Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy

Right. Two killers and the need for a place to hide.

“Please,” he said again. “Sit down for a moment. What do you have to lose?”

She didn’t even want to think about that. She must have been out of her mind. Her father’s genes obviously coursed through her veins because she’d latched on to this idea without thinking it through. She hadn’t expected to feel like this.

He smiled reassuringly and stepped back, giving her space. “Won’t you sit down? Please.”

There was a kindness in his voice, a calmness in his movements, although she could see how badly he needed her to be his fiancée.

All she had to do was load the hat—slip in the rabbit that she would later pull out as if by magic. She had him right where she wanted him. So why did she feel so miserable about it?

And even more alarming, why did she feel like he had her?

Either way, she couldn’t walk away now. She was in too deep. She had no choice but to stay and play this through. She couldn’t admit that she’d known all along she wasn’t the missing woman, whereas if she stayed, he would realize eventually she wasn’t his lost love. He would be hurt. She would feign disappointment, sorry that she’d gotten his hopes up. No harm would have been done.

Right, you just keep telling yourself that.

She gave him a tentative smile and took the chair he offered her. He pulled up one next to her rather than go behind the desk. She could see that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were large, the fingers long and finely sculpted, tanned from the sun, callused from some type of manual labor and definitely strong.

She shifted her gaze to his eyes, the same pale blue as summer skies. There was something so appealing about Cash McCall….

“Why do you think you’re not Jasmine?” he asked quietly.

That one was easy. But she could hear Max saying, “Don’t be a fool. Have you forgotten Vince and Angel and what they’ll do to you if they catch you? Stall for time. You’re safe here. And there just might be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, kiddo.”

She felt sick and realized she was more like Max than she’d ever admitted. She had only thought of herself. And now she was in trouble. So like Max.

“I know I look like her, but I can’t see how…” She made a motion with her hand, swallowed and looked around the office. It was sparsely furnished. A gold-framed photograph on his desk caught her eye.

“Your family?” she asked, indicating the photo of a group of blond, blue-eyed people standing at a wide porch railing.

“Shelby insisted on a family portrait,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “She also insisted I put it on my desk. Shelby’s my mother. She’s a bit…bossy at the moment, probably always has been.” He shook his head before she could ask what that meant. “It’s a long story.” He leaned forward a little, obviously trying to relax. Or at least make her think he was relaxed. “Tell me about you.”

Going in, she knew she couldn’t lie about her name or her past—at least the past seven years of it because he was bound to check. There was no reason to anyway, since those years had been innocuous enough and her pattern of living would suggest that she’d been unsettled, lost, searching for something.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve traveled from one place to another,” she said honestly. “My name is Molly Kilpatrick. At least that’s what I’ve been going by.” She’d learned at an early age that it was always best to blend as much truth as you could with the lies. It made keeping the lies straight that much easier. You just had to be careful that you didn’t start believing your own lies.

Meanwhile, she needed to make it clear that as far as she knew, she was Molly Kilpatrick and any confusion on her part as far as her resemblance to Jasmine Wolfe was innocent. Even if he found out that she was the daughter of Maximilian Burke, she figured her father’s death could easily explain her alleged lapses of memory.

“I’ve always had the feeling that something happened in my past, something traumatic that I want to forget, and that’s why I can’t remember,” she continued. She described her life pretty accurately, at least the years since her father died.

When she finished, she saw that the sheriff was studying her intently. Magicians called it “the burn” when someone is watching you with an unblinking stare, looking behind your words and sleight of hand to see the “trick.”

Cash felt like pinching himself. Jasmine. He couldn’t have been more shocked or relieved. While she was saying she didn’t believe she was Jasmine, he was looking at her face, the color of her hair, the sound of her voice, her mannerisms. All Jasmine. Only just different enough to account for the fact that she’d been lost for seven years.

“This is amazing,” he said when she stopped talking. The cop in him told him he should be paying more attention to her story, but the man in him could only stare in wonder. Somehow Jasmine had survived—and found her way back.

To him, he realized with a start.

He would have expected her to contact her family. Or her old roommates. Except Sandra Perkins was married to Kerrington Landow now and who knew where Patty Franklin was.

He just found it hard to believe that she could come to him. Not after the last time he’d seen her. But maybe she really couldn’t remember what had happened between them any more than she could remember him.

He tried to concentrate on what she was saying as she told her story haltingly, stopping occasionally to lick her lips. He tried to remember that mouth. It had been so long. Would it be the same if he kissed it?

When he’d thought of Jasmine over the years, the memories had been sharp and painful. Now though, as he studied her, he realized he’d forgotten how he’d felt, that initial first attraction, or how she’d tasted when he’d kissed her.

She stopped talking, then added, “That’s why when I saw the article about Jasmine Wolfe…” Her eyes met his.

He remembered that pale green color. Only he’d remembered it as reminding him of cool jade, not warm tropical waters as it did now.

“You’re not sure how many years you’ve lost?” he asked, trying to pay more attention.

She shook her head, catching her lower lip in her teeth. It was something he couldn’t remember Jasmine ever doing.

“When I read that there was a search going on for her, I thought that if there was even a chance that I was…” She stopped, licked her lips again. “I didn’t want people to keep looking for her if… I didn’t want her family to…” She shook her head. “You must think I’m a fool to come here.”

Jasmine had never been a fool. Nor could he imagine her thinking herself one. “No, you’re no fool,” he said studying her. “Can you remember anything about the day you disappeared?”

She shook her head slowly and let out a small laugh. “I didn’t even know I’d…disappeared.”

He smiled realizing that, from her perspective, that was probably true. “Have you seen a doctor about your memory loss?”

She nodded. “He said sometimes a blow to the head can cause it. I would imagine that’s where I got this.” She lifted a lock of her blond hair away from the left side of her forehead.

The scar was shaped like a crescent moon, pale white and about an inch and a half long. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. Head wounds bled a lot. That would explain all the blood in her car.

He felt a wave of relief. Not that she didn’t look and act like Jasmine, but the cop in him had questioned how she could be alive given the large amount of blood that had been found in her car. The blood loss, the head injury, couldn’t those both contribute to memory loss? And couldn’t that explain why she’d just disappeared for seven years?

“You don’t know how you got the scar?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It was just there one day when I looked in the mirror.”

He could see that the scar had scared her. He tried to imagine just looking in the mirror one day and seeing a scar and not knowing when or where you’d gotten it.

It should have scared her, he thought. It certainly did him, just trying to imagine how she’d gotten it.

She absently touched the scar with her fingers. “I think I came here hoping to find…myself.” Her voice broke a little and tears glistened in her eyes.

He’d never seen Jasmine vulnerable before. That he did remember. It took everything in him not to pull her into his arms. But he was a stranger to her. And she was clearly scared. The last thing he wanted her to do was bolt.

“I realized when I saw the photograph that I’ve put my life on hold for years waiting for something I didn’t understand.” She frowned. “Does that make any sense to you?”

He wished it didn’t. He’d done the same thing and hadn’t consciously realized he was doing it. With a start, he remembered that Bernard would be flying in. “Your brother—stepbrother—Bernard is on his way here. If he’s not already here.”

Her eyes widened in alarm. She shook her head. “But what if I’m not Jasmine? I don’t want to get his hopes up.”

Cash doubted Bernard’s hopes would be raised by the thought of Jasmine being alive. Bernard had inherited everything when Archie had died, as far as Cash knew. And knowing even as little as he did of Bernard, Cash couldn’t see Bernard wanting to share it with a stepsister back from the dead.