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Heart of the Hero
by Rickey Mallory
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Futuristic Romance

Copyright ©2003 by Rickey Mallory

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

PROLOGUE

“For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers."

As I Pondered in Silence

Walt Whitman

* * * *

“Sir, we're almost there."

Lieutenant Daniel T. White ignored the voice, letting his head fall against the plush seat of the Vice President's personal air limo. Behind his closed lids the bright Washington sun burned as red as the fire that had consumed him all those months ago. He rubbed his temples as if he could force that memory back into the recesses of his brain where the rest of his memories lurked, hiding from him.

It was no use. The beginning of his memories, the day twenty months ago, played again and again in his head, like a defective disk caught in an endless loop.

The flash of white on the viewscreen—something heavy and sharp slamming into his thigh—fire bursting in front of his face...

“We'll be in Mount Vernon in about ten minutes, sir."

He didn't bother to answer the aide, he just kept his eyes shut and basked in the genuine warmth of the real sun.

Mount Vernon, his home, where his family waited for him. A cold fear clutched his heart and suddenly the sun seemed to fade, leaving him as chilled and empty as outer space.

His family. All they were to him were faces in holographic video pictures. He'd studied the animated frames for hours, just like he'd studied his face in the mirror, but it hadn't helped. Nothing had.

He was still as lost and alone as he'd been when he'd first awakened. His gut lurched as he relived the panic that had shattered him like glass when he'd realized he was blind and strapped down.

He had screamed, “I can't see! Did the bridge get sealed off? Is the crew okay? Who was in the Rapier?"

He remembered his helpless terror when they held the auto-pen syringe against his neck. “No! Wait! I need to know what happened!” His mouth still burned from the bitterness of the drug. He swallowed hard and shuddered. Sometimes he thought that bitter taste would stay in his mouth forever.

“Lieutenant White? Did you hear me, sir? Is there something you need?” The aide touched his arm tentatively.

Danny slitted one eye as the voice pulled his thoughts back to the present. “No, why?” he asked.

“Nothing, sir. I just thought you said something. My mistake."

The aide's voice was cautious. They were all cautious around him. Even the Vice President's grip on his hand as they'd boarded the air limos this morning had been careful, as if he were afraid he would break.

Danny sat up. Around him the bright sun played over the cloudless landscape in all the colors of green he'd ever imagined. He didn't remember ever seeing grass before, or feeling the sun's warmth. He didn't remember anything except pain and fear.

Of course, nobody knew that. Once he'd recovered enough to be coherent, he'd figured out that as long as he had amnesia, he'd never be allowed to go home. He would be too big a security risk.

So he'd lied to everyone but Dr. Ganand, the space station's psychiatrist.

He flinched as he relived the endless days filled with surgeries and interrogations. They dissected his brain even while they worked to repair his body. And all of it was brutally painful. Especially the nights, which were worse than the days, because at night there was nothing to distract him from his thoughts—thoughts that never once yielded up a name or any memory earlier than the flash of white.

“Here we are, sir,” the aide said. “A number of HSF Special Patrollers are already in place. As soon as the Vice President is ready to present the medal, you'll be escorted up to the dais for the press conference."

The Hover Vehicle slowed and turned, preparing to land. Its clumsy yawing made Danny's impatient fingers twitch to grab the controls and fly the machine like it should be flown.

Sweat erupted on his forehead and under his arms. Was he remembering how it felt to fly? He looked at his fists clenched on his thighs, and consciously relaxed them, flexing the fingers that felt stiff and new.

Sometimes the visions would hit him that way—sudden, unexpected—and he would explore each one like a tongue on a sore tooth, testing it, deathly afraid it wasn't a real memory, but equally afraid it was.

“Do you have everything you need, sir?"

Danny nodded curtly as the limousine settled perfectly next to the Vice President's in front of a huge white brick house. More hover vehicles and a few land cars lined the circular drive, and uniformed officers were directing traffic.

Yes, he had everything he needed, except his memories. He had everything he could ever want, except his identity. He swallowed hard against a growing lump in his throat.

He thought about the people waiting for him. His family. Daniel White's father had died five months before, but his mother and his wife were here.

Would they be able to see behind the transplants and the prostheses, past the scars and the careful plastic surgery? Would they recognize the man behind the face?

The aide was talking again. “Now once the VP has presented you with the Congressional Medal of Honor, he will leave and you will hold a brief press conference. You'll be close enough to the front door that after the last question you can just slip into the house. I'll dismiss the media. The Patrollers will remain for a few days, to help with security. Arrangements have already been made with—"

“Ensign,” Danny interrupted softly as men in the signature green and gray of the Homeland Security Force swarmed over the yard. His head was hurting, and he needed a couple of minutes to himself before they started jerking his strings again. He closed his eyes.

“Sir?"

“Could you shut the hell up?"

“Yes, sir!” The aide got out of the HV.

Danny waited for the young HSF aide to circle around and open his door, as per protocol. He stared at his hands and gathered his courage. He was about to perform again, like a puppet, saying the things he was supposed to say, and playing the part of the wounded hero to an audience that encompassed the entire world.

Dr. Ganand had warned him. “Americans love a hero, Danny. And like it or not, you're a hero."

He spread his fingers and looked at the tiny scars crisscrossing his palms. Daniel T. White, hero. It didn't work. If everything he'd learned since the accident was true, the word didn't go with the name. Nor did the name go with the man. He pulled on his dress gloves.

A band of pain tightened around his temples. Now he was returning to the waiting arms of a family he didn't remember. They'd been told everything, finally, once the government decided he was no longer a security risk and could be allowed to go home. It was pathetic how badly he wanted to remember them, and how afraid he was that they wouldn't remember him.

Fumbling in his breast pocket, he pulled out a miniature holovid pic. An eager, open face smiled at him, green eyes looking trustingly into his. Surely she would remember him. They had been married. He pressed a small button on the back of the metal box.

“I love you.” That was all she said in her laughing, melodic voice. He turned it back over, craving another look at the open eager smile. Her face was filled with love and laughter, and maybe just a trace of sadness. Danny held the picture a bit closer. What gave him the idea she was sad? The eyes? They were green and bright and filled with something he'd like to think was love.

A voice echoed in his head from Daniel White's micro-disk logs. Conniving bitch. He couldn't reconcile the cold fury in those words with the lovely face captured in the snapshot. The face looked like a face he could love. Kee looked like someone he could trust.

If only he could remember. If only he could feel a connection with the angry voice on the micro-disk, or dredge up the resentment Daniel White obviously harbored for his wife.

But there was nothing inside him except the hollow dread. The dread and one other thing, the thing that made him able to get through all this.

Hope.

Hope that, when Kee looked at him, her face would light up like the face in the photograph, and she would open her arms and welcome him home. Hope that when he stood in front of his family, something would click in his battered brain and he would be able to believe his own lies. That he was Daniel White.

Because right now he wasn't so sure.

Chapter One

“Surely you must know who is here, is here,

You must know who I am, my love."

Out of the Cradle, Gently Rocking

Walt Whitman

Rebekah Mayne White paced back and forth, tapping the handheld media receiver against her thigh. She didn't have to read it again to remember the headline in the People section of the Mount Vernon Daily Press. Weeks of headlines echoed in her head.

"Playboy Returns a Hero!"

"Mount Vernon Bad Boy Makes Good."

It was always the same story. "Former bad boy playboy Daniel White, son of recently deceased aircraft mogul Tiberius White, returns to a hero's welcome this week. November twenty-first, two thousand thirty-four, the date of the space station accident, and the beginning of the eighteen month media blackout, is indelibly imprinted on all our memories. Finally, all the speculation, all the fears are laid to rest with Lieutenant White's return."

“Not all the fears,” she muttered, tossing the HMR onto the table. Not the fear of what he would do when he saw her again. What had he said when he learned his mother and his wife would be waiting for him?

His wife. She laughed nervously. Theirs had been no marriage. She'd found that out on their wedding night, which he'd spent drinking with his friends. He'd been hung over and charmingly contrite the next day, of course. Daniel White could be irresistibly charming. Charming, sexy, capable of sweet seduction. Even after five years, Kee still remembered how easily her heart and her body had always responded to him. But he could be cruel, too.

Kee's mouth went dry as she thought about the drunken rages. The incessant fights with his father. The callous, careless way he'd married her then ignored her, barely acknowledging her presence except when he'd bent himself grimly to the task of getting her pregnant.

She turned toward the fireplace, and her gaze lit on a holovid pic. She froze, staring at the image of her husband. There were pictures of Daniel all over the house, of course. More holovid pics, holographs, as well as traditional portraits, but what stopped her dead in her tracks at this moment was the realization that this holovid pic had been taken on that last day. The day he'd left.

Staring into his hazel eyes, she couldn't reconcile his last cruel words with the clean-cut, angelic face in the photo.

Her head spun with memories.

“Little Miss Rebekah, you got what you wanted, didn't you? Married into the great White family.” Daniel's eyes had been dark with rage, his neck corded with tension. “But you didn't keep your part of the bargain, did you? All you had to do was get pregnant. It's not like someone as wealthy as I am would ever have to put in my time in MPS. But Dear Old Dad already made it clear. Settle down or he'd make sure my call came through. If he'd thought there was a little White on the way, he'd have used his influence. But you couldn't even manage that."

His lip had curled in a sneer. “Don't forget. According to a very reliable little debutante whore, there's certainly nothing wrong with my sperm."

Fear and regret clawed at her throat. He was right. It was her fault. She had failed him. And now she had defied him. The thought of what he would do when he saw her today left her cold with dread.

She touched the button on the back of the animated photo, starting the video. Daniel stood with a frown on his face as his mother came up beside him. He smiled absently at her then looked beyond her and the frame froze as a yearning sadness darkened his gaze.

She played it again. What had he been thinking of? Or who? She had caught a similar look on his face a few times, and each time was etched on her memory. On their honeymoon, when she'd almost been convinced he cared for her, one weekend at the beach house, when for a few days they had been like new lovers.

And one other time, on their last night together—the night he'd changed her life forever, then left her.

He'd only left one thing behind for her.

Hope.

She had built her life on the hope he'd given her that last night. She'd stayed with his family, accepted his mother's love, and the money and prestige that went with being the wife of Daniel White, all because of that night.

Swallowing hard, she glanced longingly at the rare Georgian game table, where crystal decanters of amber and claret liquid caught the light. A glass of sherry might calm her, but she would not greet her husband with liquor on her breath, even if she could hardly remember a day when he hadn't had liquor on his. Not today, though. He was a Patroller, a Lieutenant in the Homeland Security Force. They wouldn't allow their officers, their heroes, to drink on duty.

Their heroes. Daniel White a hero? What a joke. Kee's throat spasmed in a little laugh that was half sob.

What if the world had heard his voice on the morning he left, coiling around her like a snake readying itself to strike?

“I don't want you here when I get back, Kee. I expect to return to a nice tidy divorce."

He had pushed her out of his way and stormed out of the room. Later, she had stood stiff and nervous on the front lawn with his fingers clamped like a vise on her wrist, while his father made a statement about patriotism and public duty.

“Son of a bitch! I'd like to murder him!” Daniel had whispered. “Public duty! He's sentencing me to prison, and he's enjoying it. I wish he were dead!"

If the world knew him like she did, what would they think of their hero then?

Oh, she knew how charming he could be. There was probably no one on Earth—or in space—who knew better.

She had been so dazzled by his insolent charm, bad boy ways and irreverent humor that she hadn't stopped to examine her feelings all that closely. And then, of course, there was the Whitehall money. But Kee had very quickly found that one of her mother's favorite sayings was true. “Money cannot buy happiness."

In the past five years she'd had thousands of hours to think about why she had married him. Another favorite proverb of her mother's, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure,” had begun to make terrible sense.

What had he done when he'd found out she hadn't gotten that nice, tidy divorce? Made a scene? She prayed he'd learned some restraint in the last five years.

Kee checked the jeweled face of her watch and stepped out of the library just as Miriam White came down the stairs.

“Kee, darling! You look lovely. Oh, I'm so sorry that Ty couldn't have lived to see Daniel returning a hero!” Miriam's hazel eyes, so like her son's, filled with tears.

Kee put an arm around the woman's shoulders and squeezed. She had come to love Daniel's mother very much. Miriam White, so vulnerable and fragile since the death of her husband, had nevertheless been a source of comfort to Kee, filling the void left by her own mother's devastating stroke.

“I'm sure he's watching, aren't you?” Kee said, although she thought it was probably a very good thing Ty wasn't here, for Daniel's sake. She couldn't even imagine what a meeting between him and the father he hated would be like.

“Are you ready, Mrs. White?” Kee patted an imaginary stray hair of her mother-in-law's perfect coiffure. “Your son has come home!"

Miriam smiled, and Kee wanted to grab her in a fierce bear hug, feel the comfort of her loving arms, but of course that would muss both their dresses, not to mention their hair.

“You're so sweet,” Miriam said. “Daniel and I are so lucky to have you!"

Miriam was wrong. Kee was the lucky one. Miriam had been the mother Kee could no longer find in the unresponsive shell of a woman in the nursing home. She'd been the friend Kee had needed during those long months of media blackout when they hadn't known what had happened on the space station. When they hadn't known if Daniel was dead or alive.

Mrs. Tiberius White drew herself up to her full five feet two inches and fingered the emerald at her throat. “All right. Let's go."

The butler appeared as if called and held the front door for them. “The Vice President is here and ready to present the medal,” Avery told them. “The Patrollers will keep the media behind the roped off area until you two have had a chance to greet Lieutenant White. Then the Lieutenant will accept the award and the VP will leave. Lieutenant White will make a brief statement and answer a few questions. The media has been warned to go easy."

Kee lifted her chin and clutched her mother-in-law's hand as they stepped into the late summer sunshine. It was too late now to worry about what Daniel was going to do.

* * * *

Standing at the open door of the HV, Danny licked his lips and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. Another throng of people. Another puppet show. Another chance for them to jerk his strings. It almost made him long for the blank white walls of the infirmary and the void he'd existed in until they'd forced him to live again.

Almost.

But he'd found out a very important truth in those agonizing weeks he'd spent in that void. It was better to be anybody, anybody at all, than to be nobody.

The aide handed him his gold-topped cane, which he gripped like a lifeline, its cold metal burning through the gloves.

“Sir? Shall we?"

He shook his head once, sharply. Through the sun's glare he could see it all, the hungry media, the dais where he would provide sight bites for the news shows, the two women standing rigidly poised—the two most important women in his life, whom, in his memory, he'd never met before today.

“No. You stay here. I'm fine,” he lied, saluting the aide. Then he walked stiffly toward the dais.

Of all the pain, trauma and fear he'd faced in the past twenty months, he was pretty sure the next few moments might be the worst, because they could be the beginning of his new life, or the last, stumbling step into the void.

Would they know him? As he drew closer, the pale ovals of their faces coalesced into features.

The older woman looked both determined and fragile. Her eyes glittered with tears, her hands clasped desperately. Her blonde hair was lighter than in the pics, and she was not quite as plump, but he recognized her. She was Daniel White's mother.

The younger woman bore very little resemblance to the fresh face in the holovid pic in his pocket. This woman looked like a mannequin ... perfect, beautiful, plastic. The girl in the picture looked more alive than the real thing.

He almost stumbled, the difference startled him so.

He'd counted so much on her open, loving smile. He'd thought Kee would be the one person he could depend on. The picture showed a girl in love.

And the fact remained that despite what Daniel White had said about her in his micro-disk logs, he had kept her picture.

As he approached, he watched her carefully, his pulse throbbing in his temples. Her throat moved as she swallowed, then she straightened her shoulders like a soldier at court martial and walked toward him.

He met her gaze, searching it for the eager joy that had beckoned to him from the holovid pic. The eyes were the same, but he saw a flicker in them that disturbed him.

Danny's heart slammed against his chest. Didn't she recognize him? Was that the reason for the wary light in her eyes?

He paused, not breathing. The next seconds would decide his fate. The throngs of people, the melee, all faded while he waited to see what Daniel White's wife would do. She seemed perfectly composed, serene, except for her eyes. He hated that wary flicker that masked something else, something vaguely, achingly familiar.

“Kee?” His voice cracked on her name. Adrenaline gushed through him and his instinct was to turn and run. But he was a Patroller, and Patrollers never shirked their duty. So he stood numb with apprehension as she drew his head down with a beautifully manicured hand and pressed her cheek against his. Her skin was warm and petal soft, and a scent of lilacs blasted him like a desert wind.

His hand cramped on the cane as he stopped himself from grabbing her and pulling her close. The oddly familiar scent and her touch combined to stir a reaction in him he didn't remember ever feeling. A reaction he'd been deathly afraid he'd never feel again. His body tightened with desire. He turned his head to put his lips against her cheek.

She froze.

“Daniel, please don't embarrass your mother,” she whispered. “I'll explain everything later."

Chapter Two

“Wherefore unsatisfied soul?

And whither O mocking life?"

Passage to India

Walt Whitman

Kee's musical voice reverberated like the echoes of a bell as she jerkily pulled back from him.

What the hell did she mean by that? What was she going to explain later?

Danny almost lifted his hand to reach for her, craving the feelings her touch evoked, but the wary pleading he saw before she lowered her gaze stopped him cold. He stared at the top of her head, his heart vying for position with the lump in his throat.

“Daniel!"

He gripped the cane tighter as he turned toward the older woman whose misty eyes shone with love and pride.

“M-mother?” His dry lips almost wouldn't shape the word.

“Oh, Daniel! Look at you! What have they done?” She touched his face, tracing one faint scar at his hairline. He had to grit his teeth to keep from jerking away from her desperate touch. His gut tightened in terror, but he forced himself to lean over and kiss her.

“My beautiful boy. I'm so glad you're home. Don't ever leave again!” Tears cut a snaillike shiny path through the powder on her cheeks. The huge green stone around her neck faded her eyes to mossy gray.

Danny searched her face for something he could claim as a memory, but nothing surfaced.

Kee's fingers brushed his arm, sending a shock like lightning through him. “The Vice President is waiting, Daniel."

He turned toward the dais where the white-haired Second-In-Command smiled indulgently. How much longer was he going to have to do this? He felt the seductive pull of the house behind him, its interior a dark, cool sanctuary where he could shut out the insatiable media and deal with the important things. Like why Kee watched him so warily. Like what his reaction to her meant. Was it merely that of a man to a woman, or did his body hold a memory of desire for his wife?

The Vice President began speaking. Danny tried to concentrate, but he was too tired, too overwhelmed by it all.

"...Lieutenant Daniel T. White, whose quick thinking and courageous action sealed off the sleeping quarters of the Space Station just as the mysterious fires and explosions began, thereby saving the lives of the off duty crews and almost losing his own. Twenty-seven Patrollers and civilian staff died, including White's bunkmate."

Danny went through the motions, accepting the medal, shaking the Vice President's hand, murmuring appropriate responses. Then suddenly, he was alone at the dais and reporters were shouting questions. The sun's autumn brilliance bounced off the microphones and vidcams that stared at him like silver fly-eyes from the lectern.

“Uh, ladies and gentlemen of the press, haven't we met before?” His voice was scratchy, but there were sounds of appreciative laughter as vidcams and disks whirred.

“I feel like I've been giving speeches for a week. This is still Tuesday, isn't it? As I've said before, I am so grateful to be alive, and to be back here with—with my wife and family. So grateful—” He had to stop. His throat was closing up, and his eyes were stinging. Until he'd actually spoken the words aloud, he'd not really stopped to consider them.

As he stared out at the eager faces before him, it occurred to him that he'd avoided thinking about what would happen when he actually met his family. Now that he was here, all the months of preparation were unimportant. It didn't matter how well he'd played the part of Lieutenant Daniel T. White, hero. It didn't matter how many times Dr. Ganand had gone over with him what he could expect, this was the reality. He was home.

Even though he had no memory of it, he was home. Tears blurred his eyes, and he had to clear his throat several times. The press loved it. The cameras and disks whirred and clicked, and more than a few eyes in the crowd glittered with sympathetic tears.

Unable to speak, swallowing against the lump in his throat, he turned with a motion that was a half gracious encompassing gesture and a half helpless entreaty to include his wife and mother. Kee's forehead was furrowed, but she put her arm around his mother, and the two of them stepped up beside him.

“I feel like I've been given a s-second chance,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady, “and I'm planning to make the most of it. I regret that my father isn't here. Now, I'll try to answer a very few questions.” Danny steeled himself against the onslaught. He'd already had a sampling of the kind of questions the press would be asking. Even a hero wasn't protected from the media's insatiable curiosity.

“Lieutenant, you said you feel like you've been given a second chance. Does that mean you'll be giving up your previous playboy lifestyle?"

Danny frowned. He should have known better than to make such a personal comment. “I plan to make the most of my life,” he said noncommittally.

“Lieutenant White, will you take over Whitehall Aircraft now?"

“I don't know. I've got a lot of catching up to do."

“Do you know what caused the explosion? Was it really a meteor, or was it, as has been rumored, an explosion of a secret experimental aircraft?"

“Can you tell us where you were when the explosion occurred?"

Danny held up a gloved hand, the other one clutching the cane tightly. “I'm sorry. I really don't know what happened, but in any case, I'm not allowed to talk about it."

“Lieutenant, what about the rumors that you and your wife were having problems?"

He saw Kee stiffen. That did it. He was through having his strings jerked, at least for one day. “I'm afraid I'm getting a little tired. So if you folks will excuse us, I'm going to go visit with my family."

Danny put his hand over Kee's where it rested on his mother's back.

When his fingers touched hers his newly healed fingertips felt seared by her soft skin. She jerked, but covered her recoil with a smile and a little flourish, gesturing to him to precede her into the house. He tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him. She kept her gaze lowered and smiled vaguely in the direction of his chin.

What was the matter with her? Her husband had been gone five years. She'd thought he was dead. Why did she tense when he touched her?

Danny's heart thudded in his breast. Did she know? Did she avoid his touch because she knew he wasn't really Daniel White?

Behind them the reporters continued to shout questions as the aide stepped up to the microphone to make a final statement. The butler led the three of them inside the White mansion and closed the heavy door.

Danny squeezed his eyes shut against a dart of pain in his temples and swallowed. The cool air of the hall chilled his sweat-sheened skin. Everyone's eyes were on him, but he couldn't play the hero any more. He needed to stop and catch his breath.

“Daniel? You're pale as a ghost. You need to go upstairs and rest.” His mother fluttered around him like a hummingbird in her filmy blue dress.

He nodded stiffly, the movement increasing the pain in his temples. He offered a silent prayer of thanks to her for suggesting it before he'd had to.

“You and Kee go on up, and I'll send up some coffee and brandy. Try to rest. Jan and Drake will be here for dinner."

Miriam clasped his hands in hers, and he felt her desperate love again. Her reaction was a good sign. She knew him. She accepted him as her son. Still, her suffocating love pulled at him. How was he going to do this?

“Oh, Daniel!” she said. “We missed you so. Ty would have been so proud."

He groaned inwardly. How could he tell her that he didn't remember her or his father? Her clutching fingers sucked at his emotions, draining him. What would she do if she found out there was nothing there?

“I'll see if I can help with the coffee...” Kee gestured vaguely toward Miriam's retreating back.

“No,” he said. “No. Come with me."

She frowned and straightened her shoulders, still avoiding his eyes. “Let me have your bag, then,” she said tightly. “You're going to have enough trouble navigating the stairs with that cane."

Gratefully handing the bag over to her, he followed her up the stairs. He let his gaze roam over his wife's body, her slim, straight back, her neatly coiled hair. She might not be the young, carefree girl in the photograph, but she was a beautiful woman. The sweet ache he associated with her rippled through him again. He tried to make it a memory, but it was too new, too alien. Still, it was gratifying to know he could react to a tantalizing glimpse of a shapely bottom. He almost smiled. It was another new experience, one of the few pleasant ones he'd encountered.

Ignoring the pain in his leg, he concentrated on Kee's bottom as it undulated under the green linen.

He hadn't paid any attention to the inside of the house, and he was distracted on the stairs, so when he entered the suite, he gasped at the scale and the opulence of everything. The space station and most of the places he'd been since his return were new and built of tempered glass and metal.

This place was from a different era. The rooms were huge, with crystal chandeliers and fine, polished antique furnishings. The bed was massive. Through a door he could see an elegantly appointed bath, and directly in front of him the entire wall was glass, with French doors leading onto a balcony that overlooked an Olympic-sized pool.

He let his breath out in a long, slow whistle, feeling his shoulders relax as he let down the Patroller's careful guard for the first time. When he did, the throbbing in his temples began to build into a tight band of pain.

“What is it, Daniel? Are you all right?” Kee's voice was sharp with apprehension, her glance keen.

“Sure,” he said quietly, narrowing his eyes against the bright sunlight. “I just need to lie down for a minute. I'm sorry.” He propped the cane against a table and tossed his hat toward the foot of the bed. He peeled off the dress gloves and doubled a pillow behind his neck, closing his eyes to slits but still watching her.

He wanted to ask her what she'd meant by explaining everything. But right now the pain in his head overrode everything else, and all he could do was wait until it dissipated. He was still so damn weak. When would he be able to get through a day without a blinding headache, or walk up a flight of stairs without his leg giving out? When would he be whole?

Kee smoothed her dress and moved toward the door, avoiding his gaze. “Why don't I leave you to—"

“No!” He closed his eyes, the pain sending red flashes across his vision. “Stay.” he commanded, regretting his harsh tone immediately, but too afraid she would leave to exercise politeness. He didn't want to be alone right now.

“Daniel..."

“Why don't you call me Danny?"

She was silent for so long that he peered at her. She was staring at him, her brow furrowed and her lips compressed. The band tightened around his head a little more. What had he said?

“What's the matter?"

“Why would you say that? You hate that name. You've always refused to let anyone call you Danny."

“Maybe I changed my mind.” He rubbed his temples with the heel of his hands.

Great. He was already making blunders. Fear lanced through his chest. Had he screwed up already? He steeled himself for an accusation, but nothing came.

Kee paced, like a spooked thoroughbred.

“Kee? Why are you so nervous?” He couldn't stand the suspense any longer. He had to know what she was thinking behind that mask of almost perfect poise.

She took a long steadying breath and said, “Daniel—Danny, I'm sorry about all this. I mean, I know what you said, but I just couldn't do it right after you left, and they seemed to like me around. And then after your father died, your mother needed me, so of course I stayed..."

He couldn't follow the words that spilled from her mouth in a jumble. His head throbbed. “Wait. What are you talking about?"

“About us. About what you said."

“What did I say?” He sat up carefully. Her hands were clasped so tightly it looked as if she were holding herself together. Her gaze traced his features like a blind person's fingers, sketching each faint scar from his forehead to his neck.

He endured her searching gaze, afraid of what she might find. The surgeons had done a good job, and he knew he looked just like the face on the ID badge. All in all, it was a good face.

He wished he could be sure it was his face.

It surprised him when she put out a hand as if to touch his cheek. “You are so different,” she whispered.

His heart lurched, and he steeled himself, anticipating her touch. That touch he'd dreamed about.

But she didn't move. He had an overwhelming urge to grab her and rip the mask of polite trepidation off her face, to shake her and demand to know if she knew him. He wanted to kiss her and see if his daydreams were real.

“Kee? What did you mean? What did I say?” His voice, always hoarse, was harsher than he'd intended.

She stepped backward. “We can talk later,” she said, her voice discordantly bright. “I'll just leave you to rest. I know you must be exhausted.” Without looking at him, she walked quickly toward the door.

“No! Wait!” He stood too fast and staggered under the weight of the pain in his head. He must have made a sound, because she turned, shock and worry transforming her face.

“Are you all right?"

“Tablets—in my bag. They're labeled Suma,” he whispered, sinking back down on the bed. He accepted the vial of tablets and the cold glass of water she placed in his hands. The water was delicious—fresh and unrecycled. He leaned his head back against the pillows.

“Is there anything I can do?” Her voice sounded concerned, if remote. He shook his head carefully. Remote he understood. It was how he'd felt ever since he'd woken up. Remote, cut off, alone. Betrayed by a brain that wouldn't cooperate and by a body that was healing much too slowly, even with the help of immunostimulant enzymes.

He gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose as a discreet knock sounded. He heard Kee open the door, and he smelled freshly brewed coffee. Kee whispered something, and the door clicked shut quietly. In a moment a hot cup of coffee was placed in his hand.

“Do you want some brandy?"

“No.” He sat up carefully and sipped, the heat of the coffee burning all the way to his stomach. “Ah. Real coffee. I hated space station coffee. It was never hot, and yet it always tasted burned. I don't know how they managed that."

Kee paced back and forth in front of the window, her every movement as poised as a fashion model, if a bit stiff. Small clicks peppered the air as her perfectly oval nails tapped against the fragile porcelain of the cup she held. Her unease wafted toward him like a sultry breeze. Despite her immaculate suit and straight, graceful stance, he still had the feeling she might break.

It was a surprising feeling. If anything, she looked more secure, less ethereal than the holovid pic, but her solidity seemed as brittle as porcelain. He couldn't help thinking that maybe Daniel White was right about her. He could imagine people thinking this sophisticated woman was a bitch.

It was hard to believe she was the same person in his precious picture. She looked ten years older.

“How old are you?” he asked, because he didn't know.

Kee stared at the stranger lying on her bed—the stranger who was her husband. She felt an hysterical laugh bubbling up from her chest and swallowed it quickly. If she weren't careful, she would lose control.

Why was he playing with her? She'd panicked when he'd demanded she come upstairs with him. It had taken all her nerve to walk into their suite in front of him. She'd actually cringed when he'd closed the door, waiting for the explosion. At least he'd controlled himself until they were alone.

What had he asked her? Oh yes. “How old am I? I don't think you ever knew. I'm almost twenty-seven. I was twenty-one when we got married.” She heard her voice—wary, bitter.

Swallowing hard, she clamped down on her feelings. She didn't want him to know how worried she was about his reaction to finding her still here.

“So why are you still here?” he asked dryly.

Chapter Three

“Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?

I know not how I came of you

And I know not where I go with you,

But I know I came well and shall go well."

The Sleepers

Walt Whitman

“Wh-what?” Kee stared at her husband, dread sheering her breath. Here it was. The showdown.

He rubbed his eyes and spoke without looking at her. “You say married as if it's a dirty word. Apparently I wasn't exactly the man of your dreams."

She let her gaze drift over his face. He looked exhausted. His lips were compressed, his face drawn. How different he was now.

The first glimpse she'd gotten of him on multivision had shocked her. There was very little resemblance between the boy who'd left her five years before and the Patroller they'd sent back.

But now she could see he was the same man. The same and, yet, so different. The only visible signs of his ordeal were the tiny scars around his hairline.

His straight brows, strong jaw, and high cheekbones still combined to make his face as classically beautiful as a sculpture. She thought the few gray streaks in his hair, the lines and the slight crook in his nose added character to features that had been almost too perfect before.

But the biggest change, the most visible testament to what he'd been through, was in his eyes. Not the fact that they were darker. The extensive surgery and transplants could account for their color. No, the difference was what was in them. She saw a haunted look that had never been there before. A look that spoke of horrors too great to be borne, of pain too terrible to imagine.

She wanted to reach out to him, to soothe away the pain. But he had never wanted her comfort, and she couldn't believe he would want it now.

All he'd ever wanted from her was one thing. A child. And she hadn't been able to give him that.

She just shook her head. “No,” she said wryly, looking away. “Not quite the man of my dreams."

He could have been. The thought struck her with the force of a blow. Once, he really could have been the man of her dreams. Long ago, before he'd transferred all the pent up anger inside himself to her, he'd shown her a glimpse of the man he could have been. She felt a flush rise to her face as an unbidden memory crossed her mind—a memory of fun and laughter and sweet, hot love.

More to stop her train of thought than to provide information, she shrugged and continued. “We were awfully young five years ago. Too young, I guess. You didn't want to go into the Patrol, but we weren't able to..."

“I told you I didn't want to go?"

She turned toward the balcony doors, looking out at the bright sunlight. The muscles in her neck tensed painfully. Why was he taunting her with these questions? Why didn't he just get on with it—whatever he was going to do. Kick her out. Yell at her.

Just do something, she wanted to scream. “You told everybody you didn't want to go."

“Why?"

She whirled on him, her nerves shattered by his quiet, incessant questioning. “Why are you doing this?” she cried. “Why are you grilling me like a Senate Ethics Committee? You know what you were like! I don't know who you thought you were fooling out there, but it wasn't me."

Her breath caught in a gasp. She hadn't meant to say that.

Danny scowled at her. “What do you mean?” he asked tightly.

“I mean all that wholesome hero stuff about being grateful to be back with your wife—” she stopped abruptly and caught her lower lip between her teeth, unable to tear her gaze away from his.

His eyes blazed darkly. She'd gone too far. She wrapped her arms around herself and waited for his wrath.

She had wondered where they were, those chameleon-like changes in his mood that had always kept her off guard. She should have known they'd emerge sooner or later. It was probably just as well it was sooner. She'd been coming awfully close to feeling sorry for him.

“Why shouldn't I be grateful to be back with my wife?"

His words flowed over her like hot lava. She shivered, not looking at him.

It had always unnerved her when he got like this. His deadly quiet voice was hoarse and unfamiliar, but the tone was the same. As quiet as it was, Kee knew, with the certainty of experience, that it was the voice of a man out of control.

“Stop playing with me,” she begged. “Why are you making me say it? You didn't want me here when you got back, and I'm still here. I didn't get a divorce."

Danny watched her back away from him. The sight sent a shiver of disgust through him. Was his wife afraid of him?

Could that be where the eager love had gone? Had it been swallowed up by fear? Fear of him?

He couldn't stand the idea that she might be afraid of him. It made Daniel White's words from the micro-disk seem ominous. What had the bastard done to her?

He stood and caught her wrist. She strained against his grip.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, not allowing her to pull away.

Her gaze flickered from him to the door as she pulled against his grip. “No. Of course not. What do you mean?"

“I mean this,” he said, gently urging her clenched fist up to her eye level. With his other hand he peeled her fingers back, feeling them resist then relax. At the same time he felt the stiffness leave her body. When he glanced up at her, his heart twisted.

Unable to bear the fearful resignation in her stare, he shifted his gaze back to her hand and saw what he knew he'd see, deep, purple half circles where her nails had dug into her palm. He touched them with a finger, rubbing the indentations, trying to smooth the marred skin that felt so soft against his. How hard had she clenched her fists to make marks that deep? “This,” he said softly, “and the way you flinch when I come near you."

She licked her lips. “I'm not—afraid. It's just...” Her voice died, and he saw tears beginning in her eyes.

The tears undid him. Letting go of her hand, he put his arms around her. He pulled her close, hugging her like he'd wanted her to hug him, ignoring for a brief moment the stiffness that immediately returned to her body, ignoring everything but his need to feel her against him, to smell her lilac scent, to bury his face in her hair.

“Don't cry,” he whispered. “Please..."

She forced her hands up between them and pushed against his chest, so suddenly and so hard he almost overbalanced on his bad leg. He stumbled backward, letting her go.

“Don't!” she said sharply. “Don't."

“What is it?” he grated between clenched teeth. “Why don't you want me to touch you?"

“All right,” she said, her voice quivering like her body. “The way you're acting is scary. You told me not to be here. You said you never wanted to see me again. And now you're acting like you're glad I'm here.” She shrugged and laughed a little hysterically. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting for your anger to explode.” She stopped and stared at him, a baffled, wary expression on her face. “Why aren't you exploding?” she asked in a small, bewildered voice. “Why are you acting so different?"

He stared at her. She wasn't wary of him because she didn't recognize him. She was confused because he seemed glad to see her.

What the hell kind of bastard had Daniel White been? Danny stepped carefully away from her, unwilling to frighten her anymore. Nothing was turning out the way he'd thought it would.

Looking at her, he made a decision—an irrevocable decision. A decision that could destroy him, and yet, the only decision he could possibly make.

Whatever had happened between them five years ago, Daniel White's wife deserved to know what she'd gotten back.

Danny had counted on being able to trust the girl who smiled at him from the holovid pic. He had no idea if he could trust this woman, but what other choice did he have?

She was the one person who could give him away, the one person who could destroy him, but she was the one person he had to trust.

“I'm sorry, Kee,” he said. “This is not going to be easy to explain."

“Explain? Explain what? What are you talking about?” An edge of panic crept into her voice, and her arms tightened around herself.

Danny wanted so badly to hold her. He wanted her warm, willing body against his. But right now he didn't dare approach her. She was too tight, too coiled with tension. He had the notion she might break if he weren't careful.

He unbuttoned his uniform jacket and tossed it on the bed. He then loosened the starched neck of his shirt and ran his hands through his hair. “It's been kind of hard. How much did they tell you about what happened?"

She spoke without looking at him. “We didn't know anything for months and months. We didn't even know if the space station was still up there. There was a worldwide media blackout. No information. At first they said it was terrorism. Then a meteor. Then after months with no information, we got a call from the Vice President himself. He told us your quick actions and bravery had apparently saved the entire space station.” Her voice mocked the words she said, as if she had a hard time believing he could have saved his own life, much less the lives of hundreds of men and women.

He looked out the balcony doors, watching the setting sun glint off the swimming pool, reflecting red and gold and purple. He understood exactly how she felt. He was finding it harder all the time to believe that the man whose face he bore could be a national hero. Did national heroes tell their wives they wanted them gone?

“It was horrible!” she continued. “After a year and a half of not knowing if you were alive or dead, one day they just announced that you were coming home a hero."

A flash of white on the viewscreen...

Danny blocked out the horrifying image of the explosion and concentrated on keeping his voice steady. “The first time I woke up, I thought I was dead, but I figured dead people probably don't hurt that much. Then, when they finally unwrapped my eyes, they wouldn't let me have a mirror.” He deliberately unclenched his fists and stuck his hands in his pockets, gritting his teeth against remembered terror. “It wasn't hard to imagine why. My hands were bandaged, but I got hold of a metal tray, and looked at my reflection. It was—bad. I—"

“Don't!"

Danny pivoted just as she was about to put a hand on his shoulder. She flinched and backed away. He almost reached out for her, once again giving in to his hunger to touch her, but she took another step back. He let her retreat.

What had she expected? Hadn't she heard what a mess the station had been in after the explosion? What a mess he'd been in? Still, she must not have been prepared to get back such a poorly reconstructed Humpty Dumpty.

Suddenly he was tired of her, tired of trying to pretend to be the man she thought he was. Tired of trying to figure out why she was acting like she'd grabbed a rattlesnake. She didn't like what she saw?

Fine. Neither did he.

As he let down his cautious politesse, he discovered the horror in her face and voice gave him a vicious satisfaction. “Don't?” he rasped. “You asked, didn't you? Don't you want to hear all the disgusting details?"

“No! I mean...” She took a breath like a sob and put a hand over her mouth, staring at him as if he were a Frankenstein monster.

He glared at her. He wanted to shout at her that he needed her to hear the disgusting details. He wanted her to care what had happened to him. He wanted her to hold out her arms and welcome him home.

Instead he smiled grimly and nodded, glad to have something to focus on besides those futile yearnings. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. I don't want to hear it either, so I'll just hit the high points. My right thigh bone was crushed. They had to grow me a new one, then they had to repair that muscle and skin.

“I've got somebody else's eyes, somebody else's skin—there wasn't enough of my own to go around. For all I know I've got somebody else's fucking face!"

The shudder that racked her increased his sadistic satisfaction.

“Is it any wonder I can't remember who I am?” He tried to grin but a dagger of pain stabbed his temples. He placed his palms on either side of his head, as if he could squeeze the memories out of the deep, dark pocket of his brain where they were buried.

Damn. He clamped his jaw, but it was too late. The damage was done

Kee's face drained of color, her eyes stared at him as if she were seeing beneath the surgery to the horrors underneath.

Danny felt stripped down to bloody gristle and bone, the memory of pain as raw as the wounds.

How could she not know him now? There was nothing covering him. If she didn't see through him now, then maybe the surgeons had given him the right face after all.

Looking at her, the thought that he really might be Daniel White didn't comfort him at all.

“Can't remember ... What are you talking about?” Her voice was shrill.

He shook his head.

“I thought you were fine now. They said you were confused at first—"

“I'm not confused,” he said flatly. “I don't remember. There's nothing in here.” He dropped his hands and smiled grimly. “So really, you could tell me anything you wanted to. I'd believe it. I'd have to or ask someone else.” He watched her struggling for comprehension. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. A vein pulsed in her neck as she swallowed.

“But Vice President Meeker told us you were fine. He said you didn't remember much about the accident, but—” She held up a hand, as if to ward off the truth.

He knew how she felt. It was incomprehensible that someone could forget everything. He knew that. “Not just the accident. I don't remember anything."

“But you—you c-called me Kee. You knew your mother."

He nodded. “You don't think they'd let me come back if they thought they hadn't sucked out every last detail about the accident and anything else I might know, do you? I lied. I pretended to remember everything. Otherwise they'd have never let me go."

“You lied?"

“Look, Kee. I'd rather not have everyone know. Dr. Ganand told me there was a pretty good chance most of my memory would come back eventually."

“Your memory..."

She was acting shell-shocked, like he had for all those weeks. Her eyes were misty and focused somewhere to the left of his face. He reached out and lifted her chin with a finger, forcing her to look at him. “Kee?"

She flinched when he touched her, and his heart took another glancing blow as her wide, frightened gaze finally focused on his face.

“I didn't mean to tell you, but—” He shrugged, assessing her, wondering if he could trust her. “I'm going to need an ally, someone I can count on. I'd appreciate it if you'd help me out."

“Ally...” She nodded jerkily, her eyes never leaving his.

“Think about it. If you want to tell everybody, I can't stop you."

She opened her mouth, then closed it, her eyes searching his face. After a moment she spoke tentatively. “You don't remember ... me?"

He shook his head once, sharply, and shrugged out of the uniform shirt, gleaning a crumb of satisfaction when her gaze flickered briefly over his bare chest and stomach.

So, there was something there. Even if she was afraid of him, she wasn't unaffected by him. He didn't remember how it felt to have a woman react to the sight of him, but then he hadn't been that pleasant a sight to look upon in recent months.

Still, even though he didn't remember the reaction, he recognized it, and it felt good. It felt hopeful.

He knew he needed time, time to see if he remembered these people. If he remembered being Daniel White.

He felt so damned vulnerable without the cushion of memory to sustain him. He just needed a few weeks to assure himself that the surgeons had given him the right face.

During that time he had to trust someone. Could he trust Kee? As badly as Daniel White must have treated her, he couldn't blame her if she gave away his secret, but he had to trust someone.

Chapter Four

“Enough! enough! enough!

Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back!

Give me a little time..."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

Kee's legs would no longer hold her up, so she sat down on the bed, her heart pounding in her ears.

Amnesia! He didn't remember anything, like why they had gotten married, how he'd felt about her, or how she'd felt about him.

Ever since she first saw him standing stiffly in the door of the limousine, she had known there was something different about him. Then as he'd walked closer, those differences had been magnified. Gone were the insolent smirk, the careless slouch, and the sleepy, sexy gaze.

In their place was a hero. A stern, straight Patroller, with hollowed cheeks and a determined mouth, with piercing eyes that bored straight into her soul like a laser.

Her gaze traced his features while compassion washed through her for the tragic, brave man they'd sent home lost, helpless, bereft even of his own memories.

He said he didn't know who he was.

Did she?

The surgeons had done a remarkable job. The eyes were haunted, the face was thinner, more lined, but it was still the same angelic face she remembered. He was the beautiful demon she'd fallen in love with.

She stiffened at that thought, earning a raised eyebrow from the man looming over her.

She hadn't been in love.

He hadn't allowed her to love him. All it had been was a fascination, an infatuation that had faded quickly once she'd learned how cruel and careless he was.

He stood there, backlighted by the harsh fluorescence from the dressing room, his bare shoulders glowing as if dusted with gold. There was a red rectangular scar right over his heart, the skin around it puckered slightly. The planes of his chest and belly were sleek and hard.

Five years ago he'd been young and slim, his body well-muscled from working out, but with just a touch of softness in his belly from drinking. His face, beautiful in its perfection, had been saved from looking dissipated only by its bone structure.

There was nothing soft about this man. He was lean and hard, his belly unyielding as a steel plate, and his shoulders and arms sharply planed with muscles. His bearing was straight and proud, like a Patroller. He was elegant in a way he never had been before.

Five years ago he could make her limp with desire or rigid with apprehension just by the look on his face, just by his touch.

She was afraid he still could.

“Kee? Are you okay?"

Kee felt immersed in gelatin, lost in fascination at his differences and similarities.

Slowly she nodded. Okay? She didn't think she'd ever be okay now that he was back in her life.

“I'm—fine."

“That's good,” he said with a wry smile and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

She stared at the door, stunned. Licking dry lips, she brushed a hand over her eyes.

Behind her closed lids, she still saw his face—grim, determined, haunted. For all I know I've got somebody else's fucking face. No, the face was Daniel's all right. Danny's. So different, but so very familiar.

* * * *

Dinner was as strained as Danny had expected it to be. His mother hovered around him, touching him to reassure herself he was real. Kee watched him with eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he was sure every move he made was the wrong one.

Did Daniel White drink wine? How did he hold his fork? Did anyone notice or care?

The worst part of the evening though, was meeting Daniel White's sister and brother-in-law. His sister was tiny and plump, with straight black hair, as opposite as possible from Danny's own lanky form and brown hair. She was pregnant and almost totally self-absorbed, which suited Danny fine.

And she definitely had a tight leash on her husband. She controlled his every move with a stern look that reminded Danny of Tiberius White's formal portrait hanging in the mansion's foyer.

His brother-in-law Drake was an obnoxious boor who smelled of cigars and brandy and sour breath. He slapped Danny on the back, making cracks like “The day you care about what goes on at Whitehall Aircraft,” and “Did you really save everybody on the space station by throwing the switch while you were getting your face burned off?"

“Not quite everybody,” Danny had responded, feeling the cold, sick regret that had settled in his gut when they'd told him twenty-seven people, including his bunkmate, had died in the explosion.

Now, climbing the stairs after pleading exhaustion, the old-fashioned clock struck midnight, and the vise of pain tightened around his temples. Twenty-seven people had died on his watch. Twenty-seven people, and Danny couldn't even remember what had happened. Everything he knew he'd been told by someone else.

The flash of white on the viewscreen...

Except that. Pain shot through his head. The flash of white was the one thing he remembered before something crashed into his thigh and fire burst in front of his face.

Understanding the flash of white was vital to understanding what had happened, and how he'd been involved.

Danny paused at the door to the suite. It had been a long week, to say the least. He knew now what bone-weary meant. They'd released him from the HSF Medical Complex just this morning, after his final top-security debriefing.

Most of the day had passed in a confused haze. He felt as if he had been in a bubble, naked and exposed, on display like a rare alien creature, but unable to communicate. All day long he had suppressed the urge to smash his way out of the bubble with his cane and scream at them all, “Leave me alone! I need time! I don't know who I am!"

Of course he couldn't say that, or they'd put him right back in the hospital, so he'd hidden behind his Patroller's bearing and discipline and allowed them to direct him here and there. It had been fairly easy as long as he hadn't allowed himself to think.

Until they'd brought him here, into the loving arms of his family.

Danny entered the empty suite. He closed the door and took a deep breath. He was alone. For the first time since he'd arrived this morning, he was alone.

He thought back over the day. Had he done all right? All the hours spent studying Daniel White's personal information, all the careful briefings, had not prepared him for the reality of meeting Daniel White's family for the first time.

He'd been told his father, Tiberius White, the aircraft czar, had died five months before, while Danny was still recuperating from the last operation on his face, while he was still under top secret security classification and his family didn't know if he was alive.

His mother was a respected pillar of the Washington D.C. social scene, known for her charity work and her spectacular parties. His wife was a junior research chemist at Whitehall. Drake Simmonds, his sister's husband, was acting CEO pending Daniel White's return.

A prestigious group.

Daniel White hadn't mentioned any of his family on any of the disks Danny had listened to. He had hardly mentioned Kee. Most of what Daniel White had talked about in his personal logs was himself.

“Cocky bastard,” Danny whispered, dragging his leaden body away from the support of the door. He was unbuttoning his uniform jacket when a tap on the door announced Kee.

“Aren't you carrying the gentility of high society a bit far?” he said dryly as she entered.

She froze. “What?"

He resolved to try and control the sarcasm with which he tended to meet tense situations. Something about his voice upset her.

With an effort, he spoke pleasantly. “Knocking on the door of your own suite. This is your suite, isn't it?"

Her gaze flickered from him to the big bed, then back, and she licked her lips. Danny's body tightened in response to the sight of her tongue flicking over her full lower lip.

“I didn't want to barge in on you. I just came in to get some things.” She ducked her head and went to the two long dressers that lined one wall and pulled open a drawer.

“To get some things? For what?"

A strand of hair had escaped from the French twist, and it curved along her neck as she bent over the drawer. His fingers twitched to touch the golden strand, but instead he finished unbuttoning his jacket.

“Just some nightclothes and stuff."

“You mean I'm running you out of your room?” He heard the quiet menace creep back into his voice, but suddenly he didn't care. If she didn't want to be around him, fine. He was exhausted. He tossed the jacket on a chair, unbuttoned his shirt and threw it on top of it.

She shook her head. “No, not exactly. It's just—I know you're tired and I don't want to disturb you. You've had such a long day.” She turned around with a pile of filmy white material in her hands.

When her gaze lit on his bare chest, for the briefest moment, she turned pink. An awareness shone in her eyes that skittered through him as she skimmed his bare chest and belly with a look as potent and erotic as a touch.

Immediately, his body reacted, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his reaction from becoming embarrassingly obvious. The irony didn't escape him. They were as wary as two cats circling each other. She, because she remembered everything about him. He, because he remembered nothing.

He didn't remember ever touching a woman before, didn't remember ever making love. She, on the other hand, could recall every time they had ever made love.

He both envied her that and was embarrassed by it. What did she remember? How would he see himself through her eyes? He felt naked, as though his desperate need was exposed to her bright green gaze.

As if she knew what he was thinking, her face turned a shade pinker and she held the nightclothes against her breast like a shield.

“I'll—” she started, then cleared her throat. “I'll just be going.” She gestured vaguely toward the door, trailing a wisp of silk in the wake of her arm, then turned away.

“Kee, wait!” As she turned, a frisson of fear slid up Danny's spine, and his gut twisted in yearning. Not sexual desire, though that was there, too. This was a different yearning, born of loneliness and pain. A yearning for someone to be there, to help keep away the empty dark. He didn't want her to leave him.

“Look, you do what you want, but nothing, and I mean nothing, sounds better to me than going to sleep,” he lied hoarsely, earning a suspicious glance from her. “Like I told you, I'd like to have your help. If we sleep in separate rooms, everybody will know by morning there's something wrong, so why don't you stay in here?” He held his breath, hoping against hope that she would agree, knowing she had no reason to. She owed him nothing, if what he was beginning to suspect was true. If Daniel White had been a mean bastard who'd treated his wife like dirt.

She laughed, a sound like breaking glass.

“What's so funny?” he demanded, stepping toward her, but she retreated, her knuckles white on the silk she clutched to her breast.

“I don't think it would be a good idea."

He was much too tired to argue, much too tired to pretend. “Look, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but the fact is I don't remember you at all, which is pretty sad because you're certainly not someone I'd want to forget.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “So do you think you could quit acting like I'm the bogeyman? I'm not going to attack you."

He'd hoped he could coax a smile to her face, but he didn't feel like smiling, so he guessed he couldn't blame her if she didn't, either.

Her eyes were opaque, and he could see fatigue in the lines around her mouth. He realized she'd probably had as long a day as he had, and maybe she didn't want to sleep in the same room as the man who had thought of her as a conniving bitch.

He shrugged tiredly. “I'm sorry. You go on. I just sort of hated to be alone—” He stopped abruptly and turned toward the balcony, shoving his hands into his pockets.

He sounded like a wimp. His eyes burned as he stared out into the darkness.

If he thought he could talk, he'd tell her to get out, because he was absurdly afraid that in a minute he might cry. He hunched his shoulders and leaned against the glass doors, staring at nothing, waiting for her to go.

Kee eyed her husband's back warily. She couldn't reconcile the two Daniel Whites. The man she had married would have already thrown her out of the house as soon as he arrived. This Daniel White—Danny—was different. Tentative, unsure of himself, he seemed genuinely concerned about her feelings, and he was obviously exhausted. She hadn't missed the whitened corners of his mouth, the drawn look on his face, or the overbright eyes.

What could it hurt to sleep in the same bed? He was right about the gossip. Everybody in the house would know by morning, if there was anyone left who hadn't already known there were problems between them. He was right about something else, too. She was acting like he was the bogeyman.

She wondered what he would say if she told him he'd often acted like the bogeyman. What would he say if she told him that to her he'd always been like some schizophrenic angel-demon, beautiful and sweet and lovable one moment, turning loathsome and cruel the next.

No matter what he'd been before, he'd asked for her help today. She realized she didn't want to be alone right now, either. She nodded slowly, even though he wasn't looking at her.

“Okay, well, I'll just take a shower, then, unless you...?"

Danny shook his head without turning around. Kee whirled and escaped into the bathroom. She showered quickly, letting the jets of steam wash the tension from her body, allowing the heat to loosen the knotted muscles and soothe away the dull headache that had lurked behind her eyes all day.

She didn't want to leave the womblike comfort of the steamy cubicle, but finally she dried her hair, slid a white silk gown over her head and brushed her teeth.

“Okay, Rebekah,” she whispered, “time to beard the lion in his king-sized bed.” She smiled wanly at the reflection in the mirror, touching the lace at her breasts and wishing it were flannel. She was amazed that the filmy material wasn't fluttering with the pounding of her heart. She turned out the light, leaving only the fiber optic night light glowing in the darkness.

The lights were off in the bedroom, but moonlight from the open curtains washed the room in silver, fading the royal blue bedclothes and draperies to gray.

Danny was asleep with the sheets down around his thighs. He wore drawstring pajama bottoms and no shirt, and the moonlight made delightful shadows on his skin.

A sweet desire as sharp as pain pierced her insides. She had longed to see his golden, silken skin, to feel his long, elegant hands on her. She had lain here in this very bed, night after night, allowing her precious memories of the good times to block out the bad.

Her eyes traced the sculpted planes of muscle that looked like an alien landscape in the moonlight. Her fingers itched to touch the scar on his chest, the faint jagged imprints on his belly, little slick pink patches which must be where skin had been stolen to replace burned tissue.

She couldn't even imagine what he'd suffered. His body bespoke agonies she would never know. Were the scars she couldn't see, the internal scars, as bad as the visible ones? Had the government spent as much money repairing the hurts inside as they had the ones that showed?

From the haunted darkness she'd seen in his eyes, she was afraid they hadn't.

Tearing her thoughts away from his pain, she let herself enjoy the sight of him in their bed. He was as beautiful as she remembered. The imperfections intrigued her. She wanted to explore each difference, recall each similarity.

Her brain conjured up the memories of his skin against hers. His body deliciously heavy on top of her. His lips hot and demanding as they sucked all her will right out of her.

She looked back at his face. She almost smiled at his innocent expression. She had often watched him as he slept. Asleep his eyes didn't mock her, his lips didn't curl scornfully. Asleep, he'd always looked like a man she could have loved.

Kee sighed and picked up the jacket he had tossed on the chair. When she shook it out to hang it up, a small box fell and bounced on the carpet. In the moon's vain light she couldn't quite make out what it was. She hung up the jacket and took the box into the bathroom. There, in the glow of the night light she saw her younger face smiling out from the worn and battered holovid pic. It looked like it had been burned around the edges.

She pressed the button. “I love you,” her voice said.

Nostalgia brushed across her mind. Had she ever been that young? That much in love?

The image was from their honeymoon in Bermuda. Daniel hadn't been interested in taking any pictures, but one breezy morning, he had gifted her with a rare, genuine grin and agreed. When they'd gotten back she'd had the silly memento made, and recorded the message.

She'd forgotten it, figuring he had long ago tossed it away. The fact that he had kept it and carried it next to his heart all day today made her want to cry.

Somehow, the little picture made all the incredible things he had told her suddenly real. Daniel White wasn't just a hero, he was her husband. And he didn't even remember her.

At first she'd had trouble believing him. After a while, she had realized he was watching her for cues, his gaze trusting and wary all at once, and she had decided not even Daniel could have carried off such a deception.

He really didn't remember.

He had told her he hated her, but he had kept a silly memento from their honeymoon all those years. Kept it and carried it, if its bent and battered frame was any indication. He had come back broken and lost, still carrying the holovid pic in his pocket. He hadn't known her, but he'd walked up to her and called her Kee.

She remembered the panicky glint in his eyes as he'd approached her this afternoon. She had been afraid of what he would do when he saw her, when he realized she hadn't obeyed him and filed for divorce.

She had almost panicked later when he'd grabbed her and his quiet voice had asked why she was afraid of him. She didn't know how to react to him.

She'd expected to get back the cocky rich kid with the chip on his shoulder and the secret pain in his heart that she'd never managed to unearth. She wasn't prepared for this vulnerable, lost man whose voice had cracked when he'd admitted he didn't want to be alone.

Wiping her eyes, she splashed water on her face. She would just have to watch her step. Maybe he had amnesia now, and it scared him and made him seem vulnerable, but it wouldn't last. When he got his memory back, he'd be the same cocky bastard who'd left her.

She felt a pang of regret for the man he could have been.

She straightened up and took a long breath. Forget what might have been. This was reality. When Daniel White got his memory back, he'd remember what she'd failed to do for him. Then he would throw her out.

If he didn't want people to know he had amnesia, she'd help him. He deserved that much. But she wouldn't let her emotions get involved. His careless charm and casual arrogance would never fool her again. The childish infatuation that had overridden her good judgment five years ago had died. As soon as things settled down a little, she'd start making plans to leave.

* * * *

Danny woke up late in the night. He came awake suddenly, just like the first time, with the sickening fear washing over him. Every time he woke up in the dark it was the same dream. He was swathed in bandages with another surgeon staring at his ruined face and mangled body. He was being fed through a tube, bathed and diapered like a baby, probed and poked and talked about like he wasn't even there.

A scent of lilacs filled his nostrils, and the dream and the panic fell away. He was home, in bed next to Kee.

He turned his head toward the lilac fragrance, afraid it was just another dream.

His shadow hid her face, but her delicate curves were outlined by the sheet, and her hair, pale gold in the moonlight, flowed free about her face and shoulders. A strand of it curled over the top of one lovely breast.

His hand reached out involuntarily to touch the soft strand, and a most incredible feeling ripped through him. He drew a swift breath at the sudden erotic ache that suffused his loins. No one could see him, so he gave himself up to the sensation and felt himself grow hard with desire for the first time in his memory.

His eyes burned and his throat closed at the sheer joy of the physical feeling, and the return of a response he didn't remember and had been afraid he'd never feel. The realization that he could—that he did—desire at least one woman. His wife.

He wouldn't touch her, not yet. He didn't want to wake her. He was afraid to test the fragile bond they had formed, a bond forged of delicate, wary trust, and secret mistrust.

They needed time to get used to each other. Time for him to regain his memories. Time, he hoped, in which the wary watchfulness in her eyes would fade and be replaced by the open, eager love he'd counted on.

He had to lift that silky strand of hair, though. Just for a moment. As his fingers caressed the silky stuff, her lips moved, whispering something, and she stirred.

He watched without breathing. She opened her eyes and looked at him and smiled. It wasn't much of a smile, and it could have been the result of a dream. He didn't breathe.

Slowly he twined the strand of hair around his fingers, his gaze holding hers until she licked her lips and her eyes drifted closed.

He let the strand of hair fall. It had almost been enough, just touching her hair, just seeing her look at him once without fear or suspicion in her eyes, even if she was sound asleep and wouldn't remember anything in the morning.

He relaxed carefully. Now he could believe he was really home. He could pretend he actually remembered the way her hair curled against her neck when she slept.

He lay there for hours, watching her sleep, drawing an odd comfort from the aching discomfort in his loins, with her lilac scent and her soft breaths wafting about him in the darkness, almost familiar, almost remembered.

As he drifted off to sleep, he had the absurdly sentimental thought that as long as she slept beside him, he wouldn't be afraid to wake up.

Chapter Five

“Aware now that amid all that blab

Whose echoes recoil upon me

I have not once had the least idea who or what I am."

As I Ebbed with the Ocean of Life

Walt Whitman

There was something warm and bright on his face. Danny came awake instantly, bracing himself. He lay, eyes closed, body rigid, waiting for his senses to tell him where he was. Was he back in the operating room with surgeons leaning over him, their heads blocking the brilliant OR lights?

He thought he'd told them he was through with their damned operations. He'd refused to let them practice being God again on his face and body?

He breathed, and the scent of lilacs reminded him he was home.

Home. How good that word sounded, even if the place was unfamiliar. Even if the people were strangers.

Carefully, squinting against the light, he opened his eyes. Dawn. Another first for his memory. Kee had opened the curtains while he slept. Had she somehow known how much it would mean to him to wake with the sun on his face, after spending so many months in darkness?

He stretched, feeling good. How long had it been since he'd had a good night's sleep? Twenty months? Five years? A lifetime?

As he got up he glanced at the other side of the bed where a small indentation in the pillow and rumpled bedclothes confirmed what the lilac scent had told him. He hadn't been dreaming. Kee had slept beside him, had opened her eyes in the night and smiled at him.

Danny's knees almost buckled as he remembered watching her in the darkness, his body heavy and torpid, enveloped with the hot sweet desire that had filled him when he touched her hair.

He barely had time to savor that memory before others crowded it out of his brain. Kee's eyes wide with apprehension, narrowed in suspicion.

His gaze lit on the micro-disk recorder sitting on the night stand where he'd laid it the evening before. He picked up the little radiation proof box that lay next to it, its metal surface cold under his newly healed fingers. The box held everything that was left of Daniel White.

Danny's fingers tightened around it, and he closed his eyes. He could list everything in the box. A few holographs of his sister and her husband and children, a wallet-sized portrait of “Mother and Dad,” his A-17, the official form that declared him a lieutenant in the Patrol, a letter of credit from his father. And three micro-disks.

Did those three tiny disks, those vignettes of a life he didn't remember, hold the answers? Would Daniel White's unfamiliar voice tell him why Kee didn't trust him? Would it give him back his memories?

He'd avoided Daniel White's personal disk logs. The few random entries he'd played had disturbed him so much he could barely sit still to listen.

The box burned his fingers as Daniel White's voice reverberated in his mind, saying things Danny couldn't reconcile with what he knew.

Damn you, Kee. Conniving, infertile bitch.

How could anyone who knew her say such things? The words didn't fit the woman.

So what did that tell him? He held the memories of a man who was, by all accounts, a selfish, spoiled brat who'd hated everyone who had loved him. A young man whose voice made Danny cringe because while it was different from his low-pitched, slightly hoarse one, it was also hauntingly, sickeningly familiar.

Setting the box down on the table, he looked at its twin and his fingers trembled as he reached for it. Another series of vignettes. Another life he didn't remember, another tragedy of the explosions. These were Sam Peters’ logs.

Every Patroller was required to make daily log entries and keep the recorded disks in these indestructible boxes. So there would be a record if anything happened.

Well, something had happened all right. Danny touched Sam Peters’ box. He'd glanced through Peters’ stuff too. It had been so hard to open this second box.

They'd given him his own stuff. He'd had to demand his bunkmate's. He'd argued that he should be the one who gave Sam Peters’ things back to his family. But he knew he'd had another reason, a selfish reason, for wanting them.

Sam Peters. The only body unaccounted for on the entire space station. His bunkmate should have been off duty, should have been asleep safe in their cabin. But the official report listed him as missing in action.

Danny's heart lurched in fear. Who had been on the bridge that night? Who had saved the space station? Daniel White or Sam Peters?

Danny opened the box. There wasn't much inside. Two micro-disks, Peters’ A-17, his conscription papers, a tiny holovid pic of a pretty, dark-haired girl, and his ID badge.

Danny had studied the ID badge hologram for hours, trying to search out something familiar in the three-dimensional image, trying to see some resemblance to his own face. White and Peters had been similar in height and build, both with dark hair, although Peters’ eyes were brown. Of course now Danny's eyes were a golden brown too, rather than the bright clear hazel they had been before.

He could quote the conscription papers. Sam Peters had chosen Mandatory Public Service as an alternative to prison when he'd been convicted of armed robbery.

He picked up the photograph of the girl. Peters’ girlfriend? His wife?

She was pretty. Dark-haired with flashing dark eyes that flirted with the camera. But her image hadn't caught at his heart the way Kee's had.

From the first instant he'd seen Kee's face in the holovid pic, it had drawn him in, giving him strength, hope, a reason to live. This other pic, of a woman just as lovely, had invoked curiosity and compassion, but nothing else.

Danny whirled and headed for the bathroom to splash water on his face, trying to blot the questions from his mind. But his mind wasn't cooperating. He couldn't pull his thoughts away from the boxes so easily.

The remains of two dead men. That was how he'd thought of them. The space station psychiatrist had swooped down on that comment like a DNA-programmed bomb. “Is that how you think of yourself?” he'd asked him. “As a dead man?"

Danny had shrugged. “Might as well be. My brain's dead."

“Not your brain, just your memories. And they're not dead, Danny. The brain has an incredible capacity for protecting itself. There are piles of case studies in the historical literature—abused children who develop multiple personalities to deal with the pain and fear, schizophrenics who invent complete fantasy lives because they can't cope with real life, ordinary people who block out terrifying or disturbing memories—"

“And you think my brain is protecting itself?"

“What do you think, Danny?"

Standing at the sink, looking at the stranger's face in the mirror, Danny shivered. Terrifying or disturbing memories. Was it terror that froze him every time he tried to listen to Daniel White's voice? A voice with a resonant timbre his voice would never have again, because of all the scar tissue in his throat from tubes and respirators, and the reconstructive surgeries on his nose and cheeks.

Were disturbing memories keeping him from answering the questions that haunted him? Questions like who was he? What was he like? And always, echoing down the empty corridors of his brain where the answers should have been stored, was the same response—he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

He walked over to the balcony doors, letting the sun warm his face and shoulders.

Something caught the sun and flashed in his eyes, triggering the one real memory he owned.

The flash of white on the viewscreen...

What had happened out there? Danny shuddered. He knew the answer to that question lay in that blinding flash of white. If he could figure out what had happened, maybe he could figure out who he really was.

If he were Daniel White, what would he do when he remembered everything, including the reason Kee was so wary of him?

He gave up asking those endless, fruitless questions and went downstairs, carefully retracing his steps from the night before. He found Avery placing fresh flowers in the vase on the dining room table.

“Good morning, Mr. White. Shall I bring your coffee in here?” Danny heard the slight reproach in the butler's voice. He must have wandered into the wrong room at the wrong time of day.

“Where is Mrs. White?"

“She went out to the pool earlier."

“Tell you what, Avery. Why don't you bring coffee and some kind of rolls or something out there? And do we have juice?"

“Of course, sir. No dialed-in food in this house. Mrs. White insists. We have fresh squeezed orange juice.” Avery went back to arranging his flowers.

Feeling dismissed, Danny left the dining room. He sure as hell didn't remember the butler. He wondered if he was going to like life under the watchful eyes of servants.

He stood in the hall for a moment, studying the layout of the house, then walked out the front door and followed the cobblestone path around to the back. There were gazebos, reflecting pools, and patches of quarry tile set into the grounds to support garden seats. From what he'd seen, the White mansion was very old, probably from the 1980s.

He walked slowly, his leg unsure on the uneven ground. Sure enough, in the back, surrounded by an elevated glassteel deck, he found the transparent pool he'd seen from his bedroom window.

Kee was swimming laps. She had on a black one piece tank suit. Even in the concealing suit, her slender body was appealing, and stronger than he'd expected. She'd seemed so fragile and thin in the expensive dress she'd worn yesterday.

She was oblivious to him, so he sat quietly and watched her. She swam competently, strongly, her beautifully shaped arms and neck moving gracefully as she stroked. Her skin was golden, sleek and taut over the muscles and bones. Her neck sloped up to a finely shaped head. She dove under the water at the far end of the pool, giving Danny a brief, tantalizing look at shapely buttocks and hips. As she surfaced, their eyes met and hers flicked away immediately.

She pulled herself out of the pool just as Avery came up the stairs. The black swimsuit was cut high on her thighs, revealing legs that seemed to go on forever.

As she tugged at the bottom of her suit, Danny tensed with desire. His body stirred in response to his wife just as it had last night. He drew in a swift breath and shifted uncomfortably.

Here in the bright sunlight, he couldn't afford to give in to the sweet ache, so he sipped his coffee, fiercely concentrating on its flavor, on the warmth of the sun, on anything other than the glistening skin and enticing curves displayed in front of him.

She walked through the blowers, shaking out her hair as the warm air lifted it, then pulled on a terry cloth caftan and sat next to him. He sighed with relief, glad she had covered herself, but then she smiled and he was mesmerized by her mouth.

With her face bare of makeup, and her hair in dripping tangles behind her ears, he thought he could almost see the girl in the holovid pic.

“Good morning,” she said. “Did you sleep okay?"

He nodded, his gaze on her mouth as she licked her lips. “You're up early,” he said. “You do this every day?"

“Usually I get up earlier than this, swim for an hour, then get to the office by nine o'clock."

“The office?"

“Sure,” she paused, looking at him. “I'm a JRC for your company."

He stared blankly at her until she laughed shortly. “A junior research chemist for Whitehall. We keep trying to build a better fuel."

“Oh, yeah. That's right. I'm the heir to the Whitehall Aircraft fortune. One of the things I should remember. Dr. Ganand briefed me on the company.” His lip curled

“Briefed? Oh, right. Briefed."

He nodded and shrugged, already weary of the game, and it had barely started. “I don't remember anything, Kee. I've got amnesia. There are a lot of things I'm not going to know."

Kee looked at him skeptically, twirling a wet strand of hair around her finger.

“Did you do that before?” he asked, following her finger with his gaze.

“Do what?” she asked, her fingers freezing in mid-twist.

“Work at Whitehall."

“You mean before you left? No, not after we got married. We spent three weeks in Bermuda on a honeymoon, then came back here."

The shadow deepened in her eyes, and her lips tightened, awakening in him a sharp sense of guilt. So the memory of their honeymoon was distasteful to her.

Kee poured a cup of coffee and sipped at it. “After we got back, you didn't want me to start back to work right away. You...” She ducked her head and took another drink of coffee, keeping her eyes on the cup.

“What?"

“You wanted me to stay at home and—"

“And what?"

“Nothing."

Her lashes fluttered as her gaze darted to his then away, and with a sudden flash of understanding he knew what she'd been about to say. Get pregnant.

Infertile bitch.

From somewhere, deep in the recesses of his brain, came a memory! And it almost gagged him.

Not a memory of her, or of his life, but a memory nonetheless. He remembered that MPS could be waived in peacetime under certain conditions, such as a sick relative or pregnancy.

He knew what Mandatory Public Service was, of course. Started almost thirty years ago, at the same time as the Homeland Security Force had been created, it was every citizen's duty.

He glanced at her face, but it was expressionless as she ran a finger around the rim of the cup.

“I wanted you to get pregnant, didn't I, to keep me out of MPS?"

Kee closed her eyes, her fingers turning white as she gripped the cup so hard he was afraid it would shatter. “You remember that?” she whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

Danny watched a delicate blue vein pulse at her temple.

“No. But it's obvious you do. What happened?"

Kee shook her head without opening her eyes. “Don't,” she pleaded.

Danny couldn't interpret her expression, or the pleading in her voice. He wanted to shake her, shake the memories out, then gather them up for himself before they faded. Did she regret that she hadn't been able to conceive? Or had she failed deliberately?

“Don't what?” he said harshly. “Don't ask? I have to ask. That's the only way I'm going to know."

A fierce, hot anger washed over him. He clamped a hand onto her wrist. When he did, she recoiled, straining against his grasp, her fist clenching reflexively.

“Tell me."

“Your father refused to call in any favors when your call came. He said it would teach you discipline. You thought if you could give him a grandson, he'd get you your waiver."

“But you didn't get pregnant."

She shook her head, avoiding his gaze, and pulled against his grip. He let go of her wrist and winced at the red marks his fingers had left.

“You're afraid of me,” he said softly, voicing it for the first time.

“N-not really,” she stammered. “I mean, you just—sometimes you get that look in your eyes, and that tone in your voice, and that always means you're about to explode."

Danny stared at her. She'd seen a look, heard a tone that she recognized.

“I need to hear this,” he said carefully. “All of it. Don't keep pulling away from me. I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to know."

Kee rubbed her wrist, and his anger flared again, this time at himself, tinged with a bitter shame at his inadvertent brutality. He didn't recognize this reaction in himself. He'd lashed out at her twice now, and he'd only been back one day.

“Kee,” he began, but she sat up straight, tension suddenly emanating from her more strongly than steam from the coffee.

“Oh, look!” she said tightly, brightly. “Here come some friends of yours."

“Friends?” He tensed. “Who?” Great. What was he going to say to them?

Kee waved and smiled and spoke casually, her words belying the whitened fingers that gripped her cup. “The tall blond is Michael Rubeck—Mike. The shorter one is Billy Majors. You've palled around with them since high school. Turn around. They're starting up the steps."

Danny stood, his gut in knots, smiling nervously as the two strangers vaulted up the steps. “Mike! Billy! How've you been?"

Danny felt their curious scrutiny as he tried to act natural. It would sure as hell help if he knew what was natural for Daniel White.

He didn't recognize either of them.

He stood stiffly as they studied his face.

“Hey, Daniel old buddy,” Billy said. “That you in there?” He reached out and clasped Danny's hand, slapping him on the shoulder with his other hand. “Boy do you look different! Man! What's with the gray hair? The little woman ought to get you some Nutra-vite. A capsule a day keeps the gray away."

The two of them laughed appreciatively, and Danny laughed too, feeling nauseated as the familiar band of pain tightened around his head. Mike shook Danny's hand as he spoke sidelong to the other man.

“At least he's got hair, Bill. Too bad that last hair graft of yours didn't take. So Daniel. You made kind of a big splash out there, didn't you?"

“Big splashes are my trademark.” Danny gestured to the chairs, hoping his remark was in character. He noticed that neither man had acknowledged Kee. As they sat, she stood.

“You guys have a lot of catching up to do. I've got to dry my hair and get going.” Danny glanced up at her, panic growing in his breast. He didn't want her to leave him here with these strangers.

“Do you have to go now?” he asked, fear coarsening his voice.

She gave him a look he couldn't read, a look he might almost think was a warning, and shook her head.

“Are you going in to the office?” he asked.

“No, I'm going to visit Mama and do some shopping.” She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I'll see you later. Bye, guys."

As she went down the stairs, Billy whispered to Danny, “I thought that bitch was out the door, man!"

Chapter Six

“What is it then between us?"

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Walt Whitman

As Kee rode in the air limo to the nursing home her thoughts were back with Danny. She hadn't meant to remind him that she'd failed to get pregnant.

Pregnant, she thought, tears stinging the back of her eyes. Fat chance! She remembered the day, years ago, when Dr. Payne had shattered her dreams.

“I had to take all of the left ovary, Kee,” he'd told her, “and about a third of the right. Only time will tell if it will produce eggs. I'm sorry. By the time you're ready to get married, ovarian transplants will be perfected. Plus the fertility drugs are getting better all the time...” His eyes had crinkled behind the blue mask. “You're years away from that, though. You'd probably like to graduate from high school first."

Daniel had never known about the surgery, which had left no scar. She'd never told him that her chances of getting pregnant were about one in ten thousand.

He'd depended on her to save him, and she couldn't.

She tried to block the memory of his face, black with rage and pain as he started to tell her what had happened up there, before she'd stopped him. Don't you want to hear all the disgusting details?

No, she'd wanted to scream. Yes!

She couldn't even imagine, would never be able to know, what he'd gone through. Because of her.

If she'd explained to him about her surgery, he could have found someone else. He'd have had plenty of time to find himself a girl who could have given him a baby. If she'd only told him.

What a coward she'd been. She hadn't been able to help him, and she hadn't been able to give him up. And when he regained his memory, he'd remember that he'd hated her for it.

All she could do now was try to make up for what she'd done. She'd do anything she could to help him, even keep his secret. But she wouldn't let her heart get involved this time. As the limo landed, she straightened and smoothed the frown lines from her face before walking inside to visit her mother.

* * * *

“Hi, Mama,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss the dry cheek. Even with all the White money, the nursing home still didn't do the little things that would mean so much to her mother, if her mother were aware.

“I brought some more of that aloe and lilac lotion we like so much. Here, let's put some on you.” She squeezed lotion into her palm, then picked up the thin, blue-veined hands that drummed restlessly and continuously on the arm of the orthostasis chair.

It was her mother's hands that broke Kee's heart. Her mother had always prided herself on her beautiful hands. She would be horrified to see the transparent skin mottled with brown, the delicate blue veins standing out like raging rivers against a pale landscape.

“Beautiful hands take a lot of care,” she whispered, echoing her mother's words from long ago. She massaged the lotion into her mother's paper-thin skin and talked to her.

“Daniel's back, Mama. I wish you could see him. You remember the pictures I brought, don't you? It's like he's not the same person.” Kee put her mother's hands in her lap, but they moved back to the arms of the wheelchair and began drumming again.

She had to steel herself to look into the faded blue eyes. The doctors had explained that the stroke had left her mother totally unresponsive while still able to function, but Kee couldn't accept that nothing went on behind those eyes, even though they never sparked with life. Kee still wanted to believe that her mother was inside the fragile shell somewhere, and so she came every day and brought the lotion her mother used to love.

“I hadn't noticed how long it's been, Mama. Five years! We were only married six months, and he's been gone for five years. When I first saw him yesterday, he looked like a stranger, but like Daniel, too.” She laughed a little and shook her head. “He used to look like a long-haired punk, you know, slouchy, leather jacket, but now he's straight and proud. I didn't remember him being so tall.” She began brushing her mother's hair.

“His hair's got gray streaks in it now, and his face ... oh Mama, his face and hands. You can hardly see the scars, but you can see it in his eyes.” Kee shuddered. “He looks like he's seen the darkest depths of hell."

Her breath caught as pity flowed like hot lava over her heart.

“He survived the explosion and all that surgery, and now he's a national hero."

Kee had a crazy urge to throw herself at her mother's feet, to feel her beautiful hands stroking her hair as she whispered, “Everything will be all right, Rebekah, as long as you remain true to yourself."

Kee looked into the vacant eyes. “How do I remain true to myself?” she asked. “I think I lost myself somewhere these past five years. It was so much easier just to stay. I thought...” Her voice broke. “Maybe if he'd died out there, I might be able to leave. Oh, Mama, I can't let him get to me again."

“Hello, Kee.” The nurse who pushed the door open with a nudge of her hip and swung into the room carrying the dinner tray was Dorothy, who had been on evening shift as long as Kee's mother had been there.

“Hi, Dorothy. She looks like she's doing pretty well.” Kee was glad of the interruption. She blinked away the haziness from her vision and sat up straight, patting her hair.

Dorothy looked at Kee. “So how'd the homecoming go?"

Kee sighed as she ran the soft brush through her mother's hair. “I don't know, Dorothy. I was just telling Mama, he's so different. It's like I don't know him at all."

“Well, honey, it's been five years. You can't expect to take up where you left off."

Kee shuddered, Dorothy's words bringing a vision of that last night before he'd left. Taking up where they left off was not what she wanted at all. “No,” she said. “I guess not."

“Anything you want to talk about, Kee? We could go to the nurse's lounge."

“No.” Kee smiled at the nurse. “But thanks for asking. I might take you up on it sometime."

“Want me to feed Mrs. Mayne?"

Kee shook her head. “No thank you, Dorothy."

She spooned vegetables and meat into her mother's mouth, trying not to think about what she had gained and lost by marrying Daniel White.

“Here, Mama, don't swallow so fast. I can't think of anything worse than Mr. and Mrs. Daniel T. White taking up where they left off.” She suppressed another shudder. “You know, I never got a chance to really feel like I was married. You know what I feel like? I feel like a widow. Like you did when Daddy died. Remember what you told me? You said it left a hole in your heart as big as all outdoors..."

Kee's voice gave out on her. She was sure there was a void just as big inside her. She swallowed hard against the stinging in the back of her throat.

“Oh, Mama! I need you! I wish you could tell me what to do.” She dabbed at a bit of gravy on her mother's chin. “You'd probably remind me that you get what you pay for. Well, you're right. Did I tell you that it's my husband's money that keeps you in all this luxury? I've lived like a rich widow for five years on his money, but at least you've been taken care of."

Her hand trembled and peas spilled down the front of her mother's dress. Her mother went on chewing placidly.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm just upset, I guess. If you can hear me, please understand! I just wanted to be able to take care of you. If I hadn't married him, we'd have been living in that little apartment, and I would be somebody's secretary or something. Now I'm a wealthy woman, I have a career, I'm the wife of a famous hero, and my weekly spending money is enough to pay for this."

She cringed at the bitterness in her voice as she sat back, searching for a spark of recognition in her mother's eyes. She leaned over and kissed the hollow, lilac-scented cheek.

“I know, Mama. ‘All the money in the world won't buy happiness'. Believe me, I know that."

Kee forced a small laugh. “I never realized how many old sayings I'd learned from you.” She reached for the lotion bottle and again began massaging the lilac-scented liquid into her mother's hands.

* * * *

When she got back from the nursing home, Danny was in their room, lying down with his arm thrown over his eyes. His legs were encased in white baggy jeans, and he didn't have on a shirt.

She couldn't take her eyes off him as her body burned with the memory of his seduction, of a passion so fierce, so frightening, she'd hardly been able to stand it.

She'd thought it would be gone by now. She'd hoped never to feel that way again. It was too much to want him that badly and know he didn't want her, except as a vessel into which he poured seed like a maddened gardener. Knowing that had taken something out of her that she wasn't sure she'd ever get back.

It wasn't normal to desire someone so much when he was indifferent to her.

He hadn't always been. Kee's whole body trembled as she recalled the times when he'd wanted her, when he'd given as much as he'd taken, when he'd given more.

She blinked and drew a swift breath. She didn't want to remember the good times. They were too few, too beguiling. What she wanted to remember was her determination never to be sucked in by him again.

She stared at him. His belly was ridged like a louvered door, and barely moved with his even breaths. She could see more scars on the under side of his arm. He'd been hurt so badly, while she'd waited safe at home.

She couldn't even imagine what he'd been through, and she could never make up to him for sending him out there. But she had to try. As badly as he'd treated her, he had not betrayed her like she had him. She owed him something for that.

After a few minutes, she realized she was just standing and staring at him, so she turned and tiptoed over to her dresser.

“Tell me how we met."

“Oh!” She jumped. Had he known she was watching him? She felt a flush rise from her neck to her cheeks. “I thought you were asleep. Do you have a headache? Want some hot milk or something?"

“No, I don't want any hot milk.” His voice was harsh, impatient, sounding like the old Daniel. It was strange to see him so changed and then hear that cold, impatient tone, or the deadly quiet one she knew so well.

“How did it go with your friends?” she asked.

“It went smashingly, as Drake would say. I didn't do much but listen to them. They're not too fond of you, are they?"

Kee's stomach tightened. No, they had never liked her, and she'd never liked them. Those dissipated playboys had had too much influence on Daniel. “Why? Did they say something?"

“Yeah, they said something all right, about how you were a gold digger who watched for your chance and took it."

A flush crept up her face. Had money been her only motive in marrying him? Had the passion and the regret only come later, too late to save him, too late to save her?

“Really?” she said caustically, to hide the tremor in her voice. “And is that how you remember it?"

“Low blow, Kee. Why don't you tell me how we met?"

Kee looked at him in the mirror. He hadn't moved, and his voice was muffled by his arm, but she heard the quiet menace in his words.

She would never forget that first meeting. It was as fresh as yesterday in her mind.

“I was called to a meeting in Drake's office. It was the first time I'd ever been up to the executive suites, and you ran into me, literally.” She laughed a little as she took the pins out of her hair. “You were so furious. You had just stormed out of your Dad's office, almost running into the automatic doors. Unfortunately, I was coming along right at that time, and you bumped into me. You were cursing, saying..."

She stopped, her hair half down. The vision of his angelic face twisted in hate would haunt her all her life.

“Saying what?"

Kee ran her fingers through her hair, then picked up the hairbrush. She didn't want to talk about it. Didn't want to call up those memories. “I don't know. You were angry."

Danny sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Tell me what I said, Kee."

He looked tired, his face drawn and pale, and in his dark gaze she saw curiosity and caution.

“I have to know these things,” he said wearily. “If I'm going to have a chance to get my memory back, you're going to have to help me."

She pulled the brush slowly through her hair as she tried to recall his exact words. She remembered his flashing eyes, bright as the sun, his insolent grace, and the filthy words, spilling from his perfect lips. It was the most shocking thing she'd ever seen in her life.

“You were so angry at him. After the auto-doors closed you kicked them and shouted—I don't see how knowing this can possibly help you."

“I said that?"

Kee chuckled in spite of herself. His gaze in the mirror flickered to her mouth, and she bit her lip in consternation. What would she do if he kept looking at her like that, full of yearning, seeking out the answering need in her? A need she was finding harder and harder to deny.

“No, you know what I mean.” She remembered the instant she had first looked into his agate bright eyes, as his hands had steadied her shoulders. She had seen him a few times from a distance and had heard the gossip about him, but she hadn't been prepared for the potency of his beauty and charm.

“Well?"

She blinked, suddenly back in the present with Danny's darker eyes burning into hers, his voice angry, afraid. That fear was what turned her heart inside out. He was just as lost as he'd always been.

She had the sudden realization that he'd never really known who he was.

“I don't want to tell you what you said,” she whispered. She didn't. She wanted to keep him here in the present with her. Safe. Safe from the knowledge of what he'd once been.

“It was so shocking, like the faerie tale where the beautiful girl spilled frogs and snakes from her mouth whenever she spoke."

Danny laughed quietly. “If I was kicking doors and running into pretty girls and cursing, I can ask any of the office staff and they'll be glad enough to tell me, I imagine."

“You shouted ‘I hate you, you son of a bitch! I hope you're dead when I get back!'” Kee lay the hairbrush down on the dresser and turned around, her pulse throbbing in her throat. “Is that what you wanted to hear?"

“Wow,” he whispered. “Did I?"

“Did you say that? Yes."

“No. Did I hate him?"

Kee turned to look out the balcony doors, her stomach in knots, her heart twisting at the sadness in his voice. She wasn't sure she could do this. She was fascinated and moved by Danny. His stoic resolve, his careful grace, his dark, haunted eyes stirred feelings inside her that she'd almost forgotten were there.

She didn't want to give him back the memories that would make his eyes turn sullen and his lip curl with scorn when he looked at her. She didn't want to give him back all the hate he seemed to have left out in space.

“Kee?"

“Do you have to know everything?” she cried, refusing to look at him, unable to think of anything but how awful it would be when he remembered. “Can't you just leave it alone?"

Chapter Seven

“Why even I myself I often think,

Know little or nothing of my real life."

When I Read the Book

Walt Whitman

Kee stood with her eyes closed, waiting for what, she didn't know. She had never talked to him that way before.

“No,” his voice grated, and without even turning around, she could picture the tic in his rigid jaw, the cold resolve in his compressed lips. “I wish I could start over, Kee. I really do. But without my past, I'm nobody—"

His voice cracked. It took effort for her to stand with her back to him, offering no comfort. She wasn't really sure why she held back, except that she didn't want to interrupt him. She had to know why it was so important to him to remember. She had to hear him say it.

After a minute, he continued. “I don't want to be nobody. There's nothing—nothing worse."

Nothing worse. Kee wasn't so sure of that. The hatred in his face when he remembered would be worse for her—much worse. But she knew deep inside that it didn't matter what she wanted. All that mattered was Danny. And Danny couldn't remember who he was.

She tried to imagine what it would be like. It was impossible.

She heard the bed creak, and he groaned. She turned around, propelled by concern for him. “What's the matter?"

“I've got to start working out or something. Maybe I'll swim laps with you.” He stretched, flexing his muscles.

The yearning built inside her again. She tried to stave it off with normal conversation. “You find those jeans in your closet?"

“Yeah. They're a little loose.” He looked down at his feet, but not before she saw the shadow that crossed his face. Running his thumbs inside the waistband that hung tantalizingly low on his lean hips, he hitched it up an inch.

“A little loose and a little long!” she said. “They're dragging the ground."

Danny held up one bare foot. “Yeah, I noticed that too. I guess I've lost a lot of weight.” He bent over and rolled up the cuffs, and Kee's gaze fell on the back of his neck, where muscles bunched and hair curled invitingly.

“How's your mother?"

She wasn't sure she'd heard him right. “What?"

“How's your mother doing? Didn't you go see her? St. Catherine's, right?"

“Uh, yes. She's about the same. She doesn't know much."

“I'm really sorry. I'll go with you one day to visit her.” He pulled on a white tee shirt as he talked. Kee stared at him. He had never asked about her mother before. He'd never acknowledged her existence.

“My headache's just about gone now. I think I'll go downstairs. Mother wants to talk to me."

He looked like a condemned man on the way to the electric chair. On impulse, she laid her hand on his arm. “Don't worry. You'll do fine."

“Will I?” he asked, giving her a crooked smile that tore at her heart.

“Sure you will. Nobody expects you to be perfect. After what you've been through, they'll forgive a few slips. Besides, your mom will do all the talking.” She smiled at him and patted his arm where lean muscles rippled under the taut smooth skin.

He lay his hand over hers.

Kee felt a flutter of something sweet and scary as his fingers touched hers. She slid her hand away and took a step backwards.

“I guess the day we met was the day my father told me he wouldn't get me out of MPS,” he said, reaching for the doorknob.

She nodded.

“What did we do?"

“You just growled at me when you ran into me, and I went on to the meeting. Later that afternoon you came to the lab and apologized."

He'd come to the lab and taken her breath away.

“I apologized."

“Yes, and you asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in your convertible. Then we went to see a movie. They were showing a Julia Roberts retrospective. The movie was Pretty Woman." The memories of that afternoon came flooding back. He'd been so charming, so fascinating.

“What was it about?"

“The movie?” She paused. That afternoon had passed in a haze of infatuation for Kee, her heart coming closer and closer to surrender every minute she was in his presence. What had the movie been about? “It was kind of a Cinderella story, about a rich man and a pros—” Kee stopped, her face burning.

“And a what?"

She swallowed and forced herself to continue. “A prostitute. A rich man and a prostitute. They lived happily ever after.” She couldn't look at him. Was the movie prophetic? Had she prostituted herself for the White money?

He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to raise her eyes to his. His thumb grazed her lower lip, and she gasped.

“What is it?” he whispered. “You look embarrassed. Was it a VRX??"

She shook her head, catching her lower lip in her teeth. “No, it wasn't virtual reality, and it wasn't explicit."

His gaze was searching, burning. “I bought you popcorn."

She blinked, trying to focus on what he'd just said. “Popcorn? Oh, yes, you did. The biggest size. I was stuffed!"

Danny's crooked smile surfaced again. It wasn't until he'd gone downstairs and she'd turned back to the mirror that she realized he hadn't asked if he bought her popcorn, he'd told her!

She looked at the closed door through the mirror, her mouth dry, her pulse pounding in her ears. Had he remembered? Or just guessed?

And if he had remembered the popcorn, how long would it be until he remembered everything?

* * * *

Avery told Danny that Mrs. White was in the library. He stood in front of the heavy mahogany door for a long time, reluctant to touch the polished brass knob. He reached for it again and again, only to have his fingers curl at the last second as he fought a cringing terror.

What was he so afraid of? Something bound up in memory? Trapped in that part of his brain that wouldn't yield up its secrets? Or was it just apprehension at facing the only other woman who should be able to know him no matter how much he'd changed?

When he finally took a deep breath and opened the door, the smell of leather and old paper twisted his gut. His heart pounded in a paralyzing fear made more terrifying because it was accompanied by a fleeting sensation he could only describe as memory.

The sickening smell of leather as he waited for the pain...

He felt the familiar adrenaline fight-or-flight response, but he controlled his urge to break and run and stood inside the doors like a child awaiting punishment.

His mother gestured to him to join her in one of the red leather chairs. He sat down gingerly, afraid that if he relaxed even for an instant, he'd bolt and run.

The leather on the chair arms was slick and cold. His fingers curled again, unwilling to touch it.

Danny gritted his teeth as the pain began in his temples, and he felt beads of sweat tickling his forehead. He had been so afraid the first time he'd regained consciousness, but that blind panic couldn't compare with the fear that now sat on his chest like a cold demon, sucking out all that was left of his humanity. This was a dread that felt old, familiar.

Somehow the familiarity was worse than the fear.

“I know, Daniel,” his mother said, startling him with the accuracy of her words, as if he'd spoken aloud.

“I know you hate this room. I know Ty was a harsh disciplinarian.” His mother smiled tremulously and patted his clenched fist. Her words ricocheted through his body like a stray bullet.

What—he wanted to scream! Am I remembering?

“He wasn't a cruel man,” she went on. “He just wanted so badly for you to be more like him, to care about the business like he did. His father was very strict, and that was all he knew."

Danny looked at the fireplace, his heart hammering against his ribs.

“We argued so many times about it. I never believed in spanking, but he was my husband, and there was nothing I could do, except try to talk to him. You worshiped him once...” She paused, staring into the cold fireplace.

Danny sat frozen, waiting for her to continue. He was afraid she was going to cry. His own eyes were already wet.

“I don't think he ever realized that his harshness caused all your rebellious behavior. In his own way, he was a good man, Daniel. He was dependable."

Danny looked down at his hands. There was a note in her voice that sounded like regret. He didn't know what to say. Everything he had heard on the disks, the things Kee had told him he'd said, had come from anger and hatred. Daniel White had hated his father.

Danny couldn't even remember the man. He felt nothing for him. He could only wonder at the cold dread that weighed him down in this room. “Mother, I..."

“I know, dear, I know. Before he died, Ty talked to me for a long time about you. He said he was so afraid we would lose control of you. He thought MPS would be good for you. I didn't agree."

Danny looked up. Miriam was staring into the fireplace, her eyes shiny with tears. He wanted to stop her, to tell her it didn't matter, but it did—so much. He craved every crumb of information about this family who had welcomed him back.

“We had a terrible fight the night before you left. I screamed at him, accused him of sending you off into space to your death. I was almost a prophet, wasn't I? When they wouldn't give us any word, he called in every favor he was owed to find out what was going on up there. But even he couldn't find out. The day he died, he told me to tell you he was sorry."

He had an overwhelming urge to fling himself at Miriam White's feet, to beg her for help, for comfort. Almost without conscious will, he crouched in front of her chair, clasping her hands in his.

“M-mother,” he said, his voice unsteady, his lips still hesitant to form the word. “I'm so sorry."

His brain was spinning with emotion and confusion. Sometimes he wanted to squeeze his head, to force the memories out like the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. Instead he just crouched there, while Daniel White's mother patted his hand and stroked his hair, her touch this time comforting, rather than desperate.

“Oh Daniel, none of it was your fault."

He bowed his head. For the first time in all the months since the accident, he felt like he actually could be a part of this family, like he belonged. He savored the feeling, afraid of how brief it might be.

Finally, embarrassed, he lifted his head and smiled sheepishly at her. Then, he stood and pushed his hair back from his forehead. He didn't trust the comforting feeling.

How could he, when he didn't know where it came from? With a head full of blank walls where motherly love and shared memories should be, wouldn't anyone feel comforted by someone who reached out to them?

“Daniel, why don't we have a party?"

He stared at her, stunned.

“I haven't done any entertaining to speak of since Ty's death, and I'd love to have this house full of people again."

“Uh, no,” he said quickly, trying to think clearly enough to answer her numbing statement. All he could do was stammer. “I can't..."

“Of course we can,” she interrupted. “We can invite your friends, and Kee's, and all the folks who have been calling and coming by to see you. I know a lot of the Whitehall people would love to come. Yes. A big party, before the weather turns cold.” Miriam reached into a drawer beside her chair and pulled out a pad and pencil, then smiled at him. “Now, let's see. Who do you want to invite?"

“I uh, I think I'm getting a headache.” He rubbed his temples with trembling fingers. “Maybe we can talk about it later."

Her smile faded and was replaced by motherly concern. “Oh, my dear, I'm sorry. Here I am chattering on and on. Of course you must rest. I'll send Avery up with some hot chocolate."

“No, don't do that. I'll just take a nap.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. Gone was the fleeting comfort, whisked away by a few words that reminded him he really had no place here. He had no place anywhere.

“I'll see you at dinner."

Kee was in the shower when Danny went upstairs.

He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He couldn't make it through a party with dozens, maybe scores of people all there to see him, all gawking at him, all comparing him to their memory of Daniel White.

The sound of the shower penetrated his thoughts, and he had a sudden, erotic vision of Kee naked—warm rivulets of water running down between her breasts, over the slight swell of her stomach, between her legs.

He groaned as his body reacted. He couldn't even remember what her body looked like, but every move she made tore through him with a sweet ache that set his pulse racing.

Had he always been so affected by her? If so, why couldn't he remember?

Danny reached into the bedside table, took out the micro-disk player and turned it on, searching for something he remembered hearing in Sam Peters’ logs. He found it easily.

"Personal log, seventeen June, twenty thirty. White keeps griping about his family. Apparently his old man wouldn't use his influence to get his boy out of MPS. Smart man, I'd say. White says he hates him. I just can't figure him out. I wonder what he'd think if he'd never known who his father was, if he'd been stuck in Hell's Kitchen with his mother and a string of “uncles."

Like that son of a bitch Bert, with his leather nightstick that made him feel like such a man! God, I wanted to wrench that damn smelly thing out of his hand and beat him with it! I'd of liked to've killed the asshole. It was his fault! He brought the stuff to Mom, let her OD—died with the auto-pen still in her arm. Shit!

Danny clicked off the recorder, shaken by the other man's words. He needed air. He stepped onto the balcony and sat, staring out over the pool.

The nauseating smell of leather.

Had the smell of leather triggered Sam Peters’ memory, rather than Daniel White's? He rubbed his fingertips together, feeling the faint scars and smooth new skin. Who was he?

He felt impotent, helpless. And so damned scared.

He heard the blower whirring, and the fear dissolved into a new set of pictures of Kee—running her fingers through her damp, golden hair, standing in front of the mirror wrapped in nothing but a towel. He could conjure up her image in a dozen different situations, just like memories.

If only they were.

The balcony door slid open.

“Hi,” Kee said.

“Hi,” he responded without turning his head. “Why don't you sit out here for a minute?"

She was wrapped in a thick terry cloth robe. Her hair was still damp, and waving around her face.

As she sat, Danny saw her small feet, encased in droopy cotton socks. Those socks had to be the sexiest piece of clothing he had ever seen. He longed to slide them off her feet, to run his hands up her calves under the terry cloth robe. The breeze picked up one damp strand of her hair and blew it across his nose, and he went rigid, trying to control the immediate response of his body to the sweet, wet smell of her hair.

He fought for control, like a teenager who'd just discovered lust, like a virgin. He had no memory of making love, no memory of the kind of lover he had been. “Tell me what I was like,” he said tightly.

Kee caught the lock of hair and twisted it around her fingers. “What do you mean?"

“Come on, Kee. You know what I mean. What was I like? What was I interested in, where did I spend my time, how did people feel about me, how did I feel about people?” Danny stopped. Did he really want to know all this? The answer screamed through every nerve ending.

Yes! He had to know. He had to know if what he felt for her was real, or just the reaction of a man too long alone. He had to know if he was Daniel White, or if he was going to have to search for someone else's memories to keep from being nobody.

Chapter Eight

“O I think you could give me my mate back again

If you only would,

For I am almost sure I see her dimly

Whichever way I look."

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Walt Whitman

When Danny met Kee's gaze, she looked away and shrugged jerkily.

“You were kind of spoiled, I guess. Hotheaded definitely.” A shadow crossed her face. “I don't know."

He glanced at her sidelong. That was the same thing Peters had said about him. “You're avoiding my question. What did we do? What was our day-to-day routine? I know I didn't hang around the house all the time, like this."

“No. You were interested in computers and artificial intelligence.” She laughed. “I guess obsessed would be a better word. You were expelled from two different prep schools for hacking into the student records and changing grades.” There was a new quality to her voice, an indulgent amusement. “You'd have never gotten caught if you hadn't bragged about it."

He considered this change in her, basking in the tiny smile that flirted with her lips. Had there been things about him she'd liked? Could it be that he hadn't been a complete bastard? “I haven't seen an InterActive Console in this entire house, except for the household robots and appliances."

Kee nodded. “Your mother told me Ty came home and broke every IAC after your last expulsion."

Ty the Tyrant, Drake had called him. The kind of man who would destroy things in rage. The kind of man whose son hated him.

“Miriam said you were twice as bad after that. He wanted you to know all about Whitehall, so he made you work in the design lab, building models from other people's designs. You hated it. You wanted to design programs yourself. You would spend every spare second up in Systems."

Danny listened to her, trying to glean a memory from her words, but everything was new, unconnected to him. Still, if he could gather enough of the scattered pieces of the puzzle, maybe they would begin to fit together in a pattern he could recognize. Maybe he could put Humpty Dumpty together again.

“So I actually worked at Whitehall,” he mused. “What did Drake mean by that crack about me worrying about the company?"

Kee's forehead crinkled. “Drake's not a very nice person. He never liked you, and he was totally loyal to your father. I think he was afraid you'd sabotage the systems at the plant to retaliate against your father. Also, you weren't real consistent about showing up, especially if you and your father had had an argument. Sometimes you would disappear for days. I think your mother gave you money."

“I disappeared for days after we were married?"

A deeper crease appeared in her forehead as she nodded. Danny wanted to smooth his thumb over the wrinkle. He wanted to wipe her brain clear of memories that hurt her, memories of Daniel White.

What a conundrum. He'd give anything to get his memories back, and yet, he'd like to take hers away—the bad ones at least.

It occurred to him that no matter how bad her memories of him might be, they were still hers, and no one had the right to take them away from her.

What he needed to do was give her new memories that would cause the old, bad ones to fade to insignificance.

Kee shivered and shifted in her chair, and Danny realized he was staring at her.

“I'm getting chilly.” She stood to go inside. “Does any of this sound familiar?"

Danny laughed wryly and shook his head. “No,” he said, getting up to follow her. He sat in the big recliner while she began the intricate machinations that resulted in that severe knot of hair.

She was so graceful. He longed to run his fingers along her arms, to trace the curve of her back down to her hips, to bury his face in her hair and feel it tickle his nose. “Why don't you leave your hair down?"

“It's too fine. It blows everywhere."

Her hair flying in the wind as they raced down the expressway in his convertible.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, having no idea why he knew. One of his daydreams maybe, brought on by the holovid pic. “I'll bet you hated that ancient car, didn't you?"

“The BMW?” she said, smiling absently. “No, I loved it. I felt so free.” She looked at him, a shadow crossing her face. “How did you know about the convertible?"

“I saw a picture."

He walked over to her. “Sit down. Let me brush it for a while."

Her eyes grew wide, but she didn't protest. She sat down on the vanity stool. He picked up the brush and began to stroke her hair.

It was like spun gold. He'd known it would be. He pulled the brush through the long strands, marveling at its smoothness.

He lifted it off her neck, and ran the brush up her nape where he longed to trail kisses. She shivered and closed her eyes.

Good. He wanted her to shiver, wanted her to be affected by him. He didn't know what kind of relationship they'd had, but there was something here in this room, so charged with feeling it was almost alive. He couldn't quite tell if it was good or bad, but it was potent.

Potent and erotic. He looked down at the finely shaped head which he could encase in his hands, at the hair that felt like a silky cat, and wrapped like fine gold chains around his fingers.

“Danny?"

“Stand up,” he said.

Her face turned pink, and she pulled on her lower lip with her teeth. “What?"

“Stand up.” He closed his fist around her hair and pulled gently, forcing her to her feet. Then he let it fall. It tumbled in waves around her face and piled like satin on her shoulders.

“There,” he whispered, feeling the heat of her body through her terry cloth robe. He looked at her in the mirror. “Rapunzel. Would you let down your hair for me?"

He was aching with need. It was still so new, this overwhelming physical reaction to her presence. He hardly knew how to control it.

Touching the sides of her face with his two hands, he gathered the gold-shot strands and pulled them back until he held her head immobile, one hand bunching her hair at her nape. He turned her head slowly until she could no longer keep her eyes on his eyes in the mirror and had to look at him directly.

Her expression held pleading, but he couldn't let her go. His fist clenched tighter, and she made a soft sound that traveled through him like an electric shock. He bent his head just enough to reach her mouth.

When his mouth touched hers, her lips parted in a little gasp, and he gasped too at the exquisite feel of them trembling under his. He kissed her slowly, gently, but thoroughly, keeping her captive by her hair, not willing to let her go until he was finished with kissing her.

To his amazement she responded, her breath coming in quiet little gasps that cooled his lips and tasted sweet on his tongue. Her head bent back as he deepened the kiss.

Finally, an eternity later, she made another small, gasping sound. He lifted his head. Her eyes were closed, her lips moist and parted, her face pink. When he drew back, her head followed his, then her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes.

Danny held his breath. When her gaze met his, her eyes were sharp with wariness and bright with tears.

He let go of her hair and turned away, fingering the hairs caught in his fingers. He sighed, not sure what he was going to do now that he'd actually kissed her.

The feel of her mouth under his, the taste of her, wasn't familiar. But the fit, the tilt of her head and the angle of his, the way she had leaned into him, was very comfortable.

He didn't remember ever kissing anyone before, so there was nothing to compare it to. Even so, he knew it hadn't been an ordinary kiss. Something electric, something powerful, had sparked between them.

She was as shaken by the kiss as he was. He'd felt that in her response. He stood with his back to her until he could breathe normally, until he could turn around without embarrassing himself, as tension crackled in the air like storm lightning.

Kee took a long, shaky breath, thankful Danny had turned away. She needed a minute, maybe even a lifetime, to recover from his kiss. Only supreme willpower kept her knees from buckling. He had stolen something from her while his mouth had covered hers. Something she could never recover.

It was the veneer she'd protected herself with since he'd returned. The veneer of five years of loneliness. He'd stripped it away, leaving her raw, exposed, virginal. How would she protect herself now?

Carefully, quickly, as he began to turn back around, Kee gathered the tattered remnants of sanity around her and licked her lips.

“I need your help, Kee,” he said.

His words surprised her. “What?"

His gaze seemed caught on her mouth as she bit her lower lip. He shook his head, a tiny smile on his face. “I need your help. My mother is planning a party. She thinks she'll probably invite everybody I've ever known. If you can think of anything worse, please tell me."

Kee shook her head slowly. “I can't. Oh, Danny, what are you going to do?"

“I've been thinking about that. If you could get a list of guests, then maybe we could go away for a long weekend and you could tutor me."

“Go away?” Alone? With him? Kee stared at him.

“Yeah. Leave town, split, vamoose, disappear."

“By ourselves?” she creaked.

“By ourselves.” Danny hadn't even formed the thought before he'd uttered it, but suddenly it was vital that she say yes. A few days alone, just the two of them, might give him time to know her, to explore the reason he was so drawn to her.

He waited, not breathing.

She looked down at her hands. “Okay."

His breath escaped in a long sigh. She would go. Suddenly, he felt like he could face anything, even his mother's party, even the worst of his memories. “So, you better get going."

“Going?"

“You've got to get a copy of Mother's guest list."

“Right!” Kee shot one last unfathomable glance at him and moved toward the dressing room. She turned back as if about to say something, then changed her mind and slipped through the door, closing it behind her.

Danny pulled a long golden hair through his fingers and held it up to his nose. It smelled of lilacs.

Chapter Nine

“But toward him there is

Something fierce and terrible in me

Eligible to burst forth,

I dare not tell it in words."

Earth My Likeness

Walt Whitman

They left for the beach on Friday. They took the InterMetro, the magnetic train that rose above the city and connected Washington D. C. with the entire East Cost, the area referred to as the BosWash Megalopolis. As Kee settled in beside Danny, he asked her where they were going, she grinned at him. “We're going to your house in Virginia Beach."

He looked disgusted. “I might have known we had a beach house. Do we also have a mountain cabin, and a fifty foot yacht, and a chalet in Switzerland?"

“I don't think you have a chalet,” she chuckled, enjoying his good mood. He had never taken much time to joke and laugh with her before. It was another pleasant difference between him and the old Daniel.

“Aw, come on, Kee. Not really!"

She nodded. “Yes. There's a place in the Catskills, and Jan and Drake are the only ones who use the yacht."

“Oh, brother!"

“Danny!” She laughed. “What's the matter? Everybody wants to be rich! Just because you don't remember..."

“Yeah, well, I'm not so sure I want to be rich."

“This can't be Daniel White talking! The bad boy, rich kid?” Suddenly Kee stopped. Danny had turned his face away to look out the window, but not before she'd seen the naked fear in his eyes.

A twinge of pity echoed through her heart. She opened her mouth to apologize for joking about his amnesia, but that would probably be worse than ignoring it, so she sat beside him the rest of the way in silence.

He spent the trip staring out the window, his dark eyes taking in the scenery below like a blind person who's suddenly been granted sight.

Kee's heart contracted painfully. He was blind. Blind and deaf and mute. It didn't matter that he could see and hear and talk. He was still cut off from the world, from his life. Sometimes when she thought of what he'd been through, she felt like her heart would burst, it was so full of compassion and concern and ... no. Not love. Concern.

By the time they'd switched from the InterMetro to an air taxi and finally arrived at the house, Danny was pale and quiet. He insisted on helping unload the supplies, but he was favoring his leg. As soon as the last box was inside the house, she turned to him, arms akimbo. “Now, you get into bed. I don't want to hear another word. You rest, and I'll fix some supper."

He nodded stiffly, his mouth tight. Soon she heard the shower from the bedroom.

She unpacked boxes of food and drinks, pleased to see how clean the house was. The automated cleaners kept it neat and fresh and free of dust, although it did have a sterile hospital-like air about it. She hurried to replace that smell with the smell of hot soup.

After she had stuck the few perishables into the cooler and the cans and bottles into the cabinets, she inspected the little kitchen. The cabin was deceptively rustic from the outside, but in here, the tiny kitchen was state of the art. There was a dial-a-meal, an auto-grill, several drink dispensers and because Miriam was a lover of the old ways, a stove. Kee smiled. Miriam White had always insisted on real food prepared by real people.

Kee wiped an imaginary speck of dust off the table. She was surprised to find herself looking forward to a few days alone with just Danny. No servants or robots hovering about discreetly out of sight. No curiosity seekers calling or standing by the gates with holovid cameras. And no nursing home to visit every day.

She pushed away the guilt that thought brought.

Alone with just Danny. Kee thought of him lying in the bedroom, tired and hurting after the long drive. Hurting not just from the drive, either.

She'd seen the confusion and fear in his eyes each time he had to face a new challenge to his missing memories. She saw the fatigue and the pain he still suffered from his ordeal. After all, he was still recovering from dozens of operations. He had endured so much.

Kee looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. She warmed the homemade soup Miriam had ordered the kitchen to prepare. She dialed a loaf of hot French bread to go with it.

When she carried hot soup into the bedroom on a tray, Danny was asleep in the double bed, his hair still damp from his shower. His lashes rested on his cheeks like sooty caterpillars, and his mouth was relaxed. He looked as innocent as the child in the snapshots scattered around the house.

She liked this face much better. The tiny imperfections made him seem more real. He had been so beautiful before, his features even and perfectly shaped, his skin as smooth as a woman's, his eyes rimmed with lashes so dark and thick they'd looked false.

No, she wouldn't trade even one of the tiny scars on his face for all that perfection.

She tiptoed back out of the room and ate the bowl of soup herself, then put the rest away.

She'd forgotten the beach house had a double bed. After the super king-sized bed in their suite, Kee couldn't see how she could sleep there with his long body sprawled out all over, though the chill air made the idea awfully tempting.

Instead, she changed into a satin sleep shirt and curled up on the couch in the living room, using an afghan as a cover.

Late in the night something woke her. She lay still and listened to the darkness.

There it was again.

Danny!

She jumped up, pulled the afghan around her and ran into the bedroom. Danny was mumbling in his sleep, his head tossing.

“No, don't leave me! I can't see! I don't know who I am!"

She climbed onto the bed, her heart thudding with apprehension and concern, and put her hand on his forehead. It was clammy with sweat. “Danny,” she whispered. “Danny, it's okay. You're okay. You're home."

His eyes flew open and he stared at her as if she were a demon. “No!” he said sharply, then he stopped and wiped his face.

“Danny? Are you awake?” Kee watched him closely in the darkness. His face was beaded with sweat, his lashes matted together like starbursts around his eyes.

His gaze finally focused. “Kee?"

She let out her breath in a huge sigh of relief. “It's me. I'm here."

He grabbed her hand. “You're cold,” he said. “Where were you?"

She nodded her head toward the living room. “On the couch. I didn't want to wake you."

He pulled the covers back. “Hurry up,” he whispered. “Get in before I wake up completely."

Kee looked at his body curled invitingly in the rumpled bed. “I d-don't...” she stammered.

“Come on,” he said, his voice soft and compelling, heavy with sleep.

She slipped gingerly under the covers, cringing at the cold sheets. His warm hands on her made her jump.

“Come on, move over here. I'll warm you up."

She wasn't ready for this. She didn't know what it would do to her shredded sanity to lie so close to him. But she didn't have the willpower to resist, nor the heart to leave him alone after his desperate cry.

The warmth radiating from his body overrode her shyness, and she snuggled back against him.

“God! Your feet are cold. No, that's okay. Leave them there."

His firm chest and belly rippled against her back as he chuckled drowsily, and his long arm draped over her shoulder made her feel small and safe. “Danny?” she whispered.

“Hmm?"

“Were you having a bad dream?"

He sighed, his breath stirring her hair. “Pretty bad, but you're here now."

“Yes,” she said softly, putting her hand over his where it lay against her waist. “Yes I'm here now."

She lay awake a long time, listening to him breathe the quiet breaths of sleep. Until she came to him, he had been afraid. He'd said he was all right because she was here.

There was a stinging weight on her chest that she recognized. It was compassion, and she knew she couldn't afford the luxury of that feeling. She couldn't let herself care for him. Not again.

Finally, she grew drowsy. As she drifted off to sleep, Danny's hand tightened briefly at her waist, then moved up to cup her breast. She held her breath, caught unaware by the melting desire that flamed deep in her belly at his touch, but he merely sighed softly and didn't move again. After a few minutes, Kee slept.

The next morning she woke to the smell of coffee. For an instant she thought she was at Whitehall, but then she remembered Danny's warm body against hers in the night and her eyes flew open.

She was all the way over on his side of the bed, and he was gone. His pillow smelled of soap and sleep. Kee took a long breath and was plummeted back in time to the only other weekend she'd spent here.

Danny had picked her up at work on Friday, ignoring her protests and driven them out to the beach house.

“At least let me pack some clothes,” she had begged, but he'd just grinned at her.

“You won't need any clothes."

And she hadn't. It had been a lovers’ weekend. He'd been in a rare mood—funny, sweet, slightly melancholy—and like their last night together, the weekend had broken down her defenses, confused her resolve to keep him at a distance.

Kee swallowed against a lump of regret in her throat. It could have been so wonderful if he had let it, if she had managed to penetrate his anger enough.

The bedroom door opened.

“Morning!” Danny said, grinning at her. He had on a loose, white fisherman's sweater and brown corduroy pants, and he looked rested for the first time since he'd come home. His hair hadn't been combed, and he was still grinning. She'd never noticed how completely his face transformed when he grinned.

“Brought you some coffee."

She sat up, pulling the bedclothes up with her. “I could smell it. You made real coffee.” She accepted the cup gratefully, blowing on it before taking a sip. “It's good!"

“Yeah, amazing, isn't it?"

“I didn't..."

“Hey, I know. It's okay. I guess I must have taken my turn at galley duty on the station. You put the coffee in the wrong place, though."

“Wrong place? I put it in the pantry with all the other food."

Danny sat on the foot of the bed and sipped at his own coffee. “The coffee, and the mugs too, by the way, should go next to the coffeemaker,” he said.

“Mugs and glasses go next to the sterilizer so you can put them away without walking all the way across the room.” Kee watched him as she spoke, a peculiar gnawing feeling under her breastbone. She hated these glimpses of his sweet, vulnerable side, these vignettes of the life they might have had.

Hated them and couldn't get enough of them.

“What you want is to get a cup of coffee without having to walk all the way across the room."

She smiled at his male logic and shrugged. “I guess you'll have to move the coffee then, unless you want to put up with dial-a-meal coffee."

Danny's face lit up again as he grinned. “'DAM’ coffee? No thanks.” He stood. “Now get up! It's a gorgeous day."

Kee sat for a few more minutes, sipping her coffee. It was nice to have someone to talk to, to play with, to ... to sleep with. A thrill shot through her, leaving her limbs shaky. His body had been so warm, so strong against hers last night.

She shook her head. She would not let her body overrule her brain. It was only a matter of time before his memory returned.

He would remember she had married him for his money. He would remember that if she'd kept her part of the bargain, he wouldn't be lost and scared. His body wouldn't be mutilated and torn. His mind wouldn't be traumatized by a horror no one but he could know.

He would hate her.

She put a stop to those thoughts and got up, dressing quickly.

“I don't know what we're doing at the beach, it's freezing!” she exclaimed as she entered the kitchen.

“All the better to snuggle in!” Danny leered at her.

She avoided his gaze, pouring another cup of coffee. “What do you want for breakfast?” she asked, reaching deep inside herself for detachment.

“What've we got?"

Kee looked in the cooler at the supplies she had put away the night before. “Well, we could dial in almost anything. You didn't have any supper,” she said. “You were sound asleep when I brought it in."

“Why'd you sleep on the couch?"

“But if you want good old-fashioned cooking, Miriam supplied us with eggs, bread for toast, milk. There's a couple of packages of sweet rolls, too."

“Warm up the rolls, then we can have an early lunch. Kee?"

She unwrapped the package of rolls and stuck it in the oven, setting the temperature, then picked up her coffee cup. She didn't want to talk about last night, about sleeping wrapped in his arms, his body warm and hard against hers. It was different in the big super king-sized bed at home. There you could sleep with an army and not know it.

He wasn't going to let it drop, though, so as he opened his mouth again, she spoke. “You looked so tired, and you were sprawled out all over the bed. I just didn't want to wake you."

“I dreamed about the first time I woke up after the explosion. I didn't mean to scare you. I'm—glad you were here."

She looked at him. He was staring into his cup, his fingers white around it.

“If I don't regain my memory, I'm going to have to have somebody around to help me,” he said quietly. “I need you. I was hoping maybe this weekend we could see if—if we thought we could make our marriage work.” He set the cup down and traced one finger around the rim.

A spear of terror streaked through her. She wanted to believe he was sincere. His bowed head, his tentative words stirred compassion inside her, but she was afraid to trust him.

The smell of bread baking gave her an excuse to avoid answering his unasked question.

“The rolls!” She jumped up and grabbed an oven mitt. The rolls were golden brown and fragrant when she pulled them out of the oven. “I was afraid they were burned,” she said sheepishly.

“They look just fine. Pour me another cup of coffee?"

They ate breakfast in silence, then strolled out to the beach, after Danny insisted that Kee put on a swimsuit under her jeans and sweatshirt.

“It can't possibly get warm enough to swim,” she had protested.

“Oh, sure it can. The water's still warm from summer, and it's a perfectly clear day. Pretty soon you'll be sweating in the sunshine.

He was right. They sat in beach chairs and went over his mother's guest list name by name until sweat was dripping off them both. Kee had shed her sweatshirt just after Danny pulled his sweater off, but she wasn't sure how much longer she could sit reading off names and talking about people she barely knew when the water looked so invitingly cool.

“Hand me your towel,” she said, setting Miriam's handwritten list down on the arm of the chair. She wiped her hands on the towel as she squinted at Miriam's writing.

It would have been so much easier if Miriam had used a mempad. “Have you talked to any of these people who have called you?"

He shook his head. “Nobody except those guys, Mike and Billy."

Kee laughed. “'Those guys’ were your best friends. How is it going with them?"

“No problem. If you just listen and nod and smile in the right places, you can get by ninety per cent of the time not saying anything. Most people talk to themselves. They don't listen to anyone else."

Kee studied his face. Had he always been so philosophically cynical? She didn't think so. He'd changed a lot in the past five years.

He opened one eye to a slit and peered at her. “Want to go for a swim?"

Standing, he pulled the corduroy pants off, leaving only a brief black swimsuit. Her eyes quickly left the narrow band of black material and traveled downward.

“Oh, God!” Her hands covered her mouth too late to stop her shocked cry.

He had told her his thigh had been crushed, but his flat, emotionless description hadn't prepared her for the mutilation he'd suffered.

The skin on his right thigh was slick and pink. The surgeons obviously hadn't spent as much time on his leg as they had on his face, where they had worked miracles from what he'd told her. The edges of each patch of skin on his thigh were puckered like a patchwork quilt.

But that wasn't the worst. Running up the center of his thigh from knee to groin was a thick, dark red scar.

She looked up at him, her brain reeling and her throat tight. The horrors he had endured were beyond her comprehension. She wanted to pull him close and hold him, but the look on his face stopped her.

His eyes narrowed and a muscle ticced in his jaw, and she realized her hands were still over her mouth. She lowered them, reaching out slightly toward him, wanting to say something but frozen by the fury in his gaze.

“Get used to it, Kee. There's only so much surgery one body can stand. What you see is what you get.” His mouth twisted in bitter amusement.

“Danny, I...” she started, but he had already pivoted on his good leg and headed for the water.

She wanted to cry because he was so brave, to shout at him to stop being so defensive and let her love him.

Well, not love him. She didn't mean that.

Help him. She wished he'd let her help him.

She stood and dropped her jeans, wiping sweat and tears off her face as she followed him into the surf. He dove into a wave, his body slick and graceful as a porpoise. She floated on the buoyant salt water, relishing its coolness, and watched him.

Could she ever make up for that first horrified reaction? He would never believe she wasn't disgusted by what she had seen. She just hadn't been prepared.

She had never been prepared for Daniel, and now she was never prepared for Danny.

She dove through the surf for a while, letting the water cool her tears, riding the waves and enjoying their refreshing buoyancy, until Danny finally called it quits. He held up shriveled fingers.

“Time out! I've got to rest. You're way ahead of me in the fitness department."

He climbed out of the water and pulled on his pants, grabbing a towel as he flopped down in the chair. Kee followed him, squeezing water out of her hair and pulling on her sweater.

“Now the air feels chilly.” She looked at him. His mouth was pinched, and he was pale. “Are you all right?"

He glared up at her, and she got distracted by his starburst eyelashes.

“Sure! I'm just fine!” he snarled. “I can't fucking move without having to rest, my body is repulsive, my brain has shut down! Yeah! I'm great!"

With an effort, she ignored the sympathetic lurch of her heart at his words, and the twinge of fear his hate-filled voice called up from her memory. He'd always done that. Tugged at her easy compassion while he lashed out at her.

He'd never been able to accept compassion. Never been able to accept even the briefest hint of caring. His first reaction had always been to parry then lunge.

“Now that sounds more like Daniel White,” she said wryly. “Angry, impatient, unwilling to be anything but perfect."

"Really?"

She cringed at the sarcasm in his voice, another reminder of the old Daniel White. And, as always, underlying the sarcasm, she heard the note of sadness, and maybe even a wistful hope.

“I thought you didn't know him—me that well."

“Oh, I knew your anger,” she said. “I know that most of it was directed at yourself, at the boy who could never quite measure up to what his father wanted him to be, and who finally decided he'd see just how far he could go in the other direction."

Danny vaulted up and threw the towel down, his face a twisted mask of fury and pain as he towered over her.

“What the hell do you know about it?” he shouted at her, his face so close to hers she could feel his hot breaths. She managed not to recoil.

“Who died and made you head psychiatrist? If you think you can use twisted psychology to try and make me feel better, just forget it! I'm sick of it! Sick of being a goddamned invalid! Sick of your pity! Sick of trying to pretend I know who you all are! That I know who I am!"

“Danny,” she said breathlessly, her heart pounding. “Stop it. Nobody thinks of you as an invalid.” She reached out with a trembling hand toward his, which was clenched into a fist at his side.

“Shut up!” he yelled, pushing at her hands. “You all think you know so damned much. Everybody's got to have a hand in putting Humpty Dumpty together again!” His voice cracked.

“Just leave me the hell alone!” He stomped off, his gait uneven as he favored his mangled leg.

Kee didn't move until he disappeared into the bright glare of the sun. She hugged herself, trying to stop the trembling. She could feel tears on her lashes, but inside, behind the fear, she felt a wary relief.

This she understood. His anger, the horrid words spilling from his beautiful lips, were familiar to her.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as her mouth turned up in a smile. She wiped her eyes, considering her bizarre reaction. Why would she welcome the very thing she had always feared—his anger? As soon as the question formed in her brain, she knew the answer.

“Because this time you weren't out of control,” she whispered, a wistful chuckle rippling her breast. “This time you knew when to stop. Still, you always were scary when you were mad, Daniel White."

Chapter Ten

“Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry,

Affected, disheartened...

I know every one of you.

I know the sea of torment, doubt,

Despair, and unbelief."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

She sat for a while and tried to read, but the sun glared onto the screen of the electronic reader until her head hurt, and she couldn't stop thinking about Danny. About all the things that were different about him. He'd thought she was repulsed by the scar on his thigh. He couldn't have been more wrong. She had just been caught off guard.

The scar was a medal to his bravery. It represented all the pain he'd gone through. It broke her heart that he'd lost the memories of his life, but carried an indelible reminder of the atrocities he'd suffered.

Kee sighed, turning off the reader. She picked up their things and trudged back up to the house. The dark cottage was empty. Danny wasn't there.

As she made herself a cup of coffee, she couldn't stop thinking about his outburst, so much like the angry boy she remembered.

She shivered, assaulted by the one memory she wished she could wipe from her brain as cleanly as it had been wiped from his.

But it wouldn't go away. One unguarded thought, and she was plunged back in time. Out of all the bittersweet memories of the six months they'd been married, this one was the most bitter, and the sweetest.

His mother had held a farewell party for him, with more people than Kee had ever seen together in one place.

Daniel got very, very drunk. The drunker he got, the more coldly sarcastic and cruel he became, until Kee finally just slipped out and went upstairs to bed.

She was nearly asleep when he burst into the room, slamming the door and flipping on the light switch. His jacket was gone, and his tie was askew. He drank from the bottle clenched in his hand.

“Get up."

Kee remembered watching him warily from the big bed, afraid of the icy calm voice that belied his disheveled, drunken appearance.

“I said get up!"

“Daniel, you're drunk. Go sleep in one of the guest bedrooms."

He grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the bed. She clutched at the lace bodice of her nightgown and flung her hair out of her eyes as she tried to twist free.

“Stop it! Let go of me!” she choked, apprehension closing her throat.

“Let go of you? Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? You've never wanted me to touch you. You're looking forward to tomorrow even more than my father is, aren't you? Well, get this! I don't want to touch you. I don't ever want to see your pretty little face around here again.” He pulled her up close, and she could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“You got exactly what you wanted, didn't you? Well, you didn't keep your part of the bargain, little whore! You got your money, but you were supposed to do something for me, too, weren't you? Weren't you!” His fingers tightened.

“I don't know what you're talking about. Let me go!” Kee's skin prickled with fear, her heart pounded. He was so strong, and he could get so angry.

“Please?” She hated the pathetic, pleading note in her voice.

“Please? You're asking me please?” He stared at her, his hazel eyes dark with anger or hatred, or both. “Little Miss Rebekah is asking me please don't hurt her?” He tossed her onto the bed like a pillow.

“What about what I asked you? Should I have said please? Why didn't you get pregnant, you conniving, infertile bitch?” He wiped his hand over his face. “Women get pregnant at the drop of a hat when you don't want them to. Shit! Why'd you let me think you'd be able to save me?"

“Danny, what are you talking about?"

“Don't call me Danny! I told you I hate that name!” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bedroom door. “He calls me Danny—Danny boy—when I've disappointed him, like I do all the fucking time—"

Kee couldn't believe it. If he weren't so obviously furious, she would think he was crying. If it was anyone other than Daniel, she would think those were tears glistening on his cheeks instead of sweat, would think his voice had broken on a sob.

“Are you okay?"

He was staring at the door. “All the fucking time!” he whispered.

He turned back toward her, his eyes bright and burning. “You are a pretty little thing, though, aren't you?” He jerked at his tie and ripped his shirt off.

The rage and pain she saw in his face just before he flipped the lights off made her limp with fear. “Daniel, why don't you take a shower? It might make you feel better. Don't..."

He pushed her back on the bed. “Don't what, sweetie-kee? Don't touch you?"

“Don't hurt me..."

With one long-fingered hand he ripped her gown completely off her. She could see his eyes glittering in the dimness. He looked like Lucifer, the beautiful damned angel of Hell.

“Daniel, don't, please! Couldn't you just once...” she was crying now, crying and begging.

“What? Just what?” he growled, his face as hard as granite.

“Act like you love me!” she cried.

“Are you serious?” He grinned as he bunched the torn gown in his fist, then slung it away. “You want me to act like I love you? What is it you want, Kee?” He touched her face with his fingers.

She flinched, but his touch was featherlight and gentle, and his face was suddenly grave. “What do you want?” he whispered. “Tell me, sweetie-kee. Sweetness?” He kissed her mouth slowly, his lips soft and seeking against her trembling ones.

“Gentleness?” He touched the tip of her breast with a light caress that sent a lightning bolt through her.

“Were you hoping for a knight in shining armor?” He bent his head to taste the hollow between her breasts, as his fingers still teased her nipple.

She sucked in her breath, biting her lip to keep from pleading with him not to stop, clenching her fists in the bedclothes to keep from pulling him desperately to her.

She had no defenses against him when he took the time to arouse her. The one thing she couldn't protect herself against was his tenderness.

“Did you want a husband who loved you?” His hand stole lower, to touch her belly, then further.

The need he was building in her was new and more frightening than anything he'd ever done. He'd always been able to arouse her with just a touch, but this sad furious gentleness was building a hunger in her that had never been stirred before.

As awful as his anger was, she wished for it now, because she could fight against his anger. She could steel herself against his hatred. But his strange mood was tearing her heart out. She didn't want to feel what he was making her feel. She didn't want to be left here wanting him when he went away.

“Well, sweetie-kee?” he whispered against her mouth. “Talk to me. Did you want me to love you? Did you want to love me?"

“Yes,” she gasped. “Please...” She wasn't even sure what she was begging for. She couldn't think. He was maddening her with his fingers.

He pulled his head back to stare into her eyes, his brow furrowed. “Yes? You like that? That's what you wanted?"

Something burned deep in his eyes, something so dark, so sad, that Kee unclenched her fist to cup his face. But before she could touch him, he grabbed her head between his hands, his jaw working, his teeth clenched.

“Well, I'm afraid I can't act like I love you,” he whispered, his voice as soft as his caresses had been. “I wanted a baby. If I could have given him a grandson, maybe he'd have used his influence to keep me out of MPS. Maybe he'd have cared. That's all I ever wanted you for."

She stared at him, her hand frozen halfway to his face, his words cutting into her heart like a straight razor, yet at the same time sending relief through her veins.

She should have known. The tenderness was just a trick. This was much better. She could deal with his hatred.

“Okay, my little whore,” he continued, his voice soft and seductive. “Let's do it your way. Let's make like lovers tonight. After all, it's liable to be the last bit of screwing either of us gets for a while. I'll make love to you if you'll make love to me."

She winced at the crude words, at the manic glint in his eyes. Then, still holding her head between his palms, he pushed his face into the hollow of her shoulder and lay perfectly still for a moment, his body heavy on her, but not oppressive.

Kee closed her eyes. It was too hard to fight her need. She savored his silky rough skin, the rise and fall of his chest, the thickness of his desire against her thighs, and prayed that he'd finish with her and leave before she begged him to stay.

With a deep, slow breath he lifted his head.

He looked at her lips for a long time, his thumbs caressing the corners of her mouth, his face angelic in the moonlight. The odd, sad look was there again.

“Sweetie-kee. You almost did it, didn't you?” He brushed his fingers across her lower lip. “I don't know how, but you almost did it.” His voice was hardly audible. “Maybe if things were different. Maybe if we'd had time. What would you have done to me if we'd had time?"

She heard his words over the pounding of her heart, over the rush of blood in her ears, but she was too mesmerized to decipher their meaning.

When she thought she would scream if he didn't do something, he kissed her, slowly, completely, as if he had aeons to spend just kissing her, as if she were the most precious thing he had ever touched.

When he stopped kissing her and moved his magical hands down her body, she started crying silently, and while she cried, she touched him too. Touched his cheeks where evening stubble was harsh against her palm. Touched the crisp, curly hair on his chest, touched his belly, hard and soft at the same time.

Her brain was numb, but her senses were superattenuated. She felt her own blood rushing through her veins, felt his pulse, strong and steady against her breasts, her belly, her neck.

Every place he touched throbbed with passion. Her collarbone was suddenly sensitized, her hipbone ached for the brush of his fingers, her eyelids and her ears burned fire under his lips.

When he lifted himself and plunged into her, his thrusts desperate but not cruel, she met him and followed him, and cried out just when he did, throbbing with passion. And when he once more tucked his head into the hollow of her shoulder, spent and sobbing for breath, she lay beneath him and continued to cry.

After a moment, she pushed against his shoulders. “Damn you, Daniel, damn you,” she sobbed, because he'd made her feel after all.

Here at the end, when he had told her to be gone before he came back, he had coaxed from her what he had never tried to find before, and he had given her something she would never again be happy without.

He lifted his head, his beautiful face grave in the darkness. “And damn you, Kee. Damn you to hell."

As he vaulted up off the bed something fell on her cheek. As he crashed around in the dark looking for his discarded clothes, she touched the drop of wetness with her finger, then touched her finger to her tongue. The drop was salty, but Kee had preferred to think it was sweat, rather than a tear.

The door slamming startled her.

* * * *

At first she was still back in time and Danny's face, white and pinched in the late afternoon sun, surprised her. Then she realized she had been daydreaming. She sat up and wiped her eyes.

“You okay?” He looked at her hard.

She studied him. His shoulders were bent with weariness, his face drawn with fatigue. His anger was gone, replaced by a bleak sadness that tore at her fragile defenses. “Sure! I'm fine. I was worried about you. Where've you been?"

“Walking.” He gave her a sheepish, crooked smile. “I just needed some time. There's been so much to take in, you know?” He sat at the table with her and rubbed his neck. “I didn't mean to yell at you like that."

“I know you didn't. I didn't mean to spout platitudes.” Kee smiled at him and touched his hand. When she did he turned it palm up and clasped hers.

Kee's heart melted at the gesture, the memory of that other night still fresh and raw within her. When his memory came back, that would be what he remembered too, that last terrible night, and the things they had said and done to each other.

She traced the tiny lines on his palm with her fingertips. She didn't want to think about that night. “Danny, tell me about it."

“About what?"

“Was it too awful to talk about?” She wanted to touch his thigh, to tell him how brave she thought he was, but she was too shy.

“Why would you want to hear about it?” His hoarse voice turned harsh, suspicious.

“I want to help,” she said, shrugging. “To understand."

“Are you sure?"

There was such a note of yearning in his voice that she glanced up at him. His eyes were terrible. He carefully extricated his hand from hers and stood. “No, you don't want to hear."

“I do! Please, Danny. I want to help!"

“Do you? Do you want to know why I stopped them before they fixed my leg? They could have fixed it, you know. They could have gotten rid of the last of these too.” He touched the scars at his hairline. “But I couldn't take it. There's a limit to the amount of pain you can stand."

He lifted his chin, his eyes dark and burning. “Or would you rather hear about the first time I woke up? About the doctor saying how hard it was going to be to rebuild my face? That's right, Kee. Even my nose. They had to grow me a new nose. The skin and cartilage were gone."

He smiled grimly, his head cocked defiantly, challenging her to beg him to stop. She saw his fists clench before he thrust his hands into his pockets.

Swallowing hard against an overwhelming pity, she stayed quiet, wanting him to continue, somehow knowing he needed to talk about it but dreading it too. She was afraid she would react in shock again, and he would misunderstand again.

“It was weeks before I could talk or see. All I lived for was the next dose of painkiller. Then, without even asking me, they started to work. They transplanted new corneas into my eyes and started working on my face before I even knew I was alive. They made the decision to salvage me."

Kee moaned quietly, unaware that she had made a noise until Danny glanced at her. “Oh, Danny,” she whispered.

“If I'd had a choice, I'm not sure I'd have judged myself worth saving."

“Don't say that!"

He stared at her for a long time, quizzically, his eyes narrowed, then he shrugged. “What's for dinner?” he said.

“Dinner? Are you hungry?"

“Almost as hungry as I am tired. I think I'll take a shower, then I'll help you make it."

“It'll be ready by the time you're done.” Kee tried to make her voice as detached as his had suddenly become. When he pulled back from her, she had no choice but to react accordingly.

She dialed steak and baked potatoes and a nice Merlot. When she heard Danny get out of the shower she called him to come and eat. He came in dressed only in the drawstring pajama bottoms which hung casually on his hips, exposing his taut ridged belly.

They ate in silence. As soon as Danny finished, he pushed his wine away and smiled apologetically.

“Think I could do breakfast tomorrow to make up for falling asleep on you tonight?"

Kee shrugged and smiled. “Sure, no problem. All I have to do is stick the dishes in the sterilizer. Besides, you're supposed to be here to relax and memorize the names of the guests."

Danny winced. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Listen, we'll spend all day tomorrow going over that ridiculous list, okay? Tonight I'm not going to be worth shooting."

He disappeared into the bedroom. Kee set the dishes in the sterilizer and tossed the napkins into the washer. She was tired too, although she wasn't sure if it was from the sun or from her afternoon of memories.

She sat in the living room, paging absently through a print zine, her mind on Danny. She'd like to think he was right, that they could start over.

But she wasn't sure she could invest all that love, all that trust in him. What if she did succeed in helping him make new memories? Would they be strong enough to overcome the old hate and anger that lurked inside his wounded brain?

The zine fell off her lap. She was falling asleep, and she still had to take a shower. Wearily she turned off the lights.

Chapter Eleven

“This is the press of a bashful hand,

This the float and odor of hair,

This the touch of my lips to yours,

This the murmur of yearning..."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

This wasn't going to work. Danny turned over again, but he still couldn't go to sleep. He knew what it was. It wasn't exhaustion from swimming this morning, then walking all afternoon after he'd blown up at Kee. It wasn't the huge, delicious meal. It wasn't even the pain in his bad leg. There was just one thing that was keeping him awake. The idea of sleeping so close to Kee.

She was right about the bed. A double bed just wasn't big enough. His long limbs took up more than his share, and the only way the two of them could sleep comfortably was to lie entwined like spoons.

Comfortably? Hell! Lying with her backside pressing up against him was anything but comfortable.

He thought about a question he'd asked himself a lot during those first horrible months after the accident. How long had it been since he had been to bed with a woman? He literally didn't know, but it had been at least twenty months.

Twenty months since the accident. Twenty months and more than twelve operations and no memory. Nothing except a few strange daydreams and a lot of unanswered questions, like why had he married this sweet girl? And what had he done to make her so afraid to trust him?

Danny listened to the shower and tried not to imagine Kee naked under the hot steam jets.

It was impossible to ignore the honed blade of desire that sliced through him whenever he was near her. The sound of the drying jets unleashed a flood of imagination, and he could trace her movements as perfectly as if he were watching her.

A flash of red lit his closed eyes as she opened the bathroom door and turned out the light. He heard her bare footfalls and felt the give of the mattress as she slid under the covers with a swish of silk against the cotton of the sheets. She tossed her hair out of the way and lowered her head onto the pillow. He heard her soft sigh as she relaxed, and he could smell the lilacs.

No, he wasn't going to be able to sleep. No matter how hard his brain tried to ignore her, his body refused to cooperate. He winced as desire overcame the throbbing ache in his leg.

He'd tried to tell her this morning, tried to see how she felt. But the damn rolls had gotten in the way so conveniently that he suspected she'd used them as an excuse to avoid answering him.

Then he'd had to go and yell at her.

He opened one eye to a slit. The moonlight illuminated the shimmery highlights in her hair and gave the folds of silk covering her enticing shadows.

She was good. A genuinely nice person. He couldn't figure out why Daniel White had resented her so much, but he thought he was beginning to understand.

Kee had just happened to be in the way of Daniel White's fury, so she'd taken the brunt of it.

“Kee?” he whispered hoarsely.

“What?” She sounded startled. “Are you okay?"

“Yeah. Listen, I want to thank you for what you've done. I mean, I appreciate you putting up with me and tutoring and grilling me about the family and all."

“It's fine. I don't mind at all, but, Danny, you don't have to pretend to remember. You're not going to be able to fool everyone. And nobody will fault you. Not after what you've been through. Besides, you're starting to remember things anyhow, right?"

“What do you mean?"

“Well, the other day you remembered buying me popcorn. You remembered it!"

Danny was silent for a minute. Had he?

Kee grinning at him around a mouthful of popcorn. Her hair flying in the wind as they flew down the expressway in his convertible. Her eyes, wide and damp with a mixture of apprehension and passion, as he moved above her.

“Kee?” He sat up. She pulled herself up on one elbow, providing him with an enchanting look at the tops of her breasts. With a supreme effort, he kept his eyes on hers, wanting to capture the look in them the instant he asked his question.

“What is it, Danny?"

“Did you love me?"

She froze, then she pushed the covers back and got up.

“Wait,” he said, vaulting up, ignoring his aching leg.

She walked out into the living room and stood in front of the big picture window that overlooked the ocean, her arms wrapped protectively about herself.

Danny followed, waiting to see what she would do. He heard the sound of the surf outside, pulsing, breathing, never-ending. He wondered if she knew how like the surf she was—constant, pulsing with life, breathing hope into him with every breath she took. He felt like the battered, sandy shore, so vulnerable, so easily eroded, but lifeless as a desert without the surf.

“Kee?"

She whirled on him. “Why are you asking me that? I've done everything I could for you. I've gone over the party guest list, I've told you all I know about your family. What more do you want from me?” She began to shake.

He couldn't see her face. It was a pale blur in the silvery moonlight.

“I just wanted to know.” He shrugged, hating himself for hurting her. “We were married for six months. I've heard the disks. I know why I married you, but why did you marry me? Did you love me?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer.

“That's not a fair question.” She still clutched herself. “You were so ... angry. I don't think I ever saw you when you weren't. I didn't know what to expect when you came home. I thought you would still be angry. I didn't know you would be so—"

“Helpless?” he asked bitterly.

“No.” She shook her head, her wide eyes glittering in the darkness. “No. So hurt, so confused. You're very different. I couldn't see past the anger before."

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you.” He'd done nothing but hurt her since he'd arrived. He'd seen nothing but mistrust and wariness in her eyes. He'd wanted so badly to find the girl in the holovid pic, but now he was afraid he never would.

She shook her head mutely.

“Remember what I said this morning?” he asked. “About trying to make our marriage work? Did you think about that?"

She shook her head again, a little jerkily this time. She looked at the front door, then back at him, like a wild animal that senses a threat.

“It's all right. Don't worry about it. I'm sorry.” He moved slowly toward her, as if she were that wild animal.

“Kee,” he whispered, carefully encircling her with his arms, barely touching her, afraid she might break if he did.

She trembled like a lost kitten, and he wanted to stroke her, to gentle her. There were other, more urgent things he ached to do, but instead he just stood still, hardly touching her.

“Danny? I'm scared."

He didn't move at all. He wished he could say something to banish her fear, but it was his fault. “I know,” he said. “Me, too."

He stood shielding her, listening to the pulse beat of the surf that matched his own pounding heart as her breath warmed his neck and her body trembled against his.

He put his face in her hair, breathing the familiar scent that surrounded her like an aura.

She moved, and he froze, afraid she would push away. But she shifted closer, so that her breasts pressed just a little more into his bare chest.

He pulled back to put his fingers under her chin and turn her face up, touching her lower lip with his thumb. “You're very different from your picture,” he whispered. “It's like you grew up. I wish I could remember that girl. I wish I could bring her back."

He moved his hand from under her chin to the back of her neck, and bent his head to kiss her.

Her lips trembled under his as he sought to urge them apart, and a surge of desire as strong as pain erupted in him when she opened her mouth to let him in. He cradled her skull in his hand and gave in to the urge that had been building in him since that first night when he had watched her sleeping.

He kissed her urgently, not holding back as he had before. This time he kissed her with meaning, with promise, with a wild desire that flared from his fingertips like lightning and crackled from his mouth like electric fire.

And she kissed him back. Her mouth relaxed under his, and her head tilted upward, accepting the gentle assault of his kiss, giving it back with an urgency as great as his own.

Suddenly she stiffened and pulled away, her eyes wide and glistening in the darkness.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“I'm sorry, Danny. I just...” she spread her hands. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with him to understand. “You're so different. It's like I don't know...” She stopped, horror replacing the pleading in her eyes.

Danny laughed, the sound echoing harshly in his ears as sudden fear ripped through him and destroyed the desire. “Don't know who I am? Yeah, I understand. I have the same problem."

He picked up the afghan and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Tell you what. You take the bed. I'll sleep here.” He threw himself down on the couch in a careless slouch that didn't reflect how he was feeling at all.

Kee stood in the center of the room, like a lost child in a railway station. “Danny, I didn't mean..."

“I know. It's all right. I just got carried away. It won't happen again.” He winced at the harshness of his voice, but if he weren't careful, all the pain and fear inside him would break the ice-thin surface of his control.

He didn't want her to see how much he'd hoped she knew him, even if he didn't know himself.

He turned his back and tried to present an attitude of settling down for sleep. After a few minutes he heard her walk into the bedroom and climb into bed.

He closed his eyes, but his mind kept replaying those few seconds of delight when she had opened her mouth to his kiss. Sighing, he resigned himself to a sleepless night and sat up to stare at the ocean and let the bittersweet pleasure wash over him again and again, as constant and destructive as the waves that pummeled the shore.

* * * *

Kee climbed into the bed, shivering with cold and shame. How could she have blurted out those hurtful words?

She pulled the covers up to her ears and wrapped up in a fetal ball, chilled through. She had been shocked by his question.

Did you love me? It had plummeted her back in time, to another night, another whispered question.

Did you want me to love you? Did you want to love me?

What she'd almost said was true in a way. He was so very different from the man he had been.

Oh, she knew who he was. She also knew he could hold a power over her that the old Daniel never had. This man they'd sent back to her could wrest from her the feelings she had never dared to show him before.

Danny could make her love him. And she couldn't risk that.

Chapter Twelve

“Here I shade and hide my thoughts,

I myself do not expose them,

And yet they expose me more

Than all my other poems."

Here the Frailest Leaves of Me

Walt Whitman

Sunday morning they took the InterMetro back to Mount Vernon in silence, carefully polite with each other, but cool.

Danny was exhausted. Kee could see that in the grim set of his mouth, his face so pale that the little scars shone pink and angry.

Feeling guilty because his exhaustion was her fault, she didn't try to talk. He dozed part of the way. She stole glimpses of him as he slept, studying each millimeter of his face, tracing each scar, each tiny imperfection with her gaze.

If she hadn't seen him before, seen the astonishing perfection of his features, she would never have noticed the scars. Whoever had rebuilt his face had been an artistic genius, but then Ty had always claimed that the government had access to technology that normal people could not imagine.

“Especially the military,” he would say. “Those boys can do things that people only read about in science fiction stories!” And Tiberius White knew what the government could do, because Whitehall Aircraft held the biggest government contract that had ever been awarded.

Danny was a military hero, so if Ty was right, then Danny had been ministered to by the most brilliant surgeons in the world. She wondered why they hadn't taken as much time to heal his mind as they obviously had to heal his body.

Danny stirred and Kee looked away. “We're almost home,” she said brightly. “Another few minutes."

“Good,” he said, trying to stretch in the cramped space. “I'd like to take a swim before the sun goes down."

“But you're so tired! Shouldn't you take a nap or something?"

“I've been napping. I think swimming might strengthen my leg.” His voice was cold, brooking no argument. “Where's that guest list? Let's go over a few more names. Who is Geoff Brinkman?"

Kee's heart turned over. “He's invited?"

“Yeah, why? Who is he?"

She felt like Danny's dark eyes were boring a hole in the side of her head. “He's the head of R&D. I guess Miriam has invited literally all the executives from the plant. You never knew Geoff."

“R&D. Research and development? So he's your boss?"

She nodded, irritated with herself for feeling guilty. She hadn't done anything. Geoff was coming to the party with over a hundred other guests. She probably wouldn't even see him.

“What's the matter?” Danny asked.

Kee looked out the window. “What do you mean?"

“I don't know. You look upset. Don't you like your boss?"

Kee almost laughed. Like him? She had been seriously considering Geoff's constant pleading to file for divorce and move in with him, when the news of the space station explosion had plummeted her husband back into her life.

“Of course I like him. He's fine. Who else is on the list?” She heard the brittleness in her voice and hoped Danny hadn't noticed it.

“Okay. Cynthia Shepherd?"

Kee breathed a sigh of relief. She explained who various guests were until the train arrived at Mt. Vernon station.

When they got home, Miriam was in her room and called to them as they passed. “Daniel, Kee? Come in for a minute. Oh, my beautiful boy, you look exhausted. What have you two been doing?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Miriam turned pink with embarrassment. “Well, that is, I didn't mean to ... I just hope you're not doing too much! That is..."

Danny went over and kissed his mother's cheek. “Hello, Mother. How was your weekend?"

Miriam visibly relaxed and Kee marveled at how easily Danny smoothed his mother's embarrassment.

“Busy as usual! I should never have let you out of here, Kee, with the Executive Wives Luncheon on Saturday. You're always so tactful with that biddy, Anne Garfield.

“Oh, Daniel!” She dug around in the pile of notes and print zines and letters on the ancient writing desk at her elbow. “There were a lot of calls for you. Most of them were the same people who have been calling, but Avery said this one was a Dr. Ganand. He said you should call him at this number as soon as possible on Monday."

Danny frowned as he took the piece of paper. “Thank you, Mother. Now if you'll excuse us, we'll change and relax for a while."

“Of course, dear. I'll see you at dinner."

As they left his mother's suite, Danny glanced again at the note in his hand and clenched his fist around it.

“Are you okay?” Kee asked.

“Sure. Why wouldn't I be?” He opened the door to their suite and tossed the crumpled note on the dresser, missing the brass tray that held his pocket paraphernalia.

Kee stood in front of her mirror, taking off her rings and smoothing lotion on her hands while she watched his reflection. “You seem upset about the phone call."

“Do I? Well, it's just a little uncomfortable to be treated like an amoeba under a microscope. I was hoping I was through with all that."

“He's the psychiatrist?"

Danny nodded.

“Can't he help you get your memory back?"

“Yeah."

Kee searched his face. Fear tinged that single syllable. She thought of what he had said last night, that he didn't know who he was, either, and his earlier comment about somebody else's face. At the time she had thought they were just reactions to his inability to remember.

As he disappeared into the dressing room to change into swim trunks, Kee sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the closed door, for the first time considering the possibility that Danny had hinted at ever since he'd been home.

Her mind reviewed all the subtle differences, from the too loose jeans to the fact that he was no longer arrogant and cruel. The idea was ludicrous. It couldn't happen ... could it?

Danny emerged from the dressing room, clad in a white bathing suit and a white terry cloth pullover shirt. “I'm going down to the pool. Want to join me?"

Kee looked up. “Uh, no. No, thanks. I'm going to...” she gestured vaguely toward the dressing room. “...take a shower."

“Okay. Is something wrong?” Danny peered at her sharply.

“No. I'm just more tired than I thought."

“Kee? I'm sorry if I upset you at the beach house. I sometimes get overwhelmed with it all. I don't mean to take it out on you."

“Really, Danny, it's okay,” she said, beginning to unbutton her shirt, her eyes on her hands. “I'm fine. Go ahead."

“If you're sure? Okay, see you later."

After he left, her fingers stopped fumbling with the buttons. What had really happened up there on the space station? Could the government have made such a monumental mistake?

No! The government wouldn't make a mistake like that. The idea that Danny wasn't Daniel White was unthinkable. Of course, it would explain why he remembered nothing of his old life. It would also explain the inherent differences that shouldn't be possible to change, like his personality.

But what about the things that were the same? His dark, furious eyes? His deadly quiet voice that might be hoarse, but still held a timbre of anger that was unmistakable?

What about his kiss?

Nobody could replace one person with another and hope to get away with it. That was pure science fiction!

Ty's booming voice echoed in her ears: Those boys can do things that people only read about in science fiction stories!

She put her trembling hands over her mouth, horror overwhelming her. Her breath came hard and fast, and she breathed into her cupped hands.

She had said, I don't know who you are, and he had said he had the same problem. He had laughed, but his face, full of hurt and fear, floated in front of her closed eyes.

Were the similarities she thought she saw real, or a product of her own fantasies?

Fantasies that had invented a new Daniel White who would come back to her and love her.

* * * *

Kee took one last look in the mirror and decided she was ready. Her hair was twisted into an intricate braid, with a string of pearls entwined in it. The dress was certainly plain enough, but clinging.

Danny had gone downstairs earlier to get a drink. She hoped he wasn't going to revert to his old habit of fortifying himself with liquor. She wasn't sure she could control him if he got drunk.

Downstairs Miriam was in her element. Mrs. Tiberius White was one of the most popular hostesses in the D. C. area, known for her easy grace, not to mention her lavish and unusual all natural buffets. It was considered an honor to be invited to the White's house for a party.

Kee had gotten used to the confusing melee that characterized these events, so she merely wandered through the crowds, speaking to people, nodding and agreeing with them that yes, it was marvelous to have Daniel back home.

She searched for Danny, but after she'd traversed the entire length of the huge room, she had to conclude he wasn't here. She slipped out and down the hall, glancing into the living room and the study, where people sipped drinks and talked. Finally, she stood in front of the library door.

She eased the door open. The library had been Tiberius White's sanctuary. He'd had it furnished like an old, elegant club, with leather and wood and velvet. No newfangled gadgets in here.

As Kee's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw Danny sitting in a red leather chair, staring at a low crackling fire.

“Danny?” she whispered. His head jerked, but he didn't turn around. She sat in the other chair and put her hand over his fist clenched on the leather-covered armrest.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked.

She knew he'd hated this room. In fact, it had always been the one place she could escape from him. He had never, in all the time she had known him, entered the library voluntarily.

He spoke without moving. “What did he do to me in here?"

“Oh, Danny. Don't. There's a house full of people waiting to see you."

“Tell me.” She recognized the deadly quiet voice that coiled like a snake around the words. How could he not be Daniel White? If he'd come back with no face at all, she'd have recognized that tone.

“Your father was a hard man. He expected you to do things just like he did—better than he had, and when you didn't measure up.... “She stopped.

“Tell me what happened in here.” His fist was rigid under hers, and he hadn't moved since she'd sat down.

Her fingers traced the scars that were almost too slight to feel, her insides churning with pity and compassion. “Well, I can remember a lot of yelling."

She stopped as a shudder racked his body. Did he remember what had gone on in here?

“I think your father believed in spare the rod and spoil the child."

He shot her an ironic look.

“You never came in here voluntarily. Why tonight? Did you remember something?"

He jerked his hand from under hers. “I don't remember anything. It was the only room without people."

He stood, then turned toward the desk. Kee saw his throat move as he swallowed.

Kee could only imagine what this room had meant to Daniel when he was young. Perhaps here was where the anger and bitterness had been born. But Danny had lost his bitter past out in space. She didn't want to give it back to him.

She stood. “Are you ready to go?” she asked, taking his hand, holding it tightly when his fingers closed spasmodically around hers.

He looked at her, and she saw the fear in his eyes.

“It's going to be fine,” she said, not believing the words. She squeezed his hand, trying to transfer strength and reassurance to him.

“I don't know anybody. You can't imagine how that feels. Don't leave me, okay?"

The pleading in his voice wrenched her heart. “Of course! I won't leave your side for an instant. After a couple of hours, you can plead a headache and we'll excuse ourselves."

She couldn't look at him. She didn't want to see the trust in his face, and she certainly didn't want him to see the doubt in hers. “I promise,” she said. “Come on. Your mother will be looking for you."

Chapter Thirteen

“Steady and long he struggles,

He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd,

He holds out while his strength holds out."

The Sleepers

Walt Whitman

Kee led the way to the huge room that doubled as a dining room and a ballroom. The tables were sagging with food. One edible centerpiece was an artichoke mountain with a hollandaise sauce river surrounded by real lemon and lime wedges. Other tables had 3D laser ice sculptures in the shape of Whitehall's most famous airplanes. There were champagne fountains and bowls of iced juices and punch, as well as an auto-bar.

Men in tuxedos and women in lavish gowns wandered about eating hors d'oeuvres and drinking.

“Daniel! Saw you on TV. You look great, boy!” A large, burly man grabbed Danny's hand and shook it vigorously.

“Mr. Greenstreet, don't you look good. Is your wife here?” Kee asked, tucking her hand inside the crook of Danny's arm. She hoped he would remember that Abel Greenstreet was a Senior Vice President of Whitehall's corporate offices.

“Mr. Greenstreet. I hope I haven't thrown Whitehall into a spin. I understand the stock has been erratic ever since my return."

Abel's laugh boomed like jolly thunder. “Believe me, son, I'll take that kind of variation any day.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “We may split. You'll have to get by one day, and I'll show you the figures."

“I'd like that, sir, very much. I want to get involved in the business as soon as I can."

“Excellent! Can't have too many national heroes around!” He roared again and clapped Danny on the shoulder. Danny winced and smiled.

Kee pulled on his arm and turned him away from Greenstreet and toward one of the punch bowls. “You're doing great. Let's get some punch,” she whispered, as she felt a resistance from Danny's other side.

“Daniel!” A woman with long red hair and freckles put her arms around Danny and hugged him as several other people, alerted by her strident voice, turned and spotted him. Suddenly there was a glut of people around him and Kee was several layers of bodies away.

As she started to bore a hole through the crowd toward him a hand on her arm stopped her.

“Kee."

She looked around in panic. Geoff Brinkman smiled at her.

“Geoff. Let me go."

“Let's have some punch. It looks like your husband will be busy for a while."

“No. I need to get to him.” She shook off Geoff's hand and turned back toward the crowd, which had doubled. Now she couldn't even see Danny. Her heart lurched. He would be lost without her. She had to get to him.

“He's a big boy,” Geoff whispered in her ear. “He's used to crowds. Now come on."

“No, Geoff, wait!” Kee looked back toward the group of people. How would she thread her way through there without making a scene? Against her better judgment, she let him lead her out of the mass of people to the nearly deserted area around the punch bowl. She drank the too sweet punch gratefully, keeping her eyes on the crowd surrounding Danny. She should never have let go of his hand. Where was he? She stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd.

“So how's it going?"

“What?” She turned back toward Geoff. “Oh, fine. Everything's fine."

“Why do I doubt that?"

Geoff gazed at her steadily, until she had to lower her gaze to the cup of punch in her hands. He'd known her a long time, long enough to know when she was lying. “I can't imagine,” she said tightly.

“Come on, Kee. You're wound tighter than a spring. You're going to break that cup if you squeeze any harder."

He took her arm and pulled her out the side door into the hall. As the door closed, the din softened to a muted roar.

She glanced back at the door, apprehension clouding her thoughts. “I need to get back..."

“It's too loud in there. Now what's wrong? You haven't been back to work since he got home. Are you coming back, or does he want you here to cater to his every whim?"

His casual reference to the things she had told him in confidence irritated her. “That's not fair, Geoff. He may have insisted before he left that I not work, but it's different now. He was horribly injured. He's still recuperating. And he's confused. Of course I'm going to stay home for a while."

Geoff lifted her chin with his forefinger. “It's good to see you."

She pushed at his hand. “I have to get back inside."

“It's been a long time. Since the night the announcement came down about the space station and your husband, the hero."

His sarcastic reference to Danny cut her. She'd gone out with Geoff a few times, just for dinner. He was smart and sweet and nice looking. He knew more about chemistry than anyone she had ever met, and he was a charming dinner companion. He fancied himself in love with her, though, and that was a problem.

She'd given him the same response she always had. “Geoff, I know what you're trying to do. I'm a married woman! If things were—"

“Damn it! Don't say that again,” he'd retorted. “Things don't have to be different. He's gone. He's been gone five years. You're young and lovely and you're withering in that big house. You didn't love him anyway. Why don't you move out?"

“What?” She came back to the present with a start, staring at Geoff, standing compactly graceful in his tuxedo. The muted din still whispered in the background.

“I said why don't you move out? I can't see what's holding you here. You said yourself he hated you.” His eyes kept straying to her mouth. “Come home with me. You know I won't hurt you."

Kee looked at Geoff, so calm, so sure of himself. He would marry her. He would keep her safe. She wouldn't be haunted by the spectre of the man he had been, because he had always been, and would always be, steady, calm, constant.

She closed her eyes. The idea of a safe, calm relationship was very appealing, a relationship in which all she'd be required to do was accept his love.

She felt Geoff's breath on her cheek and heard his voice whispering in her ear. “Come home with me.” His lips touched her temple, his hand caressed her cheek, and his steady comfort enveloped her.

Why did she want to live with a cyclone when Geoff offered her the calmness of a tranquil sea?

The roar crescendoed for a moment, then died down again as the door to the ballroom opened and closed.

“Kee?"

She pushed away from Geoff. “Danny! Are you all right?"

Danny was standing with his back against the closed door, his expression blank as he nodded. “Yeah, but I need you.” His face was pale and sheened with sweat.

Geoff slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Think about what I said,” he said, squeezing, then turned to Danny. “Mr. White, I'm Geoffrey Brinkman, your chief of R&D. We've never met. Good to have you back.” He advanced as if to offer his hand, but Danny didn't move, so Geoff turned smoothly on his heel and walked away.

“Who's he?” Danny said, rubbing his temples.

“My boss. Do you have a headache?” Kee watched him carefully. His lips were compressed, and there were lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth. He shook his head.

“Your boss? Pretty intimate for a boss."

He had seen them. Guilt gnawed at her. She searched Danny's face but didn't find anything there except a grim weariness and a haunted look that worried her.

“Are you ready to go upstairs?” she asked. “I'm sorry I got separated back there. All of a sudden people were surrounding you. Were you okay?"

“Yeah. I just smiled a lot and shook a lot of hands and hugged a lot of women. Mostly all I had to do was nod."

Kee smiled and touched his arm, relieved he'd been able to handle it. She was worried about him though. He looked breakable. “Good. That's what I was hoping would happen. So, you ready to face them again, or do you want me to make your apologies?"

Danny grimaced and sighed. “I guess I should go back in for a while, but hang on to me. I'm not sure I can go through another barrage like that last one without you."

Every time he asked for her help, her heart melted all over again. He had never done that before. His admission made her feel even guiltier that she'd deserted him. She took his hand, and they went back in together.

She held on to his arm and smiled while she guided him toward this group and that, subtly whispering names or greeting people in ways that would give him a clue to their identity.

It was after ten o'clock, the buffets were beginning to look picked over, and the champagne fountain had run dry. Kee and Danny stood with Miriam, watching a few couples dance.

Miriam was telling Danny about the Vice President's phone call when a man slapped Danny on the shoulder.

“Daniel T! Well, if you don't look like a piece of work! Put'er there, pardner!"

The Midwest twang sent adrenalin surging through Kee's veins like ice water. She instinctively stepped closer to Danny, fighting the urge to shield him with her body, but it was already too late.

The tall, gaunt man with the white shock of hair and a suit that had probably cost more than some people pay for major surgery, held his hand up, palm out, fingers spread, and waited expectantly.

Danny had turned at the slap on his shoulder, his eyes sliding over to Kee's as the man spoke. She could only try to send a silent, reassuring message to him.

Uncle Jack! Of course his name wouldn't be on the guest list! That would be like putting Danny's name on the list. She watched Danny force a grin and try to cover his bewilderment.

“Hello! How've you been?” Danny said.

She winced and tried to salvage the situation. “Uncle Jack, how did you manage to get away from Cairo? It's good to see you!” She latched onto his arm and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Doesn't Danny look wonderful? Especially for having just been paraded past all these guests, gaping at him like he was some new attraction at the zoo.” She slid her other arm through Danny's. “Is it any wonder he is just a zombie?"

Kee smiled up at him, holding her breath. John Jacob Jackson was the U. S. Ambassador to Egypt and known worldwide for his plain talk and no nonsense attitude. If he thought it was odd that Danny hadn't remembered their special handshake, or had greeted him as ambiguously as he would have any casual acquaintance, he wouldn't hesitate to point it out.

His dark brown eyes, so startling under white hair and brows, bored into hers with the effectiveness of a laser probe. She blinked but held steady. He nodded, the movement so minuscule that she might have imagined it, then smiled.

“Daniel T, looks to me like you been rode hard and put up wet. Why don't you let your fierce protector here take you upstairs and put you to bed? Me and your mother got some stuff to talk about, anyhow. I'll see you later, when you're a bit more perky, what do you say?"

Kee could have kissed him. She wasn't sure what he had deciphered from her desperate smile, but whatever it was, it had satisfied him enough to let it lie for now. She reached up again to whisper, “Thanks, Jack."

“Come on, let's get you upstairs,” she said to Danny. “Miriam, I think Danny's had enough. Will you excuse us?"

“Of course dear.” She held her cheek up for Danny to kiss. “You should have said something. Now run along, my beautiful boy, before you collapse."

* * * *

Danny tossed his jacket on the recliner.

“Whew! That was close,” Kee said, slipping through the door and leaning back against it, eyes shut.

A bolt of searing anger shot through him. “Close? Close!"

Kee's eyes flew open.

“That wasn't close, Kee! That was a ringer. Who was that man and why didn't you brief me on him?” He was clutching his bow tie in his hand and he had a crazy urge to wrap it around her lovely neck.

He took a deep breath. He couldn't remember ever feeling this angry before, but then he only had about two years of memories, most of them of pain and operating rooms and paralyzing fear.

The anger was a new emotion. Satisfying.

A flicker of apprehension shadowed Kee's face, but she stiffened. “Brief you! Just who do you think I am, Lieutenant? One of your aides?"

She planted her fists on her hips, and despite his anger, Danny thought he'd never seen anything as enticing as her flashing green eyes and pugnacious stance. “Hey, Kee,” he started, anger melting in a tidal wave of desire.

“I'm not finished! That man was your Uncle Jack. He's not really your uncle, he's your godfather, and you two have been best buddies all your life. You even have a special handshake."

She stopped to take a deep breath. “And I—forgot about him, okay? I had no idea he would be here. He's supposed to be on some kind of super secret diplomatic mission in Egypt. He wasn't expected back in the States for months.

“But I told you that you can't keep this up. People are going to know. Nobody's going to blame you for not remembering. You were almost killed out there!” Her voice and her body seemed to run out of steam at the same time, and she sank to the bed.

“I'm sorry. That was just really tough down there tonight. I'm grateful for your help.” He sat beside her on the bed. “I need more time, Kee. Please try to keep my secret for a while longer. There's so much at stake here. If I'm not...” he paused, his stomach churning. He couldn't voice the real fear, the real reason he didn't want his amnesia revealed.

What if he wasn't Daniel White?

He covered by saying, “If I'm going to be accepted as the head of Whitehall Aircraft, then people can't doubt my abilities. All those people down there tonight don't want someone in charge of the company who doesn't even remember Whitehall. They won't trust my decisions. Dr. Ganand said there was about a sixty-forty chance I would regain all my memories eventually. I've got to believe in that sixty percent chance, Kee. I've got to!"

Kee touched his hand, and he laced his fingers through hers.

“I'm just not sure how much longer you can keep up the pretense,” she said. “You're right. Probably in a large crowd, or when you're speaking in public, it'll be easy, but with people like Jack...."

She shook her head. “I'm not sure why he let it go tonight, but believe me, he's not through with you, and I don't think you can fool him."

“Maybe I won't have to, if we were as close as you say. Maybe he'd help."

Kee shook her head. “I don't know. Jack Jackson has never lied or cheated or misrepresented anything in his entire life. He is the most upstanding man I've ever met. He loves you, but—"

“Is that what you think? That I'm lying, cheating?"

“Well aren't you? You're pretending to know them, pretending to be—to be well."

Danny extricated his hand from hers and stood, wincing at the pain in his leg and the headache that echoed through his temples.

He knew what she'd almost said. She had voiced his own unbearable thoughts—pretending to be Daniel White.

“I've got to get to bed,” he said curtly.

He slid under the covers, taking a long breath to try to relax, but conscious of Kee still sitting at the foot of the bed.

He hadn't pressed the issue of sleeping arrangements since they got back from the beach, and Kee had continued to sleep in the king-sized bed. They each slept alone on their side.

He watched her through narrowed eyelids as she retrieved pajamas from her dresser and went into the dressing room. He wasn't naive enough to have missed what was going on in the hall when he came upon Kee and Brinkman.

He had interrupted a kiss.

The thought of another man kissing his wife reignited his anger. Had that been the real cause of his outburst, rather than her failure to brief him on his godfather? He'd felt a stab of what he could only identify as jealousy when he'd seen them standing so close.

He turned toward the windows as she came out of the dressing room, closing his eyes as her slight weight barely moved the bed. Behind his closed lids her face hovered, lips parted invitingly as she gazed trustingly at Brinkman.

Danny almost grunted aloud with the jarring force of that image. He was torn between fury that she could look at Brinkman like that, and aching desire to have her look at him the same way.

“Kee?” He turned onto his back and doubled the pillow under his head. He glanced at her sidelong.

“What? Are you okay?” She pushed her hair out of her face and looked at him.

“Yeah. What the hell was going on with Brinkman?” He heard the barely leashed fury in his voice, felt it in the tightness in his chest. He knew it would alarm her, but he was angry, damn it.

“Wh-what do you mean?"

He stared at the ceiling. “You know damn well what I mean,” he said quietly.

With a tiny intake of breath, Kee sat up and pushed the covers back. She started for the bedroom door, but Danny was quicker. He was out of the bed and had grabbed her arm before she'd taken two steps.

He swung her around to face him and gripped her shoulders, wanting to shake her but controlling the urge with difficulty.

“Stop it, Danny, you're hurting me."

He relaxed his hold a fraction, wondering sadly if he was destined to spend his life hurting her. “You can't keep running away from questions you don't want to answer, Kee. What's going on?"

She stared at him, fear glinting in her eyes like stars reflected on the sea. “N-nothing. We're just friends."

The new cleansing rage washed through him. “You're lying, Kee. You're lying, and I don't like it."

He pulled her up close to him, close enough to feel the cushion of her breasts against his bare chest, close enough that he could smell the apprehension and lilacs commingling on her skin. It acted on him like an aphrodisiac, and it was all he could do to stop himself from taking her then and there, like a kid who can't control his urges. He clenched his jaw and used the surge of desire to fuel his anger.

“I've lost my memory, Kee, not my mind. There's something between you two."

Her eyes widened and filled with tears. “No, he just, we just..."

“What was it he wanted you to remember?"

She lowered her gaze from his.

“Kee? Answer me."

She raised her chin and looked steadily at him. “He wants me to leave."

“Oh, and what do you want to do?” He waited, amazed and dismayed at how important her answer was.

“I—don't know."

Her tentative words hurt him in a way he didn't remember ever feeling hurt before. Deep inside. He forced it back, letting the anger cover it up, because he could deal with anger.

He pulled her closer by her arms, pulled her almost off her feet, her face so close to his he could see the flecks of gold in her green eyes. “Why don't you know?” he grated.

She let out a little gasping cry and flinched.

He let go of her as if she were hot, all his fury melting at the sight of her cringing away from him.

She backed toward the door.

It cut him to the bone to see her cowering from him, but he'd pushed all his emotions into the anger that seemed to come so easily. So he pushed his shame and self-hatred into it, too, and took two large strides past her and slapped his hand on the door, knowing she couldn't open it against his greater strength.

She turned with him as he passed her and began retracing her steps, back toward the dressing room.

“Damn it, Kee! Stop running away. I'm not going to hurt you."

She made a little choked noise that could have been a laugh, except she wasn't laughing.

“I asked you a question,” he said, making his voice quiet and soft, but knowing that something about it still frightened her. “Do you want to leave?"

She lowered her eyes from his and shrugged, the tiny movement of her shoulders lifting her breasts and drawing his eyes. He dragged his gaze back to her face.

“I...” She shook her head, looking bewildered.

Danny took a step toward her, and she stiffened and stepped backward. He stopped. “What is it between you and Brinkman?"

She glanced toward the door, then back at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Geoff isn't scary,” she said in a tiny voice. “He's nice and he's safe.” She edged toward the door, and her voice gained strength as she moved away from him. “And he doesn't hate everyone."

“What are you talking about?” Danny asked wearily.

“I'm talking about you. You hated me. You hated your father. You hated everybody. You were so full of hate and anger, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't.... “her voice stopped on a little sob.

Danny sighed and lifted his hands, palms out. He stepped away from the door and away from her with a little flourishing gesture, leaving plenty of room for her to escape if she wished. He was too tired. Too tired and too confused.

Her bright, tear-filled gaze followed him, then suddenly, she turned and flung open the door and ran, muffled sobs breaking the quiet of the night. Danny walked over and closed the door. He leaned back against it, pressing his palms against his temples, where a band of pain was tightening.

So full of hate and anger.

He was. He couldn't remember ever feeling anything as satisfying as the hot anger that had suffused him tonight,

No. That wasn't quite true. When he'd held Kee, kissed her, and felt her respond to his kiss—that had been better.

He lay down, exhausted, but knowing sleep would be as elusive as memory. Danny gazed across the inky landscape of his pillow at the dark void of the world beyond the balcony, images dancing in front of his eyes like a slide projector out of control.

Kee in his arms, her lips parted as he lowered his head to kiss her. Her hair loose and flying in the wind. Grinning through a mouthful of popcorn. Her eyes, wide and frightened, as he plunged into her, surrounding himself with her warmth, her love.

He shifted restlessly and closed his eyes, trying to wipe his brain clean of the disturbing, erotic images he didn't remember but couldn't dismiss. It was a long, long time before he slept.

Chapter Fourteen

“For who but I should understand lovers

And all their sorrow and joy?"

These I Singing in Spring

Walt Whitman

When he woke the next morning, Kee was curled up in a ball on the edge of her side of the bed. He didn't think she was asleep.

“Kee?” he whispered. “You awake?"

“Yes.” Her voice sounded strained.

He sat up, propped on one elbow. “Are you okay?"

“I've got cramps. I'm trying to sleep."

“Oops, sorry!” He crawled gingerly out of bed and came over to her side. “Is there anything I can do?” Her face was pale and pinched, strands of hair clung damply to her forehead. He brushed them back with one hand. “You're soaking wet! Should I call somebody?"

She shook her head, pulling on the corner of the pillow to change its position under her head. “I took some Stimudorph. I'll be better in a while."

Danny showered and dressed, trying to be as quiet as possible. When he came out of the dressing room, Kee was asleep, breathing easily, and her face looked less pale. There was still a tiny frown line on her forehead, however, and he touched it, smoothing it with his thumb.

One slender bare arm was stuck out from under the covers, and a tiny red mark marred her inner arm. Had he done that? Shame suffused him.

“I'm so sorry. I don't mean to keep hurting you,” he whispered as he eased out of the room.

His mother was in the library and he joined her there, beginning to relish the uneasiness he felt in the dark room. Wouldn't it be a hopeful sign if his uneasiness were because he remembered what his father had done in here? There was no question that the smell of leather triggered something. He poured a cup of coffee from the carafe on the table between the two red chairs, and sat down beside her.

“Good morning, dear. Where's Kee?"

“She's not feeling well this morning. It's—cramps, I think."

“Oh dear. She has such pain sometimes. Daniel, what about you? Did you sleep well? I hope the party wasn't too much for you. I heard what Kee said.” She looked at him, her face crumpled with worry.

“I slept fine, Mother. It wasn't too bad. Kee was just trying to cover for my confusion in front of everyone."

“Confusion, eh?"

The mellow voice startled Danny. He stood, nearly spilling his coffee.

“Uncle Jack! Good morning.” His heart pounded as his eyes met the sharp brown eyes of his godfather. Kee was right. Jack Jackson hadn't been fooled.

“Miriam, my love. Will you let us have some time to catch up?” Jack said, lifting her hand and kissing it elegantly. Danny saw his mother blush. “If you're finished with your coffee..."

“Of course.” Miriam set her cup down and stood. “You be careful with my beautiful boy. He's had a very hard time, and he's pretending to be a lot more recovered than he really is.” She patted Danny's arm, allowed Jack to kiss her cheek, and swept from the room.

Jack sat in the chair she had vacated and gestured vaguely for Danny to sit. Danny sat gratefully and put his cup down.

“Your mother is a gracious lady. I would hate to see her hurt in any way.” The piercing eyes seemed to strip Danny's soul and read every secret etched there. He swallowed hard and strove not to flinch under the older man's gaze.

“You're a brave boy,” his godfather said, finally looking away to pour himself a cup of coffee, “and you're not hiding much, as far as I can tell.” He helped himself to an incredible quantity of sugar

Danny breathed a wary sigh of relief. Maybe he could pass this hurdle, too. How many more would he have to pass before he convinced himself he was Daniel White?

“Ah, real, brewed coffee,” Jack said. “It's almost the best thing there is. Now, you want to tell me what the hell's going on?"

Jack's voice had barely changed in tone, but Danny heard the underlying warning. He demanded the truth, and Danny knew he could give this man no less. Something about him drew Danny. He could feel a bond between them, even though his brain didn't remember him.

He looked at the fire burning low in the grate. It was odd that he wasn't afraid of fire. He remembered the flash of white, and the hellfire red of the flames. He would never forget the pain that transcended all the words in all the world's languages. But he didn't mind fire, even savored its warmth when he felt cold all the way down to his soul.

He sat there waiting ... for an accusation, a barrage, something he could defend himself against, but it didn't come.

The man beside him sat placidly, staring at the fire and sipping his sugary coffee. They could have been two elderly gentlemen at an exclusive men's club, who came together not to talk but to savor the silence.

While Jack's tranquility was comforting, it couldn't penetrate Danny's uneasiness, so he got up and walked over to the huge leather-topped desk. The leather was the same deep red as the chairs, but right in front it was rubbed shiny dark, the result of years of work accomplished.

Danny touched the dark surface. It wouldn't be hard to invent himself a history—a harsh father who tapped his fingers on the desk as he decided what punishment to mete out to his rebellious son. A gracious mother who couldn't quite bring herself to believe what was happening to her child. A godfather to whom he could go for the love and acceptance his father wouldn't give him.

Danny noticed a piece of leather hanging on a nail crudely hammered into the side of the desk.

He took the ancient, scarred piece of leather in his hands. It was an antique razor strop, over a century old from the look of it.

Running his hand along the edge of the strop, Danny began to talk.

“When I first woke up, I was wrapped in bandages. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't move. I thought I was dead. It took over a year for them to put me back together. There were so many parts missing, or wrecked beyond repair."

His voice wasn't going to hold out, but there was no other way to win Jack's trust than by telling him the whole truth.

Like he'd said to Kee, most people never even listened. Most people wouldn't know what to do with the truth if it were handed to them. Danny had the odd feeling he owed his godfather that much and more.

“I don't know if I would have agreed if I'd been asked to decide. It was so hard...” He cleared his throat, trying to stay detached.

Jack didn't move, except to raise his cup to his lips.

“I thought for a long time I'd have to live my life without eyes, without a face, pieced together like some Frankensteinian monster, but they did fairly well, all things considered."

He stopped. If his godfather was going to understand what had happened, he had to hear it all, but Danny had never talked about it, hadn't realized it would be so difficult.

He'd thought he'd put it behind him, but he was wrong. There was no moving forward until the issues of the past had been resolved.

He poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the desk. The cool water helped his hot throat, and after a few moments he continued.

“They did a pretty good job on my leg, too. They'd thought they would have to amputate, but then they flew up this bone man who was the best. Everybody who worked on me was the best. It was like they had to prove they could put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” He slammed the glass down on the desk hard enough that water erupted like a geyser.

It always amazed him how much he resented what they'd done. They'd spent millions repairing his body—the body of their hero. But what about his mind? All they had cared about was bringing their hero home physically whole. They hadn't spent much time healing what was inside.

“So I was their guinea pig,” he said bitterly, “and they didn't even ask me if I wanted to live."

He felt cold again, so he walked back over to the fire and sat, gripping the chair arms.

“As bad as all that was, it wasn't the worst.” He held up one hand, fingers spread. “For all their good work, they had to make do with what they had. So, I don't have any fingerprints to speak of, at least not enough for identification. They resequenced my DNA so the clone grafts would take. My blood is Composite Positive now, and this face is the face of the person who was scheduled to be on watch. My memories begin with a flash of white. Before that, nothing."

He had finished. If he said one more word he would break down completely. As it was he'd kept pretty calm. He took a breath which broke at the top like a muffled sob, then he lowered his hand and stared into the fireplace.

Jack sipped at coffee that must have long since gone cold.

Danny welcomed the silence. He thought he could sit here in silence for the rest of his life. He leaned his head against the chair back and closed his eyes. After a long time he heard the older man stand.

“You are brave,” Jack's voice said from somewhere behind him. “Braver I think than anyone I have ever known. The very thought of awakening in the dark, not only having no idea what had happened to me, but also having no idea who I might be, chills me like the grave.” The voice held a strained note, as if he were actually able to imagine the terror.

“I watched you grow up, Daniel T. Watched you as you developed your own personality. I'd have loved to knock some sense into Ty's head. Tried a couple of times. But his father had believed in harsh discipline, so it's all he knew. He should have had sense enough to see how much you worshiped him. Should have known that with a little bit of kindness you'd have been eating out of his hand like a gentled calf. Instead, the more he pushed, the worse you got, until nobody could do a thing with you. You were a maverick."

Jack came back and sat down in his chair. “I'd liked to've had me a son, but I let the best girl in the world get away. The first time I saw you, I thought ‘now there's a prize!’”

Danny felt his godfather's hand on his arm, and he opened his eyes, meeting the glinting brown ones. It occurred to him that the broad twang was gone from Jack's voice.

“Whatever happened to you up there, Daniel T, it made you who you are. Everything we do becomes a part of us, whether we realize it or not. I have no doubt that you're my godson, even if your wife is not quite sure yet. Yep, I saw the look in her eyes. She thinks she's nursing a viper in her bosom, but she'll come around. She's a good one.” Jack leaned back and shut his eyes, resting his elbows on the chair arms and tenting his fingers. There was a pensive frown on the older man's face.

“She reminds me of the girl I told you about, before a tyrant snuffed the spark. The reason Kee doesn't trust you is because you don't trust yourself, yet. Give her time. Give yourself time.

“There's something I learned a long time ago. It was a good lesson, but too late for me. If there's something you want, go after it. It doesn't matter what it is—a girl, a job, the truth ... go get it and to hell with anything that stands in your way."

“There are so many questions,” Danny said, clenching his fists on the chair arms. “What caused the explosion? What was the flash of white?"

He looked at his godfather. “Everybody says a meteor struck the bridge, but I don't think that's what happened.” He shrugged. “I can't remember why, but there's something that's not right.” He hit the chair arm. “It's so damn frustrating."

“Like I said, if you've got to know, I'll do what I can to help you find out. But we're up against the United States government, and believe me when I tell you there's no tougher opponent in the world.” Jack stood and held out his hand.

Danny jumped up.

“Good luck, Daniel T. When you decide what you want to do, let me know. I'll be here a few more days. I want to make sure Miriam is doing okay. I'll use every ounce of influence I have to help you."

“Thank you, sir."

Jack left the room, closing the door on his way out. Danny sat back down and gripped the chair arms as if they were lifelines holding him suspended over the fires of hell, like some pathetic creature from a Bosch painting. He wasn't sure how long he could hold on. Could he stand to know the truth?

But Jack was right. He had to know. Nothing else would be worth much if he didn't know himself.

He was going to have to try harder. He'd been avoiding the disks, afraid of what he might find in either Daniel White's or Sam Peters’ logs. He'd been avoiding Dr. Ganand, too.

He couldn't continue to live in this netherworld, letting Kee run interference for him. He couldn't go on hiding from the truth, never dealing with the real issue, the issue of who truly resided under the carefully reconstructed face and body.

He leaned his head against the cold, hard back of the chair and stared at the fire.

* * * *

Kee pushed her hair out of her eyes and sat up. “Come in,” she called, her voice hoarse from the synthetic endorphin stimulant, her head hazy from pain and medication.

Miriam stuck her head around the door.

“Are you feeling better, dear? Would you like to use my sonic massager?"

“No thanks.” She smiled at her mother-in-law, thankful as always for her friendship.

“I'll tell Avery to send up some hot tea. Would you like that?” Miriam pressed a button and spoke her request.

“There. I always say that tea can heal anything. I just wish it could heal my beautiful boy.” Miriam picked at a thread on the royal blue and burgundy comforter. “Don't you think he seems awfully confused? Do you think he's all right?"

Kee closed her eyes, her queasy stomach lurching. She'd been afraid Danny's deception wouldn't work. Miriam had always been attuned to her only son's every mood. Of course she would notice a problem. But this was not the right time for Miriam to start getting curious about Danny. Kee needed to figure out how to deal with Jack Jackson first.

Uncle Jack! Her eyes flew open. “Miriam, where is Danny?"

“Oh, he and Jack are in the library."

“He's with Uncle Jack?” She hoped she wasn't too late. “Uh, would you excuse me please? There's something I need to talk about with Danny."

Miriam stood up, frowning slightly. “If you're sure, dear."

“Thanks for ordering the tea. Maybe I'll have some later.” Kee vaulted up and ran a brush through her tangled hair. She twisted it and clipped it with a barrette. If she hurried, maybe Jack wouldn't quite have ripped Danny to shreds yet.

She pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and ran down the stairs, ignoring the queasiness in her stomach.

At the library door she paused, beginning to hate the room for Danny's sake. Somehow Kee was sure Danny's sister Jan had never had to deal with Ty White's wrath. From what Miriam had told her, Jan had been Ty's favorite. She was certainly just like her father.

Danny had never gone to the library unless he was called, and when Tiberius White called his only son to the library, there was discipline at hand.

She had seen Danny come out of there like a fire-breathing dragon, his hazel eyes sparking like struck flint, his face suffused with rage and humiliation and hurt, though he would never have admitted to the last, his whole body shaking with the force of his emotions.

She had tried to stop him once, to soothe him, but he had torn past her as if she were a mile marker at a road race. If she hadn't stepped out of his way he would have knocked her down. She'd never gotten in his way again when he was angry with his father.

She tapped on the thick wood, sure her feeble knock couldn't be heard, and called out softly. “Danny? Are you in there?"

After a moment she turned the knob and slipped inside, closing it softly behind her. The room was totally dark, except for the fire that burned low in the grate. In the shadows she could barely make out the form of her husband, standing on the hearth.

“Danny?” she said, tiptoeing closer. “Are you okay? Where's Uncle Jack?"

“It's all right, Kee, I told him.” Danny's voice sounded choked. His hands were in his pockets, and he was staring into the waning flames. “I think if I remembered everyone I'd ever met, he'd still be the best of the lot.” He swallowed and cleared his throat. “He understood. He said he'd help me..."

“Help you what? Get your memory back?"

“Get my memory back, find out what happened out there."

“Danny? Are you sure you're okay?” Kee didn't like the way he was talking. There was something hard about him, as if he'd made up his mind about something, and nothing or no one was going to stand in his way. It reminded her of the stubbornness that had always gotten him into trouble with his father.

“Sure. I'm fine.” he looked up suddenly and grinned at her. When he did his face was so transformed that Kee stared, stunned. He had always been able to knock her over with his grin. A thrill rippled deep inside her.

She realized how seldom he had laughed since he'd been home. As angry as Daniel had gotten, as full of rage as he'd always been, he'd been a charming, irresistible rogue, and when he'd laughed it was impossible not to laugh with him.

“How're you feeling?” he asked. “You look like—what did Uncle Jack say? Like you've been rode hard and put up wet."

“Well, thank you very much! Since you like this look so much, I'll cultivate it. How's that?” Kee put her fists on her hips and glared at him, which only made him grin wider.

Suddenly he grabbed her at the waist and lifted her in the air. “Kee! I think I know what I want to do!” He bounced her back onto her feet and pulled her close for a hug.

She hugged him back cautiously, wanting to believe he was genuinely happy, but not able to fully trust him. “What?” she asked.

“I'm going to call Dr. Ganand. That's the first thing. If anybody can help me get my memory back, it'll be him. Then we'll see,” he said.

Kee tried to pull back to look at him, but Danny held her tight, with one hand on the back of her head and his face against her hair. She felt his trembling as if it were her own, and she put her arms around his waist and held on to him, forgetting everything except his closeness. Her nostrils filled with his scent.

He was so strong, so steady. If this were reality, she could stay in his arms forever. She could forget what had happened to him out there. She could forget the memories buried inside him, if he would stay like this. Needing her, wanting her close to him, holding her.

She wondered if he had any idea how much she needed him.

He finally spoke, his voice muffled, his breath warm on her skin. “Stay with me, Kee. I think I'm going to need you more than ever. Can you put up with me a while longer?"

She hugged him tighter, turning her face into the hollow under his chin, feeling his strong, steady pulse under her lips.

He was asking for her help, for her strength. Her heart soared, and she tried to ignore the prickle of doubt worming its way into her consciousness. He needed her.

She wanted to avoid telling him what he'd been like before. She wished they could just start over. But she'd known from the first time she'd seen him that wasn't possible.

The anger wasn't gone. The memories might be blocked, might never return, but Daniel White was still filled with anger. The anger was no longer directed at his father, or even at her, but it was still there.

So as much as she craved his touch, as much as she longed for the man she knew he could be, she would never, never succumb to his charm. The pain wasn't worth it.

He turned his head so his lips were against her ear, and her heart lurched.

No. It wasn't worth it.

“Will you?” he whispered, sending shock waves of yearning through her. “You'll stay?"

No, she wanted to scream. She swallowed hard, a lump of fear building in her throat. “Sure,” she said, her lips moving against his skin as his hands caressed her back.

She pulled away, avoiding his gaze. “I'll be glad to help, until you get your memory back."

His arms tightened, pulling her back toward him, and his dark, haunted gaze searched her face. When he spoke, his voice was harsh, tight. “That's all? Until I regain my memory?"

Her heart almost bursting with pain, Kee steeled herself to meet his gaze. “That's all,” she said, lying, making a last feeble effort to save herself from the heartache of loving Daniel White.

He let her go.

“I guess I can't ask for more than that,” he said, his voice dull now, detached.

Despite herself, she reached out toward him, but he'd turned his back. At the door to the library, Kee looked back at him. His shoulders were hunched, and he stared into the fire. Kee thought she'd never seen anyone so totally alone.

Chapter Fifteen

“Who knew too well the sick, sick dread

Lest the one he lov'd might secretly be

Indifferent to him."

Recorders Ages Hence

Walt Whitman

Kee went looking for Jack. She finally found him in the sunroom on the back of the house, sitting in the white wicker rocker, drumming his long fingers on its arm. The sun shone in through the crystal windows and broke into a thousand shards of color on the white tile floor. Baskets of exotic hanging plants gave the air a fresh, green smell.

Kee loved the sunroom, with its freshness, the vibrancy of light and living things. Here she could believe the same God who made the world this beautiful couldn't possibly allow anything but happiness and peace into it.

Jack didn't look up when she sat down on the wicker couch and picked up one of the pink and yellow pillows to hug to her stomach. He had always been taciturn, and she knew he would talk when he wanted to, so she waited.

Jack was an enigma to Kee. His Midwest twang and leathery features should have been out of place in the drawing rooms of the Capitol, but they weren't. The only thing Kee could attribute his universal success to was the fact that he always treated everybody the same, from the Prime Minister of Egypt to the servant who carried his bags at the Embassy, from the President to Miriam's upstairs maid.

In the five years she had known him, she had only seen him treat two people differently. Miriam, whom he deferred to as if she were his beloved monarch, and Danny.

She studied his face as he stared out the window, seemingly oblivious to her presence. He was gaunt, his long limbs were folded awkwardly into the delicate wicker chair. His face was thin, with hollowed cheeks and leathery skin that spoke of a life out of doors. Creases at the corners of his brown eyes hid lighter, untanned skin in their folds, and the white shock of hair gave him the look of a much older man than fifty-odd.

The warmth of the sunroom lulled Kee into a doze. She dreamed that she and Danny were at an amusement park riding a carousel. She was on a white unicorn and Danny was standing beside her, his arms around her waist. He laughed, and she turned toward him. But his face was overlaid with Jack's face, and he reached out to her with long, elegant fingers.

“You sure look like hell,” Jack's voice woke her with a shock. She jumped and pushed fallen strands of hair behind her ears. What had she been dreaming? Somehow Danny's face had gotten mixed up with Jack's, and his hands—Kee glanced at Jack's hands as something tickled the edge of her memory.

“Too much to drink last night?” he asked casually.

“As a matter of fact, I didn't drink at all,” she retorted, stifling a yawn. “And you are the second gentleman to compliment me on my looks this morning.” She tucked her feet up under her.

“Then what the hell's the matter with you? You look like you was—"

“I know,” she said, holding up her hands. “'Rode hard and put up wet.’ I've already heard that this morning, too."

“Well?"

Kee frowned at him. “I'm not feeling well."

The brown eyes studied her like a blackbird studying a scarecrow. “I can see that,” he said. “It's a hard job, isn't it, guarding the citadel?"

Strangely, Kee suddenly wanted to cry. She still hurt, and the Stimudorph was wearing off, leaving her drained and melancholy. Yes, it was hard, especially if you weren't sure what, or who, you were guarding.

“Have you decided yet?"

Kee stared at him. He was dropping his casual questions like bombs all around her. “Decided what?"

Jack chuckled softly. “Whether you're glad he's back."

Her back stiffened. “Of course I'm glad he's back. He's my husband."

He watched her closely. She was convinced that he could read her mind if he chose to. She looked away.

“How come you didn't leave when he told you to? Yes, I know he did. Daniel T used to tell me things. He's not nearly so talkative now. Well?” he insisted before she'd even had a chance to draw breath. “Is it still the money?"

“Money? No, I—” Kee stopped. There was no way she could explain to anyone why she had stayed. She didn't know herself. The reasons were all mixed up, just like her memories of Danny as he used to be were getting mixed up with Danny now.

She looked at her hands, clenched in her lap. “Miriam wanted me to stay, then after Mr. White died.... “All her best reasons for staying sounded vacuous and illogical.

Had she stayed for the money? She shook her head slightly. It might have been a lot easier if money had been all it was about. Money was solid, real. These other things—these feelings—were so confusing, eating at her heart until she wanted to scream—slamming her with love, with desire, with compassion or fear when she least expected it.

“So how long have you been in love with him?"

The words were soft and kind, but they hit her like separate stinging rocks.

She jumped up and stood in front of one of the windows, touching one of the crystal prisms.

She wasn't in love with Danny. She was just mixed up right now. She opened her mouth to tell Jack that, but the words stuck in her throat.

She watched the prisms catch the light until finally she could speak. “He was always so filled with hate, so angry. There was never any way to reach him. The few times I thought he was...” Her voice failed her again.

She shook her head. He'd never cared for her, and if she'd ever thought so, she'd just been chasing a will-o-the-wisp fantasy. “And now he's—different. He's like a stranger."

“Yes, he is. He's very much like a stranger. But he's not. He's your husband. You waited for him, and he came back to you. Right now he's a very hurt, very frightened, very brave young man. Has he told you about it?"

Kee shook her head, not taking her eyes off the spinning prism.

“He tried, but I couldn't stand it.” She bit her lip, trying not to cry. “I failed him, just like I always have. I couldn't even listen to his awful experiences. They were too horrible. You should have seen his eyes."

“I did."

Kee squeezed her eyes shut, waiting. If she was going to help Danny, she had to know it all. She had to face the worst that had happened to him, and she had to face that it had happened because of her.

But maybe she could bear hearing it from Jack. Maybe she could bear it if it wasn't Danny's quietly brave voice telling her what she'd done to him. Then, when she finally knew it all, maybe she could begin to make it up to him.

She shivered as Jack's harsh voice began again.

“He woke up blind, did he tell you that? Blind, and strapped down and hurting so badly he thought he would die—wished he would..."

Jack's voice was bleak, humorless for the first time in Kee's memory. She clenched her fists and listened, loving him for caring so much about Danny.

“He was totally lost. All he could remember was the explosion, and the pain. He thought he'd have to live without a face. They told him he'd lose his leg."

Kee put her hands against her mouth, but she couldn't stop the cry that escaped between her fingers. Tears slipped from beneath her eyelids and tickled her cheeks as they fell.

“He didn't want to live like that. He begged them to let him die. But they fixed him—at least on the outside.” Jack stopped for a minute.

Kee didn't move. Her knuckle hurt where she was biting it, and her jaw ached.

“He's still broken and bloody on the inside. He's lost himself, and he needs you to believe in him."

She heard the change in his voice, the accusation.

“You think I don't believe in him.” Kee whirled around, knocking the prism and sending rainbow colors swirling madly. She dashed the tears away angrily as Jack's dark gaze searched her face.

“That's right,” he said.

Did she? Did she believe in Danny? Did she trust him? “But you said you thought I was in love with him."

“There's a world of difference between being in love with somebody and believing in him. You've got to show him you believe in him. You've got to prove to him that you love him."

Panic burst up from her diaphragm, pressing on her throat. What if she showed him the love she'd always longed to give him and he took it and crushed it again? “I d-don't—I can't—"

Jack leaned back and eyed her narrowly. “You better figure out just what you do and can, Miss Rebekah, or you're going to lose him. And let me tell you something else. If he loses you, he'll never find himself. Without you, he'll have nothing to cling to. He's strong and brave, but he's lost himself."

“Don't do this to me,” she cried. “Don't make me responsible for his survival. I can't take that. It's not fair! What will I do when he remembers he hates me?” Kee cringed. She hadn't meant to say that out loud.

“Hates you?” Jack's voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “Whatever gave you the idea he hates you?"

She wrung her hands and paced. It was too late now. She'd already let Jack in on her secret. Maybe she could make him understand how it had been between Danny and her, and maybe he'd let up a little.

“I don't mean now,” she said. “He doesn't remember the past. But when he does remember...” she shuddered. “You should have seen him that last night."

“I did see him."

Kee stopped pacing and stared at Jack. “No, I mean later, after the party. After...” she felt her face turning red.

Jack smiled a sad little smile and nodded. “That's when I mean, too. I was just coming upstairs to bed when I saw him tearing out of your suite half-dressed."

Kee moaned quietly and turned away, her neck and face suffused with heat. Jack's voice continued behind her.

“He wasn't angry or filled with hate then, Kee. He was heartbroken."

Heartbroken? The word sliced through her like a razor blade. Heartbroken? What was Jack talking about? Danny had been enraged, impassioned, filled with hatred for her because she'd let him down.

She looked back over her shoulder at Jack, wondering what he was talking about, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at his hands.

“I never felt so sorry for anybody in my life as I did for Daniel T that night. I made him come into my room and talk to me. Fixed him a little hair of the dog, because his buzz was gone, and he was getting maudlin."

Kee shivered. She knew how drunk Daniel had been. She also knew what he'd said to her, how he'd flung himself away from her and out the door, leaving a droplet of something wet and salty on her cheek.

“He was crushed. Here he was, barely a man, thinking his father hated him and his wife couldn't wait to get rid of him."

“No, it wasn't—"

“Oh, but Miss Rebekah,” Jack interrupted Kee's involuntary words, “you must have given my godson quite a send off that night.” He paused and chuckled.

Kee's face burned again. She wanted to tell Jack to shut up, to leave her memories alone. As painful as they were, they were hers. But she couldn't speak, so she waited, her heart in her throat. Somehow she knew what he was about to say was going to be vitally important to her.

“Daniel T was a boy in love that night."

Her heart lurched so abruptly it hurt her chest. She searched Jack's face, desperately seeking the punch line but he just looked at her gravely.

“Never saw anybody so smitten. Not that I can blame him. You were a picture. Still are. That's what you ought to be making him remember, that there's something inside him other than hate and anger. But it won't work if you don't believe in him now any more than you did then."

Kee stood helpless, tears running down her face, shaking her head at the absurd things Danny's godfather was saying. “You're wrong. He didn't love me. He couldn't have loved me."

It was bad enough that she hadn't been able to save him from the horror of the explosion, but if he had loved her...

“No! You don't understand. I betrayed him. I couldn't get pregnant.” She sank onto the couch, her legs no longer able to hold her, her face buried in her hands.

“I know that, too,” Jack said softly. “Daniel T told me he figured it out pretty early."

“So you see I'm right,” she said brokenly. “When he remembers, he'll hate me. I sent him up there to be hurt and mutilated. He should hate me!” She wiped her face and sniffed.

“You waited for him."

“That was stupid.” Stupid to wait, hoping he'd learn to love her while he was gone, that he'd forgive her. “I was..."

“In love,” Jack finished for her. He wiped his hand over his face wearily.

“You want me to believe in him, as if it's something I could order at the butcher shop. ‘And give me a half pound of belief in my husband, please.’ I'm trying to,” she said, “but he doesn't believe in himself, at least not totally."

Jack nodded. “You're pretty smart for a girl, aren't you? He needs us—both of us."

“He said you were going to help him. What are you going to do?"

He stood up and yawned. “If I stay out here any longer, I'm going to sleep the day away.” He pointed a long finger at Kee. “Don't you worry about what I'm going to do. What are you going to do?"

She stared at his finger to avoid his omniscient dark eyes and shrugged. She knew what he was asking. She just wasn't sure she could open her heart up to that much pain. “I don't know."

“I think you do. You know exactly. There's not a whole lot of ways a man can be sure a woman believes in him, trusts him. And unless I'm losing my diplomatic intuition, I'd say you two need to get reacquainted. Very reacquainted. Very fast. Never underestimate your power as a woman.” With a flick at her nose, Jack opened the door.

“Jack—wait!” Kee grabbed his arm. “If Danny—if you're right, why did he always act like he hated me? If he was in love with me, why didn't he tell me?"

Jack looked down at her and smiled sadly. “That's simple. He didn't know.” He touched her cheek. “And if you're wondering why I never stuck my nose in it until now, well, I guess I underestimated you. See, I thought you knew. I thought you knew and didn't care.” He turned and left.

Chapter Sixteen

“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

“Mama?” Kee whispered in her mother's unresponsive ear as she rubbed lotion into the delicate hands. “I think I'm in big trouble. I think I'm in love with my husband.” Kee's eyes stung. She'd never said those words before. What those simple words represented could destroy her life.

Kee closed her eyes and held her mother's hand tightly.

Dorothy stuck her head in the door. “Afternoon, Kee. We missed you yesterday."

Guilt washed through her. She hadn't come the day before because she was tired. How selfish that was. This was her mother.

“I know. I know, Dorothy. I'm sorry. I've already told Mama I'm sorry!"

“Kee,” the nurse said, “why don't you step out into the hall for a minute?"

Outside the door, Dorothy stood with her hands on her hips.

Kee wrung her hands. “Dorothy, I'm so sorry. I know I should have been here..."

“Now, you listen to me young lady. No sir! Don't open your mouth. You have come here nearly every day for the past six years. Now it's admirable of you to be so good to your mother, especially when she don't even know you're here. But there's such a thing as too much of a good thing."

Through a haze of tears, Kee saw Dorothy's dark eyes gleaming with the intensity of a televangelist.

Dorothy reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of tissues. “Here, these are clean. Now, when was the last time you talked to Dr. Jones?"

Kee shook her head, apprehension grabbing hold of her heart at the nurse's words. “It's been a while. Why?"

“Your mama's not eating too good lately. He may think it's time to put a tube in to feed her."

Kee looked at the nurse aghast. She knew what inserting a feeding tube meant. Her mother was slipping a little further away from her. “But that means she'll have to be..."

Dorothy nodded and patted Kee's arm. “She'll have to be put to bed. You know she has to be in the orthostasis chair all the time now."

“I know, and I know that you've done everything you could to keep her active. I just hate to do it."

Dorothy patted her again, then turned toward the nurse's station. “I got to start giving my nine o'clock meds, honey. I'm sorry."

Kee went back into the room and looked at her mother with the assessing eye of a scientist, rather than the loving eyes of a daughter. Her mother was thinner, and the faded hair was wispier than it had been even weeks ago. She saw how her mother's thin limbs were being supported and rhythmically exercised by the orthostasis chair.

Kee sat down, a daughter again, and pushed a wisp of hair out of her mother's eyes. “I am so sorry, Mama,” she whispered brokenly. “I did everything I could. You know I did, don't you? Please tell me I did all right.” But the vacant eyes just stared, and the cool, restless fingers still drummed incessantly.

* * * *

Danny wrapped a towel around his waist and opened the dressing room door just as Kee came into the bedroom. For a stunned moment they stared at each other.

“Sorry,” he muttered and crossed the room to his closet, where his bathrobe hung on a hook inside the door. He was surprised to find that her presence irritated him. He was so used to the desire that tightened his loins whenever he saw her.

He'd hoped she would stay at the nursing home for several hours, or would stop in his mother's rooms to visit with her. He'd wanted to be alone and think about his session with Dr. Ganand, and maybe listen to the micro-disk logs for a while.

“I didn't expect you back so soon,” he said shortly.

Her cheeks turned pink and her eyes darted here and there around the room.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I'm fine.” Her voice was brittle.

He was so tired of this game they played, dancing around each other like cats in heat. “You don't look fine to me,” he bit out. “How was your mother?"

“She's not doing very well, thank you."

He peered closely at her. She'd been crying. “What's the matter? Did something upset you at the nursing home?"

Kee pulled pins out of her hair with a vengeance that must have hurt. “Of course something upset me at the nursing home. My mother upset me at the nursing home!"

There was a desperate edge to her voice that he had never heard before.

“My mother, in case you don't remember, is a complete basket case. She can't talk or respond, she isn't eating, and she has to be strapped into a special chair.” Her brittle composure cracked, and she looked like a lost child.

His first instinct was to offer her comfort, but Danny wasn't sure he had any to offer right now.

“She has to be fed through a tube,” Kee continued, with the same edge in her voice, an edge that Danny was afraid she was going to slip over into hysteria. “And she's got to stay in bed now, because she can't sit up any longer, and so it's probably just a matter of time...” She had been running her fingers through her hair, but suddenly her arms fell like a marionette when the strings had been dropped.

“Kee, I'm sorry about your mother.” Danny didn't feel up to this. He understood her fright and confusion because he felt the same way. Kee's mother was slipping away, and Kee felt betrayed and abandoned.

Well, Danny felt betrayed and abandoned, too. His brain had betrayed him. His memories had abandoned him.

He almost laughed. It was so ironic. Here they were, two lost, lonely people, caught up in their private tragedies—two people who should have been closer to each other than to anyone else in the world—and they faced each other like strangers.

Danny's heart twisted painfully. They could have loved. Somehow, deep inside him, he knew that. They could have loved each other, helped each other, kept each other safe.

Was it too late? How much easier their separate pain could be to bear if they could face it together. The urge to take her into his arms, to draw succor from her as he gave her what solace he could, overwhelmed him.

He took a small step toward her.

“Please,” she said sarcastically, “don't go overboard with your sympathy. I've handled my mother alone so far. I'm sure I can continue. Don't let me intrude on your moping and self-pity!"

His compassion dissolved in a tidal wave of fury. He was tired. He was scared. He was trying his damnedest to sort out the pieces of his life, and she was feeling sorry for herself. He whipped the towel from around his neck and threw it at her, cursing. A tiny warning voice in his brain told him he was being unfair, but right now he didn't care.

He was too vulnerable right now, and too damned tired. The towel floated harmlessly to the floor several feet in front of her, making him feel foolish for throwing it. That made him angrier, so he lashed out at her.

“Self-pity! You're accusing me of self-pity? You—” He stopped, faintly horrified. He'd almost called her a bitch.

He shook his head, pushing away the implications of that and concentrated on his anger. He stuffed his fists into the pockets of his robe to control their trembling.

“At least I've got gumption enough to try to do something,” he grated, feeling vicious and enjoying the feeling. “You're using the White's money to take care of your mother, and now you want somebody to hold your hand while she deteriorates? Well, lady, somebody better clue you in. Life ain't easy, and the sooner you learn to take it as it comes, the better."

Her face crumpled as his words slammed into her, and his heart contracted in instant regret. He stepped toward her again, but her hurt expression disappeared and in its place was anger.

“You bastard! At least I'm doing something. I don't sit around feeling sorry for myself and listening to dead people talk on little ridiculous disks! If you don't know who you are, why don't you go find out? And if you're just trying to milk this wounded hero thing for all the sympathy you can get from it, well, you've run out as far as I'm concerned."

Danny almost smiled. She was beautiful with her hair flying around her face and her eyes bright with more life than he'd seen in them.

Would he ever look at her without being overwhelmed with desire? He wanted to grab her and kiss her until she swooned. He yearned to harness their passion for something other than anger.

She propped her fists on her hips and tossed her hair out of her eyes. “Yes, I used the White's money. You're damn right I did. But you owed me that. I waited five years for you. You don't know what it was like, not knowing whether you were alive or dead. Not knowing whether I'd ever see you again.” Her voice sounded choked. “I think I deserve something for waiting all that time."

She paused, out of breath, but before Danny could say anything, could stop the inevitable direction her thoughts were taking, she continued. “As soon as Mother—as soon as...” her voice caught on a sob. “I'll leave."

She whirled and almost made it to the dressing room before he caught her arm.

“Don't touch me!” she cried, pulling against his grip.

“Kee, wait,” he said, forcing her to turn and face him. The anguish in her eyes filled him with self-hatred and a bittersweet longing to make everything better for her. But all he did was loosen his hold on her arm, running his fingers up to her elbow before pulling his hand back.

He took a long, slow breath. “I'm sorry,” he said contritely. “I just had kind of a bad day. I shouldn't take it out on you."

Her eyes changed, turned emerald bright with concern. Danny's heart lifted a little when he saw that look on her face.

“What happened?” she asked, blinking back tears.

As soon as he'd spoken, she'd immediately turned all her attention to him. She was so genuinely good, so caring. He shook his head, shamed by her concern. “Nothing. It was nothing. Tell me about your mother."

“No, Danny. You first. Did you go see the psychiatrist? Is that what upset you?"

He dropped his gaze and walked out onto the balcony, leaving the door open behind him. Kee followed him and stood beside him as he stared down at the deep blue reflections in the pool.

Seeing Dr. Ganand again had brought back the worst memories of his twenty months of recuperation.

He'd come home and closeted himself up here this afternoon, thinking he wanted to be alone, but now he knew he'd been waiting for Kee.

He wrapped his fingers around the wrought iron railing and bowed his head, trying to retain control in the wake of his memories.

Kee's small hand covered his. Her hand on his felt strong, capable, able to keep him safe against any threat. How would he function without her?

“What happened?” she whispered.

Danny sighed. “I thought I could do it. Uncle Jack actually made me believe I could just go find the truth."

He unwrapped his fingers from the railing and caught Kee's hand. “Sit down with me for a minute,” he said. “Do you know what everyone said happened out there?” He held her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

“A meteor struck the station and knocked deflector tiles off and started the fires."

A flash of white...

Danny shook his head. “There was something else. Something none of the media knew. I saw something before the explosions and fires. Something bright, like a flash..."

“What was it?” Kee's fingers tightened, sending him her support.

“I don't know,” he whispered. “But it's important. Very important. And it's vital that I remember it."

“What did Dr. Ganand say?"

Danny snorted and vaulted up out of the chair, too restless to sit still. “Shrinks!” he said derisively. “He said I was doing just fine. He said I have traumatic amnesia, and when my brain heals, my memory might come back."

He rubbed his head, where pain was building. Kee stood beside him. He could feel her concern washing over him like a cool breeze.

More than anything, more than his memories even, he wanted to reach out to her, to bury himself in her.

“That's good, isn't it?” she asked.

“Good, but not good enough. There's something I need to remember, Kee. Something...” It was no use. His brain had shut down. Would the rest of his life be spent with little wisps of memory floating around him like dandelion seeds in the spring?

“Danny?” Kee tugged on his hand. “Are you all right?"

He looked down at her. “I don't know,” he said. “Dr. Ganand mentioned something today."

“What?"

“He mentioned hypnosis.” Just thinking about it sent Danny's heart into a wild pounding fueled by hope and fear.

“Hypnosis? For you?” Kee's voice went brittle, and Danny saw the wariness flicker in her eyes.

“Yeah. He thought it might unlock some of my memories.” He took a long breath.

“Are you going to try it?” Kee pulled her hand out of his and turned away, looking toward the skyline of Mount Vernon.

Danny laughed shortly. “I don't know,” he said. “I'm tired. I'm just so tired of it all. If hypnosis can unlock the truth, then I'm willing to try it. I don't even think I care what the truth is any more. I just want it over.” It sounded like Paradise, compared to the purgatory of uncertainty in which he lived right now.

Kee was standing, her back rigid, her hands clasping the iron rail like his had earlier. He reached over and covered her hand with his. When he did, she jerked away.

“Kee? What's the matter?"

“Nothing,” she said brightly, discordantly. “I think I'll go inside, now. It's getting chilly out here."

“Wait, damn it!” He grabbed her too hard, jerked her around too fast. He was sick of her abrupt withdrawal. Sick of the way she pulled away every time he thought they were becoming close. She gasped and recoiled.

“Don't!” she cried.

“Stop it, Kee. Stop it.” He held on to her. “Why won't you talk to me? What's the matter with you?"

“Nothing,” she cried shrilly. “Nothing at all. My mother's dying, and you won't be happy until you've dredged up every horrible thing that ever happened in your life. I just can't deal with it any more."

Danny let her go. She ran inside and slammed the door to the dressing room, leaving Danny standing helpless on the balcony.

“Shit,” he muttered. He had no experience with domestic arguments, at least none that he remembered. He walked inside and stared at the dressing room door for a minute, but decided that going in there would be a mistake. In fact, he couldn't think of anything he could do that would not make the situation worse.

He tightened the robe around his waist, picked up an afghan, and went back outside.

Now his thoughts were really in turmoil. How did people handle all the emotions that buffeted them every day? How did they deal with everything? For him, everything was new.

He didn't like how angry he got at times. With a pang, he wondered if the anger was a good sign or a bad one. From all Danny had been able to gather, Daniel White hadn't been very good at controlling that rage.

Still, had Danny done any better?

Kee had said he was trying to dredge up every horrible thing that had ever happened. His heart lurched at the thought. What horrible things was she talking about? Things she obviously thought he'd be better off not knowing. In fact, it looked like the idea of him remembering scared her half to death. Why? What was she afraid he would remember?

He sat down and stared at the dark reflections in the swimming pool, marveling at how perfectly they mirrored his thoughts—dark, distorted, catching an occasional flash of a shadow-like image that faded too fast to hold.

* * * *

Kee sat on the little vanity chair in the dressing room, trying to control the dry sobs that racked her.

Leave. Of all the things they'd said, her brain latched on to that one inexorable fact. She had told him she would leave, and he hadn't said anything. Still, what had she expected? He wanted her to leave. He'd told her that five years ago. He just didn't remember it yet.

Now he was considering hypnosis! Kee wrapped her arms around herself. What would she do if hypnosis restored his memory?

Her mind whirled with all the memories that Danny couldn't recall. Memories of their brief, tragic marriage.

Kee had never meant to marry anyone. It had all just happened so fast. The expenses of the nursing home, her hopes of being a research chemist, the understandable desires of a young woman, had all combined to convince her that Daniel White was a knight in shining armor riding through her girlhood dreams.

As the weeks went by and his charm and his easy generosity had infatuated her, it had been natural for her to mistake that infatuation for love.

Then she'd met his mother, and Miriam insisted on paying for the wedding, “Since your poor mother can't.” and Kee was suddenly the pampered daughter-in-law.

Almost before Kee had time to think, it was her wedding day.

If her new husband was a little drunk even before the ceremony, and if he got so drunk afterwards that she spent her wedding night alone, she consoled herself with the thought that he was a nervous bridegroom and would make up for it on their honeymoon.

He almost had. The first night of their honeymoon was everything that Kee had dreamed it would be. She closed her eyes, remembering. The rain. The cool tile floor of the balcony. The hot, exquisite passion.

He had still drunk too much though, and the liquor had seemed to unleash a surly resentment of her that the charming, contrite mornings couldn't quite eradicate.

Still, the honeymoon had been the best time, because when they got back, she had found out he'd been called to Mandatory Public Service.

From that day until he shipped out, with a very few memorable exceptions, he had grimly set to the task of getting her pregnant, as if his life depended on it.

She lifted her eyes to the mirror, watching the dreadful truth dawn in her face.

As if his life depended on it...

The guilt ate more deeply into her heart. If not for her, he would still be whole.

She'd married him in a haze of infatuation fueled by the White money. He had married her to stay out of MPS, had tried to impregnate her to keep himself safe at home.

And she had failed him.

She hadn't gotten pregnant. His life had depended on her, and she had failed him.

And what was worse, he'd known. Jack had said he did. Of course, Jack had said Daniel loved her, too, so it was hard to know if she could believe him.

What was going to happen when he remembered? Would he love her like he had not been able to before? Or would he kick her out?

Chapter Seventeen

“No map there, nor guide,

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,"

Darest Thou Now O Soul

Walt Whitman

The chemical laboratory at the Whitehall plant in Mount Vernon was a state of the art facility. Ty “the Tyrant” White had never skimped on resources for his research people. He had always believed that the future was what was important, and that if companies didn't invest in the future, they were doomed.

As Kee walked in through the sliding glass doors, the security guard saluted her.

“Hi, George,” she called as she did each morning. She loved her work, and she knew she was good at it. In the lab she was in control. She could make the tough decisions, handle the unexpected, be in charge of her life.

She rode up to the third floor and stepped from the elevator into the anteroom that connected to the laboratory. A hologram slowly twirled the word WARNING in front of her face.

“If you are not authorized to enter this area, please step back into the elevator NOW! Insert your identification card into the indicated slot and place your palm on the hand icon."

A faint tickle on her palm and a green light told her she was cleared to enter. As the buzz faded the wall to her right slid away, and she stepped into the bright sterile Chem Lab.

“Hi, Geoff! Hi, Micki!” She waved at them and unlocked her office, throwing her shoulder bag onto the side chair and flopping down in front of her IAC.

“Console on,” she said, arching her neck and shoulders to relieve the cramping tension.

Danny hadn't come to bed last night. Then she'd awakened during the night, chilled and bereft, realizing she was alone in the night for the first time since he'd returned.

When she'd woken this morning, she'd found him asleep in the big recliner.

His innocent face tugged at her compassion. Looking at him like that, his hair mussed, his mouth relaxed and vulnerable in sleep, she could forgive all the things he'd done.

It frightened her that she'd always forgiven him nearly anything. The only thing she couldn't forgive, and could never again allow, was his remarkable ability to evoke feelings in her.

A quiet beep reminded her that the console was up and awaiting her command.

“Messages,” she commanded, wincing when she saw the number that lit up. She'd be reviewing messages all day.

Geoff tapped on her door.

“Kee! It's good to see you back.” Geoff filled her tiny cube with his compact grace as he sat on the edge of her desk and grinned down at her. “How many?” he asked, nodding at the IAC. “About a thousand?"

“Actually, twenty-three hundred forty-two. I'll be going through them for a week."

“Well, you go through your mail, and I'll come dig you out around lunchtime. Manny's okay with you?"

She nodded and turned back to the screen, instructing the console to delete any old news items or memos. That took care of several hundred. She continued, weeding out well-wishers and outdated information. Finally, she leaned back in her chair and stretched, not bothering to cover a jaw-breaking yawn.

She walked out into the lab. Geoff was at the antigravity chamber, manipulating what looked like a ball of mercury.

Micki, sitting on a stool nearby, was twisting the focus on a nanoscope and speaking into a throat mike.

“Geoff,” Kee said.

He nodded without taking his eyes off the anti-grav chamber. “Just a minute.” As he spoke, the silver ball burst into a cloud and disappeared. With a satisfied grunt, Geoff turned around.

“Is that the new fuel?” she asked.

“Not quite. Just the solvent."

“Well, it's almost noon."

“Is it? I thought I heard something. Must have been my stomach growling."

“It was probably me groaning at that ancient joke,” called Micki.

“Are you going to lunch with us?” Kee asked her.

Micki shook her head, rattling the gold hoop earrings that hung almost to her shoulders. “Nope. My guy's taking me dancing this weekend, and I have to fit into that new dress I bought. I won't be eating again til Sunday!"

Manny claimed he had the best real hamburgers in the Megalopolis, and sometimes Kee thought he was right. Today was not one of those days. She picked at her lunch and smiled absently at Geoff's complaints about the lab.

“What was the matter with you? Was your burger too done?” Geoff asked as they reentered the Whitehall lobby.

“No, I guess I just wasn't hungry. It won't hurt for me to miss a few meals, too."

“If you miss very many meals, you'll disappear when you turn sideways."

Kee laughed. Geoff was so sweet with his old jokes and his easygoing manner. She put her hand on her stomach and turned to the side, grinning at Geoff. “Can you see me?” she said, dodging people as she sidled toward the elevator.

With a thump she ran into someone.

“Oh, I'm sorry! Excuse—” When she turned, still laughing, she found herself balancing against Danny, who reached out a hand to the wall to steady himself. He was dressed in a dark sports coat and slacks. His hair was carefully combed, and he gripped the gold-topped cane tightly.

“Oh, Danny!” Her face burned with embarrassment. She smoothed her hair and ran nervous hands down the front of her skirt. “What are you doing here? I mean ... do you know Geoff? Oh, that's right. You met already. We—just got back from lunch."

Danny scowled at her as they stepped into the elevator with several employees and visitors. Kee felt their curious stares and could practically hear their unspoken whispers.

There he is!

That's him!

I wonder if he would sign an autograph?

Thank goodness, the careful anonymity of elevator etiquette kept them from bothering him.

Beside her Danny tensed as if he too could hear them. She glanced down at his hands and saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the cane tighter. She wanted to take his hand, but when she glanced back up at his face, it was hard as granite, and he avoided her eyes.

“Where are you going?” he asked, punching the button for the executive suites on the twentieth floor.

“Back up to the lab. Third floor,” she added quickly, realizing he wouldn't know where the lab was. “I didn't know you were going to be here today."

“I expect you didn't."

Kee was stung by the accusation behind the words. She almost blurted, “It wasn't me that was so irritable! You didn't even sleep in our bed."

“Are you meeting with Drake?” she asked as the elevator announced the third floor. Geoff hung back, holding the door. As she stepped into the anteroom, she looked at her husband, who watched her with eyes cold and dark as outer space. He didn't answer.

“Do you—need me?"

He just stared at her as the door slid shut.

* * * *

Danny's jaw clenched so tight it hurt. The sight of his wife laughing and enjoying herself with Brinkman set a peculiar ache just under his breastbone.

She hadn't laughed much with him. He grimaced. He hadn't given her much to laugh about since he'd been back.

He frowned and listened to the placid voice reciting floors. What right did he have to care who she laughed with? His heart slammed against his chest. Maybe no right at all.

The elevator stopped at the twentieth floor, opening into a carpeted reception area. As Danny stepped out, the receptionist stood.

“Daniel, hi!” she said. “You look great. I saw you on MV."

“Hi.” He smiled, wondering why the girl was so friendly. “Carol,” he added, reading her ID badge. Had he flirted with her, taken her out ... more?

He glanced around the suite, irritation and apprehension warring within him. Drake had practically ordered him to be here today for the board meeting. A chance to show the hero off to the powers that be, he supposed.

Nothing was familiar to him, except the fact that the executive suite looked like an extension of the White mansion. It seemed all the Whites cared about was wood and leather. No glassteel or flexiplastic for them.

He turned to the receptionist. “Where's Drake's office?"

“Oh, he got the Tyr—Mr. White's office. He said you should take his old office."

“Which one was that?” Danny gave her what he hoped was a charming smile. “It's been a long time."

“It sure has! I'm married now, and I have a little boy!"

“That's great! Congratulations,” he said, trying to push the enthusiasm and familiarity she obviously expected into the empty words.

She showed him to the office, stood in the door for a couple of seconds as if she expected him to say something else, then closed it, leaving him alone in the darkly paneled room.

Danny sat in the self-molding chair and took a deep breath, wincing at the odor of leather mingled with furniture polish. The room reminded him of the library. Everything was spotless and empty. So, Drake had moved to Ty's offices, leaving this one vacant for the prodigal son.

He ran a finger along the polished desktop, taking satisfaction in the streak it left on the spotless surface. His finger came to rest near the InterActive Console.

When Kee had asked him if he needed any help, he'd almost said yes, but he'd caught the smug smile on Brinkman's face. Danny had already told her once he needed her in front of the man. He couldn't do it again.

Why did he care what Brinkman thought of him? The answer was obvious. It was an ancient ritual—two rams, two lions, two warriors fighting over a female.

But Kee was his wife, and Brinkman had no right to her.

Danny's thoughts skidded to a halt again. He was thinking like a jealous husband. His heart thudded. He was a jealous husband.

Forcing his brain back to the problem at hand, he glanced at the clock. He was due in the board meeting. He needed to arm himself with information.

He studied the console on the desk for a moment, then spoke.

“Carol?"

“Yes, Daniel? Or, I guess I should call you Mr. White?” The girl at the receptionist desk smiled from the screen.

“Could you bring me a list of the board members please? Mark the ones that will be at the meeting today. And tell Drake I need to get with him beforehand."

“Certainly,” she said. “Console off."

He watched the screen. There were a number of obscure three-dimensional icons floating on a purple background.

A new icon appeared, then self-extracted. It was the list he'd requested. Her voice said, “Mr. Simmonds said he'd give you a call."

“Thanks."

Danny stared at the names on the screen. He didn't recognize even one. What was he doing, living this lie, expecting to step into the role of heir, son, husband, with no memory on which to base his performance? He put his head in his hands, wishing he could squeeze the memories out from their hiding places, if they were there at all.

Would knowing really be better than not knowing? Could he walk away from this, if it turned out he wasn't Daniel White? Could he walk away from Kee now that he knew her? The thought sent a chill up his spine.

“Danny?"

He jumped. He hadn't heard the door open. It was Kee, looking like an answer to his prayer. Her face was full of concern for him. What had he done—what had he ever done—to deserve her concern?

“Have you got a headache? Do you have your medicine?"

She pushed the door closed and came over to stand beside him, placing her cool hand on his forehead. He closed his eyes, relishing the healing comfort of her hand, smelling her erotic lilac scent.

“No, no headache. Just a long list of people who are all going to know in a short time that Daniel White has no memory."

“You'll do fine. Is this the list? Well, this won't be too bad. You know Drake, and remember Abel Greenstreet from the party? The big man? And Marian Martin was the small woman with the huge glasses who cleared her throat before every sentence."

Kee went down the list, calling up a holographic image beside each name.

She stood beside his chair, her arm casually draped over his shoulder, close enough so he could feel her heat. Carried on the scent of lilacs, her warmth seeped through him. He wanted her, sometimes so badly he thought he might burst. There had to be something there, something deeper than just physical lust. The need she built in him just by existing was fierce.

“How can you do it?” he asked. “How do you know all these people?"

“You forget. I've worked here five years, lived in your house with your parents and entertained these people at your mother's parties."

“Yeah, I forgot,” he muttered.

“Danny? I'm sorry. All this is so hard on you. I wish I could help. I wish I could..."

“I know. I know it's hard on you, too.” He put his hand over hers and looked up at her, his gaze flickering to her mouth. He had the most extraordinary urge to push her down onto the big mahogany desk and kiss her senseless. She licked her lips, and his body reacted immediately.

He needed her. He needed her in every way imaginable. He needed her strength, her memories, her understanding. But more than all that, he needed her to desire him.

He stood slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, his hand sliding up her arm until his fingers curled around her nape. She parted her lips and lifted her head slightly, and he could hear her breaths, short and sharp. He bent his head until he could feel the cool, sweet air of her breath on his lips, then he kissed her.

His body, reacting to her presence, hardened in searing desire at the feel of her lips under his. He pulled her closer until her body was molded against him.

Her mouth opened to him, and her hands gripped his biceps as her tongue flicked against his lips. It tore away the last of his control. He dragged his mouth away from hers to trail hot, wet kisses down her jaw to her neck, rejoicing when she threw her head back to give him access.

The IAC buzzed, shocking him out of the haze of desire.

Kee pulled away, her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide, and her cheeks turning pink. She stepped out of the IAC's range and straightened her shoulders and patted her hair.

Danny frowned at her, then looked at the screen.

“Mr. White? Mr. Simmonds will see you now."

“Thanks,” he said. “Console off."

Kee had backed up a couple of steps and stood stiffly, her fingers toying with a button on her lab coat.

Danny gave her a sheepish grin. “I don't suppose you could go to the board meeting with me?"

“I don't think your brother-in-law would like that,” she said, her face relaxing a bit as she smiled back at him warily. “Besides, I'm supposed to be developing a better fuel, remember? I just got back to work, and already they're leaning on me. Apparently they can't put the new Rapier into production until we've completed tests on this hybrid fuel."

Danny froze. Her words echoed in his head as he was suddenly catapulted back in time—back to his first terrifying memory.

The flash of white on the viewscreen...

“Danny?” Kee's voice barely penetrated his consciousness until she put her hand on his arm, drawing him back to the present.

“It wasn't a flash of white,” he whispered.

He remembered.

“It wasn't a flash of white; it was a white flash!" His heart hammered against his chest, his pulse beat in rhythm and with each beat, pain built in his head, and dreadful hope grew in his heart.

“Danny, what is it?"

He stared at her for a few seconds.

“Kee! It wasn't a flash of white! It was the white flash. I saw the white flash that's painted on the nose of the Rapier!"

“What are you talking about?” she asked, putting a hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling bad?"

He pushed her hand away impatiently. “What did you say about the fuel?"

“I said they can't put the Rapier into production until we get the fuel tests done."

“My God!” he shouted. “They can't do that!"

“What's the matter, Danny? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Danny stared at Kee, his brain whirling. “A ghost ... maybe I have,” he said slowly. “Maybe I have.” He closed his eyes as a shudder racked his body.

The Rapier. He'd seen a Rapier right before the fire had burst in front of his face. What did it mean? How could he have seen a Rapier? On the viewscreen?

The flash of white on the viewscreen...

According to the logs, he'd been on the graveyard shift. The wind tunnel was closed at that time of the night. Nobody would be flying the Rapier alone without monitors on duty.

“You're scaring me,” Kee whispered. He blinked and looked at her.

“Sorry,” he said, trying to smile at her, trying to drag his brain away from the incredible memory that had burst in front of his face with as much force as the explosion. He didn't have time to explore this newfound piece of himself.

He had to go to the board meeting. He had to act like the hero while Drake paraded him in front of a bunch of people he didn't know. “I guess I'd better get going if I'm going to talk to Drake before the meeting."

“I need to get back to the lab,” she said hesitantly. “Are you sure you're all right?"

Danny nodded.

She opened the door, then turned back to him. “See you tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “See you tonight."

Danny looked at the clock. It was time to meet the board. As much as he wanted to explore this new memory, he didn't have time.

But as he headed toward Drake's office, he knew he was one step closer to remembering what had happened out there.

Chapter Eighteen

“The mystic deliria, the madness amorous,

The utter abandonment,

(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,)

I love you, O you entirely possess me."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

The city was curtained in rain when Kee left the lab, much later than she had intended. She had stayed to go through all of her messages. When she looked up, it was already after seven. She walked through the glassteel passages to the private White air-limo. It looked seriously cold outside. It would probably snow before many more weeks. Maybe they would have a white Christmas.

At home, she ran up the stairs to see if Danny was back. His shirt was in the laundry hamper and his sports coat was tossed on a chair, but he wasn't in the suite.

She'd been worried about him all afternoon, but he hadn't called, and she didn't want to disturb him in a meeting.

She showered, changed into a long, warm dressing gown, and dried her hair until it fluffed in clouds over her shoulders. She pushed it behind her ears as she ran down the stairs.

There was no one in the library. In the living room Miriam was entertaining some ladies from one of her volunteer organizations.

She tapped lightly on the door to the den. When she heard a gruff acknowledgment she eased the door open. Jack was on a sofa in front of a bank of multivision screens tuned to various news channels.

He pressed a button on a remote and spoke into a throat mike.

“Sorry. I was just looking for Danny."

He looked up, studying her for so long she began to squirm. “I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll..."

“Ten years,” he muttered. “At least ten years."

“What?"

“Twisting that hair up and wearing all the makeup makes you look ten years older. Without it you look like a child.” He muted the sound from the MVs. “Is that what you're trying to do? Look less like a child?"

Kee shrugged. “My hair gets in my way, and I feel better with makeup on. More like—more like a White.” She marveled at Jack's ability to bore through the surface like a laser probe. He saw right through the facade she'd designed for the world. With Jack, it was the truth or nothing.

“Hmm. You're much prettier when you look like yourself. I wouldn't count on that makeup too much if I were you. It tends to rub off.” He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Looking for Danny?"

“Yes.” She had to mentally shift gears. “I wanted to see how it went at Whitehall today."

Jack shook his head. “I don't think it went well at all. He's stretching himself too much. He ought to let down his guard a little."

“I know. That's what I told him. It's not going to matter if people know he doesn't remember. They'll understand."

Jack studied her for another endless moment. “You need to let your guard down a little, too, Miss Rebekah."

“Me?"

“Yes, you. Have you showed him you trust him? Do you trust him?"

“I—there hasn't been a good time."

“A good time? A good time to trust him? No, I expect there hasn't. And there probably won't ever be. You have to make your good times. Why don't you talk to him, give him some of your memories, so he can try to find his own?"

Kee stared at him. “You don't understand. I don't...” She gripped the door knob behind her. Give him her memories? What memories? Memories of red hot rage spewing out at her like lava? Or memories of white hot love—memories she'd cherished and dreaded at the same time, because she was afraid she'd never have the reality.

“You'd rather he never remembered, wouldn't you? It would suit you just fine if he stayed just like he is, confused, needy, dependent on you."

A shaft of guilt stabbed her. “No, I—well, of course I want him to regain his memory.” She stood up straight. “He's just so fragile still. He needs to recover."

“What he needs is your support. He needs you to believe in him. If he stays like he is, he'll never be whole. You can't keep him from remembering, Kee. You can't keep him from being Daniel White."

Kee wrenched the door open and fled. She walked rapidly to the back of the house toward the sunroom, brushing at the flyaway hairs that tickled her face, pushing them away like she'd like to push away Jack's words.

Was Jack right? Daniel White had been cruel, slinging his anger around, not caring who he hurt. He had retreated into drinking to hide from a world dominated by his father, a world where he could never measure up.

No, she didn't want that man back. She didn't think he would want to return to that world.

Why couldn't she have everything? The passion of the boy who'd left her, and the determination and strength of the man who'd returned.

Why couldn't she have it all?

But she knew Jack was right. If Danny didn't regain his memory, he would never be whole.

She pushed open the door to the sunroom. It was seldom used in the winter, and it was dark and warm, the sound of the rain like a midnight swim under a waterfall. The prisms twirled slowly as if a hand had just brushed them.

A dark, familiar form stood silhouetted against the glass.

“Danny?"

The shadow moved slightly.

“Are you all right?” She walked over to him. He had on the fisherman's sweater and the corduroy pants he'd worn at the beach house, and she imagined she could smell the sun and salt. The odor reminded her of his kiss—warm, salty, devastatingly erotic.

His fists were clenched at his side, and she yearned to smooth the fingers and caress them, but she didn't.

“Yeah, I'm fine.” His voice was strained.

“How did the board meeting go?"

He made a short, sharp sound. “About like I thought it would. Drake appealed to the board's sympathy for the battered hero. He paraded me before them like a mascot, or a freak show attraction. He didn't even pretend to involve me in the meeting. Now I know what figurehead means."

“You shouldn't have allowed that! Why didn't you..."

“What? Take my ‘rightful place’ as head of Whitehall? Maybe it was because I don't remember what to do.” Bitterness roughened his voice, and Kee felt chastised for not understanding.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She reached out to touch his hand and encountered cold metal.

“What's this?” she asked, tugging on it. He relinquished it to her, and she looked closely at the object in the dim light. “Have you been listening to those logs again?"

He drew himself up straight, and she could feel his tension radiating like heat. She touched his forearm and the muscles jerked under her fingers.

“Danny?"

“I went to see Dr. Ganand this afternoon,” he said quietly. “He hypnotized me."

Kee looked at the micro-disk recorder, a sick disquiet beginning to build in her. “He taped the session?"

Danny nodded once, curtly.

She looked up at him. His face was harsh-planed in the dim light, looking like a Rembrandt painting, his tiny scars like crazes in the paint. “Have you listened to it?"

He whirled abruptly and threw himself down on the wicker couch. “A little."

She sat beside him, holding the tape player, the metal cold in her hand. “Can I listen?” she asked in a small voice.

He just shrugged, clenching his fists on his knees.

With a finger that trembled, Kee turned on the tape.

...earliest thing you can remember?

Earliest?

Yes. Your first memory.

I remember waking up in the infirmary. No! I remember the flash of white on the viewscreen. Oh, God! Ah-h-h!

Danny jerked, and Kee almost turned off the tape. That scream! It sounded like someone being burned alive! Kee's heart lurched sickeningly.

It's okay, Danny, Dr. Ganand's voice soothed. It's only a memory. You're safe now. Let's go back in time to when you were a little boy. How old are you?

Twelve.

Kee stared at the tape player. The voice was the cracking adolescent voice of a young teenager—a young Danny. Frozen with amazement, Kee listened.

Let's go further back. Can you go back to when you were six? Can you remember that far, Danny?

Don't call me Danny!

Danny had closed his eyes and bowed his head, and she could see sweat beading on his forehead. Her heart ached with compassion for him, having to listen to this. Again she almost stopped the tape, but curiosity won out over caution, and she listened in stunned silence.

Why not? How old are you? Dr. Ganand's voice vibrated with a subtle excitement.

I don't know.

Are you five?

I don't know. The child's voice had taken on a singsong quality, like children will do when they are embarrassed, or put on the spot by an adult.

Danny, try to think...

Don't call me Danny!

Why not?

I don't know. I don't like it!

It's not your name?

I don't know.

All right, son. It's okay. Can you tell me where you are? Do you see anything? Smell anything?

Kee heard a tiny sob from the tape and a lump caught in her throat.

No! the child's voice said. I didn't! Please! Don't! The fear in the child's voice sent chills up Kee's spine.

Tell me what's the matter, son.

He's going to punish me!

The little boy's voice quivered with fear, and the grown up Danny shivered, too. Kee's thumb twitched to switch off the machine again, but her hand was frozen.

Got to go in there. Got to be a man. The little voice quavered pathetically.

Go in where?

Kee waited, not breathing.

In there. To be p-punished.

What did you do?

I don't know. Something he didn't like.

She had never realized the extent of Danny's hurt.

She had known Tiberius White as a hard man, a leader, who ran his home like he ran his business, but she'd never understood what he'd done to his son. A hot, angry feeling, very much like hatred, burned through her. How could anyone treat a child that way?

“Turn it off."

The words were so quiet, for a moment Kee thought they came from her own thoughts. Then she realized Danny had spoken.

“Danny, I—"

“Turn the damned thing off!” he shouted and vaulted up off the couch.

She turned it off. Her heart was bursting with pain and pity for the child who'd never been able to please his father, the little boy who had suffered so cruelly at the hands of the one man he should have been able to trust.

Choking back tears, Kee stood and put her hand on Danny's arm. He resisted for a moment, but she relentlessly pulled at him until he turned toward her, his eyes dark with the haunted anguish she would never again dismiss as self-pity.

“I don't remember being that little boy,” he whispered, “but it terrifies me to listen to his voice. What did my father do to me?"

“I am so sorry, Danny,” she whispered, putting her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to her shoulder. “So sorry. I had no idea."

She felt him trembling against her, and she held him, her head stroking his hair, until his shivering stopped.

As he regained control, Kee sensed the change in him. His arms no longer clutched her desperately, his breaths grew long and deep. Something in his stance, in the tension that radiated from him, changed.

Kee knew what the change was, because she could feel it inside herself, too. Their embrace had changed from comfort to desire.

Danny lifted his gaze to hers. His eyes had also changed. They no longer burned with pain. Now they were deep brown velvet, and held within their depths a promise Kee hardly dared to believe in.

“Kee.” In the dark, his face was like an ancient woodcut—sharp-shadowed, planed, beautiful. “I'm the one who's sorry. I don't mean to keep yelling at you. You've stood by me. I'm very grateful for that."

He touched her cheek with one finger, a touch so light she could have dreamed it, if he hadn't done it again with two fingers, then gently pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. She couldn't move while he traced her hairline down to her ear, then further along her jaw to the underside of her chin. His fingers were like butterflies against her skin and each place he touched awakened with sensual and sensuous feelings Kee had never before experienced.

“You are so lovely with your hair flowing free. I could almost believe I remember your hair and your green, green eyes,” he whispered, bending his head toward hers.

She lowered her gaze and drew back. When he got that close, the frightening and wonderful feelings began inside her. She had promised herself she would never let him close enough to evoke those feelings again. But she wasn't doing very well at keeping that promise.

She wanted him. His mouth drew her. She wanted it on hers. His fingers caressing her face and neck awoke an answering need to touch him. She pressed her hands against her sides.

He must have seen her hesitation, or felt it. “Why don't you trust me?” he asked softly.

Kee jerked away from him, Jack's words echoed in her ears louder than the pounding of her heart.

There's not a whole lot of ways a man can be sure a woman believes in him, trusts him...

Daniel T was a boy in love that night...

You can't keep him from remembering...

She brushed her hand against the prisms, sending blue and purple shadows chasing around the room, their muted tinkling almost drowned out by the rain. She felt Danny come up close behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, and the heat of his touch spread through her like wildfire.

“I know I haven't been kind to you, but I'd like to make up for that if I could. I know I'm not doing very well so far. When I can't even be sure who I am, things like the voices on that tape are so damned frightening. I need you to—believe in me."

His voice took on a quality she couldn't identify, but it made her want to cry. She didn't want him to beg her for trust. He shouldn't have to. She was his wife.

He deserved her trust and her love. She just put her hand over his where it rested on her shoulder.

“Listen to the rain,” she whispered after a long time, her heart pounding so loud she couldn't believe he didn't hear it.

“It rained on our first night in Bermuda, on our honeymoon.” She closed her eyes. That night had begun her inexorable journey to this room, this point. That night had given her a glimpse of a love she could believe in, a man she could trust.

She needed to give him her memory of that night. “You were so sweet. It was raining, slow and steady, like this, and you opened the balcony doors and we...” she couldn't finish. Her throat contracted with poignant longing for the love they'd almost had.

She swallowed hard as the memory of desire softened her belly. “We made love with the sound of the rain all around us."

She could barely meet his questioning eyes as he turned her around slowly. She began to tremble.

Danny felt her shivering as he wrapped her in his arms. He stood still, holding her until her trembling slowed, and as she calmed his need grew, making him more bold, until finally he was clutching her to him, pressing on her back to mold her into him, almost gasping aloud when her body pressed against his hardness.

Then her arms moved and he waited, not even breathing, to see what she would do. Her arms reached up to pull his head down to her, and she kissed him.

As he lowered his head and his mouth found hers, he sighed. God, he wanted her. There were so many unanswered questions, so much he was unsure of.

Still, more than anything in the world, more than his memory even, he wanted her. He didn't care if it was just because he was so damned scared. He didn't even care if she just felt sorry for him. He still wanted her. He needed her, like the ocean needed the shore, because without it the ocean was just water—aimless, lost, a part of the chaos.

Chapter Nineteen

“You have given me love—

Therefore I to you give love!

O unspeakable passionate love."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

Kee's breath was sweet inside Danny's mouth, and he groaned with exquisite desire and pressed her closer. He found the zipper of her dressing gown and pulled it, pushing the material off her shoulders, his hands following the soft fabric as it slid down her body, its luster no softer than her skin.

She had nothing on underneath. When he discovered that, he almost lost control. His hands found her breasts, and enveloped them, small and firm in his hands.

Then he had to seek her narrow waist, and the swell of her hips. She was hesitantly touching him, too. Her featherlike fingers explored his collarbone, his biceps, through the open weave of the sweater.

He pulled the sweater over his head, and she touched his chest, the flat nipples, the rectangular scar, her fingers stealing his breath as they floated like hummingbird wings against his skin. As he pressed his palm into her stomach, she made a little noise and clutched at his arms.

“Kee?” he breathed, afraid to ask, but unable to stand another second of doubt. If she backed away now, what would he do? He was lost in her.

She nodded. He lay her gently down on the wicker couch and doffed his slacks and lay next to her, feeling her heat and softness all along his length. Her beauty stole his breath. The perfection of her body made him want to cry.

She turned toward him as he slid on top of her. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, filling her mouth with his tongue, nibbling on her lips and tasting the underside of her chin and the delicate skin in front of her ears.

She moved her hands down his body as he explored hers. When her fingers slid over his buttocks he gasped, his heart exploding with love and need. He touched her gently, murmuring her name when his fingers slid into her. She gasped and arched toward his hand.

When he lifted himself above her, he was distracted for a second by the sense of déjà vu he felt staring down into her widened eyes.

Then he plunged, unable to hold back. His whole body thrilled with a sensation he could not remember ever experiencing as she opened herself to him and cried out softly.

Then suddenly, they both were frenzied, moving together, desperate to get as close as possible. To Danny's dismay he couldn't last. When he came, his body spasming and jerking with a ferocity that left him drained, he felt her shudder beneath him. He tucked his head into the hollow of her shoulder and held his weight off her with his arms until his breathing slowed.

She lay perfectly still. The only thing that told him she was still there was the scent of lilacs and the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. He lifted his head.

Her eyes were wide, watching him with that look that he would never doubt he remembered. It was a look comprised of wonder, apprehension, and if he dared to believe it, maybe even a little bit of love.

“Are you all right?” he whispered, horrified that his voice broke.

“I'm okay. Are you?"

He lay back, pulling her with him, clutching her to him. He couldn't help it. It was too much for him to take—holding her, loving her, trying to believe that he remembered her. He clung to her, buried his face in her hair and cried.

Kee lay awake long after Danny's rough sobs had turned into the long, even breaths of sleep. She didn't think she would ever, in a lifetime, get used to the feel of his body against hers, surrounding her with the hardness, the strength, the sheer maleness of him.

She would never stop craving the feel of his skin, rough and smooth under her fingers.

When she thought he was sound asleep, she reluctantly slipped off the couch, put on her gown and covered him with a comforter. Then she sat in the wicker chair with her feet tucked under her and watched him sleep.

How had he stood it all those months? Alone, frightened, not even knowing who he was or what would happen to him? Her heart broke and her eyes filled with tears.

Her heart had twisted with pity and pain to hear his savage weeping. Had she ever considered it, she would have realized it would be like this—rough, heartbroken. The unbridled sadness and grief, once spilled, had poured out from him like it was too much to contain.

Kee had never seen a man cry. But this heartbreak, this uneasable pain, this unbearable loss, cut her to her very heart. What she felt for Danny was not just pity for a broken mind in a broken heart. This was more.

Oh, God, she loved him. She couldn't deny it. It was too late to save herself. This was love, and it hurt as much as she'd always known it would.

She hadn't meant to let him close to her, hadn't meant to ever let him touch her again. It was too dangerous, and she had known that. Hatred was such a clean emotion, and anger was so one-dimensional. It was easy to guard against them.

Love was the frightening thing, because love could contain all the other emotions. It was possible to love someone and hate them. It was easy to be enraged at someone and still love them.

Kee realized with a jolt that she wasn't really afraid of Danny hating her when he regained his memory. She was afraid of him loving her. She had known what it would do to her if he ever touched her with love, and that was what scared her to death.

Danny stirred just as the first pink streaks were appearing in the sky. The rain had stopped, and everything outside had a clean, just-washed look.

When he opened his eyes and saw her, his widened for an instant as a wary smile crossed his face. He quickly dressed, then sat on the couch and patted the seat next to him. “Come sit here."

Kee pushed her hair back and looked at him. His mouth was curled in an anxious smile. She moved to the couch.

He pulled her against him with one arm around her. “I'm sorry about last night,” he whispered softly. His words cut into her heart like a stiletto.

“Sorry?” she echoed, tensing against him.

“God, Kee. I don't mean about making love with you. I mean about breaking down. I didn't mean to be so weak."

She put her hand on his knee and spoke carefully around the lump in her throat. “Weak? Oh, Danny. Don't say that. You are so brave."

He shook his head slightly and brushed her cheek with his fingers. “Did you sleep?"

“No, not really,” she said, nestling into the sleep-warm promise of his strong arms. They sat that way for a long time, listening to the water dripping off the roof and watching the sky lighten to day.

She moved, wanting to snuggle in closer to him, and he drew in a sharp breath. “Let's go upstairs,” he whispered, pushing her away so he could stand. Wordlessly, she let him take her hand and lead her down the hall and up the stairs.

Avery was coming downstairs as they started up. His expression never changed as he nodded at them, but Kee thought she saw a hint of a twinkle in his eye. She realized he must have seen them in the sunroom as he made his usual check of the house before retiring.

In their suite Danny turned to her. “I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what's going to happen. But I need you, and I promise I won't hurt you."

Kee put her arms around his waist and hugged him. He still didn't remember anything.

But he was here now, making promises he'd never made before. Promises that brought him closer to what she needed than he'd ever come, and she couldn't resist them.

His lips began moving along her hairline to her ear, down the line of her jaw and up under her chin as she arched her neck to allow him access. She gave herself up to his lovemaking, helpless to resist the languorous desire his touch evoked, unable to do anything except believe him.

He pulled the gown off her again and tossed his own clothes aside. Then he drew the covers back and lay her on the bed, jumping in beside her and pulling the covers up to their chins.

“Come over here,” he said, pulling her back against him and wrapping his arms around her. He touched her neck, her collarbone, her sensitized breasts.

“I don't remember ever doing this before,” he whispered in her ear as his hands traced all the lines of her body. “It's like it is the first time, and you're the first woman. This will always be my first memory. I was a virgin before last night."

A streak of hot desire shot through her. She had felt virginal, too. It had been so long, and as different as he was, he was still the same man—the only man she had ever made love with.

He took her earlobe between his teeth, his breath warm and quickening. She arched her head back against his shoulder and reached for his mouth with hers, feeling him hardening against her backside. She tried to turn over but he held her firm, and with her lying against him he began to caress her in earnest.

Kee was nearly delirious with sensation as his hands moved on her. He taunted her breasts until her nipples were painfully erect. Then he moved to her belly and hips. He read her body like a blind man reading Braille and molded her like a sculptor.

When his questing fingers finally sank into her, she cried out and stiffened against him, overwhelmed by the intensity of her response and embarrassed that she had come just from his touch.

Before the throbbing had even ceased, he was turning her to sit on top of him, impaling her gently and slowly, watching her face. She braced herself against his chest, and they undulated in the inborn dance that all lovers know. Nothing in her life had taught her that loving could be so sweet, or that a man could be so giving.

The only experience she had ever had was with Daniel White, so there was nothing to compare him to except himself. His eyes never wavered from her face as he guided her until she felt the waves build in her again, and he grimaced and arched his back, lifting her with the force of his climax.

Kee collapsed, letting her body slide until she lay at his side, her head cradled in the hollow of his shoulder.

From her vantage point just at the level of his neck, she could see the dozens of faint scars that mapped his skin. They were invisible, these charts of his painful odyssey, except to those who would come as close as a plastic surgeon, or a lover. She traced one minuscule furrow as carefully as an archeologist might trace a crack in a priceless pot.

“You're so hurt, so scarred. How did you stand it?"

Danny frowned and touched his cheek. “They're pretty bad."

“No, they're beautiful. Don't you know you are the most beautiful man I've ever seen?"

His mouth twisted wryly, and she touched her fingers to his lips, smoothing away the self-mocking smile.

“The scars hardly show. But how did they do it? You said your face was..."

He nodded grimly. “Amazing, isn't it? I didn't have much choice. Nobody asked me if I could stand it, or if I wanted to have my face back, or even if I wanted to live."

Kee felt his body stiffening, could almost smell the old fear and pain wafting from him like sweat. She put her hand on his face, cradling it Madonna-like, and kissed his neck.

“I'm glad they didn't wait to ask you. I'm glad they put you back together and sent you home to me.” Tears slipped from her eyes as her lips moved against his skin. She might curse herself for an idiot later, but right now all she wanted to do was breathe in the sleepy, sexual scent of him.

Danny lay silent for a long time, then he stirred. “When is our anniversary?"

“Our...? Oh my God!” Kee sat straight up in bed, pulling the sheet up. “It's today! Today's our wedding anniversary. You remembered!"

But he was frowning.

“What's the matter?"

“I didn't remember. White probably talked about his anniversary on the disks. There's five years of talk on them. He'd have been a real bastard if he hadn't even remembered his wedding anniversary."

“You heard White? He would have been.... Why are you talking about yourself in third person.” She'd forgotten for a few precious hours the shadow that haunted him, the shadow of Daniel White.

“Don't you get it yet, Kee? You said it yourself—you didn't know who I was. I don't know, either."

“Danny, I never meant—"

“Sure you did!” He threw back the covers and bounded up, throwing on his clothes. “You said yourself how different I am from the man you married. I don't know if this is my face, or the face they gave me because Daniel White was supposed to be on the bridge that night."

“I don't understand,” she said, staring at his rigid back. “You can't seriously believe that you're not you! There's so much...” Kee stopped, remembering Ty's remarks about what miracles the government could perform.

“What is there? Am I like him, even remotely?” He whirled, anger clouding his eyes. “Is there anything about me except this goddamned face that you can point to and say there, that's the man I married?"

“Your temper,” she murmured.

He shot her a disgusted look. “I'm serious!"

“So am I. You get so angry, so intense. You always did. It's like you were always frightened, and so you would try to face down the fear with anger."

“That doesn't prove anything."

“No, it doesn't. It doesn't prove anything. That's the whole point.” She looked at the face that was burned indelibly into her brain. “You tell me,” she said, berating herself for an idiot for even voicing the question. “Why do you doubt who you are?"

He shrugged and turned toward the balcony. “Lots of things. Sam Peters was killed. He was my bunkmate. But he wasn't on duty. He should have been in our quarters, and that side of the station was safe."

“Where was he?” She said, her throat constricting in apprehension. Tiberius White's ominous words came back to her. Those government boys can do anything. Could they supplant one person with another?

“They wouldn't tell me.” Danny turned around with his hands spread. “Don't you see?"

“I see my husband.” There was so much of the boy she remembered in the man before her. The deadly quiet voice. His eyes that had always turned dark when he was angry, his fingers on her skin, his kiss.

When she searched for differences, they were all so superficial. His leaner, harder body, his gray streaked hair, the kindness, the maturity that had never been there before. Why couldn't he see it? Why was he torturing himself?

“Danny, if you're so worried about this, why don't you just prove it once and for all?” Kee leaned back against the headboard. “Why don't you just check your fingerprints? They fingerprint everybody, don't they?"

Danny walked around and sat down on her side of the bed. He held up his hands, palm out. Kee looked at his hands uncomprehendingly for a moment, then she touched his fingertips.

“Burned away,” he said flatly.

“What about your teeth—dental records?"

“They had to break my jaw, restructure it. All my teeth are implants."

“Okay then. DNA."

“Resequenced. It won't match."

“Blood type,” she flung at him.

“Composite positive. It's a hybrid. I can donate blood to anyone now."

Kee sighed in irritation.

“I know! Your birth certificate!” She clutched his shoulders.

He stared at her.

“Your birth certificate! Danny!” She tried to shake him, jar the uncomprehending stare off his face.

“Your birth certificate will have a foot print. They footprint babies! Your feet weren't burned, were they?"

Slowly his face transformed as comprehension dawned. He opened his mouth then closed it. He swallowed hard and blinked, his eyes glittering. The hope she saw raked across her heart like a cat's claws. She held out her arms and pulled him to her, cradling his head against her breast. His arms clutched her convulsively.

“It'll be okay, Danny! You'll see. There's really no question, but once you see the proof yourself, then you can stop hiding, stop living in fear."

She smoothed his hair and held him and whispered to him for a long time, forcing away her doubts, refusing to listen to the question her brain was asking.

When the veil that hung over his memories was lifted, what would he remember about her?

Chapter Twenty

“Bridegroom night of love

Working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day."

I Sing the Body Electric

Walt Whitman

Kee found Miriam at her desk, writing letters.

“Good morning, dear. How are things down at the lab?"

“Fine. Just fine. Miriam?” She sat down on the pink-striped ottoman and crossed her legs Indian style. Her heart pounded as she tried to figure out what to say. She paged through a print zine until Danny's mother lay her pen down and poured herself another cup of coffee.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?"

“No thank you. Miriam? I don't suppose you know where Danny's birth certificate is, do you?” Kee held her breath.

Miriam carefully measured out a spoonful of sugar and stirred it into her coffee. “What on earth for?"

“I uh, he probably needs a new passport."

Miriam took a sip of coffee. “I suppose the information is on-line."

Kee shook her head. “I think he needs the original hard copy."

“The original? I'll have to think."

“Could you?"

Miriam looked at her curiously. “Certainly, dear."

Kee sank back onto the ottoman with a sigh of relief as the older woman stood. She didn't know how she could have stood it if they'd had to wait. Surely this would prove to Danny once and for all that he was Daniel White.

“Now where would I have put that? I wonder if it's in the safe deposit box with Ty's papers? No, I remember seeing it not too long ago—ah!” Miriam pulled out the bottom drawer of her dresser and lifted a box.

“This is full of Danny's things,” she said, setting the box on her desk and lifting the top. “Photographs, drawings, holographs. I have such a hard time throwing anything away."

Kee stared at the box, crammed full of the paraphernalia of a child's life, overflowing with memories. Memories that might help Danny regain his. Memories that might help Kee understand him. “Miriam, I had no idea you had all of this."

Miriam was sifting through snapshots and papers, a tiny smile on her face. She paused, looking at a small photograph with a torn corner, and shook her head. “So young, so foolish,” she whispered.

“Let me see. Who is it?” Kee held out her hand, but Miriam had put the photo back into the box.

When she looked up, her eyes were misty. “I'm sorry, dear. Sometimes the old photographs bring back memories. You and Danny would probably have fun going through it. Just don't laugh too much at me for keeping it all.” She was still sifting through the papers in the box. She stopped. “Here it is.” She held up a yellowed piece of paper.

Kee looked at the document dangling from her mother-in-law's fingers. The answer was no more than a foot in front of her. Suddenly, she knew exactly how Danny felt.

With a great effort of will, she made her hand reach out and take it. She turned it over, and looked at the printed lines.

“But, but there's no foot print,” she whispered.

“What?"

“No footprint.” She held out the sheet. “Where's his footprint?"

Miriam looked at the certificate as if it had suddenly grown fangs. She dropped a handful of snapshots back into the box and sat down. She picked up her coffee cup, clattering it against the saucer.

“Oh, goodness! I'd almost forgotten,” she said brightly. “We got the birth certificate later. Danny was born early, while Ty and I were in Africa. My obstetrician was certain I would have no problem, since I was..."

“Miriam? What is it?” Kee leaned forward, worried. Her mother-in-law's face had gone suddenly pale.

Miriam set the cup down loudly. She shook her head as if to clear it. “I was only six months along, you see, but I delivered at—at seven months, and although there was a doctor, thank goodness, there were no facilities for recording the birth. So the doctor gave us a handwritten note, and when we got back here Ty had the birth certificate filled out.” Miriam took the sheet of paper. “It was all very exciting, but I'm glad I was home when Jan was born.” She put it in the box and replaced the lid with hands that shook.

Something about the conversation, or the birth certificate itself, seemed to upset her. “Miriam, are you all right? You look upset."

Danny's mother blinked and patted the lid of the box, sighing. “No dear,” she said softly. “I'm fine."

“Thanks, Miriam. I've got to get ready to go to work.” Kee picked up the box and walked back to her room. No footprint. What could they do now? It was like Danny's whole life had been wiped out. Everything that could identify him had been taken away.

She pushed open the door to their suite, and Danny turned eagerly toward her. “Well?"

Kee's wanted to cry. How could she rip away the hope that shone in his eyes? “Danny..."

“What is it? Something's wrong."

She clutched the box and stared helplessly at him. He circled the bed.

“What?” he demanded, grabbing her shoulders. “Are you all right?"

“There's no footprint."

Danny made a low sound in his throat and let go of her so suddenly she felt like she was falling. She reached out to him, but he turned his back on her.

“That's okay, Kee, don't worry about it,” he said tightly. “I'll find some other way."

“This box is full of snapshots and drawings and stuff—your stuff. Maybe you should go through it. There are a lot of memories in here.” She held the box out to his back.

“Yeah, maybe so.” He sounded distracted, as if his mind were far away from her and her box of memories.

“Danny? What are you going to do today?” She set the box down on the dresser and picked up her hairbrush. “Are you going in to the office?"

He laughed. “No. Not today. I have the feeling Drake doesn't want me there. I think I may look into some things, maybe do some research."

“Research? On what?” She caught his eye in the mirror. His distraction seemed to dissolve as he looked at her reflection, his eyes suddenly dark and soft. He stepped up behind her and pulled her hair back to kiss the nape of her neck, starting a disturbing yearning deep inside her.

“What are you doing today?” he whispered against her ear, his hands tracing her shoulders, her arms, then circling her to pull her back against him.

If she lived forever she would never get used to the feel of his warm, hard body against hers. She closed her eyes and answered his question with an effort. “I'm going in to the lab. I've got to finish the tests on that fuel. Oh!"

His fingers were sketching the outline of her breasts. They immediately became taut and heavy with sensation. “Danny,” she gasped.

He nipped at her earlobe, then pulled her dressing gown closed. “You better get started, then, and I'd suggest you wear something very conservative to work.” He grinned at her in the mirror, but underneath the grin, behind the passion, she saw the disappointment.

“Don't worry, okay?” she said, smiling reassuringly.

He kissed her temple. “I'll pick you up at your boudoir door Madame, tonight at seven. Wear something decidedly unconservative and suitable for a formal dinner, because we will be celebrating our anniversary. Our first anniversary, since I managed to miss the previous five.” He turned her to face him, took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Until then, my lady."

She laughed and curtsied, but when he straightened, the shadow in his eyes had deepened, and he was frowning at her.

“Promise me something,” he said quietly, still holding her hand.

“Most certainly, kind sir,” Kee replied, trying to hold on to the lighthearted mood.

Danny clutched her hand tightly. “Tell me before you turn in your final report on the fuel."

Kee nodded, startled. She started to ask him why, but he leaned over and kissed her nose, his eyes sparkling and his mouth relaxed into a mischievous grin.

She went back to brushing her hair, a song of happiness drifting through her heart.

Kee spent the day humming silly songs and generally getting nothing done. She hadn't felt so deliciously happy since—maybe never. The mood carried her throughout the day until, at five o'clock she told Geoff and Micki that she had to leave.

“Good!” said Geoff. “It's hard to tell your employer's wife that she hasn't been worth shooting all day. When are you going to finish the fuel tests?"

“I'm working on them! Of course because no one touched it the whole time I was out, I'm going to have to restart the longest experiment."

“You know how much we're under the gun on this. Drake wants it yesterday."

“I'll finish them."

Geoff held up his hands in defeat. “What have you been so excited about all day anyway?"

“It's my anniversary."

Geoff's eyes searched her face. “What kind of anniversary?” he asked in a dead voice.

“Wedding anniversary, silly!” she said brightly as she pulled on her jacket. “I'll see you later."

Geoff turned on his heel and went into his office, slamming the door.

Micki walked over and brushed an imaginary speck off Kee's jacket. “Girl, you are one major heartbreaker!” she said, cocking a perfectly shaped eyebrow and shaking her head, causing the silver and turquoise disks hanging from her ears to tinkle like a wind chime.

“What can I do?” Kee asked irritably. “This is where I work! I can't pretend I don't have a husband."

“You did before,” the other girl murmured.

Kee stared at Micki. “What?"

Micki shrugged, a hint of rose touching her deep sienna cheeks. “Don't mind me. I just like Geoff, and I remember how unhappy you were before. If you're happy now, then that's good. But you're breaking a fine man's heart."

“Micki! I never...” she stopped. Micki voiced Kee's thoughts.

“Never what? Never led Geoff on? Never kissed him? Tell me a better one, girl.” She held up her hands as Kee shook her head. “Okay, okay. At least you didn't have an affair with him—you didn't, did you?"

“No! Of course not. I—I was ... I am married!” Kee considered her friend's words. Had she led Geoff on? Of course she had. She had almost gone through with her divorce because of Geoff.

“Oh, Micki. I didn't mean to hurt him."

“Geoff's a big boy. He can take are of himself. I just want to know one thing. This hero husband of yours—is he okay? I mean, he must not be the same little pissant playboy you married, or you wouldn't be so excited about this anniversary."

Kee's face burned hotter. “No, he's not the same man I married,” she said, realizing the irony of her words. “Not at all."

“Well, you go have a good time. I'm working overtime again."

* * * *

When Kee got home, Danny was nowhere to be found. She asked Miriam if she had seen him, but her mother-in-law just shook her head and smiled mysteriously.

“You better hurry if you're going to be ready by seven, dear,” she said. Kee looked at the antique clock sitting on Miriam's desk and gasped.

“Oh, no, you're right! Bye, I'll see you later.” She hurried down the hall and into their room, discarding clothes as she entered the suite. She only had about forty-five minutes to shower and dress. She dried her hair quickly, brushing it so it lay smooth and silky against her neck and shoulders the way Danny liked it.

Wrapped in a terry cloth robe, she stepped into the bedroom and saw a huge box decorated with a giant red bow lying on the bed.

“Danny?” she called, but there was no one around. With a little thrill of laughter, she lifted the lid from the box.

Inside was an emerald green gown. It was hand-woven silk, and when she lifted it, the color and the texture made it look alive in her hands. The lines were deceptively simple, Kee shook her head in awe—it must have cost a fortune. Sewn in the back was a label with a name usually associated with even more wealth than the White fortune.

She dropped the robe and pulled the dress over her head. It slid over her body like warm water. The neckline was not low, but it draped seductively over her breasts. The material flowed down her waist to her hips and on to her ankles. It was the most beautiful gown she had ever seen.

She turned to look in the mirror, adjusting the neckline. The dress left her arms bare, and she shivered as she sat down to finish her makeup. She lifted her hair to move it out of the way while she inserted small emerald studs into her ears. The cool air on her neck reminded her of Danny lifting her hair this morning to kiss her nape. Closing her eyes, she recalled his breath warm against her ear....

She jumped as he wrapped her in fur.

“Danny! I didn't hear you!” she said in surprise. “What are you doing?"

“Wrapping my wife in mink,” he said softly as his arms about her urged her to stand. The coat was a rich taupe color, with a wide collar and full length sleeves.

“Danny! Mink! You shouldn't..."

“Hey, this is genuine cloned mink. The little rodents are raised to be coats.” He grinned at her.

She slapped at his hand, trying not to laugh. “You're awful. That's not funny."

“I'm kidding. It's Mother's. Fits pretty good, doesn't it?"

Kee looked down at the ballet length hem. “I recognize it now. It reaches the floor on Miriam."

“Are you ready to go?"

“Where are we going?"

“You'll see,” he said. At the door he swept her length with his gaze. “You might want to put on some shoes."

“Oh!” She ran to her closet and slipped her feet into black pumps, stopping short as she realized she had on absolutely nothing under the dress. “Wait, Danny, I need to—"

“Come on,” Danny interrupted, taking her arm. “Your carriage awaits."

She pulled the coat close around her as they ran down the stairs and into the underground garage.

“Danny! Your car!” Kee cried.

He beamed and patted the fender. “Carl kept it in mint condition for me. Come on!"

He opened the door of the vintage BMW convertible, and Kee climbed in.

Danny climbed in the other side and backed the car out of the garage.

“I'm glad you left your hair down,” he yelled as they took off down the road, “because it's probably going to get messed up."

Kee pushed strands of hair out of her eyes. “Danny, it's freezing,” she shouted, feeling an irrepressible urge to laugh out loud. “Put the top up."

“No way.” He shook his head and sped up.

Kee gave up trying to talk or control her hair. She just snuggled back into the seat and watched Danny as he drove.

His hair blew across his forehead. He turned to look at her, and she was astonished by his likeness to the boy who had swept her off her feet five years ago. He had a mischievous sparkle in his eyes that threw her back in time to that other night.

Kee realized five years hadn't really changed either of them that much. Even with the differences that time and his surgeries had wrought, he was still the boy she'd been so in love with. And she was still just that much in love.

She laughed with sheer joy, and he glanced sidelong at her. As their eyes met, a flash of something like wistfulness streaked across his face.

“Danny? Are you all right?” she shouted, leaning toward him.

He put his arm around her and pulled her close for a minute. “I'm great!” he responded. “Great!"

Chapter Twenty-one

“I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,

Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,

Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you"

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

They drove straight through to Washington, and Danny pulled into the parking lot of the historic Watergate Hotel.

“Yuk!” Kee cried, brushing at the mink coat as he stopped the car. “Your mother's coat is ruined! And look at my hair!"

Danny kissed her nose. “You're gorgeous! Now come on."

She felt like Cinderella, caught up in the magic of the ball. Danny turned off the ignition.

“I don't even have a brush,” she wailed, trying to push her fingers through the tangled mess of her hair.

“Here.” Danny pulled a comb out of his pocket and began to untangle her hair. She sat with her eyes closed and let him comb it. His hands were amazingly gentle as he separated the knots and snarls. He had never fussed over her before. It was a new, wonderful feeling.

In the six years they had been married, they had only known each other for about eight months. For many couples, the honeymoon wouldn't even be over in eight months. By their sixth anniversary, many couples would have started a family. But she and Danny didn't even know each other.

After a few moments he stopped combing, although he still held her hair in his fingers. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her.

“Rapunzel, let down your hair,” he whispered and leaned over to kiss her.

His urgency took away her breath, then gave it back to her—sweet, hot, feeding her breath and life—then he took it away again.

She moaned and reached to encircle his neck, hot need making her limbs quivery.

“No, sweetie-kee,” Danny whispered raggedly, dragging his mouth away from hers with great effort. “We've got reservations in about two minutes. I need to be able to walk!"

“What?” She sat up stiffly, her heart beating erratically. Were her ears and desire-soaked brain playing tricks on her?

He laughed. “It was just a joke. I said I need to be—"

“No!” She caught his face between her hands, desperate to know if she had really heard what she thought she had. “What did you call me?"

“Call you? I don't know...."

“You called me sweetie-kee. You called me that before."

He searched her face, then looked away. “Don't make too much of it,” he muttered, withdrawing from her and opening the car door.

Don't make too much of it? It was a pet name, a secret name between the two of them. It was a memory.

“But, Danny..."

“Just don't, okay? Let's go."

He got out of the convertible and held his hand for her, escorting her through an elegant, canopied doorway into an intriguingly lit restaurant.

Kee let his sudden careful distance set the tone for the evening and responded to him the same way. Polite, a little remote. The way two people who barely knew each other might act.

It hurt her to think after all they'd been through, they really were strangers.

Her emotions were in turmoil. She wanted to cry with joy that he had remembered his pet name for her, something so intimate, so personal, it had to be proof of his returning memory. But on the heels of the joy came sadness and fear.

What if the endearment was something he'd heard on the micro-disks?

She sternly admonished herself. No thinking. Just enjoy the evening.

They sat at a table near the huge fountain in the center of the room, and she watched giant koi chase each other in silver-shot water as he ordered their drinks and dinner.

They talked about inconsequential things: who the young woman was with the bachelor senator from Maine, what holovideos were playing, what was happening in the Middle East this week.

* * * *

Hours later in the BMW, Danny asked himself if he'd done all right, if he'd acted like Daniel White would have acted.

Daniel White would probably have not acknowledged their anniversary at all, or would have merely sent flowers—or asked his mother to do it for him.

So what was Danny doing? Trying to prove something? He'd wanted to give Kee something special, the kind of anniversary she hadn't had in six years.

He'd kept her talking about herself for most of the evening, hungry to know this girl Daniel White had snatched up so casually .

He had the feeling that even if he owned all of Daniel White's memories, he still wouldn't have known the things she'd told him tonight about her life, about her mother, about her hopes and dreams.

He looked at her, and with a suddenness that ripped through him like an electric shock, he saw the vision he'd been looking for ever since he got back. The girl in the picture. For an instant she was there beside him. He swallowed against an ache at the back of his throat.

“Danny?” she murmured, stirring.

“It's okay, sweetie-k—Kee, we're not home yet. You go back to sleep,” he whispered against her hair, breathing in her scent and savoring the ache of desire it built in him.

“I had a good time, Danny,” she whispered, her fingers on his chest burning through the silk of his shirt. “I feel like Cinderella. Has the car turned into a pumpkin?"

“No.” He chuckled, his lips against her forehead, tasting her sweet skin. “And if I have anything to say about it, Cinderella, midnight will never come. I promise you."

“That's good, Prince Charming, because I'm happy right here."

Danny's eyes stung at the drowsy, trusting voice. He'd asked her just last night why she didn't trust him. Just last night and a lifetime ago.

She dozed against his chest until he pulled into the garage.

“Come on, Kee,” he jostled her awake. “Wake up. I'd love to sweep you into my arms, but I don't think my leg is up to it, so you're going to have to climb those stairs on your own."

She yawned behind her hand. “Maybe I could just sleep in the car,” she whispered.

“No way,” he laughed.

When he finally got her inside their room and stood with his back to the door, he was stunned by her beauty.

“Come here,” he croaked, too overcome to even be embarrassed by the display of emotion in his voice.

She walked slowly toward him, kicking off one shoe, then the other, then letting the mink coat fall on the carpet with a quiet swish.

In the green dress, highlighted by moonlight, she was as seductive as a goddess.

When she stood in front of him, she pushed his coat off his shoulders and began unbuttoning the pearl studs. He stood perfectly still, his eyes taking in every movement of her graceful body, every spark in the sleepy green eyes that matched the dress so perfectly.

She took a swift breath when her hands touched his bare chest and he could hardly keep from reaching for her, but he gritted his teeth and stood still under her gentle, maddening touch.

She undid the cummerbund and unzipped his pants. He was already heavy with need for her, and when she bent to push his pants down past his hips, he almost cried out as her hair brushed his sensitized flesh. His erection throbbed with exquisite pain as she kneeled in front of him and pulled his shorts down, running her hands down his flanks, pushing him closer to the brink of ultimate release.

Danny grabbed her shoulders. “Not yet, Kee, not yet,” he whispered, pulling her up, her silk clad body sliding up his flanks, his belly, his chest.

The silk against his skin was an intense torture, and his hands trembled as he pulled the gown up past her knees, then her hips. When he realized she was naked under the gown, a groan rattled in his throat, and his body tightened convulsively.

“God!” he muttered. He slid his hands up her body under the silk, catching her waist, running his hands up her rib cage, his thumbs caressing the underside of her breasts. Then cupping them, moving his fingers over her taut, distended nipples. All the while he watched her face. She lifted her head, her lips moist and parted, her eyes half closed. The desire and trust he saw in her face convulsed his throat.

He slipped the gown over her head and lifted her and lay her tenderly down on the bed, covering her body with his. He was so close to climax just from touching her that he was afraid he couldn't hold on for even a minute.

He buried his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulder and lay still, his arms holding his weight off her, trying to gain some sort of control.

“Danny?"

Her tremulous voice broke in on his struggle to hold his raging desire in check.

“Are you okay? What is it?” Her hands were playing down his back and buttocks. Her lips moved against his shoulder, sending him one step closer to the brink.

He gritted his teeth. “England."

“What?"

“I'm trying to think of England,” he growled.

Kee laughed, her breasts and belly rippling with mirth, and he groaned again.

“Don't move! Please?"

She froze, stiff against him. “Why? Did I hurt you?"

He shook his head against her shoulder and gave up. He could hardly breathe, could hardly think, he was so suffused with the delicious ache of restraint and the unbearable pain of anticipation.

She stared up at him, her eyes wide and questioning, and something tickled uneasily at the edge of his mind, something almost familiar.

He banished the thought with the taste and the smell and the feel of her. Putting his hands on either side of her head, he caressed the corners of her mouth with his thumbs and kissed her eyes shut before moving on to concentrate on her mouth.

She kissed him back, arching her neck to reach his mouth when he drew away, arching her body when he bent his head to let his lips roam luxuriously over the mounds of her small breasts, nipping the tips softly with his teeth, until they hardened, and she made a low soft sound in her throat.

When she moved her hips beneath him, he had to jerk away, balancing himself on elbows and knees.

“Please, Kee. I want this to be good, and I'm not going to last if you don't lie still."

“What if I don't want to be still?” she whispered. “What if I need to move, need to feel you, need to touch you like you're touching me?” As she spoke she moved her hands from his back to his belly, running them along the ridges of muscle, tracing the boundaries of the scars there, then reaching lower, to touch him where he longed for her to touch.

“Kee!” he groaned.

“Now, Danny, now!” she begged, shuddering as he pushed into her, making little whimpering noises as he moved inside her.

He pulled her as close to him as he could, crushing her breasts against his chest, feeling her smooth thigh against the rough scar on his leg, breathing in lilacs mixed with the perfume of her skin.

Then, when he thought he would burst, he felt her spasms clutching, sucking at him, and he knew he had given her what he'd been determined to give before he would allow himself his own satisfaction.

He cried out involuntarily and thrust hard as she stifled a scream against his neck. Then he spasmed again and again until he was drained of fluid and strength, and he lowered his head to her shoulder, panting.

Her hands cradled his head, and she kissed his cheek, her lips soft, her touch languid. “I love you, Danny,” she whispered.

His heart nearly stopped. He lifted his head and looked into her wide dream-memory eyes.

He touched her mouth with his finger, his heart almost too full for words. “I hope you always do, sweetie-kee,” he said hoarsely. “I hope you always do."

After a while, he lifted himself off her and flopped beside her on the bed, his arms and legs still quivering with exertion and the aftereffects of his violent orgasm.

She curled into his side and went to sleep.

The room was warm, and Kee's body against his was hot, but he began to shiver and a dart of pain pierced his temples. Suddenly he was terrified.

It had been too much. The intimacy that making love had built between them was paralyzing. Kee had given herself to him totally. She had opened her body and her heart to him. But who did she think she had made love with, to whom was she offering herself so freely, so lovingly? To him, no matter who he was, or to Daniel White?

As much as he wanted to lie next to her, to have her body warming him, he couldn't catch a full breath. He carefully extricated himself from her side and got up, throwing the edge of the comforter over her. She murmured something without waking.

Danny quietly took the micro-disk recorder out of the bedside table, then grabbed jeans and his down jacket. He slipped out onto the balcony as the first tinge of dawn began to chase the darkness from the sky.

In the coolness of dawn, he sat, clutching the recorder tightly in his trembling fingers. Was he beginning to remember? Had the anniversary and the ride in the convertible and the silly endearment been an indication that his veiled memories were Daniel White's memories?

Danny looked at his fingers, white-knuckled around the block of metal. Was he ready to face what was on the disks? Would the tenuous thread of his memory begin to reweave the torn holes back into the fabric of his mind?

And when it did, would he be able to stand the truth?

Chapter Twenty-two

“Do you say Venture not—

If you leave me you are lost?"

Song of the Open Road

Walt Whitman

Kee woke, stretching languorously. Her lips curved into a smile as she remembered the night before, and a small giggle bubbled into her throat.

She shivered and lifted her head as she moved into a cold patch of material. She saw Danny on the balcony, silhouetted against the dim light of dawn. He was zipped into his old down jacket and huddled against the cold.

She listened and heard the noise that had awakened her. It was a tinny voice, just barely audible. He was playing the disks.

She knew about the disks. He had two sets of personal logs—his and Peters'. She knew he still hoped to find some clue to his memory inside those disks. But what had compelled him to leave their bed to sit in the chill early morning air and listen to them? She wrapped his discarded shirt around her and stood at the balcony doors.

...log, thirteen March, twenty thirty-three. I'm about to get fed up with White. He acts like the entire universe revolves around him. I can't believe I actually agreed to cover for him last night. He wanted to have a go with Vicki, and it was her night off.

I asked him if she was really that hot, but he just laughed and said ‘She's a piece of ass, Peters. That's all that counts.'

Man, what a scuz! I'll never cover for him again. I don't like it anyway. If I get caught it's court martial for me, using someone else's ID badge, impersonating another officer. Shit!

But I know how tough it is. I've been faithful to Maria, at least so far, but in a way, White is right. Sometimes you just need someone. I can wait, though. I can wait for my little Maria Santia Gonzales, my linda paloma.

Danny moved and Kee stiffened, but he just popped out one disk and inserted another, then pressed the start button again.

...nally talked Peters into covering for me. What a do-gooder! I really don't understand him. Here he is, straight off the streets, tells me his mother died on him when he was thirteen. He gets arrested for armed robbery, then gets conscripted, and he's fucking happy! He thinks he's got it made. Says he'll have a career when he gets back. A career!

Where does he think he'll go? No family, no money. But here he is moralizing at me! Telling me I'm married, I shouldn't be screwing around. Telling me that Vicki is a nice girl, she likes me, I shouldn't mess with her head. Ha! It's not her head I'm messing with, Peters.

Cocky bastard! I'd like to mess with his head! He says he's happy, says he knows what he wants to do with his life. Hell, I'm the heir to Whitehall! I'm the one with all the potential. I've got a good family, a beautiful wife, a future.

Why am I starting to wish I had what Peters has?

Danny switched disks again. Kee could see his hands trembling. She was trembling, too. To listen to that arrogant voice, that voice that had haunted her dreams for five years, was almost more than she could stand.

Danny pressed the play button again.

...live forever, I don't believe I'll ever learn to understand people like White,” the pleasant, husky voice said. Sam Peters’ voice.

There he is, heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the world, married to a beautiful woman. What more could a man want? But the guy is miserable. He screws around, tests the limits of authority and does everything he can think of to get himself into trouble. I'd almost think he has a death wish. I think I'm much happier being myself—plain old Sam No Middle Name Peters. Kid off the streets, going back to the streets.

But at least I know who I am, and I don't hate myself.

Kee couldn't stand it any longer. He was tearing himself apart, listening to the voice of a dead man.

When she pushed the door open and stepped out onto the balcony, Danny jumped. He switched off the player.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“You shouldn't sneak up on me like that, Kee.” His voice was soft, with that deadly tone that unnerved her so.

“I didn't sneak up on you. This is my balcony, too. I said, ‘What are you doing?'” He wanted to get angry? Fine. She was angry too. How dare he leave their bed—their lovemaking—to sit and listen to this stuff? Why couldn't he leave well enough alone?

“It's just the logs."

“But that's not your log, is it? Was that you?” She heard her voice, shrill, panicky.

Danny looked at her irritably. He shrugged, pushing past her to go back into the bedroom.

He put the recorder back into the drawer and stood, arms folded, and stared at her.

“What were you doing?"

“I told you,” he muttered menacingly, his jaw clenched, “I was listening to the logs."

“Why? Why did you get up out of our bed to sit out in the cold and listen to a dead man talking?” Kee took a sharp breath, feeling like a weight was pressing on her chest. “Why can't you let it be?"

Danny pushed roughly past her, shedding the down jacket. As he passed her she grabbed his arm.

“Why, Danny?"

He twisted his arm, and suddenly he was gripping her wrist like a vise. He pulled her close and growled at her through clenched teeth. “Don't grab me! And stop sticking your nose into my business, you—"

Her heart lurched into her throat, and she cringed.

He let go of her arm so fast she nearly fell. His face drained of color. “Kee! What is it?"

She stepped backwards, old fear rising in her. He had never hit her, but she had never doubted he would if she had ever provoked him enough. Had she now?

“God, don't do that!” His voice sounded anguished.

“Don't do what?” she asked, confused by the sudden change in him. Where had the anger gone? His emotions changed as quickly as a chameleon's color.

“Are you afraid of me?"

She didn't answer. Her cheeks burned. Her pulse pounded in her throat.

“Answer me! Are you still afraid of me?” he shouted.

“Yes! When you yell like that!” She clenched her fists and glared at him, meeting anger with anger. She felt a curious relief that his anger was back. It was so much easier to deal with than the other, sweeter emotions he flung at her.

“That's not what I mean.” He came toward her, and it was all she could do to stand still.

“Why do you cringe when I come near you?” His face was contorted with a vicious grief. “Have I ever hit you?"

She didn't answer.

“Have I?"

She just stared at him, as caught by his gaze as a snake by a mongoose.

“God, how could I have hit you? You! It's impossible. I can't be—” He loosed his grip as if she were hot.

“No. You pushed me against the wall once. That's all.” She watched him warily.

“That's all?” He made a sound deep in his throat like a laugh, but his face didn't change. “That's all? Well, that's just great. All I did was scare you and push you. That's all."

His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were blanched.

“Why were you listening to that disk?” she asked again.

He didn't answer, didn't even acknowledge her question, so she stepped around him and retrieved the recorder. She rewound it for a few seconds, then pressed ‘play'. Danny turned around when the voice started.

...being myself—plain old Sam No Middle Name Peters. Kid off the streets, going back to the streets. But at least I know who I am, and I don't hate myself.

She rewound it and played it again, and again.

...at least I know who I am, and I don't hate myself.

Before it finished the third time Danny yanked it out of her hand and threw it across the room. “Stop playing that crap!” he shouted.

Kee whirled and grabbed his head between her two hands.

“Look at me, Danny. Look at me! Tell me why you keep playing that disk. What are you looking for?"

She knew he could have shaken her off like drops of water after a swim, but he just stood there, avoiding his eyes.

“Tell me! Say it, Danny. I want to hear you say it. I want it out—right here. So we can deal with it. Say it!"

She was practically screaming. Her vision was blurred by her tears, her palms were wet with his. “Tell me after all this—after last night—you still think you're not Daniel White. You called me sweetie-kee. You remembered our anniversary."

He took a shaky breath. “I can't be the same man who hurt you, who screwed around on you, who did the things Daniel White did."

“You can't be anyone else."

He tried to push away. She wouldn't let go. Her heart was breaking for him, for the boy who had been sent off into space confused and scared, not knowing what he wanted out of life, not really wanting anything except to be loved.

And for the man who had come back pieced together the best way the best surgeons knew how, but still confused and scared, without even the cushion of memory to sustain him.

She held onto him and turned her face up and kissed him. He resisted, but suddenly she was stronger than he was. She kissed him until he groaned and kissed her back.

She slid her hands down his naked chest, caressing his skin, deliberately trying to seduce him. She couldn't sustain it though. He pulled away.

He walked to the balcony doors and stared out, his hands thrust into his pants pockets, his shoulders hunched. “I'm going to New York for a while."

“What?” Kee couldn't believe what she'd heard. “You're going where? Why?"

“New York. I think I should look up some of Sam Peters’ family, if I can."

“Sam Peters? The man on the tape?” Something heavy and dreadful pressed on her breast, stealing her breath and hurting her heart. She didn't want to ask the next logical question. But she had to know the answer. “What do you think you're going to find?"

He shrugged.

“Maybe nothing. Maybe some answers."

“What kind of answers? Who are you going to see?"

He turned, looking at her like he had that first day, as if he didn't know who she was. His face was blank, his eyes opaque, he seemed to be staring through her. Fear began to crawl up her body.

“Maria, the gang, maybe even the police. People who knew Sam Peters. I might even try to look up Vicki."

“Vicki? The piece of ass?” she flung at him.

His head jerked, as if from a blow, then his mouth twisted into a self-mocking smile. “Yeah. The piece of ass.” He half turned toward her and spread his hands.

“That's right, Kee. Daniel White thought Vicki was a piece of ass. He thought you were a conniving bitch, he hated his father. What a hero, right?"

“Danny, why are you doing this to yourself? You're here, you're my husband. Isn't that enough?” She couldn't live with all the panic welling up in her. It was stealing her breath, choking her. It was going to kill her.

She went at him, pounding her fists ineffectually against his chest. “Damn you, Danny! Go, then! But I can't take it a third time!"

He grabbed her fists using almost no effort, and looked down at her, his mouth curled into a small smile.

“You're a good one, like Uncle Jack said. I can't explain it, Kee. I just have to do it. I'd like to know that you'll wait for me.” His voice almost cracked, but his eyes didn't waver.

Kee closed her eyes. She shook her head. “I don't know. I just don't know. If you don't come back, then what do I do? If you do come back...."

She pulled her hands away and pressed them against her heart, because it was shattering into too many pieces to ever mend. “You keep making me love you, then leaving me with nothing. I don't know how many more times I can do it. I'm so scared, Danny. I love you so much. You! Not Daniel White, although I think I loved you then, too."

He turned away. “I'm sorry,” he muttered, his voice cold and empty as an old grave.

“Then go now! Please. Go now, because I can't stand you being here and wanting to be somewhere else—to be someone else.” She ran into the dressing room and slammed the door, turning on the blowers to drown out her sobs.

After a long time, she stepped into the shower, basking in the womblike warmth of the water, letting it wash her tears away along with her hopes and dreams.

* * * *

Danny found Uncle Jack in the den. He was sitting at the desk in front of an InterActive Console, the bank of multivisions lighting up the wall.

“Where'd the IAC come from?” Danny asked.

“Got it a few days ago. There wasn't one in the house except in the kitchen. And Avery stands guard over that one.” Jack chuckled. “What do you use, a handheld?"

“No, sir. I haven't kept up much since I got back."

Jack cocked one straight brow and glanced up from the screen. “Seems to me like you've been too busy feeling sorry for yourself."

Danny's face burned, and the anger that seemed such a part of him flared.

He almost turned on his heel, but he had a feeling Jack's acerbic honesty was exactly what he needed right now, so he sat down instead and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Could we talk, sir?"

“Sure, son. What's on your mind?” The older man's eyes flickered from the screens on the wall to the IAC and back.

“I was wondering if you'd had a chance—"

Jack held up a finger, speaking quietly into his throat mike. He stared at a screen that showed a news piece on the Middle East, then spoke again.

Danny shifted restlessly, half ready to get up and leave.

Jack looked at Danny and nodded toward the IAC. “I'm using a set of factorial encryption codes you put together to protect the system. Brilliant work. Even after five years."

Danny frowned. What was he talking about?

“Listen to this. It seems like there may be some funny business involving the Rapier."

“The Rapier?” Danny's heart pounded. He'd pushed his suspicions about the little airplane aside while he wooed his wife. Now they came slamming back at Uncle Jack's words.

Jack pressed a button, and the sound came up on a newscaster who was saying something about the space station accident.

“It appears that Congress has quietly put together a little subcommittee to look at the meteor explosion on your space station."

“It wasn't a meteor!” The words burst from Danny's mouth before he could stop them.

Jack nodded. “That's what my sources tell me Congress is thinking. How come you're so sure? Did you see something?"

The flash of white on the viewscreen ... Something rushing at him, something white...

“Son? You okay?"

Danny rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Something Kee said.... She was talking about testing a new fuel.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, trying for the first time to conjure up the terrifying flash on purpose. This time, transposed on the white-hot memory was a familiar logo. He sprang up from the chair. “What I saw wasn't a flash of white. It was the white flash—the little lightning bolt that's painted on the nose of the Rapier."

Danny massaged his temples. “Now it's beginning to make sense. I've been listening to the disks. According to the daily logs, I thought there was something wrong with the wind tunnel, and I kept trying to switch duties to work on it."

“Wind tunnel?"

“Yeah. Built around the station, like a ring. We were testing the Rapier in it."

His godfather sat back down in his chair and rubbed his chin, gazing at nothing. “Testing the Rapier in space."

Danny opened his eyes and looked at his godfather. “That information is classified, sir. I shouldn't have told you."

“You said you needed my help. To get it you'll have to trust me."

“I do."

“Okay, so what are you saying?"

“I think I'm saying what caused the explosion was a Rapier crashing into the side of the wind tunnel. I think I was in the control room. I think I saw it."

“Have you been contacted about appearing before Congress?"

Danny shook his head.

“Well, you will be. We may not have much time."

“We don't. Whitehall wants to put the Rapier back into production as soon as the new fuel has completed tests. They can't do that. It's too dangerous. I need to call somebody. I need to let them know it wasn't a meteor."

“Daniel T. As soon as it comes out that it was the Rapier that crashed, Whitehall Aircraft could be out of business, and the U.S. will lose a lot of credibility in the eyes of the world. That little snot-nosed model airplane is supposed to save the world from war."

Danny nodded. The Rapier was the perfect war machine. Small, smart, efficient, and undetectable.

Jack continued. “I'll see what I can find out about the subcommittee. But somebody's got to get into Whitehall. Look at the records."

Danny flopped down in the chair. “You want me..."

Jack shrugged. “You're a natural, Daniel T. You could hang around Whitehall twenty-four hours a day and nobody'd question you. They'd just figure you were getting your kicks flirting with the secretaries."

Danny scowled at him. “I wouldn't do that."

“Sure you would. At least you would have before."

He looked doubtfully at his godfather. “I'd sort of planned a trip."

“With Kee?” Jack's dark eyes lit with interest.

“No.” Danny looked down at his hands. “I wanted to go to New York. I thought I should talk to some people about Peters. You know, people who knew him?"

“I'd think about that, son. Your wife ain't going to be too happy, you chasing off after another man's memories."

“I'm just curious. He was my bunkmate, after all."

“Yeah?” Jack retorted. “Don't try to BS a BSer, son. You ain't got the experience."

Chapter Twenty-three

“Death, the future, the invisible faith,

Shall all be convey'd."

Mediums

Walt Whitman

Jack was preparing to fly back to Egypt, and Danny, Kee and Miriam were standing with him in the foyer, saying good-bye.

“I'm expected to be there, so I guess I better hightail it back for a while,” Jack said, shaking Danny's hand. “If I'm lucky, maybe I can get back here for Christmas. You take care,” he said, then leaned in even closer to Danny's ear, “and I'd get back in that bedroom if I were you, son. No reason to freeze your ass off on principle!"

Danny turned red as Jack turned to Kee. She glared at them both. She'd heard what Jack said. She resented Danny telling his godfather about them.

Jack took her hand and grinned at her. “You better finish what you started, Miss Rebekah,” he whispered. “A man needs to feel like a man when he's down, probably more than when he's up. You're the only one who can do that for Daniel T.

Kee couldn't concentrate on his words. Her attention was on the older man's face, which had undergone a complete transformation. She'd never seen Jack grin.

He had smirked. He'd snickered. He'd smiled often and frowned even more, and he'd cocked his brow. He had a hundred, maybe a thousand, different expressions he could contort his mobile face into, but she didn't remember ever seeing a true, unaffected grin.

Never.

She was having trouble breathing. Jack's grin faded, and he eyed her quizzically. She smiled mechanically at him and kissed his cheek. As he shook Danny's hand again and clasped him on the shoulder, Kee studied the two men.

Was she crazy? She slid her gaze sideways to take in the portrait of Tiberius White hanging in the foyer. The aircraft mogul was rotund, his gray hair sparse around the crown of his head, his eyes small in his round face.

Danny looked like his mother, his face echoing her wide-spaced eyes and high cheekbones. He'd never looked much like his father, not like his sister Jan did.

Kee's heart pounded so loudly she was afraid they could hear it. Could it be that the man who had treated Danny so harshly throughout his life wasn't his father at all? She looked at Jack, then at the portrait, then at Danny.

She had to find out.

Jack was talking to Miriam, and Kee watched her mother-in-law's face soften as he talked.

Jack and Miriam. She saw the slight leaning in toward each other, Jack's indulgent attitude toward Miriam, and her soft composure in his presence. It could be true.

As Jack left and Danny and Miriam stood at the front door waving to him, Kee escaped up the stairs.

Was she being silly? Was she building a superficial resemblance into a fantasy, because she thought Danny would be able to deal with Ty's tyranny better if he wasn't really his son?

She went to the box of pictures that was under Danny's side of the bed. She sat on the floor and lifted the top. It was crammed full of photographs and papers and several generations of holograms and holographic video clips.

She almost couldn't sift through the snapshots. It was too easy to get caught up in these precious frozen moments in time.

Danny and Jan in their cute Easter outfits, holding Easter baskets. Danny slouching against his BMW convertible. Danny at no more than five or six, looking up at Tiberius White with an expression of awe and maybe a little bit of fear.

Suddenly her fingers froze on a small photo with a torn corner. It was the picture Miriam had sighed over.

The picture was of Miriam, Ty and Jack. There was no mistaking Ty or Miriam, who stood beside him, rounded belly protruding even then. And next to them, grinning and pushing long fingers through dark hair, was the face that Kee knew better than any other face.

It was Jack Jackson in the picture, but the face was Danny's face. No one would ever have seen the resemblance when Danny was young and spoiled, with the green-gold eyes and flawless skin he'd inherited from his mother. But now, with his new imperfect face, slightly changed by the plastic surgery, his nose a bit crooked, it was easier to believe it. Especially when they grinned, which was seldom.

Kee heard Danny and his mother coming up the stairs. She shoved the box back under the bed and stuck the photo in her pocket. She was afraid if she looked Danny in the eye he would somehow know she was hiding a secret. If she looked at Miriam, she feared the older woman would know Kee knew.

By the time Danny entered the room, she had picked up her purse, and she walked past him without acknowledging him.

Danny started to speak as Kee swept past him, her eyes staring stonily ahead. He started to reach out and catch her arm, but she was too withdrawn, too remote.

She had been going in to work early and staying late. With a stab of irritation, he wondered if Geoff Brinkman had anything to do with her new later hours.

He watched her descend the stairs, stiffly graceful. He yearned after her, but she didn't want him, and he couldn't blame her for that. After all, when she'd told him she loved him, he'd responded by telling her he was going off to search for another man's memories.

She'd said she couldn't stand it if he left her again, and he hadn't said anything. He thought about Brinkman, solid, steady as a rock. How could Danny blame her if she went running to someone who could keep her safe?

How could he stand it?

Some time later a discreet knock on the door announced Avery. “Sir, there's a telephone call for Mrs. White."

“For Kee? She's at the lab,” he said.

“Sir, it is the nursing home. Perhaps you should take it."

Danny looked at Avery's impassive face. The butler nodded slightly.

Kee's mother. Danny clicked on the bedside videophone. “Yes? This is Danny White."

“Mr. White? I'm Dorothy Gibson at Safe Haven. Is Kee—Mrs. White there?"

“No, she's at work. What is it, Mrs. Gibson?” Danny tensed for the answer he knew was coming.

“It's her mother, sir. Her mother has passed, just a few minutes ago."

“I see. What was it?"

“They think just respiratory failure, sir. Should I call Kee at work?” Dorothy Gibson's face was grave with sympathy and sorrow.

“No, I'll tell her."

“That's good, Mr. White. That's real good. She's going to need you. She's strong, but she's fragile, you know?"

Danny nodded at the slight warning in the woman's voice. Kee was lucky to have people who loved her. “Yes, I know. Thank you, Mrs. Gibson."

“Mr. White? You'll let us know about the arrangements?"

“Of course. Thank you.” Danny clicked off the phone.

He knew exactly what Dorothy Gibson meant. Kee was as strong as the surf, and as fragile as an ice crystal.

Avery's voice brought him back to reality. “Shall I call for the air-limo sir?"

“No. Have my car brought around. And Avery, would you tell Mother that Mrs. Mayne just died and ask her to begin making arrangements?"

“Yes, sir."

Danny drove the few miles to the lab detachedly, thinking about Kee and how he was going to tell her.

When he stepped into the anteroom of the Chem Lab and saw the “Warning” hologram, he cursed. He didn't have a card.

As he rode up to the executive suites, he held out his hand. Even if it was the same hand, the machine would never recognize it now.

He asked the receptionist to call the lab.

“Brinkman?” he said when he saw Geoff's face. “I need to see my wife. No! Not on the phone. I'll be right down."

When he stepped into the anteroom this time, the right-hand wall had opened and Brinkman was standing there waiting for him.

“What's going on, White?” Geoff said.

“I need to speak to my wife,” Danny said shortly.

“From what I've seen, your wife won't be too happy to see you."

“No,” Danny laughed grimly. “I'm sure she won't."

Brinkman shot him a glance, but Danny didn't explain. Inside the lab Brinkman nodded toward Kee's office.

Danny stood watching her for a few minutes. She was intently studying the IAC as numbers flashed across it.

He stood there, not making a sound, until she stirred uneasily and turned.

“Danny?” Her eyes widened.

He opened his mouth, but he couldn't find the words. He cleared his throat. Her eyes began to cloud with worry, and he still couldn't speak.

“Danny? What is it?” She stood, her eyes still locked with his. “Not—oh, Danny, not Mama?"

He stepped into the room and held out his arms to her, but she raised one hand, palm out.

“Don't—” she started, but her breath caught in a sob.

“Kee, come here. Let me hold you."

“I thought you were leaving. Why didn't you go?"

Geoff came running in. “What have you done, White?"

“Geoff!” Kee turned to him. He held her, glaring at Danny over her head.

“Get out of here, White. I don't know what you've done to her, but..."

Danny stared arrogantly down at the shorter man. “Kee's mother just died about twenty minutes ago. So butt out."

“Kee?” Geoff looked down at her.

“Could you take me, Geoff? Please? I need to see about her.” Her small hurt voice muffled by Brinkman's lab coat tore into Danny's heart. He should be the one holding her. He controlled an almost overwhelming urge to slam his fist into Brinkman's face.

Geoff shot a look of pure triumph at Danny. “Of course.” He led her out of her office as if she were an invalid.

Danny stood immobile until they had gone. How could he fault her? She couldn't depend on him. He had shown her that. Of course she would turn to strong, steady Brinkman.

A pretty young black woman was studying him, her hands on her hips. “So what happened?” she said.

“Who are you?"

“My name's Micki. What happened?"

He nodded. “Kee's mother died."

“Oh no. Poor Kee. She's going to be devastated. And you let her go with him? Doesn't it matter to you?"

Danny studied her. “Yeah, it matters."

“Then you better get a move on! She's going to need somebody beside her in the next few days, and let me tell you, Geoff's been looking for a chance like this."

“You don't seem to like Brinkman much."

“Oh, I like Geoff a lot.” She shook her head and her dangling earrings clinked. “I happen to think he would have been a lot better match for her than some spoiled rich kid.” Her snapping black eyes challenged him to upbraid her for being rude to her employer. “But for whatever reason, Kee doesn't want him."

She cocked her head. “So? What you hanging here for?"

Chapter Twenty-four

“Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow

Because most full of love."

Old Ireland

Walt Whitman

Danny caught up with Geoff and Kee in the lobby.

“Brinkman, Kee wait!” He put his hand on Kee's rigid arm. “I'll take my wife to the nursing home,” he growled at Brinkman.

“Danny, don't do this,” Kee begged.

Geoff took Kee's other arm. “Look, Mr. White. You heard the lady. She doesn't want you. Get it?"

“Yeah, I think I'm beginning to get it, all right.” Danny stepped toward the shorter man, jaw clenched, anger building. A band of pain began to tighten around his temples.

“What are you trying to say, White?"

“Geoff, Danny, don't. You're making a scene.” Kee twisted away from both of them. Her eyes were haunted and sad.

Danny leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “I'm sorry, Kee, but you need to go with me. They need you to make some decisions."

She relented then. He could see it in the slump of her shoulders.

“Thanks anyway, Brinkman.” He dismissed Brinkman with scarcely a glance and guided her gently to his car.

He drove to the hospital in silence, with Kee stiff and anguished beside him. He wanted to reach out and pull her close, protect her for a few moments from the pain that would inundate her before long, but he didn't know how to break through her barriers.

She'd built them to keep him out, and now, when she needed him, when he could help her if she would just let him, she wouldn't allow it. He felt more helpless than when he'd been wrapped in bandages and strapped into traction.

It didn't take long for her to sign the necessary papers and pick up her mother's few belongings. She spent a long time with Dorothy Gibson while he paced in the waiting room. When Dorothy walked past him on her way home, he went looking for Kee and found her crying quietly as she searched the room.

“Kee?” he said, catching her up in his arms, but she struggled feebly, pushing at his chest. “What is it?"

“I can't find her lotion. What did they do with her lotion? I've got to find her lotion!"

He put his hands on either side of her head and made her look at him. “Come on, we've got to go now. I'm sure the lotion is with everything else. Listen to me sweetie-kee. We'll find it."

He led her out of the nursing home and back to the house. She obediently ate a little soup and let him tuck her into bed. He smoothed the comforter around her, noticing with a pang of pity how small a lump she made in the huge bed.

He eased out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. She was so delicate, so brittle. Now that her mother was dead she didn't have anyone but him.

What a poor champion he'd turned out to be. He couldn't even promise her he would be here for her because if he wasn't Daniel White, he had no claim to this place or to this precious woman who was in every way his wife.

She was so lost, so sad, and the hard part hadn't even begun. He thought he'd give up all his memories to spare her the anguish of the next days.

* * * *

There was something about a funeral parlor. The carpet seemed plusher, the wood darker, the employees gloomier. Even the walls seemed thicker, more soundproofed. Danny wondered if that was by design or by function, as he pushed his hands into his pockets and changed position, leaning his other shoulder against the wall.

He wrinkled his nose against the acrid smell of exotic flowers and plants and tried to avoid the curious glances of the visitors. These were friends of his mother's and Kee's, a room full of solemn strangers. When they could catch his eye they introduced themselves, said how sorry they were about Kee's mother. Then invariably they'd work the conversation around to the space station.

A familiar movement at the door caught his eye, and he straightened as his mother came in with Kee beside her.

Kee looked calm and composed in a severe black suit with black gloves. Her hair was covered with a black veil. Only the faint shadows under her eyes hinted at her grief.

Danny watched her, his heart aching for her pain, as she walked with his mother around the room, speaking to various people in hushed tones, smiling sadly or listening and nodding.

Danny was glad his mother had insisted on keeping the ceremony private, although the media had already set up shop outside the funeral home. He'd had to dodge reporters on the way in. He wondered how Kee and his mother had avoided them, but then Avery walked in. Of course. Avery had brought them.

Right behind Avery came Geoff and Micki. Micki stood in the doorway and looked around, but as Danny watched, Geoff moved straight toward Kee.

Brinkman touched Kee on the shoulder and held out his arms as she turned. She hugged him tightly, then pulled back and smiled up at him, touching the corner of her eye with a gloved finger.

Danny clenched his jaw and jammed his fists into his pockets.

“You're going to tear ‘em."

“What?” Danny turned his head toward the voice without taking his eyes off his wife.

“You're going to tear those nice new pants pockets if you keep jabbing at them like they're Geoff's face."

“Just what makes you think you know so much, Micki?” he grumbled.

“I don't know much,” she said. “You don't have to know much to know what a man's thinking, especially if there's a woman involved.” She tossed her head.

“So, Mr. White,” she said. “What are you doing over here while your wife is being comforted by Dr. Brinkman over there?"

“Micki, lay off. She doesn't want me around. I don't know much, either, but I know that.” He hunched his back and leaned against the wall, then straightened when he realized how much he must look like a slouching teenager. He tugged on his shirt cuffs.

“No, you sure don't know much, if that's what you think you know."

“What's that supposed to mean?” he asked as the sounds of organ music swelled. He never got an answer, because a man in a black suit gestured to him.

“Lieutenant White?” he whispered. “The service is about to begin. If you would just bring your wife through here, the other guests can enter from the hallway."

Danny walked over and caught Kee's arm, startling her. She turned, her eyes wide under the black lace.

“They're ready, Kee. We go in through here."

A sad, lost look shadowed her face, and she reached for his hand. He squeezed it tightly, remembering how reassuring her hand had felt the night of his mother's party. He hoped he could give her even a fraction of the reassurance she'd given him that night.

He guided Kee into the side room, where one-way glass shielded them from the other mourners. Miriam, escorted by Avery, and Jan and Drake and their two daughters sat behind them.

The service was short and hardly memorable, but Kee seemed pleased. She wept a little when the minister spoke, but otherwise she was perfectly sedate. She never let go of his hand, though.

Danny was glad she was calm, but he was worried. He had the feeling that inside her composure was cracking, like a porcelain cup that gets too grazed and finally shatters.

When the service was over, he drove her out to the cemetery where a handful of people stood inside a flexiplastic dome while the minister said a few words over the casket.

Back home, Miriam had made sure a huge buffet luncheon was ready, and she presided over the meal in true Miriam White style, completely at ease in her role as hostess.

To Danny's irritation, Geoff attached himself to Kee again, bringing her punch, trying to tempt her with various delicacies from the buffet table. She was wanly appreciative, smiling at him and letting him escort her around to speak to other guests.

Danny stayed away from the crush of people, enduring the questions and curious stares that he was coming to expect whenever he appeared in public. He wasn't very gracious about it, and after a while, people quit bothering him.

He spent some time talking to his two nieces, Lauren and Lydia, whom Kee had told him had a “consummate crush” on him. They were five and seven, and very matter of fact about his injuries.

“They put your face back together pretty good, Uncle Danny,” five-year-old Lauren said, tracing her finger over his cheek and jaw. “You can't hardly see the edges."

He grinned at her. He liked kids. They were no nonsense. He picked her up and set her down off his knee.

“Sorry, Lauren, my leg still bothers me some. I need to stand up for a while. Lydia, you want to take Lauren to see if there's any more cake?"

He looked at the clock. The fete had dragged on for a couple of hours. A quick glance told him Kee's smiles were becoming increasingly brittle, and the corners of her mouth were turning white, so he leaned over her chair and whispered to her. “Kee, it's time for you to rest. Let's go upstairs."

She didn't object when he held out his hand and lifted her to her feet. She let him guide her around to various groups, and smiled when people talked to her. Finally they ended up in front of Miriam.

“Mother, I'm taking Kee upstairs. She's exhausted. Why don't you have Avery start putting away the food so people will go home?"

“Oh, I will, darling, in a little while. Kee, dear, you go on up. Everyone will understand."

Danny guided her up the stairs and into their room. He sat her down at her dressing table and removed her lace veil, then unpinned her hair.

He glanced at her in the mirror, but she was staring at the veil he had laid on the table. It broke his heart that she was so fragile, so stunned.

He knew what was bothering her. The last member of her family had died. She was totally alone. He of all people knew how frightening that could be.

He remembered his harsh words to her just days before.

You want somebody to hold your hand while your mother deteriorates? Well, lady, somebody better clue you in. Life ain't easy, and the sooner you learn to take it as it comes, the better.

His chest tightened with regret at his cruel words. Sometimes, when he did things like that, it was easy to believe he was Daniel White.

She let him unbutton her jacket and drop her skirt onto the floor. He led her over to the bed, clad only in her slip. Pulling off her shoes, he slid her stockings down her legs and off.

“Lie down, Kee,” he whispered and pulled the covers over her. “Go to sleep, you'll feel better later. Close your eyes, sweetie-kee.” He tossed his jacket and tie on the foot of the bed, then sat down in the wing chair to watch her as she slept.

She looked very little like the eager, pretty young woman who had accompanied him to DC for an anniversary dinner and slept against his shoulder on the drive back.

His body tried to react to his memories of that night, but he tamped down the out of place desire. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not lusting after her. He watched her as she slept the sleep of exhaustion, of grief, of too much heartache at once.

She had said when her mother died she would go. Danny felt his insides twist at the thought. Would she leave him now? If she did, what would he do?

A tiny sound made him jump. He must have fallen asleep, because the room was dark and the balcony doors were outlined in the eerie light of early dusk on a cloudy day. He yawned.

Kee murmured again.

He bent over her, tucking the covers under her chin and pushing back a strand of hair. He touched his lips to her temple, then straightened to leave.

“Danny?” she whispered. “Is it late? Have all the people gone?"

He crouched beside the bed, thinking her voice sounded like a little girl's. “I brought you upstairs to rest. They're probably gone by now. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

She sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “What time is it? I should be helping Miriam."

“No, you shouldn't. You need to rest, you've had a difficult time the past few days."

Kee leaned back on the pillows, rubbing her eyes in a childlike gesture. “You know, in a way I'm glad she—it happened this way. I think she would have hated being all trussed up with tubes and catheters and stuff. She was always so careful about her appearance."

Danny sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand, spreading her fingers out and touching each one softly, soothingly. “I'm sure you're right. I'm sorry though. I really am."

She nodded. “Me, too.” She looked up at him, her eyes reddened with grief and exhaustion, the lids puffy from crying. It was all he could do to keep from kissing them. “You said you were going to New York."

His sore heart took another crushing blow at her pitiful voice. “Something came up,” he muttered.

“Something...” she made a little hiccoughing sound that could have been a laugh except that her mouth didn't turn up. “I was ready for you to go. I was even glad."

She sat up and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on one knee. “I don't understand. What are you looking for?"

He stood and jammed his hands in his pockets, staring out at the darkening sky. There was no sunset; the clouds were too heavy. As he watched, big spatters of rain began to stain the balcony floor.

“You don't want to talk about this now."

“Why are you still here?” Her voice was brittle and hoarse.

He shook his head. “Something's going on, and I've got to figure out what it is. I probably won't be leaving for a while."

“Going on? What do you mean?"

He sighed. He didn't want to upset her. Didn't want to lay more of a burden on her than she was already carrying. “Nothing. I'm just edgy I guess. Why don't you sleep some more? Are you hungry?"

“No. People have been shoving food at me for days. I'll just take a little nap.” She turned over and pulled the covers up. All he could see was her bright hair fanned out over the pillow.

He'd love to crawl into bed behind her and just lie against her. Sometimes he thought he'd like to spend the rest of his life just lying next to her. He walked quietly to the door.

“Danny?"

“Yeah, hon?"

“Don't sleep in the guest room tonight, okay?"

Danny squeezed his eyes shut. Be careful what you wish for.

It had been a relief to sleep in an impersonal bed in an impersonal room for the past couple of weeks. He could have used that kind of detachment while he was working to find out answers—answers he wasn't sure he wanted, but could never be content without. He sighed. “Okay."

* * * *

When Kee woke the room was pitch black, and outside it was pouring rain. She heard Danny's even breathing and felt his comforting bulk beside her. She started to turn over and snuggle up close to his back, but suddenly she was pummeled with a montage of scenes from the funeral, and she couldn't breathe.

She slipped out of bed and put on a robe over her slip. Carefully easing the balcony door open, she slipped outside.

The rain was a solid curtain of sound, like a great silver blanket hung from the sky to hide her grief. For a few minutes she huddled against the door, listening to the echo of her guilt in the Gregorian rhythm of the water.

You could have done more, she was your mother.

You could have done more, she was your mother.

You could have done more, she was—

She stepped to the rail, her hands covering her ears. “Mama, I tried!” she cried. “I didn't leave you—you left me! Daddy left, then you left, then Danny left! I don't know how to keep anyone!"

She gripped the cold rail and stood shivering, letting the rain pummel her with a force no greater than the force of her loneliness and grief. She'd known her mother was dying. She'd known Danny was leaving. So why was it so hard to imagine life without either of them?

She raised her face to the pummeling rain, letting it wash away her tears.

When warm strong hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her inside, she didn't resist.

“What are you doing, trying to kill yourself?"

“I couldn't reach her,” she cried, still caught in the nightmare of grief. “I couldn't help her."

“You did everything you could.” His voice was harsh, his fingers rough as he stripped her wet underclothes off.

“You can't stop death, Kee,” he whispered, tossing the slip into a sodden heap in the corner. “Nobody can. Now let me get these wet things off you. You're shivering."

Kee forced herself to concentrate on his voice, on his tremendous strength, on the present. Droplets of water glistened on his bare chest and shoulders, his hair was dew-crowned. Jewellike drops clung to his lashes.

As he fumbled with her wet bra fastenings, she touched one silver bead of water, watching it disappear into the dense fringe of his lash. He blinked.

“Kee.” His voice was still harsh, but now it's roughness held a plea, and his fingers hardened on her bare, wet arms.

She shivered and ducked her head, wrapping her arms around his waist and burrowing past the chill drops into his warmth. He inhaled sharply, and suddenly his comforting warmth became delicious heat. She lay her head against the rectangular scar on his chest and felt the beating of his heart.

He whispered her name again, this time questioning. In answer, she pulled him with her to the bed, craving the closeness that would help her feel alive, help her feel like he was really here with her and not shut up inside himself.

Not tonight, she vowed silently as she traced the drops of water on his chest and belly, feeling a silly triumph when he shivered and his body hardened with desire.

No. Tonight she would keep him here. Tonight they would live in the present. They wouldn't fear the past or the future. She was determined to forget her aloneness in him, and determined that he would forget his fears in her.

She pulled herself up beside him and traced each tiny scar on his face, first with her fingers, then with her lips.

Danny moved, trying to kiss her back, trying to take over the seduction, but she wouldn't let him. Finally he relaxed in defeat. She moved from his face to his neck, where the scars were more visible, then to the rectangular scar on his chest.

After she traced it with her tongue, she moved lower, to where his taut belly was marked with a faint patchwork. These were scars of healing, places where skin had been stolen to replace ruined skin.

She bent over his thigh, to that noble testament to his suffering. The massive ridge that ran from groin to knee was his badge of courage, the proof of his strength and his bravery.

She kissed each millimeter of the scar, moving from his knee to his thigh to its apex where another testament waited, this one to her power to arouse him. She touched him.

“Kee, don't,” he whispered, his voice desperate and thick, but she didn't listen to him, and soon his whisper changed to a moan, and then to a groan, as she tasted and touched him.

It was new to her, this practiced seduction. He'd asked for it all those years ago, but she'd always been too shy.

Now, though, it wasn't a favor done by request. It was a worshipful offering.

Just when she thought she might be pushing him past endurance—and inside her apprehension raced curiosity, with curiosity in the lead—he took over, pushing her down into the pillows.

“You asked for it, lady,” he growled as he caressed her stomach and thighs.

Kee couldn't speak. She was dazed with passion. Her lips felt swollen, and her breasts felt full and tender as he lowered his head and gave her back the pleasure she had given to him.

But she wasn't as strong as he. When the thrill intensified to a peak that she didn't think she could stand, she couldn't stop him. All she could do was stroke his head and arch her back as his mouth and tongue explored all the secret places of sensation. It was something else she'd never experienced. She felt consumed, on fire with an unrestrained passion she hadn't known she possessed. Finally, when the pleasure became too much to endure and her body spasmed involuntarily, she cried out.

When she was totally drained, he pulled himself up over her and started it all again. He lay on top of her, kissing her hungrily, desperately, as if he were starving and she were the only sustenance.

Then he drove into her. He pulled her to him so that every centimeter of their bodies touched, from their lips to their chests to their thighs to their toes as he plunged again and again, sinking himself to the hilt while she craved even more.

Finally, they lay together, limb to limb, torso to torso, totally joined, totally entwined, and experienced their union.

As the sky lightened to purple and mauve, Kee pulled Danny's head back so she could look into his eyes.

“Please don't leave me,” she whispered. “I couldn't stand it if you did."

He just looked at her, his face grave, then buried it again in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. His voice was muffled as he said, “I seem to break promises, so I won't promise again. But if it's up to me, I will never leave."

Chapter Twenty-five

“For the one I love most lay sleeping by me

Under the same cover in the cool night,

In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams

His face was inclined toward me,

And his arm lay lightly around my breast,

And that night I was happy."

Recorders Ages Hence

Walt Whitman

During the next few weeks, Danny spent a lot of time at the office. People were polite and cooperative up to a point. He had the definite feeling that he was being tolerated.

He spent most of his time on the IAC in his office, studying the security system. He found he liked using a smart-board better than voice, because it seemed his fingers knew a lot more than his brain did.

He would watch as his fingers executed a command which felt right. Then he would see what happened, and he studied backwards, to figure out how he'd done whatever he'd done.

The feeling was eerie and Merlinesque, but he picked up an enormous amount of knowledge by working backward from what his fingers seemed to know.

The Artificial Intelligence Design and Manufacturing program particularly fascinated him: The AIDAM was the program which had been used to create the Rapier, he was sure.

It was a heuristic program which was incomprehensible to him. Even the simple holographic tutorials for building a small plane or a rail car were multi-branching.

He could play with the models all day, but when he tried to access any of the actual designs being tested, he ran up against a blank wall. Whoever had designed the security system had done an outstanding job.

He remembered Kee telling him what a computer whiz he'd been. He'd gotten that from the logs, too. “I bet Daniel White could have gotten in,” he muttered to himself as he once more tried to study the AIDAM program's code to see if he could bypass the security.

When the IAC patiently told him for the thousandth time “I'm sorry. That command is invalid. Please check with support staff,” he banged his fists on the desk.

“Damn! If I was so good, why can't I figure this sonofabitch out?” He leaned back in the self-molding leather executive chair and closed his eyes, seeing the screen glare before his closed lids. “What kind of encryption would Whitehall use?"

What had Jack said?

“Your! Your factorial encryptions! Yes!” He paced, glancing back at the IAC every few seconds. “Did I build the security?” He rubbed his temples, feeling a tiny pain building. “Damn this defective brain."

Finally, he gave up. He'd wanted so badly to hack in on his own, to prove that he could.

“Console, staff directory. Computer specialists and system managers.” The IAC sprang to life with a listing.

Running his finger down the listing, he found the main computer room on seventeen. Wayne Blalock, Computer Specialist. The name didn't exactly sound familiar, but it seemed to stand out. He called to Carol as he left the suite. “If anyone needs me, I'm on seventeen."

There was no security on that floor, so Danny walked down the silver, brightly lit hall toward the dull roar coming from behind the heavy doors at the end of the hall.

He turned the knob. Locked, naturally. “Console, access,” he said, not really expecting anything to happen. He hadn't tried to enter any secure areas, not wanting to have to explain his scarred hands or his changed voice. When he heard a quiet click, he was surprised.

The door slid open.

The room was painted white and had a raised floor. He walked up the two steps, shivering in the bright, chilly air. There was a large console, two microconsoles, and a simulator in the center of the raised platform. In the middle of the room floated a realistic hologram of a rocket rotating about a center axis, and a giant monitor displayed lines of code flowing down the screen like water.

Inside a glass walled office, a man leaned back in a dilapidated office chair, chewing on something and stabbing occasionally at a smart-board. Danny knocked. When the man didn't move except to stab the smart-board again, Danny pushed open the door and stepped inside.

With the door closed, the muted whirr that suffused the air was gone, and in its place was the unmistakable sound of a vintage rock band, probably from the nineties.

Danny wasn't sure if he had heard the song before. That was the case with a lot of the really old stuff. A lot of it sounded the same.

“So, Dan my man, took you long enough."

Danny studied the other man. He looked out of place, like a throwback to the turn of the millennium. His hair was long and tied back. He wore glasses. And he had on a T-shirt that read Remember the Whales.

“Wayne?” Danny tried the name, figuring if he was wrong he could cover it somehow.

“What's up?” The head tilted slightly upward. Danny watched his fingers moving over the smart-board as screens of code scrolled by. He had the impression Wayne knew everything on the dozen or so screens that had flashed in the past few seconds.

Wayne took his feet off the other chair and sat up, sort of. He curved his back into the chair and peered at the screen over the top of the glasses.

“What did you mean, it took me long enough?"

Wayne shrugged. “I figured you'd be down here long before now. You look okay to me.” He gestured at the screen. “Why've you been playing with the code?"

Danny wasn't surprised that his attempts had been tracked. “Hey, five years, and I hardly got near a computer,” he lied. “I'm lost!"

“Right. Tell me another one, you sneaky SOB."

Danny spread his hands.

“Don't forget. You're messing with the Hawk now!” Wayne laced his fingers and stretched his arms in front of him, cracking his knuckles. “Download, Dano. What gives?"

Danny sat down, amused by the other man's jargon. “I can't remember my own codes."

Wayne turned away from the screen for the first time, peering at Danny's face. “You do look a little strung out. Was it bad?"

Danny studied him. If there were something crooked going on a Whitehall, would Wayne be in on it? His instincts told him no. He was the kind of guy who wore a T-shirt commemorating the tragic extinction of the largest mammal on earth.

He held out his hands. “You know how it is, Wayne. You have to feel the smart-board.” He didn't know if that were true or not. But that's how it felt to him. “You can't really program by voice."

He breathed a sigh of relief when Wayne nodded.

Danny held up his hands. “My fingertips were burned. I can't get a feel for the keys. I feel blind."

“Shee-it!” Wayne touched a fingertip.

“How's the security system set up?"

“Is this a test?” Wayne asked. “You did it."

Danny waited.

“So the rumors are true? Your brain got scrambled out there?"

Danny's heart lurched in shock. Did everybody know?

He sighed and nodded. “Pretty scrambled."

Wayne's fingers began to fly across the board. After a few moments he grunted.

“Take a look at this. The security code is multifactorial."

“That's what I figured. How deep?"

“You kidding? Two hundred digits in the first level.” Wayne laughed and shook his head.

“Two hundred. About a million years to decrypt. So nobody could break in."

“Not unless someone has perfected a long range quantum computer."

“Entangled particles.” Danny realized he knew something about quantum computers. These things slipped into his conscious thought with such ease it was unnerving.

Wayne's eyes lit up. “Yeah. I heard somebody at MIT is testing satellite beaming of entangled particles to send encryption codes."

“Wow. Okay, then. Thanks for the information."

“No problem, Dano. Good to have you back. When you have time, I want to show you this great VR of a sex show I built.” Wayne leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up again.

“Sure,” Danny said noncommittally. “See you later."

Wayne tapped the board a couple of times and hummed along with another driving, tinny song as Danny closed the door.

Back in his office sat down at the IAC. Encryption out to two hundred digits for the first layer alone. Nobody could break that code in a million years, literally. Anything that might have been done in the system was done by someone on the inside.

“Okay, Daniel T,” he muttered. “You created the encryption once. Let's see if you can do it again."

He closed his eyes and let his fingers rest lightly on the smart-board. He sat there, trying to achieve some sort of meditative daze or something, trying to recreate the feeling he'd had when Dr. Ganand hypnotized him. But each time he began to achieve that trancelike state, the sound of the little boy's voice from the disk, squeaky with fear, would echo through his brain, and his fingers would begin trembling.

Again and again he tried, but his brain reverberated with the child's brave words: Got to go in there. Got to be a man, until finally he thrust the smart-board away from him and pushed his hands through his hair.

* * * *

Kee compared the notes on her handheld with the file on the IAC again. Still no difference. Something had gone wrong with that last experiment, and she couldn't find the problem. The most likely solution was that the sample had become contaminated in situ.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. That was the last batch of sample, too. She'd have to start over. From what Geoff had told her, Drake would not be happy if they had to delay production of the Rapier because of her failed test.

She pushed a fallen strand of hair behind her ear.

“R. M. White, signing out. Console off."

She rode up to the twentieth floor, using her after-hours code. When she stepped off the elevator, the reception area was dark, but there was a pale light shining from Danny's office. As she turned toward it, she heard a crash. She ran toward the sound.

“Danny!"

He was standing with his head between his hands. When she called his name, he jerked and stared at her for a brief second as if he had no idea who she was. A glassteel paperweight lay on the floor next to her feet. She bent and picked it up.

“Are you all right?” she asked, setting the dome-shaped piece of glass, reinforced with micro-steel filaments, on the edge of the mahogany desk.

He sat down, running his hands through his hair for what was obviously about the fortieth time.

Her heart ached with compassion for him. He was working so hard. He was so tired.

“You know, Kee, I really wish you would think of another question. I'm getting a little tired of that one."

“Oh?"

His voice told her he was close to the breaking point.

She could feel the tension growing in her neck and back. All she wanted to do was go home and take a hot bath and get in bed, preferably with him. But it was beginning to look like he was going to spend another night here.

She crossed her arms. “How about this question, then,” she said. “When are you going to stop acting like a spoiled brat? Or this one. Why don't you give up this ridiculous quest and just accept yourself for who you are? Or even this one—"

“That's enough!” he shouted, vaulting to his feet and grabbing the paperweight again. His eyes were black with fury.

Kee watched his hand, but he just set the dome down again. His anger had already faded.

“I'm sorry, there's just a lot going on right now, and if I can't remember how to work this damned machine, then I've got to relearn it. I've got to figure out what's going on. It's important to me and, I think, to Whitehall."

“Tell me about it. What is it you're looking for? Maybe I could help."

“No! You don't need to be involved."

Kee was surprised at his vehemence. His mouth was set in a grim line, his eyes were bloodshot, and tendons stood out sharply in his neck.

“It's time to go home,” she said. “It's after seven. Come on.” She smiled, and deliberately lightened her voice. “I'll buy you a pizza."

But Danny just rubbed his temple again. “No. Go ahead. I'll see you later.” He looked up. “You want me to walk you to your car?"

“No, thanks.” Kee turned on her heel and left. She'd known he wouldn't come home.

He hadn't been home more than one night out of the past five. “Damn it, Danny!” she whispered as she stepped into the elevator. “Come back to me. I don't care who you are!"

* * * *

Late in the night, she woke from a restless doze to the sound of her door opening. “Danny?"

“Hey, sweetie-kee,” he whispered. “I'm just getting some clothes. Don't let me wake you."

She sat up. The room was washed in pale moonlight, and shadows danced around her as Danny moved about the room. As he stripped, his skin reflected silver and black.

“Danny?” she whispered. “Come here."

He sat down beside her on the bed. “What is it? You need something?"

“Yes.” She put her hand on his chest, where she felt his steady heartbeat. “You.” His muscles tensed under her fingers, and his heart sped up, from desire, she hoped. She leaned over and put her lips against his skin, near his nipple. The nipple grew rock hard. She murmured his name.

He cradled her head in his hand, and she felt a delicious triumph as he bent to nuzzle the hair away from her neck and nibble at her earlobe. She moved over to accommodate his length beside her in the bed.

“I can't sleep when you're not here,” she whispered, smiling at his ragged breathing and the change in the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“Kee,” he whispered and dragged her to him, so they fit together as closely as matching figurines, her softness melding into his hardness like wax into a mold. She could feel his knotted muscles relaxing, loosening, and soon they drifted into their lovers’ waltz, moving together, perfectly matched, perfectly in tune.

* * * *

Danny walked down the stairs to seventeen and waited until Wayne buzzed him in. He shivered. Somebody ought to invent a computer that likes heat and humidity, he thought as he walked toward the glass-encased office.

Danny opened the door and stepped inside, yawning as the pressure changed and the air conditioner's roar gave way to Wayne's latest favorite classic band.

Danny sat silently as Wayne's blunt fingers flew across the smart-board like a master pianist. He tried to follow Wayne's logic, but the Hawk was moving too fast, chewing on one end of his mustache as he stared at the screen.

“So what are you working on” he said.

“Oh, the suits want a timekeeping program. They want everybody to sign on when they arrive, when they go to lunch, and when they leave. Bor—ing!” He jabbed two keys, then leaned back and groaned, stretching his arms high over his head. “Now it would be different if they'd implant chips in all the employees. I've already got a tracking program written."

“You're kidding, right?"

Wayne shot him a look.

Danny laughed. “Okay, never mind.” He sat down.

“Look at something for me, will you?"

Wayne sat up and pushed his glasses up. “Sure."

Danny quickly spit out a long string of code. Wayne keyed the smart-board as Danny recited.

“What's this?” Wayne asked, once the series of codes had been entered.

“You tell me."

Wayne shrugged. “Looks like an airplane design.” He glanced up at Danny's face. “So? This is Whitehall Aircraft."

“Just look at it, will you?"

“Okay.” A few quick movements over the smart-board and Wayne was there. “But still I say—so?"

“Look at the specs, then at the design. Tell me what you see."

“Come on, Dano, I'm not an effing engineer. Bring me a programming problem, I'll be glad to help you out."

“Go with me here, Hawk. I need you."

Wayne peered at him over his glasses, but he hunched over the board and began playing another symphony.

“Now, find the node for the stress analysis indicators,” Danny prompted. “Right, the stress limits for the alloy. You got it."

Wayne went straight to the same spot in the program where Danny had found the piece that bothered him. Wayne manipulated the smart-board, looked up at Danny, keyed another string.

Finally he sat back and took off his glasses. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Somebody's messed with the code."

Danny felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. He thought he'd seen something wrong, but he was working with a handicap. His brain didn't remember what should be there.

“Yes!” he said triumphantly. He arched his neck and massaged sore muscles. “Who could have done that?"

Wayne put his glasses back on. “Anybody with access."

“Seriously?” Danny was surprised and disappointed. “Isn't that a pretty sophisticated program?"

“Yeah.” Wayne leaned ever further back in his chair, tilting it precariously. “The design part is a jewel. But if somebody wanted to screw up a plane, this is the easiest way."

Chapter Twenty-six

“I throw myself upon your breast my father,

I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,

I hold you so firm till you answer me something"

As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life

Walt Whitman

If somebody wanted to screw up a plane. Wayne's words echoed in the room. It was what Danny had thought, too, when he saw the code. It was a simple routine that had been tampered with. And the change was so elementary that almost anyone with a basic knowledge of programming could have changed it.

“Who would want to do that?” Danny asked grimly.

Wayne looked up in shock, reacting to the tone in Danny's voice. “You're asking me? Come on, Dano. I don't know anybody who'd do anything this stupid. This could get somebody killed."

The words cut through Danny like a razor.

Harsh regret seized his diaphragm. It had gotten somebody killed—twenty-seven somebodies—and he was sitting here with a fierce fear gnawing at his gut, because the field of candidates who could have tampered with the program was becoming increasingly narrower. “Yeah, I know."

Wayne stared at him again, this time with a concerned frown. “I heard you were pretty beat up out there."

Danny nodded, his throat tight. “Yeah. Pretty beat up. But twenty-seven people died. There's no comparison."

“We're friends, Dano. That's my passcode, buddy. If you got something you want to download, it's safe."

Danny stood and turned away from Wayne, looking out the glass walls of the office to the consoles and holographic screens in the bright white room beyond. He stood quietly for a few minutes, until his throat quit spasming and his eyes quit burning.

He swallowed and spoke, nodding toward Wayne's screen. “What's the first thing you think of when you see what they did with those numbers?"

Wayne shrugged. “I don't know planes, man. Just programs. I can tell you what they did. This code is a simple calculation.” He pointed at the screen. “Somebody's changed the factor."

“That's right. That part of the program deals with the stress tolerances of the new alloy used for the frame,” Danny said. “Do you know how much it costs to strengthen that ultra-light alloy to the stress tolerance specs required for Mach 1?"

“Mach 1. You mean the speed of sound? Nope."

“Well, trust me, Hawk, it costs billions. Billions!"

“So what if they don't make it to spec?"

“Boom.” Danny shuddered at his own words. If the Rapier was built with substandard alloy, it would fall apart when the speed reached Mach 1. He knew that much from just studying the design.

Boom.

The flash of white on the viewscreen...

He clenched his fists. To save some money, someone here, someone with unrestricted access to the design files, had caused the explosion that killed twenty-seven people.

And who in this multitrillion dollar company would care that much about saving money? Who, except—his brain slammed into a wall.

He literally could not even let the words form in his brain.

Wayne stared at him. “Hey man, you okay?"

Danny shook his head carefully. The band of pain had tightened and his head felt ready to explode. Pain suffused his brain, his thoughts. “Do me a favor, will you, Wayne? Double-check the program. Check it as carefully as if you were flying the Rapier yourself tomorrow. Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it wasn't done deliberately."

“You got it, Dano, although I think double-checking it is a waste of time. It just ain't that hard to screw with something that simple.” Wayne sat up and pushed his glasses up his nose. “You'd better go home. You look sick."

“I feel sick. Thanks."

But he didn't go home. He went back to his office and listened to the logs again. He'd brought them into the office with him, because they upset Kee. He listened to them again and again, trying to piece together what had happened up there.

In theory he knew. The stresses of Mach 1 that were simulated in the wind tunnel had been too much for the little plane, and it had blown apart.

He'd flown the Rapier out there. The disks told him that. He and Peters both. He even knew why the plane was there.

Space was a great place to test-fly a plane, especially a plane whose very existence was a secret, and on whose wings hung the strength of the U.S. military. They had flown it in the wind tunnel. The tunnel held the plane, simulating atmospheric force, while the pilot maneuvered.

The concept was simple, but brilliant. What better place to test the little plane that could put the U.S. back on top militarily, than in the ultra-secure privacy of space?

So if that's what happened, if the Rapier had exploded in the circular wind tunnel that surrounded the space station, then who was flying the plane?

Sam Peters, who for some reason wasn't in his bunk that night? Or Daniel White, who was supposed to be on graveyard duty on the bridge?

* * * *

The sky was cloudy as Danny walked through the glassteel tunnel connecting the InterMetro to the tall office building that housed Dr. Ganand's office. When he entered, the doctor was standing at the secretary's desk, talking on the phone.

“Well, give her two milligrams of Racemotonin, and I'll see her, when I make rounds.” He swung the vidscreen back around toward his receptionist.

“Danny,” he said, shaking Danny's hand. “Come in."

Danny stepped into the glass and steel office ahead of the doctor and looked out the glass wall at the dreary day. He heard the squeak of leather as the doctor's chair molded to accommodate him.

“So, Danny,” he said. “Did you go to New York?"

Danny sat across the desk from the doctor. He'd forgotten he'd mentioned that.

“No."

“Oh? What have you been doing?"

“I've been trying to figure something out. Do you think I'm Daniel White?” He'd asked the doctor that question before, but he waited now, gaze riveted on the psychiatrist's face, for his answer.

The doctor popped two antacid tablets into his hand and tossed them into his mouth. He chewed slowly, his eyes never leaving Danny's face. “I don't have any reason to think you are anyone else."

“But isn't there anything? Anything at all that could tell you?"

Dr. Ganand chewed. “You're an intelligent man, Danny. I assume you've checked all the usual things? Fingerprints, teeth, birth records?"

“Yeah. Nothing.” He rubbed his fingertips along the wooden chair arm, feeling the faint scars that made his fingerprints unrecognizable.

The doctor nodded. “I guess all that's gone now. If you're not Daniel White, who are you?"

Danny shrugged jerkily and flexed his fingers. Who was he? “Sam Peters?"

“The conscript? The one whose body was never found?"

“Yeah. You know anything about that?” He had come in here determined to find out everything the doctor knew. But he was beginning to think Dr. Ganand knew nothing more than Danny did about the accident.

The doctor shook his head and reached for a water glass. “No. I was just the shrink. All I know is there was a lot of scrambling up there for a while after that meteor hit."

“It wasn't a meteor!"

“You keep saying that. Is there any particular reason you're so sure?"

Danny considered the older man. He might be able to help him regain his memory, but could Danny trust him? “No reason. Just a feeling. So, doc, what do you think about me going to New York to see Peters’ girlfriend?"

“Ah.” He sat up. “So that's who you're wanting to see. Do you think she'll recognize you?” He tented his fingers and gazed at Danny over them.

Would she? Would her eyes light up with pleasure and recognition? Would touching her feel as hauntingly erotic and eerily familiar as touching Kee?

His heart lurched as the truth of what he was doing slammed into him. Why did he keep hammering at the door to his memories? There could be nothing but heartache behind that door. If he wasn't Daniel White, he would have to leave Kee. If he was Daniel White....

Why couldn't he leave it alone?

“Who the hell knows!” he shouted, hearing fear and rage echoing in his voice. “I want to see her. I want to see if I remember anything. The reason I came here today is to find out if you think it's a bad idea."

“I don't really have any opinion, Danny. I'm not the one to judge whether it's a good idea or a bad one. You have to decide that. If you feel you need to confront Sam Peters’ past, then that's what you should do. Only you can make that decision."

“Psycho-crap. That's all you can say, isn't it? ‘Only you can make that decision.’ Shit! That's not what they said when the decision was made whether to put me back together or let me die. Whose damn decision was that? Not mine!"

He bounded up out of the chair and went back to the window, his gaze tracing the streaks of rain on the glass. His throat was tight, his eyes stung. He had never meant to say that again, never intended to even think it. But it was still there, lurking deep inside him, the insidious feeling that he'd be better off dead.

“You resent them for taking that decision away from you? What would your decision have been, Danny?"

“How the hell should I know? I was unconscious, practically dead. I'd have probably been better off if they'd let me die. I don't know who I am."

He wanted to pound on the glassteel, break it, and fling himself out into space. Let them try to put him back together then, after his brains and guts were splattered all over the street! Let them try!

“So you'd be better off dead?"

“Damn right I would.” He jammed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from smashing the glass.

Of course he didn't know if he could trust Dr. Ganand—he didn't know if he could trust anybody. But he did know what had happened up there, and he knew if he didn't do something, more lives would be lost. He turned around.

He sighed. “Here's a tip, doc. I've been looking into the AI systems at Whitehall. Guess what?” He clenched his teeth against the grief and fury that assaulted him as he fully formed the thought for the first time.

“My father caused the explosion.” His voice broke. No wonder he'd hated the man. “It was no meteor. It was a Rapier. That's an experimental aircraft the government was testing up there. Whitehall built it. My father built it. And he scrimped. Not much. Hardly enough to notice. Just enough to blow the plane up."

His jaw hurt from clenching it. His head hurt from the truth. “Now, my father killed twenty-seven people for money. What possible reason could I have for wanting to be Daniel White? What reason do I have for wanting to live? What right?"

Dr. Ganand didn't say anything for a long time. But Danny barely noticed the silence, because inside his head a storm was raging. A storm of fury, of black hatred, against a man who had cared so little for human life. A man who couldn't love his own son.

“There's nothing you've encountered since the explosion that has made you feel like living?” the doctor asked.

Danny laid his palms on the cool glass, splaying his scarred fingers, then put his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. “Kee,” he muttered.

“Sorry, Danny, I didn't hear that."

“Kee,” he repeated. “I would have missed knowing Kee. But she deserves more than a Humpty Dumpty whose shell is cracked and whose insides have all run out onto the ground. She deserves more than Daniel White."

The doctor leaned back in his chair again, Danny cringed at the squeaky springs. “She deserves more than Daniel White. You want to tell me what you mean by that?"

Danny sighed. He was so tired. He thought he must have been exhausted forever. “No."

“Come on, Danny. You know what you meant. Say it."

Danny shook his head, rolling his forehead on the cool glass.

“Danny, say it. You hate Daniel White, don't you? You'd almost rather be anyone else in the universe than Daniel White. You'd almost rather be dead, wouldn't you?"

“All right! Damn right I hate him.” Danny whirled around, gripping the carved back of the chair. “He abused his wife. He made his father hate him. He's the most worthless piece of humanity I've ever heard of."

“How did he make his father hate him?"

“I don't know!” He slammed his fists into the chair back. “I was just a kid. What did I do to make him hate me? I don't even remember him."

“Now you're talking about yourself as you. What's the most frightening thing you can think of, Danny? Is it not knowing who you are?"

Danny stared down at his hands, white-knuckled on the chair back. He shook his head, blinking away the tears that blurred his eyes.

“What will you do if you find out you are Daniel White?"

Danny felt the blood drain from his face. He closed his eyes against a sudden dizziness. The very thought that he was made him sick.

“Why does that frighten you so, Danny? Why is being Daniel White worse than being nobody?"

He took a shaky breath. “If I'm Daniel White—” he paused to swallow against the raw panic that drove into his chest. “If I'm.... I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing it was my father who killed twenty-seven people. It was my father who..."

“Who almost killed his own son."

Dr. Ganand said the words he couldn't say. Danny nodded miserably, his eyes closed, his heart aching with panic and grief.

Chapter Twenty-seven

“And in my soul I swear I never will deny him."

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

Miriam wanted to run over to Paris to shop. The day after Thanksgiving was the biggest shopping day of the year, and the last thing Kee wanted to do was fight the crowds in Paris. She had intended to go into the lab for a few hours, then make Danny go out to dinner with her and come home.

He had been at the office too much. He was pale and drawn, and he looked exhausted. She'd been thinking about suggesting a weekend at the beach house.

She and Miriam spent the morning at the Champs-Élysées Dome, and despite herself, Kee had a good time.

Over lunch, Kee studied her mother-in-law as the older woman talked about Thanksgiving dinner. Miriam couldn't have been much older than fifty. She was still a beautiful woman, with the flawless skin and high cheekbones that her son had inherited.

“I think Daniel really enjoyed himself yesterday, don't you, dear?"

Kee nodded absently, her thoughts on Uncle Jack. He was probably in his early fifties, healthy, virile, handsome. He needed a family.

“Lauren and Lydia were all over him, and he seems to like playing with them."

Kee nodded again, watching Miriam's fingers manipulating her napkin. She considered her mother-in-law. It had been nine months since Ty's death. Miriam needed to start living again.

“Kee?"

Kee blinked and looked up into Miriam's hazel eyes.

“Kee, dear, what is it? You've been preoccupied all morning, and now you're staring at me as if I had some strange growth on my nose.” Miriam smiled and touched her nose. “I don't, do I?"

Kee laughed. “No, of course not. I'm sorry. I was just—thinking."

Miriam delicately touched the corners of her mouth with her napkin and laid it beside her plate. She picked up her wine glass. “Are you and Daniel getting along all right?"

Kee dropped her gaze to her plate, where she pushed lettuce around with her fork. “We're learning. Sometimes, I'm afraid he'll never—"

“Get back all his memory?"

Kee gaped at her mother in law. “You know? How? I didn't give him away, did I?"

“No, dear, you didn't. But I'm his mother, and mothers know these things."

Kee smiled wryly and took a deep breath, fighting a stinging behind her eyes. “Yes, I know. My mother used to tell me that all the time. But you never said anything."

The older woman shrugged and took a sip of wine. “He didn't want me to know. How bad is it? Does he remember some things?"

Kee tried to sort out what she thought Danny actually remembered. “I'm not sure. He called me sweetie-kee, which he had called me before—"

“That's a good sign."

“Well, I thought so, but he's not so sure. Every once in a while he'll say something that seems to be a memory, but he's very cautious. It's like he doesn't want to get his hopes up."

The waiter appeared to remove their plates.

“Bring us each another glass of wine, please,” Miriam told him. “Is that what he's seeing the psychiatrist about? His amnesia?"

“Yes, sort of.” Kee looked at her mother-in-law, wondering if she should tell her of Danny's real fear—the fear that he was not Daniel White at all. No. That information wasn't hers to give away. If he wanted his mother to know, he would tell her.

“Miriam,” she began, her pulse throbbing in her temples and her breath suddenly short. There was something else that wasn't hers to give away, either, but it might help Danny realize he really was Daniel White. And Kee would do anything to make him stay with her, to keep him from traipsing off to New York after some other man's memories.

“I need to ask you something. You can tell me it's none of my business. You can get angry with me. I wouldn't blame you. But I think it's very important to Danny, and for that reason I have to ask."

Miriam's eyes widened and she picked up the glass of wine the waiter had just set before her. Kee sipped hers, trying to imbibe courage along with the tart liquid.

“Well?” Miriam's voice was harsh. It sounded a lot like Danny's.

Kee shifted in her chair. “Ty, your husband,” she said inanely. “Ty isn't, I mean.... “she swallowed. There was just no tactful way to say it. “He's not Danny's father, is he?"

Miriam's head jerked, as if Kee had hit her.

That was exactly how Kee felt, as if she'd dealt a stinging blow to this woman who had taken her in and treated her like her own daughter. The older woman studied her glass of wine, tracing the condensation down its side, then she picked up the glass and set it down again.

When she looked up, her eyes were beginning to redden, and moisture was collecting on the lower lid. “I was always so afraid he would see it. I didn't want him to know. It would have hurt him so deeply.” She stopped to fish in her purse for a tissue. “He would have wanted to be with him all the time. He loves him so much."

Kee replayed Miriam's words in her head, trying to absorb what she had said. At first, Kee had thought she was talking about Ty, but then she realized the older woman obviously meant Jack. “Ty knew, didn't he?"

Miriam's chin began to tremble, and the moisture that had collected in her eyes began to drip down her face. “I think he knew from the beginning. He was kind to me. You have to believe that. And he only did what he thought was best for Danny.” Miriam's voice sounded tinny, desperate. Was she trying to convince herself?

He didn't give him love, Kee wanted to shout. He hurt him and frightened him and made him afraid of loving anyone.

But she didn't. It would be cruel, and Miriam knew anyway. Kee was certain that was why Miriam had always doted on Danny, to try to make up for the love Danny never got from Ty.

“He was a good man, a steady, dependable man."

Her words brought Kee back to the present. A steady, dependable man.

“And you wanted dependability more than anything."

Miriam nodded sadly. “I wasn't born into this society. My father was a roamer, a vagabond. He always came back, but in the meantime, we often didn't know where our next meal was coming from. Then, one time, he didn't come back. We finally got word that he had died."

She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, then looked up at Kee. “I didn't think I could marry someone who was always looking for a new adventure."

Kee felt tears starting in her own eyes. “Did you tell Jack that?"

“Jack was Jack. You couldn't tell him anything.” The older woman chuckled, then sniffed. “You still can't. Besides, I don't know if I'd have loved him as much if he'd been any other way."

“He loves you, you know."

Miriam looked at Kee, tears brimming anew in her eyes. She shook her head. “No, no. He doesn't love me. He loves Daniel. You know he hardly ever came while Daniel was gone. He comes here because of Daniel."

“Miriam you should have told him. Why didn't you leave Ty? You could have been happy and Danny would have had his father."

Miriam looked trapped. “It wasn't that simple,” she said, her voice quavering. “I needed the stability. The children needed stability. Jack was in Eastern Europe. He could have been killed or captured any day. Those were awful times."

Kee reached over and took her mother in law's hand. “It's not too late now. Jack deserves to know. No, wait,” she admonished as the older woman jerked her hand away and stared at Kee in horror.

“I promise I won't tell him. I promise! But Miriam, it's not just for Jack's sake. For Danny's too. It could help him so much! Part of his dread of regaining his memory is how much he feared and hated the man he thought was his father. You can't let him go on thinking that!"

Miriam put her hands over her mouth as a sob wrenched its way up from her throat. She glanced around, but the restaurant was fairly empty, and there were no patrons near them. “I'm—about to make a—scene, I'm afraid."

“Oh, Miriam, I'm so sorry. Why don't you go to the rest room and I'll take care of the check, then meet you there."

Miriam nodded and stood, touching her eyes with the tissue again.

* * * *

Danny walked across the suite to Ty White's old office. He stood in front of the door for a few moments, wishing he didn't have to do this. What he was about to do would destroy his sister's happiness and probably estrange him from his family. Well, from Daniel White's family.

But there was a lot more at stake here than one person's happiness. Lives had been lost, and more would be if he didn't do something. He couldn't possess this knowledge and let it lie for one more second without some effort at making restitution for what his father had done.

Danny pushed open the door, assaulted by the smell of leather and books. He had a fleeting glimpse of a bald, rotund man sitting at the desk, his brow creased in a menacing frown.

He blinked, lost for a moment in the bits of memory his brain fed him. The man at the desk was not Ty White.

Drake Simmonds glanced up in shock from the IAC. “Dan, old man,” he said after a moment. “What are you doing here so late? Burning the midnight oil?” He laughed and reached into his pocket for a cigar.

“Have one? They're the finest Cuban.” He spoke perfunctorily as he removed the plastic wrapping and clipped the end, carefully licking each square millimeter of the surface of the cigar.

Danny watched him with distaste.

After the cigar was prepared and lit, Drake leaned back in his chair, clouds of smoke hovering around his head, and looked at Danny. “So, Dan, old man. What keeps you here this time of night?"

Danny still didn't speak. He just stood in the doorway watching his sister's husband. Even if Ty had been the mastermind, Drake had to have been the one who altered the program.

“When did my father get an InterActive Console?” he asked casually, concentrating fiercely on keeping his hands from doubling into fists in his pockets.

“What? Oh. I had this put in when I moved in here. Ty stayed away from ‘those contraptions’ as he called them.” Drake's voice was cheery, but he watched Danny warily.

Danny had heard his own voice, quiet, deadly—the voice Kee hated.

Good. He wanted Drake to be terrified of him before all this was over.

“Dan? If you don't mind, I'm busy.” Drake made a vague gesture as if he were shooing a chicken. When Danny still didn't move or speak, just stared at him, Drake began to turn pale.

After a moment, Danny walked over to the bookshelves that lined one entire wall of the office. He touched an elegantly bound volume, breathing in the smell of leather. “So you took over after Ty's death?” he said quietly. “Took over everything, even his office."

“That's right."

Danny almost smiled at the undisguised panic that was building in his brother-in-law's voice. “Ty's right-hand man, right, Drake, old man?"

“R-right. Look, Dan, it's late. I'm supposed to meet Jan. I've got to get going."

Danny whirled as Drake began to rise. He pushed on Drake's chest, and the older man fell back into the chair, which had begun to unmold. It moved with a distasteful squeal to cradle Drake's back.

“Hey,” Drake started.

“Shut up, Drake, old man," Danny hissed between clenched teeth, his head pounding with anger and disgust. “Shut up and listen to me."

Danny yanked the cigar out of Drake's fingers and ground it savagely into a crystal dish. Then he propped one hip on the desk and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Tell me about the Rapier, Drake, old man," he said quietly.

Drake's eyes widened and a spark of terror shone in their pale blue depths.

A grimly satisfying sense of power enveloped Danny.

“What—what do you mean?"

Danny leaned forward until his face was mere inches from Drake's. “Talk. Was it your idea, or my father's?"

“I—I don't know what you're talking about."

Drake's breath was sour and smoky. Danny grimaced and straightened. “Well, you'd better start figuring it out, because you're in deep shit."

Drake started to rise, but Danny pushed him back into the chair. “Don't be in such a hurry, Drake old man. We've still got a lot to talk about."

“Now, look here, Daniel. I don't mind having you around. Good for the image, you know, but you can't be throwing your weight around like this."

“Tell me about the Rapier,” Danny said quietly, keeping his fingers from grabbing Drake around the throat through a tremendous force of will.

The other man literally ran his finger inside his collar as sweat began to bead on his face. “Oh, you must mean the little problem with the AIDAM program.” Drake sat up a little, obviously trying to recover some of his lost aplomb. “I think we're going to have to get rid of that little nerd in the computer room. He must have misprogrammed—"

Danny grabbed Drake's tie and jerked on it until Drake made a choked noise.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with Wayne's programming,” Danny growled. “We've gone over the programming. Somebody changed the code. Somebody deliberately lowered the specs on the alloy's stress tolerances.” He let go of Drake's tie just as his face was beginning to change from red to purple.

Drake coughed and sputtered for a minute while Danny watched dispassionately. At this point, he really didn't care if Drake choked to death or not.

As soon as Drake got his breath, Danny asked him again. “Well, Drake old man? Spill it."

Drake clawed at his tie, which had tightened from Danny's grip. He coughed then peered up at Danny with horror contorting his face. “Okay, okay. I swear, Daniel, I didn't know the stresses were that important. The design engineer explained that planes rarely get to Mach 1 in real flight. He said there was only a fifteen per cent drop in strength, and it was billions of dollars of difference in cost. Ty was adamant! He kept saying fifteen per cent was almost nothing! ‘I take bigger chances than that on the market every week,’ he said. I swear, Dan, it was all Ty's doing!"

“You slimy son of a bitch,” Danny grated through clenched teeth. He wanted to slug him. He wanted to beat on his face with his fists until it was bloodier and more ruined than Danny's had been. But through great force of will, he sat still.

“The day the news came down, Ty was distraught. He knew, you see. He realized what had happened before I did. Your father had a heart attack that day.” Drake's voice squeaked with fear. “He was devastated. It ultimately killed him. He never wanted to hurt you. We never meant to hurt anyone."

“God!” Danny flung himself up and away from the man sitting behind Ty White's desk. “You killed twenty-seven people. People burned alive up there. For money!"

Drake pursed his mouth and leaned back in his chair. “You've never been loathe to spend the money."

Danny whirled on his brother-in-law again. If the desk hadn't been between them at that instant, Danny might have choked the life out of him.

“You're fired, Drake,” he said softly.

Drake laughed a little hysterically. “You can't fire me."

“Want to bet?” Danny asked. “And I'll tell you something else, Drake old man. You're going before Congress. You're going to tell them all about your precious Rapier, so the American people and the dead Patrollers’ families can know what really happened."

Danny's voice broke as he spoke of the families who had lost loved ones on the station. “And Whitehall will award compensation to the families. Millions in compensation. Got that?"

Drake sat up, color returning to his face. “You can't do this Daniel. You don't know what you're doing. You'll break us. Whitehall will go bankrupt. Worse than bankrupt."

“Sure I can. I'm Daniel White.” Danny heard the irony in his voice.

Drake slid open a drawer of his desk. “No. You can't. I can't let you.” He pulled out a handgun.

Danny laughed. A gun. Drake old man had a gun. He gave his brother-in-law a disgusted look. “What are you going to do with that? Kill me? Do you think that scares me? I died on the space station. You can't kill me."

He looked at the gun barrel, amazed at his calm. “Besides,” he continued. “You think anything you do will stop this now? Congress is already investigating. It's only a matter of time anyway. You might be able to get off with life in prison if you step forward now."

Behind Danny, the door opened and Drake's face drained of color completely. He sat with his mouth open, the gun still pointed at Danny. “Precious,” he whispered.

Danny turned his head. “Hi, Jan,” he said.

“Danny? Drake? What...?” Jan looked from one to the other, her dark eyes bright with alarm and confusion. “Drake? What are you doing? Danny?"

Danny smiled sadly at his sister, whose eyes were already narrowing in suspicion and anger. He walked over and kissed her on the forehead. “I'm sorry, Janny. You may never know how much. I didn't know you would be here."

He nodded toward Drake. “Think about what I said about stepping forward, Drake."

As he walked out of the room, he heard Drake's whining voice. “I can explain, precious..."

In the elevators, Danny's hands began to tremble, and the familiar pain began in his head. He leaned back against the elevator wall and took a shaky breath.

As many times as he'd wished they'd let him die in the months while he was recovering, as many times as he'd thought he'd be better off dead, he'd never really confronted it face on. He wiped his face. Not until today.

He didn't want to die. Not for a long time yet. Not until he'd had about fifty years to build new memories—memories of happiness and love.

He drove home in the rain, his fists clenched on the steering wheel. He breathed through his mouth to combat the nausea that choked him every time he thought about what his father and his brother-in-law had done.

When Danny got to their suite, Kee wasn't there. He hadn't realized how much he'd wanted to see her until he found the room empty.

He walked out onto the balcony and stared out over the pool. The air was still cold, and rain still spattered, cooling his hot face.

The spectre of twenty-seven people haunted him. How could anyone sacrifice lives for money?

How could he be the son of a man who would do that? He ran his finger along the wrought iron rail of the balcony, pushing droplets of water off.

He couldn't. That was all. He just couldn't. His heart lurched and his limbs were suddenly so weak he had to sit.

Ty White's son. No. He couldn't be. Anguished fear washed over him, churning his stomach. Who was he if he wasn't Tiberius White's son? If he wasn't Daniel White?

He had to go to New York. That was all there was to it. He hadn't been able to find the answers here, so he would have to seek them elsewhere.

He went inside and pulled out his duffle bag. He'd just about finished packing when Kee walked in.

“What are you doing?” she asked. He averted his eyes. All he wanted to do was bury himself in her, but he didn't deserve to do that. He was hurting her again, and the best thing he could do was get it over with as quickly and cleanly as possible.

He began violently stuffing clothes into the bag.

She touched his arm, her fingers stinging his skin. “Danny? What are you doing?"

He flung off her hand, unable to stand her touch. If he let her touch him, he wouldn't be able to go.

“What does it look like? I'm packing.” His voice was harsh and mean, but he couldn't help it.

He had to leave. He had to find out, one way or another. He couldn't live a lie. He couldn't stay with her, offering her nothing but the shell of a man.

“Danny, stop.” She grabbed his arm again. “Talk to me."

He whirled, twisting his arm out of her grasp and grabbing her wrist. “Don't grab me, Kee.” What would make her leave him alone? How could he get out of here without breaking down?

There was one sure way. He tightened his grip on her wrist and pulled her face up close to his. She tried to pull away from him, but he held her relentlessly, scowling at her.

“Leave me the hell alone,” he growled, hating himself.

Her eyes filled with tears and her face blanched. He felt self-disgust mixed with satisfaction at the look in her eyes.

He'd accomplished what he'd wanted. He'd frightened her. He let go of her wrist and turned around. After zipping the bag, he flung it onto the bed.

“You're going to New York.” Her voice was flat.

“Yes."

“When?"

“Now."

“Danny—"

There was a new note in her voice. He turned, to find her studying him. “What?” he said harshly.

She stared at him for a long moment, as if she were looking for something in his eyes, then she blinked and a tear escaped and rolled down one cheek. “Don't go."

“Damn it, Kee! I told you to leave me alone!” Her crying always undid him. He deliberately dragged his eyes away from her lovely, tragic face.

“Why? Why isn't this enough for you?” Her voice implored him.

He closed his eyes. Enough. More than enough, right here in this room. How could he tell her how afraid he was of what he might find in New York? How could he explain to her that his heart and his brain were warring inside him, ripping him apart?

His heart begged him to stay, but his brain wouldn't leave him alone. His brain wouldn't acknowledge defeat.

He had to know. If it killed him, if it cost him the best thing he'd ever hoped to have, he had to know.

And she deserved to understand.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “I found out something today. About the explosion."

“You did?” Her voice took on an excited quality. “What? Was it something you remembered?"

He shook his head bleakly and continued. “No. It wasn't anything I remembered."

He felt the mattress give as she sat down beside him, smelled the scent of lilacs, almost flinched as her hand touched his leg. “Tell me,” she said softly.

“I found out it was Ty White who caused the explosion on the space station."

Kee gasped. “Ty?"

He nodded, his eyes still closed, his head still encased in his hands. The pain squeezed his temples again. “Ty and Drake. They scrimped on the alloy, and a plane blew up."

“Oh, Danny."

He looked up at her, seeing the grief and understanding in her eyes.

Of course she would understand. Of course she would see how devastating this was to him. She had always understood him. Even when he hadn't understood himself.

“How could my father have done that?” he asked, his voice scratchy and harsh with emotion. “I don't want to be his son. How can I be Daniel White?"

Kee's face changed, and she stood suddenly. She paced the room, occasionally glancing back at him, her hands twisting each other, her face a mask of unreadable emotions.

“Kee?” Danny was confused by her actions, by the palpable tension he suddenly felt emanating from her. “What's wrong?"

She stopped in the middle of the floor. “You can't leave. You've got to talk to your mother."

He stared at her, shaking his head. “No time,” he said, glancing at his watch. “In fact, I'm late now. I've got to go, Kee. Please be here when I get back.” He turned to pick up his bag, unwilling for her to see the tears that stung his eyes.

“Danny, wait!"

He stopped at the door without turning around. He couldn't face her. If he looked at her again, he wouldn't be able to leave. “What?” he grated.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She shook her head as tears streaked down her face. She held out her hands in desperate entreaty. “Please talk to Miriam. Please."

He shook his head. “Tell her I'm gone, Kee. I'll be back ... I don't know.” He shook his head. “I don't know."

Chapter Twenty-eight

“I have travel'd a long way merely

To look on you to touch you,"

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Walt Whitman

Danny caught the InterMetro to New York. He wasn't sure what he was going to do once he got there, or how he would go about finding Maria, but he was damned sure he had to do it. He would never have any peace, unless he found out once and for all where he belonged. He hadn't realized how much he hated Daniel White, or how much he loved Kee, until now, when it all could be swept away in the blink of an eye.

That was all it took to blow up a space station, to kill twenty-seven people. The blink of an eye. A single stroke on a smart-board.

A greedy man who believed money was more important than people and discipline was more important than love.

Was he that man's son? He wanted to be better than that. He wanted to be worthy of trust, worthy of love.

He wanted to be worthy of Kee. Kee, with her trusting eyes and her unshakable faith. Kee, who could keep him from being scared for a little while, who could almost make him believe that Daniel White was worth finding.

He settled back in his seat and listened to the rumble of the magnetic rails as he thought about Sam Peters’ fiancée. All he knew about Maria was what was on the disks. He'd brought Peters’ disks with him, thinking he'd listen on the way. He hadn't delved into the second disk very much. He'd been too busy.

As the train took off, he put the earphones on and turned on the disk.

"Personal log, eight October, twenty thirty-four. I'm beginning to think like White. This tour in hydroponics is about to bore me to death. I wish I could get back on wind-tunnel duty. Last tour was great! I'm tempted to try White's trick and get Baines to switch with me. Wouldn't it be a hoot if I got caught, after White's been doing it for ages? Maria would kill me if I screwed up now, with only two years to go.

Ah, Maria. I miss you so much.

Danny turned off the player when the attendant touched his arm. He shook his head. He didn't want a drink. He just wanted to get there. He turned the disk back on.

It doesn't make sense that they'd be testing the Rapier up here. Why'd they go to all the trouble to build a wind tunnel, when they could have tested it back on Earth? The WT must have cost trillions! I guess it's the government playing their little espionage games, hiding the plane until it's ready to blow the socks off any other country's military planes. Then they'll start using it, and all our enemies will die of fright. Hah!

It's a scary little machine, though, when it works right. I guess it's a good thing they're in a controlled environment. I'd hate to have been the pilot the other day when the engine cut out, if he'd been flying thirty thousand feet above Kansas instead of in the nice safe tunnel, where the engineers could let him glide to a stop. I told White it was scary to watch from the viewscreen, because the plane wobbled. For a minute, it looked like it was coming straight at the screen.

"I'd like to get back in there and fly that baby when they take it up to Mach 1. What a thrill that would be!

Danny hit the stop button and took off the headphones. He stared out the window.

...fly that baby when they take it up to Mach 1...

Peters had seen the Rapier coming straight at the screen. The white flash. Was that what he remembered?

He turned on the recorder again.

I'm really worried. I don't know who to talk to. White's been all melancholy the last few days. Says next week's his anniversary. Wondering if his wife has divorced him. I doubt anyone would blame her.

But I've got to talk to somebody. There's something wrong with the Rapier. I flew it last night, almost up to Mach 1. We're not authorized to go that high yet, but I thought I'd just nudge the envelope a little. Damn little thing acted like it was going to fall apart. I think I'll take it up again tonight. See if I can figure out what's wrong. I want to take a look at the metal, see how it's holding up under the stress.

Here comes White. He looks a little more chipper today. He's the whiz kid. Maybe I'll see what he thinks about the Rapier.

Peters knew! He'd begun to figure out the problem. And he had talked to White about it. Danny lay his head back against the seat. If both of them knew about the problem with the stresses, then who had flown the plane?

He turned on the micro-disk again, but there was nothing else recorded. He had come to the end of the disk.

* * * *

Danny got out of the taxi, paid the driver and looked around. This was definitely a poor section of town. Not destitute, not abandoned, but not modern.

The buildings were thirty or more years old, with street numbers painted on the front. Danny walked up the steps, carefully dodging a man in a disheveled topcoat who was curled up against one of the stone banisters. An odor of garlic and hot oil pervaded the air.

He opened the creaky door and saw a bank of mailboxes on one wall. He scanned the names. No Gonzales.

She could have moved home with her parents or in with someone else. Hell, she could be married by now.

He turned and went back outside, dodging two children chattering in Spanish as they ran past him. He looked at his watch and sat down on the steps, as far as he could get from the sleeping man. Almost five o'clock. He'd wait and ask someone.

As he sat, Danny watched this life that was so different from the life he had lived for the past weeks. On the space station everyone was equal, the only class distinction was rank.

Back on Earth, he'd been thrust into the life of a rich young man who had grown up in Megalopolis society. Was that his life?

Here, in the bowels of New York's poor section, life was very, very different. A group of kids walked down the street, huddled together against the cold, their clothes and shoes a mixture of old and new, hand-me-downs and booty. The kids themselves were a mixture too. Black, white, Hispanic, Oriental, they reminded him of the mix of people on the space station.

Danny zipped up his jacket and stuffed his hands in his pockets. If he could plumb the depths of his brain, would he find memories of walking through these streets with his buddies, looking for a way to cadge enough money to take his girlfriend to a VR flick?

It was almost completely dark, now, and cold. The street seemed sinister in the darkness. It was deserted, not many vehicles, although he could hear the trains and the traffic beyond the buildings.

In the dark, all the sounds seemed magnified. A baby was crying. Someone had turned on a multivision. Faint metallic clatter spoke of people fixing dinner. This was Sam Peters’ world. He closed his eyes and tried to turn the sounds and smells into memory.

A car stopped in front of the building and a door opened.

“Hasta mañana!” The door slammed.

Danny opened his eyes. A young woman waved at the departing car and started up the steps. When he stood, she paused, then tried to hurry past him.

“Maria?” he said, following her into the building, where a single bulb wanly tried to illumine the foyer and the stairs.

She turned, her eyes sweeping his length with a cunning efficiency. She was obviously used to dealing with unwelcome attention. He could understand why. She was beautiful.

Her thick, dark hair was forced into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were large and widely spaced, almond-shaped with lustrous lashes. The irises were nearly as dark as the pupils, and the whites were a startling blue-white. The rest of her face was just as perfect as her eyes, the lips were generous, even though right now they were pursed into a thin line.

“Yes?” she said.

“Are you Maria Gonzalez?"

“Yes.” She casually put her hand in the pocket of her coat. Danny had no doubt there was a gun there. He stood with his back to the exterior door and spread his hands.

“I just want to talk to you for a minute. I'm—from the space station."

Her eyes widened. She stared at his face. “You! You're the hero!"

He grimaced at the label and nodded. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee or something?"

“No, no. I mean, we can go to my apartment. Please, follow me."

Danny followed her up the stairs. Inside, she pointed to a couch and excused herself. He sat down and looked around. The apartment was ordinary. The couch and chairs were several years old, judging from their wear.

A fairly new rug lay on the battered wooden floor. Beyond the living room was the kitchen in one direction, and the door into which Maria had disappeared, probably the bedroom, in the other.

He felt nothing, recognized nothing. He took a deep breath. Dr. Ganand had said smell was the most evocative sense. Did the smell of this neighborhood, the smell of this apartment, mean any more to him than the scent of Kee's lilac lotion?

He didn't think so.

Maria appeared from the bedroom. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, and she was smaller than he'd realized.

She shrugged. “I'm sorry. I don't feel like I'm home until I am out of my work clothes. Would you like a drink? Some coffee?"

Danny stood, feeling awkward, out of place. “No, no. I just wanted to meet you.” He didn't know what to say. She was nervous, like he was a celebrity.

He felt a peculiar tingle deep inside. He couldn't tell if it was disappointment or relief. She didn't recognize him. She hadn't stared at him and turned pale, whispering the name of her dead lover. He almost laughed at his thoughts. Had he really expected something so dramatic?

“I know you were Sam's bunkmate,” she said. “He mentioned you in his messages."

“Did he?” Danny's heart pounded with apprehension. Suddenly, he wanted to be back in Mount Vernon, back in the huge house where he could surround himself in luxury and pretend he knew who he was. He didn't want to be here, talking with a lovely, sad woman about her dead lover.

“Please, sit down. Let me get you a drink. Are you all right?"

He nodded and sat. “Scotch, if you have it."

“Water?"

“Yes."

With his fingers wrapped around the cold drink, and Maria sitting opposite him, he began again. “I wanted to meet you, to tell you..."

What was the matter with him? He didn't even remember Peters, but here, in front of this lovely girl who had lost her fiancé he was getting choked up.

“You are Lieutenant Daniel White, yes? I had nearly forgotten your name.” She stared at him. “You were hurt badly in the accident? I saw it on the news—terrible things. You look better than you did on that day. I thought they should leave you alone. It must have been so hard.” She leaned forward. “Can you tell me, did Sam—was he—"

Danny slammed the glass down on the coffee table and stood, turning his back on her. He shouldn't have come, shouldn't have forced her to dredge up hurtful memories.

What had he expected? Had he thought he could just look at her and know? It hadn't happened with Kee, and now it hadn't happened with Maria. His heart contracted with profound sadness. Both of them had lost their lovers, and he couldn't help either one of them. He couldn't even help himself.

Maria's hand touched his arm and when he turned around they came together like lost children, clutching at each other, hugging tightly. He squeezed his eyes shut against hot tears as he felt her small shoulders quiver and heard her soft crying. She smelled of soap and a faint, musky perfume.

They held each other for a long time. Maria began whispering in Spanish, soft, beautiful phrases that meant nothing to Danny except comfort.

Finally, she pulled away, smiling and wiping her eyes with her fingers. She wiped tears away from his cheek. He ducked his head and stepped backward, averting his eyes and wiping furtively at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“You are like my Sam,” she said. “Tough guy. He never wanted anyone to see him cry.” She stared at him for a long time. “Yes, you are like him."

“What do you mean?” Danny heard the desperate fear in his voice, felt his throat close with terror. He took a deep breath and reached for his glass, needing something to hold onto.

She sat down and picked up her drink. He sat, too, but he felt like he was poised for flight, like a beast that senses danger.

“It is difficult to explain. There was that in Sam which I see also in you. An intensity, a determination. It is not so much physical, although you are of the same size.” She laughed and wiped her eyes again. “But I'll bet you were great friends, or terrible enemies, eh?"

“I think we could have been friends.” Danny sat down next to her on the couch. “Maria, what will you do?"

“Do? I work, eat, sleep ... wonder.” She looked down at her hands.

“Wonder?"

She nodded. “What it would have been like. He was so excited. He would come back, he said, and have a career in computers. We would marry.” She stopped.

Danny took her glass and set it on the coffee table. He put his fingers on her wet cheek and turned her face to him.

“Maria,” he whispered, then he bent his head and kissed her. Her lips trembled under his, then they parted, and he moved closer, cradling her head with his hand as he tasted her mouth.

Suddenly, he jerked and threw himself up and away from her. “God!” He squeezed his head between his hands. What disgusting impulse had made him do that? He turned around and found her watching him. He couldn't read the expression on her face.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Maria,” he said unsteadily, “I am so sorry! I don't know what got into me."

But he did. He knew exactly what had gotten into him. He'd had to prove to himself there was nothing between him and this pretty girl.

And he had.

She stood and stepped up to him, taking his face between her palms. “You are terribly hurt and frightened. I see the scars. I feel them, too. You do not know why you're here. Why you and not Sam came back. You would like to find a little bit of Sam here. So would I. I would make you Sam if I could."

She kissed his mouth tenderly, her eyes sparkling again with tears. “If you wish, we can try. We can try to find something of him in each other."

She smiled. In her eyes he saw the same openness and trust that he could sometimes find in Kee's.

Kee. Suddenly, with a terrible ache in his breast, he felt homesick. He shook his head.

“No. It wouldn't be fair to Sam.” He picked up the box he'd brought with him. “This is his stuff. And his personal disks. I don't think I need them any more.” He put the box in her hands and covered her hands with his.

“Maria, Sam was a good man. He died trying to figure out a problem with an airplane, a problem that could have eventually killed a lot more people. He loved you very much. He wouldn't have wanted you to throw away your life grieving for him. You need to start living again.” He kissed her cheek.

She smiled up at him. “Gracias, Lieutenant White."

“Danny."

“Gracias, Danny."

He turned to leave, a strange feeling tightening his chest—a mixture of regret and relief that was at once comforting and disturbing.

“Danny?"

He stopped at the door and looked back at her. She stood there alone, a lovely, sad young woman. She hadn't deserved to lose her lover. If he could have, he would have brought Sam back to her. But that was impossible. He knew that now.

“What about you?"

He wiped his face and swallowed against a lump in his throat. “I think I need to start living again, too."

“That is good, Danny. We both have been troubled too much by ghosts. Vaya con Dios."

Back out on the street, Danny felt the cold sting of the wind on his damp cheeks. He hadn't meant to kiss her. It was another shameful, selfish thing he'd done. But it had worked.

When he'd kissed Maria Gonzalez, he hadn't felt anything. Not anything. He thought he could fly if he wanted to, such a weight had been lifted.

The dark streets beckoned to him. For a while, he needed to be with himself, in the dark. For a while he needed to feel the wind drying his tears, needed to think of things he hadn't dared to think of since he'd awakened for the first time after the accident. He needed to find himself.

He walked with the cold wind chasing the tears down his face for several hours, through darkened alleyways, across busy intersections, past prostitutes who begged for attention, past people huddled in doorways.

After a long time, he had the odd feeling there was someone beside him. He was afraid to look, afraid that his mind was playing tricks. He kept walking, and his imaginary companion fell into step beside him. As he continued, buffeted by the wind, his cheeks raw and burning, the other drifted closer. Danny doggedly kept his face forward, thinking he was possibly losing his mind.

Then suddenly, he felt a jolt, like a stab of fear in his heart, and he knew that he was no longer lost, no longer only a shell of a man. Danny may have started this walk alone, but he would never be alone again.

He stopped on a busy corner and waved for a cab. As he climbed into the taxi and asked to be taken to the InterMetro station, he knew he hadn't solved all his problems. He still had very little memory past the white flash. He still had to prove himself worthy of Kee's love.

But one thing had changed. As much as he hated Daniel White, he knew now that he had to make his peace with him, because Daniel White was a part of him. He always had been, and he always would be.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you."

To A Stranger

Walt Whitman

When Danny got back home Uncle Jack was there with his mother. Danny spoke to them and headed for the stairs.

Let's talk, Daniel T,” Jack called out to him from the door leading to the library. Then he turned and walked back into the room.

Danny whirled back and stuck his head in the doorway. “Uncle Jack, can't it wait? I've got to find Kee."

“Nope,” the older man said, without turning around from the hearth. “Kee's upstairs. She'll wait. You just come on in here. This is a lot more important right now. Your wife would agree."

Danny walked into the room, feeling again the overwhelming sense of trepidation at the smell of leather and books. He stopped in front of the massive desk with the razor strop hanging beside it. He shuddered and turned his back. It was still ominous, still a devastating reminder of a man he couldn't remember, but neither the strop nor the man could hurt him any more.

He sat in one of the red leather chairs pulled up to the hearth. Jack turned, but remained standing, leaning against the mantle.

Danny had never seen his godfather look so haggard. His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks were lined. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days.

“Uncle Jack, are you all right? What are you doing here?"

Jack rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh, yeah! I'm fine. Just had some disturbing news is all."

Danny's heart stood still for an agonizing instant. “What? Kee? Or Mother? Is that why you're here? Has something happened?"

“No, no. Look, Daniel T. How about you shutting up and me doing the talking for a bit, eh?"

Danny stared at him. His godfather's voice was ragged, like it had been used too much, and his dark eyes were haunted. Danny nodded.

“Good. Now your mother wanted to do this little deed, but I decided she wasn't up to it. No!” He held up a hand. “I said no talking. I'll get around to the point of all this in my own goddamn time.

“I've not been a good person, Daniel T. Oh, I'm a good talker, and I seem to have a crusty nature that people like. And I never met a man that was better than any other man I ever met. That is, until recently. But I'll get to that in a bit. First..."

He wiped his face and turned toward the fireplace. “I believe I saw some brandy over there. Why don't you get us a glass?"

Danny jumped up and poured two glasses of Courvoisier, clattering the bottle against the glasses.

When he brought the drinks back to the hearth, Jack was sitting in the other chair with his head in his hands. Danny sat down and held the two glasses until his uncle looked up.

Incredulously, Danny realized that the older man was crying, or more accurately, trying not to.

“Uncle Jack, you're scaring me,” he said, more afraid in this moment than he could remember ever being. Something momentous, something dreadful, had happened.

“I know, son. I know just exactly how you feel. Just give me a minute."

Danny sipped the brandy and stared into the cold fireplace, giving his uncle time to control his emotions. Danny's own emotions were in a turmoil.

Uncle Jack had said there was nothing wrong with Kee or his mother. Then what could it be? What could have upset Jack this much?

“Look, Uncle Jack. If this is about—"

“I asked you to shut up, son. I'm getting around to it.” Jack stood, propped himself against the mantle again, and took a deep swallow of brandy. “Like I said, I haven't been a good man. I've whored around. I've treated my body badly with drink and cigarettes and drugs. I've done my share of fancy politicking, which is just another word for lying, although I tried to lie as little as I could get by with. And all the things I was lost me the woman I loved."

He cleared his throat. “Now the man she married was a fine man. He did a lot of things I didn't agree with, but I did things he didn't like too. When we were young he was my best friend. But, out of all the things I did that I'm not proud of, there's one that was totally unforgivable."

Danny began to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew Jack was talking about his father.

He shifted in his seat and took another sip of brandy, clutching the glass like a shield against some unknown enemy. He wasn't sure why, but he was scared to death of what his godfather was telling him.

“I did something a man should never do to his friend. Something I could never forgive myself for. Daniel T, I seduced your mother. I'm not proud of it, and there's no other word for it. I seduced her."

Jack spit out the word as if it were a piece of spoiled meat. “She was in love with me, but that was no excuse. She'd married Ty. She'd made her choice, and I should have let it go at that. But I loved her. She was the only good thing I'd ever had in my whole life.” Jack sighed and looked at his brandy glass.

Danny sat in stunned silence. His godfather had seduced his mother? What was Jack saying? He couldn't have spoken then if his life depended on it. He clutched his glass and waited.

“They hadn't been married but a few weeks, and Ty had had to leave the country on business. I'd promised him I'd keep an eye on Miriam for him. Hah! I did that! That and more."

He looked up at Danny and pointed a finger at him. “I don't want you ever thinking it was your mother's fault. It wasn't! I didn't have any business taking advantage of her feelings like I did."

Jack walked over to the Georgian side table and poured himself another brandy, while Danny sat staring at the cold fireplace and waiting for the punch line.

There was something else. Danny's heartsick feeling grew stronger. Jack was trying to tell Danny something that involved him.

His godfather didn't say anything until he was standing in front of Danny's chair. “We had a beautiful week. One week. Then Ty came back and nothing was ever said about it again. After a few months they went to Africa, and I came here to the State Department."

Danny held his breath, knowing that the real confession was imminent.

“You remember I said I'd never met a man that was any better than any other man, until recently?"

Danny nodded.

“Well, I've got to say it was a surprise. The man surprised me. I'd never thought of him as particularly courageous, or particularly noble. But when I sat here, in this chair, listening to that man tell me what had happened to him, I realized I was in the presence of the bravest man I had ever known.” Jack's voice gave out. He cleared his throat, took another swallow of brandy, and cleared his throat again.

Danny was having trouble with his own throat, and his eyes. He wanted to burst into tears, wanted his godfather to hold him, like he must have done when Danny was a little boy. But he sat there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe even, as Jack's confession unfurled as slowly as a spinnaker on a windless day.

“Daniel T, I learned something today. Something so unbelievable that I still haven't quite taken it all in. Although now, I can't figure out how I never knew. Daniel T, look at me."

Danny raised his blurry gaze to his uncle's. He couldn't decipher the expression on the older man's lined face.

“Daniel T, you are my son.” Jack's voice broke and tears slipped from his eyes.

Danny stood, dropping the wine glass on the floor, where it bounced once. He couldn't control the shaking, couldn't control the tears that spilled from his own eyes. “Your—"

Jack nodded, and Danny realized the older man's expression was wary. He wasn't sure how Danny would take the news.

Danny's heart was swelling up too big to be contained in his chest. His chest hurt, and his eyes burned. “I—” he stammered, shaking his head.

Jack stood, his back rigid and his eyes straight ahead.

“I'm very proud,” Danny said and held out his hand to the older man, completely baffled as to what his reaction should be. Jack looked at his hand for an endless moment, then made a sound deep in his throat and grabbed his son in a bear hug.

Danny hugged back, squeezing so tightly that he thought he might break bones. But he was unwilling to let go of this man who had always loved him, even when he thought he was someone else's son. Had loved him even though Daniel White had not been very lovable.

“You...” he whispered, “not him. Not him! I couldn't stand the thought of being his son. I could never remember loving him."

The two men stood, wrapped in each other's arms, for a long time, until a discreet knock on the door brought them back to present reality.

Miriam, looking as haggard and as red-eyed as Uncle Jack, walked tentatively into the room. “Daniel? Jack?"

They turned to her in unison. Danny brushed at his eyes with his palm as Jack held out his hand. “Miriam, come here."

A tremulous smile on her face, his mother walked over to the hearth where Jack put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “One more thing, Daniel T,” he said. “Your mother is worried that you'll be upset if we get married."

Danny stared at his mother, then at his godfather—no, at his father. “Upset?” he said, laughter bubbling up through his tears. “Upset that my mother and my father want to be together?” He leaned over and kissed his mother. “I hope you both can be happy,” he whispered as his mother grabbed him in a fierce hug.

Danny noticed that her embrace no longer felt cloying and desperate. It was warm, comforting, motherly. He hugged her back. His mother.

“Oh, Daniel, you'll never guess,” she said, finally pulling away and wiping her eyes. “The most awful thing has happened. It will be all over the news tomorrow, I'm sure."

Danny's heart pounded. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

Jack shot him a fathomless look.

Miriam clasped her hands together. “Drake announced today that Whitehall has figured out what the problem was on the station. Oh, my beautiful boy, it's so sad. And to think you were one of the victims."

“What did Drake say, Mother?"

“Well, he held a press conference, and he said that there was a problem with a computer program."

“A problem?"

“Yes. Apparently, the stress was too low or something, and a plane crashed. I didn't know they had planes in space."

Danny glanced at Jack, who raised his brows.

“What else, Mother? Did he say whose fault it was?” Danny's throat felt raw. He waited breathlessly for his mother's answer.

“No. He didn't say it was anybody's fault. But he has to help the police with their investigation. He announced that Whitehall is going to make sure every one of those families is compensated. Probably at least two million dollars each, he said.” Miriam paused and looked at Danny.

“Are you all right, Daniel?” She touched his face. “I know this is hard. You lost friends, and almost lost your life."

“Have you talked to Jan?” he asked.

Miriam smiled. “She's bringing the girls to stay here while Drake is involved in all this."

Jack shot Danny a look, and he nodded slightly. “Well don't be surprised if Jan stays a while. Now I've got to go find Kee."

“Oh,” Miriam said, and Danny turned to look at her.

“Where is she?” he asked tightly, afraid of what his mother was going to tell him. Please don't be gone, he silently begged Kee. Please.

“She had to go to a doctor's appointment. She should be back any minute."

Danny felt a tremor of apprehension inside him. “A doctor's appointment? For what?"

“I'm sure I can't say.” Miriam turned and took Jack's hand. “Dinner will be at eight, Danny. You'll join us, won't you? You and Kee?"

He nodded, barely aware of what she had said. He turned toward the library doors, then paused and looked back. When he did, his eyes stung with tears. “I'm really happy for you—for us all."

Danny started up the stairs, but Kee wasn't up there, and he didn't want to sit around and wait for her. He looked down the hall toward the sunroom. He liked that room, especially when it rained, and it was raining now.

Stepping into the dark, warm room, he closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the sound of the rain. His body stirred with the memories of the first time he and Kee had made love, here on the wicker couch.

The first time. A thrill of desire streaked through him as he remembered the feel of her body against his, her hair, fragrant and soft against his face, and her breasts pressing into his chest as she breathed.

He moved across the room and touched the glass prisms that hung between the baskets of plants. They tinkled faintly, barely heard over the sound of the rain.

He stood at the window and watched the rain and waited for his wife.

* * * *

Kee asked the driver to turn up the heat. November rain was the worst—not cold enough to freeze, but plenty cold enough to penetrate the thickest coat and defy the car's heater.

She glanced at her watch and wondered, as she had every day, if Danny would be there when she got home.

She'd wanted to be gone when he got back. She had meant it when she told him she couldn't go through it again. How could she let herself believe in him a third time? How could she stand to have that barely healed wound ripped open again?

She put her hand on her chest, afraid that the pain would tear her heart from her body. How could she be so selfish? Thinking of herself when he was so lost?

All his rage, all his hurtful words and deeds, only came from fear. If she didn't love him it might be different. She might be able to say “poor thing” and go on with her life with an occasional twinge of pity for him.

Her hand, which was pressing her chest so tightly, trying to relieve the pain in her heart, moved lower, to rest on her belly. There was another consideration, now. She caught her breath in a sob as one more emotion joined the melee inside her.

Dr. Payne had chuckled at her when she questioned his diagnosis.

“But that's impossible!” she'd said. “I mean, are you sure?"

He had peered at her over his half glasses, amusement lighting his blue eyes. “Reasonably sure. Of course, if you'd like a second opinion..."

She'd blushed. “No! No, it's just that I thought, after all this time, I mean ... I thought I would to have to have surgery.” She had put her hand on her belly then, too, holding herself and the tiny life inside her protectively.

“Yes,” Dr. Payne had said. “So did I, but occasionally miracles do happen. You're two months along and everything seems to be just fine."

Just fine, she thought, except for the fact that the little guy's daddy can't remember anything. Just fine, except that the little guy's mother doesn't think she can live with a man who goes chasing off after memories that may not even be his.

Ahead, she saw the dark shape of the White mansion. She stared at the house as if it could tell her if Danny had returned.

As they pulled into the underground garage, she saw Danny's car, and her heart leaped into her throat.

He was back. But why? Had he come back only to leave again? What would she do if he'd found what he was looking for in New York?

When she slipped into their suite, the room was dark and empty. She looked out on the balcony, but he wasn't there. A whisper of trepidation began to form in her heart.

She went downstairs, peeking into the library and glancing into the living room as she passed on her way to the sunroom.

The door was open but the room was dark. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness, and then she saw his familiar silhouette standing in front of the huge windows.

She stepped up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. When she did he whirled and stepped backward, knocking the prism and sending shards of reflected light everywhere.

“Danny?” she whispered, scared because he had stepped away from her. She searched his face for an answer to her question, but he was distracted, almost dazed.

“Danny? Are you all right?"

His eyes focused on her face finally, and she saw something in it that she hoped was gladness.

“Kee,” he said softly. “Sweetie-kee. Where have you been? I've missed you."

He smiled slightly and stepped toward her. In the moonlight, his face shone like an angel's. She touched his cheek, his eyebrows, his lips, searching every centimeter of his face with her eyes and her hands, looking for reassurance.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she whispered, so afraid to hear his answer. But she had to know. She had to know what had caused the happiness she saw in his eyes.

He nodded. “Finally,” he said, and her heart lurched with fear.

“Finally. And it was right here, where I'd left it years ago.” His gaze questioned her, wary, hesitant, hopeful.

“Oh, Danny,” she whispered, looking at the face she knew better than any face in the world. “I love you. Welcome home."

Epilogue

“The furious storm through me careering,

I passionately trembling.

The oath of the inseparableness of two together,

Of the woman that loves me

And whom I love more than my life,

That oath swearing,

Oh I willingly stake all for you."

From Pent Up Aching Rivers

Walt Whitman

Kee stretched, thinking she would turn over and go back to sleep for a while, but something was tickling her ear. She opened one eye.

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty, it's time you were up."

She moaned, wanting to swat at the irritating voice. “There's no reason for me to get up."

“Sure there is. It's Christmas Day. Mother and Jack are expecting us for dinner."

Kee slitted one eye. “It's still dark, they're probably asleep, like normal people,” she said yawning.

“It's cloudy, you slugabed.” She heard the delightful sound of laughter in her husband's voice, but not even that could totally penetrate the sleepy haze she was in.

“Danny, we were up all night,” she pleaded.

“Were we? Doing what?"

Kee laughed lazily. “You know what. I need my sleep. I'm in a delicate condition."

“Not too delicate, I hope,” Danny said as he dove into the bed beside her. He had on the corduroy pants and the fisherman's sweater she loved so much, and the feel of the open weave cotton against her bare skin was delicious. She snuggled back against him as he reached around her to place his hand on her stomach.

“Getting pretty round, I see.” He rubbed her belly.

“I am not. My tummy is still totally flat. And besides, I'm supposed to."

“Now wait a minute.” Danny laughed. “Let me see if I understand this. You're not getting round, and you're insulted that I would say you're getting that way. But if you are getting round, you're supposed to. Is that it?"

She pushed her behind a little closer to his front, enjoying the reaction she detected there. Then she wriggled like a happy puppy.

“Kee!” he said sternly and a little breathlessly. “Be still."

“Why?” She pouted.

“Because otherwise I'm can't be responsible for my actions."

She flipped over, tossing her hair out of her face, and touched him intimately. “Why sir, I'm shocked. Whatever are you talking about?"

“Your shameless coquetry, wench,” he growled breathlessly as he gathered her into his arms. “Now, if I can only reach your ruby lips over your rotund belly."

She swatted him on the nose, but he turned his face up and caught her fingers between his teeth, closing his lips around them, sucking and licking them with his tongue. Kee thought she'd never felt anything so deliciously erotic in her entire life, until he put his fingers in her mouth and she sucked and licked on them.

Soon, they were no longer content with just fingers, so they kissed luxuriously, until kissing wasn't enough and their fingers began to wander, to touch each other as they kissed. Then, even that wasn't enough and Danny lay back and pulled Kee on top of him.

“So you can control the depth charges, captain,” he whispered as he lowered her onto him. She gasped as he filled her, then she reached for his head, cradling it as she rocked. He bent forward, and she arched her back so he could reach her swollen breasts with his mouth, and she held his head and smelled the salt spray smell of his hair as he made love to her.

Then he sat up and took her on his lap, rocking her slowly, until they both shuddered and cried out their release into each others’ mouths.

Danny lay back and pulled Kee with him, so she could tuck her head into the hollow between his shoulder and his chest. She lay there, breathing through her mouth as his panting changed back into normal breaths.

“Merry Christmas, Danny."

He made a choked sound, and she sat up, putting her hand on his face to turn him toward her. He blinked away the wetness on his lashes and smiled sheepishly.

“Are you okay?” she asked, searching his face, afraid she would find the fear and pain which had been there for so long, and which was just lately beginning to fade.

He pulled her to him for a fierce hug. She could feel his breath, ragged and harsh, on her cheek.

“Danny?"

“Oh, sweetie-kee, I'm fine. Everything is fine. The world is fine! I am so lucky to have you."

She pulled back and cradled his face between her hands. She kissed his nose and smiled.

“I'm lucky too. We got a second chance.” She could feel tears starting in her eyes. “We just need to make the most of it."

She ran her fingers over his chest, where the rectangular scar blazed above his heart like a brand, identifying him to anyone who cared to know. “Danny?"

“Hmmm?"

“What made this scar? It's strange, different from all the others."

He covered her hand where it lay on the scar. “I never quite understood it, until recently,” he said, lifting her hand and kissing her fingers. “But here's my theory."

He sat up and reached for his jacket. From the pocket he pulled the little holovid pic he'd brought back from the space station.

Kee took it from his hand. “Oh my God,” she whispered, laying the rectangular box against his bare chest. “You kept it there all that time."

“It brought me back to you. You're the one memory I know I can be sure of."

He covered her hand with his, and pressed the button on the back of the box.

I love you, Kee's younger voice spoke from the holovid pic.

He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I never forgot that you loved me. And I love you, Kee."

Kee's heart swelled until she thought it would burst from her chest.

He loved her.

After all the years of loneliness, all the hours of fear and pain, he'd finally said it. And she realized, hearing him speak the words, she'd known it all along.