Page 10 of Desire Me
“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.”
