The Other Gloria — Virginia Nielsen

Troubled awakening...

It was a shock to wake up not knowing who she was or where she was. It was an even greater shock to learn that the identity she was trying so desperately to rediscover was not her own. She was not Gloria Hallett, and this was not her home... though everyone in it -- including the attractive but strangely distant man she thought was her husband -- let her think it was. Why? And if she wasn't Gloria, then... who was she? A young man named Bob German claimed she was Prudence Merrill, his fiancee. But to Gloria... Prue... he was a stranger. Would she ever remember her past and recapture what she must have felt for Bob? And if she did, could she ever forget the love she was beginning to feel for Michael Hallett, who belonged to the real Gloria...?

How long had the suspicion been there? From the beginning? From the time she had awakened in the strange room - a girl with no name, no past? It didn't matter, it was no longer a suspicion . . . She knew! She was not Gloria Hallet. She was not Michael's wife, little Mike was not her son. And, knowing, she was more lost than ever. Why had they lied to her? Why had they let her believe she was someone she wasn't? Why had they let her fall hopelessly in love . . . With another woman's husband?

Michael had found the girl lying unconscious in a clump of bushes between his home and Dr. Babson's clinic, and after having her slight injuries treated at the clinic, had taken her to his home. There had been nothing else to do. There was no hospital in the small town of Mayville, and the girl had no recollection of her past.

The plan first occurred to Dr. Babson, Michael Hallett's wife, Gloria, had been arrested for hit-and-run driving and her continued absence was causing concern to Mrs. Lane, her frail old grandmother who had raised her. Why not, Dr. Babson suggested to Michael, pretend to Mrs. Lane that the girl was her granddaughter, suffering from amnesia after a fall from her horse? Meantime, the sheriff would continue his investigation.

And so the deception began, with the girl knowing nothing of the deception, thinking that she was tall, good-looming Michael's wife, his adorable son, little Mike, her son, the gracious Hallett home, with its servants and air of wealth, her home, and old Mrs. Lane her grandmother.

It was a cruel awakening when Sheriff Brown came for her and she met her fiance, Bob Gorman, aggressive, blue-eyed Bob, who was so very different from the navel officer Lieutenant Michael Hallett, to whom she had quite lost her heart.

More revelations were to follow: Her name was Prudence Merrill. The city apartment she had lived in for some time seemed an alien place. The suave, gray-haired Stephen Parks, whose secretary she had been, took extraordinary pains to teach her the business details she had forgotten. And Bob Gorman was strangely anxious to get her to marry him at once.

But more important than anything else--and the question that haunted Prue day and night--could she ever forget Michael?

Hero: Michael Hallett
Heroine: Prue Merrill

Also published as: The Other Gloria

Original Title: Remember Me