His grip in her hair tightened for a second before he dropped his hand back to her thigh to rub up and down the length. She wasn’t sure if he was soothing her or himself. “Yes.”

  With that one word, the memory blossomed in her mind, beginning to end—every touch, every sigh, every word. And there had been plenty of words. Sexy words. Drowsy words. Words that made her wish she could stay.

  But she hadn’t. She’d left.

  And ended up on the street, waiting to cross at a light. Seeing a van pull up. Then an explosion of pain unlike anything she’d ever known, before…nothing.

  That was where the memory ended.

  “That was the same night I ended up in the hospital.”

  She didn’t jump out of his arms, at least not immediately. She was too dizzy from the flood of memories. Too hurt. Because one thing was clear, even if she couldn’t remember it. There was no way they had lived together. Saint was too potent, too virile to live with a woman he was interested in—and his physical reactions told her plainly that he was interested—and not have sex with her. And their first time having sex had been the night of her accident.

  He’d lied.

  She swung her legs off his lap. “How did we meet?” She’d never asked before, she realized. Had she not wanted to know? Or had she really been as overwhelmed as she told herself she was? Maybe she’d just wanted to believe Saint’s story, and Saint had let her.

  “We met at a bar called Big Daddy’s.”

  “That night?” But it wasn’t really a question.

  Would Saint tell her the truth?

  His lips tightened, but he finally admitted, “That night.”

  The words were cautious, careful, as if he was waiting for her to blow up. Shouldn’t she? She wanted to. So why hadn’t she?

  “I think you need to explain.”

  So Saint did, about the bar and the barbecue, about coming over to talk to her, about taking her home. All of it in that careful voice, no emotion. Not like the man who’d told her just minutes ago, awe in his voice, how beautiful she’d been the first time he’d seen her naked.

  She finally stood up, moved away from the couch, away from Saint, and began to pace.

  “So you didn’t know me before that night.”

  “No,” Saint said. “But—”

  “Don’t.” She circled the armchair by the fireplace, down the length of the sliding glass doors. He had known her before she was hit. Why had he sought her out afterward? Why try to find her at the hospital? Why lie and take her in?

  Was he somehow involved in all this? Was it just pity? She didn’t see herself as the kind of woman who would inspire enough lust for a man to chase her identity for a week with no clue where she was. Hell, lust wasn’t enough for a man to stand by an invalid for almost two weeks while she healed in a hospital bed, much less take that woman into his home afterward.

  So why?

  Should she ask? Did she really want to know? Nothing about Saint told her that he wanted to harm her. And yet he’d lied.

  What the fuck was the answer?

  Stopping in front of the fireplace, her back to Saint, she made her decision. She couldn’t ask. Too much was jumbled in her head, too many emotions, too many memories—and the memories were so, so sweet. They made her weak with their sweetness. They hurt her, deep down where she had no memories of ever being hurt this way before.

  So she kept her back turned on Saint, not wanting to see his face or anything that might sway her, and headed for the bedroom.

  “Rae!”

  She kept going.

  “Rae, wait! Let me explain.”

  She couldn’t. Not right now. She walked into the bedroom, closed the door, and locked it. And refused to answer Saint for the rest of the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He’d lost her. He knew it, even if her refusal to acknowledge him through the bedroom door hadn’t given him definitive proof. He’d lost her before he even truly had her, and the thought was like a black hole inside him, tearing into pieces when he still needed to be whole. To keep her safe, if not to keep her.

  There was no point in trying to sleep. Rae wasn’t letting him in, and all he would do was toss and turn on the guest bed, so he went to work.

  Despite her memories, Rae hadn’t seemed to remember anything before their actual meeting at the bar. If she still didn’t know where she had been staying, they still couldn’t access her belongings, even if they’d had the good fortune not to be thrown out after all these weeks. So that was a dead end.

  Rae also hadn’t had a phone on her the night they met—he’d seen all her clothes intimately, and no phone had been present, no bulges in the pockets, nothing but the slim wallet she’d pulled out at the bar, holding just enough cash to pay her bill. Either she hadn’t had a current phone at the time or her phone had been long lost along with all her other things. Even knowing it was unlikely, Saint rummaged through their information and found the phone numbers registered to Rae in Maine. Both her landline and cell phone had shown no activity in the past six months. If she’d been smart—and he knew she was—she’d probably ditched her original cell phone so it couldn’t be used to track her, so the lack of activity wasn’t surprising.

  “Another fucking dead end,” he grumbled to himself. Then rolled his eyes. He was fucking losing his mind, talking to himself in the middle of the night. Next thing he knew he’d be offering himself a drink.

  Tempting, but he couldn’t afford the haze of alcohol, even to forget his pain for a few lucky moments.

  By the time dawn hit, he was seriously reconsidering that decision. He was also still coming up empty. Rae hadn’t emerged from the bedroom or made a sound all night. Before he made a very bad decision, one that involved taking the door off the hinges, he called the PI’s office in Maine, but no one answered. That didn’t stop him from calling again, and again, until someone finally picked just after seven a.m.

  “Murphy Investigations, how may I help you this morning?”

  The receptionist’s cheery voice scraped along Saint’s nerves, but he ignored the irritation like he was ignoring every other emotion raging inside him and asked for the head of the firm. Ms. Cheerful put him right through.

  “Ayuh.”

  That was more like it. Murphy sounded like he needed another pot of coffee before he’d actually be coherent. Saint knew the feeling.

  “Morning, Murphy. I was hoping for an update,” he said by way of an opening.

  “Right, yeah. Hold up just a sec.” The sound of shuffling papers and a drawer slamming came through the phone, then a groan from the man and the squeaking protest of a chair as he settled into a seat. “Yeah, so I pursued a few more avenues, but since I was running into dead ends going the official route, I took myself on down to a bar on the docks last night. Friend of mine hooked me up with a dock worker who knows the family. Hangs out with one of the cousins, apparently.”

  “One of Raegan’s cousins?”

  “Yeah. There’s three, all sons of the uncle. Raegan is supposedly closest to the youngest one, Nathan. Seems she took care of them a lot when they were little—she’s a few years older, and the uncle was working a commercial fishing boat back then. Wife died when the youngest was born. Raegan helped raise the boy. My contact seemed to think Nathan would most likely know where she was.”

  “But your contact hasn’t seen her around. Did he say how long?”

  “’Bout five, six months. Said she’d gone back to school, he heard, figured she was just busy. Totally calm about it, not a hint of suspicion. Only suspicion he had was reserved for the uncle.”

  “What about him?”

  “See, most of ’em down there, working the docks or the boats, they’re hardworking, hard drinking folks. But honest. They’ve all known each other so long, they’ve got no secrets. But they also know the ones that ain’t honest. Seems Raegan’s uncle, Francis Conté, had fallen in with some of the latter.”

  Saint’s stomach protested, and he grimaced down at the cold dregs of his fourth cup of coffee in as many hours. “What kind of dishonest people?”

  “Loan sharks.”

  “Conté owes money? How much?”

  “Not sure. I’ve got a few folks I can contact today to see if they know, people better connected on that side than I am.”

  At least it wasn’t a dead end. Saint thanked the PI and ended the call, then headed for the shower.

  His team arrived shortly after, and he went into the kitchen to start fresh coffee. Everyone followed, and Elliot moved to the bread box to retrieve bagels while King grabbed butter and cream cheese and jam from the fridge. His friends knew him well, knew his house well. He wondered if having them around would comfort him once Rae was gone.

  He was so attuned to the slightest sound that the click of the lock opening on the bedroom door had him jerking his head around. Rae walked down the hall, her hair wet, clothes comfortable, face naked—so beautiful she took his breath away. He didn’t think she ever wouldn’t. When she caught him watching her, she met his gaze squarely, and he could tell from one look that she still hadn’t forgiven him. Maybe she never would.

  Maybe he was feeling a bit sorry for himself.

  Rae entered the kitchen to a chorus of greetings and settled at the island with a cup of coffee. Elliot placed a toasted bagel in front of her, and he watched hungrily as she doctored it and the coffee, though it wasn’t the food that stirred his appetite. The longer the silence went on, the more looks his team threw him, until he knew he’d have to say something. Well, he had to say something anyway. They needed to know that Rae was remembering. What that meant in regard to him didn’t matter right now.

  Still, he did nothing but watch until she’d finished eating her bagel. Then he braced himself.

  “Rae—”

  “I’m leaving.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but only for a moment. This isn’t a surprise. Toughen the fuck up.

  “No.”

  Rae raised an eyebrow at that. “You can’t stop me.”

  “I sure as hell can.”

  Dain cleared his throat, probably hoping to ward off World War III. “Rae, want to tell us what brought on this decision?”

  She turned to look at Dain, betrayal darkening her tired eyes. “Did you know, Dain?”

  A vee of confusion creased between his team lead’s brows. “Know what?”

  Rae gave a bitter laugh. “I mean, I’m sure you all did—no way could Saint have fooled all of you the way he did me. You were seeing him every day at work; you’d know if he had some chick holed up in his apartment, right?” She shook her head. “What I don’t get is why. Why did you all go along with this? I thought about it all night long, and you know the answer I came up with?”

  Dain didn’t look confused any more. “So you’ve regained your memory.”

  “Not all of it,” Saint explained, his voice as neutral as he could get it with the fear surging inside him. “She remembers some of that night, at least up until the accident.” Thank God not more than that. The doctor had believed she wouldn’t remember afterward, and he prayed that remained true. The thought of her pain made him sick; he didn’t want her to endure that again, even in her memories.

  But if she did, there’d be nothing he could do to stop it. He wouldn’t be there to wipe away the pain with his mouth, his body, the way he wanted to wipe her pain away now.

  He looked down at the floor, letting the knowledge register that she truly wanted him gone. Really thinking about it—and analyzing his response. He was giving up, had been all night. Oh, he knew that if Rae truly hated him now, wanted nothing to do with him, he couldn’t stop her from walking away. Wouldn’t, not against her will, no matter what he’d said. But if he was that easy to walk away from, she wouldn’t be this hurt by it. She wouldn’t be this angry.

  He couldn’t hold her here without consent, but that didn’t mean he should give up the fight before it even started. Rae was worth fighting for; the love he felt, the deep hunger in his soul for hers, wasn’t something he could just walk away from. He had to make her see why he’d done this, not—

  “The only why I can come up with is that you’re all involved in this somehow,” Rae said. “And I’m not staying where I’m not safe.”

  Now that made him angry. The fire felt good, waking him up, firming his resolve. He stepped forward, planting his fists on the island, leaning in until his face was mere inches from Rae’s. “I didn’t run you over, Rae,” he told her, voice tight. “You would have remembered that. And I’m not involved with the people who did.”

  This close he could see that Rae was breathing hard, emotion racing through her. The sight gave him hope. The defiance in her eyes made him want to throw her over his shoulder, carry her back to the bedroom, and fuck her until all that rebellion turned to fire beneath him.

  “Nothing else makes sense,” she said.

  “Nothing?” This time it was Elliot who stepped forward. “Rae, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense either. If we wanted you gone, we could have made that happened the second Saint left the hospital with you. Hell, anytime he was there with you alone. We didn’t have to go to all this trouble.” She waved a hand around the kitchen.

  Rae hesitated. “Nothing else makes sense.”

  The words were weaker this time, less rock-solid certain. Saint took advantage of that and rounded the island. Rae tried to slide off the opposite side of her barstool, but he gripped the edge just in time and swung her back toward him, his hands planted on either side of her thighs caging her in. “Something else makes perfect sense, Rae. Do you want to know what it is?”

  “I—”

  He counted to ten, and when she still didn’t speak, he leaned in. Rae’s breath washed over him as he brought his face close. “You want to know; I know you do. Tell me yes, Rae.”

  “I—” She swallowed so hard he heard it. “I won’t believe you.”

  “Yes, you will. You know why?”

  She hesitated, her eyes wide. Shook her head.

  “Because you can feel the truth every time I touch you,” he whispered inches from her mouth. “Because yes, I lied about us living together—to keep you safe—but I haven’t lied about how I feel. And my body can’t lie when I touch you. You know that.” He narrowed his eyes on her. “That’s why you’re running away, isn’t it? Not because of a lie. It’s because you’re afraid of what you feel.”

  Rae scoffed weakly. “No, it’s definitely because of your lies.”

  “Uh-uh.” He risked bringing his hand up, digging his fingers into the mass of her curls above her ear. The tug of his touch made her eyes soften with hunger. He felt the same softening around his aching heart. “It’s not. I know you’re afraid. You want the truth about the man in front of you, the man you want. And I can give it to you. But not if you run away.”

  She shook her head again, pulling the tangled curls surrounding his fingers. “I can’t. I already—”

  A buzz filled the room—the alarm. That was the signal for the gate. Dread and anger tangled in Saint’s chest just like his fingers in Rae’s hair. “What did you do, Rae?”

  “I— I called Leah.”

  How? But he didn’t ask; all he got out was, “Shit.”

  The alarm sounded again, and Saint straightened. Carefully untangling his fingers, he stared hard into Rae’s eyes. “This isn’t over.”

  “Yes, it is, Saint.”

  “Bet me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “How the hell did she contact you?” King asked as Remi led the way through Saint’s front door, his girlfriend, still in her scrubs, right on his heels.

  Saint took a stand at the mouth of the foyer, blocking the way into the living room. He and Remi were about the same size, both of them heavy with muscle, and no doubt they would be evenly matched in a fight. Not that Saint wanted a fight. But that didn’t mean he wanted to give the biggest Agozi brother free rein of his house, either. “Why are you here?”

  Leah stepped around her boyfriend when he stopped. “Do you really need to ask that?” She rolled her eyes. “Men can be such idiots.”

  Remi looked amused. Come to think of it, the man seemed awfully at ease for someone Saint would have imagined to be on the offense after what Rae had likely told them.

  Remi raised an eyebrow down at Leah. “Can we?”

  Leah glared. “You damn well can.”

  Remi shot her an indulgent glance before turning to Saint. “She’s not wrong.” He dropped the arms he’d crossed over his wide chest. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m not involved with her attackers, Agozi.”

  Leah snorted. Remi sobered. “If I thought you were, I wouldn’t be here alone. I’d have already attacked.”

  “What?” Leah gasped. “He lied, Remi.”

  “Calm down, lev sheli.”

  Leah’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you ‘my heart’ me.”

  Remi wrapped an arm around his girlfriend, drawing her stiff body against his side. “If he’d wanted to hurt her, he could have done so at any time. Think with your head, not your heart.”

  It was the same argument they’d given Rae, but having an outsider see it had some of Saint’s tension easing.

  “My heart sees just fine, thank you very much.” Leah shook her head. “You agreed we’d come get her.”

  “And we will take her home,” Remi said, jacking Saint’s tension right back up, “if that’s what she still wants when we’re done.”

  “It’s what I want,” Rae said behind Saint. Her footsteps crossed the hardwood floor toward the hallway. “I’ll get my things.”

  “I’m afraid that’s going to have to wait,” Remi called, stopping Rae in her tracks.

  “Why?” Saint asked.

  “Because I have some news.” Remi gestured toward the living room. “May we sit?”

  Saint stared at Remi for a long moment, debating. But like Remi, Saint knew the man in front of him was safe with Rae, and if that was the case, he was safe to be in Saint’s home.

  He stepped aside, waving the couple into the living room.