Mallory Kane - Heir To Secret Memories

“But where are you sending me?”

“You want to find the artist?”

Paige nodded, her head pounding with exhaustion.

“You are the girl in the picture?”

She nodded again.

“Then go.”

Tante Yvette opened the door and Paige stepped out. She turned back. “Please be careful,” she whispered to the woman who was helping her. “They’re dangerous.”

Tante Yvette nodded. “Go.”

The alley was shadowed and dark, and held the stench of too many garbage bins. Paige walked quickly, swallowing the nausea that swirled in her empty stomach.

Any minute the phone would ring and the voice would tell her she’d lost her chance to ever see her daughter again.

She had no idea if she were doing the right thing. She certainly didn’t know why Tante Yvette had helped her. Or even if she had. She could be walking into a trap.

But nothing that happened to her could be worse than losing Katie. If there was any chance this alley would lead to Johnny, she had to take it.

Johnny. She shook her head. It was impossible. Beyond belief. But what if it was true? What if Johnny Yarbrough was still alive?

Exploring the answer to that question was more than Paige’s battered emotions could take. If this mysterious artist was Johnny, she was about to trade his life for her daughter’s.

For his daughter’s.

She couldn’t think about that. All she could think about was Katie.

Expecting any minute to feel a rough hand grabbing her, or to hear the cell phone ring, Paige continued down the dark, stinking alley.

Sitting on the front steps of the hotel was an old black man dressed in a dingy shirt and tie, wearing a jacket that left his bony wrists bare.

Paige walked cautiously up to him, glancing around.

The old man studied her through rheumy eyes.

She held out the picture. “Do you know where he is?”

“You’re the girl,” the old man said.

She nodded. “Yes. I’m the girl.”

“So his past has come to meet him.” The old man yawned and pulled a bottle out of his pocket, then took a long swig. “I reckon Jay wouldn’t have put that picture out there ’less he was looking for an answer.”

“Jay? His name is Jay?” She thought of the monogram with its three initials and the signature on the drawing.

JAY.

He nodded and stood, wiping his mouth. “Down at the end of the hall. Don’t you do him bad, you understand?”

Paige found herself answering reflexively. “No, sir.”

The old man chuckled and walked away.

She ran up the steps into a hall lit by dim bulbs that made pale circles of light on the floor. Paige walked down the empty corridor; her sneakers were soundless on the hardwood.

The last door was room twelve. She shifted the picture to her right hand and wiped her left one on her jeans. Behind this scarred wooden door might be the man who had left her alone, who had broken her heart.

The one man who could save her daughter.

She was trembling so much that she could hardly make a fist to knock.

She lifted her hand.

JAY WELLCOME JERKED at the sound of the rapping on his door. The charcoal broke in his suddenly tense fingers. Nobody ever knocked on his door except the landlord, and today was not the first of the month.

He set the sketchbook aside and stood. A glance told him the window opposite the door was unlocked. It had been almost three years since he’d woken up wounded and alone, with no idea of who he was or what had happened to him. And still he remained always aware of everything around him.

He waited, wondering when whoever had failed to kill him before would try again.

Satisfied that his escape route through the window and out to his deceptively battered car was clear, he pulled a T-shirt over his head, brushed his hair back with a quick gesture, and stepped over to the door.

He listened for a second, but didn’t hear anything. Cautiously, balanced on the balls of his feet, poised for fight or flight, he opened the door.

And found himself staring at the girl who haunted his dreams.

He almost ran; almost slammed the door. He wasn’t ready for this.

He’d let Tante Yvette and Old Mose talk him into putting the sketches out there. He’d been skeptical, torn between a yearning to pull himself out of the dead zone where he’d existed nameless and lost for so long, and the fear of being found. He’d spent the past three years working on the oil rigs, and always, always, looking over his shoulder.

He really hadn’t expected a response. He hadn’t expected to sell a drawing. And he certainly hadn’t expected this.

He stood there clutching the doorknob, staring at her.

Although the resemblance was obvious, she was older than the girl in his dreams. She was a woman. A beautiful woman.

The wheat-colored hair he remembered as short and shaggy was long, smooth, and woven into some kind of intricate braid that hung down her back.

She was smaller than he’d thought she’d be. The top of her head barely reached his chin.

The girl in his dreams was thin. This woman had curves where a woman should have curves. The eyes were the same though. Familiar gold-flecked green eyes that seemed sunken and sad in a face that was no longer round and blushing with youth. It was pale.

He realized it was getting paler.

She whispered a name.

He stiffened. He was being way too careless. The shock of seeing her had caught him off guard. Straightening, he took a step backward and tried to make sense of her words.

“What did you say?” he snapped.

She clutched a small, framed picture to her chest. If possible, her face lost even more color. She looked as if she were seeing a ghost.

“Johnny? What happened to you?”

Johnny? The name meant nothing to him. Did she know him?

Without thinking about the possible consequences he reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her inside the room. With a lightning-fast glance into the hall, he pushed the door shut.

She backed away from him, up against the heavy wooden door. “What are you doing?”

Jay studied her. Her pale face showed a strength of character, a wisdom that wasn’t in the young innocent face he’d drawn.

The eyes though, were hauntingly familiar. The only difference was these eyes were filled with terror, and they hadn’t left his face since he’d opened the door.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Shock darkened her gaze and lifted her delicate brows for an instant. Then she seemed to shrink, and something changed in her. A tension, or anticipation, drained out of her, leaving her seeming even smaller. Her enormous green-and-gold eyes closed and she shook her head slowly, once.

When she looked at him again, her expression was carefully blank, although the rigid set of her spine had not relaxed at all.

“I almost didn’t recognize you either,” she said tightly, “but it’s impossible to forget those sapphire-colored eyes of yours.”

Johnny stared at her, panic shearing his breath as he wondered if he should be relieved or worried that someone had finally recognized him.

Paige swallowed hard, hanging on to control with as much force as she hung on to the picture. He was so different. This was not the boy she had fallen in love with. This wasn’t the frustrated young artist who was so intimidated by his father he couldn’t even bring a girlfriend home to meet him without getting permission first.

This was a man.

A strong, hard-eyed, capable man with calluses on his artist’s fingers and a scar that parted his hair and lent a cynical lift to one dark eyebrow.

Paige’s gaze traveled over shoulders that she was sure had not been this broad, down the front of his T-shirt to the faded jeans that molded over long powerful thighs, then back up to his face.