“Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll google you. And your wife. And your parents.”
He coughed several times. “I’m not ready.”
She needed to respect his pace and not hijack his story just to satisfy her own curiosity. However, she was itching to look up info. On Jonah— Not Jonah.Jeremiah. It was going to take effort to replace his false name with his real one. She wanted more info on Jeremiah but also his wife. Was his wife the woman in his nightmares?
“I feel sick,” he said.
“You are sick. But you are not, apparently, a mechanic.”
“The race car driver part sounds good. That feels like it fits. But if I’m a recognizable person from a recognizable family, how come no one reported me missing?”
“I don’t know.” They’d looked high and low for missing-person reports.
“Do you think I’m estranged from my family?”
“Youaredifficult to get along with, so maybe.”
“You’redifficult to get along with. If I was difficult, it was only because I was in extreme pain. What was your excuse?” He lifted a teasing eyebrow.
“I was afflicted with a man in extreme pain.”
The nurse returned to escort him to the scans. Jeremiah stood to follow. “Please don’t look up more about me while I’m gone.”
“If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Then I won’t.”
Remy was left alone in the exam room. Twining her hands together in her lap, she let her thoughts unspool.
He’d said he felt sick. She felt a little sick herself. Why was she so rattled to discover he was famous? He’d worn that expensive watch. His haircut, his bearing, his vocabulary, his accent all spoke to the fact that he’d come from prestige and money. Which was why she’d called him Duke. He’d turned out to be precisely the type of man she’d suspected him to be.
She was rattled because she deeply mistrusted fame and money. Jeremiah had both. Which meant he truly,trulywasn’t Jonah anymore. Jonah was lost to her. Jonah had never existed, truth be told. Her houseguest had been Jeremiah all along.
Now, thanks to Dr. Denny, his past life was coming for him. She could feel it rushing up—about to crash into his present. Soon he’d have an endless supply of the things he’d been deprived of with her—credit cards, clothes, expensive food, luxurious lodging, his loved ones. Soon his family—most notably his wife—would arrive.
Grief lumped in her throat.
Remy! Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve spent untold hours trying to find his family. At last, they would be told that Jonah—Jeremiahwas alive. She’d be able to surrender custody of him, which was what she’d wanted all along. He would rightfully be surrounded by the people closest to him. He’d no longer need her. And she’d no longer have to deal with the most infuriating and spoiled of men. She should be rejoicing.
So why was it that, in her heart of hearts, dejection reigned?
Be careful what you wish for.
Jeremiah was procrastinating.
Clearly, though, Remy wasn’t going to stand for it much longer. Any second now she was going to demand he give her the go-ahead to look up details about himself and his wife.
He watched her pacing, pale hair fanning out, arms crossed. Her quick footsteps communicated her stress.
The scans had returned good news and bad. The good news—his head wound had healed. The bad news—he was suffering from pneumonia, so he’d been admitted to the hospital. They’d sent him to this room on the fourth floor, forced him to change into a hospital gown, and predicted that he’d only need to stay for a night or two. It was now late afternoon, and the light had begun to fade from the sky beyond his window.
He was sick of being stuck in beds. In this particular bed, the top half elevated so that he was reclining, he was also saddled with an IV dripping drugs into his system.
Remy came to a halt and faced off with him. “Jeremiah.”
“You’ve saidJonahwith irritation a lot of times. But this is the first time you’ve saidJeremiahwith irritation.” What was wrong with him that he actuallylikedit when she said it that way?
