Read When the Storm Breaks for Free Online Page A

and hitting your head again. Aidan will call your friend while we talk.”
    Sean gently swiveled her legs back on the bed and drew the sheet over their pale, distracting length. He had to work very hard to keep his eyes on hers and off the sleekly muscled line of calf and thigh.
    Even with the distraction of her pounding head, Claire shivered at the touch of his hands. Considering the fact that she had been handled like a piece of meat by complete strangers ever since entering the hospital, she told herself that her reaction was ridiculous.
    But this man didn’t feel like a stranger.
    She looked away from Sean’s face to his hands. They were very nice—large, with long, tapered fingers and neatly trimmed nails. A sprinkling of dark hair dusted the back of each knuckle. She tried to recall what Olivia had said about a man with big hands. Then she remembered, and blushed.
    “Do you remember your friend’s number?” Aidan asked.
    Claire gave him the number and he walked to the far end of the room, dialing his cell phone as he went.
    Sean waited until she faced him again. When she simplystudied him for a long moment, he raised a questioning eyebrow.
    “Sorry, I just feel like—you seem very familiar,” she said, embarrassed.
    He was surprised she felt the same thing he did, a kind of visceral recognition of the other person. It had been bothering him. So he told her what he had been telling himself. “I’ve been sitting by your bed for almost twelve hours, and sometimes you’d wake up and look right at me. Naturally I seem familiar.”
    The idea of him watching her as she slept should have made Claire uncomfortable, but his matter-of-fact words reassured her. “I guess that would do it.”
    Aidan came back to Claire’s bed and sat in the nearby chair. “Your friend is on her way. I didn’t tell her much, just that you were injured but would be fine.”
    “Thank you. She’s quite the mother hen, so I know she’ll be worried.” That was an understatement. Olivia would probably get multiple speeding tickets on the way down Wisconsin Avenue.
    Sean put his hand on Claire’s arm. “I know you’ve been through a very difficult time. I spoke to Dr. Springer, and he said you couldn’t remember anything after leaving work Friday evening, but that might change as your brain heals itself. Have you been able to remember anything else?”
    “I just have some images in my head. Some feelings.”
    “Like what?”
    “I was walking, then I stopped short. A man smiling—a nasty, mean smile. I was afraid, and I remember running. Being chased.” Her eyes stared ahead, unfocused. She shivered and blinked, then looked at Sean. “Nothing really makes sense, because there’s no context. I don’tknow when it was, where I was, what I was doing there. It’s like looking at pictures in a photo album but not knowing the story behind them.” She frowned and tried to hold a thought that was teasing just at the edges of her memory. “Photos.”
    “What?” Sean asked, leaning toward her.
    “I looked at that cruel smile and thought…thought I’d seen a photo of the man smiling at me. The idea just popped in my head. It was…surreal.”
    “Good.” He took her hands and spoke soothingly. “What did the man look like?”
    She tried to remember. After a full minute of silence, all she had was a vicious headache. “I don’t know. I had to get away, so I ran. I just ran. That’s all.”
    Sean’s hands tightened around hers in an instinctive protest. To come so close, to have an eyewitness to the crime, and yet come away with nothing. Shit.
    Aidan murmured reassuringly to her as she freed her hands from Sean’s.
    “I’m so sorry.” Claire wiped her clammy forehead with the back of her arm. “I just can’t remember anything clearly.”
    Sean paced toward the door, running his hand through his hair and then letting his fingers rest on the back of his neck. Silently he considered the possibilities, revising his approach