Unforeseen Danger Read Online Free Page A

almost spooky, and – wait a minute.”   He jumped to his feet.   “I’ll be right back.”  
    Jake hurried down the hall to the nurses’ desk and borrowed a small makeup mirror from one of them.   He returned to Nikki’s bed and held it for her.   She touched her face wonderingly.   Jake thought of how incredible she looked on their wedding day.   Her lovely hair had been pinned up with a pearl clasp and her eyes had danced the day she married him, just two months after she predicted she would.   He had looked at her in that white silk gown and his heart had ached at her beauty.
    “It’s cruel for a woman like you to have a face like that.”
    Tired and stressed, Jake didn’t realize that he’d spoken aloud until she said tightly, “And just what kind of woman am I?”
    “ Nik , I’m so sorry!” he cried, horrified at himself .   “I didn’t mean to say—”
    “Were we happy, once?” she asked.   A tear slipped down her cheek and Jake felt his guts knot at the sight of it.   He brushed it away with his thumb.
    “Yes, we were…once,” he said hoarsely, unaccustomed to this fragility.
    “What happened to us?”
    “I think that we just had different expectations of what our marriage should be like.   Turns out, neither one of us got what we bargained for.”
    He knew he was being vague, but his wounds were too new and too raw for him to discuss right now, especially with the woman who had given them to him.
    Nikki must have sensed his reluctance, because she didn’t press the issue.
    “Thank you for staying here today,” she said.   “Everything feels so strange, but I feel safe when you’re here.”  
    Jake turned away, embarrassed.   If Nikki had her memory back, he would be the last person she’d want to see.   It made him somehow feel deceptive that she felt safe with him.   
    The nurse saved Jake from replying when she brought in Nikki’s lunch tray.   He perched on the edge of her bed and awkwardly began to arrange her food.  
    “ Nik , I’m going outside for a minute to try your parents again, okay?   I’ll be right back.”
    Jake climbed on the elevator, grateful for the excuse to get out of there for a moment.   He couldn’t think around her.   He could barely breathe.
    His thoughts returned to Nikki’s mystery passenger and he felt a vicious stab of satisfaction.   It had to be him.   Who else would she have been so desperate to meet with that morning?
    He knew Sara’s hotel room number by heart now and punched it in as soon as he reached the parking lot.   He was surprised to hear her muffled hello.
    “Sara?” he said a little loudly, struggling to hear over the static.
    “Who is this?”
    “It’s Jake.   I’m calling about Nikki.   She’s had an accident.”
    “What?   Is Nicole hurt?”
    He explained about her amnesia and what Luke Carver had said, and then asked if they could come home.
    “Oh, dear!   I don’t know how we can possibly get back before Saturday.”
    Jake frowned.   It was only Monday.  
    “Tell Nicole that I love her and that Mother will be there as—”
    “You’re breaking up, Sara,” Jake lied, and then hung up the phone in disgust.  
    No wonder Nikki was the way she was.
    According to Nikki, her parents had always been too busy to care for her, even when she was an infant.   That tedious duty had fallen to a dizzying array of nannies and housekeepers, one of whom was probably the woman Nikki recalled baking cookies with.   He would’ve bet his eye-teeth that Sara Davis had never taken the time to bake cookies with her young daughter.
    Unless there was a reporter around to record it for posterity.
    Nikki’s parents had always tried to make it up to her with money, lavishing her with pricey gifts to compensate for their absence.   Frankly, that was why Nikki was a twenty-five-year-old brat.   She had always gotten anything she wanted on a whim.
    Even him, he realized.   Against his will, he thought back to