Unforgettable. Samantha Hunter

in the bar.

      The way it always had.

      “I don’t understand this,” she said, stuttering a bit, unsure. Rattled.

      “What don’t you understand?”

      “Why I― What this thing is with you.”

      “What thing would that be, exactly?”

      “Why I feel...when we... I don’t know you. I don’t even think I like you much,” she said, shaking her head. “But when I look at you, I...”

      She remembered. Or some part of her did.

      He took her chin between his forefinger and thumb.

      Bo’s heartbeat was racing, too. He should walk away, call a cab and leave. He should let this be.

      But he wasn’t going to.

      “I think I know what you mean. I feel it, too,” he said, his voice a whisper.

      Her eyes widened, and without warning she turned her cheek into his palm. The light rub of her skin on his set his blood on fire, and sense evaporated. Everything was lost to the night except being close to her, finally. Bo wanted to be closer.

      He put his hand at the back of her neck, bringing her forward until she bumped up against him. Then they were kissing, and it was the first time he could breathe in months.

      He thought it would be a quick, gentle kiss, but need came on so hot and sudden it knocked all the sense out of him. Her arms wrapped around him, and she was pressing into him as she always had, as hungry as he was.

      Bo pulled her in tighter, parting her lips and kissing her as passionately as he could. Still it wasn’t enough.

      She was breathing hard as he slipped his hand along the small of her back, up under the edge of her shirt. Her skin was cool from the night air.

      He explored her throat before working his way up to her lips again, but she pulled away, as if suddenly realizing what was happening. At the same time, voices rose in the lot behind them.

      Bo couldn’t think straight. He reached for her again.

      “Erin, don’t—”

      She pushed past him and ran down the sidewalk.

      He stared after her, cursed under his breath, some little thread of clarity returning.

      What had he just done?

      If his place in the investigation had been iffy before, he’d just made it a lot worse. No one knew about his previous relationship with Erin—they’d seen each other in off-hours, never telling anyone. If the department found out now, well, things could get complicated. At best, they’d take him off the case. At worst...well, he didn’t want to think about it.

      They could think he was covering for her. They could think he was ethically compromised in any number of ways.

      As he strode through the lot, reaching for his phone with slightly shaking hands, he couldn’t help one thought that kept going around in the back of his head as her scent and taste still lingered. No matter what happened, it had been worth it.

      2

      ERIN DREW HER hand back quickly as she saw the blood well on her fingertip.

      “Stupid thorns.”

      She was sorting roses for arrangements, making sure only the perfect, healthiest ones made it into the bouquets. Her fingers were freezing, but she couldn’t do the work with gloves, so she’d risked the thorns.

      Rinsing off the wound, she grabbed a paper towel from the rack and held it until it stopped bleeding. It was only one of about a dozen scrapes and punctures she’d gotten from the flowers that day.

      Working for a florist wasn’t something she wanted to do, but it was something to do. She wasn’t a paid employee, but Kit said she could always use the free help, and at least it kept her busy. Erin couldn’t hole up in her house all day doing nothing until her memory came back. Then she really would go crazy.

      However, even the prickly thorns didn’t take her mind off Bo Myers.

      Maybe she was fumbling the flowers so much because she hadn’t slept all night, and when she did doze off, he was kissing her again. And more.

      Much, much more.

      She’d dreamed of him before in hazy, undefined ways, but last night... Well, her imagination had had a lot more material to work with. Her fantasies had been very specific. She remembered the whorls of dark hair on his chest as her fingers had touched him. The hard muscles of his thigh and in particular, a mark on the side of his hip that her mind returned to again and again. It was shaped like an almond, dark against his normal skin tone.

      She’d pressed her lips to it, hearing him moan as her hands explored elsewhere.

      And there had been apples.

      Usually, her dreams were smoky and shapeless, everything occurring in jumbles against a blurred background. But last night she’d seen apples. As if she were looking up from the ground, under a tree full of ripe, red fruit.

      When he’d kissed her outside the bar, it had been a surprise, but on a deeper, more basic level, it had been familiar and right.

      Her hands trembled as she returned to the roses, sorting them by variety without further injury and putting them in fresh water and into the coolers. Then she headed out front, where she saw that the closed sign had been flipped and her sister was bent over the computer on the counter.

      “Evening already? What time is it?”

      “Four-thirty. I closed a bit early.”

      Kit—short for Kathleen, a name that Erin learned her sister had never liked—looked up from her work, eyeing the front of Erin’s shirt with a smirk. “The roses biting again?”

      “How could you... Oh,” she said, looking down to see blood from various scrapes had gotten on the white blouse she wore.

      “I told you to wear one of the aprons,” Kit said in true older-sister, know-it-all tone. So what if she had been right?

      “I will next time, Kathleen,” Erin said with appropriate sisterly sarcasm.

      Kit’s lips twitched with humor.

      “Well, it’s good that you remember how to be annoying.”

      Erin stuck her tongue out and they laughed. Joking around was good and helped dispel some of the ghosts she’d been wrestling with—and her thoughts about Bo.

      “Do you mind if I take off early, too?”

      Kit looked at Erin over the top of her glasses, frowning. “You’re going out with the guys from the firehouse again?”

      Tension settled between them, as Erin struggled between telling Kit what happened and telling her she wasn’t her mother. Erin could go where she wanted, including out with the crew.

      Kit had told her outright that she’d never been a fan of Erin’s chosen profession. The accident had made her even more set against it. Kit didn’t even seem to like her hanging out with the guys, but Erin enjoyed seeing them. She wondered what her sister would think about what happened with Bo.

      “I can tell something is bothering you. Spill.” Kit was way too perceptive.

      Erin chose her words carefully. “Do you know if I was seeing anyone before the accident? If there was a guy? Someone special?”

      Kit’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think so. You were all about the job and never mentioned anyone. Did you remember something?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been having some dreams, and I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a figment of my imagination, but I saw someone at the bar last night, and he was...familiar.”

      “How