Private Vows

“I know.” She released his arm and lifted both hands to her face. Hesitantly her slim fingers traced its tear-stained contours as if she’d never felt them before. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know why I wanted to get away from you. Who are you?”

“Cole Grayson. Who are you?”

She touched her face again. When her fingers encountered the edge of the veil, she frowned, fumbled for a second then yanked it off, releasing a cascade of quicksilver-blond hair. She studied the veil, turning it over as if secrets were hidden in its gauzy folds, looked down at the bloody gown then back up at him. The fear in her eyes had escalated to panic and spots of pink stood out on her porcelain cheeks like clown makeup. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

A siren screamed inside Cole’s head. Amnesia. Concussion. Brain damage. His fault.

Her head jerked upward, and he realized the siren was real, not just inside his own haunted mind.

“Ambulance, police, fire truck…maybe all three,” he reassured her. “It’s okay.” Liar!

She nodded. “I know what the sound is. I just don’t know who I am.”

“Relax. You’re probably in shock. You’ll be all right in a few minutes.” Please, God, she’d be all right in a few minutes. Please, God, he hadn’t hurt somebody else. “The blood. Can you tell me where it came from?”

Looking down at her midriff, she brought her hand within half an inch of touching the stain then drew back with a shudder. She bit her lip and shook her head slowly, the slight movement shifting the glow of the streetlights in her shiny hair. “I don’t know that either,” she whispered.

Maybe she was lying. As a P.I. and a former cop, that should be his first response. They all lied.

But some remnant of the man he once was, some remnant long buried and forgotten, believed she was telling the truth. Her fear was too real.

“Did you have a knife? Did you cut that man who scared you?” he pursued, forcing himself to act on logic, to beat back his unreliable emotions.

“Man?” she repeated blankly.

“You don’t remember the man who came up to you, put his hand on your arm, and you started hitting him before you ran into the street?”

She shook her head again. “No. I don’t remember any man.” Her gaze darted from him to the people, the street, the buildings on one side, the creek on the other. He could see and feel her terror expanding to fill her universe as shock loosened its hold and she realized the extent of what had happened to her. She gripped his arm. “How did I get here? Where am I?”

A patrol car squealed up with the ambulance right behind. Doors flew open and police and paramedics swarmed out of the two vehicles.

One of the officers was Pete Townley, and Cole was both glad and embarrassed to see his old friend and former partner…and angry at himself for being embarrassed. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was still performing an honorable service, catching lawbreakers, helping people.

“Hey, buddy,” Pete greeted him. “Can’t stay away from us, can you? What happened here?”

“This lady ran in front of my car and I hit her.”

Pete turned to his partner, a new guy Cole hadn’t met. “See if you’ve got any witnesses in the crowd and take their statements. I’ll deal with this shady character.” He grinned.

The team of paramedics rushed over, and for a few moments everything was chaos. The bride with no name clutched Cole’s arm convulsively as she shook her head to every request the paramedics made.

“Look, lady,” one finally exclaimed in frustration. “We’ve got certain procedures we have to follow for your benefit and ours. You were hit by a car, and you may have a concussion. Standard procedure is for you to lie on this stretcher, let us fasten this cervical collar on your neck and examine you. Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit. You’ll feel better and so will we.”

The bride’s grip on Cole’s arm tightened. “No.”

Cole patted her hand. “It’ll be all right. These men want to help you and I need to talk to the officer a minute.”

“Don’t leave me! You’re the only person I know here.” She looked around frantically. “The only person I know in the whole world.”

She sure had changed her tune, and it made him damn nervous. Cole had his spot in life. He caught embezzlers, con artists, insurance-scam criminals. What he didn’t do—what he hadn’t done even when he was on the police force—was successfully rescue damsels in distress.

“You don’t know me,” he protested.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly calmer as she stared directly into his eyes. “Yes, I do know you and I trust you.”

He wasn’t sure what she saw in his gaze; certainly not the truth or she wouldn’t trust him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a sigh. “The cops won’t let me leave until they get their pound of flesh.”

Reluctantly she consented to lying on the stretcher for the examination, but adamantly refused to permit the paramedics to put on the collar or the backboard. As they checked her vital signs, her gaze remained fixed on him, clutching him as if he were a lifeline. He fought back a laugh…or a grimace…at the irony of that concept.

“Long time no see,” Pete said. “What’s going on? You so hard up for a woman you’ve taken to running them down?” Pete grimaced immediately, pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his bright red hair. “Aw, geez, I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cole shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans and made himself smile. “Forget it. Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Angela either until you started falling all over yourself apologizing.”

It was a lie, but only a half lie. Of course he’d been thinking about Angela, about her still body covered in blood, about her fragility, about his role in her death. Pete’s careless joke hadn’t affected that one way or the other.

“Listen, you might want to check the sidewalk and the grass for blood or some kind of weapon. She ran from between those buildings and got into a struggle with a sleazy guy who came up, probably harmless, begging, but he did grab her arm. She got away from him and ran into the street, right in front of my car. I don’t think she had time to injure the guy, but you never know.”

Pete nodded and went to check out the scene.

Cole could feel the woman’s needy eyes on him, pulling him as a magnet, and he returned his attention to her, moving closer to where she lay reluctantly on the stretcher. “She okay?” he asked.

“Seems to be,” one of the paramedics answered. “We still need to take her in, though. Just a precaution since she appears to have some memory loss.”

“No!” The bride pushed aside the paramedics and raised herself to a sitting position. Terror showed in her gaze, her trembling lips, the shaky, beseeching hand she lifted to him. “Don’t let them take me. Please don’t let him take me!”

He squatted beside her, gently easing her back onto the stretcher. “Shh. Just relax, okay?”

Him? Don’t let him take me? Why had she used the singular pronoun the second time when there were two paramedics? Was something else going on here besides a fear of being taken to the hospital by strangers?

“I’m all right now, really I am. I remember my name and where I live. It’s…Mary Jackson, and I live at…1492 Main Street.”

She was definitely lying now, making it up on the spot, her eyes begging him to believe her, to help her, looking at him as if he were a hero or Marshall Dillon. Well, he wasn’t. He was just a former cop who hadn’t even been able to protect his own family, so what did she want from him?

He rose abruptly, doing her the favor of breaking away from her.

“What day is it?” the paramedic asked, his voice gentle. He knew she was lying, too.

Tears flooded her eyes, but she bit her lip and blinked them back, then looked around her. The curious crowd chafed at the police tape as they tried to get a closer look, and a steady stream of cars inched along while drivers gawked at the scene.

“Saturday.” A good guess from the number of people out and about. “It’s Saturday night. I don’t know the date. Do you?” she challenged.

Cole shifted his stance from one foot to the other and released a long breath. The woman, in spite of being in a complete panic, not knowing who or where she was, had guts. He had to give her that. “I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said, cursing himself even as the words slipped out of his mouth. “I’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”

She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, then, as if suddenly aware of the bloodstain she was touching, she dropped them to her sides with a shudder. “I can’t get in that ambulance. Please don’t make me.” Claustrophobia? A bad experience in an ambulance?

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “You can ride with me. I’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked in. I guess I owe you that much since I’m the one who ran you down.”