Remember Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #3)(28)

A woman in a crisp military uniform sat with her back to us, hunched over a desk. She was poring over a folder of files that looked suspiciously like the ones Dr. Rajeet had shown me. Ryan knocked on the open door and pulled me into the room. “Dr. Haggerty?”

The woman swiveled in her chair, beaming a bright smile at Ryan. She was as harsh-looking as Major Wilks—a military woman to her core. Somewhere in her mid-thirties, she was tall and slender with pale skin, dark-brown eyes, and brunette hair pulled back into a severe bun. If not for the warm smile that seemed out of place on her, I might have been afraid to sit on her exam table for fear she’d take pleasure in torturing me. I wondered if the smile was always there, or if she simply had a weakness for Ryan. I was guessing the latter when she stood and greeted him, saying, “Heya, Goldilocks!”

Ryan looked at me and sighed playfully. “The ACEs have a thing for nicknames.” As if I hadn’t figured that one out yet. “Romeo and Loverboy are bad enough, but the good doctor here likes to torment me the most with Goldilocks.”

I resisted a grin as I glanced at his shiny golden-blond hair styled very much like Captain America’s. (After the Cap gets his modern makeover. Not his dorky World War II haircut.)

“Could be worse,” I said, voice flat. “Your hair could be green.”

Ryan scanned my hair, then dropped his gaze down the entire length of my body and back up. His expression turned to one that made my pulse spike and my mouth dry up. “I think it’s hot.”

I scoffed. It was definitely not hot.

“What made you decide to go green, anyway? I thought you hated it.”

“What do you mean? It’s always been this color.”

“Underneath, maybe.” Ryan pulled a phone out of his pocket. “You went to great lengths to make sure no one ever saw it. You always wore colored contacts to hide your eyes, too. See?”

He handed me his cell phone, and I gasped at the image on the display screen. I’m not sure what I found more startling: the raven-haired, jade-eyed girl looking back at me, or the fact that she was sitting on a bed with Ryan in what looked like a college dorm room, scowling playfully at whoever had taken the photo. Both Ryan and I had lipstick smeared all over our faces. We’d clearly just been caught making out.

Ryan laughed at the look on my face. “I see you’re still not a fan of my favorite picture of us.”

I had to shut my eyes. This one photo of my past was more than Tony had given me in the last six months. So many cruel lies.

“Jamie? You okay?”

“Sorry.” I took a calming breath and shook away the bad thoughts. “I’m fine. It’s just…Tony—er, Teddy told me we didn’t have any pictures together because we’d been locked up in the lab and Visticorp didn’t allow us to get our pictures taken. How could I have been so gullible?”

Ryan’s arm slipped around my shoulders. “Don’t do that to yourself. It’s like you said. You didn’t have much of a choice except to believe him. It wasn’t your fault. You had no memory. He took advantage of you in the worst way. You can’t beat yourself up for it.”

I blushed when Dr. Haggerty cleared her throat to remind us we were in her office. She gave me a kind smile, then looked at Ryan. “Are you going to introduce me?”

Ryan’s hand fell from my shoulder to the small of my back, and he pushed me forward. The soft touch shot chills up my spine. Very, very good chills. Ryan sucked in a breath through his nose and rolled his shoulders as if suppressing a shudder of his own. It made me wonder if the chills I’d felt were physical and not just in my own head. Had Ryan felt them, too? Did that always happen between us?

“Dr. Haggerty, meet Chelsea’s Angel. The guys have taken to simply calling her Angel. Or Jamie works, too.”

Dr. Haggerty extended a hand to me, and her adoring smile turned curious. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances.”

At both Ryan’s and my confused looks, the doctor handed me a hospital gown. “Major Wilks called ahead and briefed me of your attack. Did you really put your head through a cement floor?”

I grimaced and offered a shrug, hating feeling like a freak. “Not all the way.”

Her eyes scanned my body and quickly zeroed in on my neck. Nobody had said anything, but I’d seen the bruises from where I’d been strangled after my shower earlier; they looked awful.

“Does your voice hurt?”

I shook my head. “It’s not bad. My neck’s pretty sore, though.”

She nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Anything else hurt?”

“Aside from every muscle in my body?”

“Yes, aside from that,” she said with a smile.

“I still have a raging headache. But the double vision, nausea, and dizziness have all passed.”

“That’s good. It’s probably just a mild concussion, then. I can give you something for the headache, but we need to do a CT scan and an MRI to make sure there’s no swelling, fractures, or internal bleeding. I also want to double check and make sure there’s no permanent damage done to your larynx.”

I’d known this was coming, but I still looked at the backless cotton gown in her hands and sighed.

“Quick and painless,” Dr. Haggerty promised.