Love at First Sight - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,55

said. “Twenty years ago. That’s when they came out. Every girl my age wanted one for Christmas that year. I got mine early, for my eighth birthday.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said, not wanting the doll to be Liz’s. Not wanting to believe she’d put it into the grave. Tangled a piece of hose around its neck, just as nature supposedly had done to her baby?

He didn’t want to think about the person who’d buried the doll. Or about the real baby, Joanna Kay. Could this mean that she was still alive? He knew that was what Karen was hoping. But he wasn’t so sure. None of this made much sense. Who in his right mind would bury a doll?

At the hospital, Denny had been given something to sleep and was out like a light, visiting hours were hours away and the nurse wouldn’t let Jack and Karen stay.

Jack stopped by his apartment, just long enough to check the mail and answering machine. On the spur of the moment, he grabbed something for Karen and stuck it into his pocket.

Back in the Jeep, he noticed how exhausted she looked. She should have been convalescing. Not digging up graves. She looked so small and frail. It drew on every protective instinct in him. “I’m taking you home.”

She smiled. “Home. I love the sound of that.”

He smiled over at her, choked up by the rush of emotions she evoked in him. Just as impulsively as a few minutes before when he’d dug it out of the drawer in his apartment, he pulled the small velvet box from his jeans pocket. “With everything that’s happened I forgot to give you this.”

She stared down at the box, her eyes lighting up. He watched her take it, her fingers trembling, and for one moment he thought he’d only made matters worse.

But then she opened it, saw the thin worn gold band and said, “Oh, Jack.”

“It was my grandmother’s.” That was all he could get out. He’d seen her glance at her naked ring finger. He didn’t want her to think that her husband hadn’t cared. Everything else might be a lie, but he did care. God, how he cared for this woman.

She slipped the ring on her finger. It was only a little loose on her slim finger. She looked up at him, love glowing in her eyes, the exhaustion and horror of the night washed away for the moment.

He couldn’t have asked for anything more than that. He started the Jeep and drove toward the lodge. Home. He didn’t care that it wasn’t true. He blocked out the guilt and the voice that tried to warn him he was about to make the worst mistake of all.

Karen curled against him. He put his arm around her and pulled her close as they drove through what little was left of the night.

A COOL BREEZE sighed at the panes as Karen padded barefoot into the living room. She could see her husband silhouetted against the fading darkness beyond the front window. He stood motionless, his hands buried in his jeans pockets as he looked out. She stopped to stare at his broad shoulders, his strong back, the ache in her almost overwhelming to hold him. If only she could remember, then there would be no reason they couldn’t make love. No reason he couldn’t lie next to her and hold her in the darkness of the bedroom.

Or would there be? Why did she sense there was more to it than her injury and memory loss? That whatever was troubling Jack had something to do with her? With them?

“Darling?” she called softly.

He turned, his eyes hooded but she saw his reaction to her standing there in the long silk nightgown, the fabric falling over her curves, cupping and skimming, as sensual as any garment she’d ever owned. The perfect honeymoon attire. She’d purchased it earlier on the way to her shop for grave-digging tools. She’d run into a small boutique while Jack waited in the Jeep.

Now she realized the only thing that would make the gown more perfect was to have Jack take it off her. Slowly, lovingly. To feel his hands brush over the silk, over her expectant body.

“Karen,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse.

She moved to him, joining him at the window. In the distance she could see Missoula’s lights, twinkling like stars on a dark canvas of velvet black.

“Jack, I don’t care what the doctor said,” she whispered as she ran her hand along