Читать книгу Ruthless Reunion - Elizabeth Power, Elizabeth Power - Страница 9

‘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.’