“Cameron?”
“What?” Dragging my thoughts back, I turned to see Hal looking at me in an odd sort of way.
“Are you all right? Are you remembering something? Do you want me to take you back to the ranch?”
“I’m fine,” I said. At least I would be if I could stop thinking about Sloan Campbell. I’d been away from him for—what?—twenty minutes, but I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Ridiculous. I should be thinking of finding out what this man might know about my sister’s disappearance. “What did you just say?”
“Does this bring back any memories?” He gestured to the space around us, and for the first time I took it in. We’d walked into a little clearing. The stream widened a bit here, and wildflowers grew along its border. Their scent filled the air, and there was a place just ahead of us where a cluster of trees offered complete privacy. “It’s lovely.”
“But you don’t remember anything?”
I met his eyes and saw that he was studying me very intently. “I don’t remember ever being here before.”
There was a tightening in his jaw that I didn’t like. So there was temper beneath that smooth-as-silk facade. While I found it interesting, I didn’t much like the fact that I’d let myself be manipulated into being alone with him. He was even carrying my horse’s reins.
Drawing in a deep breath, he said, “I don’t want to pressure you. Doc Carter said that’s the worst thing I could do.”
“What exactly do you want, Hal?”
“I want you to remember what we meant to each other, what we were before you went away.”
To my surprise, it wasn’t just temper I saw, but pain and perhaps regret. Had Hal Linton actually been in love with Cameron? Had she been in love with him? Was that what she had gone to the cliffs to think about? I wanted to know.
“What exactly were we to each other?” I asked.
Hal looked at me for a moment. “Do you know how hard it is for me to see you standing there, to hear you say that you can’t remember me? We were…friends. I wanted more. You didn’t. But that was going to change.”
“Why?”
“Because you were having second thoughts about marrying Sloan.”
“I told you that?”
“Yes. Several times. You told me that the night before you disappeared, the night that your fiancé eavesdropped on us and caught us kissing in the garden.”
Something knotted in my stomach.
He gripped my shoulders. His hands might have been smooth, but they were strong. I felt a skip of panic.
“You’re in danger. I sensed it that night. I should have done something. If I had…” He broke off, releasing me as if he’d just realized he’d grabbed hold of me. He ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. I promised myself that I wouldn’t touch you.”
He turned and paced a few steps away, as if he had to keep his distance if he was going to keep his promise. “I’m going to tell you something that I didn’t tell you before you left. When I ran into you at the Derby, it wasn’t by accident. I was hired by the group of investors who have approached your father with an offer to buy this place. My job was to make contact with you, to get close to you. Hell, I was supposed to use any means I could—including seduction—to convince you to persuade your father to sell the place.”
“The surprise announcement of my engagement to Sloan must have thrown a spanner into the works.”
Through the tan I could see a flush stain his cheeks.
“I’m not proud now of what I had planned to do. At the time, when my associates proposed the job, it seemed easy enough. It paid well, and I found you attractive. That was the kind of man I was before I met you. Everything changed then. The last six months we’ve had fun together. You’re different than other women for me. We’d become friends. You confided in me. And I fell in love with you.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak for Cameron. And I wasn’t quite sure that he was telling the truth. He looked sincere enough, but the man had to be an accomplished liar to have gotten where he was in life.
“I won’t tell you that you felt the same way,” Hal said.
I raised my brows. “Isn’t that exactly what you tried to do last night?”
His face reddened even more. “I was worried about you. You have amnesia, for God’s sake. I wanted to give you some reason for not being swept up in James’s plans again. Believe the worst about me. But I want you to know that you were having second thoughts about your upcoming marriage on the night before you disappeared.”
He took a step toward me, but kept his hands at his sides. “Don’t marry him, Cameron. For your own sake, wait at least until you get your memory back and can remember why it was that you felt you had to run away from here.”
Once again, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Everything he said made sense, and his account of what had happened in the garden matched Sloan’s. Was he confessing all this because he was concerned about my safety? Or was he doing it on purpose to confuse me?
Marcie, Austin and Hal all seemed perfectly fooled by my impersonation. They believed that I was Cameron McKenzie suffering from amnesia. The person who’d been suspicious of me from the get-go was Sloan. Was that because he knew what had really happened to Cameron?
No. I didn’t believe that. He’d been in that plane with me. Both of us could have been killed. My head began to spin, and I pressed a hand to my temple. Not because I was suspicious of Sloan, I wasn’t. It had just been an eventful day. I’d been shot down in a plane, nearly toppled off a cliff.
“Something is wrong.” Hal took my arm. “I’ll take you back to Doc Carter.”
“No. I’m fine. I—” I broke off when I heard hoofbeats approaching, and I knew before I turned that it would be Sloan and Saturn. I could feel the anger radiating off him in waves as he reined in Saturn and dismounted. But his voice was controlled and it was Hal he addressed when he reached us.
“Your sister and Austin are waiting for you. James sent me to bring Cameron back. He needs to see her.”
Sloan’s tone was even, pleasant almost, but it was clear that Hal was being dismissed.
Hal turned to me, a worried expression on his face. “I’ll stay if you like.”
“No.” I didn’t glance at Sloan. I knew he’d have that mocking look in his eyes. “I have something that I want to talk to Sloan about before we go back.”
Hal’s expression changed, lightened. “Good. That’s good.” He gave Sloan a nod before he mounted his horse. “See you in a bit then.”
Sloan waited until Hal was out of sight and earshot before he turned to me and even then he kept his voice low. “You promised that you wouldn’t go off alone with any of them.”
“I didn’t go off alone. There were four of us.” Okay, technically, I knew I was on shaky ground.
“I only counted two when I got here.” His voice might have been under control, but there was anger in his eyes and in the way he grabbed my arm to lead me toward the horses. “C’mon.”
“Wait just a minute.” I dug in my heels. Maybe it was the culmination of the dramatic events of the day, or maybe it was because I felt I was being lectured like a child, but my own temper rose to meet his. “I came here to try to find out what happened to my sister. I can’t do that if I’m confined to the house. Austin, Marcie and Hal all have reasons to want Cameron to disappear.”
“Which is exactly why it was reckless and stupid of you to go off riding with them.”
“Stupid?” I used my free hand to poke him in the chest.
“Yes, stupid.”
I poked him again. “Stupid was sitting around for five weeks without even wondering if something had happened to Cameron.”
I saw in his eyes that my comment had struck home.
“Okay—you’ve got a point. But you’ve convinced me that Cameron is at the very least in trouble. And so are you. The plane nearly crashed. You nearly fell off that cliff. I came close to losing you twice, and then I learn you’ve gone off riding with three of the people who might have been responsible for Cameron’s disappearance!” Sloan grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake. “Which is why you’re going to go back to the house and stay put until we figure out who’s behind all this.”
He’d raised his voice, so I did, too. “Until we figure this out, we includes me. I’m not going to cower in my room. I came here to find my sister, and you’re not going to stop me!”
His eyes were bright angry slits. “You’re just like her—stubborn, unreasonable—”
“I’m not Cameron.”
He gave me another shake. “No, you’re not. She could never push me this far. No one could. No one but you.”
His mouth crushed down on mine, and in one fluid move I was beneath him on the ground. Passion erupted with such force, such speed. Was this what had been simmering inside of him since he’d pulled me to safety off that ledge? Was this what had been simmering inside of me?
Those hands could be so gentle. This time they weren’t. This time he was relentless. Those hard, callused fingers ran over my skin in that meticulous way he had, scraping, setting new fires and fueling the ones that were already burning.