A Husband To Remember

Accident? The breath of fear blew through her insides, and she wished she could run again, that her body would support her and she could get away...to...where?

“I don’t think I’d feel safer—”

“But you would be. With me.”

“I don’t even know you,” she said, stark terror beginning to seize her throat.

Sighing, he shoved a hand through his unruly mane. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this. The doctor doesn’t want you getting upset.”

Her patience snapped and she threw caution to the wind. “I can’t remember anything! I don’t remember my life, my job, my parents, my family, and I certainly don’t remember you! I’m already way past upset!”

His mouth twisted heartlessly as his cruel mask slipped easily back into place. “I think we’d better wait for Padillo. See what he has to say.”

There was an edge to his voice that caused sweat to gather at her nape. She couldn’t remember the men she’d dated, but she would swear on her very life that none of those men would look like a rough-and-tumble backwoodsman with hawk-sharp eyes, angular features and scuffed boots. She noticed the beat-up leather jacket tossed carelessly over the back of his chair and the worn heels of his boots. He moved restlessly as if he were a man used to looking over his shoulder. Her throat went dry with fear. He was a con man? Someone sent to kidnap her? Or was he really her husband?

Her mind raced with a thousand reasons why she might be kidnapped, but she didn’t think she was rich or famous or the daughter of some tycoon. She didn’t feel like a political radical or a criminal or anything.... But for some reason this man wanted her, or the people in the hospital, to think that they were married.

She couldn’t remember much, but she was convinced this impostor was not her husband.

But who would believe her on this island? Certainly not Nurse Vásquez, who obviously thought that Trent was besotted with her. But maybe the doctor. If she could talk to Dr. Padillo alone, perhaps she could convince him that something was very wrong.

Trent peered out the window, as if he were searching for someone in the parking lot below.

“I think if I really was married to you, I’d know it,” she said.

“You’ll remember,” he predicted, though no warmth came over his face. He rested his hips on the sill, his gaze shifting from her to the crucifix mounted on the wall, the only decoration in the otherwise stark room. “As soon as I get you out of here.”

“But you can’t,” she said, desperation creeping into her soul. Alone with this man—with no recollections of the past?

He smiled with cold patience. “I’m your husband, Nikki, and now that you’re awake, I’m going to ask the doctor to release you as soon as you’re well enough to go home.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c8c88788-b135-5fc7-b29c-3c80d4b55957)

“So she wakes up!” the doctor said, poking his head into Nikki’s hospital room. Short and round, with a wide smile, dark eyes and a horseshoe of gray hair, he strode into the room with the air of a man in charge. “Buenos días, you are the sleeping beauty, sí?”

Nikki felt anything but beautiful. Her entire body ached and she knew her face was scratched and bruised. “Buenos días,” she murmured, glad to finally see someone who might be able to help her.

The doctor picked up her chart from its cradle at the foot of the bed and scanned the page. His lab coat, a size too small, strained around his belly, and when he looked up and grinned a glimmer of gold surrounded a few of his teeth. Small, wire-rimmed glasses were perched on his flat nose. “I’m Dr. Padillo,” he said as he dropped the chart and moved in close with his penlight, carefully peeling back Nikki’s eyelid and shining the tiny beam in her eye. “¿Qué tal se siente hoy?”

“Pardon?”

“She doesn’t speak Spanish.” Trent’s voice caused her to stiffen slightly.

With the small beam blinding her, Nikki couldn’t see Trent, but she sensed that he hadn’t moved from his post near the window. He’d spent hours sitting on the ledge or restlessly pacing near the foot of the bed.

“Dr. Padillo asked how you were feeling today.” As the penlight snapped off she caught a glimpse of him, leaning against the sill, one hip thrown out at a sexy angle.

“The truth?” Nikki asked, blinking.

“Nothing but,” Trent said.

“Like I was ground up into hamburger.”

Padillo’s eyebrows shot up and he removed his glasses. “¿Cómo?”

Trent said something in quick Spanish and the doctor smiled as he polished the lenses of his wire-rims with the corner of his lab coat. He slid his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose. “So you have not lost your sense of humor, eh?”

“Just my memory.”

“Is this right?” he asked Trent and Nikki was more than a little rankled. It wasn’t Trent’s memory that was missing, it was hers, and she resented the two men discussing her.

“Yes, it’s right,” she said a little angrily.

Scowling, Padillo checked her other eye, clicked off his light and glanced at Trent, who had shoved himself upright and was standing in her line of vision. His features were stern and the air of impatience about him hadn’t disappeared. Dr. Padillo rubbed his chin. “You are a very lucky woman, Señora McKenzie. We were all worried about you. Especially your husband.”

“Worried sick,” Trent added, and Nikki thought she heard a trace of mockery in his voice. His cool gaze flicked to her before returning to the doctor.

Shifting on the bed, she grimaced against a sudden pain in her leg. “I feel like I broke every bone in my body.”

Padillo smiled a bit, not certain that she was joking. “The bones—they are fine. And except for your—” he glanced at Trent “—tobillo.”

“Your ankle. It’s sprained but not broken,” Trent told her, though she would rather have heard the news from the doctor himself. The thought of Trent and Padillo discussing her injuries or anything else about her made her stomach begin to knot in dread.

“Sí. The ankle, it is swollen, but lucky not to be broken.”

She supposed she should believe him, but lying in the hospital bed, her body aching, Trent acting as her husband or jailer, she felt anything but lucky.

“Your muscles are sore and you have the cuts and scrapes—contusions. Lacerations. You will be—” he hesitated.

“Black and blue?” Trent supplied.

Doctor Padillo grinned. “Sí. Bruised. But you will live, I think.” His dark eyes twinkled as he touched her lightly on the arms and neck, lifting her hospital gown to expose more of her skin as he eyed the abrasions she could feel on her abdomen and back. “This must be kept clean and covered with antibiotic cream so that she heals and does not get the infection,” he told Trent. To underscore his meaning, he pointed at a scrape that ran beneath her right arm and the side of her ribs, and the air touched the side of her breast.

A tide of embarrassment washed up her face and neck, which was ridiculous if Trent really was her husband. Surely he’d seen her dressed in much less than the hospital gown. Her breasts weren’t something new to him. Yet she was grateful when the thin cotton dropped over her side and afforded her a little bit of modesty.

The headache that had been with her most of the time she was awake started thundering again and hurt all over. Her entire right side was sore and she was conscious of the throbbing in her ankle. Padillo listened to her heartbeat through a stethoscope and asked her to show him that she could make a fist and sit up. She did as she was bid, then hazarded a glance in Trent’s direction, hoping that he had the decency to stare out the window, but his eyes were trained on her as if he had every right to watch as the doctor examined her.

“Ooh!” she cried when Padillo touched her right foot.

The doctor frowned slightly. “Tiene dolor aquí.”

“What?”

“He says you have a pain there—in your foot.”

“Mucho pain,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Sí.” Padillo placed the sheet and woven blanket over her body again. “It will be...tender for a few days, but should be able to carry your weight by the end of the week.” Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his coat, he added, “We were wondering if you were ever going to wake up.”