The Trouble with Temptation (12 page)

She made a hungry noise in her throat and opened her mouth under his.

Still, he didn’t deepen the kiss—much.

He traced the line of her lips with his tongue, learning the curves as if this was the first time he’d ever had the chance. For her, it was. Maybe it was for him, too. They’d start over. Completely over. And he’d make sure that this time, she knew she mattered.

Hannah grew impatient and tried to take control, her tongue coming out to curl and stroke against his. He eased back, whispering against her lips, “You wanted me to kiss you, baby.”

“Then do it.” She bit his lower lip.

That demanding nip set his blood to boiling but he kept an iron grip on his control, teasing the entrance of her mouth with quick, light strokes. She caught his tongue and sucked on him and the blood began to drain southward, his cock thickening.

Just a kiss,
he told himself.
Just a kiss
.

Her hands slid down to grab his hips, pulling him more firmly against her and he had to keep reminding himself that this was
just
a kiss. Nothing more.

Her breathing sped up.

His heart pounded harder, faster.

The taste of her flooded him as he sought out the hidden depths of her mouth, learning her in a way he’d never taken the time to do before.

She began to move against him, her hips circling impatiently. But he was still in control. He thought. Right up until she slid a hand between them. A shudder wracked him as she stroked him through his jeans.

Aw, fuck …

A fist pounded against the door.

They broke apart, panting and staring at each other.

There was another knock.

Hannah licked her lips and he moved to pull her back against him.

“Hannah? I know you’re probably worn out, but I’d like to talk to you.” There was a pause and then, “It’s Chief Gideon Marshall with the Treasure Police Department.”

“Damn,” Brannon muttered.

“Send him away.” Then she frowned. “No, it’s my home. I’ll send him away.”

“You can’t.” Brannon had a feeling he knew why the cop was here. “You probably need to talk to him, Hannah.”

He skimmed the back of his knuckles down her cheek.

Her skin was soft. Soft and warm, her cheeks flushed with more color than he’d seen on her in some time. “I’d rather go back to what we were doing.”

“Hannah!” Gideon’s voice was harder now, implacable.

“I’ll be right there, chief,” she said.

As she moved past him, Brannon braced his hands against the counter. The need that had twisted through him was already dying. All it had taken was hearing Gideon’s voice, realizing why the man was here.

Nobody had really explained just what all had happened the night of the wreck.

Dr. Briscoe had wanted to give her a few days, to see if she’d remember on her own. She hadn’t and they couldn’t wait any longer. Gideon had told them that once she was discharged, he’d be talking to her. There wasn’t much choice, he’d said. They had to make sure she was safe.

Over his shoulder, he slid a look at her as she opened the door.

She didn’t look as worn and tired as she had, but that was about to change.

She was getting ready to have a whole new set of problems dumped on her.

*   *   *

Hannah recognized him.

It wasn’t just because he’d been in to see her at the hospital several times, either.

She just … knew him.

It wasn’t the same familiarity she’d felt when she’d seen Brannon, but the chief was a man she’d known. And he was a man she trusted, even now.

Something about the competent set of his shoulders and the way he studied everything around him, even the grooves around his mouth that showed that he smiled a lot—all of that told her that back before her memory had turned into a black hole, she’d trusted him.

But her instincts told her he wasn’t here just for a Friday night chat.

She sank into a fat, round chair that felt more familiar to her than her own name and she drew her knees up, curling into the arm as she studied Gideon. Brannon shifted in the doorway that separated the small, eat-in kitchen from the living room, but all he did was turn and brace his shoulder against the arched entrance, his gaze flicking from her to Gideon and then back.

He said nothing.

Gideon just nodded at him, clearly not surprised by his presence.

“Why are you here, Chief?” she asked softly. “You frequently go around and check on patients who’ve been discharged from the hospital?”

“Part of the service, ma’am.” Gideon smiled at her. “And it’s Gideon, Hannah. We’re friends. If you don’t remember that, then we can just start over from scratch.”

“Okay.” She waited a beat. “Gideon, why don’t you spare me the bullshit and tell me why you’re here.”

He rubbed at his jaw and glanced over Brannon.

“I’d hoped you’d remember more. This is going to come as a shock, Hannah,” Gideon said softly.

“Yeah, well, I’m
not
remembering more,” she snapped. Kicking her legs off the seat, she surged upright and started to pace. “I can’t remember my middle name. Somebody had to tell me. I can only remember half the food I like. I don’t know what I like to eat when I go to the movies or if I even
like
to go to the movies or whether I hate my job or why I was speeding down the highway…”

“You remembered you were speeding.”

She stopped and looked at Gideon, her heart starting to pound.

Sweat pooled at the base of her spine and blood roared in her ears.

“Was I?” she asked.

Neither of them said anything.

Anger started to bleed through her and she spun away from Gideon, storming over to Brannon. Grabbing his arms, she half-shook him. “Is that why I had the wreck? Was I speeding? Hell, was I … was I
drunk
?” She spoke the final words in a whisper. “Did I hurt somebody? Oh … oh,
shit
…”

“No.” Brannon twisted, shifting around until he held her instead of the other way around. “You were on the road heading up from the boat dock. Down by where you keep your houseboat. Something…”

He hesitated.

She watched as his gaze moved over to Gideon.

“Tell me!” she half shouted. “What is it? What did I do, damn it?”

But still Brannon was silent.

There was a quiet, heavy sigh and then, from behind her, she heard Gideon say, “Go on, Brannon. Tell her.”

After Memory

CHAPTER EIGHT

TEN WEEKS LATER

“So … what’s new?”

“I’ll tell you something that isn’t—that question.” Hannah narrowed her eyes at her partner as she slid into the truck next to him. “As a matter of fact, that question is getting decidedly
old.
”

J.P. gave her an innocent smile. “Hey, I’m just asking how you’re doing.”

She made a face at him. “Sure you are.” But she relented and smiled. If it wasn’t for J.P. and some of her other friends, she might not be sitting here in the ambulance,
finally
cleared to go back to work.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she said, punching him lightly in the arm. “I’m just … fed up. I can’t go anywhere, do anything without people asking me if I’ve remembered anything yet.”

He nodded. “They don’t mean nothing by it, kid. You know that.”

“I know. I just…” She grimaced. “I feel like putting a notice in the paper.
Hannah Parker promises to tell everybody as soon as she remembers anything useful
.”

“Well, fat lot of good
that
would do ya.” J.P. started the truck. The radio was buzzing, the chatter a familiar background music that Hannah hadn’t realized she’d missed. “Ya see, people would actually have to pay attention to what you were telling them in order for it to do them any good.”

She rolled her eyes.

But he wasn’t kidding.

She’d been telling people just that for months.

Noooooo … she didn’t remember anything from the night she’d wrecked.

And no, as much as she hated it, she didn’t remember anything that might help find whoever had killed Shayla Hardee. Her mind was no longer the block of Swiss cheese it had been when she’d first woken up. Her life unfolded in bits and pieces, small ones at first, and then bigger ones.

But there was a week of time that was gone.

The last thing she remembered really well?

Brannon.

She’d been staring at him. Again.

She could remember how he’d looked, stripped naked, that body that defied description bared for all the world—or at least
her
—to see. The scowl that tightened his features when he met her gaze, as if he couldn’t understand why she was able to see him.

Because you don’t close your damn curtains, moron
.

And then he had—he’d yanked them shut as if doing so would completely shut her out of his world.

She remembered that.

Beyond that? Nada.

The first real,
solid
memory she had after he shot her that dark, fulminating glare was when he’d barged into her hospital room. Even waking up, the bright lights that had all but blinded her, the overly loud voices of the nurses, the doctor talking to her, his voice hardly connecting in her brain—all of it had seemed surreal, more like a dream than anything else.

It had taken Brannon McKay’s appearance in her room to snap her out of it.

Even after that …

She sighed and rested her head on the miserably uncomfortable seat and waited for J.P. to pull the truck out of the bay.

Movies and books had amnesia wrong. Technically, she’d known that. She was a paramedic. She knew the basics, but knowing the basics from a theoretical standpoint and actually
knowing
it from firsthand experience were two different things.

Man,
did people get amnesia wrong.

Those first few weeks after the coma had been the worst and once friends had started working with her, prodding at her buried memories, bits and pieces had started coming back.

But she felt different.

It was like she was sometimes a stranger in her own skin.

She couldn’t remember things as easily as she used to—she used to think the movie
Fifty First Dates
was the stupidest thing ever, even though medically she understood that people
could
have problems developing short-term memories. A few weeks ago, she’d watched it and bawled like a baby because she understood.

She’d once had a mind like a steel trap. Now she couldn’t go anywhere without notebooks because she had to write down
everything
. She’d gone into the grocery store with one thing in mind. One thing. One thing
only
—she’d even written it down on her hand because she’d lost her notebook. What had she needed? More notebooks.

What had she left the store with?

Tampons. She’d completely forgotten that she’d written herself a note on her hand.

“How’s the little guy?”

Hannah was
pregnant
—she wasn’t going to need tampons for quite a while. Brushing the annoyances of her messed-up memory, her shattered focus aside, she looked down at her belly with a rueful smile.

The slight bulge of her belly concealed yet one more thing she didn’t remember. She rubbed a hand over the hard mound of her belly. She was three and a half months pregnant and although she knew without a doubt who the father was, she didn’t remember anything about it.

“
She
or
he
is doing fine,” she said loftily.

“Brannon ain’t talked you into finding out if it’s a boy or girl, huh?”

She slid J.P. a look. “Since when have you ever known me to be talked into anything?”

J.P. laughed. “True, true.” They merged into traffic. “We have to take Mrs. Leery in for some tests. She fell a little while ago and they’re worried she might have broken her hip.”

“Mrs. Leery.” Hannah closed her eyes, trying to bring a face to mind.

J.P. handed her a high school yearbook. They’d taken to keeping several things like that on hand, yearbooks, photo albums. When it came to people she hadn’t seen since before the wreck, she still needed the occasional jog.

She opened it to the place that was marked by a napkin.

Her heart twisted at the sight of the birdlike face peering up at her and at the rush of emotion, a few memories worked free, followed immediately by more. “I had her for music,” she murmured.

“All of us did. She plays piano at the assisted living center.” J.P. checked the mirror and then cut over, turning left toward the center. “I sure as hell hope she didn’t break that hip.”

*   *   *

“What do you think?”

Brannon rolled the wine around in his mouth, swallowed, and then because he knew it would annoy Marc if he didn’t answer right away, he took another sip.

Marc’s hands tightened on the edge of the counter.

Next to him, Marc’s new assistant Alison pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. If Brannon wasn’t mistaken, and he didn’t think he was, he suspected Alison would be open to being a lot more than just Marc’s assistant. Brannon had no problem with it as long as they could work together if it fell apart, and he suspected they could. But Marc was oblivious. As always.

Alison held her own wine glass in her hand. Her t-shirt read:
My boss lets me drink on the job
.

Marc had told her a hundred times not to wear it.

Brannon told her he loved it, and he had asked her to design some for the shop in town.

It was an endless game between them.

Finally, he lowered the glass and put it on the softly gleaming wood of the bar. “Marc…” He sighed heavily and shook his head.

Marc’s shoulders slumped and he looked crestfallen already.

Brannon smiled. “You’re a genius. It’s fantastic.”

The vintner had wanted to start blending two wines together and Brannon had told him to go for it—he liked the end result and he enjoyed the science of it, but that was Marc’s specialty. If he could be around more, he would have been more hands on.