Читать книгу Private Vows - Sally Berneathy C. - Страница 11

With the top down on his big old T-bird convertible and one arm angled out the window, Cole Grayson drove slowly along Turtle Creek Boulevard, focusing on the trees and flowers, breathing in their essence, breathing out the bad taste his last job had left with him. This wasn’t the fastest way home by any means, but the older, wooded area—so close to downtown Dallas in actual mileage but so distant in other ways—always soothed him.

The early-June evening and the location were perfect, but they weren’t working their magic, weren’t dissolving that edgy, irritable feeling. He sat upright in the seat, fingers clenching the steering wheel, eyes darting from side to side, glowering at other drivers, ready to lean on the horn if somebody committed a slight infraction. What the hell was the matter with him? He should be happy!

He’d just turned in his final report on his last job, helping a large corporation catch an embezzler. Last month he’d found proof of fraud in an insurance scam. Business was booming, and it was good business. It paid better than being a cop and was certainly less dangerous.

And he felt totally useless.

Up ahead a woman emerged from between two buildings and paused, looking up and down the street. Cole sat even straighter and blinked, doubting his own eyes.

The woman wore a formal bridal gown.

Her clothing alone was enough to make him take notice, but it was her face, pale in the gathering dusk, her eyes wide with fear, that really caught his attention.

His foot jerked off the gas pedal and hovered over the brake but he ordered himself to go on. This was none of his business. He wasn’t a cop any longer and hadn’t been a very effective one when he was. The woman didn’t appear to be hurt. There was no reason for him to interfere.

A shabbily dressed man approached her and laid a hand on her arm. She screamed and whirled on the man, pummeling him with both fists. He tried to grab her hands, but she bolted into the street, directly in front of Cole’s car, the inappropriate yards of satin and lace billowing around her as she moved.

Cole slammed the brake pedal to the floor. His stomach lurched and a cold hand squeezed his heart as he felt and heard the sickening thud when over a ton of metal collided with a hundred pounds of flesh and bone.

The bride and all her regalia vanished from sight, hidden by the hood of his car.

He vaulted into the street, cursing himself, the woman, the man who’d frightened her…the world.

She lay on her stomach, almost hidden by the folds and layers of that damn frilly material.

Cole knelt beside her and picked up her arm encased in a lacy sleeve fastened with a bunch of little buttons. His big fingers trembled as he wrapped them around her slim wrist, searching for a pulse while his own pounded in his ears and made hers that much harder to distinguish.

He’d been a cop for twelve years. He ought to be used to this kind of thing.

But he wasn’t and he hadn’t been even when he lived with it on a daily basis.

He found her pulse, weak and fast as though she was in shock…or the terror he’d seen on her face still gripped her, but at least she was alive. Thank God he’d been going slow, that he’d already been poised to brake.

“Is she okay?” a man asked. Not the street person who’d scared her but a jogger, his face damp with perspiration.

“There’s a cell phone in my car! Call 911. Hurry!”

A small crowd of half a dozen people was starting to gather around them—concerned citizens, curiosity seekers.

The bride moaned and moved as if she was going to turn over. Well, she couldn’t be very comfortable with her face shoved into the street.

“Easy,” he cautioned. “Try not to move until the ambulance gets here.”

She gave no indication she even heard him, but rolled slowly and languidly, one arm flung above her head, as though she were turning over in her bed at home. She gazed up at him, light blue eyes blank in shock, not yet registering her situation.

She blinked then. Confusion surfaced and finally the fear again, her pupils shrinking to a pinpoint, the surrounding blue so pale it appeared almost silver in its translucence.

“No!” she choked, pushing herself into a sitting position, and he saw for the first time that the front of the dress was splattered with blood—lots of blood.

Cole broke into a sweat as the image of another woman, covered in blood because of him, flashed across the screen of his memory.

The woman in the bridal gown scooted away from him…toward the traffic in the street.

“Damn it, lady!” He grabbed her arm to pull her back, to keep her from further injury, and she burst into tears, collapsing against him.

“Let me go! Please let me go!” she begged.

Much as he’d like to do just that, let her go and pretend the whole thing never happened, he couldn’t. Instead, he held her as securely as he dared, considering the extent of the wound he must have caused.

“You’re going to be all right,” he assured her, though he wasn’t certain that she would be with all that blood on her dress. “That bum who was bothering you is gone.” The guy was probably harmless enough and her reaction to him had been, Cole thought, a little over the top, but he’d say whatever necessary to reassure her.

He stroked her back soothingly, the roughness of his palms snagging on the smooth satin. Her clean, innocent scent of lily-of-the-valley or some other white flower drifted up to him, cutting through the smell of hot pavement. She was thin and fragile, as if she would snap from too tight a grip.

Again that image of a broken doll, broken because of him, assaulted him.

Damn! This shouldn’t be happening. For the twelve years he’d been a cop he’d had no problem dealing with murderers and thieves and drug dealers, looking them in the eye and backing them down without even breathing hard. But this was asking too much, to expect him to cope with a terrified, fragile woman. He couldn’t. He’d long ago proven that.

“Lie back,” he ordered brusquely.

“No, no, no!” Face still buried against his chest, she shook her head, the netting of her veil shivering with the movement.

“There’s blood on your dress. I need to see how badly you’re hurt.” Reminding himself that she was in shock, he spoke more softly, made an effort not to startle her.

She continued to shake her head and cry.

He gripped her thin shoulders and pushed her away, forcing her to look at him. “Listen to me! I’m not going to hurt you. But you need to let me examine your wound.”

A woman from the group of onlookers knelt beside her. “Let me see, honey. Okay?”

Her tears stopping as if something inside had turned off, the bride gave the woman a puzzled glance then lifted her gaze to the chattering group around her as though she’d suddenly noticed her surroundings, suddenly woke up.

“The front of her dress,” Cole directed, and the woman nodded, gently turning the now-pliant bride to face her.

“Oh my God!” the woman exclaimed when she saw the crimson stains.

The bride’s gaze followed the other woman’s, and she gasped, then lifted her eyes to his again. Those eyes were even wider and more confused than ever, more frightened.

Now that Cole had a better look at the blood, he saw with a rush of relief that it was not coming from a fresh wound, nor was her gown torn. Either it had come from a preexisting wound or from somebody else. Not from her. Not from a wound caused by him.

Had she cut the man who’d approached her?

Automatically he rose to investigate the sidewalk where she and the man had been before she’d run into the street, to check for blood or a weapon.

“Don’t leave me!”

A hand gripped his arm with surprising strength and he turned to see the bride struggling to her feet. She was tall, which only emphasized her slender build, and she swayed as if she might not be able to stand without his support.

On the positive side, the fact that she was able to stand at all meant she couldn’t be hurt too badly. He clung to that, to the faint hope that he hadn’t caused her any permanent harm.

“A minute ago you were doing your damnedest to get away from me,” he reminded her.

“I know.” She released his arm and lifted both hands to her face. Hesitantly her slim fingers traced its tear-stained contours as if she’d never felt them before. “I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know why I wanted to get away from you. Who are you?”

“Cole Grayson. Who are you?”

She touched her face again. When her fingers encountered the edge of the veil, she frowned, fumbled for a second then yanked it off, releasing a cascade of quicksilver-blond hair. She studied the veil, turning it over as if secrets were hidden in its gauzy folds, looked down at the bloody gown then back up at him. The fear in her eyes had escalated to panic and spots of pink stood out on her porcelain cheeks like clown makeup. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

A siren screamed inside Cole’s head. Amnesia. Concussion. Brain damage. His fault.

Her head jerked upward, and he realized the siren was real, not just inside his own haunted mind.

“Ambulance, police, fire truck…maybe all three,” he reassured her. “It’s okay.” Liar!

She nodded. “I know what the sound is. I just don’t know who I am.”

“Relax. You’re probably in shock. You’ll be all right in a few minutes.” Please, God, she’d be all right in a few minutes. Please, God, he hadn’t hurt somebody else. “The blood. Can you tell me where it came from?”

Looking down at her midriff, she brought her hand within half an inch of touching the stain then drew back with a shudder. She bit her lip and shook her head slowly, the slight movement shifting the glow of the streetlights in her shiny hair. “I don’t know that either,” she whispered.

Maybe she was lying. As a P.I. and a former cop, that should be his first response. They all lied.

But some remnant of the man he once was, some remnant long buried and forgotten, believed she was telling the truth. Her fear was too real.

“Did you have a knife? Did you cut that man who scared you?” he pursued, forcing himself to act on logic, to beat back his unreliable emotions.

“Man?” she repeated blankly.

“You don’t remember the man who came up to you, put his hand on your arm, and you started hitting him before you ran into the street?”

She shook her head again. “No. I don’t remember any man.” Her gaze darted from him to the people, the street, the buildings on one side, the creek on the other. He could see and feel her terror expanding to fill her universe as shock loosened its hold and she realized the extent of what had happened to her. She gripped his arm. “How did I get here? Where am I?”

A patrol car squealed up with the ambulance right behind. Doors flew open and police and paramedics swarmed out of the two vehicles.

One of the officers was Pete Townley, and Cole was both glad and embarrassed to see his old friend and former partner…and angry at himself for being embarrassed. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was still performing an honorable service, catching lawbreakers, helping people.

“Hey, buddy,” Pete greeted him. “Can’t stay away from us, can you? What happened here?”

“This lady ran in front of my car and I hit her.”

Pete turned to his partner, a new guy Cole hadn’t met. “See if you’ve got any witnesses in the crowd and take their statements. I’ll deal with this shady character.” He grinned.

The team of paramedics rushed over, and for a few moments everything was chaos. The bride with no name clutched Cole’s arm convulsively as she shook her head to every request the paramedics made.

“Look, lady,” one finally exclaimed in frustration. “We’ve got certain procedures we have to follow for your benefit and ours. You were hit by a car, and you may have a concussion. Standard procedure is for you to lie on this stretcher, let us fasten this cervical collar on your neck and examine you. Trust me, this won’t hurt a bit. You’ll feel better and so will we.”

The bride’s grip on Cole’s arm tightened. “No.”

Cole patted her hand. “It’ll be all right. These men want to help you and I need to talk to the officer a minute.”

“Don’t leave me! You’re the only person I know here.” She looked around frantically. “The only person I know in the whole world.”

She sure had changed her tune, and it made him damn nervous. Cole had his spot in life. He caught embezzlers, con artists, insurance-scam criminals. What he didn’t do—what he hadn’t done even when he was on the police force—was successfully rescue damsels in distress.

“You don’t know me,” he protested.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly calmer as she stared directly into his eyes. “Yes, I do know you and I trust you.”

He wasn’t sure what she saw in his gaze; certainly not the truth or she wouldn’t trust him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a sigh. “The cops won’t let me leave until they get their pound of flesh.”

Reluctantly she consented to lying on the stretcher for the examination, but adamantly refused to permit the paramedics to put on the collar or the backboard. As they checked her vital signs, her gaze remained fixed on him, clutching him as if he were a lifeline. He fought back a laugh…or a grimace…at the irony of that concept.

“Long time no see,” Pete said. “What’s going on? You so hard up for a woman you’ve taken to running them down?” Pete grimaced immediately, pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his bright red hair. “Aw, geez, I didn’t mean anything by that. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cole shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans and made himself smile. “Forget it. Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Angela either until you started falling all over yourself apologizing.”

It was a lie, but only a half lie. Of course he’d been thinking about Angela, about her still body covered in blood, about her fragility, about his role in her death. Pete’s careless joke hadn’t affected that one way or the other.

“Listen, you might want to check the sidewalk and the grass for blood or some kind of weapon. She ran from between those buildings and got into a struggle with a sleazy guy who came up, probably harmless, begging, but he did grab her arm. She got away from him and ran into the street, right in front of my car. I don’t think she had time to injure the guy, but you never know.”

Pete nodded and went to check out the scene.

Cole could feel the woman’s needy eyes on him, pulling him as a magnet, and he returned his attention to her, moving closer to where she lay reluctantly on the stretcher. “She okay?” he asked.

“Seems to be,” one of the paramedics answered. “We still need to take her in, though. Just a precaution since she appears to have some memory loss.”

“No!” The bride pushed aside the paramedics and raised herself to a sitting position. Terror showed in her gaze, her trembling lips, the shaky, beseeching hand she lifted to him. “Don’t let them take me. Please don’t let him take me!”

He squatted beside her, gently easing her back onto the stretcher. “Shh. Just relax, okay?”

Him? Don’t let him take me? Why had she used the singular pronoun the second time when there were two paramedics? Was something else going on here besides a fear of being taken to the hospital by strangers?

“I’m all right now, really I am. I remember my name and where I live. It’s…Mary Jackson, and I live at…1492 Main Street.”

She was definitely lying now, making it up on the spot, her eyes begging him to believe her, to help her, looking at him as if he were a hero or Marshall Dillon. Well, he wasn’t. He was just a former cop who hadn’t even been able to protect his own family, so what did she want from him?

He rose abruptly, doing her the favor of breaking away from her.

“What day is it?” the paramedic asked, his voice gentle. He knew she was lying, too.

Tears flooded her eyes, but she bit her lip and blinked them back, then looked around her. The curious crowd chafed at the police tape as they tried to get a closer look, and a steady stream of cars inched along while drivers gawked at the scene.

“Saturday.” A good guess from the number of people out and about. “It’s Saturday night. I don’t know the date. Do you?” she challenged.

Cole shifted his stance from one foot to the other and released a long breath. The woman, in spite of being in a complete panic, not knowing who or where she was, had guts. He had to give her that. “I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said, cursing himself even as the words slipped out of his mouth. “I’ll follow right behind the ambulance.”

She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, then, as if suddenly aware of the bloodstain she was touching, she dropped them to her sides with a shudder. “I can’t get in that ambulance. Please don’t make me.” Claustrophobia? A bad experience in an ambulance?

“All right, all right,” he grumbled. “You can ride with me. I’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked in. I guess I owe you that much since I’m the one who ran you down.”

But it wasn’t only his guilt that motivated him. He wasn’t solely responsible for this woman’s problems. Something had been wrong with her before she ran in front of his car. A bride in full regalia with blood on her wedding gown had some kind of story to tell, even if she couldn’t remember it.

No, it wasn’t just the guilt that made him want to take care of her. This woman had that same fragile, helpless, innocent air that Angela had had. And in spite of knowing that the kindest thing he could do was to walk away, he couldn’t stop himself from responding to her pleas.

What the hell was the matter with him? Did he have some misguided notion he could get it right this time?

A psychiatrist could probably have a field day with that one.

“Evening, ma’am.” Pete strolled up. Cole noted that another squad car had arrived and the officers had taken over the search of the sidewalk and the surrounding area.

Instead of being relieved to see a uniformed police officer, the woman tightened her hold on his arm, and her breathing accelerated.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Pete asked in his best official mode.

“I can’t remember,” she said, her words barely above a whisper.

“A temporary fugue state,” one of the paramedics contributed.

Pete looked at Cole and lifted one eyebrow. “This guy here says you ran out from between those two buildings, a man accosted you and you ran into the street in front of his car. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“You come from a wedding reception somewhere around here?” Typical cop, assuming she was lying, trying to con her into admitting something. Standard operating procedure, but Cole wanted to tell him to ease up on her, that she was too fragile.

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“Where’d you get the blood on your dress?”

“I don’t remember!”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t remember!”

“She said it was Mary Jackson a few minutes ago,” Cole interjected. “Mary Jackson who lives at 1492 Main. But I think she was lying so she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.”

Pete’s dark eyes bored into her, and she trembled slightly. “Is that your name?” he demanded. “Are you Mary Jackson?”

She looked down to the pavement and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Mary Chapin Carpenter sings country music. So does Alan Jackson. I just put them together. 1492 Main Street. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And every town has a Main Street. I made it all up. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Home.”

“Where might that be?”

Her eyes widened and tears again glistened. “I don’t know.”

Involuntarily, Cole reached over and squeezed her hand where it clung to his arm. Her skin was smooth and silky, like her dress, and her fingers were long and delicate. The only contrast was a large diamond ring that pressed with sharp cold edges against his fingers.

“The way I see it,” Pete continued “you’ve got two choices, the hospital or the police station. You’re going to have some questions to answer when you come out of this fugue state, and we need to run some tests on that dress, see what kind of blood that is.”

She swallowed, the sound audible over the traffic and crowd noises as if the three of them stood in their own little universe. “What kind of blood?”

“Could be human. Or could be chicken. Maybe you were cooking for your own wedding reception. Could be goat. Maybe this was some kind of voodoo ceremony.” He stared pointedly at her hand on Cole’s arm, at the huge diamond solitaire. “Apparently the wedding wasn’t over. You don’t have the band to go with that rock.”

She held out her hand, studying the ring as if seeing it for the first time. Abruptly she tugged it off and extended it to Cole. “It’s not mine!”

“It is unless somebody else claims it,” Pete told her. “So what’s it gonna be? The station or the hospital?”

Her eyes, the pupils so shrunken they were lost in the silvery-blue mist, silently asked his advice, trusting him to make the right decision, to lead her in the right direction.

Couldn’t she tell just by looking at him that the only place he could lead her was straight into hell?

“If I were you, I’d choose the hospital,” he growled. “I sure wouldn’t voluntarily go with the cops.” And certainly not with an ex-cop who had the scent of death following him like a shadow.

She studied him a moment longer, her hand still outstretched with the ring winking on her palm. “All right,” she said. “But only if you take me in your car. Only if I don’t have to get into that…that thing.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” he agreed against his better judgment. She certainly did seem to have a phobia about the ambulance. Of course, she seemed to have a phobia about everything.

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I think you better let us take care of the lady.”

Cole flinched at his buddy’s words. Pete was only following procedure, but it hit Cole hard, like a direct attack, an affirmation that this frightened, confused woman would be better off with anybody in the world except him.

Pete knew his story. So maybe he was saying exactly that.

“Are you arresting me?” the bride asked, lifting her chin defiantly, that unexpected burst of strength again surfacing.

“No, ma’am. We’d just like to know where that blood came from. I didn’t find any more in the vicinity and I didn’t find a weapon, but you could have wounded the guy you were struggling with. If you did, he’s not around to press charges, and he did accost you first, according to your friend here. We’re not arresting you.”

“I’ll go to the hospital because I have nowhere else to go, but only if Mr. Grayson takes me.” She spread her hands several inches away from the dress as if she didn’t want to touch it. “And you’re more than welcome to have this…this thing as soon as I get other clothes to wear.” She shivered in the warm summer evening. “I don’t want it. It makes my skin crawl.”

She had amnesia…or a fugue state, as the paramedic called it. She had an aversion to ambulances and hospitals and cops. She was wearing a wedding gown but no wedding band, which probably meant she’d skipped out on her own wedding…after somehow getting blood all over the front of that gown…a gown that made her skin crawl. The only normal things about her were her knowledge of country-music singers and the date America was officially discovered.

She had problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and she was looking to him to take care of her. What a joke!

“I can get her to the hospital, Pete,” Cole snapped. “I can handle that.”

“Please take this,” she whispered, still holding out her hand.

Pete reached toward her, but she jerked away from him. “I’ll take your jewelry in for you, ma’am,” he said. “Give you a receipt and you can have it back as soon as you get out of the hospital or anytime you want.”

“No. Not you. Him.”

“Look, lady,” Cole said, “I’m a complete stranger. The only thing you know about me is that I ran you down with my car. Give the ring to the police officer. You give it to me and you may never get it back again. You may never see me again.”

“I don’t want it back.”

“Take it, Grayson,” Pete snapped irritably. “We haven’t got all night. I’ll see that he doesn’t run off with it, ma’am.”

Cole sighed and reached for the ring, his fingers brushing the smooth coolness of her palm. If he’d had his eyes closed, he’d have been able to tell by the feel that her skin had the color and translucency of fine china, the same allure that invited touching. And the same tendency to shatter.

Get her to the hospital. That was all he had to do. After that, he’d never see her again.

He shoved the gaudy ring into his pocket, turned and strode back to his car. She could follow him or not, go with him or not. He didn’t care. He couldn’t care.