‘Dominic,’ she protested yearningly, but he was already distancing himself from her.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ he told her curtly. ‘This isn’t…We’re playing with fire, Annie,’ he told her bluntly. ‘It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to take you to bed now, but…’
Annie felt her face start to burn with humiliation, but much as she longed to be able to do so she knew she couldn’t deny his assertion. What was wrong with her? Where was her pride? Why was she flinging herself at him, virtually begging him to make love to her?
‘You’re right,’ she agreed proudly, forcing herself to appear indifferent and unconcerned. ‘To be honest,’ she added as carelessly as she could, as she turned away to pick up the sheet of paper she had been writing on, ‘personally, I don’t believe it matters why our marriage ended. Even if I did remember, it wouldn’t change anything. I think it would be best if we just went ahead and got a divorce.’
What would she do if he grabbed hold of her and told her there was no way he ever wanted to let her go? Did he really need to ask himself that question? Dominic wondered grimly.
Only now did he recognise that somewhere over the last few days his desire to understand why Annie had left him, to draw a line under their marriage, had been replaced by a far more urgent need to discover what had gone wrong in order that he could somehow put it right. It wasn’t the past and formally ending their marriage he was focusing on, but the present, and the future he wanted to convince Annie they could have together.
‘Best for whom?’ he challenged her sharply as the fragile fabric of his hopes gave way under the weight of reality. ‘Not for me. There are still answers that I need from you, Annie. And until I get them…’
He stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Look, this isn’t going to get us anywhere. I suggest that we will be able to discuss the whole subject more rationally when we’ve slept on it.’
He was right; Annie knew. Her own emotions felt strung out, raw and over-sensitive. She ached for him in a way that both tormented and infuriated her. He had no right to be able to make her feel like this.
But half an hour later in her own room, waiting for sleep to deaden the intensity of her emotions, a tear crept down her cheek as she reflected unwillingly on the closeness she had felt between them before Dominic had destroyed it. Was that what it had been like between them? Had they been so close, so attuned to one another, so much in love with one another that nothing and no one else had mattered?
An aching sense of loss and loneliness filled her, a sharply acute feeling of grief and pain as she wept for the love that she and Dominic had somehow, between them, destroyed.
‘Tell me again. Everything. All of it…right from when we met…’ Annie demanded doggedly.
Dominic sighed, examining her pale set face. They had been treating one another with cautious reserve since the night he had so nearly given in to the temptation to make love to her, and it made his heart ache to see the way Annie was driving herself, pushing herself, to try to regain her memory.
They were walking by the river, and suddenly Annie gave a sharp exclamation as a couple of youths on bicycles came up behind her, sounding their horns and making her stumble in surprise.
Automatically Dominic reached out to steady her, frowning as he felt the way her body shuddered beneath his protective arm.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her in concern.
‘They gave me a shock,’ Annie admitted. Her teeth had started to chatter together and she was trembling so violently that Dominic was loath to let her go.
‘You said we met when?’ she began to prompt him, but Dominic refused to be diverted.
‘You’re not well,’ he told her sharply. ‘And I think—’
‘I don’t care what you think, Dominic,’ Annie interrupted him in a high, strained voice. ‘All I care about is finding out why I left you and getting on with my life.’
Dominic’s concern increased. He was worried that if he didn’t take a stand the pressure she was putting herself under to try to remember was going to make her ill.
Every day now, several times a day, she insisted on him telling her the history of their relationship, demanding to know every tiny detail and listening to him with increasing desperation as nothing he said triggered off any memories for her.
‘Why can’t I remember?’ Annie demanded helplessly. ‘Why? Why…?’
She sounded and looked so tortured that Dominic automatically wanted to comfort her.
‘Don’t. Don’t push yourself so hard,’ he urged her, and then as she turned her head he caught sight of the tears on her eyelashes and it was too much for his self-control.
‘Annie, Annie,’ he groaned as he reached for her.
Frantically Annie tensed against the tormenting intimacy of his arms. His breath brushed softly against her skin and her body quivered helplessly in longing for him. She wanted him so much…loved him so much…How could she deny it?
‘No, Dominic,’ she protested defensively, but it was already too late, and her lips parted weakly under his as he brushed the tears from her eyelashes.
Obliviously they clung together, sharing the bittersweetness of a kiss that could have been that of tender new lovers. But she couldn’t let him guess how she felt. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
Somehow she managed to find the strength to push him away. As she turned away from him suddenly the world turned dark and swung dizzily around her.
‘Annie…’
She could hear the anxiety in Dominic’s voice as he called her name, but somehow she was distanced from it and in another place…another time…She had a vivid sharp memory of another occasion on which she had walked beside the river with Dominic. They had kissed then too, but then…Annie drew in her breath in a sharply painful gasp.
‘Annie? What is it? What’s wrong? Tell me,’ Dominic insisted.
Hazily Annie focused on him. Her mental image of them had faded now. But not the memory it had brought.
‘I…we were walking here,’ she told him distantly. ‘You kissed me, and then…’ She stopped and looked back the way they had just walked, in the direction in which the house lay.
‘And then I whispered to you that I wanted to take you home, to be where I could make love to you properly,’ Dominic supplied rawly for her. ‘And you looked at me and—’
‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Annie interrupted him. Her mouth had gone dry and her heart had started to race. The images Dominic’s soft words were conjuring up were making her feel far too vulnerable.
It was only her pride now that was making her grit her teeth and see through her determination to make herself remember. Every day she spent with Domi
nic, every hour was making her more and more aware of the danger she was in. She might not know why she had left him but she certainly knew why she had fallen in love with him.
Only this morning, in an unguarded moment, he had made her laugh with his droll description of an incident which had taken place at work. And it had disconcerted her to discover that they shared not only the same taste in food but that they also read the same newspaper, liked the same kind of countryside, enjoyed the same TV programmes, felt passionate about the same issues.
‘Come on,’ Dominic told her abruptly. ‘I’m taking you home. Oh, it’s all right,’ he assured her when he saw the panic crossing her face, ‘I’m not about to re-enact our past and take you to bed. If I did…’
He stopped, and Annie stopped too, forgetting the danger of looking intimately at him as she lifted her gaze to his face and felt her heart thump and bang against her ribs in reactive punishment.
‘You’re exhausted. No, don’t bother trying to deny it. I can see it in your eyes. You’re pushing yourself too hard…’
‘You’re the one who wants me to remember,’ Annie told him shortly, but he refused to react to her defensive aggression.
‘I thought we’d agreed that we both need to know the truth,’ he said calmly. When she made no response he continued gently, ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
Home! Quickly Annie blinked away the humiliating threat of her tears. She had been so awed, so thrilled—so overwhelmed when she had realised that Dominic’s house was to be her home.
‘Well, where did you expect us to live?’ he had teased her lovingly.
‘I…I…It’s so big,’ she had breathed.