Читать книгу Dangerous Memories - Barbara Colley - Страница 7

The sight of the sleeping man on Leah Davis’s front porch gave her a start. He was slumped in a heap of humanity near the steps. His back was to her, his face hidden in the crook of his arm. And just beyond where he lay, on the top step of the porch, was the newspaper, the reason she’d ventured out in the first place.

“That’s just great,” she grumbled, shoving a stray strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “Just what I need.” Between the August heat and humidity and the double shifts she’d been pulling at the hospital, not to mention the occasional bouts of nausea, she’d just about gone her limit. And now this.

Shading her eyes against the bright glare of morning sunlight that not even the deep porch of the old Victorian home could block, she stared hard at him.

At least this one appeared to be still breathing, she thought as she noted the slight rise and fall of his back. The last one she’d found on the porch had been dead, cancer and malnutrition according to the coroner’s report.

Still staring at the man, she slowly shook her head. The fact that they kept showing up amazed her. It was almost as if every bum in New Orleans had some kind of built-in radar that directed them to her front porch.

“Thanks a lot, Grandm’ere,” she muttered as she tightened the belt of her thin cotton robe more securely then stepped out onto the porch to get a closer look.

Almost a year had passed since her generous, softhearted grandmother had died, and still they came. Leah had inherited her grandmother’s house, but she had no intention of taking over her grandmother’s charity work as well. Even so, no matter how many times she called the police to come and haul away one of the unwelcome, indigent visitors, more kept showing up to take their place.

Most of them were harmless and simply there for a handout, but Leah had learned not to be as trusting as her grandmother had been.

“Enough’s enough,” she grumbled as she crossed her arms protectively around her slightly rounded abdomen and tapped her bare foot against the wooden floor of the porch. Unlike her grandmother, who had felt that it was her calling in life to help every hungry, homeless man who showed up on her doorstep, Leah didn’t feel that she could take such chances, especially now that she had her unborn baby to protect.

With her eyes still on the man and with every intention of returning inside to call the police, Leah took a step backward toward the door. Instead of going inside though, she hesitated.

Tilting her head and narrowing her eyes, she frowned. There was something different about this one, different from the normal run-of-the-mill bums who had showed up in the past.

For one thing, even though he could use a haircut, his thick, dark hair looked fairly clean and well kept instead of long, greasy and dirty. And instead of the usual sweat and dirt-crusted pants and shirt, this man was wearing what appeared to be hospital scrubs.

Hospital scrubs?

Leah’s frown deepened. Strange. Very strange indeed.

Even so, the hair and clothes had nothing to do with why he seemed different. Though it was probably a silly notion, she could swear there was something familiar about him. That she’d seen him before…somewhere.

Growing more puzzled with each passing moment, she continued staring at him. Was it possible that he was a former patient, someone she’d treated at Charity Hospital? Leah frowned. Now she was really getting paranoid. There was no way a former patient would know where she lived.

So why the nagging feeling of familiarity? Leah had no answer. Maybe if she saw his face, maybe then she’d know.

Just forget it. Go call the police and have his butt hauled off.

Leah glared at the man as indecision warred within her. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she muttered. There was only one way to find out for sure, and though she was curious, she wasn’t careless. Her experiences working as a nurse at Charity Hospital had taught her to be cautious.

She reached just inside the doorway and grabbed the baseball bat that she kept propped there. Unlike her grandmother who, in Leah’s opinion, had always been far too trusting, Leah kept the bat handy, just in case of trouble.

Taking a deep breath for courage, she gripped the bat with both hands and eased over to within a couple of feet of the sleeping man. Using the tip of the bat, she poked him just below the shoulder blades.

“Hey, you!” she called out. “Wake up!”

The man groaned, but he didn’t budge.

Gripping the bat tighter, she poked him again, pushing harder than she had the first time. “You’re trespassing, mister. If you don’t leave I’m calling the police.” She poked at him once more for good measure. “Now, get up!”

Suddenly, like a coiled spring, the man jumped to his feet.

With a yelp of surprise, Leah immediately jerked the bat into a swinging position as she stumbled backward. “Please leave,” she shouted, her legs trembling. “Go on, get out of here.”

Then, the man turned to face her, and she froze. Her breath caught in her lungs, and all she could do was stare at him, her eyes wide with disbelief, her heart pounding like a bass drum against her rib cage.

“Hunter?” she whispered. The baseball bat slid through her nerveless fingers and fell to the porch with a clatter. “No,” she moaned as she slowly shook her head from side to side, trying to deny what was before her eyes. Had she finally lost it, gone over the edge? “Not possible,” she protested. Hunter was dead.

Yet, even while logic dictated that there was no way this man could be Hunter, her insides quivered with the ache of recognition. The same ruggedly handsome face, made even more rugged by the shadow of his dark beard…the same deep-set, steely blue eyes…

Though myriad questions rushed through her head, for the moment, she didn’t care. For the moment, more than anything, she longed to throw herself at him, to once again feel his arms around her, just to assure herself that the man really was Hunter.

Then, their gazes collided, and when she saw the clouded, confused look in his eyes, her mind reeled with her own confusion. Something was wrong…terribly wrong.

He held up his hands defensively. “I don’t mean you any harm,” he said in that rich whiskey voice that had always sent goose bumps chasing up her arms. “You called me Hunter. Do you know me? Is that my name?”

He didn’t know her.

Leah fought to gain control over her runaway emotions.

“Lady, do you recognize me?”

Lady? Even more disconcerted, Leah could do little more than nod. Of course she knew him. How could she not know her own husband? But why did he even have to ask such a question?

Mixed feelings surged through her, then suddenly, without warning, his face and the porch began to spin. Her vision grew hazy then dark around the edges even as she felt her knees buckle.

“Whoa—hey, lady—” He reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulder to steady her. He was a tall man, six foot two to her mere five foot five, and her shoulders fit just beneath his armpit. His touch was a jolt to her senses, and memories of all the other times he’d touched her assailed her.

“Take it easy. You look like you’re about to pass out. Are you sick?”

“No, not—not sick,” she whispered, shaking her head as she gave voice to the half lie.

She had been sick though. For four, long, hellish months, she’d been sick with guilt and remorse. How could she not? After all, it had been her fault. If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t have gone out that night, he wouldn’t have had the accident…he wouldn’t have died. Despite the heat, a chill ran through her. But how could he have died when he was standing next to her, talking to her, touching her? She began to shiver.

“Hey—” His arm around her shoulder tightened. “You’d better sit down before you fall down.”

Hunter. But was Hunter his first name or his last name? the man wondered as he silently repeated it. He nudged the woman toward the porch swing. She looked exactly as he’d pictured her in the brief flashes of memory he’d had over the past month…well, almost exactly. Same warm brown eyes shot with flecks of jade, same alabaster skin sprinkled with a faint dusting of freckles across a pert, ski-jump nose, all framed by thick shoulder-length auburn hair. The only difference was her body. In his memory she’d appeared to be a lot slimmer. Not that she was fat, far from it; but then again, it was highly possible that his memory couldn’t be totally trusted.

Now that he’d seen her, there was no doubt that she was the one he’d traveled hundreds of miles to find. And even better, just as he’d hoped and prayed, she knew him. But how did she know him…?

Unable to do much else, Leah allowed Hunter to help her to the porch swing. After she was seated, he knelt in front of her.

Leah searched his face. If she’d had any doubts that the man was Hunter, they disappeared. This close there was no denying who he was, right down to the tiny scar on the right side of his forehead where a bullet had grazed him.

“You know me, don’t you?” he asked again. “Is Hunter my name?”

Leah nodded, still trying to make heads or tails of what was happening.

“First name or last name?” he asked.

“Your—your n-name is Hunter Davis,” she blurted out. “And you’re—” Whether it was instinct or her overcautious nature, for reasons Leah didn’t understand, she couldn’t complete the sentence, couldn’t tell him that he was her husband…not just yet.

“Hunter Davis,” he repeated softly, almost in awe, as if savoring each syllable.

“Don’t you remember?” But even as she asked the question she knew he didn’t. If he did he wouldn’t be asking in the first place. Even so, she’d had to ask, if only to hear him say it, to hear him admit it.

His head slumped forward until his chin almost touched his collarbone. “That’s just the problem,” he said. “I don’t remember.” He slowly raised his head until he could look her in the eye. “They tell me I have amnesia.”

It was just as she’d suspected. But who on earth were “they”?

“I was told that I was in an accident and almost died,” he continued. “They said that the car I was driving went out of control and hit an eighteen-wheeler hauling gasoline, then burned. The only reason I survived at all was because I was thrown free.” He cleared his throat. “When I finally woke up, it was a month later—so I was told. I was in a hospital in Orlando, Florida, and didn’t remember any of it, not even my own name. They told me I’d been in a coma.”

Leah frowned. As shocked as she was to see him, she could still think enough to realize he should have been identified right away. So why wasn’t he?

“But what about your billfold? And fingerprints? Didn’t they run a check on your fingerprints?”

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My ID must have burned with the car, and when the police ran a fingerprint check, they didn’t find a match.”

“But that’s imposs—” Leah broke off the sentence and clamped her mouth shut.

“What?” he asked. When Leah refused to answer and shook her head, he narrowed his eyes. “You were about to say something. What was it?”

“Nothing.” She forced a smile, hoping it would take the wary edge off her tone. And suddenly, she was wary, big-time wary, and growing more so with each passing minute. Too much of what he’d told her simply didn’t make sense. After all, the police were the ones who had told her he was dead in the first place.

Leah shuddered. They had said he’d been burned beyond recognition, burned to the bones, and she’d buried those bones in the same tomb that held her grandmother’s remains. Then, there were the fingerprints. Hunter was a cop from New York City who had been on leave for medical reasons. His fingerprints would definitely be on file somewhere.

Why would the police have lied to her…and to him? What reason could they possibly have for such a deception?

And whose bones had they given her to bury?