Lost Identity (12 page)

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, knowing that her situation had been a demand on his time. “But I’ll miss seeing you.”

Her expression made him reach out and put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, it’s going to be all right. Maybe you could drop by the cottage one day after your sessions with Dr. Duboise? That is, if you’re not too busy. Things will probably start moving pretty fast once the word is out that you’re back. I’m sure there will be some welcome-home parties.”

“Parties?” She gulped in horror. Trying to focus on one stranger at a time was excruciating enough. How could she manage a whole roomful of people who would expect her to remember them. “You have to come and be there with me. You will, won’t you?”

“Of course,” he answered, denying the truth that he hated social gatherings more than anything. He’d never been good at superficial chatter, nor pretending to be enjoying himself when he wasn’t. Only the pleading look in her devastating aqua eyes made him willing to suffer a whole evening of that kind of torture.

“Thank you,” she said and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

As his hands tightened on her shoulders, he wanted to forget about being the “good guy” and the “trusted friend.” A flood of sexual desire fueled a demanding longing to feel the sweet length of her body responding to his. He wanted to kiss her lips, cup her soft breasts and make passionate love to her. As she drew back from her light kiss on his cheek, her smile was tenuous as if she’d sensed his thoughts and was frightened by them.

“I’d better go,” she said quickly, not looking at him as she touched the elevator button.

He wanted to say something that would deny his feelings for her, but he kept silent. She had enough to deal with at the moment. Better pretend that nothing had changed.

“You can call me anytime, Trish. You know that,” he said in what he hoped was a friendly offer instead of the tense longing of someone falling in love.

She nodded, and as the elevator door swung open, she almost changed her mind and asked Andrew to go up with her.
And then what?
she asked herself. Just postponing the inevitable of being alone wasn’t going to change anything. She was being selfish to cling to him like this. How could she expect him to hold her hand at every step of the way? He had his own life to live.

She gave him a casual wave good-night, and watched the elevator door shut him from view. Then she leaned back against the wall, and tried to pretend that she was Patricia Radcliffe coming home to her fashionable apartment. But her fantasy only increased the sickening sensation in her stomach.

When she stood in front of her apartment door, she realized that she didn’t have a key. She put an insistent finger on the bell, and was relieved when it only took a moment for Janelle to opened it.

“There you are,” she said with a smile. “When I got back from my place, Sasha said you’d gone out to dinner.” She peered behind Trish. “Where’s Mr. Davis?”

“I left him downstairs.”

Janelle’s eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. “Oh?”

Trish didn’t respond to the obvious question, but walked past her into the living room. She saw then that they weren’t alone.

Gary Reynolds eased to his feet. “Good evening, Patricia.”

“I was trying to get rid of Gary before you got back,” Janelle said with brutal honesty. “As you can see, I didn’t have much luck.”

“I don’t mean to butt in,” he said quickly, grinning nervously. “I really need to talk with you, Patricia. And if I wait for that stepmother of mine to spew out her poison, you’ll never give me a chance to explain.”

“Explain what?”

Janelle gave an audible sigh. “I can’t believe this, Gary. How can you expect Patricia to bail you out of another mess? We all know your dad put his foot down, and refused to sink any more money into your harebrained schemes.”

“Is that what this is about…money?” Trish asked bluntly.

“It’s about my inheritance,” he said flatly. There was a hardness in his eyes that denied his youth. “Darlene refuses to accept the fact that my father probably took some boat out in the storm and got himself killed. She’s holding up everything because she’s got this wild belief that you and he are up to some kind of con game.”

“That’s totally and utterly ridiculous,” Janelle snapped.

“I know, but once she gets an idea in that pea brain of hers, she won’t let go. She’s gathering all kinds of evidence to prevent the authorities from declaring him dead. It’s up to you, Patricia, to put them straight.”

“Put them straight?”

“Tell them that my father is dead.”

Trish shook her head as she dropped down in a chair. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation.

“You idiot, Gary,” Janelle snapped. “Don’t you have a brain in your head? You know that Patricia is suffering from amnesia. She doesn’t even remember what happened to her, let alone your father.”

“She knows she almost drowned,” Gary retorted, belligerently. “If my father were still alive, he’d have been found by now. Don’t you see, if we have to wait for a body to be washed up—if it ever does—no telling how long it will take to settle his estate—and I need the money now.”

Trish couldn’t believe his callousness. Listening to the spoiled, selfish young man was like sprinkling pepper on her raw nerve ends. She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of him, and as a number of less than polite adjectives flowed through her mind, she knew one more thing about herself—she could swear like a bawdy sailor if the occasion arose.

Janelle must have been familiar with the look Trish gave Gary, because she said hastily, “You’d better leave now, Gary. You’ve had your say, and I don’t want to pick up the pieces if Patricia loses her temper.”

Gary started to protest, but one look at Trish’s glare made him change his mind. He swallowed back the words on his tongue, turned on the heels of his expensive loafers and left the apartment, banging the door behind him.

Trish felt strangely elated. From the way Gary and Janelle had reacted, she knew that she wasn’t some mealymouthed pushover. Her present state of indeci
sion and confusion was not her normal behavior. Somehow it was reassuring to know that no one wanted to face her temper.

Gary had only been gone a few minutes when the doorbell rang, both Janelle and Trish exchanged exasperated looks. Had he come back to finish the argument?

Janelle answered the door, and when Trish heard her exchange words with someone, she quickly got to her feet, preparing to bolt before anyone else could waylay her.

“Look at what I have!” Janelle said, coming in before Trish could make it out of the room. She was holding a beautiful bouquet of several dozen roses.

Trish’s heart quickened with joy. Andrew. He must have stopped and ordered the bouquet before he left the city. She hurried over, took them from Janelle and quickly drew out the white envelope. The smile faded as she read the enclosed card.

Thinking of you, my darling, and our future together.

All my love,
Curtis

Chapter Eight

Trish turned away so Janelle couldn’t see her face. Dismayed and shaken to the depths, she felt as if someone had just landed a fist in her middle. Even though she had been aware of Curtis’s proprietary manner that morning, she had never dreamed that there had been a love relationship between them. In fact, she’d given him little thought, assuming that their connection was a business one. He hadn’t even come to mind when she’d had that flickering impression of being in someone’s embrace at the park. Her thoughts had been filled with the fear that what they were saying about her and Perry was true.

“Well, now it looks as if you have a new admirer, all right,” Janelle said, apparently assuming the flowers had come from Andrew. “He seems like a very nice young man. It’s amazing how fate threw you together, isn’t it?”

That much was true, anyway, thought Trish, but for some reason she wasn’t willing to correct Janelle’s assumption that Andrew had sent the flowers. Maybe she was too much of a coward to ask Janelle a lot of questions about Curtis or Perry, she admitted to herself. In any case, she wasn’t up to handling another
complication that might send her whole life into another downward spin.

“Would you like to have me put these flowers in water for you?” Janelle asked, burying her face in their sweet fragrance. “Beautiful. Roses are your favorite flower, aren’t they?”

Are they? I don’t know.
This silent admission seemed to crystallize the utter devastation that went bone-deep. All evening she’d seemed to totter on the edge of remembrance, but even a simple preference for roses as her favorite flower eluded her.

She turned to Janelle. “I’m very tired,” she said. “I think I’ll call it a day.”

Janelle nodded. “I understand. It’s been a rough time for you. I wish I knew how to make things easier.”

“You already have,” Trish said quickly. “Thank you for being here.”

“Please call me if you need anything. I brought some work from the office, so I’ll probably be up until about eleven. I’m in the guest room just across the hall.” Janelle smiled as she added reassuringly, “Just a holler away.”

As Trish made ready for bed, she wondered if someone had alerted Janelle to the recurring nightmares she’d been having. No doubt, if she went into one of her crying and screaming jags, she’d scare Janelle out of her wits. It had been bad enough to have Andrew, or the staff at Havengate to help her through those rough moments, but embarrassing herself with Janelle would be worse.

She hadn’t wanted to leave the hospital, but Dr. Duboise had been insistent. “Trish, we don’t know how long you will suffer a loss of memory. It could be
months, and even years. You’re a young, vibrant woman who shouldn’t languish in an institution when you could be making a new life for yourself.”

A new life. And what do I do with the old one?
Trish asked herself as she lay stiffly in her queen-size bed, wearing a fancy nightgown that she would have traded in an instant for Andrew’s too-large sweatshirt.

She pictured him lounging in front of the fire, his fair head bent over his guitar, and an appealing softness to his lips as he hummed the melody. Just thinking about the time they’d spent together brought a warmth in her chilled body, but there was a warning there, too. How could she admit to him that every time he touched her, she wanted to forget about the tangled threads of her lost memory and give into a desire that had flared the first time he’d lightly kissed her cheek? If she admitted to the building romantic attraction that she held for him, he might decide to ease out of the picture as quickly as he could.

She had felt an instant gulf between them when he’d first seen her in clothes belonging to Patricia Radcliffe, and she regretted the explosive introduction he’d had to the people in her life. That horrible scene alone must have warned him not to get involved with a woman who had so little in common with his chosen lifestyle. The more Trish knew about herself, the more she realized that the last thing she wanted to do was draw Andrew into a quagmire of her past life. Even though she knew it wasn’t fair to Andrew to cling to his support, the thought that he might drop out of her life completely created a sudden sense of overwhelming hopelessness.

It was after midnight when she finally fell into a
restless sleep. As she turned and tossed, a plaguing dream rose from her subconscious to torment her.

She was trapped in a labyrinth of high-trimmed hedges with falcons circling overhead. She cried out as she frantically ran through the maze, trying to escape from their whipping wings and threatening beaks. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t find her way out. Every turn in her path was blocked by someone. Curtis, Perry, Dr. Duboise, Janelle, Gary and Darlene.

“Let me go. Let me go,” she begged but none of them would let her pass. Each one of them drove her back into the dark heart of the maze.

She lashed out at them with swinging arms, screaming and gasping for breath.

“Wake up, Patricia! For godsake, wake up!”

Trish jerked awake and sat up, her heart racing and her breath short. Janelle stood over the bed, holding her nose as a stream of blood flowed from it.

“Oh, no,” Trish gasped when she realized in horror that in her wild thrashing, she must have struck Janelle when she tried to wake her up.

“You pack a mean punch,” Janelle gasped.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Trish slid out of bed and followed Janelle into the bathroom. “I was having a nightmare, and…and…” Her voice trailed off. Janelle wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain the dream. How could she? Trish asked herself, when even she didn’t understand. Why did she feel persecuted by all these people? She didn’t know what was behind the nightmare, but the terror had been real. So real, that even now she felt beads of sweat on her forehead and palms.

As Janelle was bent over the sink, stopping the
nosebleed with soft towels, she kept reassuring Trish that it wasn’t her fault. “I got too close. Trying to hold down your arms was a stupid thing to do. I thought I was strong enough, but, girl, you’re a wildcat when you’re riled up.”

They went into the kitchen and put ice on her nose which, Trish saw to her horror, was already slightly swollen. Great, she thought. The one person who has befriended me and I’ve punched her in the face.

“Don’t worry about it,” Janelle said, holding a cold compress to her nose. “A bloody nose is no big deal. But I am worried about you, Trish. What kind of a dream could send you into a wild fit like that?”

“I was trapped in a maze and couldn’t get out,” Trish said, deciding that she wouldn’t hurt Janelle’s feelings by telling her any more. After all, she might pass along to the others that they, too, had been villains in her nightmare. Not exactly the kind of information that would win any friends under the circumstances. It bothered her that Dr. Duboise had been one of them harassing her, but she was grateful that Andrew hadn’t shown up in the nightmare. “I’m truly sorry. I was hoping that maybe I’d get through the night without disturbing you.”