Love Lost and Found (4 page)

Felicity cringed. That was certainly not something she was ready for. “What did you
call him?”

“Jacob.” Again, Michaela’s voice was gentle, softer than Felicity had ever heard.

“Nice. Simple. I like it.”

“Anyway, tell me about you. Have you ended your dry spell yet? Gonna join me in babyland
anytime soon?”

“Hardly. My record still stands at two kisses, one crappy one-night stand, and an
ongoing flirtation with Double Dimple Jeremy.”

Michaela laughed, then her voice grew serious. “You’re going to have to get over Brendon,
babe. I know he crushed your confidence, but five years is a long time without anyone
in your heart. Trust me. I know.”

Michaela was the only person Felicity had shared her history with. She knew about
Brendon; the death of her parents; the climbing accident; the fact that Felicity had
a Harvard MBA.

“You might think it’s safer to stay single, and I know your heart has been through
plenty, but if your husband hasn’t materialized yet, I don’t think you’re cheating
on anyone.”

“Stop being so damn clever. Isn’t having a baby supposed to drain you of your brain
power or something?”

“Ha. Sucks your memory, that’s for sure.” She paused. “Sorry.”

The pause lengthened and Felicity bit her lip. Even now, the memory of waking in the
hospital with amnesia shook her. The walls were white. More than that, they were anonymous.
Completely devoid of anything personal or friendly. When she shut her eyes and looked
for the place in her mind that would tell her where she was, a switch, something?
There was nothing. No flicker of recognition of her surroundings. No slideshow of
memories of who she was. All that lay behind her eyelids were black, hollow, shadows.

“Still nothing at all coming back?”

Felicity shook her head. “Nothing since I got here.” In the hospital when she plied
through the Google hits on her name, she learned she worked in finance, most recently
at Biogena, and had done so for a number of years. When she pulled up the company
website, she’d expected a profile page, something to give a bit of personality to
the place. But it was a bland, anonymous site. “Biotech,” she’d read.

The next day she woke with a chunk of memory returned. She remembered growing up near
the coast. Remembered living on a yacht for six years before going to school, graduating
and seeing her parents’ proud faces when she received her double degree in chemistry
and accounting. But she also remembered the pain and isolation when they died on a
diving holiday around Great Barrier Reef.

“And you never heard from your boss?”

“He was still in a coma when I left.” In a coma and in isolation, her fellow climber
had left her nothing to go on, no way of telling what the hell they’d been doing on
a team-building exercise upstate or what their relationship had been like.

“So you’re still in do-over mode,” Michaela said. “Plenty of people would pay for
that sort of thing. No regrets, no losses. Your life here and now.”

“Yes, I know. You don’t need to channel your counselor today.”

A baby started crying in the background. “Oh crap. He’s awake. Honestly I put him
down and he only sleeps for forty-five minutes. I thought they were supposed to sleep
all the time.”

“It’ll get better,” Felicity promised.

“Easy for you to say. You’re still living the high life. Or you should be. I expect
some decent stories next time I call. I’m planning on living my life vicariously through
you for some time. So sort it out. Have a fling already.”

Felicity laughed. “We’ll see.” Her mind flicked to Cashypants. If he wasn’t such an
uptight shark, he’d be a rather tasty distraction.

“I mean it. Live a little, babe. Take care, okay?”

As she ended the call, Felicity wondered if she’d ever feel ready to let go completely.
Love seemed like something impossible. Insurmountable. But then, it had once been
like that for Michaela and look at her now. Felicity thought about Michaela with a
baby. About having children of her own. She’d made herself ignore thoughts of family
for the most part, but what if she’d always wanted a child? Whatever, she wasn’t having
one any time soon, whether she wanted to or not.

She threw her cell onto the table beside her bed. At least she was done with
baby
sitting VIPs for a while. Putting on her
nice
on behalf of Adventurer Cruises was exhausting!

Chapter Four

As the tender pulled up to the rather rudimentary jetty, Felicity looked around properly.
She hadn’t been to this island before. It was tiny, with no infrastructure: no hotels,
no restaurants, not even any toilets. But when the weather was calm enough for the
cruise ship to stop, the population went from zero to over a thousand in a matter
of hours. Madness. Definitely not her usual thing. But despite the sprawl of tourists
covering every square inch of its beaches, the island was…well…a tropical paradise.
Palm trees graced its golden sand beaches, offering dappled light, perfect for dozing
after a swim. The water was about as clear as even the most effusive travel agent
could hope for and, in its center, an outcrop of black obsidian pinnacles provided
a dramatic backdrop.

When the captain had summoned her this morning, she’d hoped it had been to congratulate
her on wooing Cashypants effectively. Not so much. Captain A-hole hadn’t taken her
exclamation of “
Another
day with him!” particularly well. Today she was going to have to bite her tongue
properly. No more being bitchy at Richard, no matter how often he opened his jaws
to smile
or
bite. Although what the hell got under her skin about him was still a mystery.

She’d wondered for a moment yesterday whether she might have known him, but he hadn’t
brought it up and
surely
would have. The only time he’d been remotely close to it was when he was trying out
pickup lines on her and they’d been so very bad that she hadn’t been able to take
him seriously. That was definitely a good thing. A shark like him was not what she
needed in her life right now. Calm, peace, and happiness did not come wrapped in a
package as sleek and sharp as Richard McCashin.

“I read that the locals think this place is haunted.” Richard butted into her thoughts.

“I have heard that, but those guys don’t seem too bothered by it,” she said, pointing
to the group of four local Ni-Vanuatu selling freshly caught and cooked lobster to
a very excited bunch of cruise passengers.

“It’s just at night, apparently. The spirits leave during the day, but at night they
come out to take their revenge on a princess who broke her word to a local prince.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure no one was yanking your chain on that one?”

He put his hand over his heart. “I’m sure no one would dare lie to me. I’m a potential
investor, after all.”

Good man. Maybe he’d decided to be nice to her as well today.

“The princess promised to marry the prince but she ran away without giving him a reason
for her cold feet. The descendants of the prince must’ve tracked down her spirit and
brought her here so they could take out their revenge on her every night for the rest
of eternity.”

“Remind me not to promise to marry any local princes.”

His jaw clenched and something dark glittered in his eyes.

Damn, snarky already.
Didn’t take long to break her pact with herself, did it?

He stood to step off the tender and Felicity watched him carefully. He was sharp even
after an early start. But there was too much slick to his hair, too much ironing to
his wardrobe for her liking. The linen jacket he wore today was just a joke—it’d get
creased in about two minutes on the island. And who wore linen anymore, really? Except
princes.
Ha, good one.

“Just a reminder that the tenders will be leaving at 4:00 p.m. on the dot. No excuses,
no exceptions.” The steward repeated the announcement even though it had already played
over the loudspeakers on board.

“Do they really do that?” Richard muttered.

“Leave on time?”

“Leave people behind.”

Felicity inhaled, searching for the answer that made Adventurer Cruises efficient
but not ruthless simultaneously. “It’s very rare that anyone doesn’t make it back
on time. But the whole timetable of the cruise can be seriously messed up if we have
to hang around waiting a couple of hours while someone negotiates a better price for
their pearl necklace.”

“Or doesn’t set the alarm while they’re napping after a romantic afternoon under the
covers.”

Felicity couldn’t believe the heat she felt flushing her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed
in a
loooong
time. “Something like that, yes. We don’t abandon anyone callously, of course, and
we’d never leave anyone in danger, but there has to be a balance between leaving on
time and pandering to two thousand people’s desires.”

“Of course.”

Not letting him get another jab in before she’d even gotten sand under her toes, Felicity
made for the end of the jetty and the beach, barely pretending her quick trot was
a walk. She heard him only just keeping pace behind her and slowed a fraction, remembering
her promise to herself
and
the captain. “I bet you’re dying to get some water on your body,” she threw over
her shoulder, then almost slapped herself at the opening she’d given him. But all
was silent. She looked behind and caught him checking out her butt with unfettered
relish. This time his smile was definitely more carnivorous than charming.
This is going to be a loooong day.
Yet even as she turned and stared pointedly at him, she couldn’t help the heat that
stole over her skin as his eyes tracked up to meet hers. No one had made her feel
like this in…she couldn’t remember.
Mind on the job, lady.
“So what did you want to do today? I’m afraid I’m not going to be the world’s best
tour guide as I’ve never been here before. But we can have a swim and as you know
I’m partial to a little lobster, so I’ve planned on getting you to buy one off the
locals for lunch, if you have no objections. You know, as we agreed you’re loaded
and all.”

“No objections at all. Although I was thinking of a walk first rather than a swim.”

Yippee, a long, sweaty walk. Great.
“Great.”

Their walk took them high up into the dark cliffs, and Felicity had to bite her tongue
plenty to stop from complaining. Richard kept up a punishing pace, and that combined
with the humidity meant she could feel her hair frizzing with each and every sweaty
step. As they started to descend, Richard finally showed signs of slowing and followed
a trickle of water off the path to a shallow pool.

“Thank the Lord. Melting was not how I planned to die. Time for lunch before these
lobsters we’re hauling around decide to crawl back into the ocean and I decide to
join them.”

“Fine. I wouldn’t want you escaping again.”

Again?
Weird thing to say. Felicity shrugged off Richard’s response and sat on a rock, fanning
herself with her hat.

“I do believe you might expire if you don’t get in that water. Best we undress for
lunch, don’t you think?” Without waiting for her reply, he dumped his small bag, stripped
off his jacket and shirt, and peeled down his trousers to reveal turquoise board shorts
and an array of ink Felicity would never have guessed at. He stepped into the pool
and splashed the water up over his chest, making his tattoos sparkle and his muscles
gleam. Oh, God. If there was ever a need for a new Caped Crusader, Richard McCashin’s
chest could take on Christian Bale’s any day. His tattooed torso was hairless with
perfect pecs, not too buff so they looked like man-boobs, but firm and smooth and…
Must. Not. Look. At. Passenger. Muscles. Say something to distract yourself.
“Wouldn’t have picked you for the coloring-in kind.”

He rubbed his hand over his chest.

Duh. Now you’ll be rude if you
don’t
look.
But it was reassuring in a way: if she did know him, surely she’d remember something
as beautiful as that.

“Don’t you like them?”

“I didn’t say that. Just…”

“Just what?” There it was again. The way he looked at her, with his eyes hard, piercing,
as if he was looking through her and searching for something only he knew was there.
She wrapped her arms around herself despite the heat of the day.

“Just nothing. What are they? Equations or something? You a scientist?”

“You could say that. Anyway, shall we eat?”

Not so great when someone’s asking
you
the questions, is it?
She let it slide but filed the avoidance of his tattoo story for future ammunition,
should she need it.

They made short work of the lobster, local flatbread, and mango they’d bought on the
beach, washing it down with the bottle of water Felicity had brought from the ship.
She looked at her watch. “Heck, it’s almost three thirty.”

“No wonder I was hungry.”

She shrugged off his comment. “We need to get back. Sharpish.”

The shock registered on his face when he realized what she meant. “Right.”

He jumped out of the pool but misjudged his step, tumbling to the ground via a large
pile of unfriendly looking rocks.

“Richard?”

Nothing. Just a blank look of pain on his face as he lay sprawled on his back.

“Oh, no. Richard? Richard, are you okay? Hey, dude. Dying on my watch is not okay.”

Nothing. He didn’t move, but his mouth was open, and he seemed unable to breathe.

The sound of water trickling and the faint hiss of waves on the distant beach were
all Felicity could hear. Something was wrong with Richard McCashin, and help was a
long, long way away.

Chapter Five

“Do I check for injuries, or not touch you? Crap, oh crap. What if you’ve broken your
back or something?” Felicity danced from one foot to the other, hands to her mouth,
unsure of what to do.
Stop. You are calm. You are light.
“Right.” She took a breath. “You’re probably fine, aren’t you?” She pulled off her
shirt and knelt to pillow it under his head, then decided against it.
You aren’t supposed to move someone with a back injury, are you?
Richard started turning a rather nasty pale color, and he didn’t seem to be pulling
much air into his lungs.

She looked at her watch. “Crap. Don’t be broken, just be okay. Hey, you. Get up, please.”

“Urrrgh.” His breath finally hissed in and out in little shallow gasps and Felicity
realized he’d been winded, the air stolen from his lungs by his fall on the rocks.

“Hey.” Felicity was instantly on her knees again. “Hey, can you hear me? Richard?
Are you okay? You had a fall.”

“Fall?” He struggled to sit up and draw another breath.

“No. Don’t move. Not yet.” She pushed him back down gently. “Let’s just check that
you haven’t hurt yourself too badly.”

“Everything…ouch.” He touched his stomach and his ankle.

“Don’t touch anything. And maybe don’t move. Or…maybe do. Gah, I’m crap at this.”

He laughed, then winced.
Well, the laugh was a good sign, wasn’t it?
At least he seemed able to breathe again and some color was coming back into his
face.

“Maybe you could try to move. If you think you’re up to it.” She sneaked a look at
her watch but couldn’t make out the time without being obvious.

“We late for something? Don’t want to keep you waiting.”

Sarcasm. That was a good sign too, wasn’t it?
“Let me help you to sit up. I mean, unless it hurts. Are you in pain? Other than
your stomach or your chest, or something?”
Shit, bugger, damn. Calm down and stop jabbering.
She really was a crappy nursemaid.

A flash of understanding passed over his face. “Did I fall far?” His hands explored
his body and Felicity was forced to watch them trail over his bare biceps, chest,
down to his thighs, and on to his ankle. Oh dear Lord, this really was some sort of
test sent to try her, wasn’t it? The way his tattoos danced when he flexed his arms,
the way that bead of water was trailing down the center of his chest toward his…
Stop. It. Focus.
“You tripped getting out of the water.” She pointed to the small spring pool.

Richard seemed dazed for a moment as he looked at the water, but shaking his head
briskly apparently cleared it. “Right.” He struggled to a sitting position, keeping
his hand on his ankle.

“Thank God. I was worried you’d broken your back or something.”

“Not this time.” His smile was wan, but she’d take anything she could get, at this
point.

“Sorry, but do you think you can walk? I can help. It’s just that we’re going to miss
the boat if we don’t—” A sharp blast of the cruise ship’s horn sounded out in the
bay. Felicity looked at her watch. “Oh, crap.” Three fifty. “We’re not going to make
it.” Felicity’s heart dropped like a slab of the obsidian they sat on and landed square
and solid in her stomach.

“Well, we’ve missed the last tender now. Someone will work it out and get a boat sent
for us from another island. We should be able to catch the ship up at her next stop.
Do you think you can walk down to the beach?”

“I’m sure I can, with a little help,” he said, taking her hand.

Felicity almost leaped backward and yanked her hand away.
The guy is damaged. Be gentle.
But she couldn’t help herself. The static electricity was back and there wasn’t a
scrap of linen on him to explain it. “Let’s get down to the beach in case there’s
a boat sent to fetch us right away.” She stood, gathering his clothes and stuffing
them into his bag.

He remained sitting, looking up at her with a pale face, all his shark gone.

Grit your teeth. If he falls again you’ll be ready for it.
Hesitatingly she bent and took his hand and helped pull him to his feet.
See, it’s not that bad if you take control.

He stood relatively confidently, then took a step and almost collapsed. “Ouch.”

Great.

Not waiting for an invitation, he threw an arm over her shoulders and leaned on her.
Gah!
Her knees threatened to sag and drop them both. The contact of his bare skin all
the way down her exposed side was more than static electricity. This was buttered-knife-in-the-toaster
territory.

“I’ve done my ankle in.”

“I can see that. We’ll take it slow and see how we go, okay?”
But not too slow or we’ll be stuck here forever!

Staggering slightly under his weight and with the thrill of his skin on hers, they
step by slow step made their shuffling way back to the path and started down to the
beach.

“Do you think it’s far?”

Holy Batman hell.
Far enough if it was going to be like this the whole way. “No, not too far. We’d
already started coming back down before we stopped for lunch.”

They walked on in silence for a while until she noticed his limp seemed to be getting
worse. “Is your ankle that bad?”

He didn’t say anything, just gritted his teeth and smiled.

“Humph.” She chewed on a stray strand of hair. If they didn’t get back down to the
jetty it was going to be harder for anyone to find them, but if she ripped up her
shirt to bandage his foot, she’d probably turn redder than the lobster they just ate
when the shade of the jungle trees ran out. Pulling at a stray leaf, she stopped.
Of course. “I’m going to bind your foot with some of this. Let me know if it’s too
tight.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not sure why you’re smiling. This isn’t going to make it better, just stop it
from getting worse so we can get down to the beach without you toppling over.”

He nodded and the smile faded from his mouth, but he seemed more cheerful somehow
. Whatever gets us through this.

Carefully stripping the leaf to make a few soft and relatively even lengths, Felicity
wrapped two around his foot and up from opposite sides of his ankle, using a third
to knot the whole thing together.

He tested it out. “Thanks. You’ve done this before, apparently.”

Had she? “Beginner’s luck.” But even as she said it, Felicity wondered whether she
had
done something like this before. It was as if the technique was there, just waiting
to be reused, and when she’d bound Rick’s ankle, there was no hesitation in how she
should do it. Maybe she wasn’t as bad a nursemaid as she thought.

“Not too tight?” she said to cover her confusion.

“No. Feels good.”

“At least I’m doing something right then. Shitballs, what a mess.”

…

He’d planned to get
accidentally
lost on the way back to the beach to make sure they were late. His fall had done
a much better job of ensuring they’d get stuck here for the night without any awkward
questions from his fiancée. Fact is, he wouldn’t have been able to fake being winded
like that if he’d tried. Despite the pain of his ankle, it was probably a lucky accident.

The smile that played on his lips felt good. Great, even. So far, plan B was going
pretty well. Tropical island paradise, check. Survival adventure, check. Hot feisty
woman, check. He was almost positive her amnesia was real now, so he hoped putting
her in survival mode would bring back something,
anything,
that would make her believe he had the company’s best interests at heart in getting
her to sign over the shares in the patent. The danger if he didn’t was that she wouldn’t
sign, or—worse—that she’d do whatever it was that she’d been going to do with Novotech
a couple of months ago. At the very least, keeping her to himself for a night meant
he got to work out if there was ever going to be a
them
again.

The more time he spent with her though, the less she seemed like the Felicity he remembered.
He’d never noticed her proclivity for random exclamations before. The chuckle bubbled
up unbidden when he flicked through some of her comments. Shitballs? Who said that?
Yet somehow Felicity managed to make the exclamation sound comical, righteous, and
dramatic, all in one breath. And the way she stood, feet apart, one hand on her hip
and the other tugging at her fabulous hair as she worked out the best way to bind
his foot? It had taken every inch of self-control he had not to grab her roughly and
cover her pouting mouth with his. He’d found her attractive before, but not throw-her-to-the-ground-take-her-now
sexy. She’d either taken an acting class in the last few months, or the accident had
brought out a whole lot more in her than the desire to run away from her job, fiancé,
and life back in San Francisco.

“So, you going to tell me what the story is with your ink?” she asked as she tucked
and folded the almost flaxen leaves around his foot.

Damn, he was the one supposed to be fishing for
her
story.
Felicity finished binding his foot and stood back, eyeballing him with a none-too-coy
look.
Maybe if he laid out a portion of the truth she’d follow suit?
“It’s not something I usually share with people.”

“But it’s drawn all over your body. It’s not like you’re hiding it.”

“Yes, but I don’t generally go about topless.”

She arched an eyebrow at him.

Rick took a deep breath. A taste of the truth would have to quench her appetite for
now. “It’s something my brother and I decided to do together.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes.” He let the pause spread out around them and watched her face for any flickers
of recognition. Any twitch that would tell him she knew this was a much bigger conversation
than either of them was letting on.

“Right.”

Nothing.

“So what are they, then? I mean they look like elements, but is it a formula or something?
I mean, you don’t really look the type to pick a picture out of a book.”

“You got that right.”

“So?”

Rick stretched his arms out in front of him, flexing his muscles, and caught what
might have been a slight intake of breath from Felicity.
Excellent.
“It’s an equation, yes. But not a complete one. My brother started working on something
years ago and I promised him I’d finish it.”

“You got it tattooed so you wouldn’t forget to finish it?”

“Something like that.” He’d gotten it tattooed so he’d never forget the promise he
made to keep working on a cure for leukemia. To take on the disease that had killed
his brother and knock it around a bit so it wouldn’t be the automatic death sentence
for others the way it had been for Tom.

“Cool. It’s certainly a good conversation starter.”

He didn’t need a conversation starter with the woman in front of him, that was for
sure. She came with her own backstory, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it. If you
took a lateral approach to cause and effect, his brother’s unfinished formula had
been what brought them together. It was certainly the reason he’d started Biogena,
and, as a consequence, found Felicity.

“Don’t you worry that someone might transcribe it and steal it or something? I mean,
if it means something to you?”

Rick startled. It was too close to the truth, too close to the reason he’d come after
her.
Are you testing me?
He couldn’t help the malice that crept into his voice. “It’s unfinished. You planning
on knocking me out and skinning me? My pelt might fetch a few dollars, I guess.”

“Jeez. Gross.”

She’s right. Chill out. You’ll get nothing if you freak her out.
“Sorry. That was a bit over the top.”

“You think? Man. I was only asking about your tattoos. If you didn’t want to talk
about them, you only had to say so.”

“You’re right.” It wasn’t the tattoo he couldn’t talk about. Just the work that had
become his life. His life after his brother. “A friend referred me to a graphic artist
and she turned the equation fragment into something I couldn’t even have imagined.”
Rick trailed a finger down his chest.

“It’s pretty gutsy. I mean, it’s not a small design. Definitely gutsy for someone
as straitlaced as you.”

“Straitlaced?” His arched eyebrow was half amusement, half surprise. She’d never have
said anything like that before. It could too easily have been taken as an insult.

“Don’t mean to be rude, but, you know, you
are
a squillionaire. You hardly seem the rock ’n’ roll type.”

“No.” Rick paused as he thought about what his brother would have made of this whole
situation. Tom had managed to get a tiny section of the tattoo drawn on his chest,
matching the portion that Rick touched now, but Tom’s illness had gotten so bad so
quick, adding a tattoo needle into the palliative mix of injections wasn’t something
that either of them had thought sensible. “I hadn’t really meant for it to be this
big. But when she showed me the design I couldn’t
not
do it.”

“It was the right decision. You could have gotten a tiny portion. Maybe that bit there.”
She pointed to the section Tom had chosen. “But it’s better to have the whole thing.
If you’d done half of it, it might have been just another quirky tattoo. Now? Well,
I guess I have to admit that it’s art.”

“You’re saying I’m a man of taste?”

“Hardly.” She pursed her lips, caught out at the almost-praise. “Just that your graphic
design girlfriend had real talent.”

“I’ll take the compliment on her behalf.” Rick’s breath evened out and he realized
he’d still been tensing for some kind of signal from Felicity. There was nothing there.
No recognition of the chemical formula itself, no flicker when he’d mentioned his
brother. Sure, she’d been attentive, but she hadn’t shown anything other than a simple
interest in the patterns that were scrawled across his body. More than that, the woman
in front of him was so easy with herself, despite his pressing her. It was different.
Nice. Felicity had often been a bit stiff, her shoulders always tense, even though
she’d always been ready with an answer.