The men had been fed, the kitchen was back in good order, and Matt was working in his office. Hope and he had hardly spoken that evening, and she hated the foolish, unnecessary animosity between them. In truth she really didn’t understand it, no more than she understood Matt himself, although her chat with Chuck that morning about Matt’s financial plight had given her something to ponder for the rest of the day…and to stress over.
If she had the wherewithal to help him over this rough spot, she’d do it in a heartbeat, she thought repeatedly. After all, at the very least he’d rescued her from the elements, and quite possibly he’d arrived on the scene just in time to save her from the red-haired man.
Thinking in that vein, Hope realized there were things about that day that weren’t clear to her. If Matt had explained it all, then she must have been too woozy at the time to digest the information. Maybe she shouldn’t interrupt Matt while he was engrossed in paperwork, but she felt that she really must talk to him.
She rapped on the office door and heard a gruff, “Come in.”
Opening the door, she shaped a smile and tried not to look guilty for bothering him. “Could I have a few minutes of your time?”
He wanted to say no. He wanted to say, “Keep away from me, Hope,” but what came out of his mouth was an almost cordial, “Sure. Come on in and sit down.”
Matt toyed with his pen while she took the chair directly in front of his desk. She made him nervous. He couldn’t look at her without burning-hot memories searing his conscience, which didn’t relieve the yearning for more of the same that attacked his system whenever they were together. He inhaled slowly and quietly and tried to ignore all the signs of arousal he was feeling and dared not act upon. His inner warfare caused his face to harden, and when he turned his eyes on Hope, she saw in them glints of resentment. Unnerved because he so didn’t want her in there with him, she drew a breath and rushed into her reasons for asking for a few minutes of his time.
“It occurred to me that I hardly know what took place the day you found me, and I also believe I recall the face of the man I was running from.”
Was she speaking of a genuine recollection? Her first? Was this the start of a chain reaction that would perhaps start slowly but then gain momentum until she was flooded with memory? Why did that idea unnerve him so much? God knew he’d be better off without a sensual woman underfoot constantly causing him lustful urges.
He cleared his throat. “That’s, uh, good. I guess.”
Hope was disappointed in his lukewarm response. “He has red hair,” she said.
Matt frowned. She had managed to pique his curiosity with that definitive but incomplete description. “Are you talking about the man in your nightmares?”
Hope leaned forward. “Yes, but this wasn’t a nightmare, this was an honest-to-goodness memory. I hit him on the head with a whiskey bottle, then I ran from the motel room. I kept running and it was pouring rain and my chest hurt, but I kept running because I knew he was behind me.”
Matt’s pulse went wild. Wouldn’t he just love to get his hands on the bastard that had caused her—and him—such distress?
“Do you recall the location of the motel?” he asked anxiously.
Hope sighed. “I wish I did, but no.”
“How about how long a time you ran? Or how far?”
“Not exactly, but I’m positive I ran for a long time.” Hope’s eyes glazed over as she recalled again the awful burning in her chest that night, the fear of stopping and the pounding rainfall. Her eyes cleared. “You’re doubting me, aren’t you?”
He’d been thinking again about “life after Hope,” and how a man could know what was best for him and still dive headfirst into the deep end of a shark-infested pool.
“No, I’m not doubting you,” he said with a grim twist to his lips. After a few moments, he added quietly, “I could never doubt you. You said the man has red hair?”
Hope’s heart skipped a beat, because he’d sounded so loving and kind, showing once again that side of him that had made her trust and possibly even love him.
“Very red hair,” she replied, hearing a huskiness in her own voice that was a result of her considering the possibility of having fallen in love with Matt. She couldn’t think about it now, but she knew she would, later on when she was by herself.
“And you also remember his face?”
“His features aren’t as clear in my mind as his hair is, but I think I would recognize him if I saw him again.” A shudder suddenly shook her. “Not that I want to see him again, God forbid. The mere thought of it chills my blood.”
“He really did terrify you, didn’t he?” Matt clenched his hands into fists. Picturing himself smashing his fist into that terrorist’s face was a gratifying fantasy. It won’t be fantasy if he ever shows himself to me!
“Yes, and I have to wonder why. I don’t mean why was I terrified. I mean, why was I with him in the first place? Did I know him? Did I willingly meet him in that motel room?”
Matt was convinced now that his kidnapping theory was a lot more fact than fiction. But Hope’s questions warranted some exploration. Had she known her kidnapper, willingly gone to the motel with him and then realized she was in danger? That scenario indicated a personal relationship with the guy, like maybe they’d advanced beyond the kissing stage and had rented a room to be alone.
Matt narrowed his eyes on Hope. Had she been afraid of sex before the amnesia? Had she been a frigid woman who had tried to get over it with a man she liked, or possibly loved, but once things got steamy in that motel room she had panicked and ran? Of course, hitting a would-be lover over the head with a whiskey bottle was rather extreme…unless the guy wouldn’t accept her change of heart and tried to force her. Hadn’t she rambled after one of her nightmares about the man trying to seduce her—or her trying to seduce him—and unsure of which it had been?
Damn, he thought with disheartening frustration. He’d been so positive a minute ago that she’d been kidnapped, but the whole thing could have been a simple case of romance gone awry. Not every guy took rejection like a gentleman, especially if the woman teased, flirted and promised, and then didn’t deliver.
“What?” Hope asked sharply as she grew uncomfortable under Matt’s invasive scrutiny.
“I’m just trying to unscramble what really took place in that motel room,” he said.
Something in his voice disturbed Hope. He’d been staring a hole through her, as though fixing blame. Was she to blame? Certainly she couldn’t get all huffy because he might think so when what she did remember of that night was so sketchy.
She decided to leave that segment of her past in the twilight zone for the time being and move on to another.
“I’ve been wondering what you thought when you saw me lying in the mud,” she said.
Matt met her gaze head-on. “I thought you were dead,” he said flatly.
She sucked in a startled breath. “So I looked pretty bad?”
“You looked like a pile of wet rags. Then I realized there was a person in the pile, and it wasn’t until I got down from my horse that I could tell you were a woman.”
Hope looked away from him and became very still. “I—I’m remembering something else. A light.” After a moment she added, “Yes, a distant light…not clear, not bright but there all the same. A wavering, unsteady beacon in the rain and dark.”
Matt’s eyes widened. “It could have been one of the yard lights.” He became more emphatic. “It must’ve been a yard light! There aren’t any other lights for miles in any direction.”
“Isn’t it strange?” Hope murmured thoughtfully. “There’s so much nothingness out there, and I was led to this house by a light. Just think of how easily I could have missed seeing it.”
An eerie sensation gripped Matt. It was odd that she’d run or walked or even crawled toward that light. Was fate playing with him? With both of them? Had destiny decided they should meet? Had something beyond his comprehension become annoyed with his solitary lifestyle and hard-nosed attitude toward the opposite sex and done something about it?
Get a grip, man! When did you start believing in heavy-handed spirits playing chess with the human race, for God’s sake?
His eyes met Hope’s, and neither said a word for a long moment. Everything that had happened between them lay on the path of their gazes. Regardless of what had caused them to meet, their lives were now intertwined. Maybe the comfort they’d found in each other would last beyond her recovery, maybe it wouldn’t, but Matt couldn’t deny its potency.
Nor could he convince himself that she wasn’t beautiful and sexy and looking at him with beseeching eyes, because she was beautiful, she was sexy, and if the softly glowing light he saw in her gorgeous blue eyes was any measure, she wanted him in that same earthy, unpretentious way that he wanted her.
And after she’s gone, then what?
It wasn’t a completely new concern, but this time it packed a wallop that had Matt’s head spinning. He hadn’t fallen in love with Hope, had he?
Money problems and that, too? No! I’m not getting hooked into another relationship that was doomed to fail from its onset. It would be the same with Hope. They were from different worlds, her living on big bucks and him scrambling for loose change.
Hope saw a transformation take place on his face. For a time there she’d felt a connection with him that had set her heart to pounding, but something had abruptly severed it. She sighed sadly, because without that special link to Matt, she had nothing.
Besides, deep down and without any basis of fact, she knew that something had gone through his mind to break the spell that had held them both speechless only moments ago. What topic had intruded on those lovely few moments of intimate eye contact, his deceased wife, his financial situation, her amnesia, or something she wasn’t even aware of?
She got to her feet. “I’ve kept you from your work long enough,” she said quietly, holding back tears through sheer determination. “Good night.”
Matt got up. “Good night. Sleep well.” When she’d left the room, he groaned, put his hands on his desk and let his head fall forward. Just sitting and talking to her could sap his strength. He’d be the biggest fool alive to make love to her again.
But it’s what you both want, so maybe you’re the biggest fool alive whatever you do!
Hope was almost asleep several hours later when her eyes suddenly popped open. Matt was keeping something from her! He knew more about her than he’d told her, and that was what he’d been thinking of in his office when his mood had changed so drastically.
That’s crazy. Why would he keep anything from me?
As troubling as the concept was, Hope couldn’t argue it away. She suspected that Matt had phoned Madelyn LeClaire, the woman listed as her mother on that wallet card, but he hadn’t talked about it. Not that Hope had encouraged discussion on that subject, probably because she didn’t want Matt making her feel guilty for being too cowardly to speak to her own mother.
But she was so afraid. Just thinking of the immense world beyond this ranch was torture and caused her head to pound. She couldn’t define what was out there that frightened her so; her fear was simply an irreversible part of the woman she was now.
And if Matt truly was keeping something from her, then perhaps it was because he understood her fears and didn’t want to add to them.
It was a comforting thought to fall asleep with.
The major repairs to the road were finished. While the crew filled miscellaneous potholes they joked and laughed. Things were back to normal. They could go to town when they felt like it, and tonight seemed like a “darned good time to drive to Hawthorne and have a beer or two.” They all knew better than to come back to the ranch drunk; drunkenness was something Matt wouldn’t tolerate. But even he occasionally drank an ice-cold bottle of beer on a hot day.
Matt was surveying his men’s work when he heard an approaching vehicle. Turning to watch it coming closer, Matt recognized the sheriff’s car. Already the dirt road had dried enough so that the car was kicking up dust.
Chuck walked over to his boss. “Looks like we got company.”
“The sheriff.”
Chuck squinted at the oncoming vehicle. “And someone else, too.”
That someone was Dr. Adam Pickett, Matt realized after another minute or so. When the car stopped, the two men got out and Matt shook hands with them, the sheriff first.
“I see you got your road back in pretty good shape,” Sheriff Cliff Braeburn said.
Matt nodded and grinned. “Gotta have a road, Cliff. My men were about to take off walking to get to town.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Don’t blame ’em a bit.”
Doc chuckled, as well, then asked, “How’s your uninvited guest doing, Matt?”
Matt shot the sheriff a questioning look and realized that Cliff hadn’t passed any information about Hope on to Doc.
“She’s doing okay, considering,” Matt replied.
“Still doesn’t remember anything?”
“She might be starting to remember a few things, but it’s hard for me to tell.”
“Of course it is,” Doc agreed. “Not having known her before the mishap, you’re in no position to judge anything she might say. Well, I hitched a free ride out here with Cliff to meet this mystery lady…and to examine her, if she permits…so shall we get to it?”
The three of them piled into the sheriff’s car and arrived at the compound a few minutes later. Hope heard the car and watched out the window with horrified eyes as two strangers—one in uniform, the other one carrying a black bag—got out with Matt and started walking to the house.
Even without memory Hope knew that the sheriff emblems on the car indicated that the law had arrived. For what reason? To bodily remove her from the McCarlson ranch and send her back to Massachusetts? And who was the other man? Another relative she knew nothing about?
Hope suddenly couldn’t catch her breath. Fear was choking her, and she dropped the curtain and ran from the window. Getting away from whatever awful fate they had planned for her was all she could think of, and while the three men came into the house via the back door, Hope made an escape through the front door.
Matt brought Doc and Cliff to the living room. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
In the relentless grip of panic, Hope ran from the house. Her eyes darted frantically, searching for a place of concealment. One of the buildings! Which one? Some were small, and she bypassed those to rush headlong into the largest barn. There were horse stalls and various types of equipment here and there, and she ran the length of the building and realized with tears streaming down her face that she would be easily found if she hid in there.
But then she spotted the ladder, and it went up, up, obviously to another floor. “Yes,” she whispered, and using the bottom of her skirt to dry her eyes, she scampered up the ladder without once looking down.
Inside the house, Matt was having a hard time believing that he couldn’t find Hope. He’d looked first in her bedroom—where he’d fully expected her to be when she wasn’t in the kitchen—then in the other rooms in the bedroom wing. He took a quick look into the office, then in the laundry room. Stymied, it hit him suddenly that the red-haired man she’d talked about had found her!
Something crashed within him, freezing his feet to the floor for a few shocked moments, then releasing abruptly. His mind cleared and he walked calmly into the living room. Until he’d searched the outbuildings and knew for a certainty that Hope was no longer on the ranch, he wasn’t going to get everyone worked up by pronouncing her missing again.
“She apparently went for a walk. There’s coffee in the pot in the kitchen. Help yourself. I know where she walks and I’ll go and get her. I shouldn’t be long, but don’t get alarmed if I’m more than a few minutes. I’ve suggested she not take long walks and go too far from the house, but she pretty much does as she pleases.”
“Really,” Doc mused. “Then, even with amnesia she’s a strong-minded woman. That makes me even more anxious to meet her.”
Matt smiled weakly. “As I said, make yourselves at home. If you’re hungry, raid the refrigerator. I’ll hurry.”
“Hurry” was exactly what he did as he left the room and then the house. Quickly he scanned the yard and outbuildings. Nothing looked amiss. Nothing, that is, except for the sheriff’s car.
Matt’s stomach sank as he realized what had really happened. The red-haired man didn’t have her; she’d run away at first sight of that car. Since she wasn’t in the house, then she was hiding out here, and she couldn’t be far considering that only about ten minutes had passed since he, the sheriff and Doc had driven up.
She could be in any one of the buildings, but for some reason Matt’s gaze rose to the upper story of the barn. Functioning on gut instinct, Matt crossed the yard, walked into the big barn and headed straight for the ladder. He climbed it as quietly as he could, and when his boots were on the straw-covered floor, he stood there, looked around and wondered which haystack she had burrowed into for concealment.
Actually it took him about two minutes to figure it out, because there was a very interesting bump in the loose pile of hay near the back wall. He strolled over to it and said, “I know you’re in there, so you might as well give it up.”
Gasping because he’d found her so easily, she threw the hay off her face and tried to crawl away from him.
“Hope, for God’s sake, cut it out!” Matt made a grab for her. She eluded his grasp and kept on clawing her way through hay, although she had no idea where she would end up. All she knew was that she had to get away.
Matt slogged into the haystack for a few hurried steps, then threw himself on top of her. She fought him like a tiger, but he finally nailed down her flailing hands with his. Then he glared into her face.
“What in hell’s wrong with you?” he snarled.
“You bastard!” she sobbed. “You brought him here.”
“Brought who, the sheriff? The doctor? Hope, you need to see a doctor, and what do you think the sheriff’s going to do, haul your butt to jail? Good Lord, woman, you’re not a criminal. All anyone wants to do is help you.” Looking at her teary face he felt her pain again, and he repeated in a softer, gentler voice, “All we want to do is help you, Hope.”
It was true and it wasn’t. All the sheriff and Doc wanted to do was help her, but his wants weren’t all in her best interest. Right now, for instance, his interior was hot mush because of being on top of her again and remembering what making love to her had felt like to him.
Hope was having similar feelings, and her sobbing stopped. She gazed into his eyes and saw desire, hot and strong, in their depths.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
He swallowed. “They’re waiting for us. I lied and told them you’d taken a walk but I knew where you usually went and I’d get you and bring you back.”
“Then we have a few minutes. Kiss me, Matt.” She slid her hands around him to his backside and pressed down so that he would more closely fit between her opened thighs.
“Hope, don’t do this,” he pleaded in a thick, unnatural voice. “There isn’t time.”
“You’re wasting what time we do have, and I’m so ready, Matt.”
He couldn’t resist a second longer. His mouth descended to hers in a devouring kiss, and while they kissed hotly, passionately, he unzipped his jeans, shoved them down and then went under her skirt. Within two minutes they were intimately joined and nearly frenzied in their need of each other. She met his every thrust with one of her own, and somewhere in the back of Matt’s mind was the incredibly gratifying knowledge that she’d never done this with another man, that whatever she knew of lovemaking and sex, she’d learned from him. He was her lover, her teacher, her protector, and as long as she had amnesia he could be her constant companion because what she’d run away from was the fear of being separated from him.
He rode her fiercely, possessively, and she reveled in his physical strength and his emotional power over her senses.
As mind-blowing as this unexpected encounter was, Matt knew he couldn’t prolong it, not with Doc and the sheriff waiting in the house for them. Worried that he might be going too fast for Hope, he nevertheless held nothing back and reached completion in mere minutes. When she cried out over her own release at almost the same moment that he did, he became very emotional and actually felt tears in his eyes.
Taking a minute to pull himself together, he finally lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “You are one very special lady.”
The hoarseness of his voice and ardent light in his eyes were lovely for Hope. “You already know you’re special to me,” she said softly. “Matt, don’t let the doctor or the sheriff take me anywhere.”
“That’s not why they’re here.”
“Promise me, Matt. Swear it.”
“All right, I promise. Does that make you feel better about seeing them?”
“Do I really have to?”
“You have to see a doctor, Hope, and Doc’s the only one in the area. He’s sixty years old and one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. He’s a friend, Hope, believe me.”
“Well, why is the sheriff here?”
Matt tried to make light of that question. “Because he’s nosy as hell and often goes on Doc’s calls just to keep abreast of what’s going on in his county. Come on, we’d better get ourselves back together and go to the house. They’re probably on the verge of sending out a search party for both of us.”
Before he could move away, Hope pulled down his head, kissed his lips, and then asked, “Will you sleep in my bed tonight?”
He hesitated. “Can we talk about that later on, after Doc and Cliff are gone?”
“You’re always sorry after we make love. Would you please tell me why?”
“I can tell you what I’m feeling right now, okay? If we keep this up, one or both of us is going to get hurt very badly when you regain your memory.”
“What makes you think that? I could never hurt you.”
“Hope, you have no idea what you used to be capable of doing, and will be again once you’re back to normal. Now, let’s get a move on, all right?” Matt pushed himself up and away from her, then got to his feet and yanked up his jeans.
Hope got up and started plucking hay from her clothes and hair. “You’re wrong, you know,” she said. “I don’t care what I remember about myself someday, I know in my heart that I could never hurt you.”
“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see about that,” Matt said. “Let me take a look at you and see if you’re carrying any clues that would tell them what we’ve been doing. You check me out, too.”
Hope withstood his scrutiny in silence. There was a piece of hay sticking out from his shirt collar, but she would bite off her tongue before letting him know it.
They went down the ladder, Matt first so he could catch her if she slipped, and then walked to the house. Just before they went in, she said again, “You’re wrong about me, and someday you’re going to know it. I only hope it won’t be too late.”
Puzzling over her final remark, Matt followed her into the house.