by Amy Gamet
She swallowed hard against her dry throat, then realized with horror she was close to tears. Her lips began to shake. “What happened, exactly?” she asked.
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
He reached to touch her, and she recoiled.
“I just want to see your head,” he said.
She eyed him warily. “I’m fine.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Olivia.”
“Who are you?”
“Trevor Hawkins. Hawk.”
“Why did you bring me here, Trevor Hawkins?”
He furrowed his brow. “We were in an accident. I came around a blind curve in my truck and there you were, stuck in the snow, standing outside your car. It was too late for me to stop. The impact threw you and you hit your head, which was lucky because both cars caught fire.”
She lifted her hand to her head tentatively. A large lump and a messy scab were tender to the touch. Her hair was filled with hard bits of blood. She thought of her sharp, nasty headache. The nausea and dizziness. “Why aren’t we in the hospital?”
“My cell phone was in my car. I assume yours was, too, and the phone here is dead. I haven’t been able to contact anyone.”
She turned her gaze to the front window, instantly sorry for the movement. “What about a passing car?”
“There aren’t any. Wouldn’t surprise me if they closed the road. We’re in the middle of a blizzard on Warsaw Mountain.”
“Blizzard?”
“Yes. It’s pretty bad.” He stood, walking past her toward a hallway, and she noted a tattoo on his bicep, an eagle and an anchor.
“They have to have a radio or a TV somewhere,” he said.
Warsaw Mountain.
The name meant nothing to her. She lived in… in… God, where did she live?
He walked back into the room, fiddling with a small radio in his hands. His eyes met hers. “You look like you’re going to cry,” he said.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Was this man her enemy or her friend? She watched as the muscles of his arm flexed with each movement of his hands.
If he was her enemy, she didn’t stand a chance.
Please, let him be my friend.
“I can’t remember where I live,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. He met her eyes with his calm, steely stare, clearly waiting for her to continue. She took a deep breath. “I don’t remember if I have a cat, or a dog. I don’t know if I live alone,” she dropped her eyes, “or with someone else. The first thing I remember is waking up this morning.”
She felt herself begin to come apart. Her face crumpled. “What’s happening to me?” she cried. Her hands were trembling and she took gasping breaths of air. She grabbed the bowl and vomited, horrified that he was there watching her be sick.
He moved to her and tucked her hair behind her ear, making her squirm away.
“It’s okay,” He said, touching her arm.
She pulled away from him and stood, cradling the bowl, her head reeling from the movement. “It is not okay! Nothing is okay. Everything is wrong. Who are you, anyway?”
“Trevor Hawkins.”
“You said that already. I mean, who are you? Why did you bring me here?”
“I told you, there was an accident.”
“Bullshit.”
He narrowed his eyes and took a step toward her. “What do you think happened?”
She lifted her chin, her mind searching for a reason not to tell him the truth, and finding none. “I think you drugged me. You slipped something into my drink and you took me here against my will.”
“Why would I do that?”
Blood flooded her cheeks, heat filling her face. “To take advantage of me.” She forced her eyes to remain on his as his stare slipped lower, taking in her body with cool assessment.
“The women I sleep with don’t have to be drugged, Olivia.” He closed the distance between them.
What would she do if he tried to touch her, or worse?
He leaned down and picked up the bowl, his body so close to hers she felt herself tremble.
“I was on my way to visit a friend. I rounded a corner and there you were. Your car was stuck in the snow.” He walked past her and she exhaled the breath she’d been holding. The water ran in the kitchen, and she knew he was cleaning out the dirty bowl.
She felt dirty, too. Cold and dirty and confused and aching. “Where’s the bathroom?” she called. “I want to take a bath.”
“Down the hall on the left, but there’s no hot water. I’ll heat some on the stove for you.”
She fingered the waffle weave of her pajamas. “Where are my clothes? I assume I wasn’t wearing long johns in the middle of a blizzard.”
“Your clothes have blood on them. I’ll find you something clean to wear. There’s a whole closet full of clothes that should fit.”
She nodded, instantly grimacing, then walked into the dark hallway. Her control over her emotions began to slip. Her mind worked frantically to recall something — anything — from before the accident.
She locked the door behind her and leaned against it, instantly in a full-blown cry. It was as if her life had begun the instant she woke up. The pain was swirling through her, no longer focused just on her head but in her belly and back. A word hovered on the edge of her willingness to name it, a word more frightening than any she’d ever experienced.
Amnesia.
Everything she ever knew was gone. She had amnesia and she was stuck here with this overwhelming man who could scare the bejesus out of her one moment and wash out her vomit the next.
Slipping down the door, she landed on the floor with a thud. Footsteps could be heard coming toward the bathroom.
“Olivia, are you okay?”
She leaned back against the locked door. This wasn’t happening. This awful day was nothing more than a bad dream, and she need only wake up to return to her regularly scheduled life. Her eyes drifted shut despite the pounding and Trevor calling her name. The noises seemed to get farther away, less urgent, as if they were calling for someone else.
A pleasant darkness overcame her senses, welcoming her in, and she slumped to her side.
8
“Olivia!” Trevor pounded on the bathroom door, every muscle in his body at the ready. She’d passed out, he was sure of it, and he needed to get in there fast. His mind imagined every hard surface in that bathroom, the hard thunk of bone on porcelain, and blood streaming down Olivia’s face.
He tried the door, finding it locked. He’d have to break it down. “Stand back,” he yelled, just in case she could hear him. “Get away from the door.” There was no response, as he’d expected there wouldn’t be. With a twist of his torso, he kicked in the door. It opened halfway before running into her thigh.
He entered and tapped her cheek repeatedly, calling her name and willing her to wake up.
Her eyes opened and slowly focused on him. “What are you doing?” she mumbled.
“Helping you.”
“I don’t need help. I need hot water so I can take a bath.”
He ran a hand through his hair, sheer frustration bubbling to the surface. “You passed out.”
“No.”
“Yes, you did.”
She bit her lip. “Maybe I just didn’t want to talk to you.”
“You’re joking, right?” His eyes bored into hers, surprised to see they were green, not blue as he’d earlier thought.
“No.” She raised her chin. “I feel like crap, I can’t remember anything, and you’re scaring the hell out of me.”
He raised his eyebrows high. “I’m scaring you? You lock yourself in here with a concussion and a hundred and one things to bang your head on, then you don’t answer me when I try to see if you’re okay.”
She grabbed the sink and got to her feet. “Oh, please. I’m perfectly fine.” She pivoted on her heel and listed dramatically to one side.
Trevor swooped in to
catch her. “Oh, you’re fine, all right. Not a damn thing wrong with you.”
She pushed at his chest. “I don’t want you to touch me!”
“I was keeping you from falling over.”
“Let me go.”
He released her and took a step back. “Just don’t lock the door this time.”
Olivia rubbed her arms as if to get rid of his touch. “If it will even close now that you pushed it in. Talk about overkill. What are you, some kind of macho policeman or something like that?”
“Something like that. I’ll go check on your water.”
“Do you want to nail the window shut before you go, just in case I try to escape?”
He crossed his arms. “Olivia, you’re free to leave here anytime you want. I’m not holding you against your will. But there’s a storm raging out there and no shelter for miles — if you can even find it — so I think you’d be better off hanging out with me for the time being.”
Her bottom lip trembled and her voice cracked. “You might want to stop breaking down doors so you don’t scare me to pieces.”
She looked so young, so frightened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”
She held up a hand. “It’s okay.”
Damn it all, she was crying, her face crumpling up and her mouth pulling down hard.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, “come here.” He reached for her, but she stayed where she was, eyeing him warily until he dropped his arms. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
“I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to tell me the truth. Did you drug me last night?”
“Absolutely not.”
She bit her lip. “My head hurts. I can’t remember anything…about last night, and when I woke up, you were…your body was…you were sleeping really close to me.”
When you woke up, I was halfway to a boner from your sweet ass rubbing against my cock.
From the flush on her face, she remembered that part clearly. He’d better stick to the facts. “I did not drug you. We were in an accident and you hit your head. I brought you here and I slept next to you to keep you warm.”
She nodded slowly.
“Olivia, I would never take advantage of a woman.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“I hope that’s true.” She reached for the door, gesturing for him to leave. “Because as of this moment, you’re the only person in the whole wide world I can remember.” She closed the door between them.
9
Holy fuck.
Gallant stared at the smoking, twisted metal at the bottom of the ravine. There was no way anyone could have survived this accident, and he cursed Brooke for taking off on her own and doing this to him.
What had possessed her? Like she didn’t have it good enough already, famous and in demand and about to marry one of the richest men in the world?
And he liked her, damn it. A lot more than he’d liked the others. That was the kicker.
He moved toward the tangle of steel barely recognizable as Brooke’s car, dreading the grisly find that awaited him. Maybe it was good that she was dead, that way Marco wouldn’t kill her for running off before the wedding like she did.
Or make me do it.
The driver’s seat was crushed but clearly empty. He moved around to the other side of the car. “What the hell?” From this angle it was obvious there were two cars in this tangle, not just one. He looked in what was left of the passenger compartments of both vehicles.
They were empty.
His cell phone rang and he sighed when he saw Johnson’s name on the caller ID.
Fuck.
“She was in an accident,” Gallant said. “I tracked her on the GPS through a fucking blizzard to the bottom of Warsaw Mountain. My Hummer barely made it down here, and it’s still snowing. Her car and somebody else’s are all crashed and burned up, but nobody’s here.”
“You really fucked up this time, Gallant.”
He thought of the big blonde intern he’d screwed from SNL. Brooke had set them up, even told him he could use her dressing room, then she’d disappeared. He’d kept the intern out of his version of events when he broke the news to Johnson.
“Hey, I was supposed to keep her safe, not keep her from running off,” he said.
“No, you were supposed to keep her in your sight at all times. If Marco finds out about this…”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“There’s no reason to tell him until we find her.”
“But the wedding…”
“Isn’t for almost two weeks. She couldn’t have gotten far without transportation. Find her.”
The wind blew, making Gallant shiver. Sometimes he hated this job. “What about me? I need transportation, too, you know. There’s four feet of fucking snow on the ground.”
“Fine. I’ll leave a snowmobile outside the compound for you. Keep me posted, but be discreet.”
“I can do that.”
10
While Olivia bathed, Hawk took inventory of the house. The snowshoes on the wall seemed to be real and functional. There were cross-country skis, boots, and poles in the bedroom closet. An assortment of household chemicals and alcohol that could be used to make Molotov cocktails, as well as some basic explosive components in the garage. There was also a snowmobile that ran, but it had so little gas it barely registered.
He came inside and sat on the bed, staring at the small pile of clothes in the corner and wondering if he’d made a mistake. Olivia had asked where her clothes were, and that was a perfect time to give them to her, bride T-shirt and all, but he didn’t want to do it, which reminded him of the diamond he had in his pants pocket.
He pulled it out and stuck it on the tip of his index finger. It was too showy, too elaborate for the straightforward woman in the bathtub. He’d gotten her hot water, averting his eyes when he pulled back the curtain to add it to her bath.
It was an oddly intimate act.
Maybe it was because she looked so young, and he was feeling very protective of her after what they’d been through together, but he didn’t want her to find out she was engaged before she could even remember where she lived.
Or at least that’s what he was telling himself.
Something about her had snagged his interest. She was assessing him, considering whether or not he was worthy of her trust. He was a Navy SEAL, for God’s sake, a member of the elite HERO Force. That made him one of the good guys, no matter how black his soul felt under her questioning stare.
Maybe if I hold on to her tightly, she can make me good again.
Where the hell had that thought come from?
She’s engaged to someone else, and you have no business even thinking about this shit right now. You need to get to Steele.
Every step in Trevor’s carefully laid plan had crashed to the ground when his car ran into hers. He’d been prepared for any eventuality — or so he thought — well stocked with weapons, ammunition, explosives, and all the tools he’d need to get in and out of Steele’s compound without being caught. Now all he had taken for granted hung in the balance. He couldn’t let the accident ruin his carefully laid plans.
He pressed his thumb onto the prongs holding the diamond, surprised to find them sharp like thorns. That thing was more than jewelry. It was a weapon, for chrissake. He couldn’t help but wonder about the man who picked it out.
She could be marrying a serial killer. It’s none of your business.
The song on the radio ended and the newscaster came on. “We’re in for it tonight, folks. Snow will be completely changing over to freezing rain by morning, continuing for the next twenty-four hours before changing back to snow. The state’s structural engineers have voiced some concerns about Warsaw Bridge’s ability to handle the excess weight of an ice storm, and the bridge is closed to traffic through Thursday. The bridge is scheduled to be demolished and replaced in early spring.”
Olivia’s voice came from behind him. “The w
eather doesn’t sound good. Do you think they’ll get the roads cleared before all hell breaks loose?”
“No way.” Hawk folded the ring in the palm of his hand and stood, turning to face her.
She wore the plaid pajama pants and a too-big T-shirt he’d brought her, her hair wet and her nipples standing out against the fabric. He forced his eyes to stay focused on hers. “Did you have a good bath?”
She frowned. “Not really. I couldn’t stop trying to picture my own life, where I live — stuff like that — but no matter how hard I tried, there was nothing there.”
He touched her arm, an electric tingle shooting up his hand, but this time she didn’t pull away. “It will come. Give it time.”
“Not like we’re going anywhere soon.” She brushed by him, the scents of woman, soap, and shampoo crowding him in the small space, and he closed his eyes. He could get lost in that smell if he allowed himself.
“And I wouldn’t know where to go, either,” she said. “Where do you go when you don’t know who you are or where you belong?”
He didn’t have amnesia. He knew where he had to go. He was stuck on this mountain and so was Steele.
So go and get him. Do what you came here to do.
His mind began to race. He needed a coat, some kind of weapon, and a way up the mountain. From the contents of the dresser, he knew there were clothes from a man similar in size to him.
“Trevor, thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she said, snapping his attention back to the present.
“You don’t think I drugged you anymore?”
“No, but I do want to see my car.”
He imagined it at the bottom of a ravine, its charred steel frame like a skeleton in the snow. “It’s too far away.”
“It can’t be that far if we walked here.”
“You didn’t walk. I carried you.” She met his eyes and he shrugged one shoulder. “You were unconscious.”
She frowned. “But how far…”
“About a mile.”
“You carried me for a mile?”
“Maybe more.”
She blew out air. “I find that hard to believe. No offense.”