Shifting Shadows (8 page)

“
From the top.” The words came out of her mouth before she realized she was reporting the dream, not what she knew as fact.

The way his eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened told her immedia
tely she’d given the wrong answer.

“
So you remember now.”

Had she just admitted to her would-be murderer, while trapped in a moving car with him, that she remembered his attempt on her life?

“No,” she denied, answering both the question he’d asked and the one she feared he was asking. She looked away from him as she spoke, hating the breathless way the single word came from her lips. Her heart pounded wildly as her eyes darted about the car, vainly seeking an escape.

“
If you don’t remember, then why did you say you fell from the top?” His voice was quiet and logical...and terrifying in its normalcy.

“
I don’t know why I said that. It just came out. I don’t remember. Truly, I don’t.” She waited tensely for his next action. How could she have let her guard down so he could trap her like that?

“
Well, I see your ex-husband is waiting for you,” Dylan said, and she saw that her house was just ahead, that Phillip was leaning against her car.

Very possibly, she thought as Dylan pulled up to the curb in front of Rachel
’s house and stopped, this man she had divorced had just saved her life.

She opened the door and scrambled out before Dylan could come around
to open the door.

Phillip
’s pale eyes glittered like silvery mirrors in the fading sunlight, following her path as she moved toward him, and she suddenly felt trapped between the two men. She didn’t fear Phillip as she did Dylan, but his presence made her feel suffocated. She didn’t want to be with him.

“
I’ll be over to get you in the morning.” Dylan’s voice came from behind her. Quiet, resonant and definite, it burned through her.

She hesitated, turning back.
“Thank you,” she said, laboring futilely to keep her tone polite and calm. Even to her own ears she sounded breathless...and she wasn’t at all sure if it came from fear or the sudden surge of desire he always seemed to bring to the surface.

“
My pleasure,” he said, returning her politeness. But his was as strained as hers. His eyes, his voice, the way he stood, all exuded raging passion—passion to kill her or touch her? She couldn’t tell.

Maybe both.

At the moment
Phillip seemed the safer of the two men. She turned and ran toward him.

Her gratitude was short-lived. As soon as they were
inside the house, he grabbed her arm, twisting it, forcing her to face him.

Panic surged through her as memories crowded
her mind, but not memories of Phillip. The hand clutching her arm seemed to belong to Blake.

He shook her, and she realized he was talking.

“Where did you go with him? Did you spend the day together? Where’s he taking you tomorrow? Every time I see you, he’s around. What does he want from you?”

Through a haze of fear and confusion she heard the words, tried to make sense of them, tried to determine if Phillip or Blake was saying them.

She fell to her knees before him, her free hand going up to protect her face. Blake liked to hit her in the face, leave bruises so everyone would know he could control his wife.

His fingers on her arm tightened as he tried to pull her to her feet, but she slu
mped into a dead weight, refusing to make it easy for him. She strained harder to reach the floor, to make herself into a ball. He was saying something to her, but she wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. It didn’t matter anyway. Whatever she said, he’d hear only what he wanted to hear.

Tears of pain
, rage and fright started from her eyes, but she fought against them, refused to cry ever again. His power fed on her fear, her weakness.

“
Analise!” With both hands he yanked her head up to face him. She closed her eyes to keep him from seeing her terror, but the hateful tears oozed between her lids, betraying her.

Suddenly his hands were no longer hurtful, but stroked her tentatively instead.
“Analise?”

The name reached inside her.
Analise
. She was Analise. Not Elizabeth. This was Phillip, not Blake. Blake had hurt her, beaten her, but Phillip hadn’t. Trying to orient herself to the present, she raised her face, confronted his puzzled gaze as he knelt on the floor in front of her.

“
I’m sorry.” He sounded confused and oddly uncertain as he offered her a silk handkerchief. “I don’t know what came over me. It was like I was somebody else. I didn’t mean to make you cry. You’ve always been so strong. You never cry. I’ve never seen you cry before.”

“
I’m not crying,” she protested, ignoring the handkerchief, restraining herself from wiping the tears away because that would be an admission that they existed.

“
I’m sorry,” he repeated, decisiveness returning to his voice. “I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour, wondering where you could be when your car was right here. I was worried about you. Maybe I was jealous when I saw you drive up with him. It seems like he’s always hanging around, more than just a neighbor.”

From somewhere inside, an impulse stirred for her to rise to her feet, tell Phillip that what she
’d been doing was none of his business. But she bit back the rush of defiance. It wouldn’t be right. He was...had been...her husband.

“
I couldn’t remember how to drive. Dylan took me to the shop then picked me up. That’s all.” That’s all. Except he frightened her and excited her, and no matter what he said, she knew they’d been more than friends.

Phillip rose slowly and drew her to her feet.
“You couldn’t drive? You really are suffering some ill effects from your accident, aren’t you?” Again he sounded uncertain, a rarity for him, she suspected.

“
I’m doing much better,” she told him as he urged her toward the sofa in the parlor.

But he shook his head as he sat beside her and took both her hands in his.
“You haven’t been acting like yourself. You seem so defenseless.”

Defenseless?
Well, wasn’t she? What possible defense did a woman have against a man? She’d had no defense against Blake when he turned cruel after their marriage. She’d been his wife, and he’d had the right to hurt her if she displeased him. Men were bigger, stronger. Even the law was on their side.

“
Let me take care of you,” Phillip urged.

“
I’m all right,” she assured him.

His lips thinned into a half s
mile. “But I’m not. I miss you. And when I saw you drive up with another man, I lost it. Darling, I’m so sorry. You know I’d never hurt you. I was insane with jealousy. Please come back home and let’s try again to make our marriage work. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Sh
e studied him intently for a moment. After Lottie’s description of their divorce, this was the last thing she would have expected. Insane jealousy? Wanting her back no matter what it took?

Still, the idea of being divorced had bothered her. Maybe
Analise could divorce her husband, but Elizabeth had a hard time accepting the idea. Whatever had happened to cause Analise to divorce him, Phillip wanted to make it right. Whatever it was, he hadn’t beaten her the way Blake had. She felt certain of that.

Lottie
’s peculiar idea rose to the front of her mind. She had said people reincarnated, came back to earth again and again until they
got it right
. Was this what she needed to get right, what Phillip needed to get right? She hadn’t been happy with Blake, and now she’d divorced Phillip. Both Elizabeth’s marriage and Analise’s marriage had gone wrong.

Of course, she didn
’t really believe any of that, but if her husband wanted her back, she should go. That was her duty, wasn’t it? A woman married for better or worse...forever. This man had been her husband. He cared about her, wanted to take care of her. A simple lack of feeling couldn’t have been bad enough to end a marriage.

“
No, I can’t.” She blinked in surprise as the words came out of her mouth. Even so, she knew she had spoken the truth. She couldn’t go back to him...at least not yet.

Though Phillip
’s expression didn’t really change, it seemed to harden. His grip on her hands tightened imperceptibly.

“
I can’t right now,” she temporized. “How can we work things out when I don’t remember what went wrong? Why did we get a divorce? Why do you suddenly want me back?”

He released her hands and leaned back, looking not at her but into empty space.
“Yes,” he agreed, “you’re right. We should discuss it. I knew I had to have you back when I came out here, found the door broken down and feared that something had happened to you. I knew then how important you are to me. But I’m not sure I can tell you exactly why we got a divorce. It was for a lot of reasons. I spent too much time at work. Our interests changed. We didn’t communicate enough.” He refocused on her. “But that’s in the past. We can work it out. Just give me a chance.” His words were passionate, but his eyes were pale and distant, again the reflective mirrors she’d seen in the sunlight.

“
Please,” she said, “give me a little time. I promise to reconsider us, our marriage.”

He stood abruptly, smoothing the creases from his suit.

“All right. I guess I’ll have to settle for that for the moment. Where would you like to go for dinner?”

“
I don’t want to go to dinner,” she said, bristling at the way he took her acquiescence for granted then automatically cringing when she realized she’d defied him.

He looked at her curiously but made no move to harm her. He was
n’t Blake, she reminded herself—if Blake had ever existed.

“
Then I’ll go pick up something and bring it back here,” he replied.

“
I’m not very hungry. There’s so much going on. I’d like to stay home tonight, alone.”

“
Alone.” He raised one eyebrow, making the word a question.

“
Alone,” she repeated. “I need a chance to think, to sort things out.” To deal with the memories that had suddenly deluged her, memories of having been abused by Blake.

“Tomorrow night,” he said.

She didn’t want to go to dinner with him, but he could give her more pieces of Analise, and she needed that. “Tomorrow,” she reluctantly agreed.

W
hen he finally walked out the door, out of her house, relief washed over her. She stood on her porch and waved as he drove away, then turned to go back inside. But she froze halfway. Next door Dylan sat on his own porch in front of an easel, apparently absorbed in his painting.

He
’d been watching her again. She wasn’t sure of many things right now, even her own identity. But she was certain of that one thing—he’d been watching her again with those eyes like deep wells that beckoned her to dive in, perhaps to drown.

She darted inside, locking the door behind her, pulling all the curtains closed. Even then she fancied she could still feel that dark gaze on her, piercing her, drawing her to him, and she had to fight an impulse to open the curtains wide and let it in.

Dylan watched the curtains closing, watched
Analise shutting him out. He laid his paints down, ceasing any pretense of work. What was she doing in there that she didn’t want him to know about?

Phillip had left after a surprisingly short time,
and with his going, some of Dylan’s tension had eased. When he’d seen Phillip standing beside her car, when she’d run to him, he’d barely been able to restrain himself from rushing over there, from grasping Phillip’s throat and squeezing until he saw the life leave those unnatural eyes.

He clenched his fist and
had to resist smashing his canvas in frustration. He didn’t try to stop the anger. He only marveled that he no longer seemed able to direct any of it toward Analise. His heart insisted on believing in her innocence in spite of all the evidence.

He was beginning to think she really did have amnesia, beginning to believe that fantastic story about Elizabeth
Dupard. However, she had said she’d fallen from the top of the stairs as though she remembered it. If she was innocent and she did remember tumbling all the way down the stairs, that could mean—

He set his jaw firmly, not wanting to face what
the possibility of her lying about her amnesia could mean. He’d come into this situation assuming she would lie. So why should he be so upset now to see possible proof that she had?

One thing was absolutely certain. He couldn
’t let her out of his sight even though staying so close to her might be disastrous. She was too damned attractive, especially now when she seemed so vulnerable. It was becoming far too easy to slip into unguarded, unplanned conversation with her, to try to bring out her smile.