LITMIR.BIZ

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it was obvious that something had made Anna snap. Something serious enough, it seemed, to cause her to fantasize that her mother was no longer alive.

      Logan recoiled from the thought. Fifty-three-year-old Elise was a dynamo of organization, capable of simultaneously setting up a charity bazaar, overseeing the arts foundation her husband had established for local schools, and designing the interior of a homeless shelter. The fact that Elise managed all this without losing an ounce of composure, getting a spot of dirt on her tasteful haute couture outfit or allowing one lock of hair to escape her meticulously arranged hairstyle might intimidate any daughter.

      But to imagine her mother dead?

      “Look. You have to believe me.”

      Anna’s words pulled Logan’s attention to her pleading eyes. “I don’t belong here,” she went on. “I want to leave this house, now.”

      The desperation in her voice made Logan look at her long and hard. Anna’s face seemed thinner and very pale, considering her fondness for the California sun. Her indigo eyes appeared more deep set, yet larger and more luminous.

      Luminous? Logan blinked. Where the hell had that word come from. Never, in all the years he’d known Anna, had he paid much attention to her eyes. Well once, when she was twelve and insisted that her blue eyes, combined with the fact that both her parents had brown, proved that she’d been adopted. The explanation had been simple enough, of course. Elise and Robert each had one blue-eyed parent, supplying the recessive gene that Anna, but not her brother, Chas, had inherited.

      Logan’s sudden poetic attention to the young woman’s features was far less easy to explain. Even more confusing was his sudden awareness of the gentle curves that formed the body so close to his. As his flesh began to warm, his muscles tensed. He’d known Anna all her life, and never before had he reacted to her with this…this—

      He shook away the half-formed thought. Anna was his sister, dammit. Okay—she was Chas’s sister, but as an unofficial Benedict that was how he’d always viewed her. Yet, insane as it was, he found himself mesmerized by the hopeless expression in those dark eyes of hers, fascinated by the curve of her lips, felt his head bending inexorably toward hers.

      It was at that moment, without any warning, that Anna stood. Logan got to his feet as well, instinctively grasping her upper arms again, the strange moment of temptation forgotten in his concern about Anna’s mental state.

      “I can’t let you leave,” he said. “Not the way you’re acting. I’m sure your moth—that Elise will be along with the doctor any minute. Then—”

      “Then what?” she demanded. Concern tightened the straight black eyebrows beneath her new bangs. “This doctor will give me a sedative? Something to ease my poor befuddled mind? Absolutely not.”

      Again she pulled away from him, this time with so much force that Logan was jerked forward. Rather than risk hurting her arms more than his bruising grip must already be doing, he let gravity draw her backward, onto the bed. Following her down, he pinned her there with his body.

      This didn’t end the struggle, however. Instead of lying still, Anna continued to twist and squirm as her arms flailed in an attempt to hit him. Logan slid his hands down each arm, until he again captured her wrists. Although her upper body was now relatively still, the area below her waist continued to shift wildly. When she began to buck, Logan decided he’d had enough.

      “Knock it off.”

      He purposely spoke in the low growl he used when dealing with a roomful of arguing lawyers and clients. It apparently worked on half-crazed women, too, for Anna not only stopped moving, she went completely limp.

      Slowly Logan raised his head and looked down. Her eyes were closed, her features soft and without expression. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he grabbed the obviously unconscious Anna’s left wrist. As he searched for a pulse, Elise Benedict’s voice echoed down the hall.

      “Yes, Doctor. Anna is claiming she doesn’t know any of us. She seems disoriented and unusually excitable. I think she needs something to calm her nerves—to keep her from doing damage to herself.”

      Logan managed to scramble to his feet at the side of the bed seconds before Elise entered the room. She was followed by a tall, thin man with white hair and black-framed glasses. The dark eyes behind those spectacles glanced at Logan before focusing on the inert young woman in the bed.

      “I think she fainted,” Logan said.

      Dr. Alcott bent down to place two fingers on the side of Anna’s neck. After a second he straightened. “Good strong pulse,” he said, then once more looked at Logan, his dark eyes narrowed. “Elise tells me that Anna fell and hit her head. Is this true?”

      Logan nodded. “Yes. She lost her footing on the veranda, and her feet flew out from under her. Her back took the brunt of the fall, but her head apparently hit the tile surface, too. She appeared to be a bit dazed when I reached her.”

      Something of an understatement, Logan thought as Robert Benedict reentered the room. The man was under a great deal of pressure, between serving in California’s legislature and battling to win the primary that would, hopefully, propel his political career into the national arena. The last thing he needed to hear was that his daughter had been acting strangely even before she hit her head.

      “Dr. Alcott,” Robert said as the man opened his bag and removed a stethoscope. “Do you think that blow to Anna’s head could have caused her to act as if she’d suddenly found herself in a house of strangers?”

      Alcott glanced up with a frown. “Is that what’s been going on?”

      “I’m afraid so,” Elise replied with a sigh. “Of course you know how she was before…before I called you the other day. But at least then she seemed to know us. Now—” the woman paused to bite her lip as she gazed at her daughter “—amnesia.” She shook her head. “Oh, Anna.”

      Logan tensed at the almost undetectable note of disapproval in Elise’s soft voice. The tone had the power to cut like a lash, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the charming smile that accompanied the words. He knew this because that tone had been directed toward him more than once after the death of his parents placed him in the Benedicts’ care.

      And in their debt.

      No, he reminded himself. In Robert’s debt. It had been Robert who had recognized a ten-year-old orphan’s fear of being sent to live with strangers. It was Robert to whom he owed his loyalty, along with whatever help he could offer now.

      Logan turned to the man and said quietly, “You left word that Anna was missing. What’s been going on?”

      He purposely didn’t mention the messages that Anna had left him. In her second call, she’d begged Logan not to tell her family that she’d been trying to reach him. Until he knew more about what had been happening in his absence, he would honor that request.

      Robert glanced toward his wife before replying. “Well, I mishandled a question Anna placed to me yesterday morning.” Robert’s hand rose to comb through his hair as he went on. “The timing couldn’t have been worse. You were in France, Chas was making arrangements for the campaign, Elise was up to her earlobes in arranging tonight’s fund-raiser, and I was putting the finishing touches on a speech. I’m afraid that I—”

      “Robert,” Elise broke in softly as she placed a graceful hand on his arm. “I refuse to allow you to feel guilty. Despite our busy schedules, we’ve always been there for Anna, always encouraging her, even when it became obvious that she was incapable of seeing anything through, that she would always be chasing after something new.”

      There it was again, Logan thought as he gazed at Elise, the disparity between the concern wrinkling the woman’s brow and the barely discernable note of exasperation beneath her sad tone. He was never sure which emotion was real. And at the moment this was beside the point.

      He turned to Robert. “What exactly was it that Anna confronted you with?”

      The

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