He reached out, grabbed her wrist like he had the nurse’s. “Why would the cops keep me from seeing anyone?” he asked, trying to keep his mind on the conversation. It seemed important. It was important.
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
She glanced at his hand, wrapped firmly over her wrist. He let go.
“Oh. Maybe you don’t. It’s because of Megan.”
A fleeting image sizzled through his brain, a split-second recollection of a woman, her face twisted in anger, her hair damp with snow, her pale eyes sparking with hatred. And then she was gone, the mental picture dissipating as quickly as it had appeared.
His gut twisted.
That angry woman was Megan. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure of it. “What about her?”
“She’s missing.”
“Missing?” So that was what the nurse was going to tell him when the doctor cut her off.
“Yeah, like in vanished.” Sophia threw up her hand. “No one’s seen her since the night you were brought in here. Everyone says you two got into a huge fight, and then she disappeared.”
Again, a face appeared behind his eyes, the angry countenance of a woman yelling at him, accusing him of cheating . . .
“According to the news, no one’s seen or heard from her, and even her car is gone, can’t be located.”
This wasn’t making any sense. And yet bits and pieces of that night were poking at his brain, little shards of memory cutting through the fog.
“I figured the fight was about me,” Sophia whispered. “I mean, that’s what everybody thinks.”
“Who’s everybody?” he asked, trying to keep up while the memory of the woman, so furious she was nearly spitting, began again only to wither away. What had happened? What had he done?
“Well, you know. Everyone at the inn and the Christmas tree farm, they’re sure she’d found out about us and was pissed.”
He held up a hand, then winced with the effort. Damn it all. “How would you know?”
“You know.”
He didn’t.
With a disbelieving smack of her tongue, she said, “Because I work there.”
“You work for me?”
“Duh.” She flashed him that smile again, then added, “Okay, okay, I get it. So, technically, I work for Cahill Industries, but who are we kidding? You are Cahill Industries, so yeah, I work for you and have for the last six months.” She was nodding, encouraging him to remember. “And we were like . . .” She bit her lip. “We were an item, I guess.”
“We were seeing each other?” This wasn’t making a lot of sense.
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Her eyes twinkled with a naughty little spark, and she showed a dimple, her nose wrinkling. “I knew you’d remember.”
He didn’t, but let it pass as he tried like hell to piece his life, or at least his love life, together. “And Megan?”
“Oh. Well . . .” She pulled a face, then tilted her flattened hand from side to side. “You hadn’t quite broken it off with her.”
That had a ring of truth to it.
And spelled trouble.
Sophia admitted, “But she might have found out about us and . . .”
The implication was hard to miss. “. . . and she didn’t like it.”
A shrug, as if one thing would automatically lead to another. “So she found out about me, I think, and got pissed off. The way I figure it, she drove over to your house, and you got into a fight, and you ended up here.”
Again, the flash of a woman advancing upon him, tears burning her eyes, rage flushing her face, anger radiating from her in waves appeared behind his eyes. “And that’s when Megan went missing.”
She bit her lip as she studied him, as if she couldn’t quite trust him. “You don’t remember the fight?”
An inner voice cautioned him to sidestep that one. “No.”
“Nothing?” She seemed skeptical.
“That’s what’s weird,” he admitted. “But the doctor said I came in through the ER.”
She reached out and touched his hand, her fingers cool. Familiar. “Bobby found you.”
“Knowlton?” God, he didn’t remember that at all.
“He was the one who called nine-one-one.”
“And Megan wasn’t there?”
She shook her head, blond hair glinting under the overhead lights. “I asked Bobby, and he said you were alone.”
“He say anything else?”
“Not to me.”
James’s head was pounding, but he was trying like hell to recall anything that would help him make sense of this nightmare.
She lowered her voice even more and squeezed his fingers, only to release them. “Have you talked to the cops?”
“No. Not yet.”
“But they’ve been here?”
“The doctor said so. But I don’t remember.” And then he thought of something else. “I’m missing my phone. And this one”—he motioned to the old-fashioned phone on the bedside tray—“is useless as I can’t remember anyone’s number.”
“I’ll see if I can find it,” she said, but didn’t sound too sure of herself. She leaned in closer. “I think you should know that the police were at your house. They searched the place and took stuff.”
“What?”
She shrugged. “That’s just what I heard. Bobby said they were hauling stuff out of there.”
“My phone?”
“Maybe. Like computers and stuff.”
“Can they just do that?”
“They’re the cops. They can do what they want.”
“But there are limits.” He was trying to think. Why would the cops confiscate his belongings? Did they really think he was some kind of criminal? Wasn’t that the kind of thing they did on a drug bust? Or a murder case? His insides turned to water. Was Megan dead? Is that why the doctor wouldn’t say anything?
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, and Sophia froze. Eyes wide, she held a finger to her lips and slipped to the side of the room, to the spot where the door would hide her should it be flung open.
It wasn’t.
The footsteps faded as whoever was in the hallway passed.
Sophia let out her breath. “I better go. But I love you,” she said. “Remember that.” Her smile was shy, her cheeks suddenly pink with the admission.
Love?
That seemed wrong. “Wait,” he said.
He needed more information, but she was already peeking through
