Gen couldn’t withstand his charm. “I think you’d have to ask whoever else was involved.”
He wound up shaking his head again, although Gen wasn’t sure whether in consternation or wonder.
“I’d like to get to a chair.”
“How ’bout the couch?”
He looked over at her. “The what?”
Gen pointed. He nodded.
They made it. Barely. Gen wasn’t in the kind of shape it took to keep a very large man upright. Nor had she ever really needed the skills before. Michael had no more than matched her height. Michael had also never seen fit to lose control enough to need assistance of any kind.
In the end, they made it without too much trauma. He sat, and Gen sat alongside him, trying to be unobtrusive about getting her breath back.
“Now then,” she decided with much more confidence than she felt, “I think it’s time for some answers.”
Gen couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. The last thing she really wanted was answers. She couldn’t even handle the questions.
He simply looked over her way and gave another of those weak, self-effacing smiles. “I wish I could help.”
“You have to help,” she insisted shrilly, before finally getting her distress under control. “If you can just tell me who you are. Uh, where you’re from, that kind of thing, you know. Maybe I can get in touch with the authorities and let your family know that you’re okay.”
Rafe just rubbed at his head, right over the mysterious injury. The one that looked suspiciously like a gunshot wound.
But that wasn’t where he’d been injured. He’d been injured right where that other scar—
Gen stiffened. “Your name,” she suggested.
He looked out the darkened window, as if the answer were waiting on the deck. “My name.”
Gen’s chest was beginning to hurt. “Come on, I’m not in the mood to play games here.”
“I am not,” he said, turning helpless eyes to her, “playing games.”
“Then tell me.”
He shrugged. “I can’t.”
“Because?”
Another small movement, this one of frustration. “Because I don’t know that, either.”
Gen didn’t remember getting to her feet. Suddenly she was there, though, vacillating between fright and flight. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know it. Not who I am, or where I came from, or how I got here.”
Gen might have considered this funny if there had been any witnesses. If she hadn’t just lost her husband. If she hadn’t had those damn dreams.
If she weren’t so compelled by a man she’d never met.
“Whatdoyou know?”
He smiled, and she thought her heart would break. “You.” Then he motioned around him. “This place... although it’s different somehow.”
Gen looked around. “Different how?”
But he couldn’t tell her. “It just is. I’m sorry.”
