“Who what?”
She couldn’t admit it. Couldn’t say the damning words—that she was attracted to him, that at his touch her knees went weak and her blood ran hot. “Who . . . bothers me,” she said and his lips twisted at her understatement. “Anyway you cut it, it’s not exactly Ozzie and Harriet or the all-American family and yeah, Nick, I do think it’s all strange. Real strange. I just hope that I can figure it out soon before I go out of my mind.”
“Or before you get killed,” he said solemnly.
“Killed?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. She wasn’t going to be caught up in some melodramatic paranoia. She’d considered the fact that someone might be trying to murder her, but she’d always tossed off the idea, condemned it as her own brand of fear. To hear it from someone else made it so much more real. But she still wasn’t buying it.
“Think about it,” Nick insisted. “The night of the accident you saw someone on the road and he did something to flash a light into your eyes, right?”
“Well, maybe.”
“It could have been planned.” Nick cranked the wheel sharply for a corner.
“Now, wait a minute. That’s a pretty big leap. How would he know where I was, that I was driving Pam’s car at that particular time?”
“I have no idea, but it is possible. Then you thought you were threatened at your bedside, the next thing you know you’re throwing up and nearly dying. Someone could have given you an injection or put something in your food.”
She wanted to argue, but couldn’t. He was only voicing her own fears, the ones that had been nagging at her, the ones she’d steadfastly pushed aside. “Who would want to kill me?”
“I thought you might know.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the headrest. “I don’t even know who I am, much less who’s at the top of my personal enemies list.” Her jaw was beginning to ache again, a dull throb starting to pound. “Why go to all this trouble? Why not make it easy and just shoot me?”
“Because they’re trying to make it look like an accident.”
“They. Now it’s more than one.” She sighed and shook her head as she stared at the tall buildings stretching skyward. “No way. This is too far-fetched. I was in an accident. Period. I threw up because of a jittery stomach and a bad case of nerves. That’s all. There wasn’t anything sinister about it,” she said, trying to convince herself. No one was really trying to kill her.
Or were they?
Nick found a high-rise parking lot and turned in. He plucked the ticket from an automatic machine and drove up the ramp, his eyes scouring the parked cars as he searched for a spot.
“Why would someone want me dead?” she asked.
“Because someone’s afraid of you, of what you’ll remember.”
A chill as cold as the Pacific ran through her blood.
“Is that why you moved back to the house?” she asked with sudden insight. “To protect me?”
“One reason,” he admitted easing the truck into a space between a BMW and a Honda on the third tier. Cutting the engine, he said, “Tough as you think you are, Marla, you need someone to watch your back.”
“And you’ve volunteered for the job?”
He didn’t crack a smile as he stripped his keys from the ignition. “You have someone else in mind?”
“I’d like to think I can take care of myself.”
“You don’t even remember who you are.” He leaned closer to her and the smell of musk and leather reached her nostrils, the tip of his nose nearly touching hers. Taking her hand in his, he rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “Don’t you think, given our history, that I would be the last person on earth to appoint himself your personal bodyguard?” His eyes were dark with the coming night, his fingers warm.
“I . . . I suppose,” she said, trying hard not to look at the blade-thin line of his lips, nor feel the heat of his body, a heat so intense it fogged the windows. “But I do have a husband—”
“Whom you don’t sleep with, who is always out of the house, who leaves in the middle of the night,” he reminded her. “Whom you don’t trust.”
Marla swallowed hard as his gaze drifted to her throat. She reached for the handle of the door with her free hand, her fingers surrounding the cool metal. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m not safe anywhere, not even in my own home?”
His eyes were dead serious. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”