A Hard Man to Forget Read Free

continued, the need to know who she was and who she’d
come from increased. No answers were forthcoming.
    Perhaps she should be happy with her life as it was now. She had a
name, Laura Morgan, put together from the names of two of the nurses
who'd taken care of her in those early days. She’d applied for
and received a Social Security number. She had a job, an apartment,
co-workers. Most of the time it was easy to pretend that she was just
like every other woman, living a nice, normal life.
    Yet sometimes, in the darkest hour of the night, she’d jerk
awake in a cold sweat, terror pounding through her veins. After two
years, she knew the nightmare was the same, even if she still
couldn’t remember the details. There were only vague
impressions. A fist heading straight at her face. The shadow of some
heavy object swinging toward her in the dark. The police guessed
she’d been beaten with a steel pipe. The very thought made her
hope she never remembered what had happened that night, even as her
dreams seemed to be prodding her to cognizance.
    “Must have been some guy,” Jason murmured.
    Startled, Laura was jerked out of her pensive thoughts. She caught
the displeasure in Jason’s eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her gaze to her
plate. “I’m probably putting more into this than it
deserves.”
    “Not necessarily. Not if he is someone you knew...before. You
should talk to Walker about him.”
    “I will,” she agreed quickly. Dr. Walker was the
therapist she’d been seeing ever since she left the hospital.
He hadn’t had any luck unlocking the secrets in her mind, but
she continued to see him. There was something comforting about the
man, something reassuring. He’d become a constant in her life
she wasn’t ready to let go of. She wondered what he would say
about her response to the man in the park. Unfortunately, her next
appointment wasn’t until next week, and she wasn’t
comfortable bothering him about it now.
    “So what did he look like?” Jason pressed. “This
mystery man?”
    Laura sighed. She knew what he was getting it and wasn’t
comfortable with it. “Dark hair. Tall and lean. Aristocratic
nose.” The last popped out before she thought about it.
    Jason arched a brow. “Good-looking?”
    “I suppose,” she hedged.
    “Of course he was,” Jason muttered. “I doubt you
would have noticed what his nose looked like if he wasn’t.”
    All too aware why he was upset, Laura tamped down the unease bubbling
in the pit of her stomach. She’d hoped to avoid this today.
Jason had never made a secret of the way he felt about her. If
anything, he constantly seemed to be pushing her toward moving their
relationship to a new level.
    There was no reason why she shouldn’t be attracted to him.
Jason was successful. He was handsome, with wheat blond hair and a
lean, pleasant face. Other than Dr. Walker, she was closer to him
than anyone in the world, and her relationship with her therapist was
something else altogether.
    Across the table, Jason was stabbing at his salad with a fork. He was
doing a poor job hiding the fact that he was sulking, if he was even
trying.
    Though she knew it was no one’s fault, Laura couldn’t
help but feel a little guilty. She wished there was something she
could say to reassure him, but there wasn’t. She didn’t
return his feelings. She looked into his handsome face and saw a
friend, her closest friend in the whole world. There was nothing more
there, certainly not the stomach-clenching emotion that had filled
her when she’d looked into the stranger’s eyes.
    Even now, the thought of the stranger made her stomach do a flip-flop
deep in her belly.
    She knew eventually she’d have to tell him. She simply didn’t
want to lose him as a friend, and she knew Jason well enough to know
that was where her rejection would lead.
    Preferably not today. She mustered a smile. “Why don’t we
talk about something more pleasant? How are your cases going?”
Jason was a