She didn’t say a word, not one word. Her silence cut into him like a nine-inch steel blade.
‘We won’t do this again unless we do so as equals,’ he told her flatly.
‘Equals?’ he heard her whisper.
‘Yes!’ he barked, dragging up the zip over a burgeoning shaft which was making an absolute mockery out of his grand gesture. He swung round to sear her with the flame of his own filthy anger. ‘Equals as in you saying my name and knowing this man called André who you are about to give your body to!’ he all but snarled at her.
She was sitting up, hair a mass of crackling fire around her shoulders and coiling sensually over her lily-white breasts. But her face was whiter, and he saw her flinch, saw her beautiful eyes fill with the horrible glint of shame. Remorse almost choked him. He’d started this. He’d given in to temptation when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t, done it all on the flimsy excuse to himself that he was diverting her attention away from what they had been discussing.
‘I do know him,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a rat.’
She was right and he was. His anger melted down into grim self-mockery. ‘Well, the rat is going to go scavenging in the kitchen,’ he threw back satirically. ‘Get dressed and come and join me when you’re ready.’
With that he got out of there before she threw something lethal at him. Instincts were instincts after all, and Samantha’s instincts were all damned dangerous…
CHAPTER TEN
SHE didn’t go down. He had to be crazy to think that she actually would.
Or just plain arrogant.
What she did was remain sitting on the edge of the bed, silently drowning in a pool of her own humiliation. And it was all her own. Because she’d done it all by her stupid self. He might have started it but she’d certainly encouraged it. When she should have been pushing him away she’d kissed him, bitten him, lured him and provoked him like a sex-mad teenager without a moral in sight.
Sex-mad. She shivered, feeling goose-bumps of dismay break out all over her flesh. At least they had a strong enough effect to make her get up and gather up her clothes with the intention of putting them back on. Then she just stood there, looking around the bedroom with its beautiful French furniture as if none of it was even there. Then, without thinking twice about it, she dropped the clothes to the floor again, walked back to the bed and crawled beneath the cool white percale duvet, shut her eyes and sank into a deep, dark slumber filled with dancing nymphets and leering dark devils.
She awoke hours later, feeling heavy-eyed and so sluggish she could almost believe she had drunk herself into a bad hangover.
That would be a first, she thought with a smile, and got out of the bed to walk into the bathroom, where she showered, dried herself, strolled across the thick creamy carpet towards another door that led into the dressing room. Taking her time, she selected a long, emerald-green, Japanese silk robe, slipped it on and began tying the silk belt around her waist as she walked back into the bedroom. Her head was down, watching her busy fingers, and her movements were as smooth and relaxed as anyone’s should be who was moving around their own bedroom, in their own home.
André was away, she was thinking idly. Raoul was out on the town somewhere. Which meant she had the whole house to herself to—
That was when she noticed the suitcase standing by the door, frowned at it—then heard a sound across the room and turned her head to see André, dressed in black silk trousers and a white silk shirt, standing by the window, with his hands in his pockets and his handsome face wearing a very sternly closed expression.
‘You found your old clothes, then,’ he said, and—slam. A door flew shut in her head and she sank onto the soft cream carpet.
The next thing she knew she was lying on a strange bed, wearing a beautiful green silk wrap she didn’t recognise, and a complete stranger was leaning over her.
Youngish, good-looking. ‘Hi.’ He smiled pleasantly when he saw she was looking at him. ‘Beautiful eyes. I’m glad you opened them.’
‘Where am I?’ she mumbled hazily. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a doctor.’ He smiled again. ‘The name is Jonathan Miles, though people I really like are allowed to call me Jack.’
It was only then that she realised he was lightly clasping one of her wrists, where the pulse was throbbing dully beneath his fingers.
‘Now, stay still for a moment while I get close and intimate by looking deep into those beautiful eyes with this torch…’
Obediently she did as instructed. ‘What happened?’ she asked as he began flashing the torch into one of her eyes.
‘You blacked out,’ he explained, moving onto the other eye. ‘André was worried, so he called me in to check you over.’
André. At last the mist clouding her brain began to clear.
‘Do you know where you are?’ he asked her quietly.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled.
‘Can you tell me the last thing you remember before you blacked out?’
‘I woke up. I knew who I was. Realised it and blacked out,’ she replied with quiet economy.
He began to frown. ‘What made you realise?’
Him, she wanted to spit. I hate him. I don’t ever want to set eyes on him again. And, acting on that thought, she let her eyes drift shut again. ‘I prefer not to talk about it,’ she said.
The doctor sat back with a dissatisfied sigh. ‘Too upsetting or too—private?’ he quizzed.
Both, she thought and refused to answer. The silence dragged. Somewhere else in the room a body shifted tensely. The doctor’s fingers lightly touched the fine scar at her temple. Her eyes flicked back open, hard green, sparking with warning.
‘Nice job.’ He smiled that pleasant smile again. ‘A superficial laceration that should disappear completely given time,’ he said in diagnosis. ‘What about the knee?’
‘The knee is fine,’ she answered tightly. ‘Like everything that’s wrong with me, it just needs time.’
The doctor studied her angry, pale, defensive face for a few moments, then nodded. ‘Point taken,’ he conceded. ‘Bearing that in mind, I suppose you won’t agree to a head X-ray, just to check that there is nothing—’
‘No,’ she interrupted firmly.
‘Yes,’ another voice chipped in. ‘If you feel its necessary, Jack, then she’ll do it.’
The moment André made his presence truly felt, Samantha covered her eyes with a hand.
‘This isn’t your decision, André,’ she heard the doctor say with a flat-voiced firmness that quietly impressed her. And if she’d been watching she would have seen him flash a warning look at the other man, which had him swinging away in grim frustration.
She would have also seen the doctor pick up her two packs of tablets from the bedside cabinet where, unbeknown to her, André had fished them out of her handbag and placed them. Jack Miles read the two pharmacy labels, grimaced, then opened one and flipped out a small white pill before deftly pocketing the rest and reaching for a glass of water.
‘Here, take this,’ he instructed.
The hand slid away. She frowned at the pill, recognised it and obediently took it from him, drank it down with the water then closed her eyes to wait for the mild tranquilliser to soothe away everything.
She felt the bed shift as the doctor stood up, then his hand gently resting on one of hers for a moment. ‘André knows where I am if you need me, Samantha.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ And was just glad he was going.
The moment Jack gave him the nod, André strode for the door and the two men left quietly. He felt like hell, and by the expression on Jack’s face he felt that André deserved it.
‘I don’t know what game you think you’re playing here, André…’ Jack Miles went on the attack as soon as the door closed behind him ‘…but I’m going to tell you that it’s a dangerous one.’
‘It isn’t a game,’ he threw back grimly.
‘I’m glad you realise that,’ the doct
or said. ‘But if you brought me here for my honest opinion, then I think you’re in over your head. Amnesia is a tricky condition. We know very little about it. But I would say that she is beginning to remember. And, personally, I think she needs a controlled environment in which to do so.’
‘No,’ André refused instantly, and turned to walk towards the stairwell. ‘You’re talking hospitals, and though I might see the sense in her having a quick X-ray, I will not put her back into hospital. She’s had enough of those to last her a lifetime,’ he added with a tense shift of his shoulders.
‘Which doesn’t necessarily make you her best alternative.’
‘I’m her only alternative!’ he barked, swinging round to glare at the other man. ‘She relates to me! She responds to me! She needs me to be here for her and I won’t let her down again!’
It was possessive and it was passionate. Jack studied his tight, determined features, and grimaced. ‘Your own personal crusade, André?’ he suggested.
‘Yes,’ André hissed, and turned away again to stride down the stairs, wanting Jack to go now, since he wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know already. In over his head? Hell, he knew it. Stick her in a controlled environment? Not while he still had breath left in his body to stop it from happening.
‘Here…’ At the front door, Jack fished the two packs of tablets out of his pocket and handed them to him. ‘You keep these away from her,’ he advised. ‘Administer only when you believe they are necessary.’
‘You mean—’ His mouth went dry. ‘You think she’s…’
‘I think she’s in shock, damn it!’ The other man suddenly exploded. ‘When did you find her? Two days ago? How many times did you say she’d blacked out or almost blacked out since then? Who knows what’s happening inside her head? I certainly don’t. You obviously don’t. And I don’t think that she knows either! Tonight, for instance,’ he continued furiously, ‘she goes to sleep, wakes up—and starts using that bedroom as if she’d never spent a year away from it! Then all of a sudden, wham, she somersaults back from the past into the present—it’s no wonder she blacks out!’
‘I get the picture,’ André said roughly, grimly pocketing the tablets and wanting to shut him up so that he would just go. ‘Thanks for coming out at such short notice, Jack. It was appreciated.’
‘But not the opinion, hmm?’ Jack Miles noted dryly. ‘Well, just one last piece of advice before I leave,’ he went on. ‘If you feel you must deal with this problem yourself, then take it easy. Give her comfort, support and just be there for her. But no probing,’ he warned with deadly seriousness. ‘And maybe, just maybe, you’ll get lucky and the memories will simply float gently to the surface and emerge without causing her further trauma.’
‘But you don’t think it will be that easy.’ André grimaced, reading the doubtful tone in his voice.
Jack shook his head. ‘As she’s proved already, things are coming back in disjointed flashes. And you are the trigger, André. Don’t, for goodness’ sake, squeeze that trigger, or the gun might backfire in your face.’
It backfired twelve months ago, André thought heavily as he closed the door on Jack Miles’s departure. Sighing, he turned and walked into the sitting room, then aimed directly for the whisky decanter. As he poured the drink, his eyes caught sight of a framed photograph sitting on the top of the antique bureau which was the only piece of furniture Samantha had brought with her into the house when they’d married.
Stepping over to it, he picked up the photo frame and stood staring down at the faces of two laughing young men. Then, with a violence that erupted out of nowhere, he threw the frame to the floor, smashing it to smithereens.
The next morning Samantha came down the stairs and turned towards the back of the house, following the aroma of toast and freshly ground coffee. In truth, her stomach was beginning to think her throat had been cut, it was so long since she’d swallowed anything more substantial that a pre-packed sandwich at a motorway café.
But it still took courage to open the door she presumed led into the kitchen, not at all sure who she was going see on the other side of it. Stranger or half-stranger?
Half-stranger, she discovered. A very dark, very attractive one, wearing a v-necked sweatshirt and a pair of stone-washed trousers. He was standing in front of a very impressive stainless steel cooking range, feeding slices of bread into a rotating grill. Glancing round, he saw her standing in the doorway, and a short tense stillness followed in which she gazed warily at him and he stared warily back.
Stalemate. Neither knew what to say to the other. Neither knew how the other was going to react. He broke the deadlock first by dipping his eyes over the simple corn-yellow blouse she had teamed with a pair of pale olive trousers and a matching gilet. And if he recognised them as items from the wardrobe upstairs, this time he had the caution to say nothing, and with a smooth-spoken, ‘Hi,’ he turned his attention back to what he was doing. ‘Did the smell of the coffee get as far as your room?’
‘The toast, actually,’ she replied, striving to sound as relaxed as he did. ‘I’m starving,’ she admitted.
‘I know the feeling. I didn’t eat much myself yesterday. Sit down,’ he invited. ‘Sustenance will arrive in about ten seconds.’
Well, that was the most awkward part over, she mused as she did as she was told and went to sit down at the large, scrubbed kitchen table that dominated the room. Then, to stop herself from looking at him, she made herself take an interest in her surroundings.
The kitchen was gorgeous, packed full of individually standing, old, scrubbed pine furniture you would only expect to find in a traditional farmhouse. ‘Who did the interior decorating for you?’ she questioned curiously.
‘My mother,’ he replied, deftly stacking hot slices of toast onto a hot plate. ‘Hence the French influence in just about everything you see.
His mother. Her heart sank. ‘Does she live here as well?’ she asked, silently pleading for him to say no.
He went many steps further than her plea with a quiet, ‘She died several years ago.’
Which made her feel really mean for what she had been thinking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.
He just offered a shrug as he turned to put the plate of toast down on the table, followed by a big old-fashioned coffee pot. ‘The two of you never met,’ he told her, and turned away again.
‘Your father?’ She felt compelled to ask next.
Two serviceable white coffee mugs and a couple of white side plates arrived on the table along with milk, sugar and butter dish. ‘He died when I was ten years old.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said again, then clamped her mouth shut. And because they were both aware that it was a natural progression for her to go on and ask if there were any other members of his family, a very loud silence fell.
But she couldn’t ask—though she didn’t understand why she couldn’t.
In an attempt to fill the gap, she reached for the coffee mugs, carefully lining them up in front of her while she racked her brains for something else to say. ‘I would have expected a house the size of this to have a small army of servants to keep it so nice,’ she remarked.
‘They come in on a daily basis during week days,’ he explained, pulling out the chair opposite hers and sitting down. ‘Today is Saturday,’ he added, for no reason that Samantha could see other than to keep the conversation moving.
‘Should I know any of them?’ she asked, picking up the coffee pot.
‘Mrs Saunders, who keeps the house, you knew. As to the rest, I have no idea.’
‘Oh,’ was all she could find to say to that. So she turned her attention to pouring coffee into both of the mugs, adding sugar to one and milk to the other, then she slid the sugared black one across the table towards him.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured a trifle thickly.
She nodded in acknowledgement, took a sip at her coffee, selected a slice of toast, placed it on one of the white side plates, then just sat there blan
kly staring at it.
‘What?’ he said gruffly. ‘Something wrong? Something I—’
‘Knife,’ she explained.
It was his turn to look blank as he stared at the table for a few seconds before he got up and went to a drawer, coming back with several knives which he placed down on the table.
‘You’ve hurt your finger,’ she observed, noticing the heavy plaster wrapping encasing the index finger on his right hand.
‘I dropped a glass,’ he lied, ‘and cut myself when I was picking up the broken pieces. While I’m up, do you want marmalade or jam?’
Samantha shook her head and he sat down again. Picking up her coffee, she sipped at it for a while. He did the same. When she buttered her slice of toast so did he. It was awful, she decided glumly. Neither of them had a single thing worth saying. Strangers did not even cover what they were to each other any more.
‘Did you—?’
‘Have you—?’
Both began speaking at once, and both stopped at once.
‘You go first,’ he invited.
Great, Samantha thought! She’d forgotten what she had been going to say.
Story of my life, she mocked. ‘I think I’ll have that jam.’ She plucked the words out of thin air.
He got up. Her temper began to fray under the stress. ‘I didn’t expect you to get it for me,’ she snapped. ‘All you needed to do was point me in the right direction and I would have managed to find it myself!’
The jam pot landed with a thud on the table. ‘No problem,’ he clipped.
Lying swine, she thought, and came to her feet. He was still standing. ‘Where are you going now?’ He sighed the words out impatiently.
‘It’s you who’s been jumping up and down,’ she threw back.
‘Just—sit and eat,’ he commanded. Not looking so smooth around his own sleek edges now, she noticed waspishly.
‘I’m not hungry—’
‘Sit down and eat!’ he repeated angrily.
‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I feel as if you’ve got me pinned under a microscope!’
The Unforgettable Husband Page 11