A Box Too Light

How could simply looking at him make it hard to breathe? She could scarcely believe that, before she lost her memory, she had been bound to this man in any way at all.

"Mommy!"

Jude, who had been in the kitchen, flung aside the snack he was eating and came running for the elevator.

Zena met him with a bright smile. Afraid the man might bristle at the child calling her Mommy, she stole a glance at Dane.

"Thank you for sending the car. Because of you, I..."

"Enough."

Dane felt the corner of his mouth twist of its own accord.

The woman who had abandoned their child had returned after three years with the title of nanny hung around her neck. A hot surge of bitterness rose in him. He cut her off and flicked a glance at the suitcase she had dragged in behind her.

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

Mindful of the child watching her, Zena fought to keep her expression composed. Dane jerked his chin at her—follow.

They stopped in the bedroom where she had woken the last time. The only difference was a vanity that had not been there before, and a desk with a pink laptop set upon it.

"Use this room. The bed and the closet haven't been touched by anyone, anyway."

"Thank you, Mr. Hunter."

Zena's wandering gaze snagged on a brown box sitting alone at the corner of the desk.

"But that..."

"It arrived from Chicago yesterday. You can open it."

"They're things you kept before you lost your memory."

Zena, frozen where she stood, finally moved. Thump, thump, thump—the pulse at her temple began to hammer.

She crossed to the desk and lifted the box, sealed tight with tape. For something meant to hold the traces of a lost life, it was far too light. Her hands, which had been moving without rest, went still. Zena's eyes fixed on the open box. Dane's fixed on her.

The hand that had hovered in the air reached for the photograph lying on top.

As if time had stopped, Zena stared for a long while at the child version of herself trapped inside the picture, and at the middle-aged woman beside her. It was not hard to see that the bob-haired woman who resembled her was her mother.

"Remember anything?"

Dane asked it like an interrogation, his narrowed eyes locked on her. Zena shook her head.

"No."

The word came out thick with pain.

She had thought she would feel at least some familiar ache of longing. She had expected even a scrap of memory to surface. Instead only disappointment and emptiness filled her head. Choked by the bleakness rising in her throat, Zena stood silent for a long time.

"No need to rush. There's hypnotherapy. Medication can help bring it back, too."

It was Dane who finally broke the hush.

"Have you eaten."

"I'm not hungry. I'm fine."

Wound too tight to have an appetite, she had barely managed a proper meal all day. At this rate she doubted she would eat anything before tomorrow. Just then she sensed someone at the bedroom door. She looked past Dane's back. In the open doorway, the child was watching them both.

"Jude..."

The moment his name was called, Jude ran straight to her and threw himself into her arms. The warmth of his small body lifted the mood that had sunk so low, and a smile came to her lips of its own accord.

Dane forced down a breath gone rough.

When Zena left, Jude had been an infant who had not even reached three months. After that, a single nanny had looked after him without a break. Once she quit for reasons of health, the boy grew shy and would not easily go to just anyone. And yet, since meeting Zena the other day, Jude had asked for her again and again. So this was what they meant by blood running thicker than water.

"Dr. Griwell will be here a little later."

Who was Dr. Griwell again? Only when Zena registered the gaze fixed on her forehead did she understand. He meant to have the stitches taken out of the wound there. Aside from when it was disinfected, her bangs hid it, and she had not paid it much mind.

"Thank you for looking after it, Mr. Hunter."

Lips full and red against her pale face turned toward him with a smile. The innocent eyes that could disarm a person, and the mouth that curled at the end of a smile—those had not changed.

Dane dragged his gaze off her face. His heart answered with an intensity that felt almost offensive.

"I'll be busy starting tomorrow. Look after Jude while I'm gone."

One week since she had moved into Dane Hunter's penthouse.

Because Jude called her Mommy every time, she had watched people's eyebrows creep upward more than once. It was a truly awkward fix to be in.

"You have to call me Zena. All right?"

Tilting her head down until her eyes met the child's, Zena pressed him.

"Come on. Okay?"

"Go on. Try saying Zena."

"Don't wanna."

"If you keep calling me Mommy, Daddy might get angry."

"Why?"

A name that led people to misunderstand whatever lay between her and Dane Hunter was a problem. Explaining that to a child, though, was another matter entirely.

"If you call me Mommy, don't you think your real mommy might be sad?"

Watching the boy's eyes fill with a sullen hurt, Zena rushed to add more.

"Then how about this? When it's just the two of us, you can call me Mommy. And only when other people are around, you call me Zena."

Jude's eyes sparkled with a sweetness particular to children, and he nodded.

"Then... right now, Mommy?"

"Yes."

Stroking the back of the child burrowing into her arms, Zena sank into thought.

She had expected to spend the whole day glued to his side, looking after him. She had been wrong.

Jude was little, but he kept an incredibly packed schedule. Every other day he met a specialist in a neural training program meant to ease his tic disorder, and on top of that he had lessons in skating, swimming, and art therapy.

So the hours she actually spent with him came down to the stretch from waking until noon, and from dinner until bedtime.

He went to sleep later than other children his age. Unlike Aiden, who had been out like clockwork at eight in the evening, Jude would lie in bed while she read to him and only stare back at her with wide, bright eyes.

Before long, Zena found the trick to putting him down. It was lying in the bed with him and stroking his back. If she held him close, patted him, and breathed against the small round crown of his head, he would bury his face in her arms and be asleep in less than fifteen minutes.

She watched him sleep, his breath coming soft and even, then brought her hand to the soft cheek shadowed by long lashes.

A smile formed on its own. How could a little boy be this pretty? There was not a single feature she could find fault with. She had no way of knowing what his mother's face looked like, but she could tell Dane Hunter's blood ran thick in him.

Zena buried her nose in the child's hair and drew a deep breath.

There was a strange power in this boy. Lying here with him in her arms, her heart grew peaceful beyond words. The sweet scent particular to a child cleared the thoughts drifting through her mind. She pressed a light kiss to Jude's forehead, then quietly sat up.

Back in her own bedroom, she picked up the diary on the desk and perched at the foot of the bed.

Over the past few days she had gone through it from the first page to the last, determined not to miss a single line. It was not enough to reconstruct her old life in any detail, but one thing was clear. She had not lived comfortably off her parents.

Most of what the diary held was deadlines for school assignments and schedules for part-time work. Restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, cleaning companies—the places she had worked were almost too many to count.

She did not seem to have kept any close friends, either. Most of the numbers in her contacts belonged to the shops where she had worked. Maybe that was why one name, repeated page after page, stood out so sharply.

Ryan.

She had no idea what it meant, only that sums of money were written beside a man's name. Expenditures she could not make sense of. Had she lent him money? He might have been someone tied to one of her jobs. But there was no shop name, and no phone number.

"Haa..."

Chances to cross paths with Dane Hunter were almost nonexistent.

If she could only see his face, she might ask him this and that. She could not see him at all, and so there was no way to catch him long enough for a conversation. He would surely put on that icy look the instant they met, but he was the only person she could turn to.

Does he even rest on the weekends?

She had already heard he was busy, but the time he spent with his child was far too little. A father, she thought, ought not to neglect his boy like this.

Zena changed into her pajamas and lay down. Thirst came over her all at once. She hauled her languid body upright, slipped her feet into white slippers, and walked the hall where low LED lights ran in a dim line.

When she opened the refrigerator, juices and drinks of every color caught her eye.

What to drink? Her gaze rolled, then snagged on the canned beer sitting on the bottom shelf.

She did not know what she had been like before, but for at least the last three years she had never touched alcohol. Unable to confirm her age, the Raymonds could not offer her a drink, and she herself had never thought to try one.

According to Dane Hunter, she was twenty-six now.

It should be all right to try, shouldn't it?

Boldly she took out a beer, popped the tab, and carefully took a sip. Sharp foam, and then a sweet-bitter taste spreading through her mouth.

Hm. Zena made a small sound through her nose. Another mouthful slid down her throat. It was not as harsh as she had expected, and it tasted all right. Standing right there, she emptied about half the can. The cold beer seemed to chase her sleep clean away.

I'll finish the rest in my room. She turned with that thought—and came up hard against someone standing at her back.

"Ah!"

Startled, Zena dropped the can. But the alcohol that rushed in to fill her nose was not the smell of beer spilled across the floor.

"M-Mr. Hunter?"

Dane's breath, as he looked down at her with his head tipped, was thick with liquor.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were here."

She apologized in a rush and wiped up the beer that had splashed in every direction. It did not feel like something she ought to be sorry for, but she had collided with the owner of the house, and so the apology seemed to be hers.

Feigning calm, she finished with the floor and slowly straightened.

Dane was still standing exactly where he had been. On a face sunk in shadow, a hard masculine jaw and a seductive mouth stood out.

"When did you get in?"

No answer came back. Between the open collar of a white dress shirt, two buttons undone, his throat moved.

"You've been drinking."

"Yeah."

It lasted only a moment, but a faint smile brushed the corner of Dane's mouth. He... smiled? It was not the icy cynicism or the sneer she had met until now. Was it the drink? Half-lidded, ominous ash-gray eyes held her fast.

A strange chill crept over her shoulders. Zena rubbed her arms and breathed so he would not hear. He's very drunk. Otherwise there was no way he would smile at her like this.

He swept his tongue along his lip and took one step closer. Breath, nearer still, scattered hot across her face.

"Seems like the two of us want the same thing."

"...What?"

The same thing. She could not read the intent behind the words. Looking into Zena's eyes, wavering with tension, Dane smiled, cold.

"Have a drink."

"It's late..."

Caught off guard by the offer, she let her hesitation show.

Dane glanced at the empty can in her hand, let out a short laugh, and turned his back. From the liquor cabinet he took a bottle of amber liquor and two glasses, then moved into the living room.

A thin pour. The sound of a glass filling broke the quiet. Dane sat back against the sofa and tipped his own, his gaze fixed on her as she approached with an awkward look on her face. Was this what it felt like to be stripped bare by a look alone? Zena bit her lip and fought to keep her composure.

"Drink."

She lowered herself uncertainly onto the sofa and picked up the glass. She had only tilted it near her nose, and the harsh smell of alcohol struck her. Carefully she took a sip. At the strong taste spreading through her mouth, her brow drew tight of its own accord.