by Penny Jordan
‘Yes. I kissed you here,’ Dominic was agreeing. ‘And you kissed me back, and…Oh, God, Annie…’
Suddenly she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers, and the kiss they were sharing was anything but a mere memory.
She ought to stop him, Annie knew, but instead her lips were clinging eagerly to his, and this time the warm sensual scent of man, of him, which was doing so much to destroy her self-control, was in no way imaginary—and perhaps because of that was having a much more dangerous effect on her senses.
Was it because of what she had remembered that she was feeling like this, that she was responding to him like this, wanting him like this? Annie wondered dizzily as his tongue-tip probed her lips and they parted for him.
‘Dominic. Dominic…Dominic…’ She was even unaware of saying his name until she heard him respond rawly against her mouth,
‘Yes. Yes…I’m here…’ And then his hands were cupping her face as his tongue probed deeper and more intimately, and their bodies clung and melded together as though they were, in reality, still lovers.
Some things could never be forgotten or wiped out. Some feelings…some needs…Annie’s heart thudded frantically against her ribs as her legs parted automatically to make way for the tautness of Dominic’s thigh. Instinctively she leaned into him, shivering with pleasure.
Soon he would kiss her throat, and then her breasts, gently peeling away her clothes so that he was free to do so…He would tell her that she was beautiful beyond compare, and her nipples would tighten into two hard, excited, imploring buds that he would suckle into full flower and then…
‘No!’ Her voice high and sharp with panic, Annie broke the kiss and pulled away.
For a split second she and Dominic stared at one another in shared anguish and shock, and then, equally immediately, both of them threw up protective shutters of wariness to conceal from one another their thoughts and feelings.
‘You shouldn’t have done that—’ Annie began, but Dominic stopped her, interrupting her tersely.
‘You shouldn’t have let me,’ he countered.
Let him! At least he hadn’t said she shouldn’t have responded to him, Annie tried to comfort herself.
Suddenly she felt very cold and tired, and as though he sensed it Dominic said almost gently, ‘Look, I appreciate how difficult this must be for you. But it isn’t exactly easy for me either, you know.
‘No,’ Annie agreed shakily. ‘But at least you can remember about…about us. I…’ Tears filled her eyes, her voice becoming gruff with the frustration of her feelings. ‘You’re back earlier than I expected,’ she told him, changing the subject.
‘It’s a nice afternoon. I thought you might feel like going out,’ he told her. ‘But if you aren’t feeling well…’
‘I’m fine,’ Annie told him untruthfully. She still felt dizzy and slightly disorientated, but whether that was because of what she had remembered of the past or because of what she felt now, here, in the present, when Dominic had kissed her, she didn’t know. And neither did she want to know. Because she was afraid of what she might have to confront?
‘Perhaps now that you have remembered something this might be a good time to see if you could remember a little bit more,’ Dominic suggested quietly.
‘What do you mean?’ Annie challenged him warily. If he was going to suggest that he kissed her again then there was no way she was going to go along with his suggestion, but when he answered her sharp query his voice was gently reassuring.
‘I thought we might go out for a drive, revisit some of the places we went when we were…together. It might just help to jog your memory.’
Cautiously Annie examined his suggestion.
‘Do you really…? I suppose it won’t do any harm,’ she admitted grudgingly. She might not be sure that she wanted to go along with Dominic’s suggestion, but she was sure that she didn’t want to stay here in the intimacy of the rose garden with him.
At least there could be no memories associated with Dominic’s car, she acknowledged with a small sense of relief as she reached for her seat belt. This was a new model and…
‘What kind of car did you have…then?’ she asked him, suddenly curious in spite of herself.
‘Then?’ he questioned as he eased the large BMW out into the traffic on the busy road. ‘You mean when you and I first met?’
Annie nodded her head.
‘You can’t remember?’ he pressed her.
She started to shake her head, and then, for some reason, she had a mental image of a rather battered four-wheel drive vehicle, its dark green paintwork mud-spattered and scratched.
‘Was it a…? No! I can’t remember,’ she told him shortly.
Immediately Dominic sensed that she was fibbing. Well, two could play at that game.
‘It was a small sports model,’ he told her, casually and untruthfully. ‘Bright red…’
‘What?’
‘You look surprised,’ Dominic told her. ‘Why? What kind of car did you expect me to have had?’
‘Er…I don’t know,’ Annie told him, shrugging as she said uncertainly, ‘I thought perhaps a Land Rover, or something of that type.’
‘A Range Rover,’ Dominic corrected her softly. ‘A dark green Range Rover…’
They were driving through the town now, and into the town square, where Dominic swung the car into a parking space. ‘Come on,’ he told Annie, ‘We’re going for a walk.’
‘Well?’ Dominic demanded half an hour later, his hand very firmly clasping hers as he walked Annie for the third time along the narrow street where he told her they had first met.
‘No,’ she told him truthfully. ‘Nothing. There’s nothing.’
As she saw the look of disappointment in his eyes her own emotions filled her eyes with defeated tears.
‘Do you think any of this is easy for me?’ she challenged him. ‘I dreamed about you,’ she told him helplessly. ‘I thought you were my dream lover. But this isn’t a dream, it’s a nightmare, and it’s horrible, unbearable…and I don’t want it…’
‘Just like you don’t want me?’ Dominic suggested.
Annie didn’t dare to look at him.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ she said shakily instead. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a young couple walking towards them, the girl nestled up against her boyfriend, his arm protectively holding her close. Just as they drew level with Annie and Dominic they paused, stopping to kiss one another, lightly at first and then with increasing passion. The girl pulled away first, laughing breathlessly. Transfixed, Annie was unable to look away from them, the girl’s laughter seemed to echo inside her head, making her feel giddy.
‘Annie?’
She could hear Dominic calling her name and somehow forced herself to focus on him, dragging her gaze away from the young couple.
‘I’m tired, Dominic,’ she told him. ‘I want to go home…’
A little to her surprise he didn’t press her to stay, or make any further unkind comments, but instead of driving back to the house he drove out of town and through country lanes to a small pub she had visited on a couple of occasions with Helena and Bob. It was well known for its excellent home-cooked food but there was no way she could ever have visited it with Dominic because it had opened as an eating place only two or three years previously.
‘We never came here,’ she told him positively.
‘No, I know,’ he responded. ‘But we both need something to eat and I thought it might help for us to be on mutually unfamiliar territory.’
I’m not hungry, she wanted to say. But suddenly, surprisingly, she was.
Their meal, accompanied by a couple of glasses of wine, had had the inevitable effect of relaxing her—perhaps a little too much, Annie acknowledged a couple of hours later when she opened her eyes to discover that she had fallen asleep whilst Dominic had been driving her home.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ he asked her as she focused bemusedly on him.
Perhaps it was the male amusement she could see in his eyes, or perhaps it was the certain something she felt she could see behind it. Annie didn’t know. What she did know, though, was that his air of male superiority somehow irritated her.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she snapped, quickly sitting upright in her seat. ‘A couple of glasses of wine doesn’t turn me into…a…a drunk.’
‘No,’ he agreed, his mouth suddenly quirking up at the corners and his eyes gleaming with a look that sent a thrill of sharply warning emotion flashing through her body. ‘But if my memory serves me right, and I know it does, what it does turn you into is a delightfully uninhibited and loving woman who—’
‘Stop it!’ Annie commanded him shakily, immediately putting her hands up to her ears to blot out the sound of his voice. She was feeling vulnerable enough as it was, without him making things even worse. Without waiting to see what effect her distress might have had on him, Annie reached for her door handle and opened the door of the car, hurrying towards the front door of the house.
She had almost reached it when Dominic caught up with her, his hand reaching for her as, to her astonishment, he apologised quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No. You shouldn’t,’ Annie agreed shakily, and then, urged on by her own sense of fair-mindedness, she added truthfully, ‘I know how anxious you are for me to regain my memory, but making digs at me about things you can remember that I can’t, in the hope of reactivating my memory…’
There was a small pause whilst Dominic unlocked the door, and then as Annie made to step through it he totally confounded her by saying softly, ‘Who says it was your memory I was hoping to reactivate?’
He had been drinking too, she reminded herself as she struggled to find an explanation for his extraordinary statement. Even if he had only had one glass to her two, and even though he had always had a much harder head for alcohol. She could remember well how he’d used to urge her to finish her first glass whilst he had been on his…She stopped dead in the hallway. She could remember. Unsteadily she walked towards the kitchen, where she could see Dominic filling the kettle and then reaching for two coffee mugs.
‘Okay, okay, I know I shouldn’t have said that,’ he began as she walked into the room, but then, the moment he saw her face, he stopped and put down the coffee mugs, walking quickly towards her and taking hold of her gently as he asked quietly, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Too bemused to question how he could so instinctively know that something had happened, Annie replied shakily, ‘I’m not sure. It’s…’ She stopped and looked up into his face, her eyes wide and dark, huge with a heart-touching mixture of pride and apprehension as she told him uncertainly, ‘It’s nothing, really…Just…’
When she stopped she could feel his fingers tightening a little on her arms, communicating to her his own tension. ‘I remembered that I was always still on my first glass of wine whilst you were finishing your second.’ As she saw him frown she tried to explain. ‘It was…I could see you…us…’ she told him huskily. ‘I could hear you…It was almost as though I was actually there…
‘You’re disappointed?’ she guessed when he didn’t speak. ‘I’m sorry. I…’
‘No, no…’ Dominic was quick to reassure her. ‘You mustn’t be. I’m not…It’s a start.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed a little bleakly as he released her arms. It was obvious that he had hoped she might have remembered more, and she herself was beginning to wish that she had…that she could…Her head had started to ache. Because of the wine?
She wished he wouldn’t be so nice to her, so understanding. She far preferred it when he was angry and antagonistic towards her. That way…That way what? That way she could refuse to acknowledge those unwanted tendrils of emotion and longing that were beginning to curl their way around her heart? She was just suffering from confusion…delusion…imagining that…subconsciously remembering that they had once loved one another. But that had been in the past, a past that she couldn’t remember…a past where she had walked out on him and that love.
‘I’m tired,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I think I’ll go straight to bed.’
Dominic watched her walk away from him, his forehead furrowed in a small frown. She looked so vulnerable, so lost and sad, that he wanted to run after her, to sweep her into his arms and tell her not to worry, that the past didn’t matter, that they could…That they could what? Start again? What the hell was he thinking? Just because he had seen her earlier as the girl she had been…just because when he had kissed her she had responded to him…reminded him…
But it wasn’t that girl who had moved him to remorse and filled him with tenderness just now—was it?
So he still had feelings for her…still reacted to her? Still wanted her, dammit. So what? He was allowed to be human, wasn’t he? And besides, none of that meant…
None of that meant what? That he was falling in love with her all over again? As a woman this time and not a girl.
He took a mouthful of his coffee and grimaced. It tasted sharp and bitter. Irritably he poured it away. Wasteful, perhaps, but better that than suffering the inevitable after-effects of drinking it so strong: the insomnia, the heartburn…
Heartburn? Oh, yes, he had suffered enough of that…more than enough!
CHAPTER EIGHT
RESTLESSLY Annie looked across the darkened bedroom to the window and then at her watch. It was just gone two in the morning and she had been awake for well over an hour, her thoughts racing round inside her head in an exhausting chase that led nowhere.
The recovered fragments of her lost memory taunted her, defying her to make proper sense of them, their real meaning tormentingly eluding her.
Somewhere deep inside her subconscious lay the answer to the question both she and Dominic wanted so desperately to have answered. But she was no closer to discovering just what it was. The brief memories of her marriage she had regained had only reinforced what her dreams had already told her—namely that her body yearned for Dominic as its lover, its mate, and that whatever her reason had been for leaving him—and it must have been a very strong and important one—it had not been strong or important enough to destroy her desire for him…
Her desire?
Impatiently she pushed back the bedcovers and slid her feet to the floor. There was no way she was going to sleep now. She might as well go downstairs and make herself the cup of tea her parched throat was crying out for.
A rueful smile curled her mouth as she reached for the familiar warmth of her cotton robe. It had been a present from Helena and Bob, a private joke of a gift, after she had commented on having seen it in a shop window. White cotton printed with little black heart outlines and written messages. For some reason it had attracted her attention. It was a girl’s robe, really, rather than a woman’s, short and demure, but she still loved it.
As she made her way quietly downstairs she paused to admire the carved balustrade, automatically stroking her fingers along the polished wood. The long months of her recovery had given her time, which she had used in reading and learning…in thinking, broadening her outlook in every direction. The uncertain young girl she had been, defensively concerned that others would reject her because of her background, had been replaced by a young woman confident in herself and about herself.
It still hurt, of course, to know that her mother had abandoned her and that she would never, ever know just who her parents were. But the mutual love and respect that existed between herself and Helena, the rapport and closeness they shared, had shown her that it was as herself that she was valued, because of what and who she was and not in spite of it.
In the children’s home where she had grown up she had been too quiet and withdrawn to make many friends, or to have much appeal to the couples who had come to the home looking for a child to adopt or foster.
Annie paused as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her forehead pleating in a small frown as she remembered one particularly
painful incident from her childhood.
She had been about four at the time, one of two little girls being considered for adoption by a young couple who had already visited the home on several occasions. Annie had hoped desperately that they would choose her, but she had been too shy to vocalise her feelings to them when they had taken her out, praying desperately at night instead that they would choose her. But then had come the day when they had visited the home with an older couple—obviously the parents of one of them, Annie now realised. She had been standing outside the door, waiting to be summoned in to see them, when she had overheard a conversation between them all.
‘I like Annie,’ she had heard the younger woman saying. ‘She is so sweet and pretty.’
‘Annie?’ the older woman had intervened sharply. ‘Isn’t that the child who was abandoned? I don’t think you should chose her, Elaine. You don’t have the faintest idea what her background is—other than…Well, I mean, circumstances speak for themselves, don’t they? What kind of person would abandon their child? And you know what they say about bad blood! No. I think you should go for the dark-haired one. At least you know her background.’
As in any structured society there had been a hierarchy, a pecking order in the home, and Annie had already known that she was ‘different’ from most of the others, in that no one had any idea who she was or where she had come from. She had been found by an elderly woman, wrapped in a woolly jumper in the ladies’ toilets at a town’s busy railway station, and despite every attempt on the part of the authorities for someone to come forward and claim her no one had done so. At that moment she had known why. It was because she had bad blood!
In the kitchen she made herself a cup of tea and then walked back into the hallway, stopping as she reached the open door to the sitting room.
It had been in there that she and Dominic had cuddled up together in the evenings. Reading…talking…
Shakily she walked into the room, heading, not for the sofa but for the large chair alongside it, carefully placing her tea on the coffee table and then sitting down facing the sofa, staring searchingly at it.