Lost Identity (16 page)

“I have a few things to collect from my office, and I’ll have to call the restaurant for reservations,” said Curtis. “Why don’t you come along with me, and see if anything there seems the least bit familiar to you?” The way he asked her gave the impression that she’d spent a good deal of time with him in his office.

“All right,” she said, steeling herself for another emotional drain.

As they walked down the hall to his office several people smiled and nodded knowingly as if the two of them being together was a familiar sight. Trish’s spirits sank even lower when she saw a picture of herself and Curtis in a gold frame on his desk. They were in evening dress, apparently dancing in a ballroom with a background of glittering decorations behind them.

Following her studied gaze, he said, “That was taken at the Waldorf Astoria, during the company’s annual Christmas bash. Perry believed in doing things with expensive finesse. Your ideas were a little less flamboyant. Maybe it’s a good thing you don’t remember all the arguments you two had about that party every year.”

“Was he a hard man to work with?”

“Sometimes,” Curtis said shortly and then seemed to catch himself talking negatively about his other boss. “Perry was right on top of things, though. He
liked to spend money, but he knew how to make it—for all of us.”

“Do you think Darlene has a right to be suspicious?” She hated asking the question because she didn’t know what part she herself might have played in his disappearance. “Is there any validity to her accusations that he might be staging all of this?”

Muscles tightened in Curtis’s neck cheeks. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s true that you were really the only one that had his confidence. I can’t really believe he’d betray you—unless he had no other choice.”

A
NDREW HURRIED THROUGH
his morning work with only part of his mind on business, and the rest on Trish. He’d called her apartment earlier and Sasha had told him that she and Janelle had gone to the office.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was a little early for lunch, but the Atlantis offices were only a few blocks away, and if he could catch her at lunch, maybe she’d agreed to have a bite to eat with him so they could talk.

As he pushed his way though the throng of people choking the sidewalks, he felt like an adolescent hurrying to see his girlfriend. This driving need to be with someone was new to him. He’d never had anyone get to him the way Trish had. His every thought, dream, and desire was centered on her. He’d spent hours trying to come to terms with a tenuous hope they could overcome all the obstacles between them.

She had to be told about the private eye that Darlene had hired to follow her, but he had to handle it in a way that wouldn’t add to her load of insecurity. More
than anything, he wanted to let her know that he was there for her, reassuring her that she wasn’t alone.

This thought was at the front of his mind as he neared the front of her office building. Then he stopped short right in the middle of the sidewalk. His mouth suddenly went dry as he recognized the couple emerging from the front door.

There was no mistake. Curtis waved down a cruising taxi, and put a guiding hand on Trish’s arm as he helped her into the car. Then smiling, he disappeared into the back seat with her. The taxi sped away, leaving Andrew standing alone on the sidewalk.

He swore, turned away and headed back toward his office. He couldn’t get the picture of the fashionably dressed, well-to-do Trish and Curtis out of his mind. If there hadn’t been such pain in his chest, he would have laughed aloud. What had he been thinking? He should have known that once Patricia Radcliffe found her true self, his homeless refugee would disappear. Only a fool would have believed things would end any differently. For damn sure, he was a slow learner. Once more, he’d experienced the pain of letting his feelings get the better of his common sense.

T
HE
F
RENCH RESTAURANT
was elegant and exclusive. A soft trickling of a small fountain and lush greenery absorbed the sounds of muffled voices and the efficient service of the staff. A smiling maître d’ acknowledged them as regular customers and Trish’s stomach tightened as he led them to what he referred to as “their regular table.”

Curtis held her chair as she sat down, and then took the chair opposite her. The table was beautifully set with fragile china and glistening silverware. Her trav
eling gaze flowed over Parisian prints on the wall, the wrought-iron tables and chairs and the embossed menu in her hand. Curtis had said that this was a favorite restaurant of hers. Surely, there would be a flicker of familiarity about something from her past?

She only glanced at the menu, certain that everything was delicious and beautifully prepared, but at the moment the last thing she was interested in was culinary art.

“You order,” she said, closing the menu.

“All right,” he answered readily. “Would you like your usual?”

“And what would that be?”

He flushed. “I’m sorry. You don’t remember what your favorite is, do you? It’s sautéed grouper fillet. And you always order a glass of white wine to go with it.”

She felt like a child who was being tutored by an adult, and she wished to heaven she’d never agreed to have lunch with him. She distanced herself from the situation, and pretended to look at an ebony statue of a nymph while he gave their order to the waiter.

Last night’s dinner with Andrew seemed ages ago. She wondered if Andrew was having lunch somewhere in the city. She wasn’t sure whether he was working at home or at the office. He had dismissed her so abruptly last evening, there hadn’t been a chance to make any kind of future date. She still smarted from his curt goodbye, but maybe she should have swallowed her pride and taken his call—

“Patricia? Patricia.”

Curtis’s rather impatient voice broke into her reverie. For a moment the unfamiliar name didn’t capture
her attention. Then she came to with a start. “Yes, Curtis?”

“I was saying that the best way to handle all this nonsense with Darlene and the police is simply to ignore their ridiculous suspicions. You don’t have to put up with that kind of harassment.”

“What do you think happened to Perry?” Trish asked him with a directness that surprised her. Everyone else was in a better position to figure out the truth than she was. Maybe it was time she demanded some answers of her own.

Curtis’s brow furrowed. “I honestly don’t know. Perry seemed preoccupied that last week. I knew he had something on his mind, but I just figured that his wife and son were giving him a hard time. Gary is always needing money to get him out of one scrape or another, and Darlene had insatiable ambitions about keeping up with the upper crust.”

“What was my relationship with him?” Trish demanded bluntly.

“I’m not sure.” He was silent for a moment, fingering a folded napkin as if trying to decide the best way to say something.

Trish stiffened. Was he going to talk about their broken relationship? She watched his smooth white hands and long fingers smoothing the cloth, and she felt a chill.
Had she experienced those hands caressing her?

“Are you chilly?” he asked when he saw her shiver. “They always have the air-conditioning set so high that one needs a jacket.”

“Yes, they do,” she agreed, not wanting to admit that the shiver came from deep down inside her.

Curtis sent a slow penetrating look across her face,
and his deepset eyes narrowed. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

“No. I’m sorry. What little I know about…us is what Janelle has shared with me.”
Not only does my mind not remember you, Curtis, but neither does my body. I don’t want to rest in your arms, bury my face against your chest, or fill my being with your presence. My heart doesn’t quicken the way it does when I’m with Andrew.
Her lips quivered, as she was suddenly filled with an unbearable sense of loss that had nothing to do with her amnesia.

Misunderstanding her visible anguish, he leaned toward her. “It’s all right, darling. We’ll just take it slow. I want you to know that I haven’t changed my mind. Just because you broke our engagement doesn’t mean that we can’t fix things between us. I admit that I was too possessive and I let our little frictions at the office spill over into our personal lives, but we can change that. Don’t you see, all of this may be a blessing. You’ve forgotten all about our estrangement, and we can put that behind us, can’t we, and get back to the way we were.”

Trish was slow to answer because she suddenly felt trapped, as though he were deftly maneuvering her into some kind of corner. Certainly, everything he said was reasonable enough, but she didn’t like the way it was adding up to a reconciliation from a breakup that she didn’t even remember! She wasn’t ready for that now—maybe, never.

Fortunately at that moment, the waiter arrived with their food, and she pretended great interest in the beautifully prepared meal set before her. As she picked up her wine goblet, Curtis moved quickly to click his with hers in a toast.

“To us,” he said, his hazel eyes deepening as he looked across the table at her. “To the future.”

“Whatever that may be,” she countered, determined not to be unwittingly sucked into his agenda.

He hesitated as if the toast was not to his liking, then he seemed to recover and gave her a rather thin smile.

An uneasy silence settled on them as they ate their lunch. Trish could feel Curtis’s eyes on her throughout the meal, but she gave pointed attention to the delicious food, which was wasted on her lack of appetite. He tried several avenues of conversation but they all fell flat. Obviously the things they had in common required some knowledge of what had gone on before—a knowledge that Trish didn’t have.

When the waiter brought the dessert cart to their table, she shook her head. “No, thank you.”

Curtis seemed to toy with the idea of having dessert as if determine to command her company as long as possible, but as Trish pointedly ignored him, he asked for the check instead.

As they left the restaurant, he took her arm possessively as if she might run away if he didn’t restrain her. They took a taxi back to the office.

She remained in the cab when Curtis got out. “Thank you for lunch. I think I’ll go back to the apartment now. Tell Janelle I’ll see her later.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? Maybe you shouldn’t be alone.”

“Why not?”

“You seem a little unsettled. You really should—”

“Would you quit giving me advice, Curtis,” she snapped, and then was instantly ashamed of herself. This couldn’t be easy on the guy. Obviously he wanted
them to get back together, and was doing his best to cope with a sweetheart who didn’t even remember him. “I’m sorry, Curtis. I need time to myself.”

He nodded, stepped away from the cab and watched as it pulled out into the Manhattan traffic. Trish gave her address, leaned her head back and thought about Andrew. Should she swallow her pride, drive out to his place and be there when he got home? She had his cell phone number. A brief call wouldn’t hurt anything. An inner voice mocked her weakness.
Give up, now before you make a complete fool of yourself.

The taxi deposited her at her apartment, and the smiling doorman offered her a pleasant greeting. As she took the elevator up to her floor, she wondered when she would stop feeling like a stranger trying to make everyone believe that she belonged here. Maybe she didn’t. Could there be some horrendous mistake about her true identity? This thought kept plaguing her as she greeted Sasha and then went directly to the library. A Rolodex of names and telephone numbers gave her what she wanted.

She called the number of the doctor listed there. The nurse/receptionist assured her that there was a record file on Patricia Radcliffe.

Trish thanked her and then dialed Dr. Duboise at Havengate.

Apparently orders had been left to put her right through if she called because the doctor immediately came on the line. “Trish. How are things?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the next episode of the Patricia Radcliffe soap opera. Right now, I have something else on my mind. Would you request that Patricia Rad
cliffe’s medical records from her personal physician be sent to you?”

“
Her
physician?” He echoed quietly.

“All right,
my
physician. I want you to check the blood type to see if there’s a match, and anything else in the physical records that would provide verification that I am, without question, Patricia Radcliffe. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” he answered readily in his usual accepting manner. “And tomorrow you can tell me why you think that’s necessary.” He paused. “Don’t try to handle everything too fast. Give yourself some time.”

“Do you think it might be a good idea for me to check back into Havengate for a spell?” she asked hopefully.

He chuckled as if he recognized her urge to run away and hide. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, but, Trish, you can’t hide from yourself.”

“And that’s the problem, Doctor. I don’t think I want to be me.”

“And you’re hoping that there has been some kind of mistake, and you’re not Patricia Radcliffe at all, is that it?”

“I guess so. If you want to know the truth, I don’t think I like her—me—very much.”

“Wait until you have all the evidence before passing judgment. The verdict is still out. See you tomorrow.”

Trish hung up the phone and rested her head in her hands. A growing doubt about her identity made her wonder if she was losing her mind as well as her memory.

Chapter Eleven

The next morning Janelle offered to work with Trish in the library so that she might get oriented to the company’s computer files. Trish appreciated the offer, and did her best to understand everything that Janelle was explaining about the multilevel operation of the investment branch of Atlantis Enterprises, but very quickly Trish realized that Janelle was moving much too fast and swamping her with details that needed a foundation that she didn’t have.