The Unforgettable Husband

by Michelle Reid

  And the next thing she knew she was being held fast by a pair of angry hands and his mouth was against her mouth. Her senses went into a complete tail-spin, sending shock waves ricocheting through her body as the most horrendous feeling of familiarity completely overwhelmed her.

  She knew this mouth. She knew its feel and its shape and its sensual mobility as it coaxed her own mouth to respond. His tongue ran a caress along the line of her tightly closed lips and she recognised the light, moist gesture as his way of making her open up and welcome him.

  But, worse than that, she wanted to. She wanted to respond so much that she began to whimper, having to fight herself as well as the kiss as sensation after frighteningly familiar sensation went clamouring through her system. Heat began to pool deep down in her abdomen, desire licked a taunting flick across her breasts.

  It was too much. She couldn’t bear it.

  Her stick hit the balcony floor with a hard clatter as her hands snapped up to push him away. But they didn’t push, they clung to his shoulders. And she was being assailed by yet more hot waves of familiarity. She knew his height against her own height. She knew his width and the superior power in his much stronger body.

  And she knew the pleasure in feeling small and frail and oh, so feminine when held against him like this.

  Maybe he sensed it. Maybe he was reading her body language. Because his hands shifted from her shoulders and began to smooth their way down her back to her slender waist. She groaned as he drew her hard up against him because—God help her—she let him do it.

  Let his lips crush her own apart and let their tongues make contact and let him taste her and simply surrendered the battle to this hot and seductive taste of passion.

  He withdrew. It was so abrupt that she just stood there, leaning against his hard-packed framework staring up at him in blank incomprehension.

  ‘Yes…’ he hissed down at her in soft-voiced triumph. ‘You might think you hate my touch, cara mia, but you cannot get enough of my kisses. What does that say about what is happening in here?’ he posed, bringing the whole, wild episode back to where it had started by tapping a finger against her brow again.

  And just like that the familiarity disappeared and she found herself looking at a complete stranger. A cruelly taunting stranger with eyes still glinting with a residual anger and a mouth that still pulsed from the damning kiss. It was no wonder she shuddered again.

  ‘Also, no faint,’ he mocked, adding insult to injury by stepping right back from her in a way designed to mockingly prove that she was indeed still conscious.

  ‘You bastard,’ she breathed.

  His lazy shrug conveyed a complete indifference to the title. Then he turned and walked gracefully towards the window. ‘See you in a couple of hours,’ he said to accompany his careless departure. ‘And make sure you take that rest. You look like you need it.’

  Samantha simply stared after him, too deeply sunk into a slow-dawning understanding to know or even care what he’d said. He had kissed her in anger. It had been a punishment as well as a demonstration of his power over her.

  ‘I’m to blame, aren’t I?’

  The shaky claim brought his feet to a standstill.

  ‘I did something so unforgivable that I daren’t let myself remember.’

  ‘No,’ he denied.

  She didn’t believe him. It had to be her fault or why else had he treated her as he had just now?

  ‘Apportioning blame will not help the issue,’ he added grimly.

  ‘Then, what will?’

  He shook his head. ‘We agreed not to discuss the past until we’d sought professional advice.’

  Her short laugh scorned that remark. ‘That’s rich coming from the man who’s just imposed the past on me with about as much ruthlessness as he could muster!’

  ‘All right!’ he rasped, reeling round to catch her off guard again. She jumped as if frightened. His teeth showed white in angry acknowledgement. ‘That,’ he said, waving a hand at her reaction, ‘is why I kissed you! Why I was angry—why I still am! We were lovers, Samantha!’ And suddenly he was striding towards her again. Hands reaching up. Hands grabbing her shoulders. ‘Hot, greedy, passionate lovers, who never could get enough of each other! So of course it damn well infuriates me when you jump if I so much as come near you! Being near you and not kissing you means I am denying myself—as if it isn’t enough to have one of us doing that! So—’ He bent, kissed her once more, like a terse punctuation. ‘Get used to it. You’re my wife. I like kissing you. Now I’m getting the hell out of here before I decide to convert all of this anger into something else I like doing with you!’

  And with that he turned and strode away, leaving her standing there feeling shell-shocked and shaken by the barrage of emotion he had just thrown at her.

  The suite’s outer door closed with a controlled slam. She blinked, breathed, and only realised when she did it that she hadn’t drawn breath throughout his last angry speech. Her lips were still burning from the power of his kiss and her body was trembling so badly she began to wonder if now was going to be the moment that she sank into a faint.

  It didn’t happen. Instead she managed to take a step forward—and tripped over her walking stick as she did. The trip jarred her knee and, wincing, she let fly with a few choice curses as she rubbed the offending joint and fervently wished she had never set eyes on André Visconte!

  ‘Ever,’ she tagged on fiercely to that wish.

  André was standing in the hotel manager’s office, shooting orders down the telephone as if he was conducting a bloody war.

  It was late, and he’d just come away from an interview at the police road accident department which had left him feeling turned inside out. Guilt was devouring him, along with agony and distress and a blinding black fury that was threatening to swallow him whole.

  ‘Just do it!’ he growled out at Nathan when he dared to argue the point. ‘If Samantha says it has the potential, then at least do her the honour of accepting that she knows what she’s talking about!’

  Nathan began to patiently explain that it wasn’t Samantha’s word he was questioning, but the wiseness of André making such a big corporate decision feeling as wound up as he did.

  ‘Do you think the Tremount has potential?’ André questioned coldly.

  ‘Yes,’ Nathan replied. ‘But—’

  ‘Then what the hell is it you’re arguing about? Set up the damn deal and just let me know how much it’s going to cost me.’

  ‘For Samantha?’ Nathan drawled.

  ‘Yes!’ he hissed back. ‘It’s for Samantha! And while you’re at it, make sure that friend of hers—Chrissy—is taken care of.’

  ‘Carla,’ Nathan corrected.

  ‘Carla, then!’ he all but snarled. He wasn’t in the mood for all of this. ‘Put her on our payroll. Samantha worries about her.’ And anything—anything Samantha worried about had to be eliminated!

  Samantha…

  ‘Hell,’ he muttered, and slammed down the receiver, then slumped back against the desk to bury his face in hands that were shaking.

  Now he’d seen the photographs he couldn’t get them out of his head. The roadside carnage. The twisted wreck of burnt out metal that said more clearly than words what had happened to her.

  Then there were the other pictures, ones that came without photographs but were still just as gruellingly graphic, of her waking up in some strange hospital, suffering from shock and pain and a total disorientation with the strange world around her.

  And where had he been while all of this was happening?

  Halfway round the world on a bloody wild-goose chase!

  Now she was sitting upstairs, no doubt waiting for him to continue where he had left off earlier.

  Imposing himself on her. Staking his claim. He shuddered and despised himself. He wouldn’t blame her if she’d taken up her own threat and had made another bolt for it.

  Oh, dear God. Had she—?

  Dragging his hands
away from his face, he looked down at his watch to find he had been gone for almost three hours instead of the two he’d told her he would be.

  With a jolt, he sprang forward and made for the door in a hurry. Samantha could disappear into thin air with a few hours to do it in. He should know; he’d had previous experience. The lift took him upwards. He paused outside their suite and took a few moments to smooth out his wrecked emotions before slotting in the access key and quietly opening the door…

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE suite wore an air of hushed quietness. It chilled his blood—until his eyes alighted on Samantha. She was lying asleep on one of the soft cream sofas, looking as if she had been there for a long time.

  Slowly he walked towards her, his footsteps silenced by thick green carpet. The lunch he’d had sent up still sat untouched on the table by the window. He frowned, then deepened the frown when he saw two packs of tablets sitting beside the lunch tray.

  Picking them up, he read the labels. One lot of tablets he recognised as the named-brand painkillers she had taken earlier. But he felt his gut squeeze in dismay when he recognised the other as a famous-brand tranquilliser.

  Had she taken these? Had she taken all of these? Had he finally managed to drive her into—

  His head shot up and round, his eyes locking onto her in a moment of skin-crawling horror.

  Then, No, he grimly calmed himself. She wouldn’t be that stupid.

  But he found himself checking out the pack and almost sinking to the floor in relief when he discovered none of the tranquillisers missing. Going to squat down beside her, he gazed into her sleeping face. She still looked pale, but some of the strain had eased away.

  As if she was able to sense the very moment he came within touching distance, her eyes suddenly flicked open and he found himself gazing into sleepy green.

  ‘Hi.’ He greeted her softly, aware that he was already on his guard, ready to field a hostile response.

  It didn’t come. Instead she simply lay there looking at him as if she was searching for something she needed to see.

  Remorse for his earlier behaviour? he wondered. Well, she had it. ‘Sorry things got a bit out of hand before,’ he quietly apologised. ‘Believe or not—’ he grimaced ‘—I am finding this situation as difficult as you must be.’

  ‘I understand.’ She nodded, then seemed to realise that she was staring and broke the eye contact by sitting and sliding her feet to the floor.

  It was his cue to move away, and he did so, having no wish to give her reason to erect her defences yet again. Straightening up, he looked around him for something neutral to say. ‘You didn’t eat your lunch.’ It was all he could come up with.

  ‘I wasn’t hungry,’ she replied, leaning forward to stroke exploring fingers across her damaged knee.

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Better.’ She showed him by flexing it with an ease he hadn’t seen before. ‘I took some anti-inflammatories, then fell asleep while I was waiting for them to work. What time is it?’

  André glanced at his watch. ‘Five-thirty.’

  She nodded and stood up. He was really surprised by the lack of stiffness in her movements. It was almost like the Samantha he used to know.

  But that Samantha wasn’t really here, he grimly reminded himself.

  Her polite voice intruded. ‘Did your meeting go okay?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, then turned his back on her, grabbed the back of his neck and just stood there staring into space while his mind played back a reel of still frames that would look great in a horror movie.

  What was he thinking while he stood there like that? Samantha wondered warily. He’d seemed all right. The anger had gone, so too the desire to shock her into reacting. Yet he clearly wasn’t comfortable with what had replaced it. Something must be bothering him or he wouldn’t be standing there looking like a man at a loss to know what to do next.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him reluctantly, not wanting to provoke a return of their earlier hostilities.

  He released an oddly muffled laugh. ‘Actually, no,’ he said, then turned to wing a rueful smile at her. ‘I came back here half expecting to find you’d carried out your threat and made a bolt for it.’

  If he’d meant to make her smile, she didn’t even come close to it. ‘Where would I go?’ she asked him bleakly. ‘You may think I like being like this but I don’t,’ she added. ‘I need to find out about myself and, as you rightly pointed out to me, you seem to be the only person who can help me do that.’

  ‘I don’t think anything of the kind about you.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t doubt for one minute that you must be afraid of what all of this must mean.’

  ‘Were we…?’ she stopped, changing her mind.

  ‘What?’ he prompted.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head.

  ‘You’re going that dreadful shade of grey again,’ he informed her levelly.

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said and discovered that it was her turn to turn away from him. ‘I think I’ll take a shower…’

  ‘Good idea,’ he agreed. ‘I think I will do the same.’

  Relief quavered through the atmosphere, put there because each was glad of the excuse to escape the other. ‘My room is the one on the left,’ he told her. ‘They are both more or less the same, but if you want to swap I don’t—’

  ‘The one on the right will be fine,’ she cut in, and began to limp towards it with no sign of the nagging pain. It was amazing what a couple of pills could do Samantha mused wryly.

  ‘Food,’ he said suddenly. ‘We both need to eat. Let’s make it an early dinner,’ he decided. ‘Say, seven o’clock?’

  Samantha nodded in agreement, too eager to escape, now that she had an excuse, to start up a discussion on whether she could swallow a single morsel as her throat felt so tight.

  ‘Seven it is, then,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ll book a table in the restaurant. Unless you would rather eat up here?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘The restaurant will be fine.’ The last thing she wanted was to be incarcerated in this suite of rooms with him for a whole evening. ‘I…’

  ‘What?’ he prompted when she carefully severed yet another sentence.

  She shook her head, aware of the explosive properties in dryly promising not to show him up by stepping out with him wearing polyester. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she murmured, and found her escape in the bedroom she had already claimed as her own by unpacking her suitcase and hanging up her few clothes.

  André watched the door close behind her and at last released the tense sigh he had been holding in check. This wary truce they had managed to achieve was harder to deal with than the constant lightning bolts they’d been delivering across each other’s bows.

  Would it last?

  No, it wouldn’t last, he acknowledged ruefully. She might be different, but she was still Samantha. A fiery temperament was as much a part of her nature as it was a part of his own. It was the reason why they’d fought so much, loved so much and, in the end, almost destroyed each other.

  Well, not this time, he vowed as he moved across the room towards his own bedroom door. Samantha might not understand this yet, but the two of them had been given a second chance and this time they were going to use it wisely.

  He was going to use it wisely, he then amended. Because he couldn’t expect Samantha to be wise after an event she didn’t even remember.

  At precisely seven o’clock Samantha took a final look at herself in the mirror, drew in a deep breath, then walked towards the door, reasonably confident that he was going to be feeling quietly relieved when he saw how she was dressed.

  For, despite his derogatory impression that her clothes were tat, she had a dress. A very expensive matt-black crêpe cocktail dress, kindly donated to her, among other items, by the wife of one of her doctors who’d taken pity on her—and who’d also gone up a couple of sizes since she’d bought the clothes.

  Most of the other stuff she’d
had replaced with new just as soon as she could afford to. But this dress had been too good to let go so she’d kept it, never really believing she’d ever get a chance to wear it.

  But here she was, doing exactly that, and not only did she think the dress looked good on her but it also felt good in the way the beautiful fabric moved against her slender shape. She had washed her hair with the expensive toiletries in the bathroom, and had discovered that you truly did get what you paid for because, as she’d blow-dried her hair, it had been a pleasurable experience to watch the colour become more vibrant the drier it had become.

  So she’d left it to fall free around her shoulders—mainly because she suspected he was expecting her to screw it up in defiance of his toffee-nosed prude remark. Also, she had applied some make-up, paying careful attention to the strained bruising around her eyes. The only thing letting her down were the low-heeled black court shoes she was forced to wear.

  But otherwise she was ready to be seen out in public with him, she told herself firmly, and lifted her chin and opened the door.

  André was already there, standing over by the desk with one hand braced on it as he leaned over some papers. He looked quite painfully gorgeous.

  And he was wearing a plain white tee shirt, grey linen trousers—and that was it.

  While she had been dressing up he had been dressing down, and the realisation almost shattered her carefully constructed composure.

  Then he looked up, saw her standing there, went perfectly still, and her composure shattered anyway. For this man wasn’t just breathtakingly attractive, he was dangerously so. Black silk hair, olive-toned skin, eyes like bitter chocolate which seemed to melt as they moved with an excruciating slowness from the top of her head to the shoes on her feet. His facial bone structure was perfect, his mouth essentially male, and the muscular configuration beneath that tight white tee shirt screamed sex at her—sex.

  Slowly he began to straighten his torso, the hand sliding away from the desk the more upright he became. But what really took her breath away was the way his eyes gentled as they made contact with her own eyes.