A Hard Man to Forget Read Online Free Page B

accepted it trembled. Laura took the picture with some
reluctance, leaning just close enough to take it. She was sure if she
got too close his hand would lock over her wrist and pull her to him.
He didn’t. She snatched the frame away from him and fell back
into her corner.
    Reluctant to take her eyes off him, Laura stared at him for a long
moment, then slowly lowered her gaze to the photograph. She tilted it
toward the light to illuminate the image.
    It was a wedding portrait. The man was the same one who stood
towering over her. Not that she realized it right away. The face was
almost unrecognizable, and not because there was anything physically
different. There was a softness there, a special kind of joy. The
look of a man in love. It was so far removed from the expression he
bestowed upon her now that she wouldn’t have believed him
capable of it. The groom’s smile could have outshone a thousand
suns. She couldn’t imagine the man in front of her cracking a
grin in a thousand years.
    As if to reassure herself that it was him, she blinked up at the man
standing over her. His eyes, his expression, hadn’t shifted. He
looked the same as he did in the picture, and so very different. He
was older, of course; the photograph had to have been taken at least
five years ago. But it was more than that. There was a grimness to
him that went deeper than the cast of his features, that forbidding
aura he exuded like a dark cloud. In spite of herself, Laura felt a
twinge of sympathy for this man who didn’t seem to have an
ounce of that joy she’d seen in the picture left in him. She
wondered what had happened to change him, what role his wife had
played that had filled him with so much anger that there wasn’t
room for anything else.
    “Now can you deny that you’re her?”
    His words shook her out of her thoughts, and Laura realized she had
been putting off looking at the woman in the picture. His bride. A
shudder skipped down her spine. She didn’t want to look, didn’t
want to know if what he said could be true. Under the force of his
stare, she didn’t seem to have a choice.
    Laura slowly lowered her gaze back to the photograph, forced herself
to look at this man’s bride.
    The woman had her face.
    She knew he was waiting for her response. All of a sudden she
couldn’t breathe, let alone form a coherent sentence. She could
only stare stupidly at this woman with her face.
    There were subtle differences. This woman’s nose hadn’t
been broken; hers had. This woman’s cheekbones were flawless,
high and elegantly sculpted. Hers had been restructured after the
attack. The resemblance was still uncanny. It was like looking at a
before picture, what she might have looked like before the attack.
    Which might just be exactly what it was.
    “Well?”
    There was a thread of impatience in his tone. Whatever answer he was
looking for, she couldn’t give it to him.
    “I don’t know anything about this.”
    The flash of anger appeared so quickly she didn’t recoil
immediately. By the time her reflexes responded, he’d spun away
from her, throwing his hands up in disgust.
    “Damn it, Meredith. Can’t you see that lying isn’t
going to work? You’re caught.”
    “I’m telling you the truth!” She jabbed a finger at
the picture frame. “I don’t remember this. I don’t
remember anything before they found me two years ago.”
    He came to an abrupt halt and glanced back at her, keeping his
expression hidden from her. “Who?”
    “The police. They found me outside the bus station in
Harrisville two years ago. I was attacked. Someone worked me over
pretty bad. I almost died.” Even now she couldn’t say it
without a lump forming in her throat. “But I was lucky. The
doctors were able to put me back together again. The only thing they
couldn’t help me with was my memory.”
    “You don’t remember anything?”
    Laura shook her head. “Nothing. Not who I was or where I came
from. I didn’t have any ID on me. The