“Your name?”

  Her mouth opened. Say your name. Say it. My name is…

  What was her name?

  She managed to croak, “My name is…” Her eyes stung. Tears welled, and her heartbeat pounded so hard in her throat she thought she’d pass out. “It’s…”

  The nurse’s eyes narrowed, one capable hand closing on her wrist. She hated that hand, hated the woman’s calm and competence when she couldn’t even manage basic talking, when the black spots were reappearing in her vision. She tried to remind herself to breathe, to get the precious oxygen she so desperately needed.

  Only terror allowed her to bypass her body’s turmoil.

  “I don’t know,” she cried weakly. “I don’t know my… I don’t know my name.”

  The nurse bent over her just as the black spots became a cloud that obliterated everything else.

  ∞

  Pain.

  The pain was everywhere. It ebbed and flowed, pulled her under, tossed her around. The funny thing was, she didn’t move. She was aware of her body, the bed beneath her, the fabric covering her, but it was the pain that jostled her awake. If she could just ease the pain…

  Get up. If you get up, it’ll stop.

  She managed to shift—a hand, a leg, her hip. Pain morphed into agony.

  Liar! It doesn’t stop!

  And yet as minutes trickled by, the pain did ease. Not disappear, that much was true, but the subtle shifting of her body managed to dull the ache in her muscles. Pain became soreness. Her brain registered the change and deemed it safe to awaken. Gradually the need to open her eyes, to see what she couldn’t, drove her to flutter open her eyelids.

  White.

  A sense of déjà vu enveloped her. She’d seen this before.

  But where? When?

  A sudden rrrrrrr sound filled her ears, and a vise grip tightened on her upper arm. Her gaze jerked down.

  A blood pressure cuff. She—

  The shhhhhh of the cuff releasing relieved the pressure. She sucked in a breath. Glanced at her lap. White sheet and white gown with a little blue pattern. Her opposite hand had a needle stuck in the back, a line leading to a pole next to the…was that? Yeah, a hospital bed. An IV pole. A bag of clear liquid hung from the top hook, a second waiting beside it. Various gauges and monitors and displays beeped and hummed nearby. She couldn’t see past the wall of white curtains surrounding her, but she knew she was in a hospital, knew something was terribly wrong, but what?

  A memory rushed into her brain, a nurse, calm and competent. A hand on her arm as knowledge, cold and horrible, filled her mind. Or not so much knowledge as the lack of. A well of nothing taking over her awareness until she’d had no choice but to run from it. To escape the reality that she didn’t know her own name.

  She didn’t know her own name.

  Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe past the panic rising in a swell from deep in her belly. She couldn’t let it win, couldn’t let the pain win. She had to stay aware, stay awake. She couldn’t keep herself safe if she was unconscious.

  Why did she need to keep herself safe? Had someone hurt her? Was that why she was here, in a hospital bed?

  She probed the recesses of her mind, but nothing surfaced. The only memory was that of the nurse, of realizing she had no idea who she was, where she was, what was going on, with her body or her identity. That yawning, empty pit terrified her. The not knowing was worse than the pain, and she fought the urge to let both swamp her and take her back down into oblivion. It seemed so easy, but it wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe.

  God, what was happening to her?

  She had no idea how long she lay there, just breathing, probing at her mind, before the squeak of a sliding door sounded outside her curtain. Not just a bed, then. She wasn’t in the ER or something like that. Somehow she knew doors on cubicles were a bad thing. When the curtain was thrown back, she skimmed past the nurse entering and caught a glimpse of a long, central nurses’ station and a glass wall beyond that, segmented by sliding glass doors just like hers. ICU, maybe?

  Was she that hurt?

  “I see you’ve joined us again.”

  The nurse was obnoxiously cheerful, and it made her want to scream. Couldn’t she see there was nothing to be cheerful about? She forced herself to focus, to meet the woman’s eyes, to examine every little thing about her, from the dark hair pulled back in a bun to the wedding ring on her left ring finger—gold, plain. No-nonsense, like the rest of her except for that happy grin.

  She cleared her throat and wondered if words would come out. She’d only know if she tried. “Where am I?”

  That’s what she intended to say, at least. The question was a bit garbled, so she tried a second time.

  “Where am I?”

  The nurse paused in her fussing with the various instruments and glanced down at her. This time pity flickered in her gaze before that cheerful facade took over once more. “You’re at Fulton County Memorial Hospital.” Her mouth worked as if the nurse wanted to add something to the end of her statement, and she realized it was a name. A name they didn’t have because she couldn’t remember it. Had she not been brought in with any identification?

  “Fulton County?”

  “That’s right.” A gentle hand pressed her forearm, careful to avoid the IV line. “In Atlanta, Georgia.”

  Atlanta? Her brows creased. Was she supposed to be in Atlanta? And if she was, why did the idea seem so foreign?

  She tried desperately to think through the questions, search for answers, even as fear threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Do you remember your name?” the nurse asked.

  She probed the darkness again. Came up with nothing. “No.”

  “Mmm.” The nurse typed a note into the tablet she had used for recording vitals. “Do you know where you live? How old you are?”

  They went through what seemed like endless questions, and yet she had zero answers. When the nurse left and returned with a doctor, he went through the questions again, but the results didn’t change. There had been no identification on her when she arrived at the ER after being hit by a car. No purse, no cell phone. Nothing. She didn’t know anything.

  She just…didn’t know.

  The doctor confirmed her fears when he returned a few hours later, after a battery of exams and scans and even more questions that left her exhausted and emptier than before. The words “You have retrograde amnesia,” were no surprise, but they did open a whole new, endless box of fears, worries. Panic. Because there was one more question she couldn’t answer and was desperately afraid to ask:

  What would happen to her now?

  Chapter Six

  Saint stared at the checkerboard of headshots filling his computer screen. Granted, DMV photos were never the best, but a quick skim had told him what he was looking for wasn’t here. All women, all brunettes with long hair, all around Rae’s age—late twenties to early thirties—but none of them were Rae.

  Not a single. Damn. One was Rae.

  A curse ripped out of him as he slammed a fist onto his desk. The keyboard and his third mug of coffee jumped an inch, liquid spilling from one to the other. He cursed again and grabbed a tissue to mop up the mess.

  “Better not crack that oak,” a sardonic voice said. Saint jerked his chair around to see King lounging in his office doorway. “Bad enough if you need to replace that keyboard—they don’t drink coffee, you know.”

  Saint muttered a name he’d certainly never repeat in front of his mother and spun back to his cleanup job. King entered without permission, ignoring Saint’s obvious irritation as he leaned both hands on the edge of Saint’s still intact, thank you very much, desk. One mocking brow rose as he stared at the spot Saint had slammed with his fist.

  “If you requisition a new desk along with a replacement keyboard, Lori definitely won’t approve that new GLOCK I’ve got my eye on, so keep it together, bro.”

  “You can shove that requisition right up your—”

  “Whoa!” His friend’s hands went up, warding off Saint’s curse before it could spill from his lips. “Okay, no teasing this morning. Charlotte definitely wouldn’t like it if any of my…equipment…was damaged by shoving anything up it, so let’s skip that.”

  That much was true. The couple had only recently reconnected after ten years apart, and Charlotte had made good use of his friend’s “equipment” ever since. They could barely keep their hands off each other, which usually amused him but right now irritated the hell out of him just thinking about it.

  The tilted corners of King’s mouth flattened into a serious line as he glanced at the computer screen. “Looking for someone? Is it anything I can help with?”

  Saint felt his frustration drain away as remorse hit him. Normally he was the teasing one, giving his best friend a hard time just to see him squirm. But the past few days… Hell. To say he wasn’t himself was a bit of an understatement.

  He clicked his screen off, his grim reflection staring back at him in the blank, glossy black surface. “It’s not work.”

  Which meant he was using company time for a search that shouldn’t be happening. He shouldn’t be using company access to do what he was doing, either, no matter how fruitless. There were a lot of things he shouldn’t be doing, including chasing after a woman who obviously hadn’t wanted him beyond a quick roll in the hay.

  There was nothing quick about it. You took hours with Rae, and you’d take hours more—if you could just find her.

  He flipped his inner voice a mental bird. Fuck off.

  King settled into the chair to one side of Saint’s desk and crossed an ankle over the opposite knee. The elegant shine of his John Lobb’s sent a shot of envy through Saint’s gut. He really needed to buy a pair instead of drooling over his friend’s. He’d only been jealous of the damn things for half a year.

  Who was he kidding? He might covet them, but he knew buying his own wasn’t going to happen. If he was gonna drop a couple grand, it would be on his nieces and nephews, not a pair of shoes. He had a feeling King would feel the same way about his goddaughter, Sophia, as she grew older.

  And really, who gave a damn about shoes right now?

  King’s toe dipped back and forth. “You never get distracted at work. How about sharing?”

  He met King’s direct gaze and saw understanding there. They might rag each other often, but they always had each other’s backs. So why was he reluctant to share this secret?

  Because it felt too personal. Too…close. He’d never been one to kiss and tell, but this…this felt so much bigger than one night with a woman he barely knew.

  Oh, what the hell. If he didn’t spill his guts, his mood would just get worse, and right now he couldn’t even stand himself, so…

  “Friday night, after you left…”

  There went that blond eyebrow again, cocking up in the air. “You met a woman?”

  Yes, he’d met a woman; he had to make a significant effort not to meet a woman, and that wasn’t arrogance talking. “I did.” He hesitated, sighed. “I took her home.”

  King’s gaze dropped to Saint’s chest, and he realized he was rubbing a hole in his sternum. He let his hand fall to his lap.

  “Her name is Rae. And no”—he waved away the question King was obviously preparing to ask—“I did not get her last name. I’d planned to, later, but…”

  “Oh my God.” King barked a laugh. “It finally happened! I thought I’d never see the day.”

  “See what day?” Saint asked sourly. As if he didn’t know what was coming.

  “She snuck out on you, didn’t she? You, the great ladies’ man. I can’t believe it.”

  King’s laughter grated on Saint’s already thinly stretched nerves. “Believe it,” he gritted out.

  He waited not so patiently for King’s amusement to subside. Refused to do more than growl his irritation when King had to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. Let his friend get it all out; he could take a joke at his expense. Jokes had never bothered him before.

  They’d also never been about Rae before.

  He leaned back in his seat and stared up at the ceiling. Closed his eyes. Since when did he lose his patience or his control over a woman?

  Maybe since the woman had touched something deeper than his body.

  When things got quiet, he raised his head and spread his palms out. “What can I say? I took her home. Not to a hotel, King. Not just to my car for some quick back-seat action. I took her to my apartment, and by God, I wanted to keep her there. And I did, for a while. It says everything that needs to be said that I was so deeply asleep after having sex with her that I didn’t even notice her getting out of my bed, much less leaving my house.”

  King seemed to consider that, his eyes narrowing, head tilted. He glanced at the computer screen as if remembering what had been displayed there before Saint turned it off. “You’re searching for her.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about her. It’s been almost a week, and I cannot stop.” He shoved a hand through his thick hair, pulling the strands hard. “It’s driving me insane.”

  “Have you tried the bar?”

  A bitter smile curved one side of his mouth. “Every night. I’ve talked to every server, every bartender. No one has seen her since Friday, and no one had seen her before. She’s just…poof…gone.”

  “What else?”

  King knew Saint was hunting, and there was nothing the two of them liked better than a hunt. “I started with DMV records. Every variant spelling of her name, Rae, both as first and last. Nothing so far, at least not in Georgia. Even narrowing by hair and eye color, age, and height wouldn’t get a national search down to a manageable number.” As it was it had taken him days to go through the local pages. “No warrants or BOLOs.” Yes, he’d checked with local law enforcement.

  “Have you contacted hospitals? Maybe something happened to her?”

  Saint rubbed his eyes hard. “I’d considered it.” Hell, he’d done more than consider it. That was the next step on his list.

  “Let me ask you this,” King said, his thoughtful tone sending tension through Saint’s muscles. “I get it: you felt drawn to her enough to take her to your private sanctuary.” King knew exactly how much attraction would have to be present for Saint to allow a woman to enter his home. “You can’t easily forget her, a definite first for you. But…have you considered the possibility that it’s the fact that she left without saying a word, that you can’t find her, that makes her so unforgettable?”

  Saint planted his elbows on the arms of his chair and brought his clasped hands to his mouth. He couldn’t ignore King’s point. Was that it? What if his friend was right?

  “I mean,” King continued, “why her? Why this woman out of all the women you’ve met, or even slept with?”

  “Why Charlotte?”

  The words were instinctive but still shocked him. Was he thinking Rae was to him what Charlotte was to King? Impossible.

  King considered the question, though, seeming unfazed. “Why? Because Charlotte is…”

  “Charlotte.” The perfect fit for King, better than any other woman he’d met.

  “Exactly.” His friend sighed, the point sinking home. “But you don’t know Rae. Who she is, what she thinks. How can you know her well enough to be this drawn to her?”

  “How long did you need to know Charlotte?”

  King’s smile was wry.

  “I know Rae. I might not know her name or specifics, but I know her—and in more than just the Biblical sense. I don’t know where that will go after I see her again, but something in my gut will not let this go. I have to find her.”

  “And if she snuck out because she just didn’t want anything more?”

  Saint shrugged, though his reaction to his friend’s words was anything but casual. “Then I’ll walk away. But I need to hear it from her.”

  King stared at him for a long time. Finally he gave a sharp nod. “All right. I agree, you at least need to find her.” He jerked his chin toward the computer. “I’ll help, okay? Tonight.”

  Saint started to protest, but King cut him off.

  “You need to focus. If you can’t do that with this hanging over your head, either take the day off”—he stood, reached for the heavy watch on his wrist, and began unstrapping it—“or come with me. You’ll pay attention if I have you on the mat, that’s for sure.”

  The tightness in Saint’s chest eased the slightest bit. He stood as well. “Are you saying you can take me in a fight? Because we both know that’s a fucking lie.”

  King headed for the door. “It isn’t a lie if I can prove it.”

  Saint snorted, pausing in the hallway to close and lock his office door. “You can’t prove anything. Besides, you know you don’t want to go home to Charlotte with your pretty-boy face marked up.”

  “You think I’m a pretty boy?” King threw kissing sounds over his shoulder. “I’m more than just a pretty face.”

  “You better hope so.” Adrenaline began to race through his veins. A fight was just what he needed right now, the chance to focus completely on something other than Rae and his search. To clear his mind and face the problem from a fresh angle later, with his best friend helping. Gratitude mixed with anticipation.

  King began a slow jog toward the gym, chuckling. “I don’t hope so; I know so.”

  “You don’t know nothin’, bro.” Saint sped up too. Tonight they’d find something; he knew it. For now, King had a target on his face, and Saint was ready for target practice.

  Chapter Seven

  Leah Marrone took the elevator from the ER to the ICU after her shift was over. She didn’t normally do this. She didn’t allow herself a personal interest in the patients she treated. Her home life and the secrets she kept were complicated enough; her compassion could stretch to treating people, but not to involvement in their private problems.

  And yet this patient drew her whether she wanted them to or not.

  That morning six days ago, she’d been finishing an overnight shift she’d taken for a friend. Her mind had been on hurrying home, fixing breakfast for her six-year-old daughter, Brooke, and the man who’d recently become so important to both of them. Remi Agozi was staying at Leah’s house to take care of Brooke until Leah arrived home. Just thinking about him brought a tingle to her spine, and she’d been hoping for a discreet hour, the two of them and a bed, alone, before Leah cooked and sent Brooke off to school.