Baby, Be Mine by Vivian Arend Read Free Book Online

that eliminated a too-personal welcome home, but that was okay. They’d leapt in at the start. Now he could go a little slower. Care for her. Take his time to make sure they had a solid foundation. He caressed the peach-fuzz softness just above her ear, stroking gently. “I like your hair.”
    Katy touched her head self-consciously. “It’s okay. It’s grown a lot since the accident.”
    The bottom fell out of his stomach. “Accident? What accident?”
    She snorted before jerking to a stop, the golden flecks in her dark brown eyes flashing at him in the light. “You’re serious. You didn’t know I went into the ditch?”
    He grabbed her hands tight. “I had no idea. I emailed you from Fort Mac before I went into the bush, and I haven’t heard a thing since then. What happened?”
    Katy stared at their joined hands, her mouth hanging slightly open. “Umm, Gage. It’s okay. I mean it happened two months ago.”
    Her unease increased, and her body grew stiffer. Instead of curling up against him like he’d hoped, she withdrew, and the whole situation grew more awkward by the minute.
    When she pulled her hands free, he let her go. Let her increase the distance between them. He attempted to focus on the other issue at hand. “You hit the ditch. Everything okay?” A snatch of memory struck him. “I thought your car was in the shop.”
    She pulled a face. “I guess that checkup was overdue. The brakes weren’t good, or that’s what they told me. The accident is a complete blur, though, so I’m not sure.”
    Gage glanced out the window. “Your car looks fine.”
    “Small mercies. No damage to it, other than the brakes. They told me I did a good job of driving her down the embankment. Never lost control or spun out—they could tell that from the tire tracks or something.”
    She was leaning on the wall opposite him now, a good five feet between them. Gage felt wrapped in cotton. “So…how do we get from your great ditch driving to your hair being cut off?”
    Katy took an enormous breath and let it out slowly. “They told me I bumped my head. Hard enough they shaved my hair off so they could attach test thingies. After a week’s testing when nothing showed up on their machines, they told me I was fine.”
    Gage was the one frowning now, his entire body tensing as he slipped the clues together. “You keep saying ‘they told me’. You don’t remember the accident?”
    She shook her head, frustration obviously rising. “I don’t remember the accident, plus there are a few other gaps. I lost a ton of long-term memory as it relates to math—passwords, formulas and things like that. So it’s nice you sent me an email, but I never got it. I had to set up a new email account because I couldn’t get into the old one.”
    His jaw had to be hanging open, and his feet were pinned in place now, hands dangling uselessly by his sides.
    Katy had lost her memory?
    Had she forgotten them ? If so, she’d have forgotten what they’d done. What they’d planned.
    It would explain so much in terms of her discomfort with him—more than only nerves at having him back around after a long break.
    He forced himself to speak even though his mouth had gone totally dry. “So…this amnesia. How extensive is it?”
    Katy shrugged. “A couple weeks before the bump are fuzzy or gone—I’m not sure now what are real memories and what are things I’ve been told.”
    “A couple…”
    It was true. In one swoop their future was rearranged. He wasn’t about to pick her up caveman-like and tell her that they were another thing she’d forgotten. Not when she was still fighting frustration along with whatever else had her at less than one hundred percent physical health at the moment.
    He also had no intention of letting her get away. The dilemma of how to move forward threw him into a tailspin.
    As out of control as a car skidding into a ditch.

Chapter Six
    Katy couldn’t look away. The mustache and thick beard covering his