Kathleen Korbel - Sail Away

“Mr. Ross is badly injured,” Lilly said in that dece tively soft voice of hers as she tightened her hold on hi “You need to get him some help.”

“Well, he wouldn’t’a been hurt if he’d just stayed on board like a good boy,” Louise retorted. “We would have had the ransom and dropped him off just like we promised y now.”

“Ransom,” he said, more to himself than anybody else. His head pounding and his stomach swirling, he turned his attention to Lilly, who, with both of them upright, only stood as tall as his armpit. “I guess that settles it. I must be Cameron Ross.”

It still felt wrong. Fit wrong, like a badly tailored shirt, s if he’d pulled a name out of somebody else’s closet. For some reason, he was sure it was something not to be discussed in front of Huey, Duey and Louise, however.

“You guess?” Duey demanded with an outraged snort. ‘What are your other choices—Beavis and Butthead?”

“Madonna,” Huey added.

“Elvis,” Louise retorted.

“Hey,” Duey protested. “I seen Elvis. And he ain’t no Elvis.”

He was starting to sweat and sway. Not good. Lilly knew, though. Lilly tightened her grip. After a quick look on his direction that he thought might have been concern, the glared at their captors.

“What he is,” she said through gritted teeth, “is hurt. And if you don’t let him lie down soon, he’ll be dead before you can get any ransom. Is that what you had in mind?”

“You tellin’ us what to do?” Duey demanded.

“Shut up,” Huey snapped in his best military tone. ‘Get ’em locked back in. And don’t you two do nothin’ stupid in there.”

“How stupid is vomiting?” he asked.

That got them to move fast.

“Better?” Lilly asked ten minutes later, her voice inches from his left ear.

He didn’t bother to open his eyes. It was one thing to be dramatically injured in front of a beautiful woman. was another to be ignominiously sick, especially when she had to hold your head while you did it.

“Yeah.”

He felt a cool, wet cloth being draped over his forehead and thought he would die from the simple pleasure of it The gentle attention of those butterfly hands.

“I think I’m in love,” he managed.

She laughed. “You’re not very choosy.”

He smiled back, eyes still closed. “Any girl with a ra in a time of need.”

She was quiet for a moment. Looking around, he imagined. He could hardly blame her. He was lying on a be the size of Rhode Island in a room that looked more like a country house than a ship’s cabin. Dark walnut paneling lush green carpeting, recessed lighting and an entertainement center. Windows instead of portholes, and big vase of what had been fresh flowers a couple of days ago though they now wilted at alarming angles. At least, that was what he assumed. As bad as his vision was, that could have been a bad wall sculpture of linoleum and shag he was trying to decipher.

“Well,” Lilly said with a half sigh, “if you’re going to be kidnaped, you might as well do it in style.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“You don’t sound particularly worried.”

“I’m sure that once I remember what this is all about I’ll be terrified. Right now I’m concentrating on not humiliating myself again.”

Another instinctive flutter of fingers against his cheek He wondered if she even realized she was doing that. She was a toucher, tactile contact as much a part of her communication as words and expressions. He wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think he knew many people who were unself-conscious enough to do that—especially with somebody who was purported to be a world-famous movie star.

“You’ll be fine,” she murmured.

He smiled again, surreptitiously inhaling the bouquet of her perfume. “I already am. Or I will be when I get you someplace safe, anyway. I have a feeling I should know what to do about stuff like this.”

“It is too bad your memory isn’t working,” she mused, ettling on the bed so that he could feel the heat of her against his side. “This reminds me of another movie we could make use of. Home from the Sea.”

“Mine?”

“Uh huh. You were kidnaped by terrorists who needed he computers you designed to rule the world...or something.”

“Memorable flick, huh?”

He heard the grin without opening his eyes. “Actually, it was. You were a family man who only wanted to stay on your house in Indianapolis. You were kidnaped on oard a yacht, along with the President of the United States. Pretty much saved the world with your brain instead of a gun.”

“In a tux?”

She chuckled. “Afraid so.”

He shook his head. “Cinéma-vérité, huh? How’d I get s out of it?”

“Reprogramed the ship’s computers from the bathroom after being blinded by a bullet. You were pretty amazing.”

For some reason, that made him frustrated. “It wasn’t ne.”

She touched him again, a hand to his shoulder. “Oh, I know. Your character, I mean. But you chose the role You played it. It says something about you.”

“It says, evidently, that I like to spend my time in a tuxedo.”

For that he got a moment of silence. “You don’t sound as if it makes you think highly of yourself.”

She was right. That was how he sounded. He wondered what it meant. He wondered what, when he finally cleared out the fog that muddled his thoughts and displaced his memories, he would think of the person he discovered lurking back there.

“Do you know that you have an Academy Award?” she asked gently.

He answered instinctively. “It isn’t mine.” Then he reached up to lift the rag from his eyes. That had mean something. It meant more than misplaced humility. “Neither is Cameron Ross.”

Lilly was watching him, her face a soft, round blu against the diffuse afternoon light that poured in through the windows. He couldn’t see well, but he could discern her concern. It made him, for the first time, frightened.

“That doesn’t belong to me,” he insisted. “I don’t know why. But it doesn’t. I’m someone else.”

“A different name,” she suggested. “I don’t know that much about you, but could Cameron Ross be a...like, a stage name?”

A thread of tension broke in his chest. “Yes.” It was right. “Yes, it is. But it’s still not mine.”

She shrugged, still sincerely distressed. “I don’t know what else to call you.”

“It’s okay to call me Cameron,” he said, knowing that too, was somehow right. “But I don’t think of myself that way. Neither does he.”

“Who?”

He opened his mouth to say something. Some name. Some face. Nothing came out. He closed his eyes again and tried to ignore the panic that was crowding out the comfort of her presence. “I don’t know. I just know that it’s important. It has to do with why I’m on the boat. Why I’ve been snatched instead.”

“Instead of what?”

Her hand. On his chest, resting as lightly as a breeze. Warming him, calming him, letting him know that no matter what he could or couldn’t remember, no matter what was wrong or lost or in danger, she was there with him. Instinctively, he reached up to take hold of it and anchor himself there.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t seem to know much.”

She held on tight. Leaned closer. “It’s okay. It’ll all come back, you’ll see. For now, though, let’s just pretend. We’ll pretend you’re Cameron Ross so you have a name. So you know how to react to people.”

“And who will you pretend to be?” he asked.

There was tension in her fingers, even if her voice was just as soft and soothing. “I never learned to pretend for a living, Mr. Ross. I’m just me.”

He opened his eyes. Considered the face that hovered over him like a soft, bronze moon. The eyes wide, dark and deep. The hair, black as night and tumbled around bare shoulders. The soft, full body tucked into a bright red swimsuit. An impressionist portrait of femininity. A dream of comfort and life. The smile of the sun and the water holding his hand.