‘I need a drink,’ he cut in, then stood up and began striding quickly for the door.
Samantha watched him go—relieved he was going because she needed time alone to try to come to terms with all of this. But it didn’t stop her gaze from following him, eyes feeding on his tall, lean framework as if she still couldn’t quite believe that he was real.
Maybe he wasn’t, she then told herself with a rueful little smile that mocked the turmoil her mind was in. Maybe this was going to turn out to be just another nightmare in a long line of nightmares where tall dark strangers visited her and claimed to know who she was.
‘Have we been married long?’
Why she stopped him at the door when she’d been glad he was going, she didn’t know. But the question blurted out anyway, bringing him to a halt with his hand on the door handle, and stopping her breath as she waited for him to turn.
‘Two years,’ he replied and there was a strangeness about his voice that bothered her slightly. ‘It will be our second wedding anniversary in two days’ time,’ he tagged on—then left the room.
Staring at the closed door through which he had disappeared, Samantha found herself incapable of feeling anything at all now, as a different kind of numbness overcame her.
Two days, she was thinking. Which made it the twelfth. They hadn’t even celebrated their first wedding anniversary together.
Her accident had occurred on the twelfth. Where had she been going on her first wedding anniversary? Had she been rushing back to be with him when the accident had happened? Had that been why she’d—?
No. She mustn’t allow herself to think like that. The police had assured her it had not been her fault. A petrol tanker had jackknifed on the wet road and ploughed into three other cars besides her own before it had burst into a ball of fire. She had been lucky because the tanker had hit her car first then left it behind, a twisted wreck as it careered on. The people in the cars behind her hadn’t stood a chance because they’d caught the brunt of the explosion when everything had gone up. Other drivers had had time to pull Samantha free before her car had joined in the inferno. But her body had had to pay the price for the urgency with which they had got her out. Her head, already split and bleeding from the impact, had luckily rendered her unconscious, but they had told her the man who had pulled her free had had no choice but to wrench her crushed knee through splintered metal if he was to get her clear in time. And her arm, already fractured in three places, had been made worse because it had been the only limb the man had been able to use to tug her out.
The arm had healed now, thankfully. And the knee was getting stronger every day with the help of a lot of physiotherapy. But the scar on her face was a reminder she saw every time she looked into a mirror.
And why was she hashing over all of this right now, when she had far more important things to think about? It was crazy!
So what’s new? She mocked herself, then with a sigh sat back down again.
She hadn’t even considered yet whether André Visconte was lying or not, she realised. Though why someone like him would want to claim someone in her physical and psychological state unless he felt duty-bound to answer the question for her.
Because no one in their right mind would.
No one had for twelve long months. So why hadn’t he found her before now?
He said he’d wished her in hell, she remembered. Did that mean that their marriage had already been over before their first wedding anniversary? Was that why he hadn’t bothered to look for her? And had he only done so now because someone had recognised her in that newspaper as the woman who was his wife?
Agitation began to rise. Her head began to throb, bringing her fingers up to rub at her temple. I want to remember. Please let me remember! she pleaded silently. He’d said something about being in New York. Was that where he lived? Was that where they’d met? Yet her accent was so obviously English that even she—who had learned to question everything about herself over the last twelve, empty months—had not once questioned her nationality.
Had they met here in England? Did they have a home in this area? Was he wealthy enough to own homes in two places? Of course he was wealthy enough, she told herself crossly. He owned a string of prestigious hotels. He looked wealthy. His clothes positively shrieked of wealth.
So what did that make her? A wealthy woman in her own right for her to have moved in the same social circles as he?
She didn’t feel wealthy. She felt poor—impoverished, in fact.
Impoverished from the inside, never mind the outer evidence, with her sensible flat-heeled black leather shoes that had been bought for comfort and practicality rather than because she could really afford them. For months her clothes had been charitable handouts, ill-fitting, drab-looking garments other people no longer wanted to wear but which had been good enough for an impoverished woman who had lost everything including her mind! It had only been since she’d landed this job here that she had been able to afford to replace them with something more respectable—cheap, chain store stuff, but at least they were new and belonged to her—only to her.
What did Visconte see when he looked at this woman he claimed was his wife?
Getting up, she went to stand by the tarnished old mirror that hung on the staffroom wall. If she ignored the scar at her temple, the reflection told her that she was quite passably attractive. The combination of long red wavy hair teamed with creamy white skin must have once looked quite startling—especially before too many long months of constant strain had hollowed out her cheeks and put dark bruises under her eyes. But some inner sense that hadn’t quite been blanked off with the rest of her memory told her she had always been slender, and the physiotherapists had been impressed with what they’d called her ‘athletic muscle structure’.
‘Could have been a dancer,’ one of them had said in a wry, teasing way meant to offset the agony he’d been putting her through as he’d manipulated her injured knee. ‘Your muscles are strong, but supple with it.’
Supple, slender dancer worthy of a second look once upon a time. Not any more, though, she accepted. She thought of the stranger and how physically perfect he was, and wanted to sit down and cry.
I don’t want this, she thought on a sudden surge of panic. I don’t want any of it!
He can’t want me. How can he want me? If I am his wife why has it taken him twelve months to find me? If he’d loved me wouldn’t a man like him have been scouring the whole countryside looking for me?
I would have done for him, she acknowledged with an odd pain that said her feelings for him were not entirely indifferent, no matter what her brain was refusing to uncover.
‘Oh, God.’ She dropped back into the chair to bury her face in her hands as the throbbing in her head became unbearable.
Pull yourself together! she tried to tell herself. You have to pull yourself together and start thinking about what happens next, before—
The door came open. He stepped inside and closed it again, his eyes narrowing on the way she quickly lifted her face from her hands.
His jacket had gone; that was the first totally incomprehensible thing her eyes focused on. The dark silk tie with the slender knot had been tugged down a little and the top button of his shirt was undone, as if he’d found the constriction of his clothes annoying and needed to feel fresh air around that taut tanned throat.
Her mind did a dizzy whirl on a hot, slick spurt of sudden sensual awareness. ‘Here…’ He was walking towards her with a glass of something golden in his hand. ‘I think you need one of these as much as I do.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t, not on top of the painkillers—thank you all the same.’
If nothing else, the remark stopped him, mere inches away from touching her. She