A Very Maverick Christmas. Rachel Lee

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_dfa43608-44b8-5ef0-b454-3bd71c4a10a6">Chapter Two

      For the next few days, Julie felt as if the inside of her head had become a huge jumble. Her memory, if that’s what it was, of being an angel in a Christmas pageant when she was young, was really niggling her.

      She pulled up that flash over and over, trying to wring every possible detail out of it that she could. Standing on stage, wings on her back, scanning a sea of faces trying to find her parents and not seeing them.

      “Damn,” she cussed out loud. If that was a real memory, why couldn’t she see her parents?

      But even if she had, could she rely on what she thought she remembered? She’d had some counseling since the amnesia, but it had mostly been pithy claims about how she just had to trust her memory, such as it was, and perhaps her past would return to her.

      Trust it? She couldn’t even be sure it was a true memory. It might have been some kind of daydream, resulting from a desperate need to fill in the huge hole her past had become.

      But maybe, just maybe, there was some link in her head with the holidays. She should make more of an effort to enjoy the season as it ramped up. Maybe it would jar some more memories loose for her. Maybe little shards would grow into big pieces.

      But somehow, one little girl in an angel costume had managed to throw her entire being into some kind of blender. Conviction and doubt warred within her, alongside hope and despair.

      Then there was Braden Traub. She told herself he’d just been being nice to her, but he might as well have warning flags all over him. For the first time since she lost her memory, she felt attracted to a man. Seriously attracted. Forgotten urges had wakened in an instant. Dangerous, because she had no memory. She was sure that the instant a guy found out she was amnesiac, he’d head for the hills. But apart from that, she was a babe in the woods. No memory to guide her about dealing with men. About dating.

      Hell, she couldn’t even carry on much of a conversation unless it was about the last few months. So why take a risk?

      She sighed and rubbed her aching head. Again and again she had been warned about trying to force her memory, but she kept trying anyway. Desperation gnawed at her.

      Like looking at those family portraits at the Triple-T. She’d hoped one of them would jog her in some way, but none of them had. Instead, all they had done was make her feel even lonelier. She didn’t even have one photo tied to her past.

      But then, she didn’t even know what had happened to her. The doctors theorized she might have been mugged or had an accident, but she’d been found wandering with nothing to show for her experience except a cracked skull and no memory. And her necklace. Her talisman.

      And a desire for cold and snow that had led her to New England, where she’d met the man who had researched her necklace and told her the last owner had lived in Montana. Then she’d come across that blog and felt drawn here like a homing pigeon.

      But what did any of that mean? Again, she was without context. In some ways that was the most frustrating thing of all: urges and impulses that drove her without having any idea why.

      If she couldn’t explain herself to herself, how could she explain herself to anyone?

      When she realized she was thoroughly cleaning the cabin again for the third time in as many days, she stopped and tried to give herself a wake-up call.

      One of the two rooms she was working so hard on was a bathroom. Otherwise the cabin contained a larger room that held a small kitchen at one corner, an alcove beside the bathroom where she had a bed, and a beastly woodstove that terrified her because she’d never had to use one before, at least not that she could remember. As winter deepened, she prayed the power would stay on, because if it didn’t the heater wouldn’t work and she was going to get very cold. Maybe she should buy a kerosene space heater, although those were dangerous, too.

      Sighing, she rubbed her temples. For three days she hadn’t gone out her front door, not since the party at the Triple-T. What was with her? The town was familiar enough now that she felt all right when she walked the streets and shopped. The woods around the cabin were like a personal cathedral for her, offering peace and serenity. So what was she doing being a hermit?

      She stuffed her feet into her warm winter boots and pulled her parka off the peg. A bracing walk would do her good, clearing out cobwebs and probably settling her frantic ramblings. The winter snow was not yet deep, although she had been warned that it would get there soon enough. For now, though, she could walk in the woods or into town.

      She locked up the cabin behind her, then hesitated on the stoop. The woods or town? She needed a few things from the grocery, and increasingly she had a desire to find some splash of color to add to the cabin. The inside of it was almost dismal; age had faded everything so much. A throw pillow or two, or maybe just a small throw she could wrap herself in when it became drafty. The bedding was her only addition, and sadly she’d chosen a wintry look that right now didn’t help at all.

      Why did winter call to her anyway? What she needed as the days grew shorter, colder and darker, were some really bright colors.

      God, she couldn’t even bring herself to put a mark on the place where she lived. She seemed to spend all her time feeling as if she might have to bolt at any moment, a purely ridiculous idea. Certainly no one had made her feel that way.

      She figured she’d winter in this town then perhaps move on again if she unlocked nothing about herself. That, she thought, was her real problem: trying on places and people, then hitting the road to search for the key to her memory.

      But how could she put down roots? She had two huge fears: that she might plant herself in the wrong place and thus lose any chance of finding out who she was, and that she’d find out and not like what she learned. Given that those were polar opposites, she sometimes wondered what the heck she was doing.

      She turned toward the woods then changed her mind. If nothing else, she could bring at least one piece of cheer into that cabin. Maybe something Christmasy, given her reaction to Lily’s costume. Maybe Christmas held some kind of key for her.

      She’d bought a battered, secondhand car with some of the money she’d received for the sale of her coin, and she climbed into the blue monster now in case the day turned colder, or in case she actually splurged on something besides a few groceries. A Christmas tree? But then she’d have to decorate it.

      Shaking her head at her own indecision, she turned over the ignition. This heap might not look like much, but it had turned out to be amazingly reliable so far. Probably the good thing about buying locally. The garage owner had a reputation to maintain in a relatively small town.

      She was driving up Cedar toward the Crawford General Store when she spied that psychic Winona Cobbs, her white hair flying in the breeze. That woman made Julie uneasy, although she wasn’t sure exactly why. When Winona had given a talk back in August about listening to inner voices, she’d seemed slightly dotty but not crazy. Afterward, as Julie had been drawn forward to meet the woman, she had felt an almost electric zap. In that instant Winona had snapped her head around, looked at her then shrugged and returned to her conversation.

      Whatever it was that had happened, Julie had no desire to repeat the experience. It had been weird, even creepy.

      On a weekday morning, finding parking near the General Store was easy. Julie slid into a spot then pondered exactly what she intended to do there. Most folks here drove to Kalispell for major shopping, СКАЧАТЬ