Sudden Recall Read online

  “I don’t know, but if she’s willing, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Maybe under hypnosis, she can plug you into your memory.”

  How could he turn his back on a prospect like that when the frustration over this void inside his head was eating away at him? It wasn’t just a matter of wanting his memory back but of needing it. Because he couldn’t shake his mounting sense of urgency, of time running out. But there was one thing that concerned him about Atlanta Johnson.

  “Can we trust her?”

  “She claims that anything she hears from a client she keeps strictly to herself, and I believe her. She’s like a doctor in that respect.”

  “Then let’s go for it.”

  “Uh, there’s just one thing,” Eden said as they started back to the houseboat where, with luck, they would not only reach the hypnotist by phone but secure an emergency appointment with her.

  “What’s that?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t want you to be put off by it, but Atlanta is…well, just a bit of a character.”

  AN UNDERSTATEMENT, Eden realized, recalling her casual warning with a sheepish glance at Shane when Atlanta Johnson arrived that evening. The look on his face as the mammoth woman with a mop of orange hair waddled through the front door of the houseboat was one of classic surprise.

  Garbed in a pair of stretch pants that barely accommodated her, a silk blouse in an explosion of colors, and clanking with jewelry, Atlanta definitely qualified as a character. And that was only visually.

  The first words out of her mouth were a cheerful, “You got anything to eat, girl? I’ve got to have energy for a job like this.”

  That had been a good half hour ago. Since then, Eden had watched Shane’s impatience deepen while their visitor consumed a considerable portion of the refrigerator’s contents. This had been accompanied by Atlanta’s nonstop complaints about the less savory members of her vast family.

  Shane was no longer impatient. He rested now on the sofa, eyes closed, all signs of strain gone from his face. Having satisfied herself with what the refrigerator offered, Atlanta had gotten down to business. In a matter of minutes, she’d had Shane in a deep trance.

  The hypnotist, however, was in no hurry to follow up on her impressive performance. She was currently working on a chocolate bar she had discovered at the bottom of her capacious carryall.

  “Should he be left like that?” Eden wondered. “Shouldn’t you—”

  “He’s all right. Let him settle in for a bit, get hisself comfortable with things, so to speak. It works better that way.”

  Eden hoped so. Shane certainly looked peaceful enough at this moment, she thought, casting an anxious glance in his direction from the chair she occupied near the sofa.

  She couldn’t deny to herself that her glance was also a frankly admiring one. They had visited a discount store out on the highway that afternoon in order to buy him some essential toiletries and several changes of clothes.

  He had shaved and showered before Atlanta’s arrival. With the bandage removed from his nose, leaving a raw spot that was already fading, and his whiskers scraped away, Shane no longer had the look of a tough desperado. But even in repose like this, his face was still a bold one, with strong, appealing features that stirred her senses.

  Flutters. She had flutters inside her stomach that shouldn’t be there. She tried to tell herself they existed only because she was worried this experiment might be a mistake. But she couldn’t totally convince herself of that.

  Balling up the wrapper from her chocolate bar, Atlanta parked her bulk on the stool in front of the sofa. There was a candle burning on the low table beside her. She had used its flickering flame, along with her melodic voice, to induce Shane’s hypnotic state. Ready now to begin, she blew out the candle. But before she leaned toward her subject, she turned to Eden with a solemn caution.

  “Girl, you don’t get yourself set here for something that maybe won’t happen. He went under quick enough because he wants his memory back. But that don’t mean what’s deep inside is willing. And if it ain’t willing, then it’s not gonna give up what it’s holding on to.”

  Eden nodded her understanding.

  Atlanta returned her attention to her subject and proceeded to demonstrate that she knew her business.

  “Shane, are you with me, hon?”

  “Yes,” he murmured, eyes still closed but aware of her voice directing him.

  “That’s good. That’s real good. Now I want you to rest easy and cast your mind back. Go back two weeks.”

  They had agreed beforehand that, unless it proved necessary, they would not try to regress his memory to his early years.

  “Are you there, Shane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  Atlanta waited, but there was no answer. “What’s happening?” she urged.

  Silence.

  “Is something happening, Shane? Tell me what it is.”

  “Beth,” he said.

  “Beth who?”

  No answer.

  “Is Beth with you?”

  “She’s gone. I’ve lost her again. Lost her before, and now this time…”

  “What, hon?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where did Beth go? Where do you think she went?”

  “Don’t know,” he repeated stubbornly.

  It isn’t working, Eden thought. He’s resisting. His mind is blocking it out, maybe because the memory is so awful. Or maybe because there’s some danger associated with it. Atlanta must have decided the same thing, because she tried another approach.

  “If that’s not such a good time, hon, we won’t stay there. Won’t go forward either until you’re ready. Let’s go back some ways before Beth. Maybe to a better time and place. Go back now to nine months ago. Are you there, Shane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  Eden was prepared for another silence and was surprised when this time he identified his surroundings.

  “In the jungle.”

  “What jungle?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  Or won’t tell, Eden thought, listening tensely to the exchange.

  “What’s happening in the jungle, Shane?” Atlanta coaxed. “Can you see it?”

  There was a pause during which Eden held her breath. Then slowly and haltingly, he began to describe the situation.

  “Rain. Never stops raining. Always wet. And hot. Heat and bugs. My men are complaining, but orders are orders. Be glad when it’s over.”

  “What, Shane?” Atlanta probed. “When what’s over?”

  “The operation. Free the hostages, only—”

  He stopped. Eden, watching him intently, could see that he was disturbed. A muscle in his jaw began to twitch.

  “What’s going on there now, Shane? What are you and the other men doing?”

  “Working our way through the jungle. Going to the rendezvous. I don’t like it. Something is wrong. I can feel something is wrong.”

  “You tell me what’s wrong, hon. Tell Atlanta.”

  “Ambush. We’ve walked into an ambush.” Shane’s body went taut on the sofa, his voice expressing rage and excitement. “The bastard betrayed us! Get down! Take cover!”

  He’s fighting a battle, Eden thought, experiencing his agitation along with him. He’s living it all over again.

  “There’s gunfire! One of my men is down! Vinny!” he shouted. “Vinny, watch out!”

  Eden couldn’t bear the pain in his voice, the way his body was twisting now from side to side, as if in a desperate effort to dodge a hail of bullets.

  “I’ve got to get them out of here before we’re all wiped out! I’ve been hit, but I’ve got to get my men out! Do you understand? Now, before it’s too late…”

  Eden could stand to witness no more of his anguish.

  “He’s suffering!” she cried. “Take him out of there! Please take him out!”

  Atlanta bent forward and placed a
reassuring hand on Shane’s arm. “It’s all right, baby,” she said, her voice low and soothing. “You can leave that place. You don’t have to be there anymore.”

  His face and body slowly relaxed, became quiet again. Eden’s own body went limp with relief in the chair.

  “No more of this,” she said with determination. “The session ends here.”

  Atlanta sat back and gazed at her soberly. “You sure of this, hon? We got yet to learn what you both asked for. His real name, what happened to him in the here and now that lost him his memory.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not putting him through any more. Take him out of the trance.”

  “Always better for them to come out of it in an easy manner.” She leaned again toward her subject, planting a posthypnotic instruction in his mind. “You stretch out on that sofa now, Shane. You go to sleep for a bit, and when you wake up you’re gonna feel fine. Real fine.”

  Shane obeyed her, sinking into a deep slumber. Satisfied by his serene state, Atlanta gathered up her things. “He’ll be all right. He’ll maybe remember what he said while he was under, maybe not. Depends on how tight he’s hanging on to that past of his. But you call me if you need me.”

  Eden assured her that she would, paid her, and accompanied her to the door. Atlanta turned to her before leaving.

  “Yeah, he’ll be all right,” she repeated, “but maybe you won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Atlanta’s gaze slid in the direction of the sofa across the room, then focused again on Eden. “You listen to me, girl,” she said severely. “I’ve been around and know some things. Yeah, he’s one sexy devil, but if you go and keep that man over there…”

  “What?”

  “He’s gonna do things to you. Things that are gonna squeeze the life out of your heart and soul. Maybe worse after the violence we heard him speak of. So you watch yourself with that one. You hear?”

  Chapter Five

  Eden tried not to remember Atlanta’s parting words to her as she watched over Shane from the chair near the sofa, waiting for him to waken. But she couldn’t stem the disturbing thoughts that swarmed into her mind.

  The man stretched out on her sofa, the man Atlanta had warned her about, was a stranger to her. As close as they had become in just a matter of hours, and admittedly they had, he was still a stranger. One, it seemed, who had at least one violent episode in his history. Maybe more. How that might be connected with Nathanial worried her.

  But, stranger or not, she and Shane needed to trust each other if they were going to solve the mystery of his past and find Nathanial. That trust wasn’t going to be easy for either one of them. Not when it turned out that both she and Shane had been taught by painful betrayals in their pasts not to trust.

  There was another treachery at work here—her growing attraction to this man. It could only get in the way, complicate the issues that were already problems enough in themselves.

  Problems like Beth.

  Who was she, and what did she mean to Shane? Someone significant in his life probably, a woman who might be waiting for him somewhere even now.

  But Eden didn’t want to think about Beth, whoever she was. Nor did she want to examine her reason for resisting the subject of the mysterious Beth. All she longed for was to have Shane wake up.

  A moment later, as though responding to what she willed, his eyes opened. Turning his head on the pillow she had provided for him, his gaze found her in the chair.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, leaning toward him. Hoping, in spite of Atlanta’s reassurance, that his trance wouldn’t leave him dazed.

  “Surprisingly rested.” He lifted his head, his eyes searching the room. “Where’s Atlanta?”

  “Gone.”

  “Then the session is over with? I actually went under?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it a success?”

  “Do you remember what you told us?”

  “Nothing.” He sat up and bent toward her earnestly, his hands planted on the knees of his parted legs. “It was a disappointment, wasn’t it? I can see it in your face. Didn’t I give you anything useful?”

  “Not much, but maybe it’s enough to trigger your memory.” She told him about Beth. He was silent for a moment, his mind seeking a conscious recognition. Then he shook his head.

  “The name means nothing to me. What else? There must have been something else.”

  Eden hesitated, hating to take him back to that jungle and the horror he had experienced there. But he deserved to know.

  “There was more,” she said, and she told him all the rest.

  Shane said nothing when she finished relating the episode in the jungle as he’d described it. Uneasy with his silence, she ventured a speculative, “Do you think this is how you ended up with the scars and the limp?”

  He shook his head, indicating he didn’t know.

  “It could have been the result of some kind of military operation,” she suggested. Or, she thought, not wanting to say it, something totally nefarious. “Do you suppose you might have been a member of a Special Forces unit? Is that possible?”

  Again, he was silent.

  “Shane,” she pressed him anxiously, “talk to me. Does any of this suggest anything, open up your memory at all?”

  “No.”

  He was lying to her, she thought. She could tell, because the muscle in his jaw was twitching again, just as it had when he’d relived the scene in the jungle for them. And his face wore that same grim, guarded expression.

  “You’re not telling me the truth,” she said. “If nothing else, you do have a conscious memory now of that mission.”

  “No, not a memory of the actual images,” he admitted. “Just the…”

  “What?”

  “The shadows of them. It’s like I’m seeing the shadows of them.”

  But those shadows, even if they had yet to make any sense to him, were enough to shatter his self-control. Shuddering with the sudden anguish they evoked, he hunched over, his head in his hands.

  “Oh, God, what has any of this got to do with you and your boy? Or with me? Just who the hell am I, Eden, and what have I done?”

  It was the plea of a wounded man, and whatever the consequences, Eden couldn’t ignore his need. She went to him at once, kneeling on the floor between his parted legs. Willing to share in his despair, but refusing to let him surrender to it, she reached out to him, holding his big hands in her own.

  “We’ll learn who you are, Shane. I promise you that somehow we will. We’ll put it all together, and give your life back to you.”

  He lifted his head, his potent brown eyes with the golden lights in them meeting hers. “And yours, as well,” he said, referring to Nathanial in a hopeful, husky voice.

  The promises they exchanged were reckless ones. As reckless as what followed them. Clearly needing more than her verbal comfort, needing her physical one as well, Shane abandoned all restraint. Before she could object, or even decide if she should object, he had freed his hands from hers. The action permitted him to reach down and gather her into his arms.

  Eden found herself dragged up between his legs and clasped against his hard body, caught in a fierce embrace that involved his muscular legs holding her like a vise and his hands now framing her face on either side of her head. His mouth that swooped down on hers was just as demanding, just as eager in the kiss it delivered.

  It was a wild kiss, all hot and hungry. And she didn’t try to stop him, didn’t want to stop him. Not this time. This time she welcomed the male aroma of him in her nostrils, the virile taste of him in her mouth. She not only welcomed his passionate assault, she returned it with an equal ferocity.

  Both of them by now had lost all control, any shred of reason in this sensual storm that consumed them. It lasted until Shane’s hands, which had left the sides of her head and were clamped to her hips, pulled her tightly against his groin. She felt the rigidity of his awesome arousal. Heard the aching groan f
rom him that accompanied it.

  And that’s when the shadow of the unknown Beth came between them, descending like a sword whose sharp edge was a cruel reminder that Shane might belong to another woman.

  Realizing they had gone too far, Eden flattened her hands against his chest, pressing against him to communicate her wish to be released. He let her go, and she sat back on her heels and gazed up into his sober face.

  She waited for a moment, giving them both a chance to recover before she spoke to him softly. “This isn’t the answer, Shane.”

  He nodded, and she knew he understood her. Realized that if they had any chance of succeeding in their quest, their energies needed to be focused on recovering his memory and not on each other. Neither of them mentioned that other barrier.

  Beth.

  His embrace had not been a tender one, but a gentleness asserted itself now. “Did I hurt you?” he asked her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Ironic, Eden thought. Considering the intensity of their kiss, it was his bottom lip, suffering from a cut when he’d arrived at her door last night, that should have been hurting. But he hadn’t complained.

  “No,” she said, “you didn’t hurt me.”

  Not physically, anyway, she thought. But emotionally she felt battered. That’s when she remembered Atlanta Johnson’s warning to her. And feared it was already too late.

  SHANE THOUGHT about blaming the sofa for his sleepless state. But the sofa was comfortable, even if it wasn’t quite long enough to accommodate his full height.

  No, it wasn’t the sofa. It was the woman behind the closed door of her bedroom who was responsible for his restlessness as he lay in the darkness. Or, more accurately, his longing to be inside that bedroom with her.

  Considering his situation, Shane knew that his yearning was madness. How could he want her like that, have any right to want her, when all afternoon and evening he’d been haunted by the thought that he might actually be to blame for the abduction of her kid?

  An unspeakable possibility, but then if it wasn’t true, who had taken Nathanial and where had the boy been all these years? And if Shane did have any hidden knowledge of him or had somehow ended up with the kid, what had he done with him?