Fade To Black

He said slowly, “My name is Pierce Kincaid. Now kindly tell me who the hell you are. And where is my wife?”

* * *

A stunned hush fell over the room.

It was the kind of silence that always follows some mind-boggling revelation. But why that should be, Pierce couldn’t imagine. Why his appearance in his own home should shock anyone was beyond him, but he had the oddest feeling that he’d walked into the last few minutes of a movie, and though the climax was exciting, he had no idea what the hell was going on.

The woman standing before him—face ashen, eyes wide with shock—looked like Jesse, except…different. Her hair was the color of Jesse’s, but instead of the short bob of curls with which he was so familiar, it cascaded down the woman’s back in gleaming, luscious waves. The wide silver eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, were colder and harder than his wife’s. And where Jesse’s figure was thin, almost frail-looking, this woman’s body was gently rounded with womanly curves.

Pierce felt something stir within him, and he frowned in disgust. He hadn’t so much as looked at another woman since he and Jesse were married, and yet this stranger elicited a response from him that seemed disturbingly familiar.

Who was she? A relative? That would explain the overwhelming resemblance. He’d never met any of Jesse’s family except for her brother. She rarely talked about her, but Pierce knew Jesse had a sister somewhere. Maybe the woman had simply shown up at their doorstep while he’d been out.

He tried to temper his own shock with a tentative smile. “Are you Jesse’s sister?” he asked as he took another step toward her. The woman flinched away, but the coldness in her eyes warmed for a moment with a flash of anger. Doggedly he held out his hand to her. “I’m Jessica’s husband.”

He watched the last shred of fear fade away from her eyes as a sort of horrified realization dawned in those magnetic gray depths. With an almost visible struggle for control, she pulled herself up straight. She faced him squarely, her eyes dropping to his outstretched hand, then returning to meet his gaze. “Why, you arrogant son of a bitch. What kind of fool do you think I am?”

Her hand swept upward so quickly it seemed to surprise them both. It connected with his cheek, and the stinging sensation triggered an automatic reaction from Pierce. He grabbed her, shoved her up against the edge of the counter and pinned her arms behind her back with one hand while his other hand fastened around her throat.

For one heart-pounding moment, brown eyes stared into gray.

Her face swam before his eyes, a hazy image from a dark dream. Pierce was no stranger to fear. He knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it felt like. He could see fear in her eyes again. Could feel her flesh tremble beneath his fingers. For one brief moment, it gave him an almost perverse sense of gratification to be the one to inflict it.

Then the mists cleared, and the face before him was once again a sweet, lovely, familiar face—a face far removed from the blackness, from the explosion of pain behind his eyes. As abruptly as he’d seized her, Pierce released her. He backed away, shocked and sickened by his own reaction.

“My God—” His hands moved to his eyes, as if he could rub away the searing pain in his head. Black it out, he mentally instructed himself. Fade to black.

The pain subsided, but his stomach still roiled in sickening waves. What the hell was the matter with him? He could easily have hurt her, and he didn’t even understand why. He was beginning to think he didn’t understand anything. The whole scene seemed so disjointed, like a nightmare fragmented into bits and pieces he couldn’t seem to fit together in any way that made sense.

“I don’t know why I did that,” he mumbled.

She didn’t say a word, just stood there looking at him like an animal trapped in a corner. He wished she’d say something, do something to help him understand, to help him put the puzzle together. “Can you…just tell me your name?” he asked with a desperate edge to his voice.

Her fingers were at her throat, massaging the vicious red mark left by his hand. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, “I think you already know,” she said, as the quiver in her voice shook Pierce anew. He felt his muscles tighten with awareness, with anticipation, as if preparing for a situation fraught with danger.

Their gazes clung for one electric moment, and then she whispered into the silence, “I’m Jesse.”

* * *

Jessica thought for a moment he would collapse. He staggered backward, supporting himself against the counter much as she’d done earlier. Her own knees were shaking so badly she could hardly stand. The sound of her heartbeat seemed to echo through the silence.

Pierce had come back. Somehow, some way, her husband had found his way back to her. But why had he left? Where had he been? And, dear God, why was he here now after all this time? The questions exploded in her head, mirroring the confusion and shock in Pierce’s brown eyes.

She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, but the man standing before her drew her gaze against her will. He looked at once so dear and familiar, and yet so strange and frightening. His once handsome face was haggard and deeply lined. His body, once powerful and athletic, had thinned to gauntness. A narrow white scar sliced the left side of his face, marring what had once been a perfect jawline.

She reached a trembling hand up to touch it. “What happened to you?” she whispered. “Where in God’s name have you been?”

He recoiled from her touch, and Jessica instantly drew her hand back, nursing it against her heart as if to hide the bitterness of his rejection. His brown eyes were bleak, distant now. The eyes of a stranger.

“I don’t know,” he said numbly.

“You don’t know what happened to you?” She knew her voice sounded disbelieving, but Jessica couldn’t help it. The whole situation was unbelievable. Incredible, but terrifyingly real. “You don’t know where you’ve been for five years? Were you in an accident? Is that how you got those scars?”

Pierce put an unsteady hand to his temple. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Are you saying…you don’t remember anything?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I remember leaving here to go get ice cream. The next thing I know, I’m standing in front of the freezer in the store. I get the ice cream, I walk back here, and in the space of half an hour, everything has changed. It’s like…a nightmare. Am I going crazy, Jesse?”

At that moment, Jessica wasn’t completely sure of her own sanity. Her heart was beating against her chest so quickly and so hard that for a second she thought she might actually pass out. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “You walked out that door five years ago,” she said shakily, “and until you walked back in a few minutes ago, I hadn’t seen or heard from you in all that time. I thought you were dead.”

If he noticed the faint note of betrayal in her voice, he chose to ignore it, concentrating instead on her words. “Five years? That’s impossible!”

“Look at me,” she said desperately. “You said yourself I look different. I am different. I’m five years older.”

His proprietary gaze raked over her, stirring something in Jessica she thought had long since died. She struggled to keep her expression calm, composed, but her mind reeled in confusion. The dark gaze probed her face, making her only too aware of the changes five years had wrought in her appearance.

“If what you say is true, then that must mean—” he trailed off as his gaze dropped to her flat stomach once again “—that must mean…you’ve had the baby.”

In the last few minutes, Jessica’s emotions had run the gamut—terror, shock, disbelief, anger and maybe even a glimmer of joy. But the emotion she felt now overwhelmed all the others. The fierce protectiveness for her child settled around her like an impenetrable shield.

Max was hers. She’d given birth to him all alone. She’d raised him single-handedly. She’d made the sacrifices, she’d worked the endless hours to provide for a child she loved more than life itself. No one would take that away from her. Max was the one thing in her life she had ever been able to count on.

She opened her mouth—to say what, she was never quite sure—but suddenly the back door slammed, and both of them jumped. In unison, Jessica and Pierce whirled toward the kitchen doorway where five-year-old Max, clad in jeans, a T-shirt and a shiny red Superman cape, stood staring up at them.

The dark hair, the huge brown eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw and chin—all were identical to the stranger who stared back at him.

The very air quivered with emotion. Max’s solemn little eyes took the stranger’s measure and seemed to find him lacking. His gaze shifted to Jessica then back to Pierce. He squinted his eyes. “Who are you, mister?” he demanded suspiciously.

Jessica’s own gaze was locked on Pierce’s white face. She could see a muscle throb in his cheek, saw emotion after emotion sweep across his features. There was no mistaking Max’s identity. He looked exactly like his father. Pierce took a tentative step toward him.

The slight movement roused Jessica. She made an involuntary sound of protest which drew both pairs of male eyes. She knelt and opened her arms, and Max flew across the room to her. She hugged him tightly against her as both of them stared up at Pierce.

“My God,” he said woodenly as he gazed at mother and son across the room, “I don’t even know if I’m dead or alive.”

He didn’t wait for a response but turned and walked through the swinging door of the kitchen. Jessica wanted to go after him but found that her heart was suddenly pulling her in two different directions as Max’s little arms caught around her neck and held on for dear life.

“That man’s scary, Mom,” he whispered, clinging to her. “Is he going to hurt us?”

“No, darling, he won’t hurt us,” Jessica soothed, hugging him. But even as she gave voice to her denial, she could feel the tender flesh of her neck where Pierce’s hand—a real, flesh-and-blood hand—had pressed.

A warning pounded in her brain. He’s a stranger, she thought. The man somewhere in her house was not the Pierce she had known and loved. Wherever he had been, whatever he’d gone through in the past five years had changed him. She only had to look into those haunted eyes to know that.

Maybe she’d never known him, she thought with a jolt. She’d shared her life with him, shared his bed, but had she ever really known him?

She thought now, as she’d done for those five years, of all the times he’d been away during their marriage. So many of the trips had been unexpected it seemed now in retrospect. Sometimes when he’d been gone, she hadn’t heard from him for days at a time, but the answer to that had seemed very plausible. Many of the remote areas he traveled to in Europe and Asia, looking for treasures for The Lost Attic, his antique shop, didn’t have easily accessible telephones. In fact, Jessica had been to some of those off-the-beaten-track places with him.

Back then, it had never occurred to her to question Pierce’s absences, the lack of phone calls. She’d simply accepted it. But maybe she should have questioned Pierce. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone through the hell she’d gone through the past five years if she’d taken the time to know Pierce Kincaid a little better.