The Way Home

James closed his eyes with relief. Everything else could be worked out.

A tiny sound from his daughter had him reaching for her, yet he could look at nothing else but the woman walking through the doorway.

Bella. Oh, my love.

The best part was that this was the Bella he’d loved so fiercely, her jeans dirty, her hair windblown. A smile was blooming up out of him. Bella the gardener, the digging-in-the-dirt-makes-me-happy woman who’d made life a roller-coaster ride of unexpected and offbeat pleasures.

His feet began to move, and his heart started racing. “Bella–” He would grab her, swing her around as he had so many times. He would kiss her until neither of them could breathe, and as soon as he could ditch the kids he would make love to her for hours–

Bella wasn’t smiling.

She was scared. Of them. The family she had once adored.

Dear Reader,

Forgiveness…the power of love to overcome…these themes are rich in resonance. I am blessed to experience every day—just as James and Bella have—living with someone I trust to my marrow. But taking this story to the next level, throwing this couple a dilemma they would have said could never happen to them, intrigued me. Does love conquer all? Are some things beyond forgiveness? Is your bond built on a shared past, or would it spark again even if you lost all memory of the life you’ve lived together?

The EVERLASTING LOVE books offer a chance to examine what happens
after
the happily-ever-after, to go beyond that first flush of new love to explore the challenges and hopes of a long-term relationship. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride—and the romance—with James and Bella, as I have.

Thank you for letting me into your hearts and lives to share my stories. I love hearing from readers, either via e-mail at my Web site, www.jeanbrashear.com, or Harlequin’s Web site, www.eHarlequin.com, or by postal mail at P.O. Box 3000 #79, Georgetown, TX 78627-3000.

All my best,

Jean Brashear

A
TICKLE
,
A WHISPER
.
A murmuring voice eluding my grasp. My foot stirs to give chase. Soft sheets brush my skin.

I open my eyes to a room I’ve never seen.

In a house I do not recognize.

In dawn’s fragile light, I spot mountains. Shiver as crisp, delicious air wafts through the window screen.

Then I fully awaken, and I remember.

That I am Jane Doe.

And I am lost.

T
HE WOMAN SANK
to the creaking wooden porch step and soaked in the serenity, rare since she’d first regained consciousness in the small town she’d been told was Lucky Draw, Colorado.

Luck was certainly something she could use.

Still, for the moment, she would be asked no questions, could allow her mind respite from her own. Stop flailing against
Who am I?
and
Where did I come from? Is anyone looking for me?
and simply…rest. Only…be.

The green soothed her, though the tangle of it was a little unsettling. If she weeded over there and planted daisies beneath—

She halted. Was this a piece of the puzzle of Jane Doe? A gardener? Heartened, she followed the thread. Bent forward, rested her chin on folded arms atop her knees.

So what would she do with this jumble? She let her eyes go a bit out of focus and imagined the johnsongrass rooted out—though God knows it was as nasty as kudzu to control, with its roots that stubbornly cling to the soil like a toddler to her mama—She sat up, breathless. Where did kudzu grow?

The faintest of shadows. A wisp of memory, a garden, teased at the edge of her inner vision. Something blue, leggy, a fluff of blossoms at the end of a long stalk.

She frowned, bore down, desperate not to let the image slip away.

But the fragment had already vanished. Frustration soured the brief, earlier bliss, and the bitter edge of fear threatened to drag her back into despair.

A faint buzz snatched her attention. A hummingbird hovered in front of her perhaps five feet away, pretty ruby throat and incessant search for energy, as if he wondered whether she was a flower from which he might drink.

The sight of him calmed her. Staved off fear once more.

She needed to act, to seize control. Perhaps she would plant flowers for her busy little friend. “Thank you,” she murmured, to the bird, to the green, to the morning she was, after all, alive to experience, a grace note in this dark hole that was the past she could not recall.

One step, minuscule but desperately appreciated, into the new life she must create.

Strengthened a bit against the constant drain of worry, Jane Doe rose and walked into the chaos that could become a garden, trailing her fingers over the feathery tops of doomed johnsongrass as she formulated plans for how she would spend this first day in the garage apartment Dr. Lincoln—Sam, she corrected—had insisted she make her home, since she had no money and nowhere to go. This tiny village of three hundred fifty-six souls was nearly five hundred miles from the nearest city, with no social services available except the old-fashioned concept of community. After being released from the hospital in Denver, where an MRI had revealed no brain damage beyond this amnesia, she’d accepted Sam’s offer because he was a kind man and because she’d had no choice—but only, she reminded him, until her memory returned.

Until she figured out where home really was.

The sheriff had taken her fingerprints and a photo he was comparing with national databases for missing persons, but thus far, he’d come up with nothing. To be so adrift was beyond frightening.

Why isn’t anyone searching for me? Am I alone? Is there no one who cares that I’m absent?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…anything.
But, she reminded herself, that wasn’t strictly true. A mirror had shown that she had black, curly hair, shoulder-length and sprinkled with streaks of silver. Green eyes. She was tall for a woman, five foot nine, they’d measured her. Not skinny, but not overweight, either. Probably fiftyish, no longer young but hardly old. She’d borne no children, Sam had told her.

Two dental fillings and pierced ears. Size nine feet. The battered remains of a manicure she was hesitant to remove, only because it was a link of some sort to who she had been.

Serious gardeners didn’t get manicures, and her nails were her own, long and sleek beneath the traces of polish. So she probably didn’t do manual labor, either, or health care or child care or culinary pursuits. Did she work with her mind? She possessed a quick one, they’d discovered, once she’d regained consciousness. She was good at math, better at writing, and understood some Spanish and a smattering of French.

And she still possessed bruises—she’d fought someone, the sheriff had told her, judging from the skin cells that had been trapped beneath her nails. Her coma of six days had been obtained from a blow to the head during some sort of attack, possibly a carjacking, since she’d been found with no purse and no vehicle, left for dead on the side of a deserted mountain road.

She hadn’t, thank God, been raped, Sam had assured her. Though she couldn’t remember any of the experience, so would that have mattered? Could you be traumatized by something you didn’t recall?

Was there a man in her life who would miss her? Did he wonder where she was? Did he worry?

“Morning.” Sam rounded the corner, two mugs in his hands. “Do you like anything in your coffee?”

“How would I know?” But she forced herself to smile. “Sorry.”

He shrugged one broad shoulder, then handed her a mug. “Most likely you will, at some point. As the specialists told us, you may never recover details of the immediate trauma, but over time, the rest of your memory should come back.”

“But you can’t promise that.”

“No,” he said. “However, I can and will make sure you have a safe place to heal. There’s no rush,” he said gently.

But the urgency inside her dictated otherwise. To avoid being ungracious, she ventured a sip.

Then wrinkled her nose.

He grinned. “Too strong for you? Got into the habit in med school—I drink it thick enough to stand a spoon in.”

She was very aware that she wore only a borrowed cotton nightgown, covered by an ancient blue man’s sweater she’d found on a hook by the door. “I should go change.”

“Not on my account.” He winked, laughter in the kind chocolate eyes that were her first waking memory. He wasn’t a lot taller than her, maybe six feet, a burly teddy bear of a man who commanded both respect and affection from everyone she’d encountered so far, both in Lucky Draw and in Denver. She didn’t know what she would have done without his steady, calm guidance in the first awful days when she’d realized just how alone she was. She hadn’t thought of him as a man then but as her rock, her guide, her shelter. Her friend.

But Sam was a male, and something inside her held back, as if she was already bound.

She glanced at her left hand. No ring.

“You can’t be certain,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “Now, if only marriage involved tattoos…”

She smiled. “Have you ever been married, Sam?”

“Me? No. Never found the right woman. Well…” A shake of the head. “No.”

“A little amnesia of your own?”

He grinned. “There was this one weekend in Vegas, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t legal. Here—” He laughed at his joke while digging in his pockets. “Maybe this will make the coffee more palatable. I’ve got real sugar and the blue stuff and the pink stuff—”

“No yellow packets?”

They stared at each other.

“I like the yellow packets,” she said, a smile blooming inside her. “And cream.”

“‘O ye of little faith.’ Didn’t I tell you, Jane? One memory at a time.”

“I thought of a flower this morning, a blue one, but not its name.” She stepped forward. “And kudzu, Sam. Where does kudzu grow?”

“You’re asking me? I barely recognize grass.” He wrinkled his forehead. “I believe I’ve heard of it in connection with the South, which would fit with your accent.”

“I have an accent?” Until now, she hadn’t registered the differences in their speech.

“Maybe you’re a Georgia peach or a Mississippi magnolia.” He grinned.

“Or just a redneck.”

“Nope.” He reached for her hand. “No calluses or blisters, for one thing. Those are lily-white, lady hands.” He frowned and looked closer. “But you might have played guitar, though not recently.”

“What makes you say that?” She pulled her fingers up to her face.

“Feel it. Just the smallest thickening on the tips—guitar players have calluses on one hand, from holding down the strings.”

She flexed her fingers without thinking. Closed her eyes to see if anything stirred.

Nothing. Her shoulders rounded.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Don’t push it. Your brain isn’t ready.”

I’m ready,
she wanted to shout. To scream. But none of this was Sam’s fault.

“I, uh, I need to get to the clinic, but I can switch some things if you’d like me to stay around. Or you could accompany me.”

The kindness in his voice had her halfway to tears. She sniffed them back. “No.” She glanced up. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for letting me stay here, Sam. I can’t imagine what I would have done if you—”

“You’re not alone, Jane. Let yourself rest and recover your strength.” He paused. “Anything I can bring you when I return?”

My name,
she thought.
I’m not Jane.
But she only smiled and shook her head. “Thanks for the coffee. Have a great day.”

But still he hesitated. “You’ll be all right here, you’re sure?”

“I will. Don’t worry.”

She would be doing enough of that for both of them.