LITMIR.BIZ

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Paige stopped to take a shaky breath.

      “Your father gave them the money. Nobody understood why they killed…” Her voice died on the word and she stared at his familiar, alien face.

      There was pain there, and a kind of bewildered disbelief. But she also saw a spark of interest, and something that almost broke her heart. For one naked second, she saw hope reflected in his eyes.

      He wasn’t lying. He really didn’t remember.

      Oh, Johnny. What did they do to you?

      She caught herself and shook her head. She didn’t have time for sentiment or pity. She had to save her child. It was her only reason for being here. Her only reason for living now.

      Once she’d thought she knew him better than she knew herself. She’d have staked her life on his honesty. But he’d promised her he was coming back for her and he hadn’t.

      He’d lied to her then. Was he lying now?

      But why would he be here in this seedy hotel instead of living the wealthy life he was born to? Why would he draw her picture then deny he knew her?

      “Do you expect me to believe you don’t remember any of that?” Her gaze fell on the scar that started at his hairline and furrowed along a couple of inches, like a carefully combed part.

      At the same time he lifted his hand and touched it. “All I know is somebody tried to kill me. Who kidnapped me?”

      “I don’t know.” She swallowed, “We weren’t together then. We last saw each other seven years ago.”

      He reached out and took the picture from her hands and looked at it, then at her, searching her eyes as if he hoped to find the answers he sought there.

      “How long did we know each other?”

      She shrugged and twisted the ends of her braid, painfully aware of the time ticking by. “About six weeks.”

      Long enough to create a beautiful child who was out there, held captive by dangerous strangers. What if they hurt her?

      “We knew each other for six weeks seven years ago,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “So why do you haunt my dreams?”

      “Why do I what?”

      He tossed the picture on the bed, on top of other similar sketches. A few were of her.

      He looked up, and for a second the caution and doubt in his face changed to a yearning so strong, Paige felt its pull like a fishing line, reeling her in. Then he blinked and it was gone.

      “So you knew me once,” he said quietly, a bitter longing rising up like bile inside him as he stared at the drawings, those pathetic attempts to capture the visions that streaked through his brain when the headaches hit him.

      He looked at the woman whose face haunted him. “I assume you traced me through that picture to Tante Yvette. She sent you here?”

      She nodded.

      Tante Yvette had trusted her. The strange dark woman claimed to know things, to be able to read minds. He hoped she was right this time.

      He studied the lovely, hauntingly familiar face of Paige Reynolds for a moment. The glint of panic in her golden-green eyes and the tension in her shoulders told him she was a hairsbreadth from losing control.

      But as familiar as she was, he didn’t know her and his small store of memories made it hard for him to trust anyone, even someone Tante Yvette believed.

      “What do you want from me?” he asked coldly.

      He winced at the unguarded hope that flared in her green eyes. “They’ve got my daughter,” she whispered, clenching her fists.

      He hadn’t expected that. “Your daughter? Who does?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know. But they told me to find you.”

      At her words, Jay tensed. Almost unconsciously he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, alert, prepared for anything.

      “Were you followed?” he snapped.

      Her brow furrowed briefly. She looked down at her fist, clenched in her jacket pocket, then over her shoulder at the door. “Yes.”

      He heard a noise behind her. “Look out!”

      Wood splintered and the door flew open, hurling her into his arms. The breath hissed out of her and she squealed in pain. He tossed her back toward the bed, hoping to get her out of harm’s way, as the two men attacked him.

      He struggled, fighting dirty, aiming for the groin, the kidneys, the nose, any vulnerable spot. He’d learned how to fight the hard way out on the oil rigs.

      One man was beefier, thicker than the other. Jay concentrated on his face.

      He punched, felt something crunch, then drove an elbow behind him into the smaller man’s solar plexus.

      A fist connected with his jaw. He stumbled. The small man pinned his arms behind him and Beefy reared back a fist, prepared to punch him in the stomach.

      Jay used the momentum of the small man’s grip to lift his feet. He drove them into Beefy’s stomach, pushing himself backward at the same time.

      Beefy fell. The smaller man huffed as Jay’s weight pinned him against the wall. Jay turned, jerking his arms clear, then smashed the guy’s nose with his forearm.

      When he looked back at Beefy, the big man was trying to regain his feet. Jay kicked him solidly in the groin.

      Both men were down for the moment. The smaller man’s nose was pouring blood. Beefy was doubled over with pain. But they’d recover fast.

      Jay wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, barely noting his own blood as he rushed around the bed.

      He bent over the woman. She was unconscious, or nearly so. When he slid one hand under her back and the other under her knees, she whimpered.

      “Sorry,” he whispered, afraid she was injured but knowing he didn’t have time to find out. He hefted her, absently noting how small she was, and took her out through the French doors. He kneed the doors closed and glanced inside. The two men were beginning to stir.

      Hurrying to the old sedan he kept in tiptop shape for just this purpose, he opened the passenger door and carefully set her inside. He quickly and awkwardly fastened her seat belt, then ran around the car, got in, grabbed the keys from under the mat, cranked it and took off.

      Chapter Three

      Not until Jay reached the edge of the city did he relax his hunched shoulders and breathe a bit easier. They’d made it, for now. The whole process, from the moment the brutes had broken in the door, slamming the woman forward into his arms, until he’d cranked the car, had probably taken no longer than five minutes, eight at the most. Unless there had been a third guy watching the alley, Jay was sure he’d lost them.

      As he took a right off the main road, he glanced over at his unconscious passenger. She was limp and still, her face shadowed, her braid draped across her shoulder and over her breast.

      For a split second, his eyes lingered there, where the rope of wheat-colored hair rose and fell with the slight movement of her breathing.

      Pulling his eyes back to the road, he drove the familiar route to his safe house. He’d always felt vaguely foolish about the elaborate escape plan he’d devised, but waking up with a bullet wound and no memory tended to make a guy paranoid.

      Obviously, some deeply buried part of his brain had remembered enough of what had happened to him to keep his survival skills intact.

      He took a long breath and thought about the last few moments. What he’d always feared had happened, with a twist, and now he was running away from thugs with an unconscious woman beside him.

      Not just any woman either. The woman whose

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