No, Samantha answered silently, not understanding why this house was having such a powerful, muscle-dragging effect on her. But the feeling was too strong for her to ignore it. So she remained where she was, clinging to the open door of the Jaguar, watching him place the key in the door, then send it swinging open.
Her breath caught in her throat and congealed there in a thick, suffocating ball. He too, had gone very still—no movement, no sign of anything. As if, like herself, he was waiting for something monumental to happen. Silence thumped and throbbed in the warm, muggy atmosphere, the complete stillness all aiding and abetting that silence to wrap tight pressure bands around her chest, until a roaring began to build inside her head.
No, she willed herself hazily. I won’t faint away again—I won’t!
Maybe he sensed her silent battle because he turned suddenly to face her. Big, lean and so devastatingly attractive. She felt sick with how strong her feelings were for him. It hurt, it actually hurt like a physical pain, because she just could not bring herself to believe that he felt the same for her.
‘Tell me why you married me,’ she whispered, having to squeeze the words past the ball in her throat.
His face seemed carved from stone. ‘Why does any man marry a beautiful woman?’ he countered levelly.
The ‘beautiful’ did not come into the equation. She didn’t even want to hear it there. It changed the emphasis too much. Made the beauty more important than the woman.
Yet… She dropped her eyes from his and began to frown at the ground in blind confusion, because ‘beauty’ didn’t seem to be her problem here. It was something else that was bothering her, gnawing at her, warning her. But what else? What—what else…?
‘If I could marry you again tomorrow, I would do so.’ A crunch of gravel and she looked up to find him walking towards her, the dark solemnity of his expression a hypnotic balm. ‘If you ran away again I would look for you until the day I die.’
‘But you didn’t search the first time,’ she whispered hoarsely, feeling as if she was trapped on a never-ending treadmill with that single question being the chain that held her there.
He smiled, if you could call it a smile. A twist of derision? Of mockery? Of grim, dark irony?
Then, with a lightning movement of lean, lithe muscle, he suddenly grabbed hold of the Jaguar door and the car bonnet on the other side of her, trapping her with his body, his strength—and with his anger. She gasped. His teeth glinted white between his stretched lips. And his eyes flashed like black diamonds, as hard as hell.
‘It wasn’t me who lost you, mia cara,’ he incised very thinly. ‘It was you that lost yourself.’
Sparks crackled in the air between them. Electric impulses began flashing in her brain. Doors opened, then slammed shut before she could so much as glimpse what was going on behind them. Her heart began to race. Her breasts lifted and fell in a hectic, shallow attempt at breathing.
She opened her mouth, tried to speak, found that she couldn’t because those angry eyes were forcing her to acknowledge what he’d said just now.
He was right—he was right! Her panic-ridden mind began screaming at her. Like some terrible coward she had run away and lost herself rather than face whatever it was she was scared of.
How pathetic, she thought scathingly, looking hard into those ruthless eyes that were making her face her own wretched cowardice. And willed—willed her mind to stop playing stupid games on her so she could solve the conundrum that made this man feel like her very soul mate and her worst enemy at the same time!
‘I love you, don’t I?’ she heard herself say in a cracked little whisper.
The eyes went absolutely black. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘And I hurt you badly. You implied that to me once.’
He didn’t like that claim, it had the eyes flicking away from her on a flash of irritation before they came back to her face again.
‘For a short while,’ he confirmed very grimly. ‘But if you are now thinking that I brought you here to exact retribution, then don’t,’ he declared. ‘Because I hurt you a whole lot more than you even attempted to hurt me.’
Which implied that their marriage had not been all delight and happiness, she concluded. But then, they’d already settled that point in several ways during the last couple of days.
Both hot-tempered, both passionately volatile, both stubbornly d
etermined to have their own way.
Glancing over his shoulder, she looked at the house again. It no longer filled her with frightened dismay—though she still didn’t understand why it had done in the first place.
‘I still don’t remember,’ she said, looking back at him. ‘But I want to.’
Something stirred on those rock-solid features—a slackening of tension. ‘Good.’ He nodded, and straightened away from her. ‘Then we are beginning to make some progress at last. How is the knee? Can you use it yet?’
Diversion tactics, she noted as she glanced down to find the right knee bent, so her weight was all on the other leg. Instinctive protection, she recognised dully, no matter how big the trauma, she could still protect the wretched knee.
Neither said anything more while she went through her usual exercises to loosen the stiffness out of the joint. Then, as if by tacit agreement, the moment her foot went on the ground she reached for his arm, at the same instant that he offered it to her. Slender fingers looped round cool buff cambric then curled into solid strength. Her senses leapt, then steadied. He waited to make sure that she was ready, then turned them both towards the house.