Ruthless Reunion
Elizabeth Power
When handsome Alex Sabre recognizes her, Sanchia realizes that they must have once known each other intimately. But Sanchia has amnesia–her mind has rejected three years of painful memories. Sanchia knows that to unlock her secret past she must spend time with the rich and ruthless Alex….But Alex won't tell her what she needs to know–or why he's resisting the passionate sensual pull between them. What was he to her? What is he hiding? And what happens when Sanchia learns the truth about the man she's falling in love with…again?
Harlequin Presents never fails to bring you the most gorgeous, brooding alpha heroes—so don’t miss out on this month’s irresistible collection!
When handsome Peter Ramsey discovers Erin’s having his baby in The Billionaire’s Captive Bride by Emma Darcy, he offers her the only thing he can think of to guarantee his child’s security—marriage! In The Greek Tycoon’s Unwilling Wife by Kate Walker, Andreas has lost his memory, but what will happen when he recalls throwing Rebecca out of his house on their wedding day—for reasons only he knows? If you’re feeling festive, you’ll love The Boss’s Christmas Baby by Trish Morey, where a boss discovers his convenient mistress is expecting his baby. In The Spanish Duke’s Vigin Bride by Chantelle Shaw, ruthless Spanish billionaire Duke Javier Herrera sees in Grace an opportunity for revenge and a contract wife! In The Italian’s Pregnant Mistress by Cathy Williams, millionaire Angelo Falcone has Francesca in his power and in his bed, and this time he won’t let her go. In Contracted: A Wife for the Bedroom by Carol Marinelli, Lily knows Hunter’s ring will only be on her finger for twelve months, but soon a year doesn’t seem long enough! Finally, brand-new author Susanne James brings you Jed Hunter’s Reluctant Bride, where Jed demands Cryssie marry him because it makes good business sense, but Cryssie’s feelings run deeper…. Enjoy!
Ruthless Reunion
Elizabeth Power
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
All about the author…
Elizabeth Power
ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, where she still lives with her husband in a three hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist. But it wasn’t until a few weeks before her thirtieth birthday, when Elizabeth was thinking about what she had done with her first thirty years and realized she had been telling herself she would “start writing tomorrow” for at least twelve of them, that she took up writing seriously. A short time later, the letter that was to change her life arrived from Harlequin. Rude Awakening was to be published in 1986. After a prolonged absence, Elizabeth is pleased to be back at her keyboard, with new romances already in the works.
Of her writing, Elizabeth says emotional intensity is paramount in her books. She says, “times, places and trends change, but emotion is timeless.” A powerful story line with maximum emotion, set in a location in which you can really live and breathe while the story unfolds, is what she strives for. Good food and wine come high on her list of priorities, and what better way to sample these delights than by just having to take another trip to some new exotic resort. Oh, and of course, to find a location for the next book!
For Alan and the Bermudian Longtail.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS the face behind the camera that intrigued him most.
In all the years he had been coming to Bermuda Alex had never seen anyone quite like her, and with all the problems he had left back in England—the responsibilities of a family fortune, discrepancies in investments, Luke’s death—his spring break here this year had scarcely appealed. Until now.
The young woman, however, was still intent on capturing the magnificent splendour of the ice sculpture standing near the far wall of the hotel ballroom behind him, and Alex took the opportunity to let his gaze wander, unashamedly and unnoticed, over the rest of this equally magnificent creature.
Tall, slim, in her very early twenties, she was one of the few females at the party tonight not wearing black, which marked her as independent-minded and free-spirited to his way of thinking. The heavy weight of her sleek dark hair—every bit as black as his own—was a striking contrast to the cream chiffon-fine dress that moved fluidly against her body, the long transparent sleeves somehow lending added sensuality to a bodice cut so low he could see where the deep cleavage of her generous breasts ended and the pale flesh of her midriff began.
As his eyes lingered on those full rounded breasts, a hard, basic urge ripped through him, stronger than any he had known in his life.
Reluctantly he forced his gaze down, noticing how the dress hugged her small waist and her smooth hips to whisper around her in a series of concealed splits, so that the barest movement revealed tantalising glimpses of her creamy thighs. The tapered hemline of the dress caressed long legs that finished in fine-strapped silver sandals, the height of the stilettos enhancing already shapely calves and ankles.
Self-assured. Poised. A woman who didn’t mind being noticed. Or one, he thought suddenly—conversely—with his keen, trained mind kicking into gear, who needed to advertise her confidence in order to conceal a distinct lack of any.
But her camera had come to rest on him.
As the sudden flash captured the hard, questioning angles of his face, he saw her mouth open, as though her own audacity had surprised her. Her mouth, like her toes and the scarlet-tipped fingers still holding the small device, was creamy red, a full, sultry mouth that he had the sudden hot and almost unbearable urge to plunder.
Slowly then, she lowered the camera, and Alex felt as if his breath was being dragged through his lungs when he saw that her face matched everything her body promised.
It was the face of an angel—and a siren. Her skin resembled porcelain against the deep sheen of her hair. Her eyebrows were finely arched, her lashes long and dark over seductively slanting eyes.
The sounds of the party going on around him seemed—like the chatting, laughing faces that filled the hotel’s glittering ballroom—superimposed on his brain. For him there was no one else in the room but this sensuous, unsmiling beauty. Nor did he want there to be. He wanted them all to disappear so that he could walk over to her unhampered, get her to acknowledge him—accept him—and do what his primal instincts were urging him to do. Possess her utterly and completely.
He dipped his head in the subtlest acknowledgement. She didn’t turn away, just stood there, as though hypnotised by the same powerful force that held him in thrall. But neither did she smile, and suddenly, in those strikingly amber eyes of hers and through his own private turmoil, he recognised misery of the most devastating kind.
Curiosity, on top of everything else, would have had him abandoning his companions to close the gap between him and this beautiful girl. But then the youth standing next to her touched her arm to gain her attention and she turned abruptly away.
She didn’t want to be here. She hadn’t wanted to come.
After the trauma of the past five weeks Sanchia Stevens couldn’t understand how she had allowed herself to be talked into attending a party to celebrate the expansion of one of the island’s largest hotels—except that Francine and Rick had insisted upon it, had said that it would do her good. But Rick and Francine had already left, under the pretext, she was sure, of Francine having a headache, and she guessed that they thought she had ‘fixed herself up’ with the sycophantic young man who seemed determined to cling to her and had decided to leave her to it.
They didn’t know that she had declined to go with them because she hadn’t wanted to go back to the hotel, didn’t want to be alone—because that meant thinking, and she didn’t want to have to think. Nor did they know that this was supposed to have been her honeymoon. They had naturally assumed she had come on holiday alone, simply looking for a good time, which was why they had been so ready to abandon her. But that had been nearly an hour ago, just as she’d been taking pictures of that swan sculpted out of ice, and the man she had been reckless enough to capture with her camera hadn’t taken his eyes off her since.
His black wavy hair, brushed straight back, was impeccably groomed, like the rest of him, although the immaculate tailoring of his dark suit, white shirt and tie did very little to tame the contours of a body that was honed to disciplined fitness: lean, broad-shouldered, intensely male.
Sitting on one of the high stools that flanked the bar, she could see him still, across the heads of several other guests, talking with the same group of people he had been talking to all night. Serious-minded, important-looking people, from the intensity of their conversation. Dignitaries or government officials? Sanchia speculated, and recognised one from a picture she’d seen hanging in the vestibule as the owner of the hotel. However, where dominance and sheer physical presence played a part, the man who was interesting her most outstripped them all.
His features were strikingly etched, uncompromisingly handsome beneath the rich bronze of a Bermuda tan. But it was that air of authority that drew her eyes unwittingly to him as much as to those darkly aloof features. Instinctively, she knew he would be a formidable opponent, would command respect and inspire awe in whatever game he chose to play.
And he had chosen to play for her.
A little shudder ran through her at that inexplicable acknowledgement, immediately followed by a leap of hard excitement when she saw that his company was now dispersing and he was already striding over to the bar.
‘Hello, I’m Alex.’ His voice was chocolate-rich and deep, that air of authority coupled with the impact of a devastating sexual charisma now that he was up close, making her put her reluctant fingers into the firm, warm clasp of his. ‘And you are?’
Her temperature sky-rocketing, she lifted heavy eyes to a pair that were a steel-hard, penetrating grey. ‘Wishing you’d let go of my hand.’
He didn’t immediately, retaining it just long enough for her to recognise the power of an intrepid will. Through her silent wretchedness a little voice warned her to be careful.
‘Could I get you another drink?’
‘Very probably,’ she murmured, her claws unsheathed by the pain of bitter betrayal, making him a scapegoat for all his sex. ‘I’d imagine there’s very little you couldn’t do,’ she added levelly, looking him up and down in a way designed to faze him but which only resulted in producing a throb of something elemental in her that was almost frightening in its intensity.
‘Then I’ll rephrase that.’ He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket, and amended with emphasis, ‘May I get you a drink?’ From his perfect diction it was clear he was neither Bermudian or American, but full-blooded English. From the hint of impatience in that deep voice, it was also obvious he didn’t usually have to work this hard.
‘Better.’ Her sultry mouth curved in the merest smile as she picked up the Martini glass from the bar, put it to her lips. ‘But the answer’s still thanks, but no thanks.’
‘Too complicated?’
‘Much too complicated,’ she responded, noticing now the fine lines around his eyes and the grooves etching his mouth, as though he had been driving himself too hard, or been under some strain.
‘Really? I was under the impression you wanted me to come over and speak to you.’
‘Were you?’ She gave a brittle little laugh, unintentionally tantalising, provocative, and saw the glint of something dark and dangerous leap in his eyes. Setting her glass back down on the bar, she glanced away, feigning interest in some laughter coming from one of the tables before enquiring casually, ‘Are you married?’ Not that it mattered, she assured herself firmly. He was much too sophisticated and dangerous for her to be playing with.
‘Married?’ He made it sound as though she had insulted him even by suggesting it. ‘No, I’m not married.’
Perhaps she had insulted him, she thought, some sixth sense telling her he wasn’t the type of man to approach a woman if he had a wife somewhere. A man with ethics. Uncommitted. In control. A man who could make her forget…
Sanchia shook the shocking, disturbing notion away, wondering where it had come from.
‘What’s your name?’
Above the soft music drifting out from behind the bar, the equally soft command stirred a contrary desire in her to rebel—against him, against the effect he was having on her, against herself. ‘Is that a prerequisite?’
Something like annoyance flashed in his eyes but was quickly erased. ‘A prerequisite for what?’
A rather sensual smile played around his mouth now and, held by the snare of his flagrant masculinity, Sanchia’s gaze faltered, her brain acknowledging the power of mind and body that lay behind that impeccable façade. He would know how to please, pleasure, protect a woman—for as long as she was his at any rate, she fantasised, shaken by her own wild speculation. He could also hurt her, if she played this dangerous game with him. But maybe that was what she wanted, she thought suddenly—crazily. The diversion this man could provide would numb the pain.
She had had more to drink than was wise if she was thinking like that. Not that she’d really had very much, and not so much that the man standing beside her would have noticed, but certainly one or two glasses more than she was accustomed to.
Her sparkling eyes turned the deepest amber as she looked up into his face. A hard, handsome face, whose forcefulness filled her with such a contrary mixture of rebellion and excitement that she wanted to challenge it and lose herself to it all at the same time.
She gave a heedless shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she answered, with another fleeting little smile, and felt his gaze burn over her shoulders and her generous breasts in tacit acknowledgement. A reckless heat licked through her, and deep inside her something throbbed in startling response. ‘Isn’t it all part of the game?’
‘The game?’
‘You ask my name. You buy me a drink. We wind up in bed. Isn’t that the natural progression of things?’
‘You’re very direct.’
You’d be direct, her mind screamed, if your fiancé had just killed himself and the other woman he’d been shacking up with!
‘Is there any other way to be?’ Her dark lashes swept downwards, camouflaging agony. ‘Why cloak it behind a charade of needless civilities?’
‘Why, indeed?’
She could sense that he didn’t mean that. He was just a little bit shocked by her plain speaking, she suspected, although he wasn’t allowing it to show.
‘And have you always been so cynical?’ he went on.
A smile curved the corners of his mouth again, a hard, sexy mouth that in another situation would show a woman heaven. She wondered what it would be like to feel its demanding pressure on hers.
‘Cynical?’ Her slanting eyes made an unconscious survey of his magnificent physical attributes. Broad shoulders made sleek by exclusive tailoring. A solid walled chest, tight waist and hard, lean hips. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her smile was provocative, blazing from bright lips that were struggling to conceal pure pain. ‘I didn’t mean to be.’
‘Didn’t you?’ Those grey eyes smiled, but there was a mild reprimand in the deep timbre of his voice.
He was using his gaze like dangerous visual foreplay—and it was working! She had never felt so aroused in her life. Those stimulating eyes had marked her out for his possession, and, much as she wanted to resist their lethally hypnotic power, she didn’t seem to have any defence against it. All night long there had been a silent exchange of something flagrantly sexual between them, a dark and mutually carnal demand that was screaming out to be met. She didn’t know how she could feel such a barrage of conflicting emotions. Excitement slashing through grief. Desire riding side by side with pain. The weight of it was almost unbearable.
‘So you prefer anonymity?’ That masculine voice throbbed with sensual amusement, and yet suddenly she recognised some raw and personal anguish behind the formidable strength in that face. ‘Most intriguing.’
‘Why not?’ Her fingers curled painfully into her palms from the urge to reach up and touch him, touch the elemental heart of whatever was causing him to suffer. ‘We aren’t going to see each other again.’
‘Aren’t we?’
The determination in those two words sent a little frisson through her. She wanted to challenge them—challenge that glaring authority—but words wouldn’t come.
‘Well, now that’s settled, let me tell you what I—’
She wasn’t aware of lifting her fingers to that firm, communicative mouth, only of its sensual warmth beneath their gentle pressure to silence him.
For a fleeting moment she stared at him, shocked by her own temerity. Mouth parched, breath coming quickly, blood pumping through every stimulated vessel, her hungry amber eyes were drowning in the incandescent heat of smouldering grey.
She had crossed a line, she realised hectically—stupidly! And if she stayed there would be no turning back.
Grabbing her camera off the bar, she jumped off the stool and, without a word, twisted away from him, out of the ballroom into the quiet lobby and into the haven of a waiting lift.
Slipping her camera strap over her shoulder, she stood breathless, trembling, wanting only for the lift to swallow her, when an impeccably sleeved arm sliced between the closing doors.
They yielded, allowing her pursuer entry, and whirred shut again, locking them both in a bubble of screaming intimacy that was swelling with each straining second.
They stared at each other like combatants, chests heaving, mouths turning almost savage.
There’s no way out, Sanchia thought, and felt the white-hot tide of desire pool in a molten heat in her loins.
And then the bubble burst and he was dragging her against him. Or had she reached for him first? She wasn’t sure. Only that that savage mouth was devouring her, just as hers was devouring him, responding to the fierce heat of his demands with throbbing, driving needs of her own.
His hands were twisting in the gleaming swathe of her hair with an almost painful pleasure, while hers revelled in the thick dark strength of his even as she sagged against him, weakened and clinging to him for support. Hungrily, she brought her fingers clawing down over his face, over the hard, exciting texture of his cheek and jaw, sinking her nails into his broad shoulders with a little cry of pleasure when one arm moved to catch her hard against his powerfully aroused body.
Her breasts ached for his hands, craving their warmth against their full, aching sensitivity, and like an extension of her own thinking he seemed to know. She felt the moist heat at the very heart of her as his hand slid easily inside her dress, the hard contraction of her body’s crying out to have this man possess her, to lose her pain and misery in the torturous rapture he could provide.
The whirr of the lift moving upwards was drowned by their laboured breathing. It whined to a halt, opening into a private corridor. A route merely to the penthouse suite.
It registered with Sanchia only numbly as the man lifted his head, his features flushed from the hunger that rode him—rode them both. She hadn’t even been aware of him pressing the indicator button.
There was no one about. Only the two of them and the thick silence that came with the luxury he had paid for.
He was waiting. Giving her a choice, she realised in that split moment of breathless silence. Go or stay.
Something urged her to pull free from this reckless path she seemed to have carved out for herself. But she knew she had relinquished all choice downstairs in the bar.
She wasn’t aware of actually walking to his door, or of his using a card-key to open it. She was only aware, as his arms came round her again, that she had invited this, and that she couldn’t prevent what was going to happen any more than she could stop the boilers breaking over the reef beyond the coral-crushed beaches of the South Shore.
Their mouths melded, hot and hungrily—even before he had slammed the door behind them—in desperate imitation of the act that was to follow.
It was an act that Alex knew he couldn’t have denied himself even if he had wanted to.
He was using her—heaven help him! Using her to rid himself of the demons that were plaguing him. In the same way, he strongly suspected, that she was using him.
But for all that he couldn’t get enough of her. Of her sweet moist mouth, her perfume, the earth-shattering promise of her body. He couldn’t get enough of her, and to relieve himself of the deep ache of wanting he lifted her up, so that he could feel her luscious legs as well as her arms around him, his mouth plundering hers as he moved urgently through with her into his bedroom.
I can’t get enough of him! Sanchia thought, burning for him, inhaling the scent of his aftershave as though it was vital oxygen, excited by his strength, unbearably aroused by the grazing texture of that impeccable suit against the soft flesh of her inner thighs.
His suite was in darkness, though French doors stood open to the scents and sounds that filled the bedroom from a private roof garden, and the whistling of frogs and lizards in the softly illuminated foliage was a sensuous song that heightened the eroticism of the warm Bermudian night.
The big bed yielded beneath them as they toppled down onto it together.
I want you! she thought, glorying in his actions as he pushed back the flimsy barrier that separated her from him and claimed her full, responsive breasts as his own.
She gave a small strangled cry, her breath shuddering through her from the ecstasy of those marauding hands, the sudden heat of his mouth on one swollen tip bringing her straining towards him in a wild frenzy of need.
Oh, please…! She didn’t want to wait, couldn’t wait. She wanted him now!
Alex groaned from the heat of desire that was throbbing through his body. He had never felt so out of control in his life. He was far too hot—too hard, he realised, mentally flaying himself for getting himself into this situation, wondering how, if he let things run their natural course, he was ever going to last. He couldn’t even protect her—or himself. Gone were the days when he’d gone out equipped with a young stag’s hope of getting lucky. He was thirty-six years old. A leading barrister, for goodness’ sake! With responsibilities, common sense… Except that it seemed to have deserted him in his need for this girl.
He knew he should love her as she should be loved. With care and consideration, after a quiet, romantic evening, with all the skill and mastery of a long-perfected technique. Not like this, like some callow youth…
He hesitated for the briefest moment, dragged back from the edge of a precipice from which there could be no return. But then she arched her back and her writhing hips collided sensuously with his, shaking his very foundations from beneath him, and in that moment he knew he was finished.
He was doing this, Sanchia thought, as though he was seeking respite from something. She guessed that he wasn’t usually so rough or possessive as he caught her wrists above her head and ground his lower body against hers in hard domination, but whatever unknown entity was driving him, she didn’t want to know or care. He was dark and dangerous, and she needed the excitement he offered to obliterate her savage misery.
He made little work of dispensing with her white lacy string, his hands hard and uncompromising, but when his fingers slid into her softness, checking her readiness to receive him, they were unexpectedly gentle.
She whimpered her need, her body contracting around his fingers in a way that made Alex groan with frustration. He heard her moan softly in protest as he withdrew them, clenching his teeth in throbbing anticipation as he moved, adjusting his position before plunging into her, hard and deep.
She uttered a deeply choked sound that was lost beneath the chorus of the night creatures in the luxuriant foliage, and started to climax immediately, each deepening thrust of his body bringing her bucking and sobbing beneath him through the agonising ecstasy of his own release.
When Sanchia started to think again, she couldn’t believe what she had allowed to happen.
Why had she done it? she berated herself mercilessly. She had never been so stupidly reckless in her life!
She groaned a protest under his pinioning weight, so that he moved away from her immediately.
She couldn’t look at him as she readjusted her dress over her virtual nakedness, then groped for her errant string on the crumpled bedspread.
‘Are you looking for this?’ He was on his feet on the other side of the bed, amazingly in control again. Not as she felt. Shocked by her actions. Cheapened by them. Ashamed.
She grabbed the scrap of lace from his tanned hand, unable to meet his eyes.
Dear heaven! He hadn’t even undressed! Such had been their urgency for each other. Grief and betrayal had driven her into his arms, she realised bitterly, but it had been a purely animal coupling, nothing more.
Now pangs of self-disgust, and one Martini too many after days of too little food, had her rolling off the bed and stumbling instinctively towards his bathroom, where she was physically sick.
What type of man took a woman without any preliminaries, she wondered, groping for a towel. Just out of pure need to sate his lust? But she knew she had been a willing participant, and she had shrugged off his attempt at those preliminaries, craving only the oblivion from her screaming emotions that she knew she would find in his arms. So what type of woman did that make her?
‘Are you all right?’
Her eyes hurt from the light he had snapped on.
She didn’t look at him, grateful for the hair that fell forward, hiding the mess of her make-up and her blotchy face as she wiped her mouth on a towel that smelled too keenly of his aftershave lotion. ‘Fine.’ It came out flat and muffled.
‘I hadn’t realised you’d had that much to drink. I thought you were in total control of what you were doing. I’d never have brought you up here if I had.’
He was blaming himself. That deep note of remorse in his voice told her all too chillingly that he didn’t normally give in to his animal urges with such basic disregard. And now he regretted it.
‘Don’t feel too bad about it.’ Unable to unload what had driven her to behave in a way that was grossly out of character with this total stranger—because he was still a stranger, for all the intimacy they had just shared—she didn’t even bother to explain that she hadn’t been drinking to excess, that she wasn’t proud—any more than he was—of what she had allowed to happen. He must think her a promiscuous, half-inebriated fool, and the quicker she got away from him, the better.
Matter-of-factly, he said, ‘It shouldn’t have happened like that.’
‘No.’
‘I should have put you in a cab and sent you home.’
She looked at him squarely at last, her stomach turning over even now from the impact of his devastating looks, that mouth that had kissed her senseless, his dominating, hard-edged masculinity.
‘Yes.’ What had she imagined? she wondered, feeling the pangs of a wounded injustice that seemed to anaesthetise all her other emotions. That a man like him would have wanted her in any other way than for her body?
‘I’ll get you some coffee,’ he said.
When he came back a few minutes later to check up on how she was, the bedroom was deserted. So was the bathroom, and the light that was still on illuminated his way as he strode purposefully back into the sitting room.
The door to the suite was ajar, he noticed, and quickly stepped out into the quiet corridor. The lift was in use, the illuminated buttons indicating its occupation, its movement on a lower level of the hotel.
It could be her, he realised, knowing he stood a cat in hell’s chance of catching her. Brow furrowing, his attention slid automatically to the Emergency Exit door at the end of the corridor, just past his own.
Something other than his five basic senses drew him towards it. The night-scented air greeted him with a rush of humid warmth as he pushed it open, bringing with it the continuous whistling of lizards and the restless surge of the sea.
He saw her then, some way off in the distance—a shadowy figure, illuminated by the beach lamps, sandals hanging from her fingers, racing away over the soft pink sand.
She had been so keen to get away from him she hadn’t waited for the lift. She had used the fire escape instead.
Inside, Alex felt numb. He knew he’d never catch her. She’d be lost to him even if he sprang after her now, jumped the steps below him two by two.
She had come to his bed and then left, unable, he felt sure, to face him. To face anyone, he suspected now. Which could be another explanation for her not using the lift.
But she could be carrying his child…
The thought jolted him like a whiplash and he cursed himself for his irresponsibility, for letting his raging hormones rule him instead of his head. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that she was taking the Pill.
He wanted to yell after her. To stop her in her tracks. To drag her back—at least until he knew one way or the other. But a group of guests had wandered out onto the restaurant terrace way below. He could hear the muted strains of their conversation, their oblivious laughter, and as he watched the girl being swallowed up by the shadows of the Bermudian night he realised for the first time, and with another, much more shocking jolt, that he didn’t even know her name.
CHAPTER TWO
THE jury were being sworn in.
When her turn came Sanchia knew she would have to stand up, and a small dart of panic shot through her.
It wasn’t enough that the courtroom, with its high arched windows and dark paneling, was oppressive. Or that she could sense the eyes of the awesome-looking defence barrister who was standing nearest the jury box boring into her in a way that was making her feel decidedly self-conscious. No, it was the unsettling feeling on top of all that that she had done something similar before; there was some weird déjà vu in sitting here among the sculpted halls and corridors of this majestic building that was sending spears of pain across her temples, making her palms hot and clammy.
Perhaps she should have claimed exemption when she had been summoned here today. But, having been selected at random under English law, she had wanted to do her duty like any up-standing citizen, believing that she was well enough, keen to start functioning normally again. Putting her few photographic jobs on hold to take two weeks’ compulsory jury service was just another stepping stone towards that normality—another small opportunity to pick up the tenuous threads of her life.
The court official thrust the book towards her as she got shakily to her feet. On top was a card containing the words she had to say.
‘Just a moment, m’lud.’ The deep commanding voice of the defence barrister threatened to rock her off balance as it brought the swearing-in process to an abrupt halt. The panelled walls seemed to throb in the silence that followed. The official made a silencing gesture to Sanchia, who could only stand and stare at the man who had halted the proceedings.
Although it was the judge he was addressing, those grey eyes hadn’t lifted from hers. Sharp, penetrating eyes that would miss nothing, and which marked a calculating intelligence and a keen mind.
In the dark robes of his profession he had a formidable presence, from his commanding height, olive skin and sleek black hair—visible beneath the compulsory wig—to the black winged brows above those intelligent eyes and the dark shading of his jaw, which only served to strengthen an already flagrant masculinity.
‘I’m afraid I have to challenge this juror.’
All eyes were turned towards Sanchia. Hers, though, were still trapped by the power of the man who seemed to dominate the court.
With a crushing sense of foreboding she was struck by the ominous notion that somewhere in another lifetime she had been tried and judged and sentenced by this man. Perspiration beaded her forehead, made her neck feel sticky beneath the neat French pleat and the collar of her pale green jacket, and her head started to throb.
‘I would ask that this juror be removed.’
On his deep-voiced instruction, that was more a command than a request, Sanchia thought her legs were going to buckle under her.
Her face pale against the dark twist of her hair, Sanchia’s eyes questioned his in bewildered challenge. But he didn’t relent—just stood there staring at her, as though he had seen some sort of ghost. And as the court official ushered her away she felt that grey gaze following her until she had left the court, and it was then that her legs finally gave out.
Alex was immensely relieved that he had managed to get a brief but immediate adjournment. All he had wanted to do after he had seen Sanchia walk into that court—heard her name called out so that he had been forced to challenge it and have her removed—was race after her, stop her from leaving the building no matter what it took.
He needed answers to so many questions. Like where had she gone when she had run out on him that day? And what had she been doing for the past two years? Where was she living? And why, when she had first seen him in that courtroom, had she not spoken up and excused herself, as the law required any juror sitting on a case to do if they recognised someone directly involved with it. She had glanced towards him several times, been fully aware that he was there. Perhaps, he speculated, his thoughts whirring round his cool, normally ordered brain, she had been too embarrassed to say anything. Had hoped, through some small miracle, that she’d get away with it. He gritted his teeth against the familiar kick in his loins just from remembering the way she had fixed him with those cool, seductively slanting amber eyes.
Perhaps she had been planning just to sit there and enjoy watching him fazed, he thought, his jaw clenching at the gut-wrenching possibility. She had to know that her presence would have rocked the ground on which he stood. And yet, he thought, puzzled, as his robe billowed behind him in his swift, determined passage to the room where he had instructed one of the ushers to detain her, from that almost intimidated look in those beautiful eyes when he had challenged her earlier he could have sworn she had been as startled to see him as he had been when she had first walked in.
Sitting on the low sofa where someone had settled her down with a glass of water, Sanchia glanced up as the door to the private room swung open to admit the tall figure of the barrister who had challenged her.
Alex Sabre. She couldn’t remember who it was who had told her his name.
‘Hello, Sanchia.’ Her throat went dry as she saw that he had closed the door behind him, watched his purposeful, measured stride across the floor. ‘I really didn’t think you’d still be here,’ he said, and then, in a tone that was softly menacing, ‘After all, you were quick enough to ditch me last time, weren’t you?’
He was standing in front of her now, looking down on her from his commanding height.
‘I’m sorry?’ Sanchia shook her head as though that would somehow clear the fog that seemed to be clouding her senses. In the confines of the quiet room the sheer presence of this man was mind-blowing ‘Do—do I know you?’ she asked tentatively, frowning. Surely he could only have got her name from being in court?
‘Know me?’ Some private emotion chased across his hard, handsome face, deepening the groove between those very masculine brows as his eyes scanned her face with the thoroughness of a laser. But then he laughed. A short, sharp sound, devoid of any humour. ‘Oh, that’s very good! Is the loss of memory permanent? Or was it something you dreamed up when you realised I was the defending advocate? Because, believe me, it was as much a surprise for me in that court just now as it was for you.’
‘Surprise?’ She couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
‘Or perhaps that was the intention?’ he suggested, cutting across her mind-spinning confusion. ‘One final little advantage stroke before you finally agreed to face up to facts.’
‘Facts? What facts?’ she demanded, still shaking her head.
‘You know very well what I mean. Why did you take off the way you did that day? Without a word, without even the courtesy of an explanation! Where did you go? Why were you so determined never to be found?’
‘I’m sorry…’ she said again, out of confusion rather than apology. She put her hand to her forehead, felt the dull ache that throbbed between her temples.
‘I just never dreamt it was so abhorrent to you that you’d actually run away.’
‘Run away?’ From what? Her mind battled in vain for an answer, and through what seemed like a thickening haze came up with nothing except the stirrings of an inexplicable unease. ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ she said shakily.
‘A mistake?’ He laughed again, even more harshly than before. ‘Oh, I made a mistake all right! For goodness’ sake, Sanchia! Credit me with some intelligence. How long are you going to keep this up?’
‘Keep what up?’ she challenged, wondering if it was his daunting anger or something else—something nagging at her memory—that was making her feel vulnerable and afraid. ‘The fact that I don’t know what you’re talking about—don’t even know who you are?’
‘For pity’s sake!’ He slapped his forehead with his hand, his head turning sharply so that his profile was exposed to her in all its hard austerity. What did the girl think she was playing at?
Sanchia’s head hurt from the effort of trying to remember, her thoughts leaping ahead, making connections, blind assumptions. He was a barrister. She had never mixed with barristers, had she? Why would she have had any dealings with one? Unless…
‘Was I a witness, or something? Is that why I ran away?’
‘A witness?’ Something flared in the penetrating grey eyes as he turned back to glare at her with stark incredulity. His teeth were clenched, as though he was doing his level best to hold on to what remained of a frighteningly rigid control. ‘No, my dear girl, you weren’t a witness. And I don’t think I need tell you what I do with those who imagine they can fob me off with lies and generally make an idiot out of me—even with such a first-class performance as you’re giving now.’
He would tear them apart.
Though she didn’t know him, she knew that much, and she shivered, remembering what she had overheard someone saying about him earlier.
Coming from a family involved in investment and property, he had inherited a fortune on his father’s death—which he was well on the way to doubling. Even without the vast professional fees he could command, he didn’t need to work. But perhaps he just liked wielding power over people, Sanchia thought distractedly, because apparently he was known in court circles as being triple ‘R’-rated. Rich, ruthless and respected. So ruthless that anyone who came up against him who wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, didn’t stand a chance.
Now the dangerous softness with which he had spoken sent a violent shudder through her, making her temples pulse with a throbbing pressure. Something stirred in the recesses of her consciousness, a heavy drawn curtain whose dark folds refused to part, no matter how frantically she searched for daylight, for freedom, for clarity.
‘I’m not giving any performance!’ An eternal frustration brought her own anger welling up inside of her. ‘I’ve already told you! I don’t know what you’re talking about—or who you are! You say you know me, but I can’t remember you! I had an accident and lost my memory. I can’t remember you—or anything about you! I can’t remember a thing!’
She dropped her head into her hands, groaning as a wave of nausea washed over her. Through the fog of her consciousness she battled to find the truth, the effort making her head feel as though it were splitting in two.
‘Sanchia?’ He had dropped down on his haunches in front of her. Through the screen of her fingers she could see the pinstriped trousers pulling over his bunched thighs, saw how his robe pooled on the floor behind him like a dark cloak.
‘My God…’ His tone was strung with disbelief and his face was etched with incredulity as he caught her hands, drawing them down in the determined strength of his. ‘If I thought for one moment that you were serious…’
‘Of course I’m serious!’ she breathed, meeting his eyes on the level. They were cold and glittering and clear. But the intimacy of those hard hands clasping hers caused a sudden quickening of her blood, so that finding herself the focus of such a man made her pull back as though from a tremendous shock. ‘Why would I want to lie?’
From the furrow that appeared between his eyes they had registered that disconcerted little action. As they would register everything…
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
Sanchia hesitated. He was a stranger to her, and yet his compelling authority forced her to respond. ‘I had an accident. When I was in Northern Ireland.’
‘Ireland?’ He sounded surprised, but he let her go on.
‘I stepped out in front of a car and was knocked unconscious. When I came to I couldn’t remember a thing. Not what had happened, where I lived, or who I was. Gradually things began to come back. Things further back in the past. I remember my parents. When they died. Where I was. I remember everything until my late teens. But after that some things remain hazy.’ No, not just hazy, she thought. Totally obliterated. ‘Sometimes things just don’t tie up. Like walking in here today…’
‘What about walking in here today?’ Restrained urgency over-laid the deep tones.
‘Sometimes I feel as though I’ve done things before, though I know I couldn’t have.’
‘How do you know you couldn’t have done them?’
‘I just know,’ she answered lamely. ‘There’s a portion of my life I can’t recall, but I can’t have done anything that important or significant.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m sure I’d remember it if I had. It’s just a matter of a year or so. Two, maybe. Like where I was before the accident, what I was doing. I’ve never been able to find the link.’
‘How long were you in Ireland?’
A slender shoulder lifted beneath the fluid jacket of her trouser suit. ‘I’m not really sure. I think I’d just moved there before the accident, because I was still in a bed and breakfast. Apparently I’d told the landlady I was an orphan and totally foot-loose and fancy-free, and that I was using a post office box address until I got myself some permanent digs.’
‘How long have you been back in England?’
‘Just a couple of months. I knew I’d lived in London. I just couldn’t remember where, or when I’d left, or why. Until then I was afraid to leave the safety of the places I knew. The doctors said things would probably come back in time, given the right stimulus, but…’ She gave another dismissive little shrug. ‘It’s been over two years now, and they haven’t. They say there might possibly have been something so traumatic in my life before the accident that my brain refuses to remember it. They call it psychogenic amnesia.’ Her tone derided the phrase, as well as her own inability to recover from it.
‘And you?’ He stood up then, with a subtle waft of rather pleasant aftershave lotion. Sanchia was very relieved. Crouched down in front of her like that, his masculinity was far too disturbing. ‘Do you believe that?’
She shook her head, more out of bewilderment than negation. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. How can I know?’ Vaguely sometimes she thought there must have been some boy; she caught a snatch of a voice, a bleary outline of features, a suspicion of being cruelly and brutally hurt.
Perhaps she’d gone to pieces afterwards—had a nervous breakdown. Who knew what was locked away in the depths of her mind?
‘Had you no friends who were able to help you? To try and retrace your steps?’
‘Apparently not. The doctors said I’d told the landlady that I’d been travelling round Britain—going where I pleased—but that I was definitely going to settle there in Ireland. They didn’t give me any reason to suspect I wasn’t telling the truth.’ And then as she remembered, ‘You said—you’d…been looking for me.’ She tilted her face to the strong features that wiped away any trace of the flimsy images in her brain. ‘That I ran away. What from? What was I running from?’ A cold, sick fear crept through her. She’d always known she’d been running from something.
‘…never dreamt it was so abhorrent to you that you’d actually run away.’
As the significance of those words hit home, Sanchia lowered her gaze to stare at the floor, as though she would find the answers stamped on the worn polished boards, her thoughts scouring the dark areas of her mind for the worst possible scenario. She had done something awful! Or been accused of it at the very least. ‘Were you defending me or something?’ The eyes she raised to his were dark with appeal. ‘Is that how we know each other? What did I do? Tell me!’
‘You didn’t do anything.’ A faint smile touched his mouth and was gone again, like a glimpse of the sun in an overcast sky. ‘Nothing unlawful anyway. Though that isn’t to say that what you did do, my lovely Sanchia, couldn’t be construed as criminal.’
Which meant what? she wondered, swallowing, detecting the inflection in his voice, the biting emotion behind the disturbing way he had addressed her held in check, she sensed, only by a formidable will. Involuntarily her gaze moved over his taut robed body, coming to rest again on the strong, hard contours of his face.
‘Who are you?’ she asked shakily, suddenly—inexplicably—afraid.
Alex hesitated. To tell her the truth would be to make a mockery of himself if she were just stringing him along with this preposterous story. And if she weren’t…
One strong masculine forefinger lifted insolently to trace her cheek, making her breath catch from the disturbing intimacy of his action. ‘You really don’t remember?’
She shook her head, recognising the disbelief that still laced the deep tones. Her heart was racing in her breast.
‘Anything?’
In the stillness of the room his voice, like his touch, was caressingly soft.
She didn’t know him, and yet her body responded as though she did—as though he had done this to her before and she had responded in exactly the same way. She closed her eyes at the shocking impulses that rocked her with devastating sensuality.
‘Let’s just say we…’ his hesitation was marked ‘…were acquainted. Very briefly.’
Her wan features were wary, the only colour a splash of pink along her cheekbones from the mind-shattering awareness that had gripped her just now from the lightest brush of his hand. ‘Acquainted?’ Mercifully he wasn’t touching her any more. ‘What do you mean? In what way acquainted?’
He didn’t elaborate at once, as though he were weighing her reactions, his every move calculated, geared to eliciting the truth.
She shot him a sidelong glance, nervous again as she asked, ‘Were we…dating?’
He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘Dating?’ Was that scorn or simple rejection in his voice?
‘I just meant…were we…seeing each other?’
‘If that’s what you want to call it.’
Oh, good grief! Then did that mean that she…that they…?
‘What happened?’ she asked tremulously, her throat contracting from the wild imagery her brain had started processing, afraid of the answers without fully understanding why.
‘It ran its course.’ It wasn’t true, of course. Not by a long chalk, Alex thought grimly. But if she really had lost her memory she wasn’t ready for the explicit details of their far too brief acquaintance.
He sounded cold and unmoved, Sanchia thought, her mind racing, desperately trying to grasp a thread of memory that faded even before it had taken shape.
Despairingly, she got up, moving over to the window.
In the street below, the city’s traffic was flowing unusually freely for a weekday morning in high summer. Pedestrians jostled with each other along the busy street, tourists and workers alike reflecting a world going about its business—while she was marooned up here, with this man who both terrified and excited her, groping like a blind person for a safe footing on a slippery precipice.
‘How…?’ She didn’t want to have to ask—couldn’t turn around as she tried to formulate the question that was burning through her brain, managing eventually to croak, ‘Just how…deeply were we…involved?’
Through the muted sounds in an outer corridor—a man’s sudden cough, the echo of footsteps across the floor—Alex Sabre’s sharp intake of breath was unmistakable. When he spoke, however, his voice gave nothing away.
‘You can’t remember?’
She tried. Put her hand to her head. Goodness knew, she wanted to. Blindly she shook her head.
‘If by involved you mean were we lovers…?’ The unfinished sentence was laden with meaning.
Sanchia’s back stiffened. Violently she shook her head again. No! Not with him! she thought, every nerve pulsing with an outrageously sensual rhythm as her brain determinedly denied it. She would have known. Remembered something like that. Remembered him…
‘I would have remembered,’ she said hopelessly to the window.
In the succeeding silence she was conscious only of his daunting presence, his scent, even his hard, steady breathing, her every sense painfully acute.
‘Sanchia. Turn around.’
She couldn’t have done so but for that soft command in his voice. Even then it was only to fix her troubled, confused gaze on his white wing collar and tabs, a vivid contrast with the dark austerity of his gown.
‘Don’t worry,’ he advised, and then, in a tone that was almost hostile in its coldness, ‘I would take your answer from the way your mind so keenly rejects the possibility.’
She noticed how harshly those masculine features were etched in the light coming from the window as her shoulders sagged with almost disproportionate relief. If double-crossed, she thought, he would make a formidable adversary.
‘If it puts your mind at rest, I stopped looking for you a long time ago,’ he went on. ‘Even so, I’d like to help you.’
‘Help me?’ Amber eyes widened in amazement.
‘If, as you say, you’ve lost a whole chunk of your life, then I’d like to help you try and retrieve it.’
‘How?’
‘Whatever it takes.’
Others had tried before—doctors, psychiatrists—and with no satisfactory outcome or hope of her memory ever coming back she had discharged herself over six months ago, resigned to the fact that it never would. But was it possible after all this time, she wondered, both fearful and excited by the prospect, that she could regain the lost pieces of her life, as this confident and obviously brilliant man seemed to think?
Whatever it takes, he had said. She shivered, trying not to imagine the methods a man like him might employ to delve into the intricacies of her locked, dysfunctional mind. She was afraid, and yet contrarily, with a bone-deep instinct she couldn’t even begin to understand, she knew that in doing so he wouldn’t harm her. Not any lasting physical harm, at any rate…
‘Why?’ Her slanting eyes were guarded as she looked at him askance. ‘Why would you want to help me?’
‘Why?’ The firm lines of the sensual mouth moved as though he were contemplating her question. ‘What about because the subject intrigues me? Because you intrigue me, Sanchia?’
‘Because I—?’ There had been an edge to his voice which made her break off, her features harden with sudden challenging anger. ‘You don’t believe me! You still don’t believe me, do you?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No, but you’re thinking it.’
‘How do you know what I’m thinking when I’m not even sure myself?’
‘And you claim to know me.’ She wasn’t sure why she felt such bitter disappointment, but she did. ‘How can you? How can you know anything about me if you think I’d make something like this up?’ She wasn’t sure of him. She wasn’t sure of anything. But one thing she knew was her own character. That couldn’t have changed, no matter how many months or years of her life had gone missing. Could it?
‘Believe me, I want very much to make sense of it all. To believe you—’
‘But you don’t!’
She swung back across the floor, her high heels expressing her agitation. She felt that after this she would be walking out of here to face a greater, more frightening void in her life than she could ever have imagined possible.
The loneliness was suddenly terrifyingly overwhelming. A low moan came from her throat like that of an injured animal, but as she made to push past him his arm shot out, his fingers clamping hard around her wrist.
‘For heaven’s sake, Sanchia! Virtual strangers we might be, but do you really think I’m letting you walk out of here like this?’
‘Like what?’ Her pulse was hammering crazily under his broad thumb.
‘Like a little lost child—not knowing where she’s going, let alone where she’s come from.’
‘Let me go!’ she protested as her struggle to free herself only served to tighten his hold on her. ‘I was perfectly all right before I came in here today!’
‘I don’t think you were. When you looked at me in that court you looked…ridden by some sort of terror that could destroy you if it isn’t rooted out. Like you were being hounded by some nightmare you couldn’t ever wake up from.’
A chilling sensation shivered along her spine. How could he be so perceptive? How could he know?
Shaken, she tried not to let him see how his words—how he—was affecting her as finally she wrenched free from his clasp. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Psychoanalysing me now?’
A thick eyebrow arched as he noted the disparagement with which she said it, but slipping a hand into the pocket of his well-cut trousers, all he said in response was, ‘I gather you’ve had your fair share of that.’
She didn’t need to answer, wondered if the desolation she felt showed in her eyes.
Unwillingly she noticed how the way he was standing, with his robe pushed back, revealed the hard lines of his body. A body honed to peak fitness with the same punishing stamina with which he must have honed that keen intellect—single-minded determination and ruthless resolve.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Sanchia.’
‘I know that.’ How? How could she know? she wondered hopelessly, and after a moment asked, ‘How do I know you’re telling me the truth?
‘That I know who you are?’
The neat hair that had once felt like tumbling silk beneath his hands gleamed darkly as she nodded. Alex swallowed to ease the pressure that seemed to be restricting his windpipe.
He wanted to tell her. Prove it to her. Take that hunted look out of her eyes by forcing her to remember, because he was beginning to shake off all doubts that this was any performance. And, curse it though he had just now, maybe—just maybe—her loss of memory might work in his favour. He felt unscrupulous, yet decidedly excited by the prospect as he responded, ‘To echo your own words: why would I lie?’
Sanchia frowned. Why would he? He was a barrister. Honourable. Respected.
And ruthless.
That other juror’s words sent a little shiver down her spine.
‘You’re going to have to trust me,’ he suggested softly.
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘I can’t.’ It was like a small hopeless plea in the darkness.
‘No.’ He moved closer to her, his cool, clear gaze penetrating hers, plumbing the depths of her fear and anxiety with merciless precision. ‘No,’ he repeated, as though coming to some hard decision. ‘I don’t believe you could. But all I’m asking is that you allow me to see you again—starting with this evening. I’ll take you out to dinner. That way you won’t even have to worry about being alone with me.’ And that would be for the best all round, he decided wryly, for himself, as well as Sanchia. Because he didn’t know how he was managing to stand there without reaching for her, pulling her against him, feeling her softness melting against him as he plundered that sweet, moist mouth…
‘I can’t,’ she said quickly, aware of the hint of sarcasm clothing his last remark. Nor did she particularly regret having to say it. Because, much as she wanted to recapture her missing memories, she was afraid of unlocking doors her mind clearly wanted to keep sealed. Which was as ridiculous, she thought, as fearing any kind of involvement with Alex Sabre. But nevertheless she did. ‘Not tonight. I’ve arranged to meet someone tonight.’
‘Then you’ll just have to ring him and tell him you can’t make it,’ he replied, causing her hackles to rise. She hated being bossed about. He was also wrong in his assumption that she was seeing another man, but she held back from telling him that. It was none of his business anyway. Before she could say anything, he tagged on, as though he were speaking to a rather stubborn child, ‘Isn’t this more important?’
Which, of course, it was, she thought, having already decided to telephone her friend to postpone their cinema trip.
‘That’s settled, then,’ he said, and it seemed it was.
CHAPTER THREE
‘WOW! No wonder you decided to call off an evening with me in favour of a night out with him!’
Jilly’s enthusasm brought Sanchia over to the window, to see Alex Sabre, in casual jacket and dark trousers, just locking his car. It was a shiny black BMW, long and sleek, a statement of his wealth and position.
‘He says he can help me,’ Sanchia murmured, reiterating what she had told her friend and neighbour earlier, when she had reluctantly postponed their night out at the cinema. ‘But I don’t know.’
A blonde and bubbly thirty-year-old divorcee, Jilly Boston knew about Sanchia’s amnesia. Sanchia had taken the older woman into her confidence quite soon after moving into the small garden flat, when she’d realised what a kind and helpful neighbour Jilly was—always willing to take her photographic deliveries in for her and feed the fish. Now, though, steeling herself to meet Alex Sabre again, she couldn’t explain the doubts and fears that were nagging away at the perimeters of her subconscious.
‘He says we knew each other—only briefly, by the sound of it—but he’s a link with the part of my life that’s missing, and I do want to know what I was doing then. Only…’
‘Only what?’ Jilly prompted gently.
‘I don’t know why, but I’m afraid.’
‘Just because that psychiatrist said that there must be something so traumatic lurking there behind all that grey matter that you’ve blanked it out, it doesn’t mean there is. Perhaps it’s completely the opposite, and things were so mundane at that period of your life that there’s nothing really significant to remember.’ Jilly grimaced. ‘I should know. Most of my life is like that.’ The self-deprecating quip made Sanchia smile. ‘But if a man like that offered to help me, I’d lie down at his feet, plead total incapability, and tell him to take all the time he needed.’
Which was so far from the truth that Sanchia burst out laughing.
The nerves that had been eating away at her insides for the past hour, however, had her stomach muscles tightening up seconds later as the doorbell pealed.
‘He’s here! I’ll make myself scarce,’ Jilly announced, grabbing the nail lacquer remover she had popped in to borrow. ‘And don’t worry.’ This with a comforting little smile. ‘You’ve already assured me he’s a respected barrister. And from the look of him I’d say you were in extremely good hands.’
‘Were you having your flatmate look me over?’ Alex enquired dryly five minutes later, putting the car into motion as Sanchia secured her seatbelt.
So he had noticed Jilly’s interest, she realised, sinking back against the plush grey leather, guessing that there wasn’t much that would escape him.
‘Jilly isn’t my flatmate,’ she responded edgily. ‘She’s my neighbour.’
‘And a good friend?’
‘Yes. And she wasn’t looking you over,’ she supplied, rather less truthfully, wishing Jilly hadn’t been so obvious in her appreciation of those dark good looks and the compelling authority of this man sitting beside her. ‘She was just a little surprised, that’s all. I don’t normally go out with men like you.’ What a stupid thing to say, she chided herself, feeling gauche.
‘Oh?’ He flicked the indicator switch to signal his intention to turn right at the end of the road. ‘What type do you normally go out with?’
Was she imagining it, or was there a sudden abrasive edge to his voice?
Certainly her type wasn’t big and commanding and powerful, and he was all of those things, she decided. In fact, over the past couple of years she hadn’t really gone out with any men, except perhaps for a blind date someone else had arranged without telling her, and to which she had only reluctantly agreed because it had been in the safe company of friends.
‘Not prominent barristers,’ was all she offered.
His eyes made a cursory survey of her simple cream top and tailored trousers, sending a small ripple of awareness right down through her body.
‘And how do I differ from all the other men you’ve known?’
Was he kidding?
‘You move in different circles, for a start.’
‘How do you know what circles I move in?’
Sanchia pursed her lips. She didn’t, did she? ‘You’re also very, very clever.’
‘And does that unnerve you?’
Was it that apparent? she wondered despairingly, but said, ‘No,’ rather firmly, just in case it was. ‘It just warns me to be careful, that’s all.’
He smiled lazily, a smile that displayed the sheer power of his steel-edged magnetism. ‘Why? Because I might uncover things about you that you might not want revealed?’
A little shudder played across her nerves. ‘That’s your job,’ she reminded him, glancing out of the window.
‘Only in court,’ he said, and then, with a sudden softening in his tone, ‘And even then I can be gentle when I need to be.’
But at other times he would be merciless. She didn’t need memory to assure her of that.
Nevertheless, a leap of the reckless excitement she had experienced that morning sent her blood accelerating through her veins as her mind processed the scenarios to which his gentleness might extend.
‘Do you know of anything in my past,’ she asked, suddenly dry-mouthed, ‘that I would rather wasn’t revealed?’
‘Like you robbed banks for a pastime? Or were caught up in some exotic web of intrigue, with any number of double agents after you?’
‘I’m serious.’
Straightening the car after taking the junction, he sent her a glance that was hard and searching. ‘You tell me.’
Frustration gnawed at her with the cold probability that he might still not wholly believe she was telling him the truth.
‘I can’t,’ she said dully, with a sudden weary slump to her shoulders.
The look he directed at her now was reflective—questioning. ‘Then let’s just take it one step at a time,’ he advised, his voice quiet but firm.
The restaurant to which he took her was an intimate little bistro, patronised Sanchia decided, seeing its popularity, by a regular clientele.
She felt Alex’s searching regard as a waiter pulled out her chair for her, supplied them with menus and placed a napkin ceremoniously over her lap.
It was just the place to bring someone on a first date. Relaxed, but with impeccable service, Sanchia thought. Only it wasn’t a first date, was it? Or a date of any kind, if it came to that.
She met grey eyes across the table that were watchful, darkly assessing. ‘Have I been here before?’
‘What do you think?’ he said.
Her gaze strayed across the softly lit tables, touched on the decorative climbing plants, the low painted ceiling, the bright, sparkling glasses at the bar. ‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, frowning. ‘It seems familiar, but it could just be reminding me of half a dozen other places I’ve visited. And yet…’
‘And yet what?’
‘You said you wanted to help me remember, and I don’t think you’re a man to waste time with anything that doesn’t further your immediate objectives.’
An eyebrow lifted in subtle acknowledgement, the smile playing around his mouth not quite reaching those clear, penetrating eyes.
‘An accurate assessment of my character, but it does rather make me sound as though I care for very little but my own ends.’
She surveyed him obliquely, her eyes both wary and challenging. ‘And do you?’
‘Why? Is there something in your subconscious that’s warning you to be on your guard against me?’
Was there?
‘I don’t know,’ Sanchia answered truthfully. ‘Should there be?’
He laughed. ‘This conversation’s going nowhere,’ he remarked. ‘But, yes, I think you’ll find you have been here before.’
With you? For some reason she bit back the unsettling words. Forehead puckering, she glanced around her again, seeing things that had supposedly touched her life and yet which now bore no testimony to that other time, feeling ghost-like, because nothing intruded on the void, leaving her feeling empty and invisible.
‘Sanchia?’ From across the table Alex’s voice shook her out of the haze that had been threatening to engulf her. Her wrist, lying casually on the table, was encircled by fingers that were warm and strong.
‘I don’t remember,’ she murmured, her bloodless features ravaged from the effort of trying to.
‘Are you receiving any treatment that might help you?’
‘No,’ she admitted, disentangling herself from that disturbing hand.
‘Why not?’
So she had to tell him she had given it up as pointless, and saw his eyebrows arch in undisguised criticism. ‘Wasn’t that a rather foolish thing to do?’
‘Perhaps, but you try it,’ she retorted, acquainting him with the endless sessions of therapy, the eternally false hope and, at the end of it all, the acceptance of defeat, that that part of her life was lost, never to be retrieved. ‘I had to get on with my life,’ she finished quietly.
‘And you think you’re doing that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And making a good job of it?’
‘Yes,’ she said adamantly.
‘You don’t ever wonder if you might be missing something of vital importance to you?’
She shrugged. ‘I did at first. In fact, for a long time. But I know I don’t have any living relatives, so I knew there wouldn’t be anyone looking for me or missing me. I don’t know why I lost my memory—or even what I was doing before I stepped out in front of that car. Maybe I was stressed out over something—money, my job, a boyfriend—and that’s what made me step off the pavement without looking. Or maybe I was perfectly happy and just taking a quiet stroll—I just don’t know. But in the end I thought that if the psychiatrist was right, and I had been through something so awful that my mind had blocked it out, then perhaps it would be better not to know.’
‘Isn’t that rather a short-sighted view?’
‘A coward’s way out, you mean?’
He didn’t say as much, although from the compression of his lips he was certainly thinking it.
‘Perhaps from where you’re sitting that’s what it looks like. But I’m perfectly happy as I am, and if my memory doesn’t want to come back, why try and make it?’
‘And yet you came out with me.’
Across the table their eyes clashed, and something about the dark intensity in his made her pulse throb with the acknowledgement of a powerful sexual chemistry she had recognised from her first glance at him in the courtroom that morning. Although even before she had looked at him she had felt something…
However casual their relationship might have been, however insignificant, she was sure of one thing. That dark fascination he possessed, which must have attracted her to him originally, hadn’t died with her lost memories or with time. It flared into vibrant life every time he looked at her, molten and incandescent—and she knew it would consume her with its dangerous power if she let it. She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, answering him now.
‘Why?’
Why?
She wanted to tell him lightly that it was out of curiosity that she had accepted his offer of dinner tonight, that it was nice to be invited out, and if he could give her memory a prod in the right direction all well and good. But the pull of his dark attraction rendered her incapable of such a performance, so it was all she could do to suggest rather unsteadily, ‘Why don’t we talk about you?’
From the smile curving that strong mouth he had obviously guessed why she had changed the subject, but he went along with her, saying, ‘All right. What do you want to know?’
‘Interests?’
He sat back on his chair, mouth firming before he answered, ‘Good literature. Good wine. Good music.’
She laughed. ‘Naturally. And you aren’t wearing a ring, so I would hope you aren’t married.’
His eyes narrowed beneath the thick fringes of his lashes. ‘You think that my being here with you might mean I’m cheating on someone else?’
‘It isn’t unheard of.’
‘Rest assured,’ he said, sitting forward again, ‘I’m not.’
‘Any family?’ She sipped the aperitif he had bought her from the bar.
‘My parents are dead. I still have a stepmother somewhere.’
Somewhere. Was she imagining that sudden hardening in his voice? ‘What about brothers or sisters?’
‘What about them?’
‘Do you have any?’ She suddenly felt as though she were wading through mud.
‘I had a brother. Half-brother,’ he amended, almost distractedly, and reached for his glass.
‘Had?’ Sanchia prompted cagily, setting hers aside, not sure she should be asking when she saw the lines that were etched into that strong face.
‘He believed in living life on the edge. One day it just caught up with him.’
He was watching her, she thought, with eyes that were hurting, yet direct and unfaltering too. ‘What happened?’ It came out on a whisper.
He glanced down at his glass. ‘He took up a plane he wasn’t authorised to fly—with disastrous consequences.’ As he had done everything he shouldn’t have, Alex thought, feeling bitter and torn inside.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sanchia murmured, sympathising, especially in view of how young he must have been.
A smoothly clad shoulder moved almost imperceptibly. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
Obviously Alex was still affected by it, and Sanchia was happy to comply. She was glad that the waiter reappeared just then to take their order, and the next few minutes were spent discussing the various choices on offer.
‘That’s my favourite,’ she remarked, after the waiter had gone, approving the expensive bottle of Sancerre Alex had chosen to accompany their meal.
‘Yes,’ he affirmed softly, taking her by surprise, until she remembered.
Of course. He knew her—probably knew things about her she hadn’t retained any knowledge of herself. Suddenly she felt much too vulnerable, totally and uncomfortably disadvantaged.
Under the soft lighting his hair was gleaming like jet, and the unfastened neck of the black and grey striped shirt he wore beneath his jacket exposed the crisper hair of his body, curling against skin that would tan easily.
Unconsciously Sanchia’s gaze slid down over his torso, visualising, as clearly as though she knew every contoured muscle, the lean, hard power and sinewy strength of him beneath those expensively tailored clothes.
Her head swam in a fog while the throb of a base guitar from concealed speakers echoed her heartbeat, providing the sensually hypnotic backing to a sultry ballad.
She was looking at him, Alex thought, like a sleepwalker. She started suddenly, and embarrassed colour crept into her cheeks—as though she had been jolted awake to find him watching her.
‘How did we meet?’
Reaching for one of the rolls from the basket the waiter had left at their table, Alex broke it apart and began buttering it, snatching a few moments to try and work out what to tell her, giving himself time. ‘You’ve no glimmer of recollection?’
Sanchia made a hopeless little gesture, saw the lines scoring that strong intellectual forehead.
‘It was at a party.’
‘A party?’
‘Around two years ago.’
‘Two years…?’ She was starting to sound like an echo, but she couldn’t help it. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said despairingly, with her elbows resting on the table, her splayed fingers pressed to her temples as she searched for memories that wouldn’t come.
‘For me it was a mix of business and pleasure, and you—you were there taking photographs.’
‘Photographs? So I was working?’
‘No, not that night.’
Sanchia frowned. ‘So where was it? Whose party was it?’ Her expression was pained with the effort of trying to remember.
‘Those details aren’t really important for the time being.’
‘Was I on my own?’
There was a moment of hesitancy before he answered. ‘Yes.’
‘I was?’ She shook her head, as though the movement could shift the eternal fog that clouded her mind. What confidence she must have had, she thought, because she certainly wouldn’t do that now. ‘So we met at this party,’ she went on contemplatively, ‘and…you asked me out?’
Alex’s breath felt like a ton weight in his lungs. How could he tell her that he had used her to sate pure animal lust, to relieve himself of the guilt and grief he had been burdened with on the death of his half-brother? He didn’t even want to bring up Luke’s name.
‘Not…exactly,’ he answered her, with a kind of grimace.
‘Oh?’ Sanchia’s eyes widened as a startling possibility dawned. ‘I asked you out?’ She couldn’t believe she would have had the courage to be that forward with a man like him—knew she wouldn’t have in a million years—and she was certain her character couldn’t have changed that much. Yet deep down in the recesses of her mind something nagged, worried, rubbed away at the fringes of her consciousness like a scouring pad over a raw wound.
‘The night of that party,’ Alex was telling her. ‘I didn’t even find out your name.’
‘How come?’
His mouth twitched mirthlessly. ‘You didn’t seem too disposed to tell me,’ he said, his lashes coming down over the steel-grey of his eyes.
‘Why not?’ She gave an incredulous little laugh. ‘Was I playing it that cool?’ His revelation amazed her. She couldn’t believe she would have acted that way with anyone—least of all a man like him.
He wasn’t laughing with her. He was simply watching her. Watching, waiting and assessing her reactions. As he would watch and wait and assess the reactions of those unfortunate enough to come under his hard interrogation in court.
‘You probably terrified me,’ she admitted with a little shiver.
‘Do you find me that threatening, Sanchia?’ he asked softly.
She didn’t answer. What could she say? I don’t know you. How do I know what kind of man you are? And yet somehow she felt she did know—could tell simply from being with him that behind that air of authority and that mind-blowing sexual charisma was a code of honour he would do his utmost to preserve.
‘So what happened after that?’
After that? He didn’t know how to handle this. He would always assess the currents, always chart his course, before instigating any line of action. Yet now, for almost the first time in his life, he felt dangerously close to being out of his depth.
He had already misled her about their first meeting—by omission if not with wilful untruths. And yet to tell her the truth at this stage, he thought, curbing a raging frustration to do so, would probably only succeed in driving her from him again. Because what was the truth? That they had nothing on which to build a relationship other than a hopeless abandoned hunger for each other?
‘When we met again…it was…under far…different circumstances. I…’
He spoke with some hesitancy, as though he were having difficulty recalling the exact details. As though he’d simply filed the information away as too insignificant to retain, she thought, seeing the dark intensity in his eyes and the lines scoring his forehead as he flipped a mental chart of what must be dozens of discarded girlfriends until he brought up the page marked Sanchia Stevens.
‘You were working for a small provincial newspaper. As a freelance photographer.’
‘Did I work for a newspaper…?’ She shook her head, trying to stir some recollection of that time, but nothing would come.
‘I walked into their offices on a day when you happened to be there.’
‘Really?’ The coincidence made her brows shoot up before she asked, with a nervous little smile, ‘And was I more co-operative this time?’
He sat forward, resting his arms on the table. ‘You were never co-operative,’ he murmured, and there was such dark sensuality in the firm curve of his mouth that a little frisson ran through her.
What had he meant by that?
She didn’t doubt that a full red-blooded male like him would be a dynamic and demanding lover. So had he wanted her while she had denied him? Was that what had eventually broken them up?
‘So I gave you the run-around for a while,’ she decided aloud, and before she could stop herself added, ‘But we obviously didn’t embark on a long and glorious affair?’
She couldn’t believe she had said it—couldn’t believe that she was responsible for the predatory smile that tugged at his lips as he returned softly, ‘Are you intimating that you wish we had, Sanchia?’
‘I didn’t say that!’ Shaming colour crept up her throat into her cheeks and she knew he would see it and recognise it for what it was. Pure, unadulterated embarrassment. Because surely he couldn’t know what she was thinking: that she couldn’t possibly have been involved with a man like him without finding herself in the midst of a wildly torrid affair. He was certainly affair material, and had he wanted more than a platonic relationship with her she couldn’t imagine how she could have resisted…
‘What were you doing at the newspaper office?’ she enquired rather breathlessly, for something to say—because what did it matter? All she wanted was to steer the conversation away from the disturbing turn it had taken.
‘Oh…’ He pursed his lips, his eyes reflective yet watchful. ‘Chasing information.’
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