His heart hammered hard in his chest.
The only difference between now and how he’d felt the first time he’d ever seen her—sitting under a tree on campus with a sketchpad on her raised knees—was that now there was a dull ache in his lower back from the marrow harvest and his splitting head felt like it wanted to pop off his neck.
“Laurel.”
He wasn’t even aware that he’d whispered her name until Dr. Granger patted his arm in that motherly way again. “She’s expecting you. Just go cautiously. She knows you’re familiar to her but she doesn’t know why.”
It was a needless reminder. Dr. Granger had been very clear about Laurel’s condition before he’d decided to come to Seattle in person. Five months ago, she’d been in a serious car accident. She’d been kept in a medically induced coma for nearly three months during her recovery. And when she’d emerged, though her broken bones had healed, she’d had no memory of the accident, or the events that had come before, or even her own name.
“You’re sure this is a good idea?”
Dr. Granger gave him an encouraging smile. “Your presence may trigger more memories. Then again, it might not. That’s the thing about retrograde amnesia. We just don’t have all the answers.”
He grimaced. “Great.”
“I know it’s a strange situation.”
But she didn’t know just exactly how strange.
“I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
Adam was pretty sure the only thing he needed was his head examined.
Laurel Hudson had already broken his heart twice in one lifetime. He was fully expecting a third. But how could he have refused to come? When it came to her, it was what he’d always done.
Eric Johnson’s picture had been on that same news story that Laurel had seen. But it wasn’t Eric’s face that had gotten a response from her.
It had been Adam’s.
Lecturing himself not to read too much into that had become an hourly task. It didn’t take a genius—which he wasn’t—to know that the other man was doing the same damn thing.
He entered the room, passing a sulky-looking teenager tapping away at a computer and a couple he figured were her parents who were staring at the blaring television. He stepped around a table where an old couple worked on a puzzle, and crossed the room toward Laurel. The sun was setting, casting glittering light over her hair. It was straight and a rich, shining, variegated brown. Like the colors of an aged oak barrel.
He’d told her that once. Her aquamarine eyes had widened. Then filled with sparkling laughter. She’d leaned across the table in the student union where they were supposed to be studying for exams—hers in art history, his in industrial engineering—and kissed him.
He’d been falling for her from the very first. But that kiss had sealed the deal for him.
Now that glossy oak-barrel hair slid over her shoulder as Laurel’s head turned and she looked his way.
His step faltered.
Her eyes were the same stunning shade of blue they’d always been. Her perfectly heart-shaped face was pale and delicate-looking even with the pink scar on her forehead between her eyebrows.
Eyebrows that pulled together as their eyes met.
Remember me.
Remember us.
The words—unwanted and unexpected—pulsed through him, drowning out the splitting headache and the aching back and the impatience, the relief and the pain.
Then she blinked those incredible eyes of hers and he realized there was a flush on her cheeks and she was chewing at the corner of her lips. In contrast to her delicate features, her lips were just as full and pouty as they’d always been.
Kissing them had been an adventure in and of itself.
He shoved the pointless memory out of his head and then had to shove his hands in the pockets of his jeans because they were actually shaking.
“Hi.” Puny first word to say to the woman who’d made a wreck out of him.
Still seated, she looked up at him. “Hi.” She sounded breathless. “It’s...it’s Adam, right?”
The pain sitting in the pit of his stomach then had nothing to do with anything except her. He yanked his right hand from his pocket and held it out. “Adam Fortune.”
She looked uncertain, then slowly settled her hand into his.
Unlike Dr. Granger’s firm, brief clasp, Laurel’s touch felt chilled and tentative. And it lingered. “I’m Lisa.”
God help him. He was not strong enough for this.
He dragged an unoccupied chair away from the puzzle table, flipped it around near Laurel and sat, straddling it. He folded his arms atop the chairback and tried to smile. He had no way of knowing if it looked as forced as it felt. “How are you feeling?”
She wore a thin sweater buttoned up to her neck, and the shoulder she shrugged looked pointed beneath the pink knit. “Aside from being the resident amnesiac?”
He waited and she shrugged again, her full, pouty lips compressing. “Physically, they tell me I’m fine. Mostly.” She waved her fingers slightly. “Except for the fact that I still don’t even recognize my own name.” Her blue eyes fastened on his. “Seeing you on the news last week—” She broke off and snatched up a black pencil from where it had been sitting on the window ledge. She rolled it between her obviously anxious fingers. “It felt almost like seeing a ghost. Why do I know you?”
He’d prepared himself for this, too, thanks to the clinic director. Didn’t make answering any easier. “We were friends—” his fingers dug into his forearms where they were folded on the chair back “—a long time ago. At UB.”
Her lips had softened again. “New York,” she murmured softly. “Buffalo.”
His pulse jerked around. He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“How long ago?”
Since they’d met? Or since she’d broken his heart the first time around? He went for the former. “Ten years.”
“Hmm.” She shook her
