by Penny Jordan
The knowledge that she had been hurt and close to death, even more than the discovery of her loss of memory, touched and hurt something deep within him he had thought incapable of being touched or brought to life ever again. It wasn’t love, he reassured himself. How could it be?
No, it couldn’t be love. But knowing that didn’t protect him from remembering…
Unwillingly he looked up towards his bedroom window. In that room, in that bed—his bed—Annie lay asleep. Annie…His wife…In the bed he had once shared with Annie…His Annie…His love…
Morosely he looked back towards the river. She had loved to lie in bed at night with the curtains and the windows open so that she could hear the sound of the water. They had even once stolen out in the darkness so that they could swim there together, naked in the silent darkness.
She had demurred at first, protesting that the river would be cold and that they might be seen, but then they had started to touch one another and such things had been forgotten.
The water, he remembered, had been cold, but they had not!
‘You look like a god, a river god,’ she had told him tremulously, her hands trembling against his body, the cry she had given as his body surged powerfully into hers lost in the heated kiss of eager hunger they had exchanged.
Later that night, or rather early the next morning, she had reached for him in bed, tracing the sinewy muscles on his arms with her fingertips and her kisses and then, for the first time, becoming more demanding, more assertive as her lips had touched tentatively against his stomach before moving lower.
‘Promise me you’ll love me for ever,’ she’d demanded.
‘For ever,’ he had told her, and he had meant it.
He moved back inside. He was a grown man now, with an intricate report waiting to be finished, and he had no business standing out here allowing his thoughts to drift into such dangerous waters.
No matter how much Annie’s present plight might compel his compassion he mustn’t allow himself to forget what had happened.
‘I can’t remember,’ she had wept, and he had actively felt her fear and panic. But until she could remember neither of them would be fully free to walk away from the past—and from their marriage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘HOW are you feeling now?’
‘Fine,’ Annie fibbed quickly, avoiding meeting Dominic’s eyes as she stretched across the kitchen table to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee.
She had been here in his house for nearly three days now. Seventy-two hours. Which in her view was seventy-two hours too many. Granted, she had virtually spent the first twenty-four of them asleep, but she had recovered from the shock of her accident with the kettle now and she felt thoroughly ashamed of the way she had overreacted to the whole incident.
It was time for her to go home. She wanted to go home. She needed to go home, she reminded herself shakily. The realisation, when she had finally woken up, that she was asleep in Dominic’s house and in Dominic’s bed had sent a spasm of emotion through her that she still didn’t feel strong enough to dare analyse.
She felt nothing for him other than anger at the way he had treated her—of course she didn’t. But he had looked after her.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she had begun that first evening, when she had finally recovered from her shock and he had arrived in her bedroom—his bedroom, in reality—with a tray of food.
‘Eat it,’ was all he had said, but somehow his actions had touched her already sensitive emotions, and after he had gone her salty tears had mingled with the soup he had brought her.
‘This is your room,’ she had protested later, when he had come in to remove the tray.
‘Our room,’ he had corrected her shortly, stopping as he’d seen the way she froze.
‘Don’t worry, there’s no way I want to insist on my husbandly rights,’ he had assured her grimly. ‘I’ve made myself up a bed in one of the other rooms.’
‘Actually,’ she continued determinedly now, but still avoiding looking directly at him, ‘I feel so well that I really think it’s time I went home and…’
‘And what?’ Dominic challenged her. ‘No! There’s still too much unresolved business between us, Annie.’
‘I…I have things to do—my garden, the house,’ Annie told him, and then stopped as she saw he was shaking his head. ‘The neighbours will be wondering what’s happened,’ she insisted.
‘There’s no need for you to worry about any of that,’ Dominic assured her calmly. ‘I’ve already explained the situation to your neighbours. And as for the garden, I can speak to the people who do mine and ask them…’
‘You’ve explained what situation?’ Annie interrupted sharply, her heart starting to thump heavily with nervous tension.
‘I’ve told them about your accident with the kettle and I’ve explained that, as my wife—’
‘Your wife! You told them that we’re married…’ Annie exploded in angry disbelief.
‘Why not?’ Dominic challenged her. ‘After all, it’s the truth.’
‘But we’re getting a divorce,’ Annie protested, and added angrily, ‘You had no right to do that. I don’t want—’
‘People to know that I’m your husband?’ Dominic interrupted her cynically.
Annie shook her head. How could she explain to him how mortified she felt about the prurient curiosity she feared she was bound to be the subject of once people knew that she had a husband she couldn’t even remember marrying?
‘You had no right to do that,’ she repeated huskily, before getting out of her chair and pacing the kitchen nervously and then telling him sharply, ‘I want to go home, Dominic. I want to go home now.’
‘This is your home,’ he repeated grittily, adding, before she could deny it, ‘I had the house placed in joint names after we got married, Annie, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to sell the place—without your written agreement…’
‘You can have it,’ she told him quickly. ‘I don’t want…I can’t stay here.’
‘Why not? What is it you’re so afraid of?’
‘Nothing…nothing,’ she denied fiercely, turning to face him as she did so.
‘You’re treating me as though I’m your adversary, Annie,’ Dominic told her grimly. ‘Your enemy. I’m not. All I want—’
‘Is for me to recover my memory so that I can tell you why I left you,’ Annie interrupted him sharply. ‘Do you think I don’t want to remember? Do you think I’m pretending, lying? Have you any idea how it feels to be told that you’re married…that you’ve shared a life…a love…with a man who…?’
Annie stopped as she felt the full weight of her own emotions threatening to overwhelm her. ‘Of course I want to remember. But I can’t,’ she told him flatly.
‘Maybe not—by yourself. But perhaps with my help—’ Dominic began.
‘Your help?’ Annie stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You and I shared those missing weeks of your life, Annie. I can remember them, even if you can’t. I can remember everything we did…everything—and I think that if we were to relive them…if I were to take you back through them…it just might…just might bring something back for you.’
‘What do you mean “if we were to relive them”?’ Annie asked him warily. What he was suggesting was ridiculous, and of course there was no way she was going to agree to it, but he was obviously determined to have his say.
‘Oh, you needn’t look at me like that,’ he assured her immediately. ‘I’m not some kind of weirdo who gets off on forcing a reluctant woman to have sex with him, Annie. This will be a return to the past without the sexual element of the relationship we shared. After all, that is something you haven’t forgotten, isn’t it?’ he taunted her softly.
Hot-faced, Annie swallowed the angry words of denial springing to her lips. He was talking about her dreams, of course, and she couldn’t deny what he was saying—much as she longed to be able to do so.
‘It wouldn�
��t work,’ she told him flatly.
‘You can’t say that until you try it,’ Dominic insisted grimly. ‘And you owe it to yourself to.’
Annie turned away from him, unable to make any response, knowing that what he said was true and remembering, too, how she had told him herself she would do anything to remember.
‘Very well,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘But I don’t have to stay here…’
‘Yes, you do,’ Dominic corrected her. ‘After all, you lived here with me.’
‘Before we were married?’ she demanded, her voice betraying her shock.
‘Yes,’ Dominic told her laconically. ‘After all, we were lovers, and there was no reason why we should have lived apart.’
No reason, perhaps, but for some reason Annie felt shocked by his revelation.
‘Look,’ Dominic was telling her, ‘you and I had two months together. All I’m asking is that you give me that time now, Annie. Two months, that’s all. If, at the end of that time, you’re no closer to remembering anything then I’ll concede defeat and—’
‘And we’ll be divorced,’ Annie interrupted him flatly.
‘Yes,’ he agreed in an equally emotionless voice.
Annie knew that she could have pointed out that since they intended to divorce anyway there seemed little point in delaying matters without any logical reason for doing so. But of course there was a reason, and she knew perfectly well what it was. Dominic’s male pride was still smarting because she had left him. He wanted an explanation, a reason, and he was determined that she was going to provide him with one.
Her own reasons for wishing to remember her past were far more complex. She had dreamed about Dominic as her lover; her body remembered him as its lover. Before he had told her the truth about their marriage, their shared past, she had craved a closeness with him so strong that he had somehow broken through the locked doors of her memory. So why had she left him? Her inability to remember made her feel that a piece of herself was missing, threatening to resurrect all the insecurity she had known as an abandoned child. Only this time she was the one who had done the abandoning—why? She had to find out…
‘You’re doing what?’ Helena demanded when Annie telephoned her to tell her what they were going to do.
‘Dominic says that until I’ve remembered the past and him properly neither of us will be able to move our lives on,’ Annie explained.
‘Well, yes, I suppose he does have a point,’ Helena acknowledged. ‘And if it’s what you want to do…’
The urge to tell her friend that it was the last thing she wanted to do was immensely strong, but somehow Annie resisted it. Dominic was determined to have his own way and she suspected that not even Helena would be able to stop him. She was trying to tell herself that enduring the next two months was going to be a bit like enduring the uncomfortable treatments she had had to go through in hospital. The end result would be worth the pain.
‘Well, I have to admit that I’m glad you’re not living on your own. You’re facing a very traumatic time, Annie—and, stubbornly independent though you are, and much as I understand how you feel, this isn’t a good time for you to be on your own.
‘I take it that a divorce is going to be put on hold for the time being?’ Helena continued.
‘For the time being,’ Annie agreed shakily. ‘It’s just a temporary delay, that’s all.’
Just a temporary delay. Just two months’ delay. But no less than three days into it Annie was beginning to bitterly regret allowing Dominic to persuade her to agree to his plan.
Both Helena and Dominic were insisting that she was still not fully recovered and must not overdo things, and Annie was beginning to feel that time was hanging too heavily on her hands. Dominic, though, had been so busy that she had barely seen him—a fact for which she ought to be thankful, she knew, but somehow she wasn’t. She felt tired and headachy, her lethargy caused, she knew, as much by the fact that she was not sleeping properly as much as anything else. She was reluctant to allow herself to go into a deep, restful sleep because she was so afraid she might dream about Dominic.
Dominic!
Living here with him was putting her under immense strain, and not just because of their shared past.
Just thinking about him made her body tense, a tiny convulsive shudder gripping her. She was far too physically aware of him. Far too physically vulnerable to him. There, she had forced herself to admit what she had been fighting so hard to hide from and deny these last few days. She had brought out into the open her own fear. Physically, she was…she found…she wanted…Closing her eyes, Annie willed herself to bring her chaotic thoughts and feelings to order. It was warm out here in the garden, with the sun beating down on her closed eyelids. Dominic was at work and she was on her own. A bee buzzed busily in the roses nearby.
The roses. She could smell their scent. A prickle of sensation ran through her body. Behind her closed eyelids she could see zig-zagging confusing images: roses flushed with the sun and heavily petalled, their scent filling her nostrils, but still unable to eliminate the sensually thrilling slightly musky scent of the man beside her. She could see his hand, his fingers as he reached for one of the roses.
‘No, don’t pick it,’ she whispered to him. ‘It will live longer out here…’
‘You’re such a baby…’
The warm indulgent sound of his voice echoed against her ears like the sound of the sea heard in a shell, audible, recognisable, but somehow at a distance.
She could feel his breath against her skin, her mouth, as he leaned closer to her, and she held her own breath, knowing he was going to kiss her, her stomach muscles tensing on a shock-surge of excitement and anticipation.
His mouth feathered delicately against hers, the touch of his lips as light and delicate as the warm air against the roses, but she still quivered in mute delight. She could feel his hands moving up her arms, cupping the balls of her shoulders. Instinctively she moved closer to him whilst his tongue probed the softly closed line of her lips, as busily determined to taste her sweetness as the bee seeking the roses’ honeyed pollen-dusted centre.
Her whole body quivered, her response mute no longer as she gave a soft moan of delirious pleasure.
‘Dominic…’
Abruptly Annie opened her eyes. Where she had been pleasantly warm and relaxed she was now icily cold and tense, and yet despite the shivers shuddering through her she could feel sweat beading her forehead.
What was happening to her? Was she going mad, or was what she had just experienced a flashback to reality, the sharply jagged edge of a memory forcing its way into her conscious awareness?
Had Dominic once kissed her here, in this secluded rose garden?
‘Annie?’
When she heard Dominic’s voice she tried to compose herself, but as he looked at her and she saw his expression she knew she had not succeeded.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he demanded sharply as he reached her.
He made an imposing figure, standing there in his office suit and a crisp white shirt, looking both formidable and yet somehow virilely male at the same time. Or was it her own memories that were making her see him like that? Her memories…Automatically Annie closed her eyes.
‘I…I think I may just have remembered something,’ she heard herself admitting shakily.
Why had she said that? Why had she said anything? But it was too late now to regret her impulsiveness. Dominic was next to her, one hand reaching out to hold her arm as he exclaimed, ‘You have? What? Tell me…’
‘It was nothing…not really,’ Annie started to deny it, reluctant now to describe to him the very sensual and intimate nature of her experience.
‘You’re lying,’ Dominic challenged her. ‘Tell me, Annie. I have a right to know.’
Annie swallowed. She was beginning to feel slightly giddy and disorientated—because of the heat or because of what had happened? She could feel herself beginning to tremble.
‘I’m sorry
,’ she heard Dominic apologise unexpectedly as he felt her body tremor beneath his touch. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so aggressive.’
His apology melted Annie’s resistance. Hesitantly she tried to tell him what had happened, beginning, ‘It was the roses…I could smell them, and then suddenly…’ She stopped and looked at him, unaware of the apprehension and the appeal Dominic could see so clearly in her eyes.
‘Was there ever a time…?’ she began uncertainly. ‘Did we…?’
Dominic knew immediately what she was trying to ask.
‘You loved this part of the garden,’ he told her quietly. ‘You often used to come here and…’ He paused and looked away from her. ‘I know how difficult and painful this must be for you, Annie,’ he told her, in a much less controlled tone of voice. ‘But unlike you I do have my memories of our time together and…’
He stopped, his hand dropping away from her arm. Oddly Annie discovered that she missed its warmth. Awkwardly she raised her own hand, without realising what she was doing, her eyes widening as Dominic looked at it and then reached out and clasped it with his, entwining his fingers with hers and keeping his gaze on their entwined clasped hands as he continued.
‘I’m not altogether immune to those memories of that time…’
Annie could see his chest rise and fall as he took a steadying breath.
‘It was here that I told you I wanted to take a mental photograph of you, to take with me when I left, and here that…’
‘…that you kissed me and said that my skin smelled sweeter than any rose ever could,’ Annie finished, shakily and gravely.
There was a small silent pause before Dominic nodded his head and said bleakly, ‘Yes.’
‘I…I’ve only just remembered that bit…when you told me about the photograph. Before I could only remember how you…that you had kissed me here,’ Annie heard herself confiding.