immediately. But by the time they had knocked on the hotel-room door, she’d been in such a state she hadn’t been thinking straight. And afterward, after they told her what she’d dreaded the most, she’d been too distraught to think of anything but her loss and her guilt. And she’d spent four months grieving and blaming herself for his so-called death.
But grieving wasn’t all she’d done in that time. She’d spent a lot of it thinking, mostly about their hasty courtship and marriage.
Under normal circumstances, there was no way she would have married a man, any man, after only knowing him for a few weeks.
Leah swallowed hard against the tight ache in her throat. But that particular time had been anything but normal, and Hunter wasn’t just any man. She’d been in mourning when she’d met him, mourning for her beloved grandm’ere, the woman who had raised her since she was five. With her parents’ deaths, her grandmother had become everything to her. When her grandmother had died, the world as Leah had known it, along with the love and security she’d always felt, had disappeared.
Hunter had been on an extended medical leave from the New York City Police Department for psychiatric reasons. He’d been involved in a bad shoot-out, and had accidentally shot and killed an innocent bystander, a ten-year-old girl. As a result, he’d been unable to fire a gun ever since.
For Leah, it had been a time of adjustment and mourning, of coming to grips with being all alone in the world. For Hunter, it had been a time to heal.
They had both been vulnerable and needy and had taken solace with each other and within each other’s arms.
Leah suddenly went still as yet another strange discrepancy occurred to her. “There’s something I don’t quite understand,” she told Hunter. “You say you have amnesia. But if you have amnesia, and you didn’t even know your name, why are you here on my doorstep? What made you think that I might know you? In fact, how did you even know where I lived?”
He shrugged. “I guess that does seem kind of strange, even a contradiction of sorts. But I do have an explanation,” he hastened to add. “I was told that there was a good chance I would regain my memory.”
A momentary look of embarrassment crossed his face and he got to his feet. “This might sound weird,” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck and paced the width of the porch in front of her. “But about a month ago I began having flashbacks—memory flashes. Most of them didn’t make sense to me. But in one particular flashback I kept seeing a woman’s face, and an address kept running through my mind.”
He stopped in front of her and motioned toward her. “Your face,” he said. “The same auburn hair, the same brown eyes, the same face.”
Hunter felt heat climb up his neck as he stared at her. He’d seen more than just her face in his recurring flashback, much more. In his mind he’d seen her completely naked. He’d seen himself hovering over her, stroking her, felt her smooth, silky skin, felt her writhing beneath him in the heat of passion, her hands urging him to…
He squeezed his eyes shut. There was no way he could tell her the rest, not until he knew if it what he’d seen in the flashback was true or simply wishful dreaming on his part. With a shake of his head, he opened his eyes then gestured broadly. “And this address. I’m not sure why—” He raked his fingers through his hair. “But, like I said, this address kept flashing through my head. It took me days of hitchhiking to get here from Orlando, but I felt I had to do it or I might not ever find out who I am.”
He dropped down beside her then turned to face her, his left arm across the back of the swing. “I was right, wasn’t I?” Tilting his head to one side he held her gaze. When she nodded, he said, “I need to know what else you can tell me about myself. Please,” he added.
Leah’s mind raced as she considered just how much she should tell him, and after a moment, she decided that divulging some of the facts couldn’t hurt.
“You’re thirty-two years old, and you’re a police officer with the New York City Police Department,” she said. “We met when you took an extended vacation to New Orleans after you were placed on medical leave. You said that you had always wanted to see Mardi Gras but had never had the time off.”
A frown creased his forehead as he mulled over what she’d said, and Leah laced her fingers together tightly in her lap to keep from reaching up to smooth the frown away.
“Medical leave for what?” he finally asked.
As Leah explained about the shoot-out and the ten-year-old girl, a multitude of emotions played over his face. But when she told him the part about him being unable to fire a gun, he stared at her as if she’d just grown horns.
“So it wasn’t just a simple medical leave? I wasn’t physically injured?”
Leah shrugged. “I—I don’t know all the details,” she hedged.
“Who does?”
Leah shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe your captain or your doctor.”
“You mean my shrink, don’t you?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” she repeated slowly, emphasizing each word.
“Then, how do you know me?” he retorted. “And just what was our relationship?”
The answers to his questions stuck in Leah’s throat. She’d known he would eventually ask, and she’d dreaded it, especially since she wasn’t sure how to answer him.
With all of her heart, she wanted to tell Hunter that he was her husband, and she wanted to share with him the wonderful news that he was going to be a father. But even as her hands strayed protectively to her abdomen, a little voice inside warned against revealing everything, warned that she should proceed with caution until she knew more about Hunter’s circumstances. What she’d realized in the months since Hunter’s death was that she didn’t really know him very well at all.
For long moments, a battle raged within her. Tell him… No, don’t tell him. But he’s your husband…but what if there was more to his medical-leave story than he’d admitted? After all, you only know what he told you, and he could have lied, could have lied about everything. Can you afford to take the chance? You’ve got your unborn baby to protect.
Leah finally decided that what she needed was time. Time to digest what he’d told her, and time to further assess his mental state.
“We’re friends,” she finally said. “We’re just really good friends.”
Again, he seemed to mull over what she’d told him, and Leah tensed. She’d never been a good liar, and there was nothing in his expression to indicate whether he did or didn’t believe her. If he didn’t, then what?
After a moment, he finally said, “So, friend, do you have a name?”
Leah’s stomach knotted. He didn’t believe her. Somehow he knew they had been more than just friends, knew that she wasn’t telling the whole truth. “My name is Leah. Leah…Johnson.”
“Leah Johnson,” he repeated slowly, thoughtfully. But to her acute disappointment, his eyes remained blank, without even a spark of recognition. After a moment, he squeezed them tightly shut and whispered, “Damn.”
When Hunter opened his eyes, the brief look of confusion and disappointment that Leah saw in them almost broke her heart. It was evident that he’d hoped that hearing her name would awaken some of his lost memory. But it hadn’t.
“What about family?” he asked. “Do I have any family? Mother, father, brothers or sisters?”
Leah shook her head. Only me, she wanted to say, but she whispered, “No. Your parents both died in an accident when you were a young teenager. After their deaths you lived with an aunt, your mother’s only sister. But she died of cancer not long after you graduated from the police academy.”
Again that same brief, miserable look