A Season To Believe. Elane Osborn
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That deep dimple she recalled so well creased his left cheek, but his eyes still lacked the devil-may-care expression she remembered so well.
“Hello there, Jane,” he said.
She’d always found his deep voice soothing, but today there seemed to be a harsh edge to it. Conscious of the way he continued to study her, she slowly got to her feet. His gaze swept down, then back up. His smile widened, and all the carefully chosen words Jane had been about to utter tumbled out in random order.
“Matt. I’m surprised to see you. I was just thinking about you.” Realizing that her voice sounded more raspy than usual, she cleared her throat. “Worrying, actually. Well, worrying isn’t exactly the right word. Though I did do that when I heard you were shot, of course.”
Jane knew she was rambling. She forced herself to speak more slowly. “What I was doing before you came in was berating myself for forgetting that you’d left the police force and—”
“Forgetting,” Wilcox broke in, “seems to be a habit with you, doesn’t it?”
Jane turned toward the detective, but not before she saw Matt’s dark eyebrows move together in a quick frown.
“Just what is going on here?” Matt asked.
Wilcox leaned back in his chair. “I’m here to investigate a report of shoplifting. What are you doing here?”
“I was at the station, trying to get some information on a case Jack and I are working on. I happened to hear Baker call you on your cell phone about a matter involving Jane Ashbury and Maxwell’s. I decided to find out what was going on. I know it’s not my case anymore, but call it for old times’ sake. Care to fill me in?”
In the silence that followed, Jane glanced from one man to the other. Matt, with his narrowed eyes and firmly set lips, didn’t look at all like a man who was asking a favor. And Wilcox, with his hard blue eyes and head cocked to one side, didn’t look like one who was predisposed to grant one. But slowly the man’s lips curved slightly.
“Sure. Why not? So far, we have established the fact that Miss Ashbury here ran out of the store carrying this scarf, valued at one hundred and thirty-four dollars. She claims that she became confused, didn’t know where she was, what month it was, or even who she was. That, however, has yet to be proven.”
Matt looked at Jane. Before he could say a word, however, Mr. Jessup spoke up.
“Well, actually, when the salesgirl called me, she did say she had a customer who seemed to think it was May, and was acting rather strangely.”
Matt’s gaze seemed to sharpen. “May?” he asked Jane.
She barely managed to nod before Wilcox spoke.
“All right. So she was confused. Familiar story, right? That doesn’t explain why she took the scarf with her.”
Matt turned to Wilcox and took a step toward the man as he asked, “What’s wrong with you? My guess is, she forgot she was holding it.” He turned his attention to the security guard. “Where did you apprehend Miss Ashbury?”
“She was standing in front of the store, staring into the window.”
“I see. Where was the scarf?”
“In her hand.”
“Had the tag been removed?”
The man shook his head.
“Would you mind telling me just how many shoplifters you’ve known to stop right outside, with the stolen merchandise in clear view?”
Jessup sighed. “None. But she was moving away when I grabbed her. And her story—”
“Needs to be confirmed,” Wilcox finished as he stood up. “Mr. Jessup, let’s go speak to that salesclerk. I think we can safely leave her in Mr. Sullivan’s custody. He used to be a cop.”
A minute later, Jessup closed the door, leaving Jane alone with Matt. The silence in the room seemed to grow, demanding to be filled.
“I’m sorry about Manny,” she said. “I wanted to come see you, in the hospital, but I was told you couldn’t have visitors. Then Zoe took me to—”
“Hey,” Matt broke in.
He stepped toward her, halting once he was two feet away. Jane could almost feel the strength emanating from him. Or was she recalling the way his arms had held her so tightly as she sobbed uncontrollably the last time she’d seen him?
“I’ve been out of the hospital for a year now,” Matt said. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I’ve been meaning to look you up, but—”
“But,” Jane interrupted. Embarrassed by where her earlier thoughts had wandered, and the weakness she’d shown that long-ago day, she went on quickly. “You’ve been busy putting your life back together. I understand how that goes.”
Matt’s jaw tightened. He knew Jane wasn’t offering an empty reassurance. If anyone knew what it took to put a life back together—or create a new one out of nothing, for that matter—it was Jane Ashbury.
In the middle of May, nearly a year and a half ago, he and his partner had been called to the scene of a suspicious accident. A car had gone off a cliff near the ocean and burst into flames, but not before a young woman had been thrown onto the rocks. There were no skid marks to suggest that the driver had been speeding, and the wheel tracks on the grassy cliff indicated the car had come from an odd angle. Any identification that the woman might have been carrying had been destroyed by the fire, and her body and face had been shattered by the impact.
When a check of fingerprint files, dental records and missing persons lists all came up blank, the woman was tagged with the designation normally given to unidentified bodies—Jane Doe—and given the number thirteen to distinguish her from those who had come before and those who would follow. When she came out of her coma, in the middle of June, she had no idea who she was and didn’t recognize the face the plastic surgeons had created for her.
He and Manny had elicited the aid of the media, and Jane’s story was widely covered by newspapers and television. Numerous people came to see her, hoping she might prove to be their missing sister, daughter, wife. What few people knew, however, was how devastating both her celebrity and the subsequent disappointments had been for Jane. Matt knew, though. He had witnessed the last of such visits, had held Jane in his arms as she mourned the fact that, yet again, all parties concerned had been disappointed and she still was left without an identity.
However, when she pulled away from him that day and dried her eyes, a new Jane had emerged.
That quietly self-controlled person stood in front of Matt now—more or less. She wasn’t as painfully thin as he remembered; the hair that had been shaved prior to the emergency operation on her bruised brain had grown out to frame her slender face in a chin-length cap of light brown; and the scar at the left corner of her mouth had faded to the palest of pinks.
But her smoky gray-brown eyes held the same mixture of vulnerability and determination he’d seen the day she declared she was ready to move forward, that she would never search for her past again. However, from what the security guard had said, it seemed that today Jane’s past had come searching for her.
“So,” Matt said. “You remembered something.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “No. I didn’t.”
Matt gave her a small smile. “Jessup just told me you thought it was May. That was the month your car went over that embankment.” It hadn’t been her car, of course. The vehicle subsequently had proved to be stolen. Glossing over the inaccuracy, Matt got to the heart of the matter. “Don’t you think there might be some connection?”
“No.” She took a step back as she spoke, and broke eye contact. Her gaze fell on the scarf. “I was looking at this scarf one minute, then hearing some Christmas tune the next, and suddenly wondered why the store would play that kind of