Looking down to check for himself that she was indeed managing before he took his arms away, he saw long and slender naked flesh, pearly white skin and a cluster of fine ginger curls, which reminded him of certain sensual pleasures he still hadn’t reacquainted himself with… Then he had to turn away before she could see what was happening to him.
‘Right, go and have a quick shower, then pack your things while I do the same,’ he instructed briskly, striding around the room to pick up his clothes. ‘I would like to leave here within the hour if we can do it.’
‘We’re still leaving today?’
Her tone alone was enough to have him straighten, with his final piece of clothing, to see her still standing where he had left her, looking like a beautiful Titian goddess, wearing a lost and frightened expression on her face that cut him to the quick.
She didn’t want to leave Devon and what she had come to feel safe with. And he had no choice but to insist they leave, because her past was in London—and his future, if she was going to let him have one once she recovered her memory, that was.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘London,’ she murmured, and he hated to see that vulnerable expression hollowing out her lovely green eyes. It was impossible not to respond to it, and on a sigh he walked back to her, kissed her once, firmly.
‘Home,’ he corrected firmly. ‘We are going home…’
CHAPTER NINE
THEY were an hour into their journey before either of them spoke more than a few frustratingly short syllables without a protective coating of politeness on their voices.
Home, he’d said, and instantly the barriers had gone back up between them. He’d erected his wall, Samantha suspected, because he wasn’t going to change his mind and didn’t want to argue about it. She had put her wall up because she wanted to argue but didn’t seem to have any grounds to do so.
Home was home. Of course he wanted to take her back there, she reasoned. Or why else would he go to all this trouble to come and get her? Home probably also held a million clues as to why she was like this, and if she wanted to recover her memory then home was the most logical place to go and look for it.
But accepting all of that didn’t stop her from dreading the moment. So it was easier to be silent than risk letting it all spill out.
Only, the silence was also causing the kind of tension in the small confines of the car that was obviously beginning to get to him, going by the frequent, tight glances he kept flicking at her.
‘What do you think it is I am taking you to?’ he exploded as if on cue at her last thought. ‘Hell and damnation?’
Turning her face to the car’s side window, she refused to answer, and he began muttering some really choice curses, most of them in rich Italian, which quite colourfully described his irritation with sulky females, the heavy traffic on British motorways, and the whole situation in general.
‘Have you always had such a filthy temper?’ she asked coldly when he eventually sizzled into silence.
‘No, I caught it from you,’ he replied, changing lanes and increasing his speed, mainly, she suspected, because it gave him something to do. ‘With anyone else I am as cool-tempered as an arctic frost.’
‘That surprises me.’
‘Why should it?’ he threw back. ‘I run a multinational corporation. You don’t do that efficiently when you let your emotions rule your head.’
‘The Italian temperament is notoriously volatile,’ was all she said to that.
It was like a red rag being waved at an angry bull. ‘I make love in Italian too,’ he gritted, drawing a parallel even he didn’t understand.
‘Your first name is French, though, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘My mother was French,’ he explained. ‘My father Italian. But I was born and bred in the city of Philadelphia. The Mongrel, you used to like to call me,’ he added with a smile. ‘So I used to retaliate and call you—’
‘The Alleycat,’ she said.
His foot slipped off the accelerator. She straightened in her seat and the ensuing silence was stunned.
‘You remember,’ he breathed, getting a hold of himself only enough to concentrate on his driving, while she continued to sit there staring straight ahead and looking pale again.
Seeing the sickly pallor, he began to get worried, ‘Samantha,’ he prompted, suddenly feeling trapped there on a three-lane motorway doing seventy miles an hour. ‘Talk to me,’ he commanded.
But it became clear that she couldn’t. With a flashing glance in his mirrors, he indicated and began switching lanes. If the worst came to the worst, he decided, he could pull onto the hard shoulder now, without causing a multi-car pile-up.
His jaw felt like a piece of rock. Reaching across the central console, he took a tight hold on her hands where she held them knotted together on her lap. ‘Speak,’ he ordered tightly.