Their Christmas Miracle. Barbara Wallace
“Lammie?” Chris’s gentle voice sounded on the other side. “You doin’ all right?”
She warmed at the tender nickname, a term Chris used because he said she was a little lost lamb. “I’m fine,” she replied. “A little shaken up, is all.”
Hearing his voice made her feel better. Chris would keep her safe; he’d been keeping her safe since the day she’d stumbled into his headlights.
“Do you feel up to stepping outside? We’d like to have a chat.”
By “we,” she prayed he meant him and his wife, Jessica, not the stranger with the unnervingly warm embrace.
“I’ll be right out,” she told him.
Ignoring how badly her hands were trembling, she retied her ponytail and wiped the smudges from under her eyes. If she did have to face the stranger again, she was going to look composed, dammit. For some reason it was important he see her pulled together.
When she finally opened the door, she found Chris leaning against the bar. “Better, Lammie?” he asked in a low voice. She nodded, and he gave her an encouraging smile.
She didn’t have to look to know who the other half of “we” was. The man’s presence hung in the air.
“This is Thomas Collier,” Chris said, “and his brother, Linus.”
“Like the soap.” The comment was automatic. A bottle of Collier’s lemon soap sat by the sink in the restaurant’s kitchen. Jessica swore by it, and she’d developed an immediate fondness herself.
“That’s right. They’re up from London.”
She looked to her left where both men sat at a nearby table. Both men were far more subdued this time around. The stranger was perched on the edge of his seat, his lanky body resembling a coil fighting not to spring. “Mr Collier’s wife, Rosalind, is missing,” Chris continued. “She disappeared following a car accident. He’s pretty sure she’s you.”
He’d called her Rosie.
Hoping that if she focused hard enough she might conjure up some spark of recognition, she took a better look at her so-called husband. When she’d first approached their table, before the craziness started, she’d thought both men attractive. Upon second take, she amended her opinion. One was attractive. Thomas Collier was handsome as sin. If they were married, she had fantastic taste. Taller and lankier than his companion, he had the kind of features that separately were nondescript but together formed an arresting picture of angles and slopes. And again, there were those eyes. She could almost imagine white caps dotting their blue-gray depths. A slow whorl of awareness unexpectedly twisted through her midsection.
Attraction aside, however, she might as well have been admiring a stranger. “I told him about your condition,” Chris told her.
“And you believe him?” A moot question if ever there was one. Chris wouldn’t have asked her to join them if he didn’t think Collier’s claims had merit.
“Think it’s worth you hearing him out,” Chris said. “Then you can decide for yourself.”
She chewed her lip, unsure what to do. On the one hand, if this man’s story turned out to be true, she’d finally have the answers she’d been seeking. On the other hand, everything she did know would be turned upside down, and while she didn’t know her past, her present was a good one.
“I promise I’ll behave myself,” Collier said. “You have my word I won’t do anything to frighten you again. Please,” he added, gesturing to the seat next to him.
Damn those eyes. How could she say no when they were imploring her?
Chris’s whiskers brushed her ear as he leaned close. “No need to worry, Lammie. I’ll be right over here at the bar if you need anything,” he murmured, before adding in a louder voice, “Mr Collier, might I interest you in something to eat?”
“Don’t have to ask me twice. I’ll take a giant Scotch, as well.” The other man, who she’d already noted was a younger, less arresting version of her “husband,” rose to his feet. As he headed past, he stopped to offer a warm smile. “I can’t believe it’s really you, Rosalind. Thomas is right—it’s a miracle.”
“Come along, Mr Collier. Let me pour you the best double malt in the Highlands.” Taking him by the elbow, Chris led the man to the far end of the bar.
Leaving the two of them alone.
Cautiously, she slipped into the seat to his right, her hands curling over the ends of the chair arms. Jessica was always complaining that the pub tables lacked sufficient leg room underneath, and now she could see why. Her knees and Collier’s were close enough that if she shifted in just the right way, their knees would touch. As it was, she could feel the proximity through her jeans. She scooted her chair backward another couple of inches, and waited.
“I’m sorry about before,” Collier said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. When I saw you, I couldn’t...” He paused and took a deep breath. “We were told you were dead. That you had most likely drowned in the river.”
River. She squeezed the chair arms as recollections of her nightmares came to mind. Flashes of pitch-black water and air being sucked from her lungs. She had to take a deep breath herself as a reminder the image wasn’t real.
Even so, her voice still came out strangled and hoarse. “Chris told you about my memory?”
“He said you can’t remember anything before the past four months.”
“That’s right. The doctors at the hospital think I suffered a traumatic event that caused my memory to shut itself off.” Traumatic event being the term they settled on after their battery of tests failed to turn up anything else. “You said your wife was in a car accident.”
“There was a bridge collapse and your car—” she noticed he was already using the second person “—was plunged into the River Lochy during a heavy storm.”
Plunging into icy waters certainly qualified as traumatic and would explain her nightmares. Then again, drowning in dreams was also a well-established metaphor, or so she was pretty sure. “I had a broken collarbone,” she said out loud.
“I’m surprised you didn’t break more.”
Again with the second person. “You seem awfully positive I’m her. Your wife, I mean.”
“Because I’d know you anywhere.”
The way Collier looked her in the eye, with both his voice and his expression softening, knocked her off-balance. Here she was groping around in the dark, and he was looking at her with such certainty. Like he’d found a treasure while she was still trying to figure out the map. It left her longing to see what he saw.
“You say you know, but I would be a fool to simply take you at your word.” Or be misled by a pair of stormy blue eyes.
“Trust me, Rosie, the last thing I’d ever call you is a fool. I have photos.” He pulled out a phone and showed her a photograph.
Of her.
If it wasn’t her, it was her perfectly identical twin.
“There are more.” He swiped to another photo, this time a more sophisticated version of the same woman, with her hair in a twist and wearing a stunning black gown.
“The museum fund-raiser last May,” he said. “You looked beautiful in that dress.”
What she looked was unhappy. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
The next picture must have been taken the same evening, only this time her doppelganger was flanked by a woman with flaming red hair and a handsome older man with shaggy graying hair and spectacles.
“Those are your colleagues from the university. Eve Cunningham and Professor Richard Sinclair.”
She