herself going off into a strange blank trance. A memory? she wondered. A brief flash from her past that had disappeared as quickly as it had come?
If it was, she couldn’t afford to let it go by without checking it out, she decided. And, since the Visconte name was linked with the stranger, she resolved to ask him about it at the first opportunity, because what other hope did she have of ever knowing who she was, unless she attempted to do it herself? With twelve long months behind her of waiting for someone else to do it for her, she had to start accepting that it just wasn’t going to happen.
Only last week the local paper had run yet another full-page spread on her plight, then pleaded for anyone who might recognise her to come forward. No one had. The police had finally come to the conclusion that she must have been alone in the world and on holiday here in Devon when the accident had happened. The car she had been driving was completely burned out—to the extent that they could only tell it had once been a red Alfa Romeo. They’d had no reports of a missing red Alfa Romeo. No reports of a woman gone missing driving a red Alfa Romeo.
Sometimes it felt as if she had died out there on that lonely road the night the petrol tanker had hit her, only to come back to life again many weeks later as a completely different human being.
But she wasn’t a different human being, she told herself firmly. She was simply a lost one who needed to find herself. If she hung onto nothing else then she had to hang on tight to that belief.
Eleven o’clock saw the lounge bar empty. Samantha rubbed her aching knee and finished tidying behind the bar. An hour later she was safely tucked up in bed, and by eight-thirty the next morning, after a restless night dreaming about dark demons and roaring dragons, both she and Carla were back on duty behind Reception, doing the job they were officially paid to do.
It was changeover day so the foyer was busy, but Samantha kept an eye out for Mr Payne, determined to speak to him if she was given the opportunity.
That opportunity arrived around lunch-time. The reception area had just cleared for the first time that morning, and only a few stragglers now hung around the foyer waiting for taxis to take them to the station. She and Carla were busy working out room allocations for the new guests that would be arriving throughout the afternoon when Samantha happened to glance up as the old-fashioned entrance doors begin to rotate and none other than Mr Payne strode in.
He paused just inside the foyer, and Samantha made the quick decision to take her chance while she had it. Murmuring, ‘Excuse me for a minute,’ to Carla, she opened the lift-top section in their workstation and stepped quickly through it—only to go still when she saw another man walk in and pause at Mr Payne’s side.
Both men were tall, both lean, both dressed in the kind of needle-sharp suits you wouldn’t find anywhere but at a top-notch tailors. But the newcomer was taller and a lot darker, and just that bit more…forbidding because of it, she observed with a cold little quiver that stopped her from approaching them.
As she watched, she saw his dark brown eyes make an impatient scan of their surroundings. There was a tension about him, a restlessness so severely contained that it flicked along his chiselled jawline as if he was clenching and unclenching his teeth behind his rather cold-looking mouth. Then the mouth suddenly twisted, and Samantha didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know what he was thinking right then.
The decor in here was a horrendous mix of pre-First World War splendour and 1960s grot. Originally built to grand Victorian specifications, the Tremount had been revamped in the 1960s, and everything tasteful had been pulled out or hidden behind sheets of flat plasterboard. Even the carpet on the floor was a gruesome spread of royal purple with large splashes of sunshine-gold to complete the horror. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place that said grace and style; instead it said teak and vinyl rubbish, and even the rubbish had seen better days.
Much like herself, she likened wryly, absently rubbing her knee while watching his gaze go slashing right past her. Then it stopped, sharpened, and came swinging swiftly back again.
Their eyes locked. The hard line of his mouth slackened on a short, sharp intake of air. He looked horrified. And suddenly she didn’t like what was happening here. She didn’t like him, she realised, as a tight constriction completely closed her throat. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. Even her heart stopped beating with a violent thump, then set going like a hammer drill against her right temple.
As if he could see it happen, his eyes flicked up to her temple. She saw him flinch—remembered the fine pink pucker of scar tissue there, and instinctively put up a hand to cover it.
The fact that she’d managed to move seemed to prompt him to do the same. He began walking straight towards her in a strange, slow, measured way that made her want to start backing. Sweat began to break out all over her. The room began to fade, tunnelling inwards in ever-decreasing circles until the only the two people left in the foyer seemed to be herself and him. And the closer he came, the more tight and airless the tunnel began to feel, until she was almost suffocating by the time he came to a halt two short feet away.
And he was big—too big. Too dark, too handsome, too—everything, she finished on a fine, tight shudder. Overpowering her with his presence, with that compelling look burning in his eyes.
No, she protested, though she had no idea what it was she was protesting against.
Maybe she’d said the word out loud, because he suddenly went quite pale, and his eyes were so dark she actually felt as if she was being drawn right into them.
Crazy, she told herself. Don’t be crazy.
‘Samantha,’ he breathed very thickly. ‘Oh, dear God…’
She fainted. With her name still sounding in her head, she simply closed her eyes and sank like a stone to the purple and gold carpet.
CHAPTER TWO
IN ALL of the long days and weeks she had spent in pain in hospital, she hadn’t fainted. In all of the long, dreadfully frightening weeks and months which had accompanied her slow recovery, she had never fainted. Of all the things she had ever wished and hoped and prayed for during the last twelve empty months, it had been for someone to come in through those revolving doors and say her name to her.
Yet, when someone had done exactly that, she’d fainted.
Samantha came round thinking all of that, in a mad and bewildering jumble of confusion, to find herself lying on one of the reception sofas with Carla squatting beside her, urgently chafing one of her hands, and the sounds of other people talking in hushed voices just beyond her vision.
‘Are you all right?’ Carla said anxiously the moment she saw Samantha open her eyes.
‘He knows me,’ she whispered. ‘He knows who I am.’
‘I know,’ Carla murmured gently.
The stranger suddenly appeared over Carla’s shoulder. Still too big, still too dark, too—
‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped out. ‘Seeing you was such a shock that I just didn’t think before I acted.’ He stopped, swallowed tensely, then added. ‘Are you okay, cara?’
She didn’t answer. Her mind was too busy trying to grapple with the frightening fact that this man actually seemed to know her, while she looked at him and saw a total stranger! It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t! The doctors had suggested that a shock like this might be all that was needed to bring her memory back.
But it hadn’t. Sheer disappointment had her eyes fluttering shut again.
‘No.’ His thick voice pleaded roughly. ‘Samantha—don’t pass out again. I’m not here to—’
His hand touched her shoulder. Her senses went haywire, crawling through her body like scattering spiders and flinging her into a whirling mad panic that jolted her into a sitting position to violently thrust his hand away.
‘Don’t touch me…’ she gasped out in shuddering reaction. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t!’