Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (10 page)

I’d had to walk
around in my panties for only twelve hours, luckily – if walking
around in one’s panties could be counted as luck.

Days of exhaustion and
hunger had made me just delusional enough to think that I could fly
half-naked under the radar if I acted with enough confidence. If
anyone asked – and no one dared – I’d say it was a bikini, and
I missed my ride home from the pool. Talk about flimsy.

That I was only gaped
at by the two police officers who passed me was a miracle. I’d
hoped to find a dress or pants drying on a backyard line, but it
wasn’t meant to be. I was meant to meet Drex Cougan, something that
never would have happened if I’d been in my right mind to begin
with.

It was incredible that
the men in the white coats hadn’t gotten to me first. There were
benefits to being in this wild, lawless part of the country, where a
girl without pants was just another bizarre sight to behold.

I slipped out of Drex’s
shirt, a beautiful, dark purple button-down with French cuffs. He’d
given it to me to sleep in, after he’d ravished me senseless one
more time in his bed.

The morning light
streamed in the window, illuminating the hand-painted tile floor.
Yesterday morning at this time, I’d been in a run-down Greyhound
station wondering how I was going to eat, and now I was standing in a
bathroom so elegant I almost hated to use it. Almost.

The water poured out of
an open-spout glass faucet like a waterfall, and the shower was a
warm, soothing rainstorm. I stood under it for fifteen minutes and
imagined it rinsing away the shame and confusion of the last three
days. I still had no memory, but right now, I was safe.

I dried off with a
thick towel and draped it over a slender chrome towel bar. Peering in
the cabinet above the sink, I found a bottle of body lotion and
pumped some into my hand. I rubbed it slowly into my skin, breathing
in the soft smell of verbena. It was a small thing, but it felt like
the ultimate luxury.

The touch of a sexy
man, a shower, a beautiful scent. I would appreciate every second for
as long as it lasted.

Hair combed, teeth
brushed, legs shaved – I felt ready for almost anything. Just as I
was turning to reach for Drex’s shirt, I noticed something in the
mirror.

I stopped. And then I
gasped.

There were four
silvery, inch-long streaks across my lower belly. Stretchmarks.

“No,” I whispered.
“God, no.”

They were so pale that
I’d missed them. But now, with the sun coming in at just the right
angle, they were unmistakable.

Suddenly dizzy and
breathless, I leaned my hands against the sink.

Living for right now,
enjoying the moment – it was all bullshit.

I was a mother. The
physical evidence was screaming at me in the mirror. And this ring
I’d tried so hard to ignore? There was no doubt in my mind now. It
was a wedding band.

Three days without my
memory and I’d already betrayed my family, whoever and wherever
they were.

I sank onto the floor,
unable to hold back tears. Drex made me want to pretend I had no
past, but I couldn’t reinvent myself that easily. What did they say
about the past always catching up with you? Well, it hadn’t caught
up to me yet, but it was gaining ground fast.

A child. Maybe more
than one. Was I a stay-at-home mother? A working mom? Did I have a
girl or boy?

And who was the man
who’d given me that child? Did I love him? Could I possibly want
him as much as I’d wanted Drex last night? As much as I wanted him
right now?

I covered my face with
my hands. There were a thousand questions whirling through my head,
but one kept rising to the top.

Why wasn’t the man
who’d given me this ring looking for me? What was taking him so
long?

I had no answers. I
only knew I was much too restless to sit still.

Marching to the
bedroom, I put on Drex’s shorts and a white t-shirt. Flip-flops on
my feet, I went to the living room, grabbed Diesel’s leash from the
coffee table, and opened her kennel. She raised her chin and looked
at me like I was both dense and insane.

“Come on,” I said,
my fear pushed aside by the desperate need to escape. “I’m taking
a walk and I’m not going alone. Not after that truck outside last
night.”

With a sharp-toothed
yawn, she stood up and walked onto the rug.

“Bark worse than her
bite, bark worse than her bite,” I muttered, taking what I hoped
look like a confident step toward her.

She blinked up at me
and let out a low growl.

“Yeah, yeah, you said
that last night.”

As I tried to clip on
her leash, she twisted her neck and started to walk backward. It
wasn’t ideal, but it was a lot better than snapping jaws. “We can
do this for an hour, or get it over with and go for a nice stroll in
the eighty-degree heat,” I said in a soothing voice. “What do you
say?”

She barked, but it was
tempered by soft, scared brown eyes. “Oh, Diesel,” I said, going
down on my knees in front of her. “I know just how you feel.”

As if to say
the
hell you do
, she broke free and ran behind the couch. That
only made me more determined. Something would go my way this morning,
whether Diesel liked it or not. But how would I make that happen?

With food, that’s
how.

I went to the
refrigerator and yanked open the meat drawer. Tearing off a big, raw
hunk of bacon, I cooked it on a paper towel in the microwave and
brought it to the living room.

“Lunchtime,” I said
in my highest voice. “Come and get it.”

Three minutes later, we
were walking out the front door together like I’d raised her from a
puppy.

What, exactly, did I
remember?

Waking up in the park
thirsty, my head aching. Maybe it was a hangover. But when I tried to
think back, my mind hit a wall. Hard as I tried to climb over it, it
kept getting higher and I kept slipping down.

I remembered walking,
the endless search for something that made sense. Everyone who went
by seemed to stare at me, as if they knew something I didn’t. I
took off my clothes in a diner bathroom and studied the labels. White
Vince t-shirt, faded Levi’s shorts, b.tempt’d panties. Chipped
red fingernail polish, orange flip flops – none of it told me
anything.

I drank out of public
drinking fountains and took what little food I could from rural
grocery stores and gas stations. Wrong as it was to steal, I couldn’t
bring myself to beg. I might not have a memory, but I’d rather go
to jail than have people look at me with pity.

Diesel strained at the
leash, barking at something in the distance. Fear slithered through
me, then disappeared. Whoever had come around last night was probably
long gone, I hoped.

I looked back at the
house, which had been a tiny spot in the distance just a minute ago.
Now it was gone, obscured by the shimmer of heat. Diesel drank from a
narrow creek that would probably be dry by next week. I swigged from
my water bottle and let her pull me toward the horizon, probably an
attempt to escape the leash more than anything else.

After half an hour of
walking, I sat on a flat rock. Diesel sat beside me, keeping her
distance but not glaring at me or growling.

I tried to keep my mind
blank. For now, I wouldn’t think about what I knew. I had a few
nearly-invisible marks that could be from a growth spurt, or gaining
a little weight.

I might have a child, I
might not. Maybe I had a husband, maybe I didn’t.

Nothing was certain,
and that was the only thing I could say for sure.

Scrambling to her feet,
Diesel let out one short bark. I saw a plume of dust spinning along
the desert floor and rising slowly into the air.

A car, driving in my
direction.

There was no road, but
whoever it was had to be driving fast. First it was a black spot,
then a shiny grill, and all of a sudden it was Drex’s truck, about
to drive right by me.

Diesel barked
frantically. I stood and waved my arms, much happier to see Drex than
I should have been. But I’d walked too far, and missed him more in
the last three hours than I wanted to admit.

Tires burning into the
dirt, the truck jerked to a stop. Drex stared at me through the dusty
windshield, not returning my smile. There was no mistaking his
expression. He got out of the truck and slammed the door, his face
rigid.

“What’s the
matter?” I asked.

“What?” he snapped.
“What did you say?”

“I said –”

“I got back to the
house an hour ago. What the hell did you think you were doing, taking
off like that?”

I was stunned silent.
So this was Drex angry – and really, really sexy. His hard muscles
rippled under a white cotton button-down, and his faded jeans seemed
designed to make me a stammering idiot.

“I , uh…I needed to
go for a walk and clear my head,” I said. “Diesel needed a walk,
too.”

“I took her out this
morning.”

“She’s a big dog.
She needs exercise.”

“I thought you were
afraid of her.”

“I am.”

His eyes narrowed.
“This isn’t about the dog. Christ, Jane, I just found you
wandering around town yesterday.”

“I didn’t think
about it. I just had to leave the house.”

“Why? What would make
you go out and wander around the desert without even leaving a note?”

“I’m…” I felt
pinned under his fiercely dark gaze.

“You’re what?”

I wanted to tell him
what I’d seen in the mirror, but the words stuck in my throat. He
was all I had. I couldn’t push him away, or disappoint him, or lose
him. Not yet. Not until I knew who I was and how I ended up here.

“It’s been a
stressful time, that’s all. Can’t you understand?”

He sighed and dropped
his head back. “Of course. But did you have to do something like
this? Who knows who was out here last night, or what they could do to
you.”

“You’re right,” I
said. “I’m sorry. It was inconsiderate.”

He frowned.
“Inconsiderate? How about reckless? Thoughtless? Totally rude?”

“Okay,” I said,
forcing down my temper. “Anything else you want to add while you’re
at it?”

He glared at me.
“Careless. Dangerous. Dumb.”

“
Dumb?”

“Very. Now, get in
the truck.”

Now that he knew I
wasn’t dead, he was right back to giving orders. “First, tell me
where you were. You said you’d gone to take care of business.”

He opened the passenger
door. “I did.”

“You can’t get more
specific than that?”

“Do I need to, Jane?
I’d think you’d just be grateful I came looking for you.”

“I am. I’m also
wondering what was so important that you couldn’t wait to leave
until I woke up.”

He jabbed a finger at
me. “You.”

Now he was talking in
riddles. “What?” I asked, shaking my head.

“What was so
important was
you
.”
Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the cab of the truck. “I
went to see a friend of mine, a detective I’ve known since we were
kids. And unfortunately, there’s no missing person’s report that
matches your description.”

“Unfortunately?”
There was only one way to interpret that word in this context, and it
wasn’t good.

He wanted me gone. I
was a complication, a distraction. A fuckable one, maybe, but a
distraction nonetheless. “I’ll leave today,” I said. “I won’t
bother you again.”

He put up both palms.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Who said anything about you leaving?”

“You did, by going to
the police.”

“Jane, sweetheart,
you’ve got this all wrong.”

I tried to cram my
hands into the pockets of the shorts I’d borrowed from Drex, but
there weren’t any. “Like hell, I do. You went straight to the
police this morning, hoping somebody was looking for me so you don’t
have to deal with me anymore. And you know what? I don’t blame you.
You didn’t plan on this. You thought I was just some…nutjob in
distress.”

He took a step toward
me. “That doesn’t mean I regret it. Did last night feel like
regret to you?”

“The morning after is
a totally different thing.”

“Not to me,” he
said. “Nothing’s changed.”

How seductive those
words were. I wanted to believe them, but our brief history had shown
that Drex could convince me of almost anything.

“Nothing’s
changed?” I said. “There’s no missing person’s report. That
seems like a pretty big change to me.”

“We’re back where
we started from, that’s all. Right?”

After a long pause, I
forced myself to answer. “Right.” But we weren’t back where we
started from. Not after what I’d seen in the mirror.

“Come on, Diesel,”
he said, taking her leash from me. “Get in the back.”

Eyebrows twisted, she
stared at him as if he’d caught fire.

“I think that means
no,” I said.

“No isn’t an option
anymore. She needs to learn that.” Biceps flexing through his
shirtsleeves, he grabbed all eighty or ninety struggling pounds of
her and plopped her in the back on a huge dog bed. She stood on it
and stared defiantly at both of us.

“Lie down,” Drex
said. I knew that tone of voice, and it was almost impossible to
refuse. After an ear-splitting bark, she spun around slowly and
tucked her legs under her body.

Drex turned back to me
and jerked his thumb toward the passenger door. “Now it’s your
turn. Let’s go back to the house.”

I had the impulse to
argue, but couldn’t figure out what to argue for. The right to stay
out here by myself with my stomach grumbling and my water running
low? “Fine,” I said, giving him an annoyed smirk.

As soon as we got into
the truck, he grabbed me by the upper arms. “Come here.”