Forget-Me-Not Page 2

  Chapter Two

  The next afternoon, Valli reached for her guitar, blessing Charlie for leaving it along with her clothing. It was the first time she'd touched it since the night of her concert and the comfort it brought her was amazing.

  It wasn't wired to an amp and there wasn't a microphone in front of her. It was like the old times when she'd taught herself the chords, watching her favorite singers on television to catch their finger positions.

  There hadn't been enough money at home to run to lessons, but Valli--or Valerie as she'd been back then--had persevered, finally managing to master the simple basic fingering required for a good many of her much-loved folk songs.

  Encouraged by her mother, who would harmonize with her, Valli had made music a part of her life from an early age. Finding it again was healing in so many different ways.

  Settling onto the couch by the window, she gently strummed, listened, tightened and strummed again until it was tuned to her satisfaction. She'd always had a sharp ear for the timbre of a string and wouldn't do anything until it sounded right. The theory of music had come later, but by then, Valli had an amazingly intuitive grasp of where the music should go.

  It was a gift of sorts and one she was grateful for every day of her life. Especially today, when the peace of her surroundings allowed her mind to wander down musical pathways often closed to a busy performer.

  Closing her eyes, Valli let her fingers fall into the C-chord and softly began a basic folk rhythm. Lulled by the sound, she sang the first few words that popped into her head.

  "Down in the valley--"

  "Valley so low..."

  She jumped and yelped, nearly dropping her guitar as a rich male baritone finished the line for her.

  He was standing in her patio doorway, leaning casually against the jamb, arms folded, watching her.

  And smiling.

  Shit, he sure could smile. His teeth were straight and white, his lips crinkled at the corners and his eyes--God, a girl could drown in the blue of those eyes.

  "Valli So-lo. I get it now. I didn't until you started that particular song."

  Valli pulled herself together and tried to ignore the teeny sizzle that smile had caused someplace dark and private. She wasn't the sort of woman to have casual sex and besides that, he didn't know who he was.

  Damn it.

  "Hello. You're John Dish. My next-door-neighbor?" She blinked against the bright sunlight streaming in.

  He walked into the shade and grimaced. "Sorry about the name. I may not know much, but I'll bet you anything you want that it isn't the one I was born with."

  "Well, they had to call you something." Valli kept her voice practical. "Please don't think anybody gossiped." She flashed him a quick grin. "I saw you doing your pushups. I asked."

  He grinned back. "I'm flattered."

  "So you have amnesia."

  "And you have--what's the word--exhaustion?" He lifted an eyebrow and let his gaze roam over her tank top and shorts, coming to rest on her bare feet. "I have to say that if this is what exhaustion looks like, then I recommend it."

  "Thanks." Valli paused. "I think."

  "It's a compliment." He gestured to the other end of the couch. "May I?"

  "Sure."

  "I asked too." He produced a folded paper from his back pocket, sat down and ruffled the pages. "All about Valli Solo, the latest singing sensation." He waggled his eyebrows at her over the top of the paper. "Quite a story. And the staff here loves your music. I've heard it several days in a row."

  "Oh boy." Valli couldn't help a chuckle. "Sorry about that."

  "Don't be. It's nice."

  "Nice?" She bristled. "Nice? I'll have you know I worked my ass off to write those songs. Nice isn't a word that I really like to hear. Gorgeous, maybe. Melodious, definitely. Haunting is good too. But nice? If you tell me they're sweet, you can just haul your butt off that couch and leave."

  He ignored her, merely crossing his long legs. His really nice, well-muscled, jean-clad loooong legs. His feet were as bare as hers, and for the first time in her life, Valli found herself obsessing over a man's feet. He had delicious toes. Straight, dappled with a little masculine hair and ideally proportioned. She could easily imagine nibbling on them...

  Christ. What the hell was the matter with her? She blushed.

  As if he knew the direction of her thoughts, John wiggled one of his delicious toes. "Ahem." He rattled the paper. "Says here you're self-taught on the guitar, write your own songs and are about as clean as it gets. No drugs, no alcohol, no scandals. Mothers love you, teenagers love you..." His voice tapered off as he looked at her hopefully. "It doesn't mention sex. Do you have sex?"

  Valli glowered at him. "None of your business." Her conscience kicked her soundly. "Okay, yes. I have sex. Satisfied?"

  "Not yet." His grin was pure wickedness and his eyes caught the light, turning a silvery blue. He was just so damn edible--

  "Who are you, John? Do you remember anything?" The words came unbidden from Valli's mouth. And as they did, an image flashed before her eyes. A woman in a hippie outfit. A woman who'd looked uncannily like Janis Joplin.

  "Oh my God."

  "What?" John tossed the paper aside. "You okay? You want some water or something?"

  Valli snorted. "No. Thanks anyway. I'm fine. I just remembered something."

  "Lucky you." His smile was wry.

  "Seriously. It's the weirdest thing." How much to tell him? He'd think she was a nutcase for sure. And if he ever mentioned anything, the tabloids would have a field day with it. Valli Solo seeks rehab for mental issues. Country singer sees ghosts. Is Valli having Elvis's baby?

  "What's weird?" John regarded her steadily.

  "Just--I don't know. Right before I got really ill, I sort of remember a dream I had. I was told I'd meet someone like you. A man who was really important." She peeked at him from beneath her eyelashes. "Any chance you're important?"

  "Me?" John huffed a breath that blew the hair off his forehead. "Sure. I'm important. So important that there isn't one missing persons report out there that fits my description. Not one single soul has expressed any interest in my whereabouts." His mouth turned down. "So yeah, I guess I'm real important."

  Valli could hear the pain beneath the words. "Do you think you're married?"

  He looked up quickly at her, then glanced down at his hand. "No." He waved his fingers in the air. "See? I'm tanned. No tan line on my ring finger. No dents, no evidence that I've ever worn a wedding ring."

  "A lot of married men don't."

  "I would."

  Valli watched his mouth firm as he said the words. Yeah, he would.

  "Well, if we work on the assumption that I had a dream visitation by a something-or-other from the spirit world, then you must be the person I'm scheduled to meet." She kept her tone light. "We've established that you're probably not married. We've established that I've had sex." She batted her eyelashes at him. "Perhaps we're supposed to fall madly in love, have a wild and tragic affair and I'll write a song about it that will go down in the annals of music history as the most...the most..."

  His roar of laughter interrupted Valli's fantasy. She wasn't really pleased either. It was a rather nice little scenario, she thought. Especially the affair parts.

  "What's so funny?"

  "I'm sorry." John snorted down his chuckles. "It's just refreshing to talk to someone with an imagination. A real person, not a doctor. I'd forgotten how much fun it could be." His face stilled. "It's pretty bad, you know. This forgetting thing."

  Valli felt for him, her sympathy stirred by something in his expression. "I can't begin to imagine that. How it must feel."

  His head turned away from her as he looked out the window. "The docs have asked me to describe it. I can't. There's nothing there. No memories at all. I look in the mirror and I see a face that I can't put a name to. I've been here six weeks or so and it's taken me that long to learn how to shave. How stupid is that?" He shook his head
. "A guy learns his own face. I don't know this one."

  His fingers clenched into a fist as they rested on one knee. "I've been prodded, poked, scanned and tested. Over and over again. Nobody can find anything wrong with me. There's just this great gaping hole where my life ought to be." He closed his mouth, his lips a firm line.

  Valli knew there was so much he wasn't saying, so much he was keeping inside. She found herself aching for him and reached for his clenched hand. "Look, I'm sorry about all this. I can't put myself in your place and I'm no expert on any of this amnesia stuff." She thought for a moment. "But you obviously have some memories."

  He glanced at her. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, logically--you speak English." She followed her own line of thought. "You do know how to shave, even if you don't recognize your face. You work out, so your body remembers various fitness exercises. You can dress yourself, do all the basic things people do." She blinked. "And you can sing."

  "Huh?"

  "When you were standing there? I was playing and singing Down in the Valley. It's a real old classic folk song. You knew the next line."

  John stared at her with an arrested expression. "I guess I did, didn't I."

  "Yep." Valli nodded. "We should try some more songs. See if anything clicks."

  She reached for her guitar, but never made it. A voice made her jump.

  "John?" It was a nurse, peering in from the patio. "Oh here you are. I got worried." Her gaze flickered from Valli to John and back again. "Is everything okay?"

  "Sure." John shrugged. "Just being neighborly with Valli here."

  "Well, isn't that nice."

  Valli winced. John might not be receptive to the nurses and their subtle invitations, but it was quite clear some of them weren't keen on seeing him mingle with a patient, no matter how innocent the mingling was.

  "Anyway, it's time for your appointment with Dr. Felix."

  John sighed. "Another MRI, I guess." He turned to Valli. "Can we do this again? I like your ideas. I've got nothing to lose at this point, and if all else fails, at least I'll get a private concert." He smiled.

  Valli's heart thudded as the force of his blue eyes crashed into hers. He could have all the private concerts he wanted if he'd keep smiling at her like that. Hell, she'd do 'em naked if he asked.

  The world all but disappeared around Valli as she stared at John. Heat curled deep inside her, the breath seeped from her lungs, and for a few seconds, she was the one with amnesia. She forgot how to do anything but gaze at him, losing herself in an odd sense of longing and need.

  Music echoed somewhere in her brain, a quick shiver of excitement brushed over her skin and she could've sworn her body quickened into sexual arousal in microseconds. Her panties were definitely damp. Holy shit.

  "I'll take that as a yes." John's voice was a little rough as he stood. Perhaps he felt it too.

  "Oh--er--yes. Yes, that would be fine." Valli jumped up too and put her guitar carefully down beside the couch. "I'll look forward to it."

  She was still tingling as he nodded and walked away into the sunshine.

  ----

  John sighed as he climbed onto the bed of the MRI machine. He'd been in and out of it so much, he'd joked it had conformed to his body. His doctor had chuckled and added that John would probably be developing a magnetic personality and should try to stay away from large amounts of cutlery.

  John had responded with the comment that, in that case, he'd like to be housed next door to a woman with nipple rings.

  It had gotten a laugh out of everybody, but now--after his time with Valli--nipples, and the breasts they were attached to, were uppermost in his mind. Sexual thoughts rippled through him and he'd nearly gotten hard when she'd stared at him so intensely. There was a massive attraction there and, if he wasn't mistaken, it wasn't only on his part.

  Of course, she was used to dealing with fans. Perhaps it was part of her personality, this charm and effect she had on him. Maybe all her male worshippers got the same thing. But somehow, he didn't think so.

  He certainly didn't want to think so.

  John settled his head onto the small pillow, assumed his most relaxed position and waited for the MRI process to begin. Again.

  "Okay, John?"

  "Yep. Have at it, Doc." He closed his eyes. Once again, his brain would be "sliced" into images that revealed what was going on inside. Or rather what wasn't going on inside. Little or no activity in the areas that correlated to short and long term memory.

  His doctor, an expert in the field of cognitive neuroscience, had recognized a goldmine of research possibilities when he'd first scanned John's brain. Their sessions had included discussions of encoding, storage and retrieval. They'd wandered into realms of transient patterns, the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe and the hippocampus.

  When Dr. Felix had mentioned the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, John had raised his hand and asked permission to go the bathroom. He promised he'd be back in time for the quiz and he'd have the paper finished after recess.

  Dr. Felix had understood, apologized and tried to keep things in layman's terms from that point on.

  There was nothing physiologically wrong with John's brain. No tumors, masses or roadblocks. No narrowing of any arteries, no interference with spinal chord functions or blood flow. No blood chemistry imbalance. The first few weeks of tests revealed to everyone that, in essence, John had a perfectly normal human brain on top of a perfectly normal human body.

  Except for the fact that the MRI showed no neural activity in the memory centers. Well, duh. John could have told them that and saved everyone a lot of time. But, being thorough physicians, Dr. Felix and his team needed the test results in front of them along with their patient.

  Fortunately, no one was inclined to want to get inside his head, literally speaking. There was nothing to biopsy or remove. And John was not in favor of medications, insisting that he wanted to remember, not trip out on some psycho-hallucinogenic compound. Having ruled out the organic causes of amnesia, the doctors were inclined to agree.

  All of which left the functional cause as the only answer. Something in John's head was barricading his memories behind a solid wall.

  He was physically in great shape. There were no indications of excessive alcohol or drug consumption. Other than the few bruises on his body when he arrived, there was no trauma. Dr. Felix proudly announced that John didn't have retrograde amnesia, traumatic amnesia, transient global amnesia or several other types of amnesia.

  To which John had replied with a small "whoopee" and a wiggle of his fingers. The news didn't really seem to warrant a party.

  Which left them with dissociative amnesia, possibly the Fugue state. Rare and unusual--although overused by novelists--this particular amnesia was explained to John as being the result of some psychological trauma. It was, according to the expert definition, an inability to recall some or all of one's past.

  Again, John could have told them that, without any of the fancy terminology.

  Something in his past had made his brain close down and hang out the "Gone Fishing" sign. All he had to do was figure out what it was. And of course, since he couldn't remember anything, that was a moot point.

  Sexual abuse? God help him, they'd checked. No, he hadn't been raped. He showed signs of one old injury--a broken shinbone that they estimated happened when he was seven.

  Nothing led anywhere at all. He'd spent hours with various therapists, looking at everything from inkblots to girlie magazines and confirming his heterosexual nature. He'd donated sperm at their insistence--in private at his--verifying that everything worked as it should. The little wiggler count was on the high side and he was disease free.

  Both good to know, but not terribly useful.

  The machine thrummed around John as he ran over all these recent memories. He could recall everything that had happened since he'd stumbled into this odd place. It was just the void before that he was missing.

  According to his
teeth, he was around thirty-four. So the void covered three decades, give or take. Quite a gap in anyone's life.

  And yet today, he had something new to hang his hat on--he could sing. He knew the words to an old folk song. With his eyes closed, John tried to think of other songs, other music. But all he could hear was Valli's voice singing from her CD.

  A click distracted him. "John? What were you thinking just then?"

  John frowned a little. "I was thinking about music. About the woman next door to me. She's a singer."

  "Okay. Thank you." The intercom clicked off.

  A few moments later, his bed slide out of the machine and he stretched before sitting up and looking at his physician hopefully. "Anything?"

  Dr. Felix tilted his head to one side. "Maybe."

  John's heart picked up speed. "What do you mean, maybe?" When it came to straight talking, doctors made a corkscrew look like a knitting needle.

  "Well, we saw some flickers of activity in the frontal lobe. Apparently when you were thinking about music." The doctor walked to John's side. "I'd certainly encourage you to keep up that line of thought. It might be a little crack in the wall you've built in here." He tapped John's skull. "Or maybe it's the woman. I can't tell."

  "Hmm." John's voice was noncommittal.

  "Look, John. This isn't something I ordinarily recommend to patients, but if you're attracted to her, you might want to pursue it. Maybe the stimulation of sex will open a few neural pathways."

  John stared at him. "You're telling me to screw my next door neighbor to get my memory back?"

  Dr. Felix had the grace to blush. "Well, not in so many words, of course. No. But I'm ready to explore anything that gets a response. There was a definite response. I'm thinking sexual interest might help."

  "Gosh." John swallowed. "You may have chosen the wrong field, Doc. I can't begin to imagine how many teenage boys would love to have had you as their general practitioner."

  "Just think about it, okay? Maybe that's all that's needed." Dr. Felix shrugged.

  John left the lab with a sense of shock and a strong urge to take the doctor's prescription. Would he think about it? Of course. He might not be able to remember a damn thing, but his body sure did. And he'd responded to Valli in the most natural of ways. She was attractive, charming, talented and funny. She had all the requisite attributes like breasts and thighs and--