White Lies (13 page)

           
 
Sometimes, watching him as he exercised with
that frightening relentlessness of his, she caught herself hoping that his
memory
wouldn't
return, and then
guilt would eat at her. But he depended on her so much now, and if he began to
remember, the closeness between them would fade. Even as she tried to protect
herself from that closeness, she treasured every moment and wanted more. She
was caught on the horns of her own dilemma and couldn't decide how to get free.
She could protect herself and walk away, or she could grab for whatever she could
get, but she couldn't decide to do either. All she could do was wait, and watch
over him with increasing fierceness.

           
 
The day the bandages were supposed to come off
his eyes, he got up at dawn and prowled restlessly around the hospital room.
Jay had gotten there early, feeling as anxious as he did, but she forced
herself to sit still. Finally he turned on the television and listened intently
to the morning news, a frown knitting his brow.

           
 
"Why the hell doesn't that damn doctor
hurry up?" he muttered. Jay looked at her watch. "It's still early.
You haven't even had breakfast yet."

           
 
He swore under his breath and raked his
fingers through his hair. It was still shorter than was fashionable, but long
enough to cover the scar that bisected his skull, and it was dark and shiny,
undulled by sunlight, and beginning to show a hint of waviness. He prowled some
more, then stopped by the window and drummed his fingers on the sill.
"It's a sunny day, isn't it?" Jay looked out the window at the blue
sky. "Yes, and not too cold, but the weather forecast says we could have
some snow by the weekend."

           
 
"What's the date?"

           
 
"January 29."

           
 
His fingers continued to tap against the sill.
"Where are we going?" Jay felt blank. "Going?"

           
 
"When they release me. Where are we
going?"

           
 
She felt a shock like a slap in the face as
she realized he would be released from the hospital within a few hours if
everything was all right with his eyes. The apartment Frank had rented for her
was tiny, only one bedroom, but that wasn't what alarmed her. What if Frank
intended to whisk Steve away from her?

           
 
Granted, he had once said something about her
staying with Steve until his memory returned, but it hadn't been mentioned
since. Was that still his plan? If so, where did he intend for Steve to live?

           
 
"I don't know where we'll go," she
replied faintly. "They may want to send you somewhere...." Her voice
trailed off into miserable silence.

           
 
"Too damn bad if they do." He turned
from the window, and there was something lethal in his movement, a predator's
grace and power. She stared at him, silhouetted against the bright window, and
her throat contracted. He was so much harder than he had been that it almost
frightened her, but at the same tune, everything about him excited her. She
loved him so much that it hurt, deep inside her chest, and it was getting
worse.

           
 
A nurse brought in his breakfast tray, then
winked at Jay. "I noticed you were here early, so I had an extra tray sent
up. I won't tell if you won't." She brought in another breakfast tray,
smiling as Jay thanked her. "This is the big day," the nurse said
cheerfully. "Call this a sort of precelebration meal." Steve grinned.
"Are you that anxious to get rid of me?"

           
 
"You've been an absolute angel. We're
going to miss those buns of yours, but hey, easy come, easy go."

           
 
A slow flush reddened Steve's cheeks, and the
nurse laughed heartily as she left the room. Jay snickered as she unwrapped his
silverware and arranged everything on the tray as he was accustomed to finding
it.

           
 
"Bring your gorgeous buns over here and
eat your breakfast," she ordered, still snickering.

           
 
"If you like them, get a good view,"
he invited, turning around and lifting his arms so she did indeed have an
excellent view of his tight, muscular buttocks.

           
 
"I'll even let you touch."

           
 
"Thank you, but food wins out over your
backside. Aren't you hungry?"

           
 
"Starved."

           
 
They made short work of the meal, and soon he
was again prowling about the small room, his restlessness making it seem even
smaller. His impatience was a palpable force, bristling around him. He had
spent too many weeks flat on his back, totally helpless and blind, unable even
to feed himself. Now he had his mobility back, and in an unknown number of
minutes he'd know if his sight had been restored. The doctor was certain of the
surgery's success, but until the bandages were off and he could actually see,
Steve wouldn't let himself believe it. It was the waiting and the lack of
certainty that ate at him. He wanted to see. He wanted to know what Jay looked
like; he wanted to be able to put a face to the voice. If he never saw anything
else, he needed to see her face, if only for a moment. Every cell in his body
knew her, could sense her presence; but even though she had described herself
to him, he needed to have her face in his mind. The rest of his vanished memory
didn't haunt him nearly as much as the knowledge of Jay that he'd lost, and the
most piercing of all was that he couldn't remember her face. It was as if he'd
lost a part of himself.

           
 
His head came up like a wary animal's as he
heard the door open, and the eye surgeon laughed. "I half expected you to
have taken the bandages off yourself."

           
 
"I didn't want to steal your
thunder," Steve said. He was standing very still. Jay was just as still,
tension coiling in her as she watched the surgeon, a nurse, Major Lunning and
Frank all enter the room. Frank was carrying a bag with the name of a local
department store on it, and he placed it on the bed. Without asking, Jay knew
it contained street clothes for Steve, and she was vaguely grateful to Frank
for thinking of it, because she hadn't.

           
 
"Sit down here, with your back to the
window," the surgeon said, directing Steve to a chair. When Steve was
seated, the doctor took a pair of scissors, cut through the gauze and tape at
Steve's temple and carefully removed the outer bandage in order not to disturb
the pads over his eyes or let the tape pull at his skin. "Tilt your head
back a little," he instructed.

           
 
Jay's nails were digging into her palms and
her chest hurt. For the first tune she was seeing his face without bandages;
even the relatively small swathe of gauze that had anchored the pads to his
eyes had covered his temples and eyebrows, as well as his cheekbones and the
bridge of his nose. He had been a handsome man, but he wasn't handsome any
longer. His nose wasn't quite straight, and they had made the bridge a little higher
than it had been before the explosion. His cheekbones looked more prominent.
All in all, his face had more angles than it had before; the battering he'd
taken was evident. Slowly the doctor removed the gauze pads, then wiped Steve's
eyes with some sort of solution. Steve's lids looked a little bruised and his
eyes were deeper set than before.

           
 
"Pull the curtains," the doctor said
quietly, and the nurse pulled them across the window, darkening the room. Then
he turned on the dim light over the bed.

           
 
"All right, now you can open your eyes.
Slowly. Let them get accustomed to the light. Then blink until they
focus."

           
 
Steve opened his eyes to mere slits and
blinked. He tried it again.

           
 
"Damn, that light's bright," he
said. Then he opened his eyes completely, blinked until they were focused and
turned his head toward Jay.

           
 
She sat frozen in place and her breath
stopped. It was like looking into an eagle's eyes, meeting the fierce gaze of a
raptor, a high-soaring predator. They were the eyes of the man she loved so
much she ached with it, and terror chilled her blood. She remembered velvety,
chocolate-brown eyes, but these eyes were a dark yellowish brown, glittering
like amber crystal. An eagle's eyes. He was the man she loved, but she didn't
know who he was, only who he wasn't.

           
 
He wasn't Steve Crossfield.

           
 
His heart almost stopped in his chest. Jay.
The face to go with the name and the voice, the gentle touch, the sweet and
elusive scent. Her description of herself had been accurate, yet it was far
from reality. The reality of Jay was a heavy mane of honey-brown hair, eyes of
deep-ocean blue and a wide, soft, vulnerable mouth. God, her mouth. It was red
and full, as luscious as a ripe plum. It was the most passionate mouth he'd
ever seen, and thinking of kissing it, of having those lips touch his body,
made a hard ache settle in his loins. She was immobile, her face colorless
except for the deep pools of her eyes and that wonderful, exotic mouth. She
stared at him as if mesmerized, unable to look away.

           
 
"How does everything look?" the
surgeon asked. "Do you see halos of light, or are the edges fuzzy?"

           
 
He ignored the doctor and stood, his gaze
never wavering from Jay. He would never get enough of looking at her. Four
steps took him to her, and her eyes widened even more in her utterly white face
as she stared up at him. He tried to make his hands gentle as he caught her
arms and pulled her to her feet, but anticipation and arousal were riding him
hard, and he knew his fingers bit into her soft flesh. She made an incoherent
sound; then his mouth covered hers and the erotic feel of her full lips made
him want to groan. He wanted to be alone with her. She was shaking in his arms,
her hands clutching the front of his shirt as she leaned against him as if
afraid she might fall.

           
 
"Well, your sense of direction is
good," Frank said wryly, and Steve lifted his head from Jay's, though he
kept her tight against him, her head pressed into his shoulder. She was still
trembling violently.

           
 
"I'd say his priorities are in order,
too," Major Lunning put in, grinning as he looked at his patient with a
deep sense of satisfaction. It hadn't been too many weeks since he'd had serious
doubts that Steve would live. To see him now, like this, was almost miraculous.
Not that he was fully recovered. He still hadn't regained his full strength,
nor had his memory shown any signs of returning. But he was alive, and well on
the road to good health.

           
 
"I can see everything just fine,"
Steve said, his voice raspier than usual as he looked around the hospital room
that had been home to him for more days than he cared to remember. Even it
looked good. He'd disciplined himself to picture everything in his mind, to
form a sense of spatial relations so that he always knew where he was in the
room, and his mental picture had been remarkably correct. The colors were oddly
shocking, though; he hadn't pictured colors, only physical presences.

           
 
The surgeon cleared his throat. "Ah... if
you could sit down for a moment, Mr. Crossfield?"

           
 
Steve released Jay, and she shakily sat down,
gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that her knuckles were white. They
were wrong! He wasn't Steve Crossfield! Shock had kept her mute, but as she
watched the surgeon examine Steve—

           
 
no,
not
Steve!—control returned and she opened her mouth to tell him what a horrible
mistake had been made.

           
 
Then Frank moved, tilting his head to watch
the surgeon, and the movement caught her attention. Ice spread in her veins,
freezing her brain again, but one thought still formed: if she told them that
she'd made a mistake, that this man wasn't her ex-husband, they would have no
use for her. He would be whisked away, and she would never see him again.

           
 
She began to shiver convulsively. She loved
him. She didn't know who he was but she loved him, and she couldn't give him
up. She needed to think this through, but she couldn't right now. She needed to
be alone, away from watching eyes, so she could deal with the shock of
realizing that Steve... dear God, Steve was dead! And this man in his place was
a stranger.

           
 
She stood so abruptly that her chair tilted
back on two legs before clattering forward again. Five startled faces turned to
her as she edged toward the door like a prisoner trying to escape. "I... I
just need some coffee," she gasped in a strained voice. She darted out the
door, ignoring Steve's hoarse call.

           
 
He wasn't Steve. He wasn't Steve. The simple
fact was devastating, rocking her to the core.

           
 
She ran down the hall to the visitors' lounge
and huddled on one of the uncomfortable seats. She felt both cold and numb, and
faintly sick, as if she were on the verge of throwing up.

           
 
Who was he? Taking deep breaths, she tried to
think coherently. He wasn't Steve, so he had to be the American agent Frank had
been so concerned about. That meant he had been deeply embroiled in the
situation, the one man in the world who knew what had happened, if only he
regained his memory. Could he be in danger if anyone—perhaps the person or
persons who had set off the explosion that had already almost killed him—knew
he was still alive? Until he recovered his memory, he couldn't recognize his
enemies; his best protection now was the false identity he wore. She couldn't
put him in more danger, nor could she give him up.

           
 
It was wrong to pretend he was someone he
wasn't. By keeping this secret she was betraying Frank, whom she liked, but
most of all she was betraying Steve...
damn
,
she hated calling him that, but what else could she call him? She had to
continue thinking of him as Steve. She was betraying him by putting him in a
life that wasn't his, perhaps even hindering his complete recovery. He would
never forgive her when he knew, if he ever regained his memory. He would know
she had lied to bun, that she had forced him to live a lie by putting him in
her exhusband's place. But she couldn't put him at risk. She just couldn't. She
loved him too much. No matter what it cost her, she had to lie to protect him.

           
 
"Jay."

           
 
It was
his
 
voice, the raw, gravelly voice that
haunted her at night in the sweetest of dreams. Numbly she turned her head and
looked at him, still so shocked that she couldn't guard her expression. She
loved him. Loving Steve, with his need for excitement that she couldn't give
him, had been bad enough; what had she done, letting herself love this man
whose life consisted of danger?

           
 
She had walked off an emotional cliff and was
now in a free fall, unable to help herself.

           
 
He filled the doorway of the lounge. Now that
she knew, she saw the differences. He was a little taller than Steve had been,
broader of shoulder and deeper of chest, more muscular. His jaw was squarer,
his lips fuller. She should have known just by his mouth, the shape of which
hadn't been changed by surgery. A funny kind of pain filled her as she realized
that she didn't know what he had looked like before. Had his cheekbones been
that high and prominent, his eyes that deep set, his nose slightly off center?
His face was battered and rough now, but had it been drastically changed?

           
 
"What's wrong, baby?" he asked in a
low tone, squatting down in front of her and taking her hands in his. His
thick, level brows descended in a frown as he felt the iciness of her fingers.

           
 
She swallowed, and fine tremors shook her
body. Even hunkered down, he was on a level with her. The sense of power, of
danger, about him was overwhelming. It had been partially disguised while his
eyes had been bandaged, but now, with his fierce will glittering in those
yellow-brown eyes, she felt the full force of his personality.

           
 
"I'm all right," she managed to say.
"It just got to me all of a sudden. I've been so worried."

           
 
He released her hands and slid his palms up
her arms. "I wanted to see you so badly I didn't have time to worry,"
he murmured. The stroking of his big hands warmed her arms, and she felt the
heat of his legs as they pressed against hers.

           
 
"You told me about your blue eyes, but
you didn't tell me about your mouth." He was looking at her mouth. She
felt her lips begin to tremble. "What about my mouth?"

           
 
"How erotic it is," he said under
his breath, and leaned forward. This time his kiss was hard, seeking, forcing
her to give way under his onslaught and open her lips for his tongue. Pleasure
shuddered through her muscles even though a dim alarm began to sound. While he
had been recovering and needed her support so badly, he had been supplicant,
asking for her kisses and the intimacy of her touch. Now he wasn't asking, and
she realized that he had been holding back all along. He wanted her, and he was
coming after her with the full intention of getting what he wanted.

           
 
He stood, his strong grip drawing her up, too,
without breaking contact with her mouth. He kissed her with the forceful
intimacy of a man who intends to take his woman to bed, loosening the reins of
control, demanding more. Jay clung to his shoulders, her senses swimming at the
hard pressure of his body against hers. He moved his hips, seeking the cradle
of hers, and groaned harshly in his throat when his swollen flesh found the
warm notch at the apex of her thighs. She would have groaned, too, if she'd had
the breath. A wild, hot madness was swirling through her veins, tempting her to
forget everything in the demanding urge to satisfy the longings he'd aroused.

           
 
A man and woman entered the lounge; the man
walked past without more than a sidelong look, but the woman stopped and
blushed before looking away and hurrying past. Steve lifted his head, his hands
loosening as a crooked smile quirked his mouth. "I think we need to go
home," he said. She panicked all over again. Home? Were they expecting her
to take him to the small one-bedroom apartment she'd been using for the past
two months? Or would they take him away from her after all, to finish
recuperating in some unknown place?

           
 
They left the lounge to find Frank leaning
patiently against the wall, waiting for them. He straightened and smiled, but
his eyes were sympathetic as he looked at Jay. "Feeling better now?"

           
 
She took a deep breath. "I don't know.
Tell me what's going to happen, then I'll tell you how I feel."

           
 
Steve put his arm around her waist.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. They're not sending me anywhere without you. Are
you, Frank?" He asked the question mildly, but there was steel underlying
his tone, and his yellow-brown eyes narrowed.

           
 
Frank looked back at him with wry humor.
"It never even crossed my mind. Let's step back into your room and we'll
talk."

           
 
When they were once again behind a closed
door, Frank walked over to the window, opened the curtains and looked out,
blinking a little at the brightness of the winter sun. "First, you have to
let the surgeon finish his examination of your eyes," he said, and glanced
back at Steve. "And you'll need a follow-up exam next week, but I'll
arrange that."

           
 
Steve made an impatient gesture, one that
Frank read perfectly. He held up both hands, palms out in a delaying motion.
"I'm getting to that. We'd like to keep you safe, but accessible to us. If
you agree, we plan to move you to a safe house in
Colorado
."

           
 
Jay's head spun, and she sat down abruptly.
Colorado
? Her life had been turned upside down in
the past two months, so the thought of such a drastic change shouldn't have
stunned her, but it did. How could she go off to
Colorado
?

           
 
Then she looked at Steve and knew she would go
anywhere if it meant she could be with him. It was ironic. When she had been
married, the most important thing in her life had been to establish some sort
of stability on which to build her relationship with Steve, and the marriage
hadn't survived. Now she had to pretend this man was Steve, but she was willing
to walk away from everything and everyone she knew just to be with him. Painful
sadness filled her, because this pointed out so clearly that she hadn't truly
loved the real Steve Crossfield, though she had wanted to. He had held her
away, walked his path alone and died alone without anyone ever really being
close to him.