Why had she been there? He’d never understood that. She’d been on a highway she didn’t normally travel, on a trip she’d told no one about, carrying divorce papers he would never have signed. It had just been one of the many strange, horrible things about her death.
Finding the car had taken them two harrowing days. Inside, they’d discovered her purse, with her wedding ring tucked into a side pocket, and divorce papers inside a briefcase—but no body. They said her body had been washed away in the rain-swollen river. The search had gone on for interminable days, but divers had found nothing.
Leah had no family. The people from her design studio, already devastated by the recent loss of another artist in the co-op, had held a small memorial service.
Roman had told no one about the divorce papers. His family’s relationship with Leah had been difficult enough while she had been alive. There was no point in making it worse after her death.
But she wasn’t dead.
“I’m Roman,” he said, watching her. Nothing. Still not a flicker. “Roman Bradshaw.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Roman Bradshaw,” she said, “but if you don’t mind, we’re busy tonight.” She turned away.
He let her go because he had no choice. He couldn’t tell her the truth yet. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t know him, and she didn’t want to know him. He couldn’t just waltz in here and claim her like a caveman throwing his woman over his shoulder.
But he wasn’t leaving, either.
Leah laced up her running shoes on the stoop outside the back door of the Shark and Fin. Dawn was breaking over the Atlantic. The sun shone a muted blue-gold glow through the morning clouds. It was chilly this early, but soon it would be hot.
The beach was quiet, empty. She loved this time of day, loved this beach, loved her life on Thunder Key.
She never wanted to leave, and she could only wonder, if she dared, what had taken her so long to get here. But she didn’t dare. She just lived her life, one day at a time. Thunder Key was her heart and soul—the endless water, sun, sand, the laidback lifestyle and friendly people.
Thunder Key was her home, and the people here her family. It was all she knew. And as if she had come desperate, thirsting, straight from the desert, she drank in what the quaint island offered. There was not a second of the past eighteen months on Thunder Key that was not stored precisely, vividly, in her memory.
Which made the fact that she could remember nothing before then that much more startling.
Do you remember me?
The man’s face leaped into her mind. Did she remember him? How could she forget him? Square jaw, intense blue eyes, planed cheeks, thick dark hair and a gorgeous, sexy dimple she’d glimpsed when he’d laughed. He was tall, wide-shouldered. Wealthy, too, she guessed. He had the bearing of a man accustomed to ordering the world to do his bidding. She’d asked around and learned he was staying in a bungalow at the White Seas Hotel, indefinitely.
The attraction had been instant, like being hit by a tidal wave. She had looked across the bar and her heart had gone wild, thumping and pounding. She’d had the insane urge to leap over the bar, throw herself into his arms, and—
What? The same way she’d known instant attraction, she had known instant fear, though she had no idea why.
But if she had learned anything in the past eighteen months, it had been to go with her instincts. Her instincts were all she had.
For example, she didn’t like peas. Cats made her sneeze. And the heart-stoppingly sexy man from the White Seas was dangerous. So she had schooled her features to reflect nothing of her thoughts, and she had stayed as far away from him as possible.
Quickly she looked around now and was relieved to see no one. He knew she ran in the mornings, he’d told her that. I need to talk to you.
She didn’t want to talk to him. She shouldn’t talk to him.
She stood, shoes laced tightly, images flashing through her mind. The man from the night before—smiling, watching, mixed with other, stranger images of the same man, another time, another place—then he was gone and there were no more images, only sensations, sounds. They were the markers of her panic attacks.
She’d had attacks like this before—both sleeping and waking—but not for a while. They had been so painful, so terrifying, that at first she’d thrown up after them.
Then she’d learned to block them. She had stopped trying to remember the past. And the panic attacks had vanished.
But they were back.
Rushing wind. Cold. Darkness. Screaming—her own.
Pain streaked through her temples, almost bending her double. She couldn’t give in to it. She forced herself to straighten, to walk. Then run, run. Breathe. Run.
She had been a runner in her life before Thunder Key; she knew that. She could run for miles. It was her salvation from the pain, from the past. She reached the packed wet sand and she immediately found the contact soothing. She loved to run right along the shoreline. The faster she ran, the faster she could shut down the haunting bits of the past that never came together, only remained in shards that stabbed at her mind.
Somehow the man from the bar had brought the past crashing down on her again. Was that why he was dangerous? Did he remind her of someone from her past?
Or was he someone from her past?
Birds wheeled overhead, their calls breaking the still morning air. She was alone, all alone, but in her head the haunting wind and screams played on. Sometimes she was afraid she was going crazy.
I know who you are, the voice said. Who was she?
Run, run, run. Before her head exploded.
I know what you’ve done. What terrible thing had she done? Why? What kind of person was she? Did she even want to know?
Leah ran faster, faster. Running was the first thing she remembered.
Pitch-black night, lights flashing past, air, just air, and she was dropping, dropping, dropping. Water. Pain. But not so terrible. No, she could move. She could run.
The trucker who had picked her up from the side of the highway had worn a green-checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole over one knee. He had a round, easy face, and kind eyes.
“I’m going south,” he’d said.
“Me, too,” she’d answered. “Thunder Key.”
Where had that come from? She hadn’t even known where Thunder Key was located. It had come out of nowhere, and it had actually scared her, but everything had scared her that night, so she hadn’t let that stop her.
She’d been damp, bruised, shaken. Barely dawn, and she hadn’t known how long she’d been running.
“You got a name?” the trucker had asked.
She hadn’t known what to say. The trucker had reached over, and in the glow of the rig’s dash, had touched the bracelet on her arm.
“Leah.” He’d read the engraved letters. “You got a last name?”
They’d passed an interstate sign: Wells, 1 Mile.
“Leah…Wells.” She’d shivered in the heated cab.
He’d had a road atlas. In the index, she’d found Thunder Key, part of the chain of islands that appeared like an afterthought on the tip of the Florida coast.
The trucker had taken her as far as South Carolina. He’d given her money for a bus ticket from Charleston. He’d insisted.
“A pretty lady like you shouldn’t be hitching,” he’d said.
She’d made him give her his home address, and promised to send him the money. And she’d sent it, a month later,