One Forgotten Night Page 12

  All at once she remembered how Mike had supported her, there in the hospital when she’d been afraid that she was going to fall. She was weak with yearning to feel him holding her again. Thoughts and memories of him that she had battled all day to suppress came flooding into her mind, and she closed her eyes to keep her tears at bay. She wondered where Mike was just then, and what he was doing. And whether he was thinking of her.

  * * *

  Mike shifted irritably in his seat, trying to get comfortable. After six or seven hours, any car could feel as if it had been designed by the Spanish Inquisition. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been moving, going somewhere, but he was just sitting. And, he admitted, his mood didn’t help much.

  He’d been in a lousy frame of mind when he left Nina’s apartment that morning, and the intervening hours had done nothing to cheer him up. Now it was the tail end of a pretty decent Sunday afternoon. He could be knocking back a cold beer somewhere, watching a ball game on TV. He could be taking Sig for a run; he reached into the back seat and knuckled the dog’s head, and Sig snorted, scratched an ear with a hind paw and went back to sleep. At least Sig didn’t seem to mind the fact that they had spent most of the day in the car.

  He’d been unable to drive away from Nina’s building. He’d sat outside for hours, staking the place out, calling himself every kind of fool. He’d followed Julien and Nina when they went out to eat. He’d watched them from a distance, two slender, long-legged figures, as they strolled along Ben Franklin Boulevard and sat chatting on the art museum steps. He’d followed them back to Nina’s apartment. Now he was sitting and waiting—for what, he didn’t know. Are you a cop or a stalker? he asked himself disgustedly.

  He knew one thing—he was jealous as hell. But it wasn’t just jealousy of Julien Duchesne that was gnawing at him. All right, he disliked the guy’s smooth good looks and his air of superiority. Julien Duchesne wasn’t the kind of man Mike Novalis was likely to warm up to. And the fact that Duchesne had laid claim to a place in Nina Dennison’s life didn’t make the guy any more likable. But none of that explained why Mike was watching Nina’s apartment. He had no official reason to do so—in fact, he had been given clear orders to stay away. So it had to be personal, right?

  Mike sighed. His feelings about Nina and about this case were so tangled that he was having a hard time sorting them out. He had no claim on her, even though his body still throbbed with the memory of her. What had happened between them had been more than just the hungry coupling of two lonely people, of that he was sure. Nina had touched him in a way no one else ever had, not even Karen. And he had thought he loved Karen. So what did that say about his feelings for Nina?

  He shook his head angrily. Better not to think about that. No matter what he felt for Nina, she had a past with Julien Duchesne—her memory of being on his sailboat proved that. Maybe she had a future with him, as well. God knew Duchesne had a lot to offer. What did Mike have? A dump of an apartment, a goofy dog, a beat-up car, a dangerous job. A battered heart. Too battered, perhaps. All things considered, maybe he’d better keep it to himself.

  Grimly Mike forced his thoughts back into a more professional track. Go back to the basics, he ordered himself. Look at the facts. You know something’s going on at Zakroff and Duchesne. You know someone took a shot at Nina Dennison. You know someone searched her apartment. And that’s all you know. Anything else is guesswork.

  As much as he hated to admit it, even after making love with Nina Dennison, Mike couldn’t prove that she was telling the truth about her amnesia. Any more than he could simply accept Irons’s assurances that the attack on Nina was a random shooting and that she was in no further danger. To Mike, the equation looked the same now as on that first morning in the hospital: Nina could be completely clean, or she could be up to her neck in something dirty. Either way, she might be in danger. Guilty, innocent—Mike wasn’t sure that that mattered any longer. He just wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. Not if he could help it.

  What’re you gonna do? he jeered at himself. Stake her out all week? The answer was clear: If I have to. Of course, there was the problem of his caseload, which had been suffering from neglect since the middle of the week. Hecht would have his hide. For the first time Mike felt the full burden of the isolation that had enveloped him since Jack Renzo’s death and the debacle over Karen. He had grown used to feeling ostracized, but now for the first time he wondered whether some of the isolation had been self-imposed. Had others drawn away from him, or had he drawn away from them?

  Mike was jerked out of his uncomfortable reverie by a flurry of activity on the street. A red sports car swept up in front of Nina’s building, and out of it stepped one of the most gorgeous women Mike had ever seen. She was tall, model-slim, blond and chic, with a mink coat draped over her shoulders. She tripped up Nina’s front steps on high heels and a moment later was admitted to the building. Mike recalled that one of Nina’s memory flashes had involved a blond woman in a mink coat. Must be one of her friends. The blonde didn’t match the description of anyone who had turned up in his brief investigation into the life and times of Nina Dennison, but then he’d only been on the case for a couple of days.

  Not long enough, he thought, watching the door through which the blonde had disappeared. Not nearly long enough.

  * * *

  Nina was relieved when Marta buzzed her from the downstairs intercom. Her nerves were shrieking with exhaustion and tension. Julien was being scrupulously polite, but nevertheless his very presence was a burden. Nina wanted to be left alone with her thoughts. Maybe she’d take a nice, hot bath. Or maybe, she thought tiredly, she’d climb right into bed, pull the covers up over her head and cry.

  There came a quick, impatient knock at the door. Nina opened it and was engulfed in a cloud of perfume. A fastidious, beautiful woman stepped into the apartment.

  “Nina, darling!” cried Marta. Leaning forward, Marta took Nina by the shoulders and planted a kiss on her cheek. In the air near it, actually. A long blond tendril that had worked loose from Marta’s chignon tickled Nina’s nose and made her sneeze. Or maybe it was the perfume. Marta appeared not to notice.

  “Sweetie,” she was saying in a light, swift voice with a slight accent, like her brother’s, “I have been so worried. And Julien—he was a wreck when he heard the news. You should have seen him. Devastated! But now all is well, yes?” She brushed aside Nina’s bangs. “Oh, lovely. Not even a scar, I hope. Good! And what is this about losing your memory? I hope you remember me.“

  Suddenly Marta seemed to notice that Nina was not listening. Instead she was staring at Marta’s glossy dark brown mink coat as if she had never seen one before.

  “Oh, my new coat,” Marta said. “I got it in Geneva.” She pirouetted to show Nina the back of the coat. “Do you like it?”

  All at once it hit Nina, and she simply couldn’t take any more. “Oh, this is just too much,” she said. She backed up until the sofa hit her behind the knees and then collapsed into it, ignoring Julien’s and Marta’s quizzical expressions. “As if I didn’t already have enough trouble—!” She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved.

  “Nina, what’s wrong?” Julien rushed to her side. “Tell me.”

  He drew her hands away from her face. Nina was laughing helplessly, and at the look of baffled surprise on his face she laughed even harder.

  “I’m sorry.” Nina gasped. “I can’t help it.” She gulped and tried to control herself.

  “But what is it?” Julien said. There was a hint of peevishness in his voice.

  “Look, I can’t explain. It wouldn’t make any sense. But, please, both of you, I’m exhausted and I really need to be alone. Could you just leave? Now? Please?”

  Julien and Marta exchanged glances. Their identical worried expressions heightened the family resemblance between them.

  “Julien,” Marta said, low voiced, “something is wrong here. I think she’s hysterical. Do you think the sight o
f me upset her in some way? Triggered a memory, perhaps?” She looked doubtfully at Nina, who had crossed to the door and was holding it open.

  “I don’t know.” Julien was equally concerned. “Nina,” he said winningly, “maybe Marta should stay with you—”

  “No!” Then, abashed at her vehemence, Nina said with as much patience as she could summon, “Please, I just want to be alone. Julien, I’ll see you at the office tomorrow. Marta, it was nice of you to come, but I have a headache.”

  Julien opened his mouth as if to utter a protest or a suggestion, but at the sight of Nina’s unyielding countenance he closed it again.

  “Very well, my dear,” he said mildly, and he ushered Marta toward the door.

  “I understand, Nina,” Marta said sympathetically as she left. “There has been a lot of excitement for you today. Rest now, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Julien tried to kiss Nina goodbye at the door, but she avoided the kiss by sticking her hand out for him to shake. He did so, and then, with a wry smile, lifted it gently to his lips.

  “Goodbye, goodbye,” Nina called, practically dancing with impatience. She slammed the door, bolted it and felt like sinking to the floor with relief. But although she had pleaded exhaustion to speed the Duchesnes on their way, her tiredness had vanished. Her mind was humming with a new and unexpected mystery. “Just what the hell is going on?” she demanded to the empty room.

  She went into the bedroom and took her diary from the bedside table. Sitting in the kitchen, she went over everything that had happened to her since she had woken up in the hospital on Thursday morning, trying to remember each and every one of the vivid “memory” flashes she’d had. She made a list:

  1. Thurs. (in restaurant)—Julien and another man (dark hair) in small room (cabin of boat?)

  2. Thurs. afternoon—blond woman in mink coat in my apartment

  3. Thurs. night—Mike N., no shirt, plants

  4. Fri. (in Armand’s office)—metal box full of emeralds

  5. Sun.—Julien D. aboard sailboat

  Nina studied the list, satisfied that it was complete. Then she put a check mark next to number three. On Thursday night she’d had a vision of Mike Novalis, bare chested and smiling, framed by a backdrop of plants. At the time she’d been unable to figure out how she could possibly be remembering something that had never happened. She’d decided that the vision was something cooked up by her own imagination, stoked by the simmering desire for Mike that had been building inside her throughout the day.

  Then, on Saturday, she’d visited Mike’s loft and seen her “vision” come true in every detail. There was no explanation; she’d chalked the whole thing up to coincidence. Eerie, sure, but still just possibly a coincidence. Now she was almost certain that there was another explanation, after all. She didn’t want to believe it, but—she had no idea when

  Slowly she reached out and made another check mark, this one next to number two. The blond woman she had seen in her flash of vision was Marta Duchesne. There was no room for doubt. Everything matched: the face, the voice, the hair. It might have made sense for Nina to have a memory of Marta, as the woman was apparently her best friend. But there was a kicker, and it was a big one. The vision could not have been a memory. For in the vision Marta spun around, modeling her new mink coat, and said, “Do you like it?” Exactly as she had done upon arriving at Nina’s apartment not fifteen minutes ago.

  It couldn’t be coincidence. The alternative seemed impossible, yet Nina could see no way around it. Those brilliant scenes, framed in flashes of white light, weren’t memories at all. She was seeing the future.

  Nina paced around her apartment for hours, trying to figure out what had happened to her. The only idea she could come up with was that the gunshot wound that had caused her amnesia had somehow, unbelievably, also given her the ability to glimpse events before they happened.

  Apparently there was no particular order to the process. Nina’s third vision had come true before the second one. As for the other three, she had no idea when—or even if—they would take place. She had no control over her newfound ability. “I always thought seeing into the future would be more practical,” she muttered. “Do I see next year’s stock market results? No, I get a woman in a fur coat and a guy in a sailboat.”

  Her first thought was to call Mike. But what would she say? “Hi, I just thought you should know—I’m psychic”? She didn’t know how she could make him believe her. Especially when he didn’t believe me about the amnesia, she thought, remembering how his skepticism had riled her.

  Nina wouldn’t admit to herself that the real reason she didn’t want to call Mike was that she didn’t know what she would tell him about Julien Duchesne. Everything was so mixed up! Maybe Mike didn’t even want to hear from her. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if she called him and his response was merely polite. Or, worse yet, cool and distant.

  At last, worn out with speculation, Nina washed her face and brushed her teeth. It was only eight o’clock in the evening, but she felt as if she could sleep for a month. She undressed, dropping her clothes in a heap on the bedroom floor. I’ll pick them up tomorrow, she thought, and then caught herself wondering whether the neat and cautious Nina Dennison had ever in her life tossed her clothes carelessly on the floor. Always room for new habits.

  She left her flannel nightgown on its hook in the closet and slipped naked between the sheets. Their cool caress against her skin awakened sensations that she had tried all day to forget. She shivered, thinking of the way Mike’s hands had moved on her. Her body was taut, alive, on fire. The need that filled her had nothing at all to do with the man she had agreed to marry. No, this urgent need that gripped and tore at her like a wild thing was for Mike.

  You’ve known him for less than a week! she raged at herself.

  Yes, she answered, and that’s my whole life. He’s the very first thing I remember. The only thing I need to remember.

  She tossed restlessly on the sheets that still smelled of him. Facedown, she clenched her fists in the pillow that he had used. But even as she felt the ache of desire in her breasts and in the warm cleft between her legs, she knew that what she wanted from Mike was more than sexual pleasure, more even than the ecstasy they had shared when they found the pinnacle of release together. What she wanted was to be enfolded in his arms, to feel his gentle hands stroking her hair and his kiss closing her tired eyes. And the fact that she yearned for gentleness and tenderness from Mike Novalis frightened her, for she did not know whether he would let himself give them.

  Just before she tumbled into a deep well of sleep, Nina remembered the way Mike had looked just before he walked out of her apartment, his eyes as chill and forbidding as a wall of blue ice. Perhaps, she thought sleepily, that icy wall was not so much to keep her out as to keep his own pain locked away from the world.

  Chapter 7

  Nina’s week got off to a rocky start. She woke on Monday morning after ten hours of sleep, feeling completely unrefreshed. As she ate breakfast and dressed for work she kept hoping that the phone would ring and that she’d pick it up and hear Mike’s voice. But it didn’t ring.

  When she arrived at the Z and D offices, everyone from her secretary to Armand Zakroff converged on her, twittering with excitement. “Congratulations!” cried Debbie, her secretary. Debbie’s eyes were bright with curiosity as she surveyed Nina. The office manager and the other appraisers and buyers crowded around Nina to pat her on the back and shake her hand. Bewildered, Nina scanned the group. There stood Julien, beaming with pride.

  “You lucky dog!” Phil, one of the buyers, dug Julien in the ribs.

  And Debbie said to Nina, “I can’t believe you really kept it a secret!”

  Then Nina understood. Julien had arrived at the office before her and had announced their engagement.

  Her first reaction was outrage. How could he have done this to her without so much as a hint of his intentions? She was tempted to jump up onto a chair and shout, �
��Forget it, everybody! Just a joke. Back to your offices!” Then she saw that Julien’s eyes were anxiously fixed on her. Her fury died down a little—to the level of anger and frustration. There was no point in causing a scene in front of the whole office. Both she and Julien had to work with these people, after all. A public argument would only embarrass everyone. The only thing that really mattered right now was getting a few things straight with Julien.

  She pasted a smile onto her face and hoped it looked sincere. “Thanks, everybody,” she said.

  “Hey, Nina,” Phil called out, “when’re you guys getting married? When’s the happy day?”

  Getting further away all the time, she thought grimly. She caught Julien’s eye and nodded toward her office.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” she replied. “Right now I need a few words with Julien.”

  With laughter and teasing, the little crowd broke up. As Nina was about to follow Julien into her office, Armand laid a hand on her arm. “I’d like to see you in my office for a few minutes when you’re free,” he said quietly. Nina nodded. Armand walked off toward his own office, leaving her alone with her fiancé.

  She went into her office and closed the door. Julien was lounging in her visitor’s chair; she sat behind the desk.

  “You look lovely today,” he said.

  Nina was in no mood to listen to compliments. She stared at him unsmiling and asked, “Just what the hell was that all about?”

  Slowly the smile faded from his face. “I don’t understand.”

  “Why did you tell everyone that you and I are engaged?”

  He sighed. “I told you yesterday, darling, that we had already agreed to announce our engagement as soon as I returned from Geneva.”

  “Yes, you told me that. And I told you that things are different now. For God’s sake, I have amnesia! You can’t expect me to go on as if nothing has happened!”

  He stared at her, his expression starkly bereft. “You say that things are different. Does that mean you no longer consider yourself...bound to me?”