Promises to Keep Read Free Page A

taking you home."
    Panic dried her mouth and constricted her throat, making speech impossible. It must have shown in her eyes as well because, for the first time since the beginning of their interview, Garth's expression softened.
    "There's nothing to be afraid of, Julie," he reassured her. "I won't make any demands you're not prepared to meet."
    He touched her face; his palm was warm and hard against the softness of her cheek. It was a soothing, almost avuncular gesture. The last rays of the dying sun burnished his hair and seemed to settle in the tawny flecks in his eyes, and she wondered how she could ever have thought them cold. And when he smiled, his spare features were transformed; they had about them an almost boyish good humor. His face was made for smiling, she thought. She found herself charmed into believing his promise.
    "Where is home?" she asked.
    "In northern California in an area that's known as the Valley of the Moon," he replied. His smile broadened at her startled expression. "It's in the wine country north of San Francisco, not far from Santa Rosa," he explained. "The nearest town is Sonoma."
    He studied her face closely as he told her this, and it was clear that she was discouraged.
    "It doesn't ring any bells, does it," he said and his unexpected gentleness brought a hot rush of tears to her eyes.
    "No," she replied tremulously, "except that I don't think I'm terribly familiar with the general area you've described."
    "Well, that's not surprising. You lived there until you were about five, but you returned for the first time only a few months ago. It will all come back to you eventually."
    "Dr. Ziegler believes I might be helped by hypnosis."
    Garth nodded. "He mentioned it to me too. He also said he'd tried to hypnotize you and found you were resistant to it."
    "I'm resistant to
him
!" She wrinkled her nose with distaste. "I don't like him."
    Amused by her vehemence, Garth chuckled. "Now I understand why he took his failure as a personal insult! We'll just have to find a therapist you do trust, won't we."

Chapter Two

    The sight of herself in a mirror was still something of a shock to Julie. Even after four weeks it was like seeing a stranger. Of course for the first couple of weeks her features had been so battered and swollen, she had looked like the loser of a barroom brawl. The doctors kept telling her how lucky she was that her facial wounds were superficial, for she might have been badly scarred. But even when the swelling had subsided, she mostly tried to avoid looking at herself at all, and when it became absolutely necessary, she concentrated on one feature at a time or on the action of combing her hair or washing her face.
    The following morning, however, she studied herself carefully, critical of the hospital pallor of the face that confronted her. It was a small oval of a face that was framed by a silky spill of dark hair. She supposed her eyes were her best feature—or they would be, if they weren't so lackluster. From beneath fine level brows they stared back at her, so velvety and dark a brown that they were almost as black as her hair. They tilted upward slightly at the corners, which gave them a certain piquancy, and they were surrounded by an abundance of long sooty lashes, but they were far too large for the rest of her face—so large, they practically swallowed the rest of her. Their expression was dazed. She thought she looked as if she were sleepwalking even though she was wide-awake.
    She turned impatiently away from her reflection. Taken separately, all of her features were disproportionate. Not only were her eyes too big but her mouth was too full, her nose was too short, and her neck too long. Her chin had a funny little cleft that was slightly off-center. It looked as if it had been added as an afterthought and it made her appear fey and impish.
    She saw nothing in her image that a man like Garth Falconer might find appealing. He was such a magnificent creature, it was only