was not the real reason why she was sitting with her eyes closed like this, she had to admit. It was really a means of escape from what was beginning to develop here—not that closing her eyes was going to make it all go away again, she acknowledged heavily.
He was here, and she was too acutely aware of him standing across the room like a dark shadow threatening to completely envelop her.
And on top of that it was just too quiet. Quiet enough for her to sense that he and Carla were swapping silent messages, which had to involve her, though she didn’t bother to open her eyes to see exactly what it was they were plotting.
As it was, she soon found out.
‘Sam…’ Carla’s voice sounded anxious to say the least ‘…do you think you will be all right now? Only I really must go and see if everything is okay out there…’
A clammy sense of dismay went trickling through her when she realised they had been silently plotting her isolation. She didn’t want to be left alone with him. But she also saw that there was no sense in putting off the inevitable. And besides, she understood Carla’s predicament. They were paid to do a job here, and this hotel had a poor enough reputation without the staff walking off duty.
So she gave a short nod of understanding, then forced herself to open her eyes and smile. ‘Thanks. I’ll be fine now.’
With another concerned scan of her pale face, then an even more concerned one of the man who was standing on the other side of the room, Carla stood up and, with a final glance at their two pale faces, left the two of them to it.
And the new silence was cloying.
Samantha didn’t move a single muscle and neither did he. His attention was fixed on the view outside the staffroom window which, since it looked directly onto the hotel kitchens, was not a pretty sight. She kept her eyes fixed on the empty water glass she was so very carefully turning in her hands.
‘What now?’ she asked when she could stand the tension no longer.
‘It’s truth time, I suppose,’ he said, sounding as reluctant about it as she felt.
Turning slowly to face her, he stood watching her for a few more tense seconds. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision and strode over to sit himself down again—and gently reached for the glass.
His fingers brushed lightly across hers and a fine frisson set her pulse racing. Sliding the glass away, he further disturbed her by taking hold of one of her hands as he set the glass aside then turned back to her.
‘Look at me,’ he urged.
Her eyes lowered and fixed fiercely on their clasped hands; the command locked her teeth together. And for the life of her she couldn’t move a muscle. The frisson became a deep inner tremor that vibrated so strongly she knew he could feel it.
‘I know I’ve come as a shock, but you have to start facing this, Samantha…’ he told her quietly.
He was right, and she did. But she still didn’t want to.
‘So begin by at least looking at me while we talk…’
Oh, dear God, she thought and tried to swallow. It took every bit of courage she had in her to lift her eyes and look directly at him.
He’s so beautiful, was the first unbidden thought to filter through her like a lonely sigh. His neatly styled hair was straight and black; his skin was warmed by a tan that she’d seemed to know from the moment she’d set eyes on him was natural to him. Sleek black eyebrows, long black eyelashes, eyes the colour of dark bitter chocolate. A regular-shaped nose, she saw as her gaze drifted downward to pause at his firm but inherently sensual mouth. It was a strong face, a deeply attractive well-balanced face.
But it was still the face of a total stranger, she concluded.
A stranger who was about to insist he was no stranger and, indeed, she added frowningly to that, already he did not feel like a stranger, because his touch felt familiar. There was an intimacy in the way he was looking at her that told her that this man knew her only too well. Probably knew her better than she knew herself.
‘Samantha,’ he prompted. ‘You know your name is Samantha.’
Glad of the excuse to claim her hand back, she lifted her fingers to part the collar of her blouse, revealing the necklace she wore around her throat.
A necklace spelling out her name in gold lettering. Sweet but childish though it was. ‘It’s all I had left,’ she explained. ‘Everything else was lost in the fire.’
The eyes flashed again. ‘Were you burned?’ he asked harshly.
Her body became shrouded in a clammy coat of perspiration. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Someone dragged me out before the car blew.’ Then the trembling fingers left the necklace to quiver up to the small pink scar at her temple. ‘I injured my head,’ she said huskily, ‘my arm…’ she gave her right arm a tense little jerk ‘…and m-my right leg…’
His eyes dropped to her knee, where even the sensible, high-denier thickness of her stockings could not hide the scarring beneath. Then with a slow raising of his oh-too-sensual long black lashes, he looked at the scar at her temple. ‘Your lovely face…’ he breathed, lifting a hand up to touch the scar.
She flinched back in rejection. And for the first time in months of just being too glad to be alive to want to feel any kind of revulsion for the physically obvious damage she had survived with, Samantha experienced a terrible, terrible urge to hide herself away.
This man’s fault! She blamed him wretchedly. He was so obviously one of those very rare people who was blessed with physical perfection himself and no doubt surrounded himself with the same that she suddenly knew, knew that whoever he was and whatever he once had been to her, she no longer fitted into his selective criteria!
It was her turn to get up, move away, though she didn’t do it with the same grace he did! ‘Who are you?’ She turned to launch at him wretchedly.
He stood up. ‘My name is Visconte,’ he told her huskily. ‘André Visconte.’
There it was, ‘Visconte.’ She breathed the name softly. ‘Of the Visconte Hotel Group?’
He nodded slowly, watching her intently for a sign that the name might begin to mean something else to her. But other than the same odd sensation she’d experienced the night before, when Freddie had said the name, it still meant nothing.
‘And me?’ She then forced herself to whisper. ‘Who am I?’
His eyes went black again, nerve ends began to sing. ‘Your name is also Visconte,’ he informed her carefully, then extended very gently, ‘You are my wife…’
CHAPTER THREE
FACE white, body stiff, eyes pressed tightly shut, Samantha simply stood there waiting—waiting to discover if this latest shock, coming hard upon all the other shocks she had suffered today, would manage to crash through the thick wall closing off her memory.
I am Samantha Visconte, she silently chanted. His wife. This man’s wife. A man I must have loved enough to marry. A man who must have loved me enough to do the same. It should mean something. She stood there willing it to mean something!
But it didn’t. ‘No,’ she said on a release of pent-up air, and opened her eyes to look at him with the same perfectly blank expression. ‘The name means nothing to me.’
She might as well have slapped him. He looked away, then sat down, his lean body hunching over again as he dipped his dark head and pressed his elbows into his spread knees—but not before Samantha had seen the flash of pain in his eyes and realised that her ill-chosen words had managed to hurt him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out sounding so…’
‘Flat?’ he incised when she hesitated.
She ran her dry tongue