Forgotten Sins

by Robyn Donald

  ‘Stay here,’ Jake ordered, putting the binoculars back on the divider.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m going to order them off,’ he said briefly.

  Startled by his high-handedness, she protested, ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘I can,’ he told her. ‘If they’ve got a chart—and they will have—they know I’ve got riparian rights, so they also know they’ll be trespassing the moment they set foot on shore.’

  Moving with noiseless ease, and very fast for such a big man, he was gone before Aline had time to think. Although he wasn’t running, there was something predatory about him, an intimidating aura of authority that tightened her skin even as she told herself there was no danger, just a scene repeated thousands of times over New Zealand—people landing on a beach.

  It was only then that she realised these two men, whoever they were, could get her back home. Charged with adrenalin, she bolted out of the house as the dinghy scraped up onto the beach.

  The men got out and walked towards Jake across the hard sand. They looked ordinary and safe. Much safer than Jake.

  Not that you’d know he was dangerous—he was speaking coolly, his attitude relaxed, his whole stance one of total self-confidence. Was it only Aline who recognised his cold alertness? She jumped the few inches from the edge of the lawn to the sand, landing lightly, but both men caught the movement and started forward.

  Jake swung around, something in his hard face bringing Aline to a skidding halt.

  The shorter of the two men made a dive for the boat, straightening up with a camera. Heart pounding, Aline stared mutely as he levelled it at her.

  ‘Go back,’ Jake said, his voice quiet and flat, his gaze unwinking.

  Driven by an instinct as old as danger, Aline swivelled and ran back towards the house, barely faltering when one of the men called her name. ‘Aline! Wait, Aline—we just want to talk to you, get your side of the story. You’ve been very close to Peter Bournside. Do you know he’s left the country? A large chunk of Trust money is missing—do you know where it is?’ A sudden grunt, followed by an outcry and a splash, cut off the words.

  She jolted to a stop, turning her head in time to see one of the men drag the camera from the water and shake it.

  Jake said calmly, ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘What the hell did you knock it into the water for? You’ll pay for this,’ one of the men shouted incredulously.

  ‘Bill me,’ Jake said, bored.

  Her heart thudding heavily in her ears, Aline shot into the house; once safely out of sight, she grabbed the binoculars.

  The two men had started to follow her, but Jake was barring the way, unyielding, controlled and uncompromisingly formidable. Voices rose and fell as the men argued vehemently with him, but it was clear that neither was prepared to go past him.

  Aline didn’t blame them. Big and inflexible, he looked more than capable of dealing with both of them.

  Pulses pounding in her ears, she struggled to hear, but their words were indistinguishable; both men kept looking up at the house, and through the glasses she could see from their expressions and their body language that they’d switched from anger to attempts at persuasion.

  She could have told them they didn’t have a chance of changing Jake’s mind.

  Eventually they shrugged. Talking fast, the one without the camera said something to Jake. Horrified, Aline watched his big hands clench at his sides. The journalist must have recognised his danger, because he backed off and scrambled into the dinghy; its engine shattered the silence as it started back towards the speedboat.

  Tall and forbidding, Jake remained on the beach, watching as the men clambered aboard. One reached for another camera and began to film; he continued to photograph the man on the beach, the house, the bay, until the speedboat had left as noisily as it came.

  Only then did Jake turn and come back up to the house. Although his face was impassive, she could sense his towering anger.

  Setting her jaw, she went out to the deck to meet him.

  He said grimly, ‘I told you to stay inside.’

  Angry and embarrassed, she resented the involuntary clutch of response in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed, but said crisply, ‘What was all that about? Why are journalists trying to take photographs of me? What was that about money?’ Anxiety cracked her brittle poise. ‘And who is Peter Bournside?’

  ‘He’s the executive manager of the trust fund your late husband set up for at-risk youth,’ Jake said casually.

  There was nothing casual about his watchful eyes, however.

  Aline frowned. ‘What on earth were they talking about? Do I have anything to do with the Trust?’ A swirling, formless panic began to pool beneath her ribs.

  He shrugged. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then why would I be interested in him leaving the country?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Jake said indifferently. ‘Come on, I’ll feel more confident with you inside. I had to threaten them with harassment to get rid of them, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they landed in the next bay and sneaked over the hill.’

  When she didn’t move he urged her through the doors with an uncompromising hand at her elbow. Although the last light from the sun still spilled in through the windows, it no longer reached the trees behind the house. The lush, green growth now huddled in tangled, gloomy obscurity.

  Aline couldn’t stop a swift, almost scared glance at the hill. ‘Why?’ she asked, stopping once she was safely inside. ‘It was me they wanted, wasn’t it? And they were journalists. What’s going on?’

  ‘What is going on,’ he said curtly, watching her with a cool assessment that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck, ‘is a media witch-hunt. Someone has written a book about your—about Michael Connor. I gather it’s a piece of hack journalism by a muckraker out to coax a quick buck from those readers who enjoy discovering feet of clay in their heroes. It’s full of innuendo and insinuations. Those men are journalists who want to interview you. It’s not likely that they’ll be the last.’

  She felt the colour drain from her skin. ‘Why?’ she asked stupidly.

  ‘Because scandal sells newspapers,’ he said with brutal frankness. Before she could demand to know what scandal, he went on, ‘If they discover that you’ve lost your memory there’ll be a feeding frenzy.’ Shrewd eyes assessed her expression with clinical detachment. ‘I’m assuming you don’t want that.’

  ‘No!’ Shivering, she looked up sharply into eyes as unreadable as quartz. ‘What did they say? What has this hack writer put in his book that’s sent journalists chasing me?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it so I don’t know.’

  She sensed he was holding something back, but his shuttered face warned her he wasn’t going to tell her. Of course, she didn’t have to accept his decision. ‘One said something about money.’ She frowned, recalling his exact words. ‘He asked if I knew where the money was. If I’ve got nothing to do with the Trust, why would I know anything?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ Hard golden eyes searched hers.

  Anxiety churning inside her, she said sturdily, ‘It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘As you’ve dealt with everything else,’ he said, still in that ambiguous tone that contrasted with his assessing, unsparing scrutiny.

  She shrugged. ‘You either deal with life or you go under.’ Emphatically she finished, ‘Once I get over this amnesia I’ll never complain about bad memories. I’ll be grateful for them, however awful they might be; having none is like living in a wind tunnel with nowhere to go and nothing to hold onto.’

  ‘It will pass,’ he said calmly. ‘Are you all right? You’re pale.’

  ‘I’m fine. I just wish I knew—oh, well, I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.’

  After a keen look he said enigmatically, ‘I’m sure you will. Would you like to set the table?’

  He seemed—distant, somehow. Yet there was nothing Aline could pin down, no shi
ft in his attitude except for a puzzling neutrality.

  Not in his reactions, however. When he looked at her his eyes kindled and his voice deepened, and behind the cool irony of his expression she read a need that matched the hunger aching through her.

  Aline spent the rest of the evening in a state of simmering excitement, but when she announced that she was tired and ready for bed, he said coolly, ‘I’ll sleep in another room tonight, just in case we have any nocturnal visitors. I don’t want a camera in my face if I’m in the same room as you.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RACKED by bitter, corroding disappointment, Aline asked, ‘Surely you don’t expect those journalists to try a bit of breaking and entering?’

  ‘No.’ Jake got to his feet, his face hiding his thoughts completely. ‘But close the doors to the bedroom, just in case.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Goodnight.’ With a set smile, Aline forced herself to walk briskly and erect away from him, sickened by the bitter taste of humiliation.

  Surely he could have come up with a better excuse for not sharing her bed?

  Something had destroyed the tenuous rapport between them—and it had happened while he held the journalists at bay. What had they said to him? Her head started to throb, so she took a couple of painkillers, then, white-faced and aching with misery, closed the doors in the bedroom and locked the windows half-open before crawling into bed.

  Perhaps it hadn’t been anything the journalist said. Perhaps he’d had his fill of her…

  Raw with pain and a deep, harsh despair, she lay for hours listening to the silent hush of the waves on the beach, wondering how she was going to endure the rest of the week. Jake’s rejection was like a sword-cut to her heart, swift and lethal.

  She woke late, to another blue and gold morning. But it was the sound of an engine that drove her from the bedroom to the big main room.

  Jake was there, and her heart lifted and expanded, filling her with a giddy, heady feeling that vanished the moment she laid eyes on his forbidding, darkly handsome face. ‘More journalists?’ she said urgently.

  He must have read her apprehension. ‘It’s the helicopter.’

  Unnerved, she chewed her lip. ‘The one we came in?’ At his nod she asked, ‘What’s it doing here?’

  ‘It’s taking us off the island,’ he told her, coming across the room.

  Cudgelling her brain into action, she stared up into his impassive face, searching it for reassurance.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked forlornly, but immediately straightened her shoulders, refusing to surrender to the ever-threatening panic that lurked beneath her surface composure. ‘And how did you reach the chopper?’

  ‘I used my mobile phone to call the pilot.’

  She turned on him, sudden fury flaming like blue fire in her eyes. ‘You said you had no way—’

  ‘I said the reception was bad, and so it is,’ he interrupted, mouth compressing into a hard line. ‘Yesterday I couldn’t get out at all. This morning I could. I also discovered that the journalists who came yesterday are on their way back again. A couple of security men are on the chopper; they’ll make sure no one sets foot on the island, so with any luck no one will know we’ve taken off to Auckland.’

  The noise from the helicopter’s engines intensified as it settled behind the house, then eased off.

  ‘Auckland?’ Aline asked, still panicking. ‘Why can’t I go home?’

  She wanted to cling to him, to feel his arms around her, but he was surrounded by a chilling aura of detachment.

  ‘Your house is too easily staked out,’ he said calmly, urging her back towards the bedroom. ‘We’ll go to my apartment in Auckland—there’s a landing pad on the roof, and no chance of any journalists getting anywhere near you. Also, I can get a neurologist to come in and check you.’

  ‘A neurologist?’

  He looked at her keenly. ‘For your memory loss.’

  ‘Oh.’ Feeling stupid, she nodded. ‘Yes, of course. All right, I’ll be ready in ten minutes.’ She ran back to her room.

  The prospect of being ambushed by journalists appalled her. Folding her clothes swiftly and neatly into her bag, she decided that once she got to Auckland she’d see what the newspapers were saying about the man she’d married. Something there might trigger her memory, spurring her brain into full recollection.

  The apartment was large, and beautiful in the same restrained masculine way as the beach house. Without comment, Jake showed Aline into a bedroom that was definitely a guest-room, although it had its own en suite bathroom.

  Did he suspect that she was falling in love with him? Because although he’d told her he wanted her beyond reason, and shown her how much beyond reason that was, wanting was not love.

  And how did she know that the emotion she felt for him was love? It could be simple dependence. Even hostages sometimes developed intense ties with their kidnappers because of the fake intimacy of their relationship. She had no one but Jake to rely on, so of course she’d become dependent on him.

  Yet anticipation, subtle and sparkling, glossed her hidden anxiety—anticipation in spite of his sudden aloofness, because she was here in Jake’s home.

  After she’d unpacked she emerged warily, finding her way into the sitting-room.

  ‘You look like a cat in a new house,’ Jake observed from the window. The building was on the edge of one of Auckland’s low cliffs, overlooking a wide panorama of harbour and islands and peninsulas, and over it all a sky the colour of blue velvet, dimpled with the fuzzy images of stars. ‘I should put butter on your paws.’

  ‘I feel a bit bewildered,’ Aline admitted, her stomach contracting at the image.

  ‘The neurologist will be here shortly.’ His voice sounded casual, but again she had the impression that he was carefully monitoring her reactions.

  ‘I—thank you,’ she said warily.

  He showed her the book he’d been flicking through. ‘If you’re still amnesiac when all this fuss dies down—and it won’t take the news media long to find something else for their headlines—we’ll see what medical science can do. In the meantime, you might find this interesting.’

  That off-hand linking we’ll sent a terrifying wave of longing through her, a longing she couldn’t afford to give in to.

  He was right—it was time to disengage, set some distance between them. Accepting the book, a hearty tome on psychosis, she stepped away, backing up against a large sofa, saying sedately, ‘It’s kind of you to offer, but I’m quite capable of coping with it myself, thank you.’

  His eyes were very keen and hard. ‘You’re an independent woman, but at the moment you need all the help you can get.’

  ‘With any luck the amnesia will disappear of its own accord,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the cover of the book. ‘In spite of—what’s happened between us—you’ve admitted that we’re not much more than business acquaintances. Business acquaintances don’t usually help each other in their personal lives.’

  ‘I’d help anyone who deserved it,’ he told her curtly. ‘And if you think we’re just business acquaintances, Aline, you’ve got an odd idea of how business is conducted.’

  She bit her lip. ‘It takes more than—what we’ve had—to turn people into lovers,’ she said remotely. How could she be so weak? He had only to say her name and she was instantly transfixed by another wave of yearning, sweet and fiery and powerfully addictive.

  ‘Stop savaging your pretty mouth.’ He traced the outline with a sure finger.

  Aline felt his touch in every cell in her body. Sheer joy fountained through her, life-giving, erotic—dangerous—yet she couldn’t move, linked to him by the light pressure of his finger on her skin. Looking at him was like being stabbed by arrows of gold.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he rasped.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘As though you want me to kiss you…’ His hand jerked, then he gave a muffled groan and bent his head.

  Lost in incandescent de
light, Aline stood motionless as he kissed the line of her brows and the sweep of her cheekbones. By the time he reached her waiting lips she was breathing fast and eagerly, her heartbeats drumming in her ears, that fiery tide of need beginning to heat her like lava creeping from a volcano, deceptively beautiful, infinitely dangerous.

  ‘Say my name.’ His voice was deep and abrasive. ‘Say it now.’

  For some reason she hesitated. Something in his tone worried her—a kind of hard impatience, as though beneath that darkly powerful passion there was anger.

  Then she surrendered. ‘Jake,’ she said huskily, dropping the book in her hands so she could reach up to cradle his face. ‘Jake, Jake, Jake…’

  She was still whispering his name when he crushed the word—and every thought—into oblivion with the pressure of his mouth.

  It was a primal possession, a fiercely territorial kiss that stripped her of everything but the need to give him what he demanded, and take an equal measure from him.

  When at last he lifted his head, he surveyed her with gleaming eyes. ‘Nothing in this world is ever perfect—we have to make the best of the deal life hands us,’ he said roughly.

  At the soft peal of a bell somewhere, he said something sharp and raw beneath his breath, then lowered his arms and stepped back. ‘That will be the neurologist.’

  She hid her flushed cheeks by bending to pick up the book she’d dropped. When she straightened she asked, ‘Is there a newspaper here?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to see one?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘Yes.’

  After another probing glance, he said, ‘I’ll get a copy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  When he’d left the room Aline let her pent-up breath sigh out; still dazed by the sheer, primitive passion of the kiss, she stared after him and wondered what had happened then.