Father Fever. Muriel Jensen
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when he’d awakened in the sitting room. He’d been alone on the futon with part of her slip caught in his fist and the taste of her on his lips.
He couldn’t remember what had happened, but he could imagine. The first few minutes of their meeting were clear in his memory—and he’d been plotting her seduction since then.
He remembered taking her upstairs, pouring more champagne, taking her in his arms and…had he told her about his lonely childhood, or had he just dreamed that? He couldn’t be sure.
But he wished he could be sure he hadn’t hurt her, offended her, upset her.
He’d tried to find her, but without a name or any idea what she did or who the friends were she was visiting, it had been impossible.
Even Mrs. Beasley hadn’t known who she was, though she remembered the dress. She’d arrived with friends, she said, and that was all she knew.
David got up from the computer and went downstairs to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee and read the editorial page and his horoscope. He forced himself to write three pages every morning before allowing himself that luxury. Otherwise, he’d find a dozen excuses to keep him from the computer.
He’d submitted a full synopsis and three chapters of the novel to an agent in New York, primarily as a way to make himself finish it.
Writing columns, though putting him under the stress of three weekly deadlines, had been easy compared to writing fiction. And in a way, his work as a government agent had been the same. He’d had a clear subject, his own observations and feelings to draw from, input from other people.
In writing fiction, he sat there all alone, except for the demanding blink of the cursor. There were no source materials. Everything came out of his heart or his head and usually lived there behind closed doors, resisting his every effort to force them open.
When the doors did open, the material came at him haphazardly. It made him hurt, made him laugh, made him angry, made him wish he’d chosen to do anything but be a writer.
Until he put just the right words together and made a nebulous thought clear in a beautiful way. And then it was all right. He was all right.
But every morning was a fresh struggle. Every day he had to figure out just how he’d done it the day before.
He poured some Colombian roast into a plain brown mug and carried it to the living room coffee table where he’d left the paper.
He turned on the television for the noise. Dotty, his housekeeper, was away for a few days, Trevyn was somewhere in a remote spot of the Canadian mountains, taking pictures for a calendar, a commission he earned every year. With Bram in Mexico on a case for his already thriving detective agency, Cliffside was quiet as a tomb.
He folded back the editorial page as the weather report promised another week of Indian summer for the Oregon coast. Then the newscaster’s voice said, “We’ll show this item one more time for those of you who are joining us late or missed last night’s report. This woman was found in the Columbia River off Astoria by a pilot boat. She’s in fair condition at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, but cannot remember her name, where she lives, or how she ended up in the water. The Coast Guard reported no capsized boats or distress calls.”
David looked up from the paper, his attention snagged by the story—and felt his heart stall in his chest. He got up, knocked over his coffee in the process and stood stock-still in shock.
The grainy photo of the woman remained on the screen while the newscaster pleaded for anyone who knew this woman to contact the Astoria police.
The photo showed a woman on a stretcher, long red hair wet and lank against the pillow, her eyes closed. Her features were difficult to distinguish, but he knew the shape of that face, the delicate point of the chin. It was Constance! And her stomach mounded up under the blanket covering her, clearly in a very advanced state of pregnancy.
His heart hammered its way into his throat. Oh, God.
In his fuzzy memories of that February night, he saw her lying atop him, her hair free of the confining headpiece. He’d been filled with lust for her and she’d been so warm and responsive.
Though he struggled to remember, he still couldn’t recall what had happened after that.
Until he awakened later that night with part of her slip in his hands and her scent clinging to him.
“If anyone has any information about this woman, please call the Astoria police.”
After all this time! After all his efforts to find out who she was! Pregnant and with amnesia?
He tucked the pad under his arm, grabbed his keys, his cell phone and his jacket as he raced out to the garage. He climbed into the silver-blue sedan between Trevyn’s truck and Bram’s Jeep and dialed the number from the broadcast before racing down the road to the highway.
His conversation with the officer to whom his call was transferred was surreal.
“I’m calling about the young woman fished out of the Columbia River last night,” he said, trying to sound calm rather than the way he really felt.
“Your name, sir?”
“David Hartford from Dancer’s Beach. Is she all right?” he demanded.
“I believe so. You know who she is?”
“Yes.” He knew who she was. She had walked out of his dreams, lived in his heart.
“And what’s her name?”
“I…ah…don’t know.”
“But I thought you knew her.”
“I do. She came to a party at my home. But we were all wearing…masks.” It wasn’t until he got to the last word in his explanation that he realized what this must sound like to the officer. “It was a fundraiser,” he added lamely, “for the historical society.”
“I see. And she didn’t tell you her name?”
“No, I was dressed as a Musketeer and she…” He could feel his credibility diminishing. “No, she didn’t.”
“I see. Then, how do you feel you can help?”
He hadn’t really considered that. He’d just wanted to see her. “I can take care of her,” he said, “until you find out who she is.”
“We can’t release her into your custody, sir, if you’re not a relative.”
“But you don’t have a relative if you don’t know who she is! What’ll become of her when she’s ready to leave the hospital?”
David was at the highway now and had to concentrate to turn into the morning rush-hour traffic.
Fortunately the officer didn’t have an answer for that until David was comfortably ensconced in the stream of cars driving north.
“I’ll have to look into that for you, sir.”
“Thank you,” David said. “I’ll be there in three hours.”
“It’s a long drive from Dancer’s Beach, sir. Take your time. We’ll be here.”
ATHENA SAT IN THE BACK of a cab taking her from the Astoria Airport at the Coast Guard Air Station to Columbia Memorial Hospital. She folded her arms against the need to hold on to the front seat and shout “Faster! Faster!”
She couldn’t believe that she’d seen her sister on the news, pale and limp and pregnant, dragged out of a river like an old boot. She couldn’t imagine what had happened.
And she wasn’t entirely sure which sister this was. She and Alexis and Augusta talked on the telephone once a week, but she hadn’t seen either of them since their masquerade party fiasco in February. They’d met up again at the car that night as planned, both Lex and Gusty convinced that the Musketeers could not have been involved in anything illegal.
“He