Chapter 1
The light hurt his eyes.
They fluttered open and then closed again as the piercing brightness seemed to cut straight into his head, sending the headache thumping from just a minor nuisance to an all encompassing pain. He groaned, trying to lift his hand to cover his eyes. A sharp pain in his arm stopped him and he managed to squint open his eyes, seeing the tubes taped down to his arm.
A machine next to him kept track of his heart rate, the bleeps almost comforting. Another machine kept track of his blood oxygen and still a third regulated the amount of liquid that was being fed into the tube in his arm.
He was in a hospital. But why? He tried to remember what happened but everything seemed so blank.
"Oh, you're awake," a soft, very feminine voice said next to him.
He turned his head, staring at the Angel who stood next to his bed. She was blonde, her hair long and naturally curly. Her big blue eyes dominated a small heart shaped face. She had delicate features, a tiny tip tilted nose and lush pink lips that seemed made to be kissed. He could see a book on the chair behind her and wondered if she'd been sitting with him long. "W-what h-happened?" he asked, his voice a hoarse croak.
"You don't remember?" the girl asked. "You were in an accident. I found you wandering in the dark on the side of the road. You were bleeding and incoherent. I got you to the hospital." She reached down and took his hand. "Let me get the doctor."
She patted his hand gently then left the room, leaving behind her the fresh smell of gardenias to tease his senses.
He closed his eyes, enjoying the fragrance, feeling as if it were taunting him with a memory he just couldn't seem to reach. He heard the door to the room open again and he opened his eyes, staring at the short, heavyset woman who took his wrist in her hand. "So you're back with us finally. It's about time. I couldn't understand how any red blooded American boy could resist this little girl but you've managed for an entire week."
"A w-week? I've b-been here a week?" He stared at the short woman in her nurse's scrubs, a sense of horror and disbelief flooding him. "I c-can't stay. I have to ... to..."
The blonde angel came up on the other side of the bed. "Shh. You won't do yourself any good if you get up and rip out your stitches or pass out and hit your head again." She stroked his bare arm unconsciously.
He settled back into the pillow under his head, staring up at her. "W-who are you? Do we know each other?"
His angel glanced over at the nurse. "You don't know who you are?"
He shook his head, groaning as the movement caused his headache to flare even brighter. "It's like a brick wall." He glanced up at his angel. "You don't know me?"
"No," she said softly, still stroking his arm. "I'd never seen you before the night I found you on the side of the road."
"She managed to keep you calm when you were delirious," a male voice said from the doorway.
The nurse handed the doctor his chart after she finished writing his vitals in it. "I'm Dr. Anthony Bernard, I've been on your case since your were brought into Emergency last week. So how are you feeling today?"
"I can't remember anything," he said, a touch of panic making his voice a bit shriller then it had been. "I can't even remember my name. Is that normal?"
The doctor cocked his head. "You had a pretty nasty head injury. Some amnesia wouldn't be abnormal. Just relax, don't try to force anything. It'll come back in time."
"In time? Doctor, how would you like not knowing who you are or where you belong?" He tried to sit up in bed but his pretty blonde angel moved quickly to his side. She stroked her hand over his face until he turned toward her, reaching up and grabbing her hand to hold in his.
"Listen to the doctor. He's one of the best," she leaned down to whisper near his ear.
"I'm going to send you down for an MRI. I'll know more after I get a chance to look at those pictures." Dr. Bernard lifted the sheet that covered him, reaching for the hospital gown and lifting it just enough to see the bandages that covered his ribs. "I'm going to have the nurse change your bandages but you seem to be healing well. Keep this up and we'll be able to release you by the end of the week."
He nodded, bringing his free hand up to his forehead as the headache seemed to grow. Release him to go where? He couldn't help but wonder. He could feel something behind the pain but he wasn't sure what it was. It was as if he needed to get through the pain, to reach the other side of it and everything would be there, his identity, what happened to him, why he felt so strange, everything.
His eyes flickered and the pain receded. He opened his eyes, staring at his angel then at the nurse who was feeding something in a syringe into the tube that went into his arm. "W-what?" he stuttered faintly.
"Something for the pain, you'll sleep for a while," she said.
His head swiveled on the pillow, a low moan coming from between his lips. "No," he growled, a sudden pain in his back, like the shifting of bones accompanying his rage. But then, as the medication took affect, the bones shifted back and he fought to keep his eyes open.
"Shh, Jamie," his angel said. "Just let it work." She stroked his hair that wasn't covered by bandages, her hand gentle.
His eyes popped back open as he heard her call him a name. "J-Jamie?" he whispered.
"You don't look like a John Doe," she said with a shrug. "I had to call you something."
"W-who are you?" he asked even as he lost the fight with consciousness. Her name echoed in his head as the darkness flooded him. "Tessa."
Tessa Carmichael walked out of the hospital room, following the nurse. "He'll sleep for a while, won't he?" she asked, worried about what would happen if he woke up and she wasn't there. But she had to leave. She had to get back to work. Her lunch hour was over.
"Yes, he'll be fine, Tessa. You've gone above and beyond with staying with him the way you have. Especially since he's a stranger."
"He isn't to me, though," Tessa said. "He's become more than that to me." She shrugged and turned toward the elevators.
"I'll tell him you'll be back if he wakes up," the nurse called after her and Tessa waved her thanks, hitting the down button to call the elevator. It was there quickly and she stepped on with a group of white coated people, all carrying clipboards, pagers hooked to their waists, dark circles under their eyes. They got off at the next floor and she rode the rest of the way to the lobby by herself.
A big, beautiful blue glass ball sat in the middle of the lobby, water pouring from a fountain in its center to create a rippling affect upon the surface of the glass. It gave off a calming effect and made Tessa smile, every time she saw it. She walked past and out the main doors, into the heat of the mid summer afternoon. It was only because it was summer that Tessa had been able to spend so much time with Jamie. Classes were out and she had most of the summer off except for teaching her English summer school class.
She had five students who'd failed their English classes last year. In order to graduate, they had to retake the course. Tessa, being low man on the totem pole at work had gotten stuck with the class. Not that she minded. She had no family to speak of, nobody she was close enough to, to want to take a vacation with this summer. She'd have spent this summer break like she had last year, sitting out by the pool at her apartment, reading.
Her car coughed and then the ignition caught. She shifted into reverse slowly, then backed out of her spot, holding her breath that her car would behave. It was ancient, the car her parents had given her before she'd run off to college the year before they'd been murdered. Because of that, she hadn't been able to give it up even when it broke down every two weeks like clock work.
She made it to the school with no problems, giving a little prayer of thanks to the deity that covered cars for his tolerance of the day. Walking down the familiar path that led to the English and Math part of the school, she swung her briefcase, a small smile crossing her face. Jamie was awake. He'd be okay.
Tessa couldn't help but remember the night she'd found Jamie. He'd all but fallen across the road in front of her, forcing her to slam on her brakes. Getting out of the car, she'd raced to his side. His face was bloody, his hair matted with the stuff. Bruises covered his features, swelling the side of his head. Worse had been the long gash across his ribs, the blood causing his shirt to stick to his chest.
She'd managed to rouse him enough to get him to his feet and then into the passenger side of her car. Closing the door, she was on the way to her side of the car when she heard it. A snap of a branch in the woods alongside the roadway, the harried sound of growling and then a roar, as if whatever was out there had flown into a rage.
Wasting no time, she'd gotten out of there, slightly freaked out by the sounds. She'd raced the injured man to the hospital, running in to bring out people to help her get him inside. They'd taken him beyond two double doors into the Emergency room, leaving her with a nurse to field questions she had no idea how to answer.
Then the cops showed up, asking more questions that she could only answer with an "I don't know." They finally went out to the place where she'd found him, and found exactly nothing but a small pool of blood in the middle of the road where he'd fallen. There'd been no sign of a car, no sign that he could have come from one of the houses along the way. They'd sent out teams to do a house to house search for any sign of where he could have been hurt, but there'd been nothing.
He seemed to have appeared with no trail, no family and no one to claim him. The police had been running his photo on the news for the past week and no one had come forward. Tessa thought of what the doctor had said about releasing Jamie in the next week. He had no where to go.
She straightened her shoulders. Yes, he did. She would take him in. There was nothing else she could do or would have wanted someone to do for her or a loved one, if she'd had any.
She pulled open the door to her hallway, seeing her group already standing at the door to her room.
"It really looks bad for the teacher to be late to class," her loud mouth student, Brian Cole, said. "You been spending more tie at the hospital, Miss Carmichael?"
"And what if I have?" she asked Brian, slipping between the three boys and two girls to unlock the door to her room. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"I think you got a crush on coma-boy," Francis 'Frankie' Rusher teased. "Kind of hard to get any when he's sleeping all the time."
"He woke up today," she said, knowing that the class would hear the excitement in her voice.
"So who is he?"
"He has amnesia." She sat her briefcase down on her desk and flipped up the latches, taking out the test that she'd planned for the day. She was planning on making it a quick day, wanting to get back to the hospital. "Books under your desks, please. When you finish the test, you may be excused for the day."
Settling back at her desk, she pulled out the essays that they'd given her at the last class, and started correcting them. When the first test hit her desk, she looked up.
"I think what you're doing is great, Miss Carmichael. You saved that guy's life."
"Thank you, Amy. That's nice of you to say."
The pretty girl blushed and nodded, then headed toward the door, already pulling a cell phone out of her purse. Tessa let it slide even though she knew she should take the phone from her. They weren't supposed to have them on school property. But she remembered what it was like being a teenage girl. The phone was a God to them, a part of their social distinction.
When the last paper hit her desk, she glanced at the clock. She still had another twenty minutes before she could leave. She wrote the grade of the essay she was correcting on the top, shaking her head at the barely passing mark. Brian was a smart kid. She just didn't know why he couldn't grasp some of the concepts she'd taught them. She'd have to call his parents, maybe arrange for some tutoring. If he didn't watch it, she wouldn't be able to pass him from this class either.
The remaining time ticked away slowly, but she stayed until the time was up then packed up her briefcase, stopping at the teacher's lounge on her way out to buy an icy cold water from one of the vending machines. The sun was still high in the sky when she got out to the parking lot, her car the only one there. It was a bit intimidating, the huge school looming over her, the desolate area, the tiny prickles of awareness that kept making the hair on the back of her neck rise.
She put her key in the lock of her car, hearing a snap of a branch behind her. The sound of footsteps on the pavement had her fumbling with the keys and almost dropping them before she could get the door open. She could almost feel the hot breath of whatever was coming on the back of her neck and she hurried to get into her car, slamming the door shut and locking it quickly. Looking out the window was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, every horror movie she'd ever seen flashing through her mind.
But no one was there. Tessa heaved a heavy sigh, her hand going to her throat as she laughed derisively at herself. Her hand was shaking so badly, that it took her three tries before she finally managed to get the key into the ignition and turn the car on. She backed out slowly, still making fun of her fear. Then she saw it, a quick glimpse of yellow eyes, hidden in the shadows of the trees that lined the lot. White teeth came into view and a lolling pink tongue. It growled and slavered, those yellow eyes staring at her, filled with malice.
"God!" she exclaimed. "What is that thing?"
She didn't stop to look twice, pulling out of the parking lot with a shriek of tires against the pavement. All the way back to the hospital, she kept glancing into her rearview mirror. She didn't breathe easy until she was I the lobby of the hospital, heading at a fast clip to the elevators.
Tessa managed to calm herself down in the elevator, knowing it wouldn't do her or Jamie any good if she were upset when she was with him. She'd never had a man relate to her the way Jamie had. Just the sound of her voice would have him turning his face toward her, even in the coma he'd fallen into. Stroking his hair had elicited a sound that could almost have been called a purr from deep in his chest. She'd made sure to touch him often, letting him learn the feel of her skin, the sound of her voice, her scent.
Though why she found that important, she didn't know.
He was a wake when she walked in, his eyes heavy eyed and blurry from the drug he'd been given.
"Tessa," he said, his voice deep and rough. It sent a shiver through her, the same shiver that she'd gotten when she'd walked in after the blood had been cleaned off of him and the swelling had gone down. Her Jamie was a very handsome man in all the ways that sent her heart to thumping wildly in her chest. Long black hair fell back from a wide forehead. Black brows slashed above eyes that had incredibly thick lashes. They brushed against high cheekbones covered in tanned skin that even now didn't show any signs of fading. His mouth was lush, slightly parted, showing off the tips of straight, even, white teeth.
She hadn't been able to see his eyes before, it had been too dark on the road and then he'd been in the coma, but she could see them now. Dark emerald in color, they glittered like the gem, causing her heart to thump in her chest.
"You're awake," she said unnecessarily.
"Yes." He looked up at her from under those incredible lashes, his mouth turned out into a pout. "You weren't here."
"I had to go to work, Jamie. The nurse said she'd tell you where I was and that I'd be back." She sank down next to him, dropping the bag of food she'd snuck in onto his tray. "I brought you something."
She went to open the bag but his hand came out, grabbing hold of hers and pulling her palm to his cheek. "I'd rather have you just talk to me," he said.
"I'll talk to you while you eat. I figured you'd need more than just this hospital food to garner your strength back."
"You're afraid," he said suddenly, letting her pull her hand away from him. "Why are you afraid? It's ... not me is it?"
"No," she said quickly, slightly unnerved by the look in his eyes. "No, I couldn't be afraid of you, Jamie."
"You should be though," he said, sighing heavily. "I don't know who I am or what I've done. I could be some kind of murderer."
"Or you could be the most gentle man alive," she countered, unwilling to let him fall into some kind of depression or to push her away. "I know you won't hurt me, Jamie." She opened up the bag, pulling out a wrapped sandwich. "I didn't know what you liked so I got you my favorite." Pulling the wrapping part way down, she held the sandwich to his lips, waiting for him to take a bite.
He finally relented and she watched his face light up as the lean roast beef and swiss cheese with a tangy sauce flooded his taste buds. "Wow, that's good," he sighed as he chewed and swallowed, taking another bite. She fed him the entire thing, her smile fading as he took her wrist in his hand and brought her fingers to his mouth. His eyes met hers as he licked the sauce off her fingers and she felt her heart slam against the wall of her chest then double its beat, a flush rising to her cheeks.
"Thank you," he said softly, tugging gently against her arm to have her bend closer to him. His lips found her cheek and she turned her head, staring up into his eyes. He said something she didn't catch because of the sound of her pounding heart was so loud, she was sure he could hear it. Then he pulled her forward again and she lost her balance, her hands going to the bed on either side of his body, trying to stop from hurting him. His lips found hers, and all thought left her mind.
His lips were warm and he tasted spicy from the sandwich he just ate. His tongue pushed against her lips and she opened eagerly for him. A low growl sounded in his throat, echoing the moan that was pulled from hers. He kissed her with passion, fire heating his blood, her taste driving him mad. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her onto his lap, knocking the tray table back from the bed.
Tessa couldn't have stopped him if she wanted to, which she didn't. His kiss invoked feelings she hadn't thought possible for her to feel. Heat slammed through her, seeming to head directly to the pit of her stomach, coiling there to send a wetness to her loins that dampened her panties and made her pussy ache with longing. She could feel him under her hip, hard, throbbing with every harried beat of his heart.
How far they would have gone, she didn't know. She did know that even though one part of her wanted to slam the door on the nurse that walked in and interrupted them, another part was glad that she did. It was too fast, too soon, the feelings too hot and intense for her to rationalize. So when a feminine clearing of a throat interrupted them, she crawled off his lap, excusing herself quickly to head to the public restroom down the hall.
The Tessa that looked back at her from the mirror didn't seem like the same one she'd seen in the mirror in her own bathroom just this morning. Instead, she seemed sexier, sultrier. It could have something to do with the flush that stained her cheeks, or the heated look in her blue eyes. She didn't know. She turned on the cold water tap, letting it run as cold as it would then splashed her cheeks with the icy water. Running her damp hands over her hair straightened out the some of the mess. She dried her face with a paper towel and then forced herself to leave the bathroom.
The nurse was at her desk and she gave Tessa a knowing grin. Tessa couldn't help the blush that rose from her chest to heat her cheeks again. She gave the nurse a curt nod and then knocked on Jamie's door and opening it.
His bed was empty, but she found him sitting in the chair that was in the corner of the room by the windows staring out at the late afternoon sunshine.
"You came back," he said.
"You didn't want me to?" she asked, coming over to lean against the wall.
"Yes, but I thought maybe you'd be upset with me."
"Maybe I should be," she said, using the tone she used to scold one of her students. "But I'm not," she finished a bit more gently.
"Good, because I'm not sorry I kissed you. I've been thinking of doing it since I woke up this afternoon after you left. You're beautiful, Tessa."
Tessa wanted to wave away his compliments but he said them with such innocent enthusiasm that she couldn't. He held out his hand and she took it, letting him pull her closer, only balking when he tried to pull her into his lap again. "No, Jamie. You just woke up and I don't want to hurt you."
"Then will you stay and talk to me?" he asked.
"Yes, of course. But when you get tired, you have to let me know. I don't want you to relapse."
"Will you tell me why you looked so scared when you came in the first time?"
"I looked scared?"
"You know you did. You stopped just outside the door to try to calm yourself. What scared you Tessa?"
She stared into the jade green of his eyes and wondered if she dared tell him what she'd heard the night she found him. Then again, she'd heard it today as well. Was she in danger because she'd helped him?