said I darted in front of your car. If you hadn’t acted quickly, I could have been killed. So I guess what I know about you is that you saved my life.”
His lips twisted upward in a cynical imitation smile. “That’s a nice theory. I’ll try real hard to buy into it.” His gaze retreated into the shadowed depths of his own soul for a moment, then he shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”
He was getting ready to leave, taking with him the only connection, tenuous and brief though it was, that she had to herself, to the person she’d been before the accident, the only familiar element in this unfamiliar world.
“Tell me about the man I struggled with,” she entreated, interrupting him before he could declare his intention to leave, thereby making it irrevocable. “What did he look like? The police kept asking me, and I don’t know. They asked if I knew him, and I don’t know. They asked if the blood on my dress belonged to him, if I wounded him, and I don’t know.” She bit her lip as she realized her voice was rising, panic spilling over the edges of her words.
He moved to sit beside her on the bed, the mattress sinking with his weight, creating the sensation that, if she relaxed, she could slide against his body, into him, let herself be swallowed up in his strength.
She held herself rigidly against the temptation to do just that.
He gazed at her for a long moment and she saw that his eyes were actually hazel, the brown streaked with green like a tree in April, dead from winter’s cold but ready to burst into bloom with the warmth of spring. However, the torment that welled up from the depths gave the lie to that green promise.
He raised his hand and for a second she thought he was going to take hers, but instead he raked his fingers through his shaggy hair then dropped them to his denim-encased thigh. “I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. Average size, average height, dark hair. I think he was probably a homeless person, looking for a handout. They sleep in the parks around the area. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”
“Then I must have had the blood all over me before. Did I? When you first saw me, was there blood on my dress?”
“I don’t know.” He grinned wryly. “You see? You’re not the only one who has to admit that. If you want my opinion, though, I’d say you did. The blood was several minutes old by the time I got to you. That could be one reason that guy approached you. He could have been trying to help a beautiful woman who might be hurt.”
An involuntary, unexpected thrill darted through her and she touched her face, examining the unfamiliar contours. “Am I beautiful?”
“You don’t know what you look like? No, I guess you don’t.”
“Nobody had a mirror in the emergency room. They told me to wait until I got up here, but I haven’t looked yet. I’m not sure I can deal with seeing a stranger staring back at me.” Even as she said it, she felt shame for her cowardice, for being so frightened of everything, even her own face.
“To answer your question, yeah. You’re beautiful.” His words were complimentary but his tone was cold. For a brief instant, green fire seemed to flicker in the depths of his eyes, a fire that could heat a woman to the boiling point, past that and beyond, a fire that brought her body to tingling awareness. But that green flame died as quickly as it came.
If it had ever truly been there in the first place and not just her imagination, something she wanted to see.
“You’re beautiful like one of those cups with flowers painted on them that you see in antique shops,” he continued, his words so detached she was sure she’d imagined that brief spurt of flame. “The kind a guy’s afraid to pick up because it might break if he held it too tight.”
It was a pretty accurate description of the way she felt, but she bristled anyway. “Wouldn’t you be feeling a little fragile and a whole lot scared if you suddenly lost yourself?” She blurted the defense as much for herself as for him.
“Yeah, I guess I would be.” His square, black-stubbled jaw and the straight line of his lips contradicted his words.
With the clarity about others that must have come when she lost herself, she knew that Cole Grayson had met the devil and challenged him on his own turf. Considering the torment that lived behind his eyes, he might have lost the battle, but even so, he’d survived and nothing frightened him anymore.
“Would you hand me that other hospital gown from the foot of the bed?” she asked. “It’s the only pretense of a robe they could give me and I want to see what I look like.” She wasn’t sure whether her sudden courage came from the fact that Cole had enough strength for two people and she was able to absorb some of it, or whether his stoic demeanor shamed her into the action.
He rose from the bed, handed her the gown and waited.
She wrapped it around, covering the open back of the first gown.
Even so, when she stepped out of bed, she felt naked and exposed…and acutely aware of Cole’s masculine presence in the small room.
That was silly. The gowns, one tied in the back and the other in the front, hid her body effectively. Anyway, Cole was there as a rescuer. He had certainly not given her any reason to think he was interested in her body. He’d all but said she looked as if she might break if a man held her too tightly…and he looked like a man who would hold a woman very tightly.
She moved around the bed, carefully avoiding the mirror above the sink in the corner of the room. Facing herself wasn’t going to be easy.
Cole came up behind her, so close she could feel his body heat, smell his masculine scent combined with something else…something dark and dangerous and scary and exciting.
He flipped on the light above the sink then put both hands on her shoulders. “Go ahead,” he urged, his voice as startlingly gentle as his touch. “Maybe when you see yourself, everything will come back. You said the doctors thought the sight of a familiar face might help. You can’t get much more familiar than your own.”
She lifted her gaze slowly, as if she could sneak up on the strange woman she knew she would find in the mirror.
It was a pale, thin face with prominent cheekbones and overly large eyes. Long blond hair failed to add any color.
The image belonged to her, housed the brain she used to speak and walk. It was the woman other people saw when they looked at her. She ate with that mouth, smelled with that nose, saw through those eyes, combed that hair.
Though she couldn’t say the features were familiar, the tight, frightened expression somehow was.
She raised her eyes to Cole’s, looking for something—reassurance, courage, answers he couldn’t possibly have.
What she found instead was a flaring of the green flame she’d seen so briefly before, a fire that reminded her he was, after all, a man, an attractive, virile man, and she was a woman wearing nothing underneath the short hospital gowns.
For an instant, inappropriate thoughts and feelings flooded her mind and her body. Though Cole didn’t move, she could feel his heat against her skin, tracing down her spine and over her bottom, warming her thighs just as his breath warmed the nape of her neck.
He blinked, took his hands from her shoulders and stepped backward. “Recognize anybody?” he asked, his voice gruff with angry overtones. Anger at her? At himself?
“No.” Her answer came out on a breathy sigh and she was appalled to find her body yearning for him to return, to stand behind her, to touch her again. Her memory might be gone, but her hormones were working overtime.
Stress, she told herself. A reaction to the accident, to everything that had happened. So much stress that she’d imagined for a second time the brief flicker of desire in Cole’s eyes, imagined it and overreacted.
She cleared her throat and tried again to answer his question. “If I’d seen a picture, I wouldn’t have been able to identify