Much like herself, she likened wryly, absently rubbing her knee while watching his gaze go slashing right past her. Then it stopped, sharpened, and came swinging swiftly back again.
Their eyes locked. The hard line of his mouth slackened on a short, sharp intake of air. He looked horrified. And suddenly she didn’t like what was happening here. She didn’t like him, she realised, as a tight constriction completely closed her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. Even her heart stopped beating with a violent thump, then set going like a hammer drill against her right temple.
As if he could see it happen, his eyes flicked up to her temple. She saw him flinch—remembered the fine pink pucker of scar tissue there, and instinctively put up a hand to cover it.
The fact that she’d managed to move seemed to prompt him to do the same. He began walking straight towards her in a strange, slow, measured way that made her want to start backing. Sweat began to break out all over her. The room began to fade, tunnelling inwards in ever-decreasing circles until the only the two people left in the foyer seemed to be herself and him. And the closer he came, the more tight and airless the tunnel began to feel, until she was almost suffocating by the time he came to a halt two short feet away.
And he was big—too big. Too dark, too handsome, too—everything, she finished on a fine, tight shudder. Overpowering her with his presence, with that compelling look burning in his eyes.
No, she protested, though she had no idea what it was she was protesting against.
Maybe she’d said the word out loud, because he suddenly went quite pale, and his eyes were so dark she actually felt as if she was being drawn right into them.
Crazy, she told herself. Don’t be crazy.
‘Samantha,’ he breathed very thickly. ‘Oh, dear God…’
She fainted. With her name still sounding in her head, she simply closed her eyes and sank like a stone to the purple and gold carpet.
CHAPTER TWO
IN ALL of the long days and weeks she had spent in pain in hospital, she hadn’t fainted. In all of the long, dreadfully frightening weeks and months which had accompanied her slow recovery, she had never fainted. Of all the things she had ever wished and hoped and prayed for during the last twelve empty months, it had been for someone to come in through those revolving doors and say her name to her.
Yet, when someone had done exactly that, she’d fainted.
Samantha came round thinking all of that, in a mad and bewildering jumble of confusion, to find herself lying on one of the reception sofas with Carla squatting beside her, urgently chafing one of her hands, and the sounds of other people talking in hushed voices just beyond her vision.
‘Are you all right?’ Carla said anxiously the moment she saw Samantha open her eyes.
‘He knows me,’ she whispered. ‘He knows who I am.’
‘I know,’ Carla murmured gently.
The stranger suddenly appeared over Carla’s shoulder. Still too big, still too dark, too—
‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped out. ‘Seeing you was such a shock that I just didn’t think before I acted.’ He stopped, swallowed tensely, then added. ‘Are you okay, cara?’
She didn’t answer. Her mind was too busy trying to grapple with the frightening fact that this man actually seemed to know her, while she looked at him and saw a total stranger! It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t! The doctors had suggested that a shock like this might be all that was needed to bring her memory back.
But it hadn’t. Sheer disappointment had her eyes fluttering shut again.
‘No.’ His thick voice pleaded roughly. ‘Samantha—don’t pass out again. I’m not here to—’
His hand touched her shoulder. Her senses went haywire, crawling through her body like scattering spiders and flinging her into a whirling mad panic that jolted her into a sitting position to violently thrust his hand away.
‘Don’t touch me…’ she gasped out in shuddering reaction. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t!’
There was a muttered expletive, then Mr Payne appeared. His fair-skinned face was lined with concern as he murmured something soothing in Italian to the other man. He answered in the same language then, quite suddenly, spun on his heel and sat down abruptly on a nearby chair, as if the strength had just been wrenched out of him. And only then did it occur to Samantha that if he did really know her then he too must be suffering from shock.
‘Here…’ Carla pushed a glass of water at her. ‘Drink some of this,’ she urged. ‘You look dreadful.’
The stranger’s head came up, shock-darkened eyes honing directly onto her own, and for a moment Samantha felt herself sinking into those blackened depths again, as if drawn there by something more powerful than logic.
Oh, God. Confused, she wrenched her gaze away, pushing the glass aside so she could cover her face with a hand while she at least attempted to get a hold of herself.
‘Is she all right?’
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘Has that man upset her?’
Hearing the jumble of questions coming from all directions reminded her that there were other people present. ‘Get me away from this,’ she whispered to Carla.
‘Of course,’ Carla murmured understandingly, and straightened up before taking hold of Samantha’s arm to help her to stand. It was a well-timed offer of help, because the moment she tried to put any weight on her right leg the knee reacted with a crack of pain that made her gasp out loud.
‘I wondered when I saw you fall if that would happen.’ Carla frowned. ‘You hit your bad knee against the corner of the desk as you fainted,’ she explained, looking down at the place where Samantha’s uniform-straight navy blue skirt finished, just above the injury. ‘I hope you’ve not done it any further damage.’
Gritting her teeth and clinging to Carla, she began to limp across the reception area towards a door marked ‘Staff Only’.
The stranger came towering to his feet. ‘Where are you going?’ he said sharply, staring at her as though he was expecting her to make a sudden run for it.
Samantha smiled wanly at the prospect. She couldn’t run if she tried. ‘Staffroom,’ she said, then added very reluctantly, ‘You can come if you want.’
‘I have every intention of doing so,’ he replied, and moved to follow them—only to pause and turn to make a flashing inventory of the crowded foyer. ‘Are you the only two people running this place?’ he questioned.
American. His accent contained the deep velvet drawl of a cultured American, Samantha noticed, then began frowning in confusion, because he and Nathan Payne had been speaking in Italian to each other only a minute ago.
‘The manager is away on business today.’ Carla did the explaining. ‘I’ll just help Samantha in here, then I’ll come back and—’
‘No!’ Samantha protested, her hand closing convulsively over Carla’s. ‘Don’t leave me alone with him!’ she whispered shrilly, not caring if the stranger had heard what she’d said and was offended by it.
‘Okay,’ Carla said soothingly, but her expression was looking a little hunted. It was the busiest time of the week on Reception and both of them couldn’t just walk off duty.
‘Nathan.’ Even Samantha, in her state of shock, heard the voice of authority when it spoke like that. ‘Take over here,’ the stranger instructed—then, at Carla’s uncertain look, ‘Don’t worry. He knows what he’s doing. It’s his job to know. We are going in here, I presume?’ he then prompted smoothly, indicating the door next to the reception desk.
Samantha nodded, having to bite down on her bottom lip now because her knee was hurting so badly. So, leaning more heavily on Carla while trying hard not to show it, she limped slowly through the staffroom door with him following so close behind her that she could actually feel his breath on her neck.
She shuddered, wishing he would just back off a little and give her time to recover and think. She didn’t want him here. She didn’t like him. She didn’t want to like him. Which was just
stupid when she remembered that this man would be the link to her past she had been praying for.
It was relief to sit down in one of the chairs. At Samantha’s mumbled request Carla hurried off to collect her painkillers from her room, and the stranger pulled up another chair right beside her own, then sank down heavily on it. It brought him too close. She could feel his body heat and smell his subtle, masculine scent. Fighting hard not to edge right away from him, she leaned forward slightly to rub at her throbbing knee.
‘How bad is it?’ he rasped.
‘Not too bad,’ she lied. In fact it was very painful. ‘I just need to rest it for a few minutes.’
‘I meant, how badly did you injure your knee in the accident?’ he grimly corrected her mistake.
‘You know about that?’ she responded in surprise.
‘How the hell else do you think I found you?’ he bit out angrily.
She flinched at his tone; he let out a sigh and suddenly sat forward to lean his elbows on his spread knees, bringing their heads disturbingly close.
‘Sorry.’ He sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off.’
Samantha didn’t say anything, and after a moment he said more levelly, ‘Nathan was surveying a couple of properties around here. He saw the article about you in the local newspaper and recognised your photograph. He couldn’t believe it!’ he ground out. ‘Neither could I when he rang me in New York to—’ The words dried up, seeming to block in his throat so he had to swallow, and his hands clenched very tightly together between his spread thighs.
‘Who is Nathan?’ she asked huskily.
His head swivelled round to look at her, dark brown eyes lancing her a bitter hard look. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you asked me who I am?’ he suggested.
But oddly, even to herself, Samantha shook her head. She didn’t know why, but she just wasn’t ready to hear who he was yet.
‘This man…Nathan,’ she persisted instead. ‘He’s been staying here over the last few days to keep an eye on me, hasn’t he?’
He took her refusal to take him up on his challenge with a tensing of his jaw. He answered her question though. ‘Yes. After he rang me and told me about your accident and the—the—God—’ He choked, had to stop to swallow thickly, lifting a decidedly shaky hand to press at his mouth. ‘I don’t want to think about that,’ he muttered after a moment. ‘I can’t cope with thinking about that right now…’
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, accepting that if he had read the article the newspaper had run on her accident, then he had a right to feel this bad about it. It made horrendous reading.
But she didn’t accept the cruel way he lashed back at her. ‘For surviving when six other people didn’t?’
The harsh words sent her jerking back in her seat in reaction, her green eyes spitting ice as a cold anger suddenly took her over. ‘I feel no sense of pleasure in being the lucky one,’ she informed him frigidly. ‘Six people died. I survived. But if you think I’ve spent the last year counting my blessings at their expense then you couldn’t be more wrong!’
‘And I’ve spent the last year wishing you in hell,’ he sliced back at her. ‘Only to discover that you were already living there and I didn’t know a damned thing about it!’
True, so true, she grimly acknowledged, for living hell was exactly where she had been. But it made her wonder why he had wished her in hell. What had she done to him to make him wish something as cruel as that upon her?
Whatever the reason, his harsh words hurt, and did nothing to make her feel more comfortable with him. In fact she was scared.
Maybe he realised it, because he launched himself back to his feet, then just stood there literally pulsing with a sizzling tension. He was tall—over six feet—and the room suddenly grew smaller. He seemed to dwarf everything—and not just with his physical presence. The man possessed a raw kind of energy that seemed to be sucking up all the oxygen.
Then he let out a harsh sigh and muttered something that sounded like a curse beneath his breath. As he did so, some of the tension eased out of the atmosphere.
‘I’m not managing this very well,’ he admitted finally.
No, he wasn’t, Samantha agreed. But then, neither was she.
It was perhaps a good point for Carla to reappear. Glancing warily from one tense face to the other, she came to squat down in front of Samantha, then silently handed her the foil slide containing her prescription painkillers, followed by a second glass of water.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured, and flipped two of the tablets out into her palm, swallowed them down with the help of the water then, on a sigh, sat back in the chair and closed her eyes to wait for the tablets to take effect. The knee was throbbing quite badly, and hot to the touch, which told her she must have knocked it pretty hard.
But that was not the real reason why she was sitting with her eyes closed like this, she had to admit. It was really a means of escape from what was beginning to develop here—not that closing her eyes was going to make it all go away again, she acknowledged heavily.
He was here, and she was too acutely aware of him standing across the room like a dark shadow threatening to completely envelop her.
And on top of that it was just too quiet. Quiet enough for her to sense that he and Carla were swapping silent messages, which had to involve her, though she didn’t bother to open her eyes to see exactly what it was they were plotting.
As it was, she soon found out.
‘Sam…’ Carla’s voice sounded anxious to say the least ‘…do you think you will be all right now? Only I really must go and see if everything is okay out there…’
A clammy sense of dismay went trickling through her when she realised they had been silently plotting her isolation. She didn’t want to be left alone with him. But she also saw that there was no sense in putting off the inevitable. And besides, she understood Carla’s predicament. They were paid to do a job here, and this hotel had a poor enough reputation without the staff walking off duty.
So she gave a short nod of understanding, then forced herself to open her eyes and smile. ‘Thanks. I’ll be fine now.’
With another concerned scan of her pale face, then an even more concerned one of the man who was standing on the other side of the room, Carla stood up and, with a final glance at their two pale faces, left the two of them to it.
And the new silence was cloying.
Samantha didn’t move a single muscle and neither did he. His attention was fixed on the view outside the staffroom window which, since it looked directly onto the hotel kitchens, was not a pretty sight. She kept her eyes fixed on the empty water glass she was so very carefully turning in her hands.
‘What now?’ she asked when she could stand the tension no longer.
‘It’s truth time, I suppose,’ he said, sounding as reluctant about it as she felt.
Turning slowly to face her, he stood watching her for a few more tense seconds. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision and strode over to sit himself down again—and gently reached for the glass.
His fingers brushed lightly across hers and a fine frisson set her pulse racing. Sliding the glass away, he further disturbed her by taking hold of one of her hands as he set the glass aside then turned back to her.
‘Look at me,’ he urged.
Her eyes lowered and fixed fiercely on their clasped hands; the command locked her teeth together. And for the life of her she couldn’t move a muscle. The frisson became a deep inner tremor that vibrated so strongly she knew he could feel it.
‘I know I’ve come as a shock, but you have to start facing this, Samantha…’ he told her quietly.
He was right, and she did. But she still didn’t want to.
‘So begin by at least looking at me while we talk…’
Oh, dear God, she thought and tried to swallow. It took every bit of courage she had in her to lift her eyes and look directly at him.
He’s so beautiful, was the first unbidden thought to filte
r through her like a lonely sigh. His neatly styled hair was straight and black; his skin was warmed by a tan that she’d seemed to know from the moment she’d set eyes on him was natural to him. Sleek black eyebrows, long black eyelashes, eyes the colour of dark bitter chocolate. A regular-shaped nose, she saw as her gaze drifted downward to pause at his firm but inherently sensual mouth. It was a strong face, a deeply attractive well-balanced face.
But it was still the face of a total stranger, she concluded.
A stranger who was about to insist he was no stranger and, indeed, she added frowningly to that, already he did not feel like a stranger, because his touch felt familiar. There was an intimacy in the way he was looking at her that told her that this man knew her only too well. Probably knew her better than she knew herself.
‘Samantha,’ he prompted. ‘You know your name is Samantha.’
Glad of the excuse to claim her hand back, she lifted her fingers to part the collar of her blouse, revealing the necklace she wore around her throat.
A necklace spelling out her name in gold lettering. Sweet but childish though it was. ‘It’s all I had left,’ she explained. ‘Everything else was lost in the fire.’
The eyes flashed again. ‘Were you burned?’ he asked harshly.
Her body became shrouded in a clammy coat of perspiration. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Someone dragged me out before the car blew.’ Then the trembling fingers left the necklace to quiver up to the small pink scar at her temple. ‘I injured my head,’ she said huskily, ‘my arm…’ she gave her right arm a tense little jerk ‘…and m-my right leg…’
His eyes dropped to her knee, where even the sensible, high-denier thickness of her stockings could not hide the scarring beneath. Then with a slow raising of his oh-too-sensual long black lashes, he looked at the scar at her temple. ‘Your lovely face…’ he breathed, lifting a hand up to touch the scar.
The Unforgettable Husband Page 2