Lost And Found Bride

“I’m Afraid,” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

“I’m Afraid,”

she admitted. “I’m afraid I won’t ever find out what happened in my past. I’m afraid that I will, and won’t be able to stand that knowledge. Who am I, Richard?” she asked desperately.

Slowly, almost as though he had to do so, he brought her against the strength of him. And, as though this, too, he had to do, he lowered his mouth to hers.

She knew this touch! Somehow, from countless longings and memories still hidden from her mind, she knew it. She sighed and surrendered to the sense of homecoming that washed over her.

But too soon she felt him drawing away from her.

“We can’t do this,” he said unevenly.

She felt bereft. Alone. A chill wind seemed to slice through her. “Why?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because you don’t know me, Alexandra. And because, God help me, I don’t know you.”

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Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

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Lost and Found Bride

Modean Moon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MODEAN MOON once believed she could do anything she wanted. Now she realizes there is not enough time in one’s life to do everything. As a result, she says her writing is a means of exploring paths not taken. Currently she works as a land title researcher, determining land or mineral ownership for clients. Modean lives in Oklahoma on a hill overlooking a small town. She shares a restored Victorian farmhouse with a six-pound dog, a twelve-pound cat and, reportedly, a resident ghost.

One

Richard Jordan stood in the shadow of the draperies, but not completely unnoticed. The man behind the massive mahogany desk—the doctor, Richard thought derisively, Dr. Hampton—was aware of him. Although Hampton attempted an attitude of professional detachment, Richard saw the moisture beading on his forehead and upper lip as he gripped the pen in his hand and scrawled tense circles on the folder before him.

The atmosphere in the spacious room was close and stifling. Heavy mahogany furniture filled the room, heavy paneling diminished it, and heavy draperies darkened it still more. No medicinal smells intruded—only those of old wood and lemon oil. Not pleasant scents these; no, the old wood here carried the essence of rot, of wood worms busily destroying the structure behind the facade, and of decadence.

Outside the decoratively barred windows the late-October sunlight fought its way through the bare limbs of the trees, and a light breeze scattered the fallen leaves across the lawn. Outside, the air was crisp and fresh, promising a harsh winter but beguiling with its gentleness. Richard fought a fleeting impulse to thrust open the windows, in spite of the discreet wiring of the alarm system along the edge of them, and let that breeze into the room. Would that cleanse the air in the room? Could anything cleanse it?

But it was not the doctor behind the desk, or even the room that held his attention. It was the woman. Swathed in a shapeless, long-sleeved garment, she sat on the edge of the chair in front of the desk. The anger that he had felt when he’d first seen her asleep in a room bare of anything except the narrow cot on which she’d lain had not faded. He knew he might never lose the anger, but it had firmed itself into a chilling resolve—to have her released into his care.

Her hair, once shimmering ebony that fell to below her waist, had been cropped close to her head with no thought given to style. Always slender, she now appeared almost skeletal. But it was the sight of her eyes that fed his anger, that had him clutching at the window ledge to keep from lunging across the room. Gone was the sparkle of intelligence and humor that had lit her small features. Her eyes were now two gray smudges in the pallor of her face, without life, without hope, smudges that she turned toward the man behind the desk.

Even her voice had changed—still soft, still low, but without the music of laughter, without the breathless catch of anticipation. Without inflection of emotion, she answered Hampton’s questions—the same questions, the same answers Richard had heard the day before.

“What is your name?”

“Alexandra Wilbanks.”

“What is your birthday?”

“October 27.”

“What day is this?”

“March 15.”

“What is your husband’s name?”

“I have no husband.”

Hampton turned to him and spoke, calling attention to his presence, but the woman did not move.

“As you can see, as I told you yesterday Mr. Jordan, she is completely out of touch with reality.”

“Not quite.” Richard stepped from his place in the shadows. The answers were wrong for the questions, but they were based in reality—a reality this so-called doctor would have discovered for himself had he ever attempted to help her. Wilbanks, the name under which she had been admitted, was her maiden name. October 27, though not her birthday, was her wedding day. And March 15 was the day his plane had crashed.

Richard walked to her chair and knelt in front of her, willing himself to think of nothing but her and the present moment. He braced his hands on the arms of the chair as he spoke softly.

“Lexi?”

She cocked her head at the sound of his voice and turned her eyes toward him.

“Do you remember me?”

He thought he saw a question in the flatness of her eyes. It was fleeting, and he couldn’t be sure whether he had seen it or imagined it, but she looked at him—at the irritation on his cheek where dermal abrasion had finally removed the last of the scars, at the angry red welts still showing on his hand as it rested on the chair arm.

“You came. Before.”

He let his breath out in a long, slow exhalation. “Yes. Yesterday.” And it had taken all his control not to carry her from this place at that time. All his control to pretend to agree with Hampton that she was where she needed to be. But he had sensed that pretense was necessary for her safety, and he had needed time to prepare for today.

“Would you like to go away with me?”

There. He saw it again, and it wasn’t his imagination. A question in her eyes. A ghost of a smile flitted across her features, softening the tight mask of her face.

“They won’t let you take me,” she said softly. “I’ll never be allowed to leave.”

His hands tightened on the chair arms, but he kept his voice low and controlled. “Yes. You will.”

He straightened and turned to face the man behind the desk. “Send for her things.”

Hampton also stood. Richard watched him warily. The man was cool, but not so cool as he wanted to appear. his hands were clenched at his sides. “Perhaps we should send her back to her room while we discuss this.”

“No.” Richard stepped to the desk. “She doesn’t leave my sight again until she walks out of here with me.” He picked up the folder on the desk. “And this.”

“No.”

“These are her records, aren’t they?” Richard asked, but he knew the answer. They were. At least a part of them. There probably were more, hidden somewhere.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

“And they would be forwarded to the next physician as a matter of routine.”

Hampton’s hands clenched again. “Yes.”

“Then I see no problem,” Richard told him. “But if you don’t wish me to take them now, I’m sure you won’t object to my calling for a full-scale investigation of your hospital.”

Hampton attempted to stare him down, but when that failed, he turned to the intercom unit on his desk. He depressed the lever. “Alexandra is leaving us,” he said. “Bring her things to my office.”

“Doctor, I should—” The voice of the guardian of the outer office burst through the small speaker before it was muffled and then silenced. “Yes. Immediately,” she said in more subdued tones.

When the knock sounded on the door a few minutes later, Richard interposed and opened the door himself. He took the small package from the tight-featured, gray-faced woman and closed the door on her and the outer office.

He looked inside the package. A pair of dark blue lightweight wool slacks. A light blue mohair sweater. A wisp of a bra and matching briefs in ice blue. A pair of Italian sandals.

“Where are her rings?” Richard asked. “Her identification? The rest of her clothes?”

“That’s all,” Hampton told him. “She came with only the clothes she wore.”

Richard muttered an oath as he slammed the garments back into the package, but when he approached the woman in the chair, his actions and his voice were once again gentle. He touched her arm, and she looked up at him blankly.

“Let’s go, Lexi.”

She stood obediently and let him guide her across the room, through the doorway and into the outer office, while Hampton followed.

The outer office was full of men, as Richard had known it would be, and they were silent, as they had promised him. He turned to look at Hampton, who had paused at the doorway, visibly paler as he recognized the prosecuting attorney standing before his secretary’s desk.

“Dr. Wilford Hampton?” the prosecuting attorney asked, but it was a ritual question, requiring no response. “I have a search warrant for this hospital, and an order requiring you to allow your patients to be examined by an independent team of physicians.”

“Jordan!” Hampton’s voice broke. “You have the records. You said—”

Richard turned a cold smile on the man. “I lied. I wanted to kill you, Hampton, but men living in civilization no longer do that. Instead, I’ll break you. And if these men find what I think they will, I’ll take great pleasure in seeing you behind bars, where you will no longer be able to control your nefarious empire.”

One deputy detached himself from the throng, took the folder and package from Richard and led the way to the outer door. He opened it and waited while Richard guided Lexi, still obedient, unquestioning, an automaton who responded to the slightest pressure on her back, from the prison where she had been kept for the last seven months.

On the top step of the porch, in her first stubborn action since he had come for her, she stopped. He looked down at her. Unaware of him or of the official cars now cluttering the parking lot, she lifted her face to the sun and filled her lungs with the fresh October air. Then she waited, once again obedient, for him to direct her.

The uniformed chauffeur stood at attention by the open passenger door of the limousine as Richard guided Lexi to the car. Then in an act of consideration that Richard had not thought possible from a veritable stranger, he produced a folded blanket and handed it to Richard. Richard took it, unfolded it, draped it over Lexi’s thin shoulders and helped her into the car.

The man who had accompanied them from the clinic took his place in the front seat of the limo, and silently, powerfully, the automobile pulled away from the converted Georgian mansion, glided through now-open gates and sped on its way.

Lexi showed no interest in the interior of the car, or in the autumn scenery along the twenty-five-mile route into the heart of Boston. She sat quietly during the entire drive, not even looking up when the powerful automobile pulled to a stop in the alley outside the service entrance of a hotel.

Richard helped her from the car and looked down at her as she stood shivering beneath the blanket. Her shoes were only slippers, little more than scraps of inexpensive cotton fabric with flimsily reinforced soles. Swearing under his breath, he bent to take her in his arms. She stiffened but made no protest when he touched her.

“I’m going to carry you,” he told her. “Don’t be alarmed.”

But of course she wasn’t alarmed, he realized. She tolerated his lifting her into his arms just as she had tolerated everything else for God-only-knew how long with a quiet acceptance. And she weighed almost nothing—a fragile weight that he held easily, but carefully, next to his heart.

The man who had accompanied them from the clinic led the way, across the alley and in through the hotel’s service door, to the freight elevator, which a uniformed police officer held open and waiting for them. He gave the guard the folder of records and spoke softly to him before joining Richard and Lexi in the elevator and pushing the button for their floor. When they reached the floor, he led them down the long, carpeted hallway and opened the door of the suite at the end of it, stepping inside after them, but remaining by the door.

Richard settled Lexi on the brocade-covered sofa and stood back, watching her, but she didn’t look at him. She stared blankly ahead, toward the window.

He stifled still another oath and turned from the sight of her. A tray of drinks waited on a nearby table, and he crossed to it and splashed a hefty dose of scotch into a crystal tumbler.

The noise was so slight he barely heard it. He turned toward its source. Lexi had shrugged off the blanket and risen to her feet. Now she walked slowly across the room, toward the window. There was a table in front of the window, and on that table, an arrangement of spring flowers—harder than the devil to find at this time of year, Richard had been told, but he had insisted. She bent to the flowers, inhaling their scent. He watched her, unable to take his eyes from her, and unsteadily lifted the glass to his mouth as she touched one slender finger to the bright blue petal of a forget-me-not barely visible for the profusion of Dutch iris and sprays of forsythia.

“Richard.”

His name on her lips was the last thing he had expected to hear. It stunned him into immobility. She turned, her eyes enormous, her hands outstretched—pleading with him?—holding him at bay?—her voice a thin, reedy moan. “Why?”

As he watched in stunned disbelief, she began crumpling, folding in on herself. By the time he realized what was happening, by the time he tossed the glass away from him, she was falling. By the time he reached her, she lay unconscious on the carpeted floor. He scooped her up, glaring a warning at the deputy, who had also run to her side, and carried her into the adjoining bedroom.

With one hand, he tore back the covers of the bed and laid Lexi on the sheet. Mindful of the man who’d moved to the other side of the open door, he seated himself on the edge of the bed, shielding her from view as he eased the abominable dress from her.

She wore nothing under the dress except a pair of cheap cotton underpants that were much too large for her. She was unmarked, if he could call emaciation unmarked, except for her arms. He touched the arm nearest him. It, like the other, bore the marks of careless injections. But this one still carried the bruise of a healing hematoma, which discolored the skin for several inches above and below the crook of her elbow.

Richard began swearing, silently, viciously. He damned Hampton and his entire staff. He damned his mother, no matter what the truth was. He damned the doctor who had first mentioned Hampton’s hospital. And finally he damned himself for his own carelessness, his own stupidity.

He bent over her, sliding his arms around her cautiously, knowing he could crush her with no effort, and held her while his silent tirade continued.

“Mr. Jordan?”

The voice from the doorway was an intrusion he didn’t want to deal with. He ignored it, until it came again.

“Mr. Jordan,” the man said again, now sounding as though he had stepped into the bedroom. “I don’t want to bother you, but it’s time. We don’t want to jeopardize the case by delaying gathering evidence.”

Richard silenced him with a curt nod. “I know.” Slowly he drew away from Lexi and covered her with the sheet. He reached for the telephone on the nightstand and punched out the numbers. The phone at the other end was picked up on the first ring.

“We’re here,” he said, hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “Mel...I need you.”

Dr. Melissa Knapp arrived in only moments—her room was just two doors down the hallway—looking beautifully cool and competent in her tailored suit, with each perfect blond hair caught in the sophisticated coil she wore, and accompanied by a uniformed nurse. His sister-in-law drew her brows together, the only sign of her concern, as she looked at Lexi.

“Leave the room, Richard,” she said.

“No.”

Melissa managed to get between him and the bed. “Then at least step back,” she told him. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Please,” she said. “It will be easier. Leave the room.”

He compromised. He couldn’t leave the room, and he couldn’t bear to watch as the nurse produced a syringe. He walked to the window and looked down over the street as the blood samples were drawn, as impersonal hands and eyes examined Lexi. A few minutes later the nurse left and, almost simultaneously, the guard arrived with a photocopy of the hospital records. Then Richard and Melissa were alone with Lexi—the guards gone, the evidence gathered, their part of this day finished.

It seemed like hours later, and they were still alone.

The hotel bedroom was softly lit by the lamp Melissa used as she studied the photocopy of the hospital records. Her eyes had widened when she first began reading, but she made no comment, reading silently, with her entire concentration focused on the file in her hands. The sky outside the window was dark now, the building across the street a darker shadow against it.

And Lexi slept on, unaware of them, unmoving.

“Can’t you do anything?” Richard asked in frustration, breaking the silence.

Melissa looked up from the papers. “Not until we know what has already been done,” she said. Her voice softened. “It doesn’t look good, Richard. Drug treatment like she has apparently received was never proper psychiatric therapy, not in the past, certainly not today, and I want the lab report before I make any decision. I’m afraid, though, that we may be looking at addiction, that it’s not going to be a matter of just letting her sleep off the medication.”

Richard closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, swallowing once before he spoke. “What do the records say?”

“Too much,” Melissa said. “And not enough.”

He shrugged impatiently and lunged to his feet. “Damn it, Mel. Don’t play games with me.” He looked at the silent figure on the bed. “She’s my wife!” With visible control he lowered his voice, speaking insistently. “And it was my money that put her there.”

“Do you believe that?” Melissa asked. “Do you really believe that?”

Richard turned from her. “Hell, I don’t know.”

Sighing, he stuffed his bands into the pockets of his suit pants. “Yes, damn it. And because of an overdraft in an unknown account, I have the bank drafts to prove it.” He straightened his shoulders and turned to face the woman. “So tell me, Mel, just exactly what do those papers say.”

“Richard—”

“Tell me.”

“They say I was the referring psychiatrist.”

“But you were with Greg.”

“They say that Alexandra admitted herself to the clinic.”

“But why?” Richard asked. “She’d left me. She was free.”

“Richard. Please don’t do this to yourself.”

“Why, Mel? Why?”

Melissa stood, but after one hesitant step toward him, stopped. “Her medical records state a history of depression—”

“That’s nonsense—”

“Following a...following a self-induced abortion.”

He saw her. He heard her voice. But nothing made sense. Lexi. Pregnant? Letting him leave without telling him? That he could believe. Being desperate enough to run away in his absence. That he could believe. But to kill a child, any child, even his child. No. Not Alexandra. Please, God, not Alexandra.

The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted them. Gathering the copies close, Melissa hurried to the bedside table before the instrument could ring again. She spoke softly, asking few questions, and replaced the receiver. She turned slowly. “It isn’t good. Her med levels are much too high.”

Richard faced her silently. The news shouldn’t have surprised him. They had discussed addiction as a possibility. But only as a possibility. Now it was reality. A reality he had to confirm by looking at the figure in the bed.

Her eyes were open, watching him.

“Lexi?”

At his sharp intake of breath, Melissa turned, too, until she was standing beside him.

Lexi’s head twisted on the pillow, a pale blur against the pale linens. She looked from Richard, to Melissa, then back at Richard. Before he realized her intentions, she scrambled up against the headboard, taking the sheet with her. She felt beneath the cover. She was naked except for the ugly cotton underpants, but she seemed to take no notice of that. She bent her legs, reaching to feel her feet.

“My shoes,” she said in a little voice. “Where are my shoes?”

Her shoes, those cheap cotton slippers, had fallen from her feet as he carried her to the bed. They had lain in the middle of the floor until the nurse had picked them up and at Richard’s insistence had thrown them in the wastebasket, along with her dress.

Richard dropped to sit on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need them any longer. You’ll have new ones tomorrow. All you want.”

“I want them!” She shrank away from him, and Richard heard rising hysteria in her voice. “Please. Let me have them. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll be good.”

Richard clutched her shoulders, holding her in the bed. “For God’s sake, Mel, get the damned shoes.”

The moment Melissa thrust the shoes into Lexi’s groping hands, all the fight went out of her. She ran searching fingers along the insole of each one, then, clutching them to her, she curled around them and slid back down in the bed and into unconsciousness.

Richard sat dazed beside her, looking at the soiled and pitiful treasure she had fought for. The cotton was worn almost through on the soles, and ragged cardboard protruded from rips in the fabric. But Lexi had fought for them.

Why?

Even in sleep, her fingers clutched them, fighting his attempts to remove them. As gently as possible, though, he did.

He glanced at Melissa, but she shook her head, telling him silently that she understood no more than he did. It was almost as if Lexi had searched them. He ran his fingers over the insoles as she had. The change in texture was slight, so slight he almost didn’t notice—an area slightly stiffer than the rest of the backing. The tear in the lining was just one of many, but he found it.

Impatient with the tiny opening, he ripped the lining, exposing a folded piece of cardboard different from the faded gray backing. He unfolded it, and a moan broke from him.

The print was cracked and faded from the constant pressure of her foot. It wasn’t dated, but Richard needed no date. He and Lexi had renovated the conservatory of his house in Backwater Bay, Oklahoma, the preceding winter. Together they had selected the furniture and had taken delivery on it the week before he left. The picture he held was a snapshot, not a very good one, but good enough to show him and Mel seated on the floral-covered rattan love seat in the conservatory. His face was turned so that his unmarked profile faced the camera, and they were smiling at each other as they shared one of the few moments of the past months in which they had found any reason to smile.

He handed the picture to Melissa, and she studied it silently.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked.

“Yes.” She smiled grimly, the first time she had smiled since entering the room. “It means that Alexandra is very tenacious. It means that she has more spirit than either of us gave her credit for. It means that at least a part of her is still intact, still holding on, in spite of what she’s gone through.”

“And it means,” Richard said, not wanting yet to digest what Melissa had said, “it means that someone in the house, close enough to us to take that photo, made sure that she got a copy of it.”

“Richard.” Melissa put her hand on his chest. “She ought to be in a hospital.”

“No! She’s been hospitalized too long. I won’t send her back to one, and I won’t run the risk of exposing her to the press during the early court proceedings unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

“Withdrawal will be painful for her.”

Richard closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I know.”

“And for you.”

“I know that, too.”

He opened his eyes and met Melissa’s clear, considering gaze. “How long?” he asked.

“Several days at a minimum.”

“And after that?”

Melissa refused to look away from him. “I can’t make any promises.”

He groped for her, like a blind man searching for shelter, and she went into his arms, holding him to her. “Oh, Richard,” she murmured. “My dear, dear Richard. I wish I could tell you, but I just don’t know.”