The Amnesiac Bride
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Marie Ferrarella
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HarlequinChapter 1
She opened her eyes and slowly became aware of a void. A huge, shimmering, all-consuming void that threatened to swallow her up whole and send her tumbling, head over heels, into a gaping abyss that had no end.
The void wasn’t outside her, it was within. She was the void.
She blinked, attempting not so much to clear her mind but to summon an image, any image, to it.
Nothing.
There was nothing.
With furtive movements, she focused on various items in the large, sun-splashed bedroom, searching. Desperately hoping to see something that would trigger a reaction, a thought. Panic engulfed her.
There wasn’t a single familiar thing in it. Not the flower arrangements that seemed to litter every flat surface in the room, not the room itself, or even the half-naked man lying beside her.
The sudden realization that she wasn’t alone made her bolt upright in bed, her body rigidly alert. The gasp that rose in her throat was stifled by a will that wasn’t quite her own. Instinct, for lack of a better word, seemed to be taking hold. She allowed it to govern her. It was all she had.
Lips pressed together, she stared at the sleeping man. Again there was nothing. He triggered no memories. How was that possible? How could she not remember who this man lying in bed next to her was?
At that moment, a horrible realization encompassed her. She didn’t know who she was.
She didn’t know her own name.
There was no name to grasp, no murky syllables to try to piece together into a whole. There was nothing. Only the void. And this room, this man.
She was more stunned than afraid. Real fear hadn’t had time to register yet. It hovered just on the rim, waiting to embrace her with its icy arms.
Who was he? And why was he sleeping on top of the covers instead of beneath them?
Quickly, she leaned forward to look at him more carefully before he woke up and perhaps asked questions of his own. Questions she couldn’t answer.
He was wearing faded jeans that, even in sleep, adhered to him like a second skin. The snap was open just below his navel, resting against a taut, flat stomach. He looked to be tall and he was lean and well muscled. There was a definition to his biceps that even his relaxed state couldn’t erase. They matched the sharp contours of his face, what she could see of it. One arm was thrown back against his forehead, obscuring a clear view. His hair was dark, almost black, and appeared to extend down to his shoulders in this pose.
He was a complete stranger.
Smothering a frustrated, uneasy sigh, she eased her legs out from beneath the covers. Still watching his face, she rose. He didn’t move.
But the room did. It tilted abruptly as a searing pain speared her temple. Caught off guard, she almost crumpled to the floor. She grasped for the bedpost. Snagging it like a pop fly, she wrapped her fingers around the wood and steadied herself. The room righted again. Within a moment, her knees felt stronger.
Afraid she’d woken him, she looked quickly at the man on the bed. He was still asleep. Relief trickled through her veins. She didn’t want to deal with the man yet. Not until she had some sort of handle on all this.
Some sort of name to attach to herself.
Cautiously, she moved toward the mirrored closet. The reflection looking back at her was that of another stranger. A stranger with wide, lost blue eyes and long blond hair that fell razor straight against her bare shoulders. The ends flirted with the edge of a turquoise nightgown that was short on material and long on dreams. The woman in the mirror was almost hauntingly pretty. She didn’t remember being pretty.
For a moment, she could only stare at the reflection, wondering who the woman was. Wondering how she got here, to this state.
A breeze from the partially opened window ruffled the gauzy material. It fluttered and moved about her. She felt cold. There had to be a robe around somewhere.
With hands she fought to keep from shaking, she slowly opened the closet door. Maybe she could find a robe inside.
Her hand tightened on the door.
There was a robe in there, all right. It was hanging beside a wedding gown. Not a dress, but a gown in the full sense of the word. An exquisite gown with appliqué and beading that suggested the outrageously huge price tag that had once been attached to it. A few grains of rice were on the carpet just below the hem.
A sense of awe fluttered through her as she reached out to touch the gown. Was it hers?
She looked over her shoulder toward the bed. And did he go with it?
Her heart began to hammer wildly as the full impact of the situation took root.
She pulled the white robe from its hanger and quickly put it on. Just as quickly, she searched each pocket, hoping for a clue. Her fingers curled around something glossy in the left pocket.
She was conscious of holding her breath as she pulled her hand out.
It was a photograph, a Polaroid taken of her and the man in the bed. Except that he didn’t have jeans.on. He was wearing a tuxedo. The kind men wore when they married women in gowns with high price tags. Gowns like the one she was wearing in the photograph.
Panic began to nibble away at her. If she knew all that, if she knew about gowns and tuxedos and Polaroid photographs, the question echoed in her lonely brain, why didn’t she know who she was? And why couldn’t she remember posing for this picture?
Tears began to moisten her lashes as she stared down at the photograph in her hand.
“Hey, you’re up.”
The unexpected greeting startled her. She swung around toward the source, something defensive snapping into place and galvanizing her spine. It was all automatic, done without conscious thought.
Something told her she didn’t trust strangers and despite the photograph in her hands, he was a stranger. At least for now.
“Looks that way,” she replied guardedly.
Zane Russell pulled his body upright on the bed and leaned against the headboard. He had sat up most of the night, watching her, because he’d been concerned. It had been a hell of a night.
Body aching, he rotated his shoulders, stretching them subtly, like a tiger waking from a half sleep. How had it gotten to be morning so soon?
Making the best of it, he dragged one hand through his hair, then rubbed it across his face, brushing sleep aside. He could snap into action at a moment’s notice but enjoyed the luxury of not having to do that now. He could relax around Whitney the way he couldn’t afford to around too many people.
He glanced toward her now. Was it his imagination, or was she looking at him oddly? She’d certainly had him worried for a while there, but it looked as if everything was all right.
The itch at the back of his neck warned him that maybe he was being too optimistic too soon. It wasn’t something he was in the habit of doing very often.
Zane looked at her again. Her expression puzzled him. Her body language only compounded it. She seemed tense, like a diver on the edge of the board before a major dive. A diver who wasn’t sure the pool had been filled with water.
“How do you feel?”
When he rose and moved toward her, she took a step back, her eyes on his face. It wasn’t a face that a woman would easily forget. Yet she had. Completely. Why? What had happened to her?
The words in response to his question came out slowly, rolling toward him one at a time. “How am I supposed to feel?”
Zane’s brows almost touched as they drew together. She was being unusually cagey this morning. And it wasn’t his imagination. She was looking at him oddly. What was going on?
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You tell me.” How had this turned into a debate? And was she trying to maintain a distance between them?
Subconsciously testing his theory, he reached out for her arm. Whitney backed away. The look on her face said she didn’t know if he was going to touch her or strike her. What the hell was wrong with her? He thought of last night. Maybe they weren’t out of the woods yet.
His eyes daring her to move, he took another step toward her. “That was a pretty nasty bump you got last night.”
“Bump?”
She echoed the word, letting it play across her mind. It meant nothing to her, brought back no scene, no sensation. She held perfectly still, afraid to breathe, as his tentative fingers felt around her forehead. Only when the man brushed against the bump did she wince and pull her head back.
Zane dropped his hand to his side, staring at her. The swelling had gone down, just as the doctor had told them it would. Everything was supposed to be all right now.
“Yeah, bump.” He studied her face. “The one you got—hey, what’s with you this morning, Half-Whit?”
He’d once seen a look that had passed through .a child’s eyes as she tried to grasp the string of a balloon that the wind had ripped from her hands, only to miss. Whitney had that same look in her eyes now. His uneasiness grew.
“What?” he pressed.
Disappointment filled the void, choking her, then disappeared without a trace. She was empty again.
She shook her head. She could almost hear it rattling. “Nothing. Only for a minute, I thought that sounded familiar.”
What the hell was she talking about? “Of course it sounded familiar. I’ve been calling you that for...”
His voice trailed off as he took a closer look at her. Impatience dropped from him like a snake’s outer skin. She didn’t look like herself at all. The jaunty, devil-may-care confidence was gone. And he couldn’t put a name to what was in its place. He only knew he didn’t like what he saw.
Something in his gut turned over.
Zane took hold of her shoulders. She was trembling. It wasn’t cold in the room. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing except a tiny spark of fear. The woman he knew was gone.
His voice was low and deadly calm as he asked, “What’s the matter?”
Somehow it seemed cowardly to admit it. She had a vague feeling that she wasn’t a coward. That made her feel a little better, though why it should, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t say a lot of things.
She had the oddest feeling that she had leaped into this body from nowhere. Leaped into it like...like that scientist in the TV show.
Hysteria bubbled and receded, held back by a steely lid she clamped down on it My God, she had no idea who she was, or where she was, and yet she remembered a TV program. It made no sense.
Nothing made any sense.
She raised her eyes to the man in front of her. Could she trust him? Trust was important to her. She knew that, too. And knew that she had no other choice. She had to trust him. She had to let someone into this solitary world she found herself in.
Hesitating, she wet her lips and took a chance. “I don’t know who I am.”
“What?” Zane released her and backed away, shaking his head.
Whatever she thought his reaction would be, annoyance hadn’t headed the list. But he obviously was annoyed. Very annoyed.
“This is a hell of a time to try to spring a practical joke.”
She grasped at the straw he’d unintentionally offered her. “Do I do that? Do I play practical jokes?”
What was she asking him that for? “You know you do.” He opened the closet and took out a navy blue pair of slacks. If he had his way, jeans would be the only clothing anyone would wear, but there were certain requirements to this game. He took a shirt out that was the color of corn bleached by the sun. That ought to do it. “Now hurry up, we have to be—”
He stopped talking as he turned to look at her over his shoulder. She was still standing there, in the center of the room, looking like a lost waif.
He’d never seen her like that before. Zane let the clothes drop on the bed.
Instincts he had long ago learned to trust with his life nudged their way forward. “My God, you’re serious, aren’t you?”
Very slowly, biting her lower lip to keep it from trembling, she nodded. She fought the tears she suddenly felt rising again.
“Yes.”
The hoarse response echoed in the hotel suite, the sound framed by the four walls. Beyond the window, seven floors down, the people who flocked to Las Vegas to divert themselves, or to win easy money that turned out not to be so easily wooed, were busy going about their business. They could have been a thousand miles away for all the difference they made.
Stunned, Zane sank down on the bed, his green eyes never leaving her face. If she was lying, he’d know. And if this was a joke, he was going to kill her. Slowly. “You’re telling me you have amnesia?”
What did it take to make him understand? “I’m telling you I don’t know who I am.”
She wasn’t kidding. She was serious. What the hell am I supposed to do now? he wondered.
She thought he looked more devastated by the revelation than she did and didn’t see how that could be possible. But then, if they had just been married...
Her fingers curved around the photograph she’d hastily shoved back into her pocket when he’d woken up. “Are you my husband?”
Thoughts were colliding in his brain like megabytes of information being processed in a computer. The question brought him up abruptly. He looked up at her, surprised.
“What?”
She pulled out the photo and looked at it again, then raised her eyes to his face. “Are you my husband?” she repeated.
For the first time, she looked down at her hand. There were rings on it. Huge, magnificent rings. The diamond engagement ring gleamed and shot off rays as it trapped a sunbeam within its sphere. The glow reflected off the diamonds encrusted in the gold band beneath it.
Her mouth formed a perfect O as she stared at the light show. The stones were large enough to have their own zip code.
At least one of them, she thought, was very, very rich.
Zane scrubbed his hand over his face. This was going to complicate everything. Why hadn’t she been more careful last night? He’d told her to stay in the hotel room, but she had been stubborn and followed him. And then she’d fallen.
The laugh he uttered was purely reflexive, a throwaway sound.
“I’m—” Debating, he made a decision and hoped it wasn’t the wrong one. There’d be hell to pay eventually if it was.
Zane moved toward her and put his hands on her shoulders again. Hoping against hope, he looked into her eyes one more time.
No, this wasn’t a joke. She’d never carry one this far. Damn it, anyway. He should have locked her up in the room last night. But it was too late for remorse now. He’d have to play the hand he’d been dealt. He always had before. But this time, he had a feeling it was going to be harder than usual to bluff.
A practiced smile slid across his lips. With just the smallest bit of effort, Zane forced it to his eyes. A man did what he had to do to survive. “Yes, I’m your husband.”
She had the photograph and the rings, yet his assurance couldn’t penetrate the invisible wall wrapped around her. Couldn’t nudge a single memory to the fore. She bit her frustration back.
“Then you’d know my name.”
His eyes touched her face, her hair, with such familiarity she thought she should remember at least a kernel of something. But she didn’t.
Taking her hands in his, Zane nodded. “Yes, I know your name.”
Maybe if she heard it. “What is it?” she asked hopefully.
This was going to take some time, Zane thought. And time was the one thing they didn’t have in abundance. Not if this thing was going to go off on schedule. But he couldn’t just ignore the situation, either. Damn, but this was a mess.
Trying to be as gentle as he could, Zane took her by the hand and sat her down on the bed.
“Your name is Whitney. Whitney Bradshaw.” He searched her eyes to see if that made any impression on her.
She could almost feel him delving into her mind, looking for something as hard as she was looking for it herself. Maybe he was her husband. There was no reason to doubt him just because she couldn’t remember. Why would he lie?
Powerless to make a connection with the name, she shook her head in response to the unspoken question that hung between them.
All right then, here goes, he thought. “Actually, your name’s Whitney Russell now. We were married two days ago in a chapel just outside of Las Vegas. We’re in Las Vegas right now. The Hotel Zanadu.”
She didn’t know a single thing about herself outside the fact that she had, at least once, watched a TV program about a time traveler, yet what he was telling her didn’t sound right. Didn’t feel right. She didn’t think she was the kind of person who would have been happy settling for a ceremony in Las Vegas. Something told her she had more taste than that. More of a sense of tradition.
And then there were the clothes.
Confused, she pulled out the photograph from her pocket and held it up to him again.
“Aren’t these very fancy clothes for Las Vegas?” If she was just going to run off with him, why had she bothered bringing such an expensive-looking gown with her?
Zane sighed. Whitney might not be in there at the moment, but she’d left behind her annoying habit of picking things apart. He might have known the worst traits would remain.
“You insisted,” he told her, the smile on his lips never fading. “You said you wanted a memorable photograph of your wedding, even if the place wasn’t.”
“Why Las Vegas?” The rings didn’t look fake. The gown certainly wasn’t. That meant there was money enough for a huge wedding.
His smile widened. This time, there was just the slightest trace of amusement in his eyes. “You were in a hurry.”
In a hurry. That, like the nickname he had called her, almost struck a chord before fading away. She held the photograph in both hands, looking down at it. Willing herself to remember, to grasp the half memory before it became a ghost.
Like sugar in the rain, it was gone.
“Was anyone else there?” She raised her eyes to his. “My parents? Brothers? Sisters?” She tried to conjure up faces to go with the labels. They didn’t come.
He continued to watch her eyes as he answered. “You don’t have any.”
“Not even... a brother?” Her lips surrounded the word. She’d said it before. Brother. To whom?
“You had one,” he said quietly, reaching for her hand. “You told me he died.”
Died. Someone died. A brother. Her brother.
Whitney sighed. She was alone. That would account for some of the emptiness she felt. But not all. A newlywed shouldn’t feel as if she were hollow. Should she?
“Then there’s just you?” she asked Zane, her voice hardly above a whisper.
Guilt raced through him. He squelched it. Mustering the most sympathetic look he could, Zane covered her hand with his own and squeezed it.
“Just me.”
She nodded, absorbing the information. “What’s your name?”
“Zane. Zane Russell.” He could see that didn’t mean anything to her, either.
Very lightly, he brushed aside her hair and looked at the bump she’d sustained last night. It didn’t look very big now. He’d been concerned enough about it at the time to force her to go to the emergency room even when she’d stubbornly refused. X rays hadn’t shown any cause for alarm. There were no signs of a concussion. The doctor had assured him she’d be fine after a night’s rest.
Fine. Yeah, right. The man had probably gotten his degree from the back of a matchbook cover.
Zane rose to his feet, his hand still wrapped around hers. Quinton slept in late. That gave them a few hours’ leeway.
“Look, why don’t we go back to the hospital?”
Doubt filled the hollow spaces. “Back?”
It was going to be a matter of force-feeding her all sorts of information. He knew the danger in that. He was going to have to be very careful.
Zane nodded. “I took you there last night, after you hit your head. Community General.”
The name meant less than nothing to her. “How did I happen to...?”
He anticipated her question. The scenario was one he’d thought of last night, while driving her home from the hospital. In case anyone should ask.
“In the pool. The one on the roof. It was late, and we had it to ourselves. I guess we got a little carried away,” he said vaguely, then flashed her a dazzling smile when he saw more doubt in her eyes. “After all, we are on our honeymoon. Anyway, you slipped and hit your head on the side of the pool.”
Had they been skinny-dipping? The way he phrased the explanation made her think that they might have been. She tried to picture that in her mind and couldn’t. The tinge of embarrassment rose up to color her cheeks, anyway. She put it out of her mind. There were more important concerns to deal with.
“Was I unconscious?”
“No, that’s why you resisted.”
“Resisted? You?” That seemed hardly likely. She might not remember Zane Russell, but there was no denying that something within her remembered the chemistry between them. Even now, highly confused and disoriented, she was aware of it. Aware of an underlying strong pull between them.
It was all she needed to convince her that he was telling the truth. Whether or not she remembered it, she was his wife.
“No, going to the hospital. I had to force you to go to the emergency room.”
Again, something vague whispered along the perimeter of her mind. Someone being ushered into a car. Was it her? Was he the one doing the ushering? Her head began to ache again.
“You forced me,” she repeated.
Despite the gravity of the situation, his mouth curved. “You’re stubborn.”
So what exactly did she have here? A name and a face, neither of which were even vaguely familiar. And a few scraps of information. How did it all fit together?
“I’m stubborn and I play practical jokes and I have no family.” She blew out a deep breath. “Not much to build on, is it?”
Zane thought of his own background. “Some have had less.” He wished he could tell her more, but now wasn’t the time. Instead, he slipped his arm around her. “C’mon, get dressed and we’ll see what the doctor has to say.”
Before she could answer, there was a sharp knock on the door.
