by Penny Jordan
What was she looking for? Some inner vision of Dominic and herself seated there?
She was, she discovered, holding her breath, willing herself almost to see them…to remember more…But already the memory was fading, stubbornly refusing to metamorphose into anything more meaningful.
Angrily Annie subsided into her chair. She felt as though her own memory was playing a deliberately tormenting game with her, feeding her just enough information to lead her on but then refusing to give her something more substantial.
There was a notepad and a pen on the table, and on an impulse she reached out and picked them up, settling back in the chair, curling her legs beneath her as she started to doodle idly.
Stiff, spiky-branched trees…a little house, four-square to the world, with curtained windows and smoke coming out of its chimney. She gave it a garden, picket-fenced and secure. Well, it didn’t take much imagination to know what that represented. But what about the river she had also drawn, and the car? A large, boxy vehicle, not totally unlike a four-wheel drive—Dominic’s Range Rover?
‘Think…Think…’ Annie urged herself. ‘Remember…’
She started to write. Dominic’s name, she realised when she had finished, with little sketched hearts over the ‘i’s instead of dots. Now why had she done that? She wrote down the word ‘marriage’, and then under it she started to write another list of words, her pen moving faster and faster as she did so.
When she finally stopped she was breathing as though she had physically exerted herself and her heart was pounding.
Nervously she studied the list.
Love. Trust. Respect. Joy. Sharing. Acceptance. Dominic.
Tears blurred her eyes.
Dominic grimaced as he stared at his alarm clock. He had woken up abruptly several minutes ago, as alertly and totally awake as though it was seven in the morning and not still three.
He knew there was no way he was going to go back to sleep. He might as well use the time to do some work. Slipping out of bed, he pulled on his robe.
Annie was concentrating so hard on her list that she failed to see or hear Dominic until he was in the sitting room, and her face burned bright pink with self-consciousness when she looked up and saw him.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she told him, almost defensively. ‘So I came downstairs to make a drink…’
‘Mmm…Me too…’ Dominic told her, going to stand beside her so that he could look down at the list she wasn’t quite quick enough to conceal.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked curiously.
‘It’s nothing…just…I just thought if I wrote down whatever came into my head it might somehow…’
‘May I see?’ Dominic asked her, sitting down on the sofa.
Reluctantly Annie handed over the piece of paper. ‘I don’t know why I bothered,’ she told him. ‘It was a silly idea and…What is it?’ she demanded as she saw the way he was frowning as he concentrated on the paper.
‘Nothing,’ he told her shortly, and then, as though he recognised how curt he had been, he explained, ‘It’s the little hearts…above the “i”s. Like these on your robe,’ he added, pointing out a similarity that Annie herself hadn’t recognised. ‘That’s the way you always used to write my name. You used to say that the hearts were ours.’
He looked back at the list and Annie studiously avoided meeting his eyes when he eventually finished. She was aware of a very special subtle aura of intimacy and closeness enclosing them, as though both of them had briefly let down their defences.
‘What went wrong between us?’ she asked Dominic helplessly. ‘Why…?’ She stopped and took a deep breath before admitting shakily to him, ‘Sometimes I feel I’m destined to have unanswered questions in my life, empty spaces…’
Her eyes clouded and Dominic guessed intuitively what she was thinking. Like her, he too was conscious of an unexpected closeness between them, a sense of them sharing their need to discover her lost past.
‘You mean your parents?’ he asked her.
Numbly Annie nodded her head.
‘I often wonder if she, my mother, ever thinks of me.’
Her unguarded admission touched Dominic’s feelings in a way he hadn’t expected. He was in danger of responding to her as though he still loved her, he warned himself, and then proceeded to ignore his self-warning as he told her gently, ‘I’m sure she does.’
It was and always had been his personal opinion that the mother who had abandoned Annie as a very new baby must have been a very young and very frightened girl, too immature and too afraid to admit that she had given birth, and Dominic felt equally sure that as she had grown up and matured she must have spent many sad hours wondering about the baby girl she had abandoned.
‘I could never do that to my child,’ Annie burst out passionately. ‘Never. Not under any circumstances. Not for anyone…’ She stopped and flushed. What on earth had provoked such an outburst from her?
‘Can I ask…?’ she began, and then stopped, before speaking again and very quickly, so she didn’t lose her courage or change her mind. ‘Will you tell me what it was like for us…being married?’ she asked Dominic huskily. ‘Perhaps it might help me to remember. I don’t know…’
‘It was…it was very good,’ Dominic told her sombrely. ‘In fact…’ He paused and looked past her, as though he was able to see something she could not. ‘It was more than very good, Annie,’ he told her. ‘It was…we were…’
As she heard the emotion in his voice and saw the brief sheen on remembered pain in his eyes Annie was overwhelmed with sorrow and remorse.
‘Oh, Dominic,’ she protested. ‘I…’
She stopped and looked at him, his eyes…his mouth…his…Her heart lurched as her gaze was drawn inextricably back to his mouth.
‘Annie…’
She could hear the protest in his voice, and the need, and then suddenly they were reaching for one another, touching, kissing, with an inevitability that Annie knew nothing could have prevented.
Annie felt herself being lifted tenderly out of her chair and drawn down against Dominic’s body. She had no will to resist him; she could find no need, no reason. She felt his hand tremble slightly as he smoothed her hair off her face. They might have made love a hundred times before, but instinctively Annie knew that this was different, that this was special; what they were feeling, sharing, was not merely a re-enactment of their shared past.
This Dominic, who held and touched her now, was not a figment of her imagination, nor even her husband from the past. This Dominic was the man he was in the here and now.
In the light of the lamp she had switched on she could see his face, shadowed and mysterious and yet at the same time familiar. She traced the shape of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone, and then stopped as she saw the way he was watching her. Time itself seemed to rock to a standstill—no sound, no movement, no breath even breaking the intensity of their silent communication with one another.
Very slowly and carefully Dominic lowered his head towards her. Automatically her lips parted, her eyes closing in sweet, sensual anticipation. His lips felt warm against hers, their caress so sensitising and arousing that she started to quiver. A soft moan broke the silence between them as his hands slid down her body, shaping the nakedness of her curves beneath her thin robe.
Now she understood why she had been so drawn to its small printed hearts. They were almost an exact replica of the ones she had drawn in Dominic’s name. She pressed closer to him, her mouth softening enticingly beneath his.
Dominic shuddered as he felt the response of her mouth and her body. Beneath his touch her nipples had flowered into life, and he could see as well as feel their sharp outline beneath her robe. His body was even more flagrantly proclaiming its own arousal, and his tongue was pushing against the flimsy resistance of her softened lips.
What had begun as an attempt to show her just how good their love had been had turned swiftly into something far more potently dangerous, and rooted i
n the present. The woman he was holding, kissing…caressing…wanting…wasn’t the Annie of the past, the girl he had married. The woman he was holding now…wanting now…was Annie as she now was, and the way he wanted her, the intensity with which he wanted her, faded into insignificance his memories of the way they had once been.
He had known already of the danger he was in, and now it couldn’t be denied any longer. He was falling in love with her all over again, abusing the power his position in her life gave him to use, what on her part had been an innocent and anguished plea for his help to satisfy his own need.
He had to stop before it was too late…before he…
Annie tensed in loss and bemusement as Dominic tore his mouth from hers. He was breathing heavily, and she could feel her own heart pumping fast in aroused response.
‘Dominic,’ she protested yearningly, but he was already distancing himself from her.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ he told her curtly. ‘This isn’t…We’re playing with fire, Annie,’ he told her bluntly. ‘It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to take you to bed now, but…’
Annie felt her face start to burn with humiliation, but much as she longed to be able to do so she knew she couldn’t deny his assertion. What was wrong with her? Where was her pride? Why was she flinging herself at him, virtually begging him to make love to her?
‘You’re right,’ she agreed proudly, forcing herself to appear indifferent and unconcerned. ‘To be honest,’ she added as carelessly as she could, as she turned away to pick up the sheet of paper she had been writing on, ‘personally, I don’t believe it matters why our marriage ended. Even if I did remember, it wouldn’t change anything. I think it would be best if we just went ahead and got a divorce.’
What would she do if he grabbed hold of her and told her there was no way he ever wanted to let her go? Did he really need to ask himself that question? Dominic wondered grimly.
Only now did he recognise that somewhere over the last few days his desire to understand why Annie had left him, to draw a line under their marriage, had been replaced by a far more urgent need to discover what had gone wrong in order that he could somehow put it right. It wasn’t the past and formally ending their marriage he was focusing on, but the present, and the future he wanted to convince Annie they could have together.
‘Best for whom?’ he challenged her sharply as the fragile fabric of his hopes gave way under the weight of reality. ‘Not for me. There are still answers that I need from you, Annie. And until I get them…’
He stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Look, this isn’t going to get us anywhere. I suggest that we will be able to discuss the whole subject more rationally when we’ve slept on it.’
He was right; Annie knew. Her own emotions felt strung out, raw and over-sensitive. She ached for him in a way that both tormented and infuriated her. He had no right to be able to make her feel like this.
But half an hour later in her own room, waiting for sleep to deaden the intensity of her emotions, a tear crept down her cheek as she reflected unwillingly on the closeness she had felt between them before Dominic had destroyed it. Was that what it had been like between them? Had they been so close, so attuned to one another, so much in love with one another that nothing and no one else had mattered?
An aching sense of loss and loneliness filled her, a sharply acute feeling of grief and pain as she wept for the love that she and Dominic had somehow, between them, destroyed.
‘Tell me again. Everything. All of it…right from when we met…’ Annie demanded doggedly.
Dominic sighed, examining her pale set face. They had been treating one another with cautious reserve since the night he had so nearly given in to the temptation to make love to her, and it made his heart ache to see the way Annie was driving herself, pushing herself, to try to regain her memory.
They were walking by the river, and suddenly Annie gave a sharp exclamation as a couple of youths on bicycles came up behind her, sounding their horns and making her stumble in surprise.
Automatically Dominic reached out to steady her, frowning as he felt the way her body shuddered beneath his protective arm.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her in concern.
‘They gave me a shock,’ Annie admitted. Her teeth had started to chatter together and she was trembling so violently that Dominic was loath to let her go.
‘You said we met when?’ she began to prompt him, but Dominic refused to be diverted.
‘You’re not well,’ he told her sharply. ‘And I think—’
‘I don’t care what you think, Dominic,’ Annie interrupted him in a high, strained voice. ‘All I care about is finding out why I left you and getting on with my life.’
Dominic’s concern increased. He was worried that if he didn’t take a stand the pressure she was putting herself under to try to remember was going to make her ill.
Every day now, several times a day, she insisted on him telling her the history of their relationship, demanding to know every tiny detail and listening to him with increasing desperation as nothing he said triggered off any memories for her.
‘Why can’t I remember?’ Annie demanded helplessly. ‘Why? Why…?’
She sounded and looked so tortured that Dominic automatically wanted to comfort her.
‘Don’t. Don’t push yourself so hard,’ he urged her, and then as she turned her head he caught sight of the tears on her eyelashes and it was too much for his self-control.
‘Annie, Annie,’ he groaned as he reached for her.
Frantically Annie tensed against the tormenting intimacy of his arms. His breath brushed softly against her skin and her body quivered helplessly in longing for him. She wanted him so much…loved him so much…How could she deny it?
‘No, Dominic,’ she protested defensively, but it was already too late, and her lips parted weakly under his as he brushed the tears from her eyelashes.
Obliviously they clung together, sharing the bittersweetness of a kiss that could have been that of tender new lovers. But she couldn’t let him guess how she felt. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
Somehow she managed to find the strength to push him away. As she turned away from him suddenly the world turned dark and swung dizzily around her.
‘Annie…’
She could hear the anxiety in Dominic’s voice as he called her name, but somehow she was distanced from it and in another place…another time…She had a vivid sharp memory of another occasion on which she had walked beside the river with Dominic. They had kissed then too, but then…Annie drew in her breath in a sharply painful gasp.
‘Annie? What is it? What’s wrong? Tell me,’ Dominic insisted.
Hazily Annie focused on him. Her mental image of them had faded now. But not the memory it had brought.
‘I…we were walking here,’ she told him distantly. ‘You kissed me, and then…’ She stopped and looked back the way they had just walked, in the direction in which the house lay.
‘And then I whispered to you that I wanted to take you home, to be where I could make love to you properly,’ Dominic supplied rawly for her. ‘And you looked at me and—’
‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Annie interrupted him. Her mouth had gone dry and her heart had started to race. The images Dominic’s soft words were conjuring up were making her feel far too vulnerable.
It was only her pride now that was making her grit her teeth and see through her determination to make herself remember. Every day she spent with Dominic, every hour was making her more and more aware of the danger she was in. She might not know why she had left him but she certainly knew why she had fallen in love with him.
Only this morning, in an unguarded moment, he had made her laugh with his droll description of an incident which had taken place at work. And it had disconcerted her to discover that they shared not only the same taste in food but that they also read the same newspaper, liked the same kind of countryside, enjoyed the
same TV programmes, felt passionate about the same issues.
‘Come on,’ Dominic told her abruptly. ‘I’m taking you home. Oh, it’s all right,’ he assured her when he saw the panic crossing her face, ‘I’m not about to re-enact our past and take you to bed. If I did…’
He stopped, and Annie stopped too, forgetting the danger of looking intimately at him as she lifted her gaze to his face and felt her heart thump and bang against her ribs in reactive punishment.
‘You’re exhausted. No, don’t bother trying to deny it. I can see it in your eyes. You’re pushing yourself too hard…’
‘You’re the one who wants me to remember,’ Annie told him shortly, but he refused to react to her defensive aggression.
‘I thought we’d agreed that we both need to know the truth,’ he said calmly. When she made no response he continued gently, ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
Home! Quickly Annie blinked away the humiliating threat of her tears. She had been so awed, so thrilled—so overwhelmed when she had realised that Dominic’s house was to be her home.
‘Well, where did you expect us to live?’ he had teased her lovingly.
‘I…I…It’s so big,’ she had breathed.
‘It’s just a house, Annie,’ Dominic had tried to reassure her. ‘Bricks and mortar, that’s all. Only with you to share it with me it can truly become a home.’
A home. Her home. The first real home she had ever known. And Dominic had gone out of his way to make sure she had felt that it was her home.
He had taken her shopping, insisting that she was to choose new decor for their shared bedroom, encouraging her to trust her own instincts and taste. She smiled wryly, remembering the hours she had spent poring over books she had bought, trying to find out what style of decor would be right for the house.
‘The Chinese silk would have been wonderful, but I was afraid because it was so expensive,’ she said now.