Her Forgotten Betrayal(20)

“And you know that how?” she asked through clenched teeth.

Actually, it didn’t hurt as badly anymore. Or maybe she didn’t notice as much because Cole was close again, the masculine strength of him easing her frazzled senses. As he worked on her hand, waves of brown hair were near enough for her to reach out and touch their silkiness. She didn’t, of course. But she ached to.

“The same way,” he said, “that I knew how to use the gun I pointed at you a few minutes ago, but never would have hurt you with.”

“You’re with the police?” She watched him root around the box for a second time. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to looking her in the eye.

“Not exactly.”

He pulled out a small white packet and opened it the way he had the gauze. He plucked an antiseptic towelette from the wrapper and replaced the soiled gauze with the wipe and more careful pressure, making her hiss.

Really? That was all she was going to get?

He couldn’t have been more gentle about taking care of her, this man she suspected was a force to be reckoned with wherever he went. But parting with personal information obviously wasn’t his thing. Meanwhile, her addled mind was now obsessing over the clean, outdoorsy scent of him, as if that were all that mattered when it came to trusting the guy or not.

“Okay,” she said. She pointed to the first-aid kit he had gone back to sifting through. “Let’s talk about how you knew that was under my grandmother’s sink. Exactly how close were we when we were younger?”

He produced a butterfly bandage this time. “I’m more concerned about why you don’t remember me or, according to you, anything else.” He wrapped her thumb with an economical twist of his wrist. He looked up from his handiwork. “We knew each other from the time we were little kids until we were nearly out of high school. And I have to say, you’ve never been the type to freak at things that go bump in the night. Now you think someone’s trying to kill you?” A deep frown made his rugged features and cerulean eyes impossibly compelling. “Maybe we should go to the hospital. Did you hit your head either time you fell tonight?”

At his directness and obvious concern, Shaw felt moisture flood her eyes. She glanced at the cabinet, the sink, then at the beautiful silverware scattered on the floor around them. None of her grandmother’s things felt as though they belonged to her. None of it seemed remotely as real as the nearness, the warmth, of this man looking back at her. Which only made her want to cling to him, and she’d be damned if she’d give him another reason to pity her.

“No.” She fingered the scar at her temple. “I didn’t hit my head either time. Not that it matters. Nothing matters in the end. Not when you can’t even remember yourself.”

He stilled. He was obviously curious. Confused. But the compassion that quickly eclipsed both reactions was what finally made her tears fall.

“Anything?” he asked. “Before I went upstairs, you said you’d forgotten…”

“Everything.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and gestured toward her head. “I was…hurt, and nothing before that night will come back to me.”

He collected the trash from his work, then closed up the kit, letting her cry without making a fuss about it, or making her feel childish for her loss of control. “And something about the way you were injured is making you think someone is still after you?”

He reached for her face. His finger brushed across her temple, her scar, and her memories, leaving her shivering with the almost-there sensation that he might be the first memory she could reach for, grab onto, and not watch slip through her fingers.

“I…I was shot,” she whispered. She cleared her throat. “I dream about it, but I can never see his face, the man who did this to me. They wanted to kill me and he tried. Or maybe I’m imagining all of it, and my bruised brain is hiding what really happened. Hysterical amnesia, the doctors call it. I’m supposed to be here so I can relax enough to get something of my life back. I’m told I was here every summer growing up. I guess while you lived on the mountain, too, with your family? My doctors thought it would be a nonthreatening, familiar retreat.”

“And it’s not?”

“What I keep thinking I remember about the night I was hurt is so horrible. People wanting me dead…”

Cole stretched out one powerful, jeans-clad leg and snagged a chair with the toe of his boot, dragging it over from the table. He rose from the floor, lifting her with him as if she were light as a doll. She stiffened in his grasp.

“I can do it,” she said, not entirely sure why she was struggling out of his arms, when the amazing feel of his hard, muscular body supporting hers was enough to make her dizzy all over again.