White Lies Read online

  “Sit down here, with your back to the window,” the surgeon said, directing Steve to a chair. When Steve was seated, the doctor took a pair of scissors, cut through the gauze and tape at Steve’s temple and carefully removed the outer bandage in order not to disturb the pads over his eyes or let the tape pull at his skin. “Tilt your head back a little,” he instructed.

  Jay’s nails were digging into her palms and her chest hurt. For the first time she was seeing his face without bandages; even the relatively small swathe of gauze that had anchored the pads to his eyes had covered his temples and eyebrows, as well as his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. He had been a handsome man, but he wasn’t handsome any longer. His nose wasn’t quite straight, and they had made the bridge a little higher than it had been before the explosion. His cheekbones looked more prominent. All in all, his face had more angles than it had before; the battering he’d taken was evident.

  Slowly the doctor removed the gauze pads, then wiped Steve’s eyes with some sort of solution. Steve’s lids looked a little bruised and his eyes were deeper set than before.

  “Pull the curtains,” the doctor said quietly, and the nurse pulled them across the window, darkening the room. Then he turned on the dim light over the bed.

  “All right, now you can open your eyes. Slowly. Let them get accustomed to the light. Then blink until they focus.”

  Steve opened his eyes to mere slits and blinked. He tried it again.

  “Damn, that light’s bright,” he said. Then he opened his eyes completely, blinked until they were focused and turned his head toward Jay.

  She sat frozen in place and her breath stopped. It was like looking into an eagle’s eyes, meeting the fierce gaze of a raptor, a high-soaring predator. They were the eyes of the man she loved so much she ached with it, and terror chilled her blood. She remembered velvety, chocolate-brown eyes, but these eyes were a dark yellowish brown, glittering like amber crystal. An eagle’s eyes.

  He was the man she loved, but she didn’t know who he was, only who he wasn’t.

  He wasn’t Steve Crossfield.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HIS HEART ALMOST stopped in his chest. Jay. The face to go with the name and the voice, the gentle touch, the sweet and elusive scent. Her description of herself had been accurate, yet it was far from reality. The reality of Jay was a heavy mane of honey-brown hair, eyes of deep-ocean blue and a wide, soft, vulnerable mouth. God, her mouth. It was red and full, as luscious as a ripe plum. It was the most passionate mouth he’d ever seen, and thinking of kissing it, of having those lips touch his body, made a hard ache settle in his loins. She was immobile, her face colorless except for the deep pools of her eyes and that wonderful, exotic mouth. She stared at him as if mesmerized, unable to look away.

  “How does everything look?” the surgeon asked. “Do you see halos of light, or are the edges fuzzy?”

  He ignored the doctor and stood, his gaze never wavering from Jay. He would never get enough of looking at her. Four steps took him to her, and her eyes widened even more in her utterly white face as she stared up at him. He tried to make his hands gentle as he caught her arms and pulled her to her feet, but anticipation and arousal were riding him hard, and he knew his fingers bit into her soft flesh. She made an incoherent sound; then his mouth covered hers and the erotic feel of her full lips made him want to groan. He wanted to be alone with her. She was shaking in his arms, her hands clutching the front of his shirt as she leaned against him as if afraid she might fall.

  “Well, your sense of direction is good,” Frank said wryly, and Steve lifted his head from Jay’s, though he kept her tight against him, her head pressed into his shoulder. She was still trembling violently.

  “I’d say his priorities are in order, too,” Major Lunning put in, grinning as he looked at his patient with a deep sense of satisfaction. It hadn’t been too many weeks since he’d had serious doubts that Steve would live. To see him now, like this, was almost miraculous. Not that he was fully recovered. He still hadn’t regained his full strength, nor had his memory shown any signs of returning. But he was alive, and well on the road to good health.

  “I can see everything just fine,” Steve said, his voice raspier than usual as he looked around the hospital room that had been home to him for more days than he cared to remember. Even it looked good. He’d disciplined himself to picture everything in his mind, to form a sense of spatial relations so that he always knew where he was in the room, and his mental picture had been remarkably correct. The colors were oddly shocking, though; he hadn’t pictured colors, only physical presences.

  The surgeon cleared his throat. “Ah…if you could sit down for a moment, Mr. Crossfield?”

  Steve released Jay, and she shakily sat down, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that her knuckles were white. They were wrong! He wasn’t Steve Crossfield! Shock had kept her mute, but as she watched the surgeon examine Steve—no, not Steve!—control returned and she opened her mouth to tell him what a horrible mistake had been made.

  Then Frank moved, tilting his head to watch the surgeon, and the movement caught her attention. Ice spread in her veins, freezing her brain again, but one thought still formed: if she told them that she’d made a mistake, that this man wasn’t her ex-husband, they would have no use for her. He would be whisked away, and she would never see him again.

  She began to shiver convulsively. She loved him. She didn’t know who he was but she loved him, and she couldn’t give him up. She needed to think this through, but she couldn’t right now. She needed to be alone, away from watching eyes, so she could deal with the shock of realizing that Steve…dear God, Steve was dead! And this man in his place was a stranger.

  She stood so abruptly that her chair tilted back on two legs before clattering forward again. Five startled faces turned to her as she edged toward the door like a prisoner trying to escape. “I…I just need some coffee,” she gasped in a strained voice. She darted out the door, ignoring Steve’s hoarse call.

  He wasn’t Steve. He wasn’t Steve. The simple fact was devastating, rocking her to the core.

  She ran down the hall to the visitors’ lounge and huddled on one of the uncomfortable seats. She felt both cold and numb, and faintly sick, as if she were on the verge of throwing up.

  Who was he? Taking deep breaths, she tried to think coherently. He wasn’t Steve, so he had to be the American agent Frank had been so concerned about. That meant he had been deeply embroiled in the situation, the one man in the world who knew what had happened, if only he regained his memory. Could he be in danger if anyone—perhaps the person or persons who had set off the explosion that had already almost killed him—knew he was still alive? Until he recovered his memory, he couldn’t recognize his enemies; his best protection now was the false identity he wore. She couldn’t put him in more danger, nor could she give him up.

  It was wrong to pretend he was someone he wasn’t. By keeping this secret she was betraying Frank, whom she liked, but most of all she was betraying Steve… damn, she hated calling him that, but what else could she call him? She had to continue thinking of him as Steve. She was betraying him by putting him in a life that wasn’t his, perhaps even hindering his complete recovery. He would never forgive her when he knew, if he ever regained his memory. He would know she had lied to him, that she had forced him to live a lie by putting him in her ex-husband’s place. But she couldn’t put him at risk. She just couldn’t. She loved him too much. No matter what it cost her, she had to lie to protect him.

  “Jay.”

  It was his voice, the raw, gravelly voice that haunted her at night in the sweetest of dreams. Numbly she turned her head and looked at him, still so shocked that she couldn’t guard her expression. She loved him. Loving Steve, with his need for excitement that she couldn’t give him, had been bad enough; what had she done, letting herself love this man whose life consisted of danger? She had walked off an emotional cliff and was now in a free fall, unable to help hersel