Slowly, reluctantly almost, his fingers moved to pick up the photograph, hesitated a moment, then flipped it over.
Samantha’s heart flipped over with it. Because staring back at her in full Technicolor was herself, dressed up in frothy bridal-white.
Laughing. She was laughing up into the face of her handsome groom. Laughing up at him—this man dressed in a dark suit with a white rose in his lapel and confetti lying on his broad shoulders. He was laughing too, but there was more—so much more to his laughter than just mere amusement. There was—
Abruptly she closed her eyes, shutting it out, shutting everything out as her body began to shake violently, a clammy sweat breaking out across her chilled flesh. She couldn’t breathe again, couldn’t move. And a dark mist was closing round her.
Someone hissed out a muffled curse. It wasn’t her so she had to presume it must be him, though she was way too distressed to be absolutely sure of that. The next moment two hands were grasping her shoulders and lifting her to her feet. The stack of documents slid to the floor forgotten as he wrapped her tightly in his arms.
And suddenly she felt as if she was under attack from a completely different source. Attack—why attack? she asked herself as her head became filled with the warm solid strength of him.
‘Oh, my God.’ She groaned.
‘What’s happening?’ he muttered thickly.
‘I d-don’t know,’ she said tremulously, and tried sucking in a deep breath of air in an effort to compose herself. That deep breath of air went permeating through her system, taking the spicy scent of him along with it, and in the next moment her brain cells went utterly haywire.
Familiar. That scent was familiar. And so wretchedly familiar that—
Once again she fainted. No more warning than that. She just went limp in his arms and knew nothing for long seconds.
This time when she came round she wasn’t lying but sitting, with him standing over her pressing her head down between her knees with a very determined hand.
‘Stay there,’ he gritted when she tried to sit up. ‘Just wait a moment until the blood has had a chance to make it back to your head.’
She stayed, limp and utterly exhausted, taking in some carefully controlled breaths of air while she waited, waited for…
Nothing, she realised. No bright blinding flood of beautiful memories. Not even ugly ones. Nothing.
Carefully she tried to move, and this time he allowed her to, his dark face decidedly guarded as she sat back and looked at him.
‘What?’ he demanded jerkily when she didn’t say a word.
Empty-eyed, she shook her head. She knew what he was thinking, knew what he was expecting. She had been expecting the same thing herself.
His dark eyes glinted, a white line of tension imprinting itself around his mouth. Then he sucked in a deep lungful of air and held onto it for a long time before he let it out again.
‘Well, we aren’t going to try that again,’ he decided. ‘Not until we’ve consulted an expert to find out why you faint every time you’re confronted with yourself.’
Not myself, she wanted to correct him. You.
But she didn’t, didn’t want to get into that one. Not now, when it felt as if her whole world was balancing precariously on the edge of a great, yawning precipice.
‘So that settles it,’ he declared in the same determined tone. ‘You’re coming with me.’ He bent down to pick up the scattered papers, his lean body lithe and graceful even while it was clearly tense. ‘I’m going to need to make a few phone calls,’ he said as he straightened, then really surprised her by dropping the photograph back onto her lap. ‘While I do that, you can go and pack your things. By then I should be finished and we can get on our way—’
‘Do I have any say in this at all?’ she asked cuttingly.
‘No.’ He swung round to show her a look of grim resolve. ‘Not a damned thing. I’ve spent the last twelve months alternately thinking you were dead and wishing you were dead. But you aren’t either, are you, Samantha?’ he challenged bluntly. ‘You’re existing in some kind of limbo land to which I know for a fact that only I have the key to set you free. And until you are set free, I won’t know which of my alternatives I really prefer, and you won’t know why you prefer to stay in limbo. The newspaper report on you said they took you to a hospital in Exeter after the accident, which I presume means you received all your treatment there?’
She nodded.
So did he. ‘Then, since Exeter is where we are going, we don’t mention the past or anything to do with the past until we’ve received some advice from someone who knows what they’re talking about.’ He settled the matter decisively. ‘All you have to do is accept that I am your husband and you are my wife. The rest will have to wait.’
CHAPTER FOUR
WAIT…
Carla certainly did think she should wait for answers before trotting meekly off with him. ‘But you don’t know him from Adam!’ she protested as Samantha moved around her room gathering her few possessions together. ‘How do you know if he’s telling the truth?’
‘Why should he lie?’ Samantha countered, turning the question round on itself.
‘I don’t know.’ Carla sighed in frustration. ‘It just doesn’t feel right to me that you are willing to go off with him without knowing what it is you’re going to!’
Samantha’s only answer was to silently hand Carla the wedding photograph.
She stared at it, then at Samantha, then back at the photo again. And suddenly her mood changed. ‘What can have happened to you to make you forget something as beautiful as this?’ she murmured painfully.
Samantha wished she had the answer to that one. The story that photo was telling might be bringing tears to Carla’s eyes, but she couldn’t even begin to describe how it made her feel.
Nothing, she named it. But it was a strange, pained nothing, which was, in itself, something terribly saddening. ‘Do you know who he is?’ she asked quietly.
‘Nathan Payne told me.’ Carla nodded. ‘But just because he’s the great Visconte himself doesn’t absolve him from having to explain why it’s taken him twelve months to come and get you!’
True, Samantha conceded, and sat down on the bed as the heavy weight of all her own uncertainties came thundering down on her again.
‘I mean…’ Carla went on, determined to push her point home now that she had Samantha wavering ‘…you were famous for a week or two in these parts when the accident happened. Your predicament was reported in all the local papers. If you were missing and he was worried about you, wouldn’t you expect a man like him to pull out all the stops in an effort to find you? At the very least he could have checked out the police stations and hospitals. Your looks are pretty damned distinctive, Sam,’ she pointed out. ‘Even without you knowing who you are, for someone to be searching for a tall, slender redhead going by the name Samantha would surely be enough to make the necessary link?’
‘Maybe he was away—out of the country or something,’ she suggested, thinking of New York.
‘You mean, you haven’t bothered to ask him?’ Carla sounded dismayed.
Samantha was a little dismayed herself at how little she had asked him to explain. But the truth of it was, she didn’t want to ask. In some incomprehensible way, it felt safer not to ask.
‘The trouble is,’ she admitted with a rueful grimace, ‘every time we discuss anything even vaguely personal, I faint.’
‘Even more reason, surely, for you to think carefully before putting yourself in his care. Don’t you see that?’
See it? Of course she did. But…
Easing herself back to her feet, she gently took back the photograph, then looked at Carla with disturbingly bleak yet resolute green eyes. ‘If I am ever to discover why I’ve ended up like this,’ she said quietly, ‘then I have to go with him.’
To her, it was as simple and as final as that.
Where was she? André flicked a hard glance at his watch then stu
ffed his hand back into his pocket. She was taking an age!
‘Damn,’ he muttered, feeling the hellish anger he had been keeping banked down take another step closer to exploding. ‘Look at this place,’ he growled out contemptuously. ‘If it fell down right now, no one would miss it.’
Nathan Payne looked up, and André suddenly saw himself as his manager was seeing him—like a prowling panther pacing up and down on the awful carpet in front of the reception desk, as if in need of a good fight.
Hell, he thought. Ten rounds with the best boxer in the world wouldn’t knock out the ugly stuff churning up his system right now.
Samantha, residing in these miserable surroundings. It was enough to snuff the living light out of anyone! And the sooner he got her away from here the better as far as he was concerned.
Where was she? ‘Ring her room,’ he instructed Nathan.
‘No,’ the other man refused. ‘She will come when she’s ready.’
‘She’s already been an hour.’
And that other girl was with her. She didn’t like him. He’d seen it in her face when she’d heard what Samantha was going to do. She thought he was being too pushy and that Samantha was in too deep a state of shock to be going anywhere with anyone. Damn it, she was right, he grimly conceded.
‘Don’t you think you are being a bit hasty, taking her away from the only secure environment she knows?’ Nathan posed levelly.
Don’t you start, André thought. ‘I can give her a secure environment,’ he insisted.
‘She’s in shock, André.’
‘So am I,’ he tossed back.
‘And she’s frightened.’
Did Nathan think he didn’t know that? ‘I’m not into S&M, Nathan,’ he rounded angrily on the other man. ‘I’m not going to chain her up in a cage and put a whip to her rear end every hour on the hour!’
‘I’m so very relieved to hear that,’ another voice inserted.
Spinning round, he saw her standing in the mouth of the corridor which led to the staff quarters. She was wearing a simple blue shift dress and her hair was still fixed in a dreadful, priggish bun, which was in itself a defiance of what the real Samantha was. Deliberate, or a subconscious act? he mused grimly, and felt his senses grind together. Deliberate or not, it was there. Her chin was up, her mouth small, and her eyes were tossing out the kind of cold green sparks that had always declared war—old Samantha style.
He had never been able to resist it, and didn’t even try. Relaxing the tension out of his body, he let his eyes send back a counter-declaration, and he taunted lazily, ‘Submission is not your forte, mia dolce amante. You demand equality in all aspects of your life.’
He threw in the ‘my sweet lover’ in Italian just to see if she would remember it; he saw her face grow pink and was very, very pleased that she did indeed understand what he’d said. Standing beside her, he also saw her friend shift uncomfortably. Behind him he felt his manager do the same. He didn’t actually blame either of them, because sexual tension was suddenly rife in the dull and dingy foyer.
But it was Samantha’s response that mattered to him, and as the first truly healthy one he’d managed to rouse in her it did his bad temper the world of good.
‘Are you ready to come with me?’ he tagged on silkily, deciding to build on his sensual success—a building that crumbled the moment she moved forward and he saw that she was using a walking stick.
Anger roared back to life, making him turn on Nathan like a rattlesnake with poison dripping from its fangs. He snapped out orders which Nathan took in his stride with a kind of silent sympathy that only helped to make him feel worse. But he couldn’t even begin to describe what it did to him seeing his beautiful, vibrant Samantha in so much pain that she needed help just to walk!
Samantha left him to it and went outside, hurt by the flare of dismay she had seen on his face when he’d caught sight of her walking stick. Nor did she like the autocratic way he’d spoken to Nathan Payne, whom it seemed was going to remain here and cover for Samantha until the hotel manager returned.
‘He’s a bully,’ Carla said.
Samantha couldn’t deny it so she remained silent instead.
‘And he fancies the hell out of you,’ Carla added.
Static electricity suddenly shivered through her, setting almost every hair she possessed on end. ‘Not this girl,’ she denied, giving the walking stick a deriding kick.
‘What was the Italian seduction scene about, then?’
‘You said it.’ Samantha shrugged. ‘The words “Italian” and “seduction” always go together. In fact I don’t think they can function without each other.’
‘So he’s an Italian-American.’ Carla assumed.
Samantha shrugged again, because she didn’t actually know. Certainly the Visconte name was Italian. The accent was most definitely American, but the first name was surely French? she mused frowningly.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ From being argumentative, Carla had seen the frown and was now sounding anxious again.
No, I don’t think I am going to be all right, she thought, staring bleakly out across the potholed car park to where two cars in particular stood out like the symbols of success they obviously were. One was a natty black Porsche, the other a racing-green Jaguar.
‘Samantha—?’ Carla prompted her for an answer.
She gave one. ‘I’m not all right as I am now,’ she pointed out. There didn’t seem anything left to say after that.
André came striding out of the hotel, and the atmosphere suddenly took on a distinct change. Reaching out, Samantha took her suitcase from Carla, who had insisted on carrying it for her this far.
The two girls hugged while he looked on—or ‘glared’ would have been a better word—a set of keys jingling impatiently in his hands as he did so.
‘Take care of yourself,’ she murmured to Carla as she drew away.
‘No, you take care of you,’ Carla returned.
‘Let’s go,’ his hard voice said.
Samantha felt the old panic erupt inside her and had to work very hard at damping it back down. As he set off down the hotel steps the sun came out, giving his skin an extra warmth that added a luxurious sheen to it.
‘Call me,’ Carla begged as a final farewell.
‘I promise.’ She nodded, and felt a burn begin behind her eyes as she took that first mammoth step to follow him.
Maybe he sensed the tears. Certainly something made him pause and look back. Eyes like black marble lanced over her. Samantha lowered her own eyes and bit down on her bottom lip, fought hard to concentrate on negotiating the steps instead of the wave of anguish that was trying to overwhelm her.
His hand snaked out. She hadn’t even realised he’d moved back towards her until she felt the suitcase being taken from her. Then, without another glance at anyone, he strode off towards the Jaguar, opened the boot, threw the case in, then went round to open the passenger door to stand beside it like a jailer waiting to lock his latest prisoner in.
Which made her think of cages and chains, which in turn almost caused a hysterical bubble of laughter to burst in her throat. Swallowing both tears and laughter, she kept her face turned away as she reached the car and lowered herself into it.
Without a by-your-leave, her stick was taken from her. The door shut with a very expensive thud, and she found herself experiencing a different kind of luxury, made up of soft cream leather and walnut veneer. Five seconds later his door came open and he was bending inside to toss her stick onto the car’s rear seat. She caught the tantalising scent of his skin as he folded his long body in the seat beside her. He had put his jacket back on but his tie still hung loose around his throat. He looked lean and mean and decidedly alien.
Without a single word being spoken between them, he pulled his seat belt across his wide chest and locked it in place, glanced briefly her way to check that she had already done the same. Then, with a final settling of his long frame, he started the engine, shoved
it into ‘drive’, and swept them away.
It was all so swift, she decided, so final. As she caught her last glimpse of the hotel, she felt the tears burning the backs of her eyes once again. Goodbye, she lamented silently—then wondered why she felt as if she’d said goodbye like this to some other run-down, dearly loved building?
‘Why the stick?’ he bit out suddenly.
‘If my limp offends you,’ she flashed at him coldly, ‘then maybe you should turn around and put me back where you found me. Because the limp it isn’t going to go away just because you don’t like it!’
‘It doesn’t offend me,’ he denied. ‘It makes me bloody angry, but it does not offend me.’
She wished she believed him but she didn’t, and it didn’t help that it had to be her scarred profile he saw every time he flicked a brief glance at her!
‘Tell me about it,’ he persisted stubbornly.
Does he never give up? Taking a deep breath, she gave him what he wanted. ‘The knee was crushed in the accident but the injury was made worse by the urgency with which they had to pull me from my car before it went up in flames.’ He winced, but she didn’t care; he’d asked for this! ‘I’ve since had four operations on it and, believe it or not, the limp is not half as obvious as it was two months ago.’
With sarcasm abounding in that last comment, still he didn’t give up. ‘Any more operations to come?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘What you see now is what you get. So if you were hoping to recover the same person you see in that photograph you gave me, then let me tell you now, before this thing goes any further, that you won’t be getting her!’
‘I’ll be getting the temper, though, I notice,’ he drawled, and was suddenly smiling, smiling in a way that made her heart flip over. Smiling with his eyes and a genuine amusement that completely altered his face. He was smiling at her as if she’d just given him some special present instead of yelling at him like a harridan.
‘Keep your eyes on the road!’ she cried as a desperate diversion away from the emotions that were suddenly churning up her insides.
The Unforgettable Husband Page 4