Private Eye Protector. Shirlee McCoy
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let her eyes slide shut, relaxing against the touch that felt so safe.
Someone brushed strands of hair from her cheek.
Her brother or father?
Michael?
Couldn’t be Michael. She’d given back the ring, broken things off.
“Dad? Jonas?” She wanted to open her eyes, tried to open them, but they felt so heavy.
“Chance.”
She forced her eyes open, looked into a stranger’s face.
Dark hair, high cheekbones, pale eyes.
She knew those eyes.
Didn’t she?
“Who are you?”
“Chance Richardson.” He frowned, pressed a button on the bed rail. “We work for the same company. You rent an apartment from my mother. Don’t you remember?”
Did she remember?
She tried to pull the information from her mind, found nothing but emptiness and a cold, hard kernel of fear. “I live in Arizona. I work for a women’s shelter in Phoenix.”
“Do you know what day it is, Rayne?” He looked into her eyes, searching for something, but she had nothing to give. His eyes shimmered blue or green or gray, and she was sure she’d looked in them before.
When?
Where?
“I … No.”
“Do you know what city you’re in?”
A memory surfaced. Packing the U-Haul, strapping Emma into her car seat, leaving everything she knew to take a new job in a new place. “I remember packing to leave. That’s it.”
“Do you know where you are?” He pressed the button on the bed rail again, and she knew he was summoning a nurse. A nurse couldn’t help, though. All that could help was remembering, and that seemed to be impossible.
“The hospital.”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“No.”
“You were in an accident,” he said, as if he hoped it would spark a memory.
All it sparked was terror.
Emma!
“Where’s my daughter?” Rayne tried to sit up, but Chance pressed her back.
“She’s fine. She wasn’t in the car with you.”
“Thank God.” She closed her eyes, the prayer swirling through her mind again and again and again.
“He was definitely looking out for both of you. Do you remember what happened?”
No, and that terrified her.
She tried to respond, but her thoughts were clumsy, her eyelids leaden.
“Do you remember the accident, Rayne?” he persisted, pulling her from the edge of sleep.
She scowled, wondering if she knew him well enough to tell him to go away and leave her alone. Not to ask any more questions, because every question she couldn’t answer only added to her fear.
“Do you know how it happened? Where it happened?”
“In my car?” There. Finally something she could answer.
“Funny, Goldilocks, but that’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny, and my hair isn’t gold, it’s platinum.”
“Looks gold to me. Do you know what town you’re in?”
That she could answer, too.
She’d left Phoenix to work in Spokane, Washington. If Chance was her coworker, she must be there.
“Spokane, but I’m tired of playing twenty questions, so let’s stop for a while, okay?” She opened her eyes, looked into his gray-blue gaze.
Eyes she knew but didn’t know.
The world spun, and she spun with it, falling back into darkness so quickly she thought she might never escape it.
She reached out, grabbed something warm and solid.
His hand.
Calloused and rough and oddly familiar.
She knew his eyes, and she knew him, but she had no memory of meeting him, no knowledge of their shared history. How far back did that history go? How much time had passed since her last memory?
Was Emma still a baby?
Had she grown into a toddler?
Something more?
Terrified, she sat up, stars shooting in front of her eyes.
“I need to see my daughter.” The frantic edge to her voice matched her racing pulse and the frenzied beep of the machine.
“Calm down, Rayne. Emma is fine. My mom was babysitting her while you worked, and she’s still taking care of her.” Chance pressed a palm to her cheek, forced her to look into his eyes.
Calm.
Confident.
Not panicked at all.
Then again, he wasn’t the one with amnesia.
“Is everything okay in here?” A nurse walked into the room, her dark eyes widening as she saw Rayne. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“Aside from having a splitting headache and amnesia? Okay.”
“Amnesia? The nurse looked at chance, and he nodded.
“She seems to be missing her recent memories. No idea what day it is, no memory of the accident. She doesn’t seem to remember me or the area.”
“She’s sitting right here, and she can speak for herself,” Rayne grumbled, but throbbing pain stole the heat from her words, and she really didn’t have the strength to add to what he’d said.
Besides, what would she add?
He’d said it all.
All her recent memories were gone. Trying to find them was like searching through a sea of nothingness.
“I’ll page the attending physician. He’ll want to ask you a few questions, Rayne. In the meantime, on a scale of one to ten, what’s your pain level?”
“Seven.” But, compared to her fear and confusion, that was negligible.
She wanted to remember everything. Wanted it with a desperation that made her physically ill.
“When the doctor comes in, we’ll see if you can take something for that.”
“I don’t need anything for the pain. All I want is to go home and see my daughter.” Only she didn’t know where home was. Didn’t know where her daughter was.
Being a parent is a big responsibility. Let someone else take it on. Someone who really wants a baby.
Michael spoke from the past, and Rayne realized she’d closed her eyes, was drifting on waves of distant memories.
Or maybe not so distant.
“What day is it? What’s the date?” she asked.
“Friday, November 28th, 2011.” Chance answered, smoothing a lock of hair from her forehead.
She’d left Phoenix at the beginning of October. That meant she’d lost nearly two months of her life. Two months of Emma’s life.
Better than the alternative.
Better than years or decades.
“I