Page 45 of Ice Cold Christmas

“What was the first thing you remembered?”

“Snow. Blood. Fear.” She licked her lips. “A car coming at me.” The nightmare that replayed so many times when she tried to sleep.

But there were some things you could never escape.

Hunter had vanished after the chopper landed. She had suspicions about where he’d gone. And her first suspicion… “I’m assuming Hunter is accessing my hospital records from my time up north?”

“Of course.”

Of course. “Won’t he need my permission to do that? Shouldn’t I sign a release or something?”

A soft rumble of laughter escaped him. “We have ways to work around that. Don’t worry.”

Too late. She worried all the time. “Every single thing I’m telling you is the truth. I woke up in a hospital bed. I remembered nothing about my past. It was that way for a while. Then the pieces started sliding back to me.”

He rose from the couch. A slow, graceful lift of power. He began to close in on her.

She didn’t retreat. It was his house. Where could she go? And wasn’t she tired of running? “When I realized I was Melody, I thought about staying away.”

He stopped, mid-stalk. “What?”

“I researched her—I mean, I researched me. And each time I considered coming here, to Richmond, I would get terrified. Like my body knew something my mind didn’t want to face. I could have stayed away. I could have just started over. A new life.”

He shook his head. Resumed his stalk.

A wall was behind her, one painted a dark gray. He stopped right in front of her. His hands rose, but he didn’t touch her. Instead, his palms flattened on the wall. “I would have found you.”

Maybe.

“I would never have stopped looking for you.”

Her heart beat faster. Wasn’t that what she wanted? So very badly? To know that she’d mattered enough to someone that the person was looking for her? “How did you know I wasn’t dead?”

A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Some days, I feared you were.” There was pain in his voice. A dark, savage rage. “But I was going to search until I found you, whether that was you…living, breathing, beautiful…” One hand left the wall and curled under her chin. “Or you cold and…” He stopped. His nostrils flared. “I wasn’t giving up until I found your body. I had to search. You were there one minute, gone the next, and sometimes, I felt like I had lost my mind when I lost you.”

She ached for him.

“You don’t remember us.”

“No.” So far, she’d remembered nothing personal about him. Couldn’t recall any of their time together.

“You stare at me, and you see a stranger.”

“Not…exactly.”

His eyes narrowed. Such dark, dark eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, I stare at you, and I get terrified.” The same way she used to get terrified when she thought of returning to Richmond. Like my body knows something my mind doesn’t want to face.

Victor backed away as if he’d been burned. “What?”

“When I saw you at the estate for the first time, it was like an electric shock went through me. My first instinct was to run.”

Victor shook his head. “I would chase you. You can’t leave me again.”

“I’m not running.” She wet her lips. His dark gaze followed the movement. The darkness in his eyes seemed to heat. “Because I’m afraid, but at the same time…I-I feel this pull to you that I don’t understand.”

A mocking smile curved his lips. “We always had that pull. You wanted to hate me.”