White lies

So she had to go along with the deception and continue pretending he was Steve, because she loved him. She had fallen in love with him before she even knew what he looked like; she had loved his relentless will, his refusal to give in to pain, to stop fighting. She loved the uncomplaining way he went about recovery and rehabilitation. Except for occasional frustration at his lack of memory, he hadn’t let anything get him down. She had fallen in love with the man while he was stripped down to his basic character, without any of the cam- ouflaging layers added by society.

She couldn’t give him up now. Yet neither could she take him as hers; she was as caught in the web of circumstance as he was. He trusted her, but she was being forced to lie to him about something as basic as his identity. She knew the man, but she still knew nothing about his life. Dear God, what if he were married?

No, he couldn’t be. Whatever game they were playing, they wouldn’t tell a woman that she was now a widow, then give her husband another identity. Jay simply couldn’t believe that of Frank. But there could still be a woman in Steve’s life, someone he cared for, someone who cared for him, even though they weren’t married. Was there such a woman waiting for him now, weeping because he’d been gone for so long, and she was terrified that he would never come back?

Jay felt sick; her only choices were twin prongs of the devil’s pitchfork, and either would be pure torment. She could either tell him the truth and lose him, very possibly throwing him into danger, or she could lie to him and protect him. For the first time in her life she loved someone with the full force of her nature, with nothing held back, and her emotions propelled her toward the only choice she could make. Because she loved him, she could do nothing but protect him, no matter what the cost to herself.

Finally she got up and threw her clothing haphazardly into suitcases, not caring about wrinkles. Two months ago she had stepped into a hall of mirrors, and she had no way of knowing if the reflections she saw were accurate or a carefully constructed illusion. She thought of her chic apartment in New York and how much she had worried about losing it when she’d lost her job, but she couldn’t think now why it had seemed so important to her. Her entire life had been thrown off kilter, and now it rotated on a different axis. Steve was the center of her life, not an apartment or a job, or the security she had fought so hard to win. After years of struggle she was throwing it all away just to be with him, and she had no regrets or moments of longing for that life. She loved him. Steve, yet not Steve. His name, but another man. Whoever he was, whatever he was, she loved him.

She found a box and dumped into it the few personal articles such as books and pictures that she’d brought to Washington. It had taken her less than an hour to get ready to leave forever.

As she went back and forth, loading things into the car, she looked around carefully, wondering if any of the people she could see supposedly going about their own business were in reality watching her. Maybe she was getting paranoid, but too much had happened for her to take anything for granted, even the appearance of normalcy. That very morning she had looked into fierce, golden eyes and realized that everything that had happened during the past two months had been a lie. The blinders of trust had been stripped from her eyes, making her wary.

Suddenly she felt a driving need to be with him again; uncertainty made her desperate for him. He was no longer a patient in need of her care and attention, but a man who, in spite of his memory loss, would be more surefooted than she was in this world of shifting reality. The instincts and reactions she had wondered about were now explained, as was the scope of his knowledge of world politics. He had lost his identity, but his training had remained with him.

He and Frank were lounging in the hospital room, patiently waiting for her. Jay barely managed a greeting for them; her eyes were on Steve. He had changed into khaki pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back over his forearms. Even as lean as he was, he still gave the impression of power. His shoulders and chest strained at the cotton shirt. With the bandages gone from his eyes, he had shed the last semblance of being in need of care. He looked her over from head to foot and his eyes narrowed in a look of sexual intent as old as time. Jay felt it like a touch, stroking over her body, and she felt both warm and alarmed.

He got to his feet with lazy grace and came to her side, sliding his arm around her waist in a possessive gesture. "That was fast. You must not have packed much."

"It wasn’t actually packing," she explained ruefully. "It was more like wadding and stuffing."

"You didn’t have to be in such a hurry. I wasn’t going anywhere without you," he drawled.

"Both of you have to go shopping, anyway," Frank added. "I didn’t think of it, but Steve pointed out that neither of you has clothes suited to a Colorado win- ter."

Jay looked at Frank, at his clear, calm eyes and friendly face. He’d been a rock for her to lean on these past two months, smoothing the way for her, doing what he could to make her comfortable, and all the time he’d been lying to her. Even knowing that, she simply couldn’t believe he’d done it for any reason other than to protect Steve, and because of that she forgave him completely. She was willing to do the same thing, so how could she hold it against him?

"There’s no point in shopping here," Steve said. "Or even in Denver. If we go to a city, we’ll have to get what some department-store buyer thinks is stylish for a winter vacation. We’ll stop at some small-town general store and buy what the locals buy, but not at the town closest to the cabin. Maybe one about a hundred miles from it."

Frank nodded at that impeccable logic, as well as the ring of command in Steve’s raspy voice. He was taking over the show, but then, they hadn’t expected anything else; amnesia didn’t change basic character traits, and Steve was an expert at logistics. He knew what to do and how to get it done.