of her hand sent a frisson up her arm. She flexed her fingers to dispel it, stopped and turned. ‘What?’
‘I want you to keep an account.’ His voice was gruff and he didn’t meet her eyes. ‘Everything you spend.’
‘I can afford to buy you a couple of pairs of shoes,’ she objected quietly.
‘Not the point.’ His eyes came back to hers, as she’d hoped. ‘Keep an account. I’ll repay you. Everything. When I get straight.’
‘Okay.’ She wasn’t going to push it. ‘But you know what I’d really like, more than money.’ She looked pointedly at the waste bin, standing at the kerb.
He took barely a second to catch on.
The rueful smile, as he ceremonially dumped the bag with the old trainers, had the corners of Madison’s mouth twitching. She turned hurriedly towards the car.
‘Impressive place.’
Madison pulled into her designated parking slot and turned off the engine.
‘I suppose it is.’
She looked around. The lab was a long, low building, a curve of white plaster and glass, set well back from the road to Amersham, surrounded by wide lawns. She’d stopped seeing it, she realised, with a jolt. The shiny windows, close-cropped grass, tasteful flowerbeds of pale lemon daffodils, edging the approach to the double doors. She didn’t look any more, not even at the flowers. It was just the place she worked.
‘Good design. Clever design,’ Jay corrected softly. ‘Unthreatening,’ he explained, when she raised her brows. ‘All that white. Open.’ He waved a hand at the immaculate green. ‘Nothing to hide. Clever,’ he repeated.
‘Or truthful.’ Madison could hear herself, a shade tart, as she opened her door. ‘It’s just a research foundation. Nothing bad happens here.’
‘Good to know.’ Jay slid out of the car and padded after her. ‘Good. To. Know.’
Madison closed her ears to the mockery in the drawl.
She made her decision as she crossed the foyer to sign in, leaving Jay to negotiate the doors in his own time. Not the interview rooms at the front of the building, where she usually conducted initial assessments. Jay was coming with her, into her office. Her own domain – private domain. Her mind twisted over the tangle of power and threat that represented.
‘I’ll need a visitor’s pass, for Mr …’ Hell. The security guard behind the desk was looking at her expectantly. Her eyes flipped frantically for a second, before settling on the monochrome canvas of lines and splatters that covered most of the wall in front of her. ‘Jackson. Jay Jackson,’ she repeated, louder, as Jay joined her. She saw his eyes widen, then the almost imperceptible nod, to show he understood. ‘He’s going to be helping me for a few days.’
‘No problem, Dr Albi.’ The guard thrust the book towards Jay, who slanted her a quick glance before signing.
‘I suppose I should be grateful that whoever chooses the corporate art around here doesn’t have a taste for Picasso.’ Jay stood behind her, looking back into the foyer as she punched numbers into the security lock that accessed the main building. ‘Or maybe Caravaggio?’ he suggested conversationally.
Madison couldn’t help the splutter of laughter. ‘You got that, did you?’
‘The Jackson Pollock, over by the desk? Difficult to miss. Is it real?’
‘Probably – but too big to steal.’ They were through the doors and into the narrow, glass-sided corridor that ran along the entire front face of the building.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
They’d reached another coded door. Something in the way he paused made her look up.
‘You can identify a piece of modern art, but you don’t know who you are.’ She’d already got to it. ‘You know how to read, how to write. You just signed the visitor’s book. You didn’t have to think about it.’ She swung open the door. ‘You can probably drive a car and work a computer – maybe you play a sport, or a musical instrument. None of this is affected by the fact that you can’t remember.’ She watched the frustration roll over his face. ‘Don’t push it.’
Her hand was on his for only a second.
She unlocked the final door and ushered him into her office, dropping her bag and coat on to a chair. She needed some time to collect herself.
She headed for the safety of her desk, pointing to the two easy chairs that stood closest to the door and gesturing to Jay to sit, wondering if he would. She wasn’t surprised when he ambled to the window to stare out. A problem with authority, natural restlessness, used to giving, not taking orders?
She exhaled heavily and sank into the chair behind her desk. The indicator light on the phone was blinking. She had voicemail. Routine stuff. She listened to her messages, with half her mind making notes automatically, her eyes on Jay’s back. Last night all she could think of was how to hold on to him, to harvest everything she could from him. But now—
She closed her eyes, briefly. She might have known it would be a lot more complicated than that. Even without the memory loss, this would have been a bigger, slower thing. Last night she’d been on a high of possibilities. Reckless. Now there was reality and issues piling up all around. She was probably already over her armpits in stuff that would keep the lawyers in fits for days. Kidnapping, forgery, using an alias, impersonating a member of the medical profession – but hey, the last three were only aiding and abetting. Memo to self – stay well away from the legal department. Thank God the Institute’s director was still in Washington.
She needed to rearrange her schedule to work with Jay. She reached for her diary, then let her hand drop. Busy work was all very well. The elephant in the corner, visible only to her, wasn’t going away. She could only avoid it for so long.
Face it now, or face it later.
This man has the potential to get under your skin.
She let out a shallow sigh. It wasn’t the physical awareness, buzzing just under the surface. She could deal with that. Simplest thing in the world. Just ignore it.
But not if your mouth is going to run away with your mind whenever he asks you a personal question.
In the car just now, she’d started to say that she didn’t have lovers – a subtle warning that she wouldn’t be taking him as a lover – and realised, too late, how it sounded. A denial of Neil and all that they’d shared. And then she’d blushed, for heaven’s sake! She could feel the heat again now, rising up from the collar of her dress. Confusion? Irritation? Guilt?
The word whispered, like an echo of pain.
She brought her hands down firmly on the arms of her chair, shaking her head to cool the flush. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back there.
Briskly she pulled open the drawer of her desk, selected a new folder and wrote Jay’s name on the cover. She stood, tucking it into the crook of her arm. Jay swung round from the window as she approached him. She pasted on her professional smile.
‘If you’re ready, I’d like to start with some simple tests.’
‘Do you think this is going to get us anywhere, like this side of the next millennium?’ Jay demanded as he shifted position on the sofa, scowling. ‘When you said tests, I thought you were going to do something.’ His eyes tried to nail her, accusing. ‘This is just stringing words together.’<
br />
‘True,’ Madison agreed serenely, making a note. ‘I said it was simple, but it is important. Look.’ She fanned out the sheets she’d been using, spreading them over the table. Jay bent forward, interested, despite his protests. ‘These are behavioural memory tests.’ She indicated the lists. ‘Each one you’ve completed is perfect. Even half an hour of my bargain-basement psychology skills is showing that there’s nothing wrong with your semantic understanding. There’s no evidence of confusion, or fugue.’
‘Which means – in English?’
‘Your memory is fine, except for the fact that you can’t remember anything.’
His bark of reluctant laughter made her grin in response. ‘I guess I walked into that one.’
Madison tried not to look smug.
Jay shifted long legs in one direction and then the other, clearly uncomfortable on a sofa which was too small for his frame. ‘If you’re going to psychoanalyse me, shouldn’t you have a couch or something?’
Madison got to her feet. ‘If you want a couch, then you have to come to my lab.’
Chapter Five
Madison leaned against the workbench, watching Jay. He was prowling around the sterile white room, like a wary predator inspecting new surroundings. She knew the cliché from a hundred novels. She’d never seen it in action before. As she watched, he examined the flasks and beakers set out on the side, studied her wall charts and considered the sink and the air conditioning unit. Knowing she was observing didn’t seem to bother him. Finally he tested the couch, which stood under the shaded window, before sitting down on it.
‘This where you want me?’
‘Wherever you’re comfortable.’ She took a lab coat from the hook behind the door and put it on. Protective coloration, or professional barrier?
Out of Sight Out of Mind (Choc Lit) Page 6