by Penny Jordan
‘Yes, they did say when I originally booked the table that they were expecting a busy evening. Apparently Petrofiche are having a dinner for their new consultant marine biologist.’
‘Oh, yes, I heard they’d found someone to take Professor Salter’s place. They’ve headhunted him from one of the Gulf States, or so I’ve heard. He’s extremely highly qualified and relatively young—in his thirties. It seems he’s actually worked for Petrofiche in the past.’
‘Mmm…It’s odd to think of a marine biologist working for the petrochemical industry,’ Bob cut in.
Helena gave him a wifely smile and then exchanged a conspiratorial look with Annie as she teased him,
‘I suppose you think of marine biologists as people who make underwater films of sharks and coral reefs…’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Bob denied, but his sheepish look gave him away.
‘These days all the large multi-nationals are keen to ensure that their customers see them as greener than green and very environmentally aware,’ Annie told them both. ‘And because of the effect any kind of oil seepage has on the world’s seas and oceans, and their life forms, for companies like Petrofiche it makes good sense to use the services of such experts.’
They were out of the car now and heading towards the restaurant. Originally a private house, it had been very successfully converted to an exclusive restaurant, complete with a conservatory area and a stunningly beautiful garden which ran down to the river. As they walked past the wrought-iron gates that led to the private garden they could see inside it, where skilful lighting illuminated several of the specimen trees as well as the courtyard area and its decorative statues.
The restaurant was owned and run by a husband and wife team in their late thirties, and as she recognised them Liz Rainford gave them a warm, welcoming smile.
‘I’ve kept you your favourite table,’ she whispered to them as she signalled to a waiter to take them through to the dining room.
Liz was on the committee of a local charity that Annie helped out, by volunteering for fund raising duties when she could, and Liz was aware of the history of Annie’s accident and her relationship with Helena and Bob.
‘I know tonight’s a special night for all of you.’ She smiled.
Their favourite table was one that was tucked quite discreetly in a corner by one of the windows, through which one could see down the length of the garden and beyond it to the river, and as their waiter settled them in their chairs and produced their menus with a theatrical flourish Annie gave a small sigh of pleasure.
Sometimes she felt almost as though she had been reborn on that morning five years ago when she had opened her eyes in her hospital bed to see Helena looking back at her. Although now she could remember her childhood and her teenage years, they were somehow in soft focus and slightly unreal, their edges blurred, so that occasionally it was hard for her to remember that those years, those memories, actually did belong to her.
It was the effect of the huge trauma her mind and body had experienced, Helena was quick to say, to comfort her when she worried about it; her mind’s way of protecting her.
The restaurant was full, with the doors to the conservatory closed to protect the privacy of the party from Petrofiche dining inside it. The girls in the office had been talking about the new consultant when Annie had been at work earlier in the week.
‘He’s got his own business and Petrofiche is just one of his clients,’ Beverley Smith, one of the senior personal assistants, had told them importantly. ‘He’ll only be coming in here a couple of days a week when he isn’t out in the field.’
‘Mmm…I wonder if he needs a PA. I certainly wouldn’t mind a couple of trips to the Barrier Reef,’ one of the other girls had remarked enviously.
‘The Barrier Reef!’ another had scoffed. ‘More like Alaska. That’s the current hot-spot for marine biologists.’
Annie had listened to their good-natured bantering with a small smile.
Although she was regularly invited out on dates by male members of the staff she never accepted. Helena had warned her gently that she was in danger of allowing her dream lover to blind her to the reality of real live potential mates, but Annie was quietly aware that there was more to her reluctance to accept dates than merely a romantic figment of her own idealistic dreams.
It was almost as though, in some way, something deep within her told her that it would be wrong for her to start seeing someone. Quite why she should think this she was at a loss to know, and, indeed, her feelings were so nebulous, so inexplicable, that she felt too foolish to even confide them to Helena. All she did know was that for some reason it was necessary for her to wait…but to wait for what? For whom? She had no idea. She just knew it was something she had to do!
CHAPTER TWO
‘OH, WE didn’t order champagne,’ Annie began as the waiter suddenly appeared with a bottle and three glasses, and then stopped as she saw the look of smiling complicity Helena and Bob were exchanging.
‘This was supposed to be my treat,’ she reproached them as the waiter filled their champagne flutes.
‘Yes, I know, but it is our celebration,’ Bob reminded her fondly.
Annie agreed quietly, her eyes large and dark with the emotional intensity of her thoughts, tears just beginning to film them as she turned to Helena and told her huskily, ‘If it hadn’t been for you…’ She stopped, unable to go on, and the three of them sat in silence as they each shared the others’ emotions.
It was Bob who broke the emotional intensity of the moment, picking up his glass and lifting it, announcing in a firm voice, ‘To you, Annie…’
‘Yes, my love. To you,’ Helena joined in the toast.
As she looked at Annie’s flushed face Helena marvelled at the recuperative powers of the human body and its capacity for endurance. Looking at Annie, it was hard to equate the healthy young woman she was now with the comatose, badly injured accident victim she had seen lying inert on the hospital trolley as she’d hurried through the Accident and Emergency unit.
Later, whilst they were waiting for their pudding course, Annie excused herself to the other two.
‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she announced, getting up and walking towards the cloakrooms in the foyer. She was just about to walk past the entrance to the conservatory when the door opened and a party of four men came out. Two of them Annie recognised as executives from the company she worked for, the third she didn’t know, and the fourth…
Her heart gave a stunned leap inside her chest wall, shock rooting her to the floor where she stood as she stared open-mouthed at the fourth member of the quartet in total disbelief.
It was him! He…The man…From her dreams…So exactly identical to him that she could only stand and stare in silent shock. Her dream lover come to life! But how could that be possible when he was only a figment of her own imagination, a creature she had conjured up within her own mind? No, it wasn’t possible. She must be imagining it…hallucinating…She had drunk too much champagne she decided dizzily.
Quickly she closed her eyes and counted to ten, and then she opened them. He was still there, and what was more he was looking at her. She felt as though her blood was quite literally draining from her veins, leaving her empty, her body cold and in danger. Panic filled her. She tried to move and couldn’t. She tried to speak but no sound emerged from her paralysed throat…A hideous, horrible sensation of fear invaded her. She wanted to move. She wanted to speak. But she couldn’t. With horrible certainty Annie knew that she was going to faint.
When she came round she was in Liz’s private quarters and Bob and Helena were hovering anxiously over her.
‘Darling, what is it…what happened?’ Helena was asking her worriedly as she chafed her hand. Helen’s fingers were on her pulse, Annie recognised shakily, and she could see the professional beginning to take over from the concerned friend. Determinedly she forced herself to sit up.
‘I’m all right,’ she insisted. ‘I
just felt faint, that’s all,’ she whispered, still too much in shock to be able to tell Helena what had actually happened.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Liz as she ignored Helena’s protests and swung her feet to the floor, gritting her teeth against her giddiness as she made herself stand up. ‘I don’t really have much of a head for vintage champagne,’ she excused herself, giving the other woman a brief smile.
Of course there was no question of either Helena or Bob allowing her to drive home, nor of her being allowed to return home on her own. Instead she was put to bed in the bedroom which had been hers whilst she was recuperating, with Helena fussing round her and announcing that she felt it might be a good idea if she were to have a full check-up.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Annie insisted. ‘I just had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
‘A shock? What kind of shock?’ Helena demanded anxiously.
‘I…I thought I saw someone I…’ Annie paused and shook her head, her mouth dry as she told her, ‘I must have made a mistake, imagined it. I know, because it just isn’t possible that…’
‘Who was it? Who did you think you saw, Annie?’ Helena probed.
‘It…it wasn’t anyone. It was…just…just a mistake,’ Annie repeated stubbornly, but as she reached for the cup of tea Bob had brought her she started to tremble so violently that she had to put it down again.
Covering her face with her hands she admitted shakily, ‘Oh, Helena…it was so…so surreal. I don’t…I saw him…the man…from my dreams…He was…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I know that I can’t have done, that he just doesn’t exist, but…’
‘You’re getting yourself all worked up,’ Helena told her firmly. ‘I’ll give you something to help you relax and go to sleep, and then in the morning we can talk about it properly.’
As she lay back against the pillows Annie gave her a small weak smile. She knew that her friend was right, of course.
Several minutes later Helena, who had left the room, came back with a glass of water and two tablets for her to take. She watched with maternal tenderness as Annie dutifully swallowed them down.
‘I’m sorry if I spoiled your evening,’ she whispered drowsily to Helena as the tablets started to work.
Now that she was beginning to feel calmer she couldn’t understand why she had overreacted so foolishly, just because of some minor and no doubt imagined similarity between the man she had seen in the restaurant and her own fantasy lover. And anyway, now that she really thought about it, there was no way her dream lover would ever have looked at her the way the man in the restaurant had, with that look of implacable cold hostility in his dense, darkly blue eyes, that blanked-out look of icy contempt and banked-down anger.
Wearily Annie felt her eyes starting to close, and ten minutes later, when Helena quietly shut the bedroom door behind herself, Annie was deeply and completely asleep.
‘I suspect that the emotion of the evening and the memories it stirred up are the root cause of what happened,’ Helena announced to her husband Bob as she went back downstairs to join him.
‘Mmm…There’s no way the man she saw could be someone she knew, is there?’ Bob asked her curiously.
‘Well, it is a possibility I suppose,’ Helena agreed. ‘After all, as you know, there are still some missing pieces from her memory. She can remember arriving here in Wryminster, but she can’t remember when she arrived. It’s difficult to imagine that anyone who was involved with her to the extent they would have had to be involved with her to be responsible for dreams of the intensity of those that Annie has been having could ever be cold-hearted enough, uncaring enough, not to get in touch after the accident. After all, it was reported in the local papers.’
‘No, it does seem improbable,’ Bob agreed.
Upstairs in her sleep Annie started to smile, her body quivering with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.
‘God, but you feel so good…Will you let me look at you as well as hold you, little Annie? I want to so much…’
Annie tensed a little as the warm, knowing male hands began to gently undress her, nervous at first, her heart thumping anxiously, but then, as pleasure and excitement took over from her initial apprehension, her tension started to fade, her body beginning to relax as she started to respond to the soft verbal praise of her lover whilst he, oh, so slowly and carefully, laid her body bare to his gaze, peeling back the protective layers of her clothing, freeing her flesh to the warmth of his hands, their warmth, like their strength, a benediction as well as a nerve-thrilling wonderful new sensation.
He knew that this was her first real experience of a man’s love, her first time, and he had told her, reassured her, that the choice, the decision was to be hers, that he would, if she asked him to do so, stop and allow her to change her mind. But she didn’t want to change her mind, nor did she want him to stop. She wanted…
She gave a small gasp of delight as his touch set fire to her desires, igniting all the passion she had somehow known she was capable of feeling but which hitherto had been locked up inside her, hidden away in a secret place to which only he had the key.
She loved him so much…wanted him so much…What had been unthinkable with anyone else was not just ‘thinkable’ with him, but desirable…must-haveable…Her whole body shook with the force of what she was feeling…with her longing for him…her love for him. He only had to look at her and she melted.
Just the way he said her name was a form of poetry greater than even the greatest love sonnets. Just the way he looked at her more beautiful than any love song ever sung. The way he made her feel was so intense it was scary…He thrilled her, excited her, made her want to laugh and cry at the same time, filled her with such happiness that it made her feel afraid. He made her feel almost immortal, and yet, at the same time, he filled her with such a sense of her fragile vulnerability, her own frightening dependence on him and his love, that she was consumed with terror at the thought of losing him.
He stroked her breasts, watching her as she quivered in instant response, her eyes darkening, her lips parting.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have the sexiest mouth in the whole world?’ he asked her softly, rimming it with his fingertip and smiling as she made an instinctive movement to catch hold of it.
‘Not like that,’ he whispered to her. ‘Like this…’ And then he slid his fingertip into her mouth, coaxing her to fasten her lips around it and slowly suck on it.
In her dream Annie moaned out loud in shocked delight, her body moving restlessly as it sought the intimacy of its lover’s embrace.
The evening sun slanted through the wide windows. Beyond them, if she opened her eyes, Annie knew she would see the purple haze of the distant hills, and if she stood close to them she could look down on the mellow wash of the river. Even at this distance she could hear its soft rhythmic whisper, almost feel the insidious pull of its tide, just as she could feel the urgent tug of the female tide within her own body. She drew a sharp breath as she felt the male hunger in the hands that caressed her.
‘Tell me now if you want me to stop,’ he was whispering huskily, insistently, to her. ‘Tell me now, Annie, otherwise it will be too late.’
But she knew she would say nothing, that she wanted him too much, loved him too much, even though the things he was doing to her, with her, were a world away from her own childish experience, limited to a few fumbled kisses.
‘I’m much, much too old for you,’ he had already told her, but somehow, instead of putting her off, his bold confession had only heightened and intensified her desire for him, imbuing him with a magical, almost mystical worldliness, a male knowledge and awareness that galvanised her body into excited little shivers.
And now it was nearly here, the moment of supreme revelation, the moment when…
Annie gave a sharp, piercing cry and she suddenly woke up, her body drenched in perspiration, her mind racing. As she sat up in her bed she covered her face with tre
mbling hands.
Her dream had been so strong, so real, and the man in it, her dream lover, had been so—so scarily alive.
Shakily she tried to draw a calming breath of air into her lungs, and then she closed her eyes, reliving the moment when she had traced with her lips the shape of the tiny scar she had seen on her lover’s temple, the same scar in exactly the same spot that the man in the restaurant had had. How many times had she dreamed of that scar and not really known it?
She didn’t know. She only knew that a small fierce stillness had gripped him as she touched it. It was as familiar to her as her own reflection. But how could that be? What was happening to her? Was she experiencing some kind of sixth sense, some kind of special awareness, some kind of inexplicable glimpse into the future? Were they perhaps fated to meet, and was this—these dreams—fate’s way of warning her of what was to come, of what was to be? Her whole body started to tremble.
She had been so very close to death, and, although she was extremely loath to acknowledge it, never mind discuss it openly, had experienced the sensation she had read avidly and secretly about that was reportedly so common to people who shared her near-death experience: that feeling of rushing towards a wonderful welcoming place, being propelled through darkness into an indescribable sense of awesome light, then that sudden awareness of being turned back, pulled back, that voice that was not actually a voice announcing that it was not yet her time.
Had that experience somehow or other, illogical and implausible though it might sound, given her the ability to sense, to feel, to experience a special, wonderful event in her life that had yet to take place?
Had the secret yearning she had carried all her life, to share it with someone who loved her, affected her to such an extent that she was already living in her dreams what she had yet to live in reality? Was her dream lover, in fact, not so much a figment of her imagination as a very factual and real figure from her future?
Impossible, implausible…Yes, maybe, but then there were many mysteries that defied logical explanation and analysis.