Mallory Kane - Heir To Secret Memories

It could be someone else’s face, harsh, scored by years and darkened by the sun. But there was no mistaking the eyes. They were the same brilliant blue eyes that had regarded her so tenderly as he told her how much he loved her. Now they blazed with startling intensity in his tanned face.

She wasn’t sure what was going on behind those familiar eyes. He watched her warily, all senses alert, like a cat watches an unknown threat. His taut, muscled body was perfectly balanced, his hands loose but open and ready at his sides, his gaze never leaving her face.

“It’s Paige,” she ventured, wanting to cry because she had to remind the only man she’d ever loved of her name. She tried a smile. “Paige Reynolds.”

He frowned. He frightened her, this familiar stranger who stood in a dingy, sordid hotel room and acted like he’d never seen her before today, but whom she knew without a doubt was the father of her daughter.

Katie! Searing loss and chilling fear met with stormy force inside her. Her head reeled and she swayed.

“Are you all right?” Johnny asked, reaching toward her.

She pressed her lips together to gain control of her emotions.

Hold on. This is for Katie’s sake.

She nodded stiffly.

“Good.” His voice was cold. “Now what are you doing here, and what did you call me?”

Paige lifted her chin. “I called you Johnny. Johnny Yarbrough. It’s your name.”

He didn’t move a muscle, but she felt his increased tension like an aura surrounding him. She saw the vein that beat in his temple, saw the infinitesimal tightening of his wide, generous mouth.

“Johnny Yarbrough,” he repeated, his voice no more than a croaking whisper. His lips barely moved. “Yarbrough.” His mouth closed grimly and a muscle jumped in his jaw. He winced, touching the side of his head.

Paige stared at him. He was acting so strange. “Actually,” she said wryly, “I guess that would be John Andrew Yarbrough. You never told me who you really were.”

His eyes never left her face, but she had the sense he wasn’t looking at her at all. His fingers slipped through his sun-kissed brown hair, and then went back to his temple.

“Johnny?”

He shook his head, looking confused.

“I don’t understand. What’s the matter with you? You act like you—”

The truth hit her like a wrecking ball. In one explosive instant, everything Paige had pinned her hopes on crashed down around her.

As unbelievable as it was, it explained everything. Why no one had ever found a body. Why he’d never returned to his rightful place in his father’s business. Why he looked so bewildered.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, stunned.

Her daughter’s life was at stake, and the only man who could save her didn’t know who he was. Telling him he had a daughter would mean nothing to him.

“You don’t remember.” Her numb lips formed the words, hoping he would deny them, but knowing he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He sent her a terrible, haunted glance, then turned away.

She stared at his bowed back, watched his bicep flex as he massaged his temple.

Her brain rejected the idea. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t allow it to be true.

“I need your help.” She took a step toward him. “Look at me,” she pleaded. “Look at this.”

He angled his head, and the muscles in his back rippled the white cotton of his T-shirt. Then he half turned, his long lashes shadowing his eyes.

She held up the drawing. “You drew me. We were together here, in New Orleans, seven years ago. You can’t tell me you don’t remember that.”

He faced her, his jaw set, his eyes bleak. He shrugged. “I don’t remember that.”

“You have to. If you don’t remember me, surely you remember being kidnapped?”

His eyes narrowed. He took a step toward her. “I was kidnapped?”

Paige gasped and forced down the panic that bubbled up into her throat. “Of course. Three years ago. It was all over the news. The ransom note demanded two million dollars. After weeks and weeks, your wallet covered with your blood was found in a stolen car out by Chef Menteur Highway. You were—presumed dead.” She couldn’t believe he didn’t remember anything.

“Your father begged the kidnappers not to harm you. He offered twice the ransom if they’d just let you go.” 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.