Loe raamatut: «Their Christmas Miracle»

CHAPTER TWO

“ROSIE?” THE WORD came out as a hoarse whisper; he could barely speak. Six months. Praying and searching. Mourning.

It couldn’t be her.

Who else would have those brown eyes? Dark and rich, like liquid gemstones. Bee-stung lips. And the scar on the bridge of her nose. The one she always hated and that he loved because it connected the smattering of freckles.

How...? When? A million questions swirled in his head, none of which mattered. Not when a miracle was standing in front of him.

“Rosie.” Wrapping her in his arms, he buried his face in the crook of her neck. She smelled of lemons and sunshine. “Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.” He murmured her name against her skin.

Hands slid up his torso to grip his lapels. He moved to pull her closer, only to have her fists push him away.

He found himself staring into eyes blazing with outrage, confusion and panic. The last one squeezed at his heart.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

Was this some kind of joke? Now he was confused. Why would she pretend? “They told us you were dead. That—that you were swept out to sea.” He reached for her again, only to have her take another step back.

“I’m sorry. I don’t...” She shook her head, her eyes growing moist with tears. “I don’t know...” Pressing a fist to her mouth, she turned and bolted from the room.

“Rosalind!” Thomas started after her, only to have Linus grab his arm. What the hell was his brother doing? He tried to yank his arm free, but Linus had a grip of iron. His brother’s fingers were dug in so tightly they were going to leave bruises. “Let me go!” he snarled. “It’s Rosalind.” If he lost her again...

But Linus held fast, damn him. “Calm down, Thomas. She only looks like Rosalind.”

“No.” Linus was wrong. It was Rosalind. He knew his wife. Why did she run? Did she hate him that much? “I have to talk with her.”

Before he could try and pull free, McKringle barreled his way over. “What’s going on here?” he asked, all his earlier friendliness stripped away. “I don’t know what you lads do wherever you’re from, but here we don’t manhandle waitresses and make them cry.”

Thomas spun around on him. “And what about hiding someone’s wife from him? Are they okay with that here?”

He waited as McKringle’s bushy brows pulled together. “Did you say ‘your wife’?”

“Rosalind Collier.” Where was his phone? Looking around, he found it on the floor by his chair where he snatched it up and quickly began scrolling through its photo collection. “Here,” he said, finding the photo they’d used for the missing person poster. He held the phone so McKringle could see. His hand was shaking. “She went missing this summer when her car went off a bridge near Fort William.”

Wordlessly, McKringle slipped the phone from his hand and held it closer. Thomas could feel his body tensing with each second of silence. Surely, the man knew what he was talking about. Her disappearance had been all over the news, for crying out loud. They weren’t so isolated out here that he couldn’t have seen at least one headline.

“She had a car accident?” the man finally said.

“Yes. Her car plunged into the river.” Thomas didn’t have time for this. His wife was in the other room. He needed to see her. Find out what happened. How she’d ended up out here and why she was pretending he was some kind of stranger. “Please,” he said. Desperation cracked his voice. “They told us she was dead. I have to talk to her. Need to know what happened. She... We have a daughter who needs her.” His control was starting to slip. Six months of pain rose back to the surface in a groan.

“It’s all right, lad. I think you need to sit down.”

McKringle tried to lead him back to the table, but again Thomas broke from the contact. “Dammit, why is everyone trying to keep me from seeing my wife?”

“We don’t know if it is Rosalind,” Linus said. “I think we should hear him out.”

“I promise you she’s not going anywhere,” McKringle said. “But there’re a few things I think you ought to know. Please, Mr Collier. Take a seat. I’ll get you a drink.”

Thomas didn’t want a drink. He wanted his wife, but he allowed himself to be led back to his chair. Something in McKringle’s eyes said he needed to do as the man said.

“Let me ask you a question,” the old man said once they’d all settled in their seats. “Have you ever heard of the term dissociative fugue?”

She couldn’t stop shaking. Hunched over the bathroom sink, her fingers clutching the vanity edge for support, she could feel her legs trembling beneath her.

Rosie. He’d called her Rosie.

She’d always thought that when she met someone from her past, she would know. Instinct would kick loose whatever it was wrapping her brain in blackness and the memories would be set free. But when this man—this stranger—called her Rosie, she’d felt nothing.

Well, not completely nothing. Her heart had practically beat itself out of her chest when he hugged her. But he could have called her Jane or Susan or Philetta for all the name meant.

Maybe he had her confused with someone else. That must be the answer. What woman could forget a man that devastatingly handsome? Those eyes, blue-gray like the northern sea. If she closed her eyes, she saw them clear as day. Surely, such an indelible couldn’t be wiped from her mind.

She looked in the mirror and studied the heart-shaped face that was familiar yet foreign. Dissociative fugue, the doctor at the hospital called it. A type of amnesia brought on by trauma. All she knew was...nothing. Her mind was a void of memories older than a few months.

At first the blankness had terrified her, but lately she’d started to grow comfortable with her empty past. Until the stranger with blue-gray eyes had walked in.

There was knock on the ladies room door. “Lammie?” Chris’s gentle voice sounded on the other side. “You doin’ all right?”

She warmed at the tender nickname, a term Chris used because he said she was a little lost lamb. “I’m fine,” she replied. “A little shaken up, is all.”

Hearing his voice made her feel better. Chris would keep her safe; he’d been keeping her safe since the day she’d stumbled into his headlights.

“Do you feel up to stepping outside? We’d like to have a chat.”

By “we,” she prayed he meant him and his wife, Jessica, not the stranger with the unnervingly warm embrace.

“I’ll be right out,” she told him.

Ignoring how badly her hands were trembling, she retied her ponytail and wiped the smudges from under her eyes. If she did have to face the stranger again, she was going to look composed, dammit. For some reason it was important he see her pulled together.

When she finally opened the door, she found Chris leaning against the bar. “Better, Lammie?” he asked in a low voice. She nodded, and he gave her an encouraging smile.

She didn’t have to look to know who the other half of “we” was. The man’s presence hung in the air.

“This is Thomas Collier,” Chris said, “and his brother, Linus.”

“Like the soap.” The comment was automatic. A bottle of Collier’s lemon soap sat by the sink in the restaurant’s kitchen. Jessica swore by it, and she’d developed an immediate fondness herself.

“That’s right. They’re up from London.”

She looked to her left where both men sat at a nearby table. Both men were far more subdued this time around. The stranger was perched on the edge of his seat, his lanky body resembling a coil fighting not to spring. “Mr Collier’s wife, Rosalind, is missing,” Chris continued. “She disappeared following a car accident. He’s pretty sure she’s you.”

He’d called her Rosie.

Hoping that if she focused hard enough she might conjure up some spark of recognition, she took a better look at her so-called husband. When she’d first approached their table, before the craziness started, she’d thought both men attractive. Upon second take, she amended her opinion. One was attractive. Thomas Collier was handsome as sin. If they were married, she had fantastic taste. Taller and lankier than his companion, he had the kind of features that separately were nondescript but together formed an arresting picture of angles and slopes. And again, there were those eyes. She could almost imagine white caps dotting their blue-gray depths. A slow whorl of awareness unexpectedly twisted through her midsection.

Attraction aside, however, she might as well have been admiring a stranger. “I told him about your condition,” Chris told her.

“And you believe him?” A moot question if ever there was one. Chris wouldn’t have asked her to join them if he didn’t think Collier’s claims had merit.

“Think it’s worth you hearing him out,” Chris said. “Then you can decide for yourself.”

She chewed her lip, unsure what to do. On the one hand, if this man’s story turned out to be true, she’d finally have the answers she’d been seeking. On the other hand, everything she did know would be turned upside down, and while she didn’t know her past, her present was a good one.

“I promise I’ll behave myself,” Collier said. “You have my word I won’t do anything to frighten you again. Please,” he added, gesturing to the seat next to him.

Damn those eyes. How could she say no when they were imploring her?

Chris’s whiskers brushed her ear as he leaned close. “No need to worry, Lammie. I’ll be right over here at the bar if you need anything,” he murmured, before adding in a louder voice, “Mr Collier, might I interest you in something to eat?”

“Don’t have to ask me twice. I’ll take a giant Scotch, as well.” The other man, who she’d already noted was a younger, less arresting version of her “husband,” rose to his feet. As he headed past, he stopped to offer a warm smile. “I can’t believe it’s really you, Rosalind. Thomas is right—it’s a miracle.”

“Come along, Mr Collier. Let me pour you the best double malt in the Highlands.” Taking him by the elbow, Chris led the man to the far end of the bar.

Leaving the two of them alone.

Cautiously, she slipped into the seat to his right, her hands curling over the ends of the chair arms. Jessica was always complaining that the pub tables lacked sufficient leg room underneath, and now she could see why. Her knees and Collier’s were close enough that if she shifted in just the right way, their knees would touch. As it was, she could feel the proximity through her jeans. She scooted her chair backward another couple of inches, and waited.

“I’m sorry about before,” Collier said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. When I saw you, I couldn’t...” He paused and took a deep breath. “We were told you were dead. That you had most likely drowned in the river.”

River. She squeezed the chair arms as recollections of her nightmares came to mind. Flashes of pitch-black water and air being sucked from her lungs. She had to take a deep breath herself as a reminder the image wasn’t real.

Even so, her voice still came out strangled and hoarse. “Chris told you about my memory?”

“He said you can’t remember anything before the past four months.”

“That’s right. The doctors at the hospital think I suffered a traumatic event that caused my memory to shut itself off.” Traumatic event being the term they settled on after their battery of tests failed to turn up anything else. “You said your wife was in a car accident.”

“There was a bridge collapse and your car—” she noticed he was already using the second person “—was plunged into the River Lochy during a heavy storm.”

Plunging into icy waters certainly qualified as traumatic and would explain her nightmares. Then again, drowning in dreams was also a well-established metaphor, or so she was pretty sure. “I had a broken collarbone,” she said out loud.

“I’m surprised you didn’t break more.”

Again with the second person. “You seem awfully positive I’m her. Your wife, I mean.”

“Because I’d know you anywhere.”

The way Collier looked her in the eye, with both his voice and his expression softening, knocked her off-balance. Here she was groping around in the dark, and he was looking at her with such certainty. Like he’d found a treasure while she was still trying to figure out the map. It left her longing to see what he saw.

“You say you know, but I would be a fool to simply take you at your word.” Or be misled by a pair of stormy blue eyes.

“Trust me, Rosie, the last thing I’d ever call you is a fool. I have photos.” He pulled out a phone and showed her a photograph.

Of her.

If it wasn’t her, it was her perfectly identical twin.

“There are more.” He swiped to another photo, this time a more sophisticated version of the same woman, with her hair in a twist and wearing a stunning black gown.

“The museum fund-raiser last May,” he said. “You looked beautiful in that dress.”

What she looked was unhappy. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

The next picture must have been taken the same evening, only this time her doppelganger was flanked by a woman with flaming red hair and a handsome older man with shaggy graying hair and spectacles.

“Those are your colleagues from the university. Eve Cunningham and Professor Richard Sinclair.”

She couldn’t help noticing the firm way the professor held his arm around her waist.

“You’re not in these photos.” She rubbed her forehead. A throbbing sensation started behind her eye.

“That’s because I took them.”

And they were on his phone. “Is there one of us together?” Anyone could get random photos from any number of sources. It would be harder, although not impossible, to fake a photo of both of them.

“A few.” Seconds later, she was looking at a selfie—and a terrible one at that, with looming faces and the tops of the heads cropped off. No mistaking her face though, right down to the annoying scar across the bridge of her nose.

Unlike the other photographs, their smiles reflected in their eyes.

“We took this two springs ago, when we were in the Lake District,” Thomas told her.

“Two springs ago? Nothing more recent?”

“I’m not much of a selfie taker.”

That was obvious. She studied the photograph closer. “We look happy.”

We. She was starting to believe him. Rosalind Collier. The name sounded strange, but had a comfortable feeling. The way a new outfit felt when it fit properly.

Thomas took back the phone and stared at the photo. “We were,” he said. “Happy. You loved being at our place in Cumbria, away from the city.”

Then why did his voice suddenly sound sad? Why was he staring at the picture with a pensive expression?

“You were supposed to be in Cumbria when you had your accident,” he murmured.

Oh. That was why. A wisp of a thought taunted her, hovering just out of her grasp. Something about ice or rocks, but it slipped back into the blackness before she could be certain.

She was certain of another thought however. “If I was supposed to be in the Lake District, how did I end up here, miles away? Fort William is miles away from Cumbria too. What was I doing there? It doesn’t make sense.”

“No one knows.” He tossed the camera onto the table where it landed with a thunk. “Best theory I can come up with is that you were headed toward Loch Morar. You did some field work there once. You’re a geologist,” he added when she frowned.