The Coltons: Nick, Clay & Jericho. Marie Ferrarella

clearly disapproved, and Alan didn’t blame her. “He calls our answering machine at home every ten minutes.” Alan roused himself. Last time he’d been out of this room, the waiting area had been empty. “Is Dan out there?”

      Caroline shook her head. “I sent Shelly to look for him, and she called when she found him carrying a gas can down the highway. They’ll come here after she takes him to a service station and then back to his car.”

      He nodded, twisting his hands on the metal bed rail. “A full gas tank probably seems pretty mundane to him right now.” He and Dan had stumbled blindly through the past two days. Cate anchored their family. Alan only hoped he was taking up enough of her slack to be a good father.

      Caroline’s eyes seemed unnaturally wide as she tried to smile. “We’re all afraid. What if she doesn’t wake up? How long are we supposed to—”

      “Don’t think about giving up.” Alan briefly hugged his sister-in-law. “She feels what you feel, Caroline.” It was ridiculous, putting such an airy-fairy notion into words, but Caroline met his gaze with Talbot determination.

      “Don’t you worry.” She gripped Cate’s hand. “I refuse to lose her.”

      Caroline’s tenacity almost renewed his faith. But it might be too late for him and Cate. Her serious injuries and the possibility she’d never let him try to win her back lingered in his mind.

      He’d wanted to make her life comfortable and easy. Instead he’d let her down, and even now, he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.

      The door swished open, and Aunt Imogen entered the room without speaking. Her bare head made Alan take a second look. She habitually wore oversize straw hats that she’d trimmed with flower displays never seen in nature. Today, only her fine gray curls clung to her temples.

      Courage in her tired gaze touched Alan. He’d swear she hadn’t closed her eyes since he’d had to tell her about Cate. Neither had he, but she looked fragile.

      He dragged a chair to the side of Cate’s bed. The way he’d let Cate think he resented her care for Aunt Imogen shamed him. According to local gossip, the older woman had been in midheartbreak over an affair with a married navy pilot when she’d taken in Cate and Caroline. Her emotionally hungry nieces had loved their aunt back to health, and Aunt Imogen and her brother, Ford, had shown Cate and Caroline the only true family affection they’d ever known. They’d also convinced Alan he belonged to the Talbot clan from the first day Cate had brought him home. He owed them as much as Cate ever could.

      Taking Caroline’s hand, Aunt Imogen sat and smoothed the sheet beside Cate’s hip. “I guess you spoke to Dr. Barton this morning, Alan?”

      Before he could answer, Uncle Ford prodded his way into the small room with the aid of a cherry cane and his great-niece Shelly’s hand at his elbow. Behind them, Dan craned for a glimpse of his mom.

      Alan sidled through the others to wrap his arms around his son’s surprisingly broad shoulders. Dan hugged back, to Alan’s relief, but then he quickly pulled away. Dan preferred a handshake in recent years.

      Alan met Aunt Imogen’s questioning gaze. “Barton can’t say much until Cate wakes up.”

      “Until she breaks out of that coma,” Caroline said, as if the coma were an animal that had wrapped her sister in its vicious grip. “Let’s face facts.”

      “I won’t face that word.” Aunt Imogen stood, her expression a faultless display of barely controlled fear. “Take this chair, Ford. Stop banging that cane.”

      Her brother gave her an annoyed glance. “Good thing I’m not sensitive about having to use it.” He patted his sister’s hand. “I know you’re just worried.” Bellowing at a decibel level that compensated for the hearing loss he refused to admit, Uncle Ford nevertheless took Aunt Imogen’s seat. “Maybe the racket will wake—” he actually lifted his voice “—Cate.”

      Her foot twitched beneath the blanket. Alan went back to her bed. “Cate?” Could waking her be that easy?

      Her eyelids fluttered. For a horrified moment, he was afraid she couldn’t open her eyes.

      “Cate,” he said, “wake up. Uncle Ford, why didn’t you shout at her before?”

      “Shall I try again?” Uncle Ford struggled to his feet, maybe to lean a touch closer to Cate’s ear. He might have yelled again, except Dan appeared at his side to help him—or maybe to hold him back.

      Alan flashed his son a grateful smile and took Cate’s hand. “Wake up,” he said again. “Please, Cate.” He didn’t beg easily, and his reticence had been a sore spot between them. He’d beg pretty damn freely now. “Cate,” he said again, and she opened her eyes and held them open. Her steady blue gaze made him want to shout, but he knew better than to scare her.

      “Are you in pain?” He didn’t dare look away. Something different in her expression bothered him—some level of detachment he’d always expected to see. Wives detached themselves, no matter what you did to keep them with you. “Caroline, get the doctor.”

      As Caroline left, Cate’s gaze followed her. She studied each person around her bed. Nothing that made her the Cate he loved was in that gaze. She eyed her aunt and uncle, her son and her niece with the same strange, dreamy look until she focused on Alan again.

      “Who are you?”

      The courtesy in her tone chilled him.

      Trying to ask her what the hell she was talking about, he choked on his first breath. Confusion threaded the air, like a piece of twine that slipped from body to body. Strangling them all.

      Aunt Imogen finally cried out, but then she covered her mouth. Uncle Ford’s cane clattered to the floor. Alan reached for both older people, steadying them with hands that shook hard enough to remind him how his father felt about men who gave in to their emotions.

      But even his dad would understand this. Cate had left him after all.

      THE LOVELY WOMAN with copper hair had raced out of the room, and the others, except for the dark man, poured after her. Just as well. Breathing took such an awful effort, and that many people must use a lot of oxygen.

      Why would a hospital let such a crowd mill around a patient’s room? She stopped in midthought. She must be the patient. She was in bed.

      How she’d come there escaped her, although she felt as if someone had welded a hot metal plate to her right leg. Nausea hovered, as if she were on a boat that refused to stop rocking.

      She willed her queasiness away and concentrated on the man. Watching her from wide, dark-green eyes, he was clearly waiting for her to speak. As if he knew her.

      She didn’t know him.

      She must have been in an accident. Had she interrupted a family reunion? That many people in the same place had to be a family.

      She took a deep breath that seemed to fill her head. The truth rocked her. Strangers didn’t hang around a hospital bed, even if they’d banded together to rescue an accident victim.

      She didn’t remember what had happened to her. She remembered—nothing.

      At her shoulder, a monitor’s steady beep grew more rapid. The sound drew her gaze as she tried to pry her own name out of her blank memory. She didn’t seem to have a name.

      She knew her name. Everyone knew her own name. It was—She could feel it on the tip of her tongue. She ought to know. The monitor began to ping like sonar.

      She didn’t know.

      Suddenly aware of the man’s harsh grip on her hand, she turned toward him. “I don’t know you.”

      “I’m your husband. I’m Alan.”

      He terrified her. She tried to sit up in bed, but a powerful, formless weight held her down.

      “I’ll