by Robyn Donald
Anguished frustration pounded through her.
Desperately she lay back and closed her eyes, repeating to herself, ‘I am Aline Connor,’ in the hope that the mantra might goad her errant memory.
Eventually she slept, to wake to a dazzle of sunlight and a knocking that had somehow become entwined in her dream—a dream of pursuit, where she searched vainly down dark winding corridors for something she’d lost.
She opened her eyes and sat up, automatically pushing her hair back. Jake stood at the door, his face wiped free of expression so that for a stark, scary moment she saw stamped on his features the ruthless strength that marked a warrior’s face.
In spite of the T-shirt, she hauled the sheet tightly above her breasts and eased back against the pillows. ‘What do you want?’ she asked thinly, shocked anew at his raw male power—and even more shocked at her primal, lawless response.
‘You called out,’ he said without expression. ‘I thought you might be having a nightmare.’
He saw her lashes flick sideways, but he’d already noticed the subtle signs of arousal—darkening eyes, soft mouth, the colour staining her translucent skin. One graceful hand pushed back the tousled hair that stuck endearingly to her cheek, blending the strands into the rumpled jet tresses across her shoulders.
In the plain white cotton shirt she was more intriguing than any other woman in seductive silk or lace, and she got to him as no other woman ever had, packing a punch so hard it damned near unmanned him. Now, when he needed to be able to think clearly, all his subversive brain could manage were erotic memories of her in that bed, in his arms.
She frowned. ‘It wasn’t a nightmare,’ she said, adding awkwardly, ‘But thank you for coming to wake me.’
Jake looked at her, his face sombre. Forcing her to stay in this room so that every time she went to bed she’d recall their fevered lovemaking had seemed a good idea, but if she had amnesia it was futile.
If she had it.
For the first time ever he cursed the unreliable mobile telephone link. Cold logic told him a complete loss of memory was highly unlikely, but the sneaking worry wouldn’t go away. She had banged her head, even if only slightly, and the previous day had been a traumatic one for her.
Then she’d behaved in a way that was totally out of character, damned near seducing him.
Given her intense loyalty to Connor, Jake wondered grimly if what had been a mind-blowing, addictive experience for him had tipped Aline over the edge, so that the only way to forgive herself for being unfaithful to her husband’s memory was to cut him out of her mind.
Jake was beginning to resent just how much that bothered him.
On the other hand, if what Tony Hudson had told him about the Connor Trust was true—and if that long conversation at the christening had roused her suspicion—it was possible she might have a very good reason for pretending amnesia. A large amount of money, enough to mean she’d never have to work again.
When he’d asked Tony if she had anything to do with the day-to-day affairs of the Trust, Tony had shaken his head. ‘No, no, but of course she knows what’s happening. She and Peter Bournside, the manager, are friends. Very good friends.’ Tony’s pleasant, honest face had been concerned. ‘That’s what makes it all so awkward…’
He’d refused to say anything more, but his words stuck in Jake’s memory like grit in a shoe.
‘Stop staring at me as if I were something nasty washed up on the beach,’ Aline snapped belligerently, her eyes glittering green sparks.
‘If you think that’s how I look at jetsam,’ he said evenly, ‘you’re sadly mistaken.’
Hot colour rushed into her skin again. Glowering, she hunched her shoulders and pulled the sheet up higher, trying to hide. ‘Please go,’ she said, but her voice wobbled and, to her outraged horror, weak, shaming tears flooded her eyes.
As she twisted sideways and buried her face into the pillow she felt the side of the bed give. Strong, ruthless hands turned her around, and Jake said, ‘I thought it wasn’t a nightmare?’
She gave a huge gulp. ‘Oh, it was all very symbolic! I was looking for something, running and searching, searching and running, banging on doors that wouldn’t open. I knew I had to find it because I didn’t know where I lived or who my friends were!’
His hands tightened on her shoulders, before sliding around her back and pulling her against his large, secure body. ‘It’s all right,’ he said calmly, his voice very deep and sure.
Beneath her cheek she could hear his heart, slow and regular and infinitely reliable. A sensation of complete trust welled through her—exquisite, unbearable, and as gossamer as moonbeams, because what on earth was it based on?
‘I don’t know who I am, or who you are. I know the name of the Prime Minister,’ she half-sobbed, half-hurled at him, ‘and where Australia is—I can see a map of the world in my head. It’s all there. But I can’t remember anything about me. My life’s been wiped out.’
He said quietly, ‘Look at me.’
‘Why should I?’ she muttered, appalled at her complete disintegration. She squeezed her eyes shut, stopping the tears by sheer force of will.
An inexorable hand on her chin tilted her face and held it still. Unable to bear his unseen scrutiny, Aline opened her lashes wide, blazing blue defiance while he surveyed her face with eyes as hard and emotionless as yellow diamonds.
That impersonal, detached gaze hurt her deep inside. She said wearily, ‘I don’t even remember the man I was married to, and surely I should be able to do that. Jake, I want to go back home—I know I’ll remember once I’m home.’
‘I doubt it,’ Jake said absently. ‘Your house is like a nun’s cell—nothing personal in it to jog a reluctant memory.’
He appeared to be thinking, his face so empty of all emotion it looked like an austere mask.
Urgently, she demanded, ‘Do you believe me?’
His mouth curved in an ironic smile. ‘That you’ve lost your memory? Yes—if only because I know that normally you’d sooner die than let me see you crying, or losing your temper.’
It wasn’t the relief she’d thought it would be. Oddly uncertain, she asked, ‘Am I so uptight?’
‘Not uptight.’ In an oddly comforting gesture, he wiped away the tears from her cheeks with his thumb. ‘You’re controlled, extremely astute. A very cool lady.’
His gentle touch shattered something deep inside her. And because it was dangerous to give in to that pleading hunger for the security of his arms she pulled free of him, surging back against the pillows. ‘If I knew why I lost my memory I might be able to do something that would bring it back. You told me I’d had bad news…?’
He hesitated before saying deliberately, ‘You learned that your husband had been unfaithful to you.’
‘Oh.’
Neither spoke. A vagrant breeze off the ocean, fragrant with the promise of unknown destinations beyond the horizon, caressed her pale cheeks. Aline turned this new piece of information over in her mind, examining it with an appalled, sombre intensity.
Why had her husband betrayed her? What sort of marriage had they had? Had she been broken-hearted, or bitter, or furious? Or all three? However harrowing, any emotion would be better than this enveloping blankness.
Eventually she confessed, ‘Apart from a kind of regret—the sort of thing you’d feel for an acquaintance if you were told about it—it doesn’t mean anything.’ She wiped foolish tears away with the backs of her hands.
‘It did yesterday.’ He got to his feet and stood by the side of the bed, still watching her with that searching gaze.
‘Enough to make me want to forget him?’ Aline asked, grateful for her T-shirt.
‘Perhaps. If you combine it with making love with me last night,’ he said coolly. ‘That was out of character. I assumed you needed reassurance and comfort.’
‘That makes me sound awful—as though I used you!’ she exclaimed in distress.
Tawny eyes glinting beneath black
lashes, mouth smiling in sensuous reminiscence, Jake laughed deep in his throat. ‘If that was how it started, it certainly wasn’t how it ended,’ he told her frankly. ‘I don’t know whether you got any comfort from my reaction, but you certainly got all the reassurance about your desirability as a woman that you might have needed. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life watching you come in my arms, untamed and beautiful and erotic as hell.’
Heat stormed through her skin as she recalled the scratches on his back. ‘So if I—ah—enjoyed it—’
‘You have a talent for understatement,’ he interpolated mockingly.
Stumbling but determined, she continued, ‘Making love to you wouldn’t have slammed that screen down in my brain. It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘You’re a very passionate woman—passionate in your loyalty, passionate in your anger. The combination of your husband’s treachery and your desire for another man—and you did want me, Aline, right from the start—could have locked your mind into a conflict that led to this impasse.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s much more likely that the trigger was finding out about my husband’s infidelity.’ A wisp of emotion—raw anguish and bitterness—surfaced from somewhere deep inside her. Was that how she’d felt yesterday? Shuddering, she thought that amnesia might have its good points after all.
‘True.’
The abrasive note in his voice brought her head around. He was angry, she realised, wondering exactly what she’d said to summon that steely edge of leashed emotion.
Disturbing, enigmatic, he’d been kind in his forceful way. Why, last night, had she decided to make love with him? However upset she’d been, she’d have known that Jake was not a man to take and use and discard.
A desperate need drove her to say, ‘Jake, make love to me now.’
His face hardened. ‘Why?’ he asked.
She bit her lip. And recklessly told him the truth. ‘Because I can’t look at you without wanting you,’ she whispered. ‘The only thing that’s stopped me from panicking today is that you’re here with me. I can’t remember making love with you, and I want to.’
The only security she knew was in his arms. It could have been because she remembered nobody else, but she suspected the real reason was that she’d spent the past two months falling in love with him. Something had kept them apart; this might be all she had of him, these days when whatever kept her distant from him had no power over her.
Jake thought he might have been able to resist her if he hadn’t already held her fragrant slenderness in his arms, if she hadn’t looked up at him with that mixture of shy passion and fear.
Instinct—the deeply rooted need to make her his in every way there was—warred with the need to go carefully in case he made things worse.
What she wanted was security. He wanted so much more from her.
She made love with you last night, temptation purred. A deep, powerful, possessive pleasure sharpened his hunger; although she’d lost everything else, she hadn’t lost that. He’d watched her fight her response to him since she’d woken that morning—just as he’d been fighting this slow burn of need, a need that had grown instead of being eased by last night.
‘Jake?’ she said in a husky whisper that smashed through his will-power, swamping him with a hungry sensuality unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.
He sat on the side of the bed and picked up her hand, surveying its slender, strong length, delicate yet competent. Around the ring finger was the pale line of her wedding ring, the ring she’d hurled from his car.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, deliberately expressionless.
She answered directly and fiercely. ‘I’m sure. I don’t know much about myself, but I understand desire when I feel it. And perhaps…’
His fingers tightened a moment around her hand. With a hard, probing glance he asked, ‘Perhaps?’
‘Perhaps making love again will give me my mind back,’ she said with stark frankness. ‘But that’s not the main reason.’
Her glance, turbulent and desirous, made the main reason plain. More aroused than he’d ever been before, he wondered why he’d ever doubted her. Memory or no memory, she was honest to the core, and he wanted her so violently that he was prepared to take her any way he could.
Aline’s heart lurched at his hooded glance, the golden eyes darkening into arrow points of urgent need. Her breath came urgently through her lips when he stood up and ripped his shirt over his head before unbuckling his belt.
With dilating eyes, she watched the play and flow of muscles beneath his tanned skin as he stripped. Liquid fire gathered in the pit of her stomach, melting her bones and focusing her brain so that all she could see was Jake, magnificent in the quiet room, all she could hear was the thunder of her pulse-beats in her ears, all she could smell was the faint, salty scent that was his alone.
And when he came in beside her all she could feel was the smooth, hot slide of his skin against hers as he wrenched her T-shirt up and over her head, and then she felt his mouth on her breasts, and his hands, and his disciplined strength and his unleashed passion washed over her in a white-hot tide of sensation.
Able only to feel, she let her brain slip into neutral, letting her body take control. She might have forgotten what it was like to lie beneath this man and make love to him, take him inside her, find that forbidden, soaring ecstasy in his arms, but her body remembered!
And her body knew what to do—knew that touching him in a certain way made him drag in a harsh, impeded breath, knew that arching into his taut length made him growl deep in his throat as he smoothed his hands up over her breasts and held her face still to kiss her, thrusting deeply in the sweet reaches of her mouth in a spine-tingling mimicry of what they both knew was coming.
And when it did—when her slick body was begging and she was saying his name in a desperate, driven plea for something—she knew that this was what she had been born for. This man and this moment.
As sensation built, powerful and consuming, the world dwindled to the two of them, the heat and the primal energy of male and female, man and woman, the acute sensory overload until she couldn’t bear any more pleasure, would scream if he thrust one more time—and then he thrust, and she screamed and convulsed in an agony of erotic rapture, waves of feeling spreading out from the place where they were joined, rippling like a floodtide through her and on and on.
Jake’s breath laboured through his lungs; groaning, he moved faster and faster, and as another tidal wave of ecstasy drowned her she heard his harsh cry when he too reached his peak.
How long they lay together on the ruined bed she had no idea, but eventually their breathing slowed and he propped himself up on one arm and looked down at her face. ‘All right?’ he asked.
Aline opened her eyes. He looked like some ancient warrior who’d taken his pleasure of one of the spoils of war. Well, she didn’t begrudge him his satisfaction because she felt it too!
‘Fine,’ she said, her voice hoarse.
‘No memory?’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
He kissed her swiftly and got up. ‘When I heard you cry out I was on my way to check the generator and attend to a hiccup in the pump.’ He grinned at her as he scooped up his clothes and went towards the door. ‘Give me ten minutes before you try the shower.’
Aline’s breath sighed out as she relaxed against the pillows. Her tiredness had disappeared, banished by Jake’s potent vitality.
How many other women had made love with him in that big bed? A sudden jealousy pierced right through to her heart.
Don’t even go there, she thought wearily as she stretched extravagantly, enjoying the mild ache in her joints.
Jake knew women, and enjoyed them; she should feel gratitude instead of jealousy for the faceless predecessors who’d refined his natural understanding of female sexuality into experienced skill.
Had she learned to love him during the last two months?
‘Oh, why didn’t my memory come back?’ she muttered.
The sun was close to the horizon when she emerged from her room. In the kitchen Jake surveyed her with an amused gaze before indicating a glass on the counter.
‘Sauvignon Blanc,’ he said laconically. ‘Your favourite.’
‘Thank you.’ Startled by the fierce hit of pleasure at the sight of him, she made no attempt to pick up the wine glass.
‘Unpoisoned,’ he said with a faintly mocking smile. ‘No drugs, Aline.’
She flushed, but retorted, ‘You can hardly blame me.’
‘It was an interesting idea,’ he said, and opened the door into a pantry, bending to collect a handful of new potatoes. ‘Just not my style.’
Well, no. Jake Howard wouldn’t have to drug any woman into making love with him. In thrall to a shiver of remembered pleasure, Aline asked, ‘Can I help?’
‘You don’t cook.’
‘I can scrub potatoes,’ she said firmly.
He dropped them into the sink and smiled at her, a smile that had probably been melting women’s bones since he’d started high school. ‘Then scrub away.’
Aline enjoyed working beside him in the kitchen. Scrubbing the small white potatoes was satisfying work, and the sound of them bubbling away in the saucepan was gratifying. But better than that—better than anything—was the feeling of rightness, a hundredfold stronger than before, that she felt at his side.
She was drying her hands when she noticed Jake glance out to sea. Alerted by his stillness, like a hunter sighting a target, she followed his line of sight to a speedboat pounding around the headland in a flurry of spray. Noise filled the quiet bay as the craft roared across the water. Not far out from the beach it slowed and settled down into the water before stopping. A moment later she saw a splash as the anchor dropped into the water.
‘Friends of yours?’ she asked, staring at the three men on board.
Scanning the boat with a pair of binoculars, Jake said briefly, ‘No one I know.’
Aline watched an inflatable dinghy go into the water from the stern; two people got in, one carrying what appeared to be a parcel. The outboard buzzed into life like an irritated wasp, whipping the dinghy sideways in a welter of foam. After a couple of exciting seconds it straightened up and headed for the beach.