Wife To A Stranger. Daphne Clair
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on the back of it. The loose cream silk shirt and dark green trousers suited her colouring and they fitted perfectly. Yet she felt as though she was wearing someone else’s clothes.
Her hair was still damp. She went into the bathroom and hunted in the drawers under the vanity unit, coming up with, as she’d half expected, a hand-dryer. There was a safety plug near the basin, and in ten minutes her hair was dry—silky soft and bouncy with the underlying wave that had always created problems.
Always? For a moment memory seemed almost within her grasp. And then there was nothing.
She brushed the style into shape, then padded back to the wardrobe and, after a brief indecision, slipped her feet into bronze pumps, one of the few pairs of shoes that didn’t have high heels. Then she opened the door and ventured into the turquoise-carpeted passageway.
The aroma of frying meat led her to the kitchen, a spacious room that gleamed with stainless steel and whiteware. Rolfe turned from the stove top set into one of the wide counters. He smiled, his eyes studying her thoroughly and making her skin prickle, not unpleasantly.
‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.
‘Finish off the salad if you like.’ He indicated a glass bowl half filled with lettuce leaves. ‘You’ll find tomatoes and cucumber in the fridge.’ Turning back to the stove top, he took a pair of stainless-steel tongs from a wall rack to flip the chops over.
Looking about, she found the refrigerator, first opening the door of the matching freezer by mistake.
She placed the vegetables on the bench and rummaged in a drawer for a few seconds before Rolfe looked around and asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘A knife?’
He directed her to the wooden block by the refrigerator where she found several knives of different sizes. By the time she’d finished the salad, Rolfe was turning down the heat under the chops. A beeping noise made her look at the microwave oven at one end of the workbench.
‘Can you turn those spuds?’ Rolfe asked her.
She opened the door and dealt with the two potatoes in their jackets, then restarted the machine.
When she turned away again Rolfe was watching her with a curious stare.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘You seem to be familiar with the microwave.’
She hadn’t thought about it. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, momentarily pleased. Perhaps if she just let things happen without thinking too much, skills and memories would return to her. ‘I must have used it before.’
‘Frequently.’ He gave her a slightly taut grin. ‘As soon as the potatoes are done we can eat.’
Rolfe carried their plates to an adjoining dining room while she brought along the cutlery they needed. He’d already flung a cloth over the small table that fitted into a half-circle of windows. A longer table flanked by highbacked chairs occupied most of the remaining floor space.
The curtains were open, and moths and insects flung themselves against the dark glass. A particularly loud thump made Capri glance up from cutting into her baked potato, and she gasped at the huge brown winged beetle, long feelers waving madly, trying to gain access through the window.
‘It’s only a huhu.’ Rolfe got up to jerk the curtains closed over the window, then sat down again.
The beetle hurled itself twice more at the window, and then apparently gave up and flew away. Relieved, she said, ‘The insects here are pretty rampant.’
‘Only at night. How’s your chop?’
‘Fine. You’re a good cook.’
‘I have a few basic skills.’
‘I’ll do the cooking tomorrow.’
He looked up, a fork poised in his hand, then nodded. ‘If you feel up to it.’
She helped him clear the table, and watched as he placed the dishes in a machine. ‘It hardly seems worth it,’ she commented, ‘for just a few dishes.’
He straightened, closing the lid, and his brows lifted slightly. ‘You’ve always had a firm belief that laboursaving devices are there to be used.’
‘Well…I suppose…’ She shrugged. There was some sense in that.
For a moment she had a weird sensation of being lost in a dark, unknown place, blindly groping for something to cling to.
‘Capri?’ Rolfe’s hand was on her shoulder, his eyes probing hers. ‘What is it?’
‘I just…I don’t know. For a minute I…didn’t know where I was.’
He grasped both her shoulders, but not hard. ‘You’re home, Capri,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’
Something snapped. ‘It’s not all right!’ she retorted sharply. ‘I feel like an intruder in my own bedroom, my own wardrobe, I don’t know my way around, and I can’t even remember where the damned knives are kept!’
He gave a small, not unsympathetic laugh, but in her oversensitive state even that stung.
Her voice notched a note higher. ‘It’s not a joke! And how do I know you’re really my husband? I’ve no recollection of being married to you!’
And that, she realised, remembering the wedding photograph in her bag, was a pretty stupid thing to say.
The smile had disappeared from Rolfe’s mouth. ‘Believe me, I don’t think it’s at all funny, Capri. But I am your husband, and you’re my wife!’
The air had thickened between them, and everything seemed to go still. She was overwhelmingly conscious of his strength, his nearness, his masculinity, and her breath caught in her throat, a tiny pulse hammering at its base.
He drew in a breath too, and she remembered that moment in the hospital when he’d seemed to be affected by the scent of her, and she’d seen his nostrils dilate and his eyes darken as they did now.
His hands slipped from her shoulders to the bare skin of her arms. His expression went taut and purposeful. ‘Maybe this will help,’ he said, and pulled her closer, his arms sliding about her as her head involuntarily tipped back, and then he caught her mouth under the warm impact of his.
The kiss was intimate and insistent, the warmth and hardness of his body pressing against hers, unfamiliar and a little frightening, even though her blood sang and her lips involuntarily parted under his persuasion. His hold was firm but deliberately gentle, as if he had remembered that her bruises were still tender.
Now her head was cradled against his arm, and his mouth demanded a response that she gave at first tentatively and then with increasing passion, until he shifted their positions and manoeuvred her up against the workbench, and with his strong hands under her arms lifted her and sat her on the counter, his mouth freeing hers and his hands going to the buttons of her blouse.
But the mindless spell had broken. ‘No!’ Her fingers closed frantically over his, stopping him.
‘No?’ His voice was hoarse, and he spread his hands under the feeble constraint of hers, big palms cupping her breasts through the flimsy fabric. Then his expression tightened. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘You didn’t hurt me, but—don’t, Rolfe! I’m not ready for this.’
‘Damn it, Capri—’
She gripped his wrists, her cheeks hot and her body trembling. ‘Please—’
His hands moved to her face, his eyes subjecting her to a hard, furious inspection. ‘Are you saying you don’t want me?’
‘I’m saying I don’t want…this.’ She still held his wrists. ‘I know you have every right, but—’
‘Right?’