LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Five

      Hugh felt as if he’d been holding this little girl in his arms every day for the past two years. The way she curled against him and the fresh scent of her hair felt utterly familiar.

      His daughter. She’d always been with him, even if he hadn’t known it.

      He’d missed so much of her life. And, without realizing it, he’d missed Meg.

      Hugh had wondered at his lack of response to women in the past two years. He’d kept watching for some quality that was missing. An honesty that, he realized now, was an essential part of Meg’s appeal.

      He loved the way she looked, too, even though she wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Walking ahead of him with a towel slung around her shoulders, she glowed with natural sensuality.

      He wished he could remember making love to her. How she looked without that bikini….

      When they reached Meg’s car, he strapped Dana into her child seat. This dented sedan made him uneasy, as if a painful memory were connected with it. He couldn’t summon any specifics and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

      In his own car, Hugh followed Meg through town. He had an urge to shout at every vehicle that approached, “Slow down! Don’t hit them!”

      He wanted to protect them. It was such a fundamental urge that it bypassed his intellect, which warned that they might not really be his.

      The two-car caravan entered the trailer park between a scattering of tall palm trees. Mobile homes crammed the spaces, and a flock of children rode scooters in the narrow roadway.

      As Hugh steered carefully between them, he vowed silently that his daughter wouldn’t grow up playing in the street. She should have her own yard and a sidewalk where she’d be safe.

      Meg stopped at a small unit and, leaning out the car window, waved him to the visitor slots a short distance farther. After parking, Hugh walked back amid the blare of a radio through an open window and the chatter of a TV from another unit.

      Meg waited till he reached her before shepherding Dana inside. Following, Hugh found himself wanting to crouch because of the low ceiling, although it wasn’t low enough to bean him.

      He took in the sprinkling of toys on the floor, the mismatched furniture, the plastic flowers filling a vase on the coffee table. Disappointment darkened his mood. If he’d ever stayed in this place, his brain contained no record of it.

      “Did we live here?” he asked.

      Meg nodded. “I hoped you might remember.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Never mind. Excuse me a minute. I’ve got to help Dana change clothes.” She carried the toddler into a bedroom.

      Perhaps he really wasn’t Joe, Hugh thought. Surely her husband would feel at home in the place where they’d lived.

      He certainly wouldn’t have forgotten making love to Meg. Eating dinner with her, curling up in bed with her, taking a shower together in the morning. Not if he’d really done those things.

      Without thinking, he trailed in Meg’s wake and peered into Dana’s room. Flowered curtains. An aging rocker. A poster of Minnie Mouse on the wall.

      He’d pictured those things when Meg was in his office. This very room. So he had been here before!

      The clues fit too, Hugh reflected, sorting through them mentally. Rick’s sailboat had sunk shortly before the watery rescue of Joe Avery. People at the Back Door Cafe recognized him, and Meg had a police report showing that her husband had vanished the same day Hugh turned up in Los Angeles.

      Everything pointed to the likelihood that he had lived in this place and fathered a child. Still, that didn’t make it true. As a doctor, Hugh knew that mountains of circumstantial evidence didn’t amount to gold-standard proof. Even his own memories might be misleading.

      Seeking more clues, he gazed at a couple of photos on the living room wall. There was one of him and Meg with baby Dana, but Hugh, or rather Joe, had his face slightly averted. Another picture showed Meg beside a thin young man with reddish-brown hair like her own.

      “That’s my brother, Tim,” she said, joining him. Changed into a pair of white jeans and a blue-green camp shirt, she smelled of flowers and a trace of chlorine. “I dropped out of school to raise him after our mother died.”

      “Couldn’t your father handle him?”

      “Dad had a drinking problem. He wasn’t around,” she said. “He’s been dry for nearly ten years now.”

      Hugh moved away from the pictures. “Where’s Dana?”

      “Taking a nap,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

      “Sure.” In the small kitchen, he turned a chair backward and straddled it.

      “You always sat that way.” She pointed at the floor. “Look.”

      On the linoleum, two worn patches lay directly beneath Hugh’s feet. It gave him an eerie feeling to realize that he, or someone, had sat in exactly this position many times.

      “That is interesting,” he said.

      He still didn’t recall living in the trailer. Or perhaps he couldn’t think straight with Meg sitting across from him, her camp shirt’s low V-neck revealing the swell of her breasts. To Hugh’s embarrassment, Meg noticed him staring. “Stir any memories?”

      “Is that what you’re trying to stir?” he teased. “I’m only human, you know.”

      She gave him a mischievous grin. “You’re a doctor. Anatomy isn’t supposed to affect you.”

      “It depends on the circumstances. Shall I treat you as the mother of a patient, or as the mother of my child?”

      “That depends on how you see me.” Her amber eyes dared him to respond.

      “I don’t know how I see you,” Hugh admitted. “It’s hard to trust someone who suddenly appears in my life, no matter how much I want to.”

      She sighed. “Thank goodness for DNA tests. What if they didn’t exist? I’d have to find another way to prove my case.”

      “How would you do that?” he asked, intrigued.

      Meg tossed her mane. “I suppose I could seduce you and hope it reminded you of what we had before. That raises some weird moral issues. I don’t even know if you’re legally my husband.”

      “People don’t have to be married to make love,” he said.

      “I did!” Her mouth tightened. “You were the first man I was ever with.”

      “I’m sorry if I offended you.” Hugh reached across the table to cup her hand. He tried to ignore the shiver of desire that ran through him at the contact. “That was a special gift you gave me.”

      As Meg turned away, he saw a sheen of moisture in her eyes. “I waited a long time for the right man. Who could have believed we’d end up in such a mess?”

      “I’m curious about our relationship.” Despite a few immature entanglements earlier in life, Hugh had never felt truly close to a woman. Yet during his lost months, he’d evidently fallen in love with Meg and she with him. “How did you know I was the right man?”

      “Joe—you—made me laugh,” she said.

      “Me? I never make anybody laugh except when

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