Conquer the Memories Read Online Free PDF

of every detail. Yes, it had been dark, but the moon had been full and the park had had lights. Craig was sure he would know the filthy bastard again. Pianist’s fingers, long and thin. For the rest of his life, he would remember the shape of that hand on Sonia’s stomach, her horrified cringe at the cur’s touch, the sick helplessness in her eyes.
    Craig closed his own eyes. He was the one who had let it all happen. Skipped out on the bodyguard. Taken Sonia where he knew there was potential danger. A city park, dammit. Charming in the daytime but—he should have known—risky at night. But he’d had it with the asphalt jungle, and had been hungry for grass and trees and privacy. The lake had beckoned…
    No excuse. He had no excuses for himself.
    His mother had died when he was nine; his father when he was seventeen. Craig had fended for himself and fought tooth and nail to make the ranch solvent. Shale, rich in oil, lay under his grazing land, and at the time he found it, the government had been willing to back anyone who could develop a process for extracting oil from shale. Craig knew as much about oil extraction as every other rancher in the area: nothing. Hard and fast, he learned. Hard and fast, he’d learned everything. For years, he’d needed no one, though the tough, hard veneer had worn off once he was old enough, and experienced enough, to no longer need a protective wall around himself. He’d never been able to define precisely his attitude toward Sonia. He’d played a long, wide field before he met her. With no other woman had he ever felt such intense, instinctive surges of protectiveness.
    Sonia was vulnerable. He loved that in her. She believed in people, in their basic goodness; she had such perception and compassion and love in her. The first time he’d touched her, he’d felt a violent urge to destroy anyone who would hurt her, who would dare to harm her. She delighted in teasing him that she’d “been around.” She’d been around like a newborn kitten without claws. Her trust—that gut trust that came from the sweetest core of her—she’d never given to anyone before him.
    He’d failed to earn that trust last night.
    “Craig.”
    His eyes blinked open. Her sleepy ones met his, soft and shadowed, wrenching his heart.
    “Good morning,” he whispered. He had to use both hands to get up from the chair, and ignored the apprentice going wild in his head at even slow-motion efforts. He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “How’s the shoulder?”
    “Fine. Maybe a little sore. Everything’s…fine, except that I feel pumped full of drugs.” She smiled groggily, and then frowned. “Honey, what on earth are you doing here? You’re supposed to be flat on your—”
    He motioned to the empty bed next to her, his choice of where he preferred being flat on his back totally clear.
    Sonia’s smile was sleepy. “This is the women’s ward.”
    “I like women.”
    “You’d better not. You’re already in trouble with me, Mr. Hamilton.”
    “Oh?” He made it back to the chair when he felt he could no longer stand, tugging it closer to her bed so he could touch her.
    “You all but promised to make love to me last night,” she joked groggily. “Lord, what a tease. What kind of way was that to end the evening?”
    “A frustrated one,” he said wryly.
    Slowly, she eased herself up to a sitting position, letting the sheet fall to her waist. The hospital gown made her figure disappear; she looked ten years old with her disheveled mass of blue-black curls and huge turquoise eyes.
    Totally disoriented from the sedatives the doctor had pumped into her, Sonia was finding it a monumental task to concentrate. “Craig, you have a concussion—”
    “A light one,” he lied.
    “Did they tape the rib?”
    He shook his head. Slowly. “They don’t always do that anymore. It’s nothing, Sonia.”
    It wasn’t nothing. As her vision cleared, she could see the terrible bruises, and beneath his natural