by Penny Jordan
‘But why have I forgotten?’ Her forehead pleated in a frown. ‘Surely people suffering from amnesia forget because they want to forget, because there’s something in their past they don’t want to remember.’
‘Not always. Could there be something in your past, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ The effort of trying to remember exhausted and frustrated her. How could she tell this kind man that she was frightened because she didn’t remember her husband, because something about him unnerved her and threatened to unleash emotions she wasn’t sure she wanted to experience? ‘We have been lovers,’ he had said, and she had felt the effect of his words right through her body, as intimately as though he had reached out and touched her.
‘Don’t worry, it will all come back in time. Some things quite automatically, like the way you speak English but can understand Greek when it is spoken slowly.’
‘And the way I knew your name was Greek,’ Sienna mused. ‘Why is that?’
He shrugged. ‘We are not sure. The mind is a complex and delicately balanced piece of equipment. Like a computer, to get the correct information out we have to punch the right information in. Amnesia is rather like speaking to a computer in the wrong language, but we will find the right one.’
‘And if I don’t want to remember?’
He frowned and tapped his pencil on the chart. ‘Sometimes the mind uses amnesia as a form of protection, a scab over a sore, but eventually wounds heal, there will come a day when you no longer need the protection of forgetfulness, when you are strong enough to confront whatever it is you wanted to hide from.’ He walked towards the door.
‘Dr Theonstanis.’ He paused and studied her unknowingly wan face. Alexis had asked to be told the moment she woke up from the shot they had given her after her faint, and he half expected to hear her ask for him, but instead she asked hesitantly, pleating the sheet with nervous fingers, ‘Have I… has anyone… have I any other family, besides my husband, I mean?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t really know. Your husband gave me the English hospital notes on you when I took over your case. Physically you are fully recovered, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t be discharged with the next few days. For the rest, I’m afraid you will have to ask him.’
‘Discharged!’ Fear raced through her. She didn’t want to be discharged into the power of this man who said he was her husband, whose rings she wore and who she was quite sure she didn’t love. ‘But surely my amnesia….’
‘That we will continue to treat, of course, but rest and relaxation are the main prescriptions. Your husband has a beautiful villa on the equally beautiful island of Micros, where he has assured me that you will have every care. My colleague there will visit you to check on your progress. I’m afraid in a case like yours we cannot chart how much progress you should make. Your memory might return slowly, or alternatively one day….’ he shrugged as though to signify his inability to qualify the possible term of her convalescence. ‘And now I suppose you would like to see your husband. He has been like a tiger in a cage,’ he told her with a slight grimace. ‘All my nurses are in awe of him. I suspect he would have nursed you himself had we permitted it,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘Seldom have I seen so devoted a husband—but then you have not been married long and your accident, I understand, took place shortly after you were married.’
The picture he was painting did not accord with Sienna’s brief memories of the man who claimed he was her husband. Devotion was not an emotion she would have thought familiar to him. He was too hard, too arrogant for such a timid, selfless description. The doctor had reached the door, and she wanted to plead with him not to permit Alexis to see her, but it was already too late. The door was open and he was walking towards her. Her eyes registered the close-fitting cream jeans and the thin silk shirt that went with it. Through it she could see the tracery of dark hairs shadowing his chest and her body reacted with a wave of nausea she could barely control, her body shaking, drenched in perspiration.
‘Sienna!’ Instantly he was at her side, pushing her down on the bed, touching her moist skin, and frowning in the direction of the doctor as though he were the culprit. ‘What is the matter with her?’ he demanded peremptorily. ‘She is shivering, and the temperature in here is well into the seventies!’
‘A sudden spasm of weakness. Your wife has been very ill. It is natural that she should be afraid.’
‘Afraid?’ Grey eyes raked her pale face, the thin mouth tightening imperceptibly. ‘Are you trying to tell me she is frightened of me? Her husband?’
‘You are a stranger to her,’ the doctor reminded him gently. ‘It is only natural that she should feel fear.’
‘Is that true?’ Alexis demanded when they were alone. ‘You are frightened of me?’
‘I don’t know you.’ Sienna moved away from his constraining hand.
‘Ah, but you do, Sienna.’ His voice was soft, rich with sensual meaning and she flushed vividly as hot as she had been cold. ‘We know each other in the most intimate sense of the word. You are my wife.’
‘But we haven’t been married very long.’
‘And because of that you think I have not taken you to my bed?’ He laughed softly. ‘What makes you think I waited for the wedding ceremony?’ He was holding her hand and he lifted it to his mouth kissing her trembling fingers, his eyes defying her to look away from him. ‘Your mind may not remember me, Sienna, but your body recognises me.’ He bent his head and pressed his lips to the pulse thudding at the base of her throat, and immediately, scorchingly, Sienna knew that he hadn’t lied. Impossible though it was for her to comprehend, her body did recognise him, and yielded to him on a weak tide of pleasure that surged along her veins.
‘Soon I shall be taking you home, and there I will show you just how much pleasure our bodies take in each other.’ He stood up, releasing her hand, but Sienna barely noticed, frowning deeply as something he had said rang a warning bell in her mind. If only she could remember… if only she wasn’t lost in this fog of unknowingness, totally reliant on this man all her senses warned her not to trust, for every signpost back to the past.
‘I asked the doctor if I had any family… besides you,’ she managed painfully, ‘but he didn’t know.’
‘You have a brother.’ He watched her carefully, but Sienna felt no spark of response. ‘He is working abroad at the moment and I haven’t been able to contact him to tell him about your accident.’
‘You said we were married?’
‘In England, after what I believe is termed a whirlwind courtship.’ He saw her look of disbelief and laughed, a half growl of sound deep in his throat. ‘You do not believe me? I assure you it is true. I knew the moment I saw you that I had met my destiny….’
‘And me.’
‘You?’ He smiled deeply, indenting his mouth, laughter gleaming in his eyes. ‘Ah, my Sienna, you fell in love with me on sight.’ His fingers cupped her jaw, preventing her from looking away from him. ‘You want to deny it, I can see it in your eyes, but it is true, I assure you. When I have you home and safe I will show you how true.’
‘But I don’t remember you. I….’
Before she could say any more a nurse walked into the room looking briskly at her watch and then at Alexis.
‘We can talk again later,’ Alexis told her calmly. ‘Rest now, and get better so that I can take you to Micros and you can recover in the warmth of our Greek sun.’
‘Can the sun give me back my memory?’ Sienna asked in angry frustration, but he refused to be drawn by or respond to her anger, and she was left alone with her nurse and her tempestuous, disturbing thoughts, and the clamouring of her senses which warned her that he was speaking the truth when he said they had been lovers. If they had been lovers she must care about him. She knew instinctively that she wasn’t the kind of woman who would take pleasure in a chain of brief sexual encounters. No, when she gave her body it would only be with love, and she had given her body to him, she knew it w
ith some instinct that went deeper than mere memory.
So why was she so antagonistic towards him, so defensive in his presence? Surely as her lover and her husband he would be the one person she would want to be with—and yet alarm bells rang consistently in her head whenever he came near her.
It was all too taxing to dwell on too much, her body and mind exhausted by the shock of discovering her lost memory defeated her efforts to concentrate, and she was grateful for the soothing drug the nurse offered her, bringing a sweet, dark oblivion, which was what she seemed to crave.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SO, you are now ready to leave us.’ Doctor Theonstanis seemed to think she ought to be pleased, but weak apathy would be a better description of her true feelings, weak apathy tinged with alarm, Sienna thought tiredly. It was true that over the last few days she had lost her dread of Alexis’ visits. He was her husband and he was unfailingly kind to her. It wasn’t, after all, his fault that she couldn’t remember a single thing about him. Indeed he had shown remarkable patience, apart from one or two spine-tightening remarks about their lovemaking, and she owed it to him to greet the news that she could now go to Micros with him with something approaching enthusiasm. Having to stay close to the hospital in Athens with her must have severely disrupted his life. He must surely work, although she hadn’t yet discovered what at, and there was a limit to the understanding of even the most patient of employers. And yet despite Alexis’ patient manner toward her Sienna was aware of not feeling completely at ease in his company. Why should she feel like that? He was her husband, and one look at him had been sufficient to assure her that he was first and foremost very much a male man, who had presumably married her because he loved and desired her. They had been lovers, so he had told her, but she felt no sense of familiarity towards him. She wanted to plead with the doctor to allow her to remain in the hospital a little while longer, but common sense told her that that would simply be putting off the evil day. She couldn’t play the invalid for the rest of her life.
As though he guessed her fears Dr Theonstanis had tried to reassure her, telling her that it was only natural that she should feel uncertain and nervous of leaving hospital, going out into a world which was essentially unfamiliar. ‘Your husband tells me that you have never visited Micros,’ he told her as he studied her.
‘So there will be nothing there that will help me remember?’
‘The memory is a strange thing,’ he responded obliquely. ‘We will see.’
She was dressed in the clothes Alexis had brought the previous day, sitting on the end of her bed, waiting for him when he arrived, her fingers stroking the soft silk of her cream dress. The dress and the silk underwear that went with it were luxuries for her, she knew that instinctively, and wondered if Alexis had spent lavishly on her in an effort to boost her spirits. As always when she saw him she was struck by the total maleness of his face and body, the same alien tremor she always experienced running through her body, colour mounting in her pale face as he watched her.
‘Good,’ he commented when his scrutiny was over. ‘I see the dress fits. I wasn’t too sure.’
‘You… you haven’t bought clothes for me before?’
‘In London there wasn’t time, and then you have lost weight.’
‘They’re very expensive.’ She touched the silk again. ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much. My own clothes….’
He shrugged aside her protests indifferently, saying only, ‘It is much hotter here in Greece than you are used to. You had nothing really suitable for our climate, but if what I have chosen for you is not to your taste you can buy more the next time we come to Athens for your check-up. I’ve arranged for us to be flown to Micros. Normally I use my yacht, but the sea journey takes eighteen hours, and as this is the first time you have left your bed for any length of time….’
‘Will you be coming with me?’
He stared at her, and Sienna recognised with a sudden thump of her heart that despite all her fears and doubts about him, once she left the hospital he would be the only thing that was familiar in an otherwise alien world.
‘Don’t you want me to? Would you prefer to go alone, to a strange island, a strange house?’
Sienna shuddered as his words echoed her own thoughts, shaking her head. ‘No, but I thought perhaps your work… your employers….’
He smiled sardonically as though for some reason she had amused him, but said only, ‘There is nothing you need to worry about. My place for the moment is with you.’ His face hardened, cold and reserved, his thoughts hidden from her, but Sienna thought she heard him mutter, ‘After all, it is my fault that you are here,’ but before she could question him he was striding towards the small cupboard by her bed and removing her personal belongings, putting them in the case which had contained her new clothes. He grimaced faintly over the thick cotton nightdresses she had folded only that morning, and said wryly, ‘I suppose we must take these with us. I suggest you give them to Maria—you certainly won’t be needing them. I have not enjoyed seeing you lying in that narrow little bed dressed like a nun, only able to remember what it feels like to have you in bed beside me, your body curved against mine.’
As always when he mentioned anything intimate Sienna was aware of a confused mingling of embarrassment and apprehension, and she licked her lips nervously, studying him beneath her lashes, her voice faintly strained as she asked, ‘Your house… will we be alone there, or do you share it with other members of your family?’ She knew that Dr Theonstanis shared his home with his mother and sisters and had learned that this was common practice in Greece, but Alexis shook his head decisively and said, ‘My only family is my sister, who lives in New York. Maria and Georges look after the house for me, so you need not worry that I shall put you to work scrubbing and cooking the moment we arrive.’
‘Between us then we seem remarkably short of relatives,’ she managed dryly as he watched her. ‘You have one sister and I have one brother. Have you been able to contact him at all?’
Alexis shook his head. ‘Not yet, but as to our lack of family, pethi mou, that is something we can perhaps remedy ourselves.’
She saw the look in his eyes and her heart raced. ‘You mean children?’
‘You don’t want to carry my child.’ He crossed the room and came to stand in front of her, his grey eyes almost black as he watched the emotions chase one another across her pale face.
‘No, it isn’t that….’ How could she explain that although she knew instinctively that she liked and wanted children, she still found him too much of a stranger to contemplate with any degree of equanimity the degree of intimacy he was discussing?
‘So, and it certainly can’t be the getting of them that brings that look of terror to your eyes, for, as I have good cause to know, you are delightfully responsive in bed.’
Was she? She licked her lips again, flushing when she saw the way his eyes followed the brief gesture, their expression as old as time itself, the hard pad of his thumb reaching out to probe the slightly moist skin. She jerked away, trembling under his touch aware of the conflict of her emotions. She couldn’t simply resume the married life they presumably had enjoyed before her accident, it would be like going to bed with a complete stranger, but when she tried, haltingly, to explain her feelings to him he simply laughed and said softly, ‘So much the better, just think of all the things I shall have to teach you which I already know you enjoy.’
When she would have protested, he said sardonically, ‘I am not going to permit you to sleep in a separate room from me, Sienna. I appreciate how difficult things are for you, but we have been lovers, we are married, I am not a patient man or a boy content to settle for courtship all over again. Listen to your body,’ he told her softly, ‘and not your mind. It will tell you how intimately we are known to one another.’
Her husky, ‘No, I can’t,’ was stifled beneath the hard possession of his mouth, searing against her lips, silencing her protests. She tried to reject him,
but he was too strong for her, arms like steel clamping her to him, strong fingers holding her face, the rhythmic stroke of his tongue against the swollen outline of her lips coaxing them to part in direct contradiction to her intentions. That they had kissed like this before she couldn’t deny. She could feel it in the powerful surge of emotion that swept through her body, her fingers sliding into the thick darkness of his hair as he arched her back over his arm. Her skin burned where his mouth touched it and she shook violently in his arms as he trailed kisses along the curve of her throat and the deep V of her silk dress. His hand found her breast, probing the rounded contours, and Sienna wondered if he could feel the swift gallop of her heart as intensely as she could herself. She gasped in protest as his fingers found the buttons of her dress and the soft creamy swell of her breasts were exposed to his gaze. His thumb stroked over the fine silk of her bra, the fabric doing nothing to conceal the flaunting evidence of his effect on her, and Sienna heard him growl softly in his throat as she started to protest, a husky, masculine sound of satisfaction and pleasure as he pushed aside the silk barrier completely and she felt the burning scorch of his mouth against her skin. Deep shudders racked through her, an amalgamation of pleasure and shock, her eyes wide and unseeing as she stared up into his face, too stunned to do anything other than simply stand there as he pushed her gently away and then fastened the buttons of her dress. She tried to breathe and found it caused her physical pain. Her body shook with reaction and she turned away from Alexis, not wanting him to see how shocked she had been by the explosiveness of the feelings he had aroused inside her.
‘You’re an extremely sensual woman,’ he told her calmly as though he had read her mind, ‘and it’s been a long time….’
Muzzy and still half dazed with reaction, Sienna stammered, ‘I didn’t know, I never guessed. I….’ She sat down on the edge of her bed, gnawing on her bottom lip. Underlying the intense feeling of pleasure she had experienced at his touch had been a jagged-edged warning, an inner voice that urged her not to respond, and she couldn’t understand why. They were married, they loved one another, and there should only have been cause for concern if she had not responded to him, not because she had.