Page 45 of Hunted in Hope Town

“All right. My PI is supposed to get me an update by five. I’ll be in touch by then. Let me know what you come up with, if there’s any more I can dig into.”

Ellis agreed and they said their goodbyes.

He stood, too much energy pumping through him. Colleen Fredericks. A woman he knew, but she’d changed her look. She was clearly hiding something. Would he have recognized her if he’d come face-to-face with her? Would Kirsten have recognized her without having her memories back?

He looked down at her, still sitting on the couch. “Well, I guess you remembered in the nick of time.”

Her mouth curved. Her eyes were sad and didn’t meet his, but he couldn’t discount that it was a lead he wouldn’t have picked up on. At least not at first. Maybe it would have come to him eventually, but maybe too late.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered. “Why would she have a fake identity? Be working for Dr. Leigh? She was in public affairs. Not psychology. Not undercover work.”

“But she wasn’t your biggest fan, was she?” Kirsten replied primly.

“I hardly think me blowing her off made her want to…whatever this is. Jesus. If she’s involved in this…” He didn’t even know. It was so incomprehensible. “I don’t think I have that kind of power, Kirsten. And you don’t either.”

“No, I imagine there’s something more complicated at play, but the truth is she did have a thing for you, and she wasn’t happy when you put distance between the two of you.”

Ellis had never been fully on board with Kirsten’s view of the situation, but he was hardly going to get into a fight with his wife over a woman who didn’t matter. It was easier to put the distance between him and Colleen. And Colleen being weird to him after that was just…

“I never told you,” Kirsten said very quietly. “It meant a lot to me. That you listened and didn’t make me out to be some crazy jealous wife. That you believed me and what I saw, or at least let it matter enough.”

It was the kind of blunt, emotional truth they didn’t tend to get into with each other. But he felt like if she was going to give it, he owed her. Hell, he owed her everything. “You never gave me any reason not to believe you.” In spite of himself, he could remember everything about her. All the memories he’d tried to forget while she’d been essentially someone else. Always right there. Always pain.

But here in this moment, with her remembering, some of them didn’t feel as much like pain as they had. “Hell, you made Olivia a baby blanket.” Olivia had been his high school girlfriend, and because her parents were friends with his stepdad, they’d run into each other on occasion. There’d been no jealousy on Kirsten’s part there.

Kirsten smiled. It was warm. Friendly. Her. Not the shell of her that her life as Jessica had been.

And still, he didn’t know how to trust it. How to believe it was this easy. Not that her throwing up last night and falling apart was easy. It just seemed…fast. To spend two years in the dark only to remember almost overnight.

Maybe not overnight. She’d claimed to remember things before this, and he could hardly discount her. It was just…

She stood, crossed to him. He tensed in spite of himself. He was just so used to having to hold himself back, having to protect her from everything he felt. And now she remembered and he didn’t know what to do with all the rules he’d set for himself.

They seemed imperative. And very, very tenuous. Especially when she reached up and cupped his face with her palms. When she studied him with big brown eyes, shiny with tears.

“Ellis.”

“We’ve got so much work to do.” His voice was too rough, so he cleared his throat. “The internet is terrible up here. It’ll take me forever to—”

“Ellis.” She wound her arms around his neck, pressed her body to his. Pleasure and pain. Everything they’d been. Everything they’d lost. Everything he still had to do.

“We’ll do all that work,” she said quietly, moving onto her toes so their mouths were at the same height. “We’ll have to. I just need… We lost so much time.”

Did she have any idea? Did the time feel the same to her? Did she have any idea the excruciating pain of remembering? No more than he could imagine what it was like to forget.

So weren’t they at odds again? Even if she remembered. Different places. Different wants, needs.

Except when she pressed her mouth to his, there was only want. Only one need. And she seemed to share it since she was the one pressing herself to him. Kissing him like the weight of losing him sat as heavy on her as losing her had sat on him.

This was his wife. The wife he thought he’d lost in a million different ways.

But she was right here.

KIRSTEN WASN’T FOOLISH enough to think this was wise. And still, she just…needed it. To feel connected to him like this again. To run her hands over his hair. To feel the scrape of his whiskers against her chin. To taste and be tasted. To touch and be touched.

Maybe they had their problems. She wouldn’t pretend that understanding how much there was to lose solved them.

But it put things into perspective. They could work on relationship stuff. They had time now—well, if they survived whatever this was. Together. Together.