A Season To Believe

“A jacket? It’s beautiful out.”

“Sun or no sun, the wind on the coast can be quite chilly. You need a jacket.”

With a nod, Jane turned. Matt watched her cross the foyer and start up the stairs, then noticed the way her sneaker-clad feet bounced off each step as she lightly ran up. It seemed like yesterday that he and Manny had escorted Jane, enveloped in a navy sweat suit that only served to emphasize her extreme thinness, to the hospital’s physical therapy department.

Lying in bed for a month, comatose, had given the pelvic fracture she’d suffered in the accident time to heal, but the inactivity had left her as weak as a baby—she was going to have to learn to walk all over again. He and Manny had watched like proud parents as she gripped waist-high parallel bars, then wobbled like a newborn colt as she slowly made her way down the length of the track.

There was nothing spindly or wobbly about Jane now, Matt noticed as she neared the landing. The cut of her faded jeans hugged slender but shapely legs, and her hips had rounded into decidedly womanly curves.

“She has grown much in the past year.”

Zoe’s words made Matt realize where his thoughts had been leading. He turned to the older woman, aware his face had grown uncomfortably warm.

“It seems she has done exactly what she said she would,” he said. “Created a life for herself, on her terms.”

“Yes, she has. She has turned her lack of memory from a handicap to a strength.”

“How so?”

“With no preconceived concept of what she could or could not do, she approaches each challenge with an open mind, along with the assumption that she can succeed.”

Matt mulled this over. “After her accident, one of Jane’s doctors told a reporter that the bruising her brain took may have resulted in permanent memory loss. Do you agree with that assessment?”

Zoe shook her head. “No.”

“Well, Jane mentioned that you haven’t been pushing her to regain her memory. Do you think it’s wrong for me to encourage Jane to remember her past?”

“Not at all. Jane was disheartened when the hypnosis sessions in the hospital were unsuccessful. It would have been cruelty on my part to force her repeatedly to search her memory, only to encounter emptiness. But yesterday’s incident indicates that her mind, and perhaps her spirit as well, has recovered to the point that she can access and, more importantly, accept whatever she remembers.”

Hearing the sound of feet on the stairs above, Matt asked quickly, “Do you have any suggestions about how to handle this? Do I get her to relax, like you did yesterday? Or should I try to push her into remembering?”

Zoe seemed to consider his question for several seconds before she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Try one first. If that doesn’t work, try the other.”

“All right, now,” Matt said. “I want you to close your eyes and keep them that way until I tell you differently.”

It had taken Matt and Jane over an hour to cross the Golden Gate Bridge and drive up Highway One. After turning on a road leading west, Matt had pulled onto the side of the road, then turned to face Jane before issuing his order.

“Close my eyes?” she repeated.

“Yes. And keep them shut.”

“I thought we came here so I could identify the beach I saw in my memory. I can hardly do that with my eyes closed.”

“No, the prime objective here is to provoke further memories. Although your description was pretty sketchy, I’m fairly certain I have the right place. Remember, I grew up surfing these beaches.”

“So, you think it will be more effective to lead me to the area, then spring it on me all at once.”

“Exactly. Ready? Close your eyes.”

Once Jane had obeyed his order, Matt put the Jeep in drive. Several minutes later, he turned onto the road that would lead them to Limantour Beach. It took him beneath a canopy of cypress trees, then wound down through a sea of golden grass and a crescent of sand that arched to the right, ending at the foot of a sheer cliff that jutted out to the sea.

“Tell me,” he said, “just how do you create these magical dolls of yours.”

“Well, I sculpt the faces, hands and feet from a polymer clay, which hardens in the oven. The bodies are made of wire and stuffing, held together with fabric bodies. But they aren’t meant to be played with, like dolls. They’re collectibles.”

Matt glanced at her. “People collect elves?”

“People collect all sorts of things, it seems. Zoe’s cousin Clara in Maine makes very realistic little men, women and children. She creates three or four new characters each year, and collectors from all over the country buy her numbered pieces.”

“Nice of her to teach you to do this.”

“Well, actually, she’s published a book on her technique. I used it as a jumping-off point to create my own little world, and I assume others do that, too.”

Matt downshifted as he neared the dirt parking lot. “I had no idea there was such a market for…”

“Fantasy figures?” Jane finished for him. “I didn’t, either, but Clara took a few of my pieces to one of the stores that carry her things, and mine sold out right away. So, I made more when I got back to San Francisco, got a few specialty shops to carry them, then participated in a couple of craft fairs this summer, and the thing just mushroomed. Since July I’ve been really busy. I decided to adapt my faces to create special Santas and his little helpers in place of woodland elves and make angels instead of fairies. That’s one of the reasons I was downtown yesterday. I delivered some of these to a place called The Gift Box, and they asked me to make even more.”

“It seems you’ve become quite the businesswoman,” Matt said as he pulled into a parking space overlooking the beach, then added teasingly, “I hope you have someone you trust keeping your books.”

He switched off the engine and turned to Jane.

“I suppose,” she said in a mock huff, “that crack was a veiled reference to my mathematical abilities.”

“No,” Matt said as he opened his door. “It’s a direct reference to your decided lack of said abilities.”

Before Jane could respond to this allusion to what he and Manny had termed her “numerical dyslexia,” Matt slid from his seat and said, “Stay where you are,” before snapping his door shut and stepping around to her side of the car.

“I’ll have you know,” she said the moment he opened her door, “that I have managed to master math. The important stuff, at any rate. I can add, subtract, divide, multiply and figure fractions with the best. The rest is superfluous. The idea of adding a’s and b’s and coming up with x’s is an exercise in futility, if you ask me.”

Matt hooked his hand over the top of the door’s frame, noticing the way Jane’s closed eyes wrinkled as she blindly reached for the buckle of her seat belt. That intense concentration of hers was a wonder to behold. It was the secret, he suspected, behind her swift recovery from the sort of injuries that had kept muscular linebackers out of commission far longer than they had this delicately boned girl.

Woman, he corrected himself when, freed of her seat belt, Jane pivoted toward him, slid out of her seat, then stumbled into his arms.

For the second time in two days Matt found himself holding her close to him. For one moment, he wondered if he could somehow absorb the joy that seemed to emanate from her, even when she was frightened. He had once responded to life that way, too, thrilled by the surge of adrenaline that came with walking the tightrope between safety and danger. He hadn’t experienced that since leaving the hospital.

Until yesterday—when he’d walked into Maxwell’s security office and gone to Jane’s defense.

And now, the idea that Jane had begun to remember, that there was a chance he might solve a crime that had its origins back in the days before Manny died, before he had given up the career he loved, seemed to promise that he could reawaken the passion he’d brought to his old job.

Slowly, as Matt continued to hold Jane, he became aware of the awakening of a different sort of passion, the kind that heated his body, tempted him to tighten his arms around the woman he was holding, to lower his mouth to kiss lips that were still softly parted with surprise.

He just as quickly became aware of how inappropriate it was to feel this way toward the subject of an investigation.

After checking to see that Jane had gained her footing, he released her and stepped back in one quick motion. Instantly, her eyes flew open, surprised and tinged with hurt.

A second later she shut her eyes and muttered, “Sorry,” in a voice more husky than usual.

Damn. Matt’s jaw tightened. Keeping his distance from Jane Ashbury was going to be a challenge, and today it might even prove to be a conflict of interest.