Private Vows

Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.

Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.

He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Chapter Two

Jane Doe.

That’s what she’d heard the doctors and nurses calling her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and she hated it. Bad enough she’d lost all memory of self, but everyone’s insistence on using that generic, no-identity name stole any remaining sense of self.

They said it was normal that she could remember dates from history and the names of country singers but not whether she liked those country singers, not who she went to concerts with, nothing about the classroom where she’d learned those historical dates. Nothing personal. Nothing that made her anything more than a zombie with no soul and no name.

She tucked the hospital sheet more tightly around her as if that thin material could keep out the demons. She couldn’t remember their names or faces, but she knew they were there, watching from dark, soulless eyes, waiting to snare her with twisted claws.

The man who said he’d hit her with his car, Cole Grayson, the one person she’d felt connected to in this strange world, had brought her to the hospital and turned her over to the others then left. They had poked, prodded and examined every inch of her mind and body. She’d hated it, hated the invasion, hated and feared the strangers…medical personnel and police officers…with their questions she couldn’t answer and their sly insinuations that she might be lying.

Finally they’d put her in her own room and left her alone, and that was the worst of all. She was alone without even herself for company. But at least she was out of that horrible dress that had imprisoned her with its endless yards of fabric and the sticky blood that stained the front and clung to her skin like some foul creature. Even now, bathed and wearing a clean hospital gown, the metallic scent seemed to linger in her nostrils and on her tongue.

As she lay staring into the darkness, the door to her room opened. It made no sound except for a whisper of a sigh when it moved through the air, but she heard it and a nameless terror rose inside her. Pressing her nails into her palms, she fought the urge to bury her head under the sheet.

Instead, she forced herself to sit up and face the intruder.

He hesitated half in and half out of the doorway, the light from the hall turning him to a dark silhouette, unrecognizable except that he was the only recognizable element in this shadow world she’d been thrust into.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said. Cole Grayson, the man who’d caused her to be in this hospital in the first place, yet the only person her heart trusted even while her mind warned her against such insanity.

“No. I wasn’t asleep.”

He moved inside, closed the door and flipped the wall switch, flooding the sterile room with light. He was tall with wide shoulders that stretched the fabric of the blue knit shirt as it molded to clearly defined muscles. Faded jeans hugged muscular thighs. His brown hair was shaggy, had seen too many weeks between haircuts, and his square jaw was accented by the dark shadow of a man who needed to shave twice a day and hadn’t.

His appearance said he observed the rudiments of a civilized dress code but actually didn’t much care what he looked like. He bordered on disreputable and was surely someone she shouldn’t trust at all.

Yet there was a desolate emptiness somewhere behind his brown eyes that reached inside her and drew her to him, a sadness she suspected most people didn’t see. It was that desolate emptiness, an echo of what she felt inside herself, that had made her trust him while she was still in the middle of the street, virtually under the wheels of his car.

No, that wasn’t all of it. Behind her emptiness lay fear; behind his lay a stone wall strong enough to support that emptiness, to keep it from devouring him. She was drawn to that strength, to that stone wall, to the only security she’d seen so far in this unknown world into which she’d awakened.

“I brought your engagement ring back.” He walked over to the bed and laid the shiny object on her night-stand. She looked at it, somehow expecting it to take on a life of its own, to coil and snarl and attack her.

“I must have loved the man who gave it to me,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, you must have. I don’t think men go around giving that kind of jewelry to women who hate them.”

In vain she searched her memory for a picture of that man, for the love she must have felt for him, for some reason that would explain why she had such an aversion to the ring.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt badly,” Cole continued. “I talked to the cops, gave them my statement, and the officer said you were okay except for a little bruising, especially around your wrists. That guy you were struggling with must have grabbed you pretty hard.”

She lifted her hands and looked at the black-and-blue marks that marred the arms she didn’t recognize. Had she always been this thin or had she been sick? What event had occurred in her life to cause that small scar? Did she break that fingernail when she fell or when she grappled with the man on the street…or during whatever struggle had left all that blood on her dress?

“I guess he must have grabbed me hard. I don’t remember.”

“The doctors think you will, though. Soon.”

She nodded. “I know. They told me. Officer Townley said they’re checking missing-persons reports and they’ll put my picture in the paper and on the news. Somebody will recognize me. The doctor said as soon as I see a familiar face, that could jog my memory.” It all sounded quite logical. So why didn’t she believe it? Why did she fear being stuck in this foggy land of nowhere for the rest of her life?

“Yeah. The guy who gave you that ring is probably frantic right now. As soon as he sees your picture, he’ll come to take you home.”

“Yes,” she said. “If he’s still alive. If he’s not the man whose blood was all over my dress.” A memory beat leathery bat wings against the dark, closed windows of her mind.

“I don’t want that thing,” she blurted, scooting as far away from the diamond and from the almost-memory as she could in the narrow bed.

Cole looked as her as though she were nuts. Well, wasn’t she?

He rubbed the back of his neck, the gesture causing his biceps to bulge so that the sleeve of his shirt seemed certain to tear. He was a big man, a strong man. He could hurt anybody he chose to hurt, especially someone as defenseless as she.

Yet she felt no fear of him. Instinctively she knew that he would use that strength to protect her, and she desperately needed protection right now…from the dark, unknown terrors hiding in her mind, as well as from the unknown world around her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I told you, I’m Cole Grayson.”

“That’s not what I mean. They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. That might even be my name, or maybe it’s Sarah Smith or Mary Jackson. But whatever it is, a name doesn’t tell anything about who I am or who you are.”

He gazed down at her for a long moment then finally turned away and angled a hip onto the windowsill, studying their reflections in the dark glass. “I’m nobody you want to know.”

A gray veil of desolation emanated from him. She could see it, feel it in the weight of the air, smell the leaden scent, taste the bitter agony. Perhaps because her mind was completely empty of her own emotions, his came to her, strong and clear.

“I don’t have a choice right now,” she said. “You’re the only person I know.”

“What do you know about me, other than the fact that I ran you down in the street?”

“You said I darted in front of your car. If you hadn’t acted quickly, I could have been killed. So I guess what I know about you is that you saved my life.”

His lips twisted upward in a cynical imitation smile. “That’s a nice theory. I’ll try real hard to buy into it.” His gaze retreated into the shadowed depths of his own soul for a moment, then he shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing better.”

He was getting ready to leave, taking with him the only connection, tenuous and brief though it was, that she had to herself, to the person she’d been before the accident, the only familiar element in this unfamiliar world.

“Tell me about the man I struggled with,” she entreated, interrupting him before he could declare his intention to leave, thereby making it irrevocable. “What did he look like? The police kept asking me, and I don’t know. They asked if I knew him, and I don’t know. They asked if the blood on my dress belonged to him, if I wounded him, and I don’t know.” She bit her lip as she realized her voice was rising, panic spilling over the edges of her words.

He moved to sit beside her on the bed, the mattress sinking with his weight, creating the sensation that, if she relaxed, she could slide against his body, into him, let herself be swallowed up in his strength.

She held herself rigidly against the temptation to do just that.

He gazed at her for a long moment and she saw that his eyes were actually hazel, the brown streaked with green like a tree in April, dead from winter’s cold but ready to burst into bloom with the warmth of spring. However, the torment that welled up from the depths gave the lie to that green promise.

He raised his hand and for a second she thought he was going to take hers, but instead he raked his fingers through his shaggy hair then dropped them to his denim-encased thigh. “I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. Average size, average height, dark hair. I think he was probably a homeless person, looking for a handout. They sleep in the parks around the area. I don’t think he meant to hurt you.”

“Then I must have had the blood all over me before. Did I? When you first saw me, was there blood on my dress?”