Sudden Recall Read online

  “We’re not husband and wife, are we?

  You don’t even know my name. You never once called me by name. You don’t know any more about me than I do.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Eden said.

  “Yeah, I trusted you. That was my mistake. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t call the cops last night when I stumbled in here. Why is that? What is it you’re after?”

  “Look, give me the gun, and we’ll talk about it.”

  Until he knew differently, he had to assume Eden was his enemy, an enemy from whom he needed answers. But this was a dangerous place to try to get them. He needed somewhere that was safe until he figured out what to do. Where? That’s when he remembered the painting above the fireplace.

  He was getting out of here, going to that isolated houseboat on the river—and he was taking her with him.

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  Those April showers go hand in hand with a welcome downpour of gripping romantic suspense in the Harlequin Intrigue line this month!

  Reader-favorite Rebecca York returns to the legendary 43 LIGHT STREET with Out of Nowhere—an entrancing tale about a beautiful blond amnesiac who proves downright lethal to a hard-edged detective’s heart. Then take a detour to New Mexico for Shotgun Daddy by Harper Allen—the conclusion in the MEN OF THE DOUBLE B RANCH trilogy. In this story a Navajo protector must safeguard the woman from his past who is nurturing a ticking time bomb of a secret.

  The momentum keeps building as Sylvie Kurtz launches her brand-new miniseries—THE SEEKERS—about men dedicated to truth, justice…and protecting the women they love. But at what cost? Don’t miss the debut book, Heart of a Hunter, where the search for a killer just might culminate in rekindled love. Passion and peril go hand in hand in Agent Cowboy by Debra Webb, when COLBY AGENCY investigator Trent Tucker races against time to crack a case of triple murder!

  Rounding off a month of addictive romantic thrillers, watch for the continuation of two new thematic promotions. A handsome sheriff saves the day in Restless Spirit by Cassie Miles, which is part of COWBOY COPS. Sudden Recall by Jean Barrett is the latest in our DEAD BOLT series about silent memories that unlock simmering passions.

  Enjoy all of our great offerings.

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Intrigue

  SUDDEN RECALL

  JEAN BARRETT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  If setting has anything to do with it, Jean Barrett claims she has no reason not to be inspired. She and her husband live on Wisconsin’s scenic Door Peninsula in an antique-filled country cottage overlooking Lake Michigan. A teacher for many years, she left the classroom to write full-time. She is the author of a number of romance novels.

  Write to Jean at P.O. Box 623, Sister Bay, WI 54234. SASE appreciated.

  Books by Jean Barrett

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  308—THE SHELTER OF HER ARMS

  351—WHITE WEDDING

  384—MAN OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN

  475—FUGITIVE FATHER

  528—MY LOVER’S SECRET

  605—THE HUNT FOR HAWKE’S DAUGHTER*

  652—PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS*

  692—OFFICIAL ESCORT*

  728—COWBOY P.I.*

  770—SUDDEN RECALL*

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Eden Hawke—She is prepared to risk anything to get her son back, including the man without a past.

  Shane—He is on the run and with no memory. Can he trust the alluring P.I., or is she another threat to him?

  Tia—Eden’s friend is worried about her.

  Nathanial—Is Eden’s son still alive? If so, what became of him after he vanished three years ago?

  Roy—The caretaker is unwilling to tell what he knows.

  Harriet Krause—The lab technician is frightened. What is she hiding?

  Bruno and Boris—Whatever their actual names might be, the two brutes are both dangerous and desperate.

  Lissie Reardon—She is prepared to sacrifice everything, including her life.

  Charles Moses—Eden had once loved him, but now he’s her enemy.

  Irene Moses—The daughter of Sebastian Jamison is as shallow as she is beautiful.

  Claire Jamison—What family secret is Sebastian’s elegant but ruthless widow determined to protect?

  Estelle and Victor DuBois—They are valuable friends, but how far are they willing to go to help Eden and Shane?

  To my good friends Bev, Jane and Kathy. You’re the tops.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  A special thank you to Judy Scrimpsher, R.N.,

  for sharing her medical knowledge.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Whatever it was, it was vital. Something he had lost and had to recover before it was too late. That part was clear, though nothing else was.

  He wished his head would stop hurting. If only he could achieve that much, ease the throbbing inside his skull, he was certain he would remember just what it was he was trying to find.

  Then a new thought struck him. Maybe it wasn’t a something from which he had been separated but a someone. Could that be right? Yes, he was sure of it now. Someone was waiting for him, someone who needed him. Or was it the other way around? Was he the one in need?

  In his confusion he wasn’t absolutely certain of anything, only that he had to get there. Wherever there was. He was so disoriented he had no idea what this place was or how he’d gotten here. Neither the hour nor the weather were his allies.

  It was late, sometime in the middle of the night. He could sense that much. And there was water off to his right. A river, he thought. He could see lights on the other side, and more lights off to his left. Between them was this strip of darkness along which he had been wandering. For how long he didn’t know.

  A parkway, he decided. That was the explanation for the grassy strip. He was alone and on foot along some city parkway. A wind blew off the river, cold and wet, pelting him with needles of rain. He wasn’t dressed for the weather. Drawing the collar of his light jacket up around his neck, he turned and moved away from the biting exposure of the broad river.

  That’s when he realized that more than his head was hurting. His whole body was sore, aching with the effort of each step. Had he been in an accident?

  He came to a wide boulevard where the traffic at this hour was light. On the other side were the glowing lights of what looked like a convenience store, one of those places that never closed.

  They would have aspirin in there. If he could get some aspirin inside him, relieve the stabbing inside his head, he was confident his brain would find the answers he was searching for.

  He shuffled across the thoroughfare, and into the store. The light was dazzling after the darkness outside. It took him a moment to adjust to the glare. Then he saw that the store was deserted except for him and a young attendant at the checkout counter talking on her cell phone.

  He found the aspirin at the rear of the store. There was bottled water nearby. He took both the aspirin and a bottle of water up to the checkout.

  “Customer,” the attendant said into her phone. “Gotta go.”

  She ended her call and turned her attention in his direction. There was a startled e
xpression on her face when she looked at him. It puzzled him for a second, and then he remembered how wet he was from the rain. He must look as if he’d fallen into the river.

  He placed his purchases on the counter and reached for his wallet in his back pants pocket. There was no wallet, not in that pocket or anywhere else on him. Had he been robbed? The young woman was staring at him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “Forgot something.”

  He left the aspirin and water on the counter and retreated down one of the aisles. When he was out of sight of the checkout area, he stopped and searched again through all his pockets, trying not to panic, trying to understand.

  But there were no funds on him anywhere, not in his pants, his shirt or in his jacket. No money, no credit cards and no identification. Nothing at all.

  In desperation he clutched at the sides of his jacket. And that’s when he felt it. Something deep down inside the lining. His hand plunged again into the lower left pocket, this time finding a tear in one corner. His fingers dug through the opening, fished around, and finally closed around two small rectangles of thick paper.

  Not concerning himself with how they had gotten there, whether they had slipped down into the lining by accident or whether they had been deliberately concealed there, he hoped only that they would tell him who he was and what was happening to him, if not why. He withdrew his discoveries.

  One was a photograph of a young, solemn-faced boy. He didn’t recognize the child, and there was no writing on the back. There was printing on the other rectangle. A dog-eared business card. Hawke Detective Agency, it said. Under that, beside the emblem of a golden hawk, was a name and address. Eden Hawke, 99 Mead Street, Charleston. There were also a phone number and an address.

  None of it triggered any memories. None of it meant anything to him. But it was all he had, and he suddenly knew that he had to go to the address on this card. That it must be the place he was seeking, and that there was someone there waiting for him.

  A phone. He remembered seeing a pay phone in a corner at the back of the store. He had no money to place a call, nor any wish to make that kind of contact. No desire to do anything but reach that address. But first he had to locate it. Public phones were accompanied by city directories, and directories had maps in them. A map that could tell him how to get to 99 Mead Street.

  Providing, that is, this was Charleston he was in and not some other city far away. And why didn’t he know? Never mind, he promised himself as he moved down the aisle toward the phone. It would all get sorted out.

  There was a display of sunglasses with a small mirror at eye level, to see what the glasses looked like on you. He caught a glimpse of himself as he started past the display. Coming to a stop, he peered into the mirror, shocked by his image.

  No wonder he was in pain and that the attendant had been jolted by the sight of him. The unrecognizable face that stared back at him looked like a battleground. One eye was bruised and so swollen it was half shut, his bottom lip split open, a raw wound on the bridge of his nose, blood smeared on his cheek.

  Something had happened to him out there all right. Something very bad. No time to wonder about it. Later. He had to get to Mead Street.

  Backing away from the mirror, he went on to the phone. A directory was attached to it by a chain. The cover under the heavy black binding told him what he needed to know. He was in Charleston, South Carolina. The street map inside the directory provided him with the location of Mead Street.

  He would need the map. Tearing it out of the directory, he folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket along with the business card and the photograph.

  He had to get out of the store before that attendant got nervous and called the cops. Maybe she already had. He didn’t want the police, didn’t consider asking the attendant for help, either with medical assistance or directions. He wasn’t sure why, but instinct told him there was a potential danger in this situation that he had to avoid.

  He left the store, head lowered, and went out into the wild blackness of the night. There was a street sign on the corner. He read it and then checked the map under the streetlight. Mead Street was twelve blocks from this corner. Not far, but light-years away in this weather and in his condition. But he would manage it. Somehow.

  It was a struggle. The wind had risen again, blasting rain into his face. In several places he stumbled over limbs that the storm had torn from the trees. He fell once and fought the temptation to just lie there and forget he must be oozing blood and that every step was agony. Picking himself up was an effort, moving on an ordeal. But he did it.

  There were few people out in this weather, and at this hour the traffic almost nonexistent. A cab did pass by. If only he could have hailed it. He couldn’t. He had no money for a taxi.

  There was another car that made him melt into an alley. A police cruiser. He didn’t know why he should fear it, but a sense of self-preservation had him blindly doing just that. He wasn’t challenged, which meant they probably hadn’t spotted him. The cruiser turned the corner and disappeared.

  He emerged from the alley and went on, driven by an urgency he didn’t understand. He was worried, too. Worried that he wouldn’t make it, because both his head and his leg were hurting like hell. He was limping badly and so weak and dazed that he had trouble with his bearings.

  Where was he now? How far had he come? He wasn’t sure, but it looked as if he was in an historic district. There were rows of vintage houses, most of them shuttered and all of them crowded to the edges of the brick sidewalks.

  Mead Street. He saw the sign for it by the gleam of an old lantern on a post. He was almost there. Dragging himself along the length of the street, he searched the numbers and came at last to ninety-nine.

  With a white frame and a narrow face, it was one of those Charleston structures known as a single house. The kind with a fanlighted door at one end of its front wall that opened onto a piazza at the side of the building. He didn’t know how he knew this, but it seemed that he did.

  There was a brass plate on the door and sufficient light from a nearby street lantern to permit him to read it. He was so spent by now, so light-headed from his exertions, that he almost passed out when he leaned down from his considerable height to peer at the lettering. Steadying himself, he focused on the plate. Hawke Detective Agency, it said. He had come to the right place.

  Why he should trust a private investigator any more than the police, he didn’t know. And what made him think anyone would be here at this hour?

  They were questions for which he had no answers. Nor was his mind functioning with any clarity. His head was swimming now. There was only one clear emotion inside it. Relief.

  He didn’t bother knocking on the door or looking for a bell, both of which might be loud enough to draw attention to him out here on the street. He didn’t want to risk that. Instead, he reached for the knob and turned it, and since the door was actually a gate and not really a door at all, it was unlocked. Just as he had figured, it opened on a piazza that overlooked a storm-littered garden at the side of the house.

  Then he was inside and the door closed behind him. Inside and mercifully safe.

  There were a door and windows off the front of the piazza. Probably the agency’s office. The windows were dark. But at the rear of the piazza, where the house turned in a right angle, were lighted windows. He staggered toward their welcoming glow.

  He didn’t make it. Halfway along the piazza, his body finally betrayed his determination. Although it felt as though he was collapsing in a silent slow motion, he must have toppled with a crash. Because as he lay there, helpless on the wet bricks, a door banged open and light spilled onto the piazza.

  There was the sound of hurrying footsteps, a little cry of alarm, and then he sensed someone kneeling beside him, caught the whiff of a fragrance. A feminine scent that was warm and comforting. Something that made a man want to sink into its sweetness.

  He lifted his head and just before he slid into unc
onsciousness, he managed to plead in a strained, husky voice, “Am I home?”

  HE WAS CONSCIOUS again but still so disoriented he was only dimly aware of his surroundings. What was this place? A bedroom apparently, since he felt a firm mattress under him and a warm quilt drawn over his prone figure.

  But it was hard to be certain of that since the room was in almost total darkness. The only source of illumination was a thin strip of vertical light, which was the result of a door left slightly ajar somewhere on the other side of the room.

  All right, he was in a bedroom. But whose bedroom, and where? He wanted to believe it was his own room, that he belonged here. But he couldn’t be sure of that either.

  He hated his confusion. Hated this state of helplessness that prevented him from…what? He didn’t know, but it nagged at him. There was something he was supposed to do, someone he was supposed to see, but he couldn’t recall what or who.

  And then he heard it. The sound of voices drifting through the crack where the door was ajar. Two people engaged in a conversation out there in another room. Voices so low that he couldn’t make out their words, only their tones. One of them intense, earnest. The other calm but equally insistent. Her voice.

  He recognized it now, remembered its reassurances to him. As soothing as her hands on him, as silken as her scent. It was all right then. If she was here, close by, then he was safe. He could forget all the rest, worry about it later.

  He was so damn sore and exhausted that he needed to do just that. The voices droned on and then faded altogether as he drifted back into unconsciousness.

  “YOU CAN’T DO THIS, EDEN. It’s wrong. The man should be on his way to the E.R., not stretched out back there in your guest room.”

  Eden watched as her friend and neighbor from the apartment upstairs placed her medical supplies back in her bag. There was an expression of pronounced disapproval on Tia’s delicate Asian face.