She gasped and choked. “You were in some kind of prison for four years?”
“Some kind of prison. Not nearly as nice as what we have going on here.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile. A filthy cot. An earthenware pot for a toilet. Stale bread for dinner. And the beatings, always the beatings.
He’d never tell Devon any of that. She belonged light years away from all of it. Light years away from him.
She closed her eyes and a tear slid from beneath her lashes. “I’m so sorry, Kieran. You lost your memory while you were imprisoned? Everything? Every memory?”
“I think I took a particularly bad blow to the head during some kind of beating.” He pointed to his patch. “Probably when that happened. When I came to, I could piece together that I was military and that I was a prisoner of war. Certain memories would float in and out.”
Devon looked up, a tear trembling on the edge of her lashes. “But no memories of me?”
How could he explain it to her? He couldn’t remember her face or her name, or even that he had a fiancee. But every day in that damned prison he had a will to survive, some force of goodness and light that shored up his strength, hardened him against the torture, forged a brutal desire to live.
Left a shell of a man.
How ironic that he now had to give up the source of his survival because the survival itself had turned him into a monster.
His jaw tightened. “No. No memories of you.”
The soft sigh from her lips made him clench his hands and turn his gaze onto the boy, patiently sorting shells, examining each one as if looking for a pearl.
“Then why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in treatment or something?” She brushed her hair from her face and straightened her spine, pinning her shoulders to the back of the chair.
Kieran shrugged. “The army wanted to send me to some shrink at Walter Reed. I chose not to go. I want to recover my memories in my own way, in my own time.”
“But surely the army told you about your brother and the location of your parents? They must’ve told you about growing up in Coral Cove.”
The army had told him all of that, but the minute Lieutenant Jeffries, his debriefer, had mentioned Coral Cove, Kieran knew he had to come here first. He knew he’d find his guardian angel in Coral Cove, and as soon as he’d spotted Devon his soul had recognized her. The familiar feelings of hope and optimism had flooded his senses.
“The army also told my parents and my brother that I was dead. They haven’t bothered to notify them otherwise since I was on a top secret mission, even though Colin was on that same mission. I came here first because I wanted to ease into things slowly.” The lie of his last statement came to his lips easily. He’d perfected lying over the past few years-lying and a lot of other skills that had no place in a civilized society. No place in Devon’s life.
Devon peered at him in the encroaching darkness and whispered, “Do you want me to help you?”
“Yes.” The word flew from his lips before he had time to swallow it. “No. I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
Her eyes widened, and then she tilted her head back and laughed. She doubled over and laughed some more, her shoulders shaking. When she raised her head, strands of hair clung to her wet cheeks. Her laughter continued unabated, but she didn’t have a smile on her beautiful face.
Michael studied his mother with a frown crinkling his face and clutching two shells in his hands. Even he recognized that her laughter was bereft of humor.
“Go to any trouble?” She wiped the back of her hand across her nose and hiccupped. “We were engaged, Kieran. You disappeared from my life, and then Colin told me you were dead. I was devastated. I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I could barely drag myself into work. I couldn’t envision my life without you. I felt dead.”
Her words punched him in the gut, adding to his guilt and rage that he hadn’t escaped his captors sooner. “I’m sorry, Devon.”
He gazed at Michael, who had gone back to his game with the shells when his mother had stopped laughing. Devon had gone on. Had met someone else. Reclaimed her life. That little boy was evidence of that.
“Don’t be sorry.” Devon gathered her blond hair and twisted it around her hand like a golden rope. “It was fate, just like running into you in Coral Cove on my escape from the city.”
Escape? What was she running from? Unease crawled across his flesh. He slid a look at Michael. Where was his father?
Kieran inhaled the sea air and expelled it between his clenched teeth. “Was that Michael’s father on the cliff? Is that why you were so worried?”
“What?” Her brow furrowed as she tilted her head. “Was who Michael’s father?”
“The man in the white van on the cliff. The man watching Michael.”
THE WHITE VAN.
Kieran’s words sliced through the fog swirling around her brain. Too many discoveries had pummeled her in such a short period of time, her mind was still reeling. For a minute, she’d thought Kieran had asked about Michael’s father.
She remembered the white van in the lookout area. “There was someone watching Michael when he came up on the rocks?”
Kieran’s shoulders relaxed. “I-I saw you and Michael climb down to the beach. A man had gotten out of the van and was standing at the edge of the lookout. I thought he was making a move toward Michael when he clambered out of the cave, but I got to the boy first.”
Devon shrugged, but a finger of fear had touched the back of her neck. Why had she even noticed that van? She’d been on edge ever since Mrs. Del Vecchio’s murder.
But now she had bigger issues on her plate. Kieran didn’t even remember her. She hadn’t had a chance to tell him about her pregnancy before he’d left for Afghanistan on that top secret mission.
Should she give him some time to piece together the fragments of his life before springing paternity on him? She glanced at the dark stranger coiled in the deck chair, the black patch hiding one eye and a guarded secrecy hiding the other.
Hugging herself, she rubbed her arms. “The guy in the van was a stranger. I’m not running from Michael’s father if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That’s good.” He tilted his chin toward her. “Are you cold? Should we continue this conversation inside?”
He couldn’t even bring himself to touch her. What had those monsters done to him?
“Inside Columbella?” She glanced at Michael, whose hands had stalled above the shells.
“It’s shelter from the breeze, anyway.”
“Have you actually been staying in the house?”
“It’s the only place I remembered.”
“H-have you been to the burned-out room?” Did he remember that room? It had been their secret place.
“I saw a room off the library that was scorched.” He threw a sidelong glance at Michael. “It seemed…”
“There was a fire there last month.” She scooted up to the edge of her chair. “I have a better idea.”
His frame stiffened and he clutched the arms of the chair as if ready for takeoff. “What?”
“Your parents have a perfectly good house across the street.” She waved her arm in the general direction of the street on the other side of Columbella House. “It has electricity and everything.”
“Is it occupied?”
Kieran didn’t want to see his family? Yes, he was a different man.
“No. Your parents live in Hawaii now, and Colin just left. He’d been staying there while he was in town.” She crooked her finger at a sleepy Michael, rubbing his eyes, and patted her lap.
“Where’s Colin now?”
Devon scooped Michael into her lap, and he tucked his head into the hollow of her neck. His dark lashes fluttered on his cheeks and Devon’s heart skipped a beat. Couldn’t Kieran see his mirror image in Michael?
