Shifting Shadows

by Sally Berneathy

  “So what have you been doing?” Phillip asked. “I called the shop, and Lottie said you’d taken the day off to run some errands.”

  Analise speared an olive, chewed and swallowed as she thought about how to answer him.

  “I went to the library and looked through some old newspapers. I thought it might help me remember things.” Old was a relative term. He’d likely think she meant last week, not last century.

  Phillip froze with his glass of wine halfway to his mouth. “And did it?” He smiled, but his eyes were frosty.

  What had she said? Could he somehow know she’d been scouring through the past, that she once again believed she was Elizabeth, that she’d left him for Dylan in another life?

  Of course not, she reassured herself. How could he know those things? Yet there was no denying that he was regarding her intently, waiting for an answer.

  She tried to return his smile, hoped hers didn’t look as phony as it felt. “Nothing significant. For the most part, the last few years of my life are still blank pages. I was hoping you might help me fill in some of them.”

  He relaxed, raised his wine to his lips and drank. From the time of her accident, Phillip had seemed determined to help her remember, but he appeared relieved that she hadn’t. What in heaven’s name was hiding in the depths of her brain that no one wanted her to remember?

  “Maybe we ought to get you to a psychiatrist, try hypnotherapy or something,” he suggested.

  She blinked, studied his cool countenance as he adroitly divided his attention between his food and her. “I don’t need to see a psychiatrist.”

  He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m just trying to help.”

  “I know. And you have. The things you told me last night certainly helped fill up some empty spaces.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, smiling.

  Lottie was right, she thought. With his silver hair, pale eyes and tanned, even features, he was devastatingly handsome. More handsome, really, than Dylan. Dylan had a rugged, powerful look. A dangerous look. A sensual look.

  She concentrated on her salad, berated herself for the improper, traitorous thought.

  “Did you go to the library alone?” Phillip asked, as though he could read her mind.

  “No. My neighbor volunteered to go along and help me find the place, not to mention operate the equipment.”

  My neighbor. It sounded so much more innocent than Dylan. Just thinking his name called up his image, the feel of his lips on hers, his arms around her, his heart pounding wildly against her breast.

  “Dylan Forrest,” he said. “How neighborly of him.”

  She lowered her gaze and stuffed a bite of artichoke heart into her mouth, but it had turned dry and tasteless. Her appetite had disappeared again.

  “Did you spend the entire day at the library?”

  “No. We drove around the city.” Looking for the house I once lived in with you when we were other people, trying to find the place in the river where I drowned running away with Dylan who was then Shawn. If she told him that, he’d have her committed. “I wanted to go down to the river.”

  “You hate the river.”

  “Yes. I do.” She cast about for a change of topic. “I was going through my office today and found Terence, the dog you won for me at the fair. Remember?”

  His forehead wrinkled in a scowl. “The fair?”

  “The year before we got married. The state fair in Sedalia. Now who has amnesia?” she teased.

  “It seems yours is going away rapidly.” She heard no happiness in his voice. But Phillip wasn’t given to effusiveness.

  “I wouldn’t call it rapid.” I still know more about a woman who died a hundred years ago than I do about my own life.

  He lifted his wineglass. “Shall we drink to your complete recovery?”

  The words and gesture, the expression of caring concern, were all exactly right. Yet his tone was off, cool, totally lacking in warmth.

  Analise raised her glass in response, mentally rebuking herself for being so paranoid. Was she so desperately searching for proof her memory harbored a dangerous secret that she found evidence of it where none existed?

  The waiter arrived a few minutes later with their entrees.

  He replaced Analise’s barely touched salad with a heaping plate of pasta covered in a white seafood sauce.

  She twirled a large portion around her fork, determined to eat...if for no other reason than to escape the dizzying effect of the wine on her empty stomach. Her faculties were already severely limited. She didn’t need further clouding. What she needed was illumination, information. What she needed was to know why someone would want to harm her.

  “Who were our friends?” she asked. The question sounded saner than asking about her enemies.

  He peered at her keenly. “Mostly people from my office. Other lawyers, clients. In fact, one of them asked about you today. My client, Gordon Robison. Remember him?”

  “Yes. No.” She winced as an arrow of pain shot through from the back of her neck to her forehead, and a memory teased her but fled before she could examine it. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

  “I’ve done a lot of limited partnerships for him and Michael Stevens. They’re trying to buy a strip center now. I spent most of the day with them.”

  The pain had turned into a throbbing ache, so intense it was making her nauseous.

  She stumbled to her feet, pushing her chair back clumsily. “Excuse me,” she mumbled.

  “Analise, are you all right?” Phillip’s words came to her through a haze.

  “I need to go to the ladies’ room. I don’t feel so good.” He came around the table, wrapped a steadying arm about her and helped her down the stairs. As they passed under the loft, something indefinable drew her gaze to the table directly beneath where they’d been sitting.

  The sole occupant sat with his back to them, face to the wall. But she couldn’t mistake the black, unruly hair, the width of his shoulders or, more importantly, the magnetic field that seemed to emanate from him, drawing her to him.

  What was Dylan doing there?

  Phillip urged her forward, and she realized she’d been lagging. She stumbled along, trying to peer surreptitiously behind her, but Phillip blocked her view.

  By the time she got to the ladies’ room, her headache and nausea had almost disappeared. Nevertheless, she went inside and splashed her face with cold water, stared at herself in the mirror and tried to read her own mind, just as Dylan always seemed to be trying to do. She could only hope she was as opaque to him as she was to herself.

  Had he now taken to following her, to eavesdropping on her conversations in order to discover whatever it was he needed from her? Well, this was going too far. She’d march up to him, make sure that he knew she’d caught him, see how he handled that.

  She blotted her face with a rough paper towel and went out to meet Phillip.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Your color’s coming back. You were awfully pale. What happened?”

  “I haven’t eaten all day. I guess the wine just got to me.”

  But that wasn’t it. She wasn’t sure what the problem had been, but it was nothing as simple as wine on an empty stomach.

  He put his arm protectively about her waist. “Do you want to go home?”

  “No. I’m all right. Really. Let’s finish dinner. I’ll feel better after I eat.”

  As they walked past the table where she’d spotted Dylan, she saw only a white tablecloth with a candle in the middle.

  Had she imagined him? Was she so consumed with the man that she was starting to see him when he wasn’t there?

  She hadn’t been feeling well. The raging headache had obscured her vision.

  But she remembered the familiar aura he emitted. Never mind her eyesight. She’d felt him.

  Dylan had been there.

  Chapter Twelve

  After they finished eating, Phillip to
ok her home and walked her to the door.

  “Thank you for dinner,” she said, immediately inserting her key in the lock, hoping to avoid another good-night kiss. The memory of Dylan’s lips on hers was too new, too old, too wonderful. She didn’t want it replaced or tainted.

  “Are you going to invite me in?”

  “Oh, well, actually I’m kind of tired. And that terrible headache...” She trailed off. She felt fine. There was no reason she shouldn’t invite Phillip in. No reason except she didn’t want to.

  “I understand that you’re still weak, and that’s one of the things we need to talk about.”

  Reluctantly she opened the door and allowed him to follow her inside. At least this would give her a chance to find out more about herself. He’d been the one eliciting information at the restaurant. This could be her opportunity.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  She nodded and headed toward the kitchen, but he detained her with a hand on her arm. When she looked up at him, he kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “You sit down. I’ll make it for you.” He guided her toward the sofa in the parlor.

  She sat, but bounced back up the minute he was out of sight. This was her house. She could sit where she chose. In the kitchen the light was brighter...and he couldn’t sit beside her.

  She marched in and took a seat at the table. Phillip looked up from his coffee preparations and raised an eyebrow but made no comment.

  Finally, when it was brewing, he turned to her. “Think we could invite Terence to have a cup? I haven’t seen the old boy in a long time.”

  She’d been prepared for him to try to kiss her, to try to argue her into coming home with him, almost anything but that. She smiled softly, nostalgically, for the Analise and Phillip who’d gone to the fair together.

  She stood, pushing back her chair. “I’ll go get him.”

  He motioned for her to sit down. “You’ve been ill. Just tell me where he is.”

  “In the closet in my office.” She started to sit again then remembered the chaos she’d left in that room. “I’d better go. Things are in kind of a mess up there.”

  “I’ve seen your office in a mess before.”

  She caught him in the doorway. “Please. I’d really be embarrassed to have you see.” And worried he’d ask what she’d been looking for when she’d strewn the contents of her office.

  For a long moment they stood, his stare locked with hers.

  A contest of wills. Then he smiled, shrugged and gave way. “I was just thinking of you, sweetheart. I didn’t want you to have to go up and down those stairs an extra time tonight.”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  She left, returning shortly with Terence in tow.

  “He’s a little grungy,” she said, placing him upright in a chair, positioning his front paws on the table.

  Phillip set down steaming mugs of coffee for each of them, including Terence. He stirred sugar into Analise’s cup, then reached over and squeaked the stuffed animal’s ear.

  Analise wrapped both hands around the warmth of her coffee mug and smiled. “You remembered.”

  Tears misted her eyes as she wondered what had happened to the laughing young man who’d won the stuffed dog and the naive, tractable girl hanging on his arm.

  Time had passed, and she’d grown into someone else. Just as time had passed and Elizabeth had grown into Analise.

  Incredible as the whole concept still seemed, she had to admit that she felt the same about her memories of Elizabeth as about her childhood memories. Had her soul exchanged one body for another? She supposed that wasn’t any more amazing than exchanging the body of a baby for that of an adult.

  “Analise?”

  “I’m sorry. Were you saying something? I guess my mind was wandering.”

  He reached over and briefly grasped one of her hands. “I was just saying how much I miss those days when we first got married, even though we were dead broke then.”

  She nodded, easily locating the memory. “We had that awful house where nothing worked, and the payments took your entire salary.”

  “But it was in a good neighborhood.”

  Even in those early days status had been everything to Phillip. She chased away the disloyal thought. Everyone else at his law firm had been concerned about those things, so he’d had to be too if he expected to succeed.

  “We thought we were out of the woods the time you had five houses scheduled to close in the same month,” he said.

  “Oh!” She groaned then laughed. “I was so proud of myself. I hadn’t been in the business long enough to understand how precarious five deals could be with four of them contingent on the sales of each other. When the fifth buyer backed out, the others collapsed like dominoes.”

  “We stopped looking at new cars very abruptly.”

  “And bought a twenty-pound bag of beans.” She sipped her coffee, ruminating over the past.

  “We owe it to ourselves to try to recapture what we had back then.”

  She reached over and stroked the stuffed dog’s soft ear.

  “All those things happened to someone else,” she heard herself say. “We’re different people now.”

  “We changed once. We can change again. We won’t make the same mistakes this time.”

  Change. Get it right. Wasn’t that what it was about?

  But even though he was saying all the right words, even though her mind was going along with him, her heart resisted.

  “At least let me take care of you until you’re yourself again. I won’t push you to make a permanent decision right now, but you need me. Tonight proved that.” He stood, picked up Terence and came around to her. “Give us a second chance, Analise. I’m trying so hard, but I can’t do it if you won’t let me.”

  She cringed inside at his words. He was trying, and she continued to reject him. That couldn’t help either one of them, could it? Elizabeth had given in to her desire for another man, had left her husband and died. But Blake had been cruel to Elizabeth. She couldn’t find any evidence of cruelty in Phillip. True, he’d grabbed her that evening when she’d come in with Dylan, but he hadn’t really hurt her.

  If she gave Phillip another chance, would they find the rainbow...and avoid the specter of death?

  “Why don’t you just go upstairs and pack an overnight bag?” he suggested. “We’ll take this one day at a time. Stay with me tonight, and we’ll renegotiate for tomorrow night.”

  Could she ask for more? He was being wonderfully reasonable. All he was asking was that she not close the door on their failed marriage. Against everything her treacherous heart screamed for, she forced herself to nod, to slide back her chair and rise.

  Phillip’s face radiated triumph.

  As if in a trance, she climbed the stairs and went into her bedroom. But once inside, she froze. Try as she might, she couldn’t force herself to go to the closet and take down her overnight bag.

  As though she was being led, she could only move in the direction of the window. Slowly parting the curtains, she looked next door. The window was dark, the curtains closed. But she knew he was there.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, he parted the barrier and stood staring at her.

  And she knew, even if their relationship never went any further, never passed beyond the two kisses they’d shared, that she couldn’t go home with Phillip when she felt this way about another man. Not even if it meant risking her life.

  She whirled from the window and raced downstairs, coming to a halt on the last step when she saw Phillip waiting for her in the foyer. “I can’t,” she said breathlessly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go home with you.”

  Phillip’s pleased expression vanished. His face seemed to darken though his eyes were alight with pale, cold fires. “Why not?” he snapped.

  She backed upward another step, cringing away from him, shaking her head helplessly.

  His jaw clenched, his thin lips compressed, and he took a slow, d
eep breath then let it out. “Sweetheart, this constantly changing your mind is just another symptom. You’ve been through a lot. You’re not well. I must insist that you come home with me and let me take care of you until you’re better.”

  “Phillip, I want to do what’s right, but you’re going to have to give me a little more time.”

  “Time for what?” he demanded.

  “To understand what’s going on. You didn’t try to stop the divorce. Why are you pushing me so hard now?”

  He stared at her a long moment, his gaze unreadable. “You’re getting better fast, aren’t you? Or maybe you never really had a problem in the first place.”

  There it was again, the obsession he and Dylan shared, questioning whether or not she really had amnesia. She wanted to ask Phillip why it mattered so much, but he turned and strode out the door.

  She stared after him regretfully. She hadn’t meant to make him angry. But relief that he was gone mingled with the regret, overwhelmed it.

  Slowly she climbed back upstairs to her bedroom. Perhaps Phillip would be so upset he’d never come back. She searched for sadness at that idea but found none. She was drained, she thought, too exhausted from all that had happened that day to feel any emotion.

  Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, she’d decide what to do about Phillip.

  However, the instant she entered her bedroom, all thoughts of Phillip fled from her mind. Dylan was still there, still watching. She could feel him.

  She went to the window and confronted him. Energy surged between them, sparked through her body. The windows, the open space, the houses, the years, the different lifetimes...none of it really separated them. He was there with her and she with him.

  For an infinite moment they stood, transfixed, absorbed. Then he whirled away, and she could trace his progress as surely as if there were no walls between them. Out of his bedroom, down the stairs, through the living room. His front door opened, and he appeared on the porch. For an instant he paused, looked up at her. She could almost see herself through his eyes...see the desire and need for him that must be glowing all around her.

  Then he was stalking across the yard.