Opening this door hadn’t been part of his agenda today.
But that didn’t mean much when Maddy arched against him, stretching up to bring her lips to his. The temptation was just too great. Adam gathered her even closer, placed his lips on hers, deepened the kiss and let all the hunger he’d been suppressing surge to the surface.
The intensity of the kiss was stunning. Like a fire that kindled, flared and burned out of control, the kiss created its own fuel, generating more hunger and more heat, robbing them both of breath and thought.
And it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy the needs that were taking on a life of their own. Adam wanted more, and everything Maddy poured into that kiss told him she wanted more, too. At that moment there was nothing standing between them. There was nothing to stop him from sweeping her off her feet, carrying her into his bedroom and allowing the fire to run its course.
Nothing to stop him except his own conscience. A voice that had been silent for longer than he cared to remember spoke up from the dark, murky pool of his soul and reminded him of all the reasons he’d hate himself if he didn’t stop. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he reached inside himself, found a scrap of the integrity he thought he’d used up long ago and commanded his mind to take control of his body.
“Maddy, no…” He tore his mouth away from hers, slid his hands up to her shoulders and pulled back to put a little distance between them. Her body was still touching his in all the places that counted, but his gesture gave them a little breathing room. “We can’t do this,” he told her, still fighting for air. “I don’t think you’re ready.”
Maddy looked up at him, her eyes smoky with confusion and desire. “I’m not ready? Oh, Adam, you couldn’t be more wrong.” She arched up to kiss him again, but he wouldn’t allow it.
“I’m not talking about being ready physically, Maddy.”
Her brow furrowed as her confusion turned to irritation. “Aren’t you the one who just complained because I’ve been keeping you at arm’s length?”
“But I wasn’t talking about this. I was talking about trust and an emotional commitment that I was hoping would bring you closer to regaining your memory.”
Maddy was beginning to feel foolish and more than a little embarrassed. She slipped out of Adam’s arms, her hands clenching into fists as she tried to control the passion-induced adrenaline coursing through her. “You don’t think going to bed with my husband might bring back memories?” she asked sharply.
“It might,” he conceded. “But if it doesn’t, you’re going to hate me for letting something happen you weren’t ready for. You’re vulnerable and confused right now, Maddy. I won’t take advantage of that.”
Maddy was too stunned to acknowledge the logic of his argument. All she could see was that she’d thrown herself at him, and he was rejecting her!
The desire that had engulfed her began ebbing away as quickly as it had come. “I don’t believe this,” she said, stepping back to put even more room between them. “What’s really going on, Adam? I’m your wife, remember? It’s obvious to me that a strong sexual attraction was very much a part of our relationship. So what’s the real reason you’re putting the brakes on something you obviously want as much as I do?”
Adam took a step toward her, his dark eyes glittering with a mixture of emotions Maddy couldn’t begin to identify. “Because I want more than a quickie with a woman who thinks of me as a stranger,” he told her bluntly. “When you give in to whatever you feel for me, I want you making love to your husband! I want you to remember all the things that we’ve shared!” He paused a moment, gentling his voice. “I want you to remember loving me, Maddy. I can’t settle for less.”
Maddy was suddenly breathless again, but not from passion this time. His declaration made her want to cry, and in that instant, she finally understood the depths of the love she and Adam had shared. The thought that she might never get it back was almost more than she could bear. “What if I don’t ever remember, Adam?” she asked softly as a new kind of fear began gnawing at her. “Will I lose you?”
Adam reached for her and brought her into his arms again. “No. Of course not. We’ll just…start all over. If that’s what you want.”
He was giving her an option, but of course there wasn’t really any decision to be made. Two weeks ago Maddy had awakened in the hospital knowing what it meant to be lonely to the very core of her soul. Now she had no doubts that for the ten years of their marriage, Adam had made that loneliness go away. She might not remember being happy with him, but she was sure that nothing could have been more precious to her than being with him, loving him and having him love her in return.
Making peace with that truth enabled her to say, “Of course I want that, Adam. I want that so much it scares me. I think that’s the real reason I built a wall between us.”
“Is the wall gone now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Thank God. Now maybe we can get things back on track.” He smiled. “I’m not giving up on the old Maddy, you know. You’ll remember everything soon. I know it.” He brushed his lips against hers lightly, and then stroked her hair when Maddy buried her face in his shoulder.
“I guess I should be grateful to you for being so noble and saving me from myself,” she murmured.
“Oh, there’s nothing noble about me, Maddy,” Adam assured her as his lips grazed her forehead. “Nothing noble at all.”
If she’d been looking into his eyes at that moment, Maddy would have known those were probably the most truthful words he’d spoken to her since the day he’d walked into her hospital room.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN MADDY AWOKE the next day she wasn’t at all surprised to discover she’d slept until nearly noon. After all she’d gone through yesterday she wouldn’t have been alarmed if she’d slept all day, instead of just half of it. It was early afternoon before she was actually dressed and ready to start her day.
Adam teased her through lunch about being a lady of leisure. Neither of them mentioned what had happened—or what hadn’t happened—on the balcony, but it seemed clear that their relationship had entered a new phase. They were more at ease with each other and Maddy’s level of anxiety had lowered considerably.
In fact, she felt freer than ever as she and Adam headed for the combination outdoor rifle range and indoor shooting gallery. They spent several hours there, and Maddy discovered she was every bit as good as Adam had claimed—and Adam was even better. When they returned to the hotel, they spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around the pool visiting with other guests and catching up on island gossip.
There were rumors about romances among certain guests and hints of scandal were circulating about a well-known actress who was spending a few days at the resort “in hiding,” as the woman circulating the rumor had put it. Another woman said she’d seen one of the housekeepers crying this morning, and someone suggested she might have been upset over the death of an employee named Roger who had been rushed to the hospital after suffering a crippling stroke.
There was also a great deal of comment about the impending visit of the President, which led to a heated debate about politics in general and, more specifically, the President’s arms-reduction bill. From what Maddy could glean, the issue had been a hotly contested topic in the U.S. for a year or more.
Maddy soaked up all the information like a sponge, taking in every detail of every discussion in the hope that something would trigger a memory. All she succeeded in doing, though, was exhausting herself mentally, as well as physically. When Adam suggested they return to their room, she was too tired to even think of arguing with him. They collected their belongings and went upstairs.
“Would you like to have dinner on the balcony to-night?” Adam asked her as he opened the door to their room and stepped back so that she could precede him.
“What? Give up dinner and dancing till dawn? Surely you jest.”
He chuckled. “I’ll take that as an a
ffirmative and call room service.”
“Thank you.” She dropped onto the sitting-room couch, slipped out of her sandals and put her feet up, with her ankles crossed in front of her. She closed her eyes and threw one arm over her head, allowing it to dangle off the headrest of the divan.
“My, my, such wanton abandon,” Adam couldn’t resist saying. “All you need is a barge and a suitable large body of water, and you could pass for the queen of the Nile.”
Maddy snapped her fingers insistently without bothering to open her eyes. “Grapes, slave! And be quick about it, or it’s off with your head.”
“Don’t look now, darling, but that is definitely a mixed metaphor. You seem to be confusing Cleopatra with Marie Antoinette.”
Maddy turned her head and looked at him drolly. “Are you insinuating there’s something wrong with my memory?”
Adam laughed as he crossed the room and sat on the divan facing her. “Have I told you lately what an amazing woman you are?” he asked.
“I’m not amazing, Adam. Merely astonishing, occasionally remarkable and usually extraordinary.”
“Don’t forget modest.”
“And modest,” she added.
“Would you consider adding honest to the list, too?” he asked.
His inquiry was so lightly spoken Maddy almost missed the subtle signs that their playful exchange had just turned serious. She met his gaze with all the honesty she had at her disposal. “I’m trying to be as truthful with you as I’m being with myself, Adam. What else can I do?”
“Be a little more honest with yourself,” he suggested.
Maddy straightened and tried not to let his insinuation pull the trigger on her temper. She couldn’t keep a small element of terseness out of her voice, though, when she asked, “What, exactly, do you think I’ve been lying about?”
“Last night, right before you went back to sleep, I asked you what your nightmare had been about. Do you remember me asking the question?”
Oh, boy, Maddy thought miserably. The moment he was referring to wasn’t exactly her finest. “Yes. I remember.”
“And do you recall telling me that you couldn’t remember anything about the dream?”
“Yes.”
“That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Maddy didn’t want to answer him, but it had nothing to do with the fragile, newfound trust she was beginning to have in him. A psychologist would have called it classic avoidance; Maddy wanted to pretend the dream didn’t exist.
But despite her mounting agitation, she admitted, “Yes, it was a lie.”
“You remember the dream?”
She clenched, then unclenched her fist over and over again as she answered. “Now I do. Yes. At first, I couldn’t remember anything, then I started retaining fragments, and now it seems to get more vivid each time.”
“Each time? Maddy, how often do you have this dream?”
Maddy squelched an urge to scream. “How often do I sleep?”
“My God, Maddy. That’s horrible,” he said, his voice filled with concern. “You have the same dream every night?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”
“Because I wanted to avoid this conversation! I don’t like thinking about the dream, and I like talking about it even less.”
Adam’s frown deepened. “Who have you been talking about it with?”
That sounded a lot like jealousy, but Maddy didn’t call him on it. Instead, she answered, “No one.”
He seemed to relax a bit. “Then how do you know that talking won’t help?”
Maddy couldn’t ignore her instinct to escape any longer. Though she had nowhere to go, she sprang to her feet as she told him, “The same way I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, gravity will make things fall down, instead of up, and Adam Hopewell will continue to be a pain in his wife’s posterior!”
“Darling, if wanting you to be safe and well makes me a pain in the you-know-what, I stand guilty as charged,” he said. “Now, tell me about your nightmare.”
“Do I have to?” she asked as she started pacing in front of the French doors.
“I think you should,” he replied calmly.
“Why?”
“Because I have no intention of giving up until you tell me everything you remember about the dream.”
He meant it. She could be as stubborn as she wanted, but short of hiding in her room until her memory returned, there was no way to avoid this conversation. She had no choice but to describe the whole hellish nightmare to him. She crisscrossed the room again and again as the details unfolded, and Adam listened without comment.
Even in her agitated state, Maddy was impressed by the intensity of Adam’s concentration. When she finished her narration at the point where she generally awakened, he started asking questions, forcing her to examine even the most insignificant details of the dream. After a time her head started to ache.
She’d stopped pacing and was sitting beside him on the couch, massaging her temples, when he started on yet another tack. “You said you heard screaming,” he commented. “‘Like the cawing of crows,’ I think you described it.”
Maddy pinched the bridge of her nose, but it didn’t lessen the ache behind her eyes. “That’s what it sounds like, yes.”
“Focus on the voices, Maddy. Listen to them and see if you can hear what they’re saying.”
“They’re not saying anything, Adam. They’re just making that horrible noise.”
“And it frightens you.”
“Yes.”
“You perceive the voices as a threat?”
“Yes. Absolutely. There’s a definite threat involved, but I can’t identify the source.”
Her obvious discomfort didn’t seem to faze him. “What about the man in the dream?” he asked. “What does he look like? Tall, short? Fat, thin?”
Maddy tried to pull up his image, but it was associated with so much blood and so much fear that her mind rebelled. It took a lot of discipline to bring him into focus. “He’s lying on a floor—a dirty tile floorso I can’t really tell how tall he is, but he’s…” She struggled to find the right word and finally came up with, “Plump. Not obese, just slightly rounded everywhere.”
“How had he been killed?”
A little shudder snaked down her spine. “I don’t know. All I remember is the blood. A lot of it.”
“Could he have been the man who was killed at the airport when he distracted your attacker?”
She paused to think. “No. For one thing, I never saw the man at the airport. The man in the dream is someone I know and he’s someone I saw die. I’m certain he’s real, not symbolic.”
She didn’t tell Adam about the incredible guilt she associated with the blood or the certainty that those cawing voices were blaming her for the man’s death. Instead, she told him, “And besides that, Detective Hogan said the man who saved my life at the airport was African-American.”
“But the man in your dream is white?” Adam asked.
Maddy frowned in concentration. “Well, he’s swarthy. Looks…Arabic.”
“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere,” Adam praised her. “What about his words? Concentrate on what he was trying to tell you.”
Something in Adam’s tone struck Maddy. He suddenly sounded like a teacher who already knew the answers to the questions and was just trying to elicit the correct response from his pupil. “What are you trying to get me to say, Adam?” she asked, betraying a suspicion she was ashamed of feeling.
Adam looked surprised. “Whatever you remember. Whatever you can bring into focus.”
“But you’re behaving as though you’re fishing for something specific.”
He seemed genuinely mystified by her accusation. “Maddy, I just want you to remember as many details of the dream as you can. If you’re having this dream every night it’s obviously very important—it may even be the key to regaining your memory. At the very least it might help us figure out wha
t happened to you during those days you were missing.”
“Only if the parts of the dream that seem real happened recently and not a dozen years ago,” she countered.
Adam shook his head emphatically. “No, it’s recent, Maddy. It has to be. You’ve never been plagued with nightmares before, and if you’d ever had a man die in your arms, you would’ve told me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.” His certainty was so complete it didn’t leave any room for her to doubt him. “Finding the key to your dream is just a matter of separating remembered images from the symbolic ones.”
He dove back into his questioning and Maddy tried to be as cooperative as possible, but no matter how many times Adam asked, she couldn’t bring the dying man’s words into focus, nor could she ascribe meaning to the black wings that enfolded her or any of the other metaphorical images. It was all just mumbo jumbo.
“Adam, that’s all I remember, I swear. Please, can we stop now?” she pleaded, massaging her temples again.
“All right.” He slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. “I’m sorry I pressed you so hard. I just want so much for you to remember.”
“I know. And I should have told you before.” She looked at him. “It just scares me so badly, Adam.”
Adam pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t be scared, darling. Don’t be scared,” he crooned softly. “I won’t let anything hurt you. I promise.”
God, how she wanted to believe that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON THEIR THIRD FULL DAY at the resort, Adam rented a small sailboat and they spent most of the day on the water, until a little squall blew up and forced them back to the island—exactly as it had on their honeymoon, Adam told her. Maddy discovered that she was a fair deckhand, but the only memories that stirred were those regarding which line to pull to trim the jib and how to tack into the wind. Though she was utterly captivated by Adam’s wit, charm and tenderness, Maddy couldn’t scrape up even one tiny memory of their honeymoon—or anything else about their ten years of marriage.
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