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The Husband She'd Never Met
Barbara Hannay
Waking up with amnesia!Waking up from a riding accident, Carrie Kincaid's world is turned upside down when she can't remember the man in front of her – her husband! He sets her heart racing, but every memory with tycoon Max is a blur.For Max, this is a last chance to save their marriage! Until her memory returns, he will recreate the moments that shaped their romance, one magical date at a time! It's a race against time to help her rediscover all the reasons why they fell in love in the first place…
‘I—I wish—’ Carrie began to chew at her thumbnail. After a bit, she said, ‘I wish I could remember meeting you. How did it happen? Did our eyes meet across a crowded room? Or did you chase me?’
She dropped her gaze to the gnawed thumbnail.
‘Did I flirt with you?’
Max recalled the amazing chemistry of that night. The glittering harbourside venue and that first heart-zapping moment of eye contact with Carrie. Her shining dark eyes and dazzling bright smiles … the electric shock of their bodies touching the first time they danced.
He couldn’t suppress a wry grin. ‘I reckon we could safely claim all of the above.’
The Husband
She’d Never Met
Barbara Hannay
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
BARBARA HANNAY has written over forty romance novels and has won the RITA® award, the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice award, as well as Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year.
A city-bred girl, with a yen for country life, Barbara lives with her husband on a misty hillside in beautiful Far North Queensland, where they raise pigs and chickens and enjoy an untidy but productive garden.
Thank you to all the wonderful readers who have helped me to turn a hobby into the happiest of careers.
Contents
Cover (#u2ee967e2-bdee-539f-9ca2-5d0b3053d595)
Introduction (#u25be4ae1-2257-5479-af3e-e8d5539265b5)
Title Page (#u3e93df6b-2ed9-54f9-b7f2-ad1e72dc6798)
About the Author (#u745c9d58-35f5-5f1e-883a-620fc7253204)
Dedication (#u0dd5a059-cf1a-5208-bf1d-3c64c0816356)
CHAPTER ONE (#u953fc4dd-5500-568b-909a-3f0d20b3421b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u162d4844-249e-5d3d-88ce-a1f06797ec99)
CHAPTER THREE (#u8228b76d-03d6-5ee8-b69b-bf6fc9c10a1e)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u39331dde-c99d-56c7-8382-23d63b20da97)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_47030791-0754-5ffc-a798-7e8cc9856ec0)
THE SUITCASE WAS almost full. Carrie stared at it in a horrified daze. It seemed wrong that she could pack up her life so quickly and efficiently.
Three years of marriage, all her hopes and dreams, were folded and neatly layered into one silver hard-shell suitcase. Her hands were shaking as she smoothed a rumpled sweater, and her eyes were blurred with tears.
She had known this was going to be hard, but this final step of closing the suitcase and walking away from Max felt as impossible and terrifying as leaping off a mountain into thin air. And yet she had no choice. She had to leave Riverslea Downs. Today. Before she weakened.
Miserably, Carrie surveyed the depleted contents of her wardrobe. She’d packed haphazardly, knowing she couldn’t take everything now and choosing at random a selection of city clothes, as well as a few pairs of jeans and T-shirts. It wasn’t as if she really cared what she wore.
It was difficult to care about anything in the future. The only way to get through this was to stay emotionally numb.
She checked the drawers again, wondering if she should squeeze in a few more items. And then she saw it, at the back of the bottom drawer: a small parcel wrapped in white tissue paper.
Her heart stumbled, then began to race. She mustn’t leave this behind.
Fighting tears, she held the thin package in her hands. It was almost weightless. For a moment she pressed it against her chest as she battled painful, heartbreaking memories. Then, drawing on the steely inner strength she’d forced herself to find in recent months, she delved into the depths of the suitcase and made a space for the little white parcel at the very bottom.
There. She pressed the clothes back into place and snapped the locks on the case.
She was ready. Nothing to do now but to leave the carefully composed letter for her husband propped against the teapot on the kitchen table.
It was cruel, but it was the only way she could do this. If she tried to offer Max an explanation face to face he would see how hard this was for her and she would never convince him. She’d thought this through countless times, and from every angle, and she knew this was the fairest and cleanest way. The only way.
At the bedroom window, Carrie looked out across paddocks that were glowing and golden in the bright Outback sun. She smelled a hint of eucalyptus on the drifting breeze and heard the warbling notes of a magpie. A hot, hard lump filled her throat. She loved this place.
Go now. Don’t think. Just do it.
Picking up the envelope and the suitcase, she took one last look around the lovely room she’d shared with Max for the past three years. With a deliberate lift of her chin, she squared her shoulders and walked out.
* * *
When the phone rang, Max Kincaid ignored it. He didn’t want to talk, no matter how well-meaning the caller. He was nursing a pain too deep for words.
The phone pealed on, each note drilling into Max. With an angry shrug he turned his back on the piercing summons and strode through the homestead to the front veranda, which had once been a favourite haunt. From here there was a view of paddocks and bush and distant hills that he’d loved all his life.
Today Max paid the view scant attention. He was simply grateful that the phone had finally rung out.
In the silence he heard a soft whimper and looked down to see Carrie’s dog, Clover, gazing up at him with sad, bewildered eyes.
‘I know how exactly you feel, old girl.’ Reaching down, Max gave the Labrador’s head a good rub. ‘I can’t believe she left you, too. But I s’pose you won’t fit in a city apartment.’
This thought brought a sharp slice of the pain that had tortured Max since the previous evening, when he’d arrived from the stockyards to find Carrie gone, leaving nothing but a letter.
In the letter she’d explained her reasons for leaving him, outlining her growing disenchantment with life in the bush and with her role as a cattleman’s wife.
On paper, it wasn’t convincing. Max might not have believed a word of it if he hadn’t also been witness to his wife’s increasingly jaded attitude in recent months.
It still made no sense. He was blowed if he knew how a woman could appear perfectly happy for two and a half years and then change almost overnight. He had a few theories about Carrie’s last trip to Sydney, but—
The phone rang again, interrupting his wretched thoughts.
Damn.
Unfortunately he couldn’t switch off the landline the way he could his cell phone. And now his conscience nagged. He supposed he should at least check to see who was trying to reach him. If the caller was serious, they would leave messages.
He took his time going back through the house to the kitchen, where the phone hung on the wall. There were two messages.
The most recent was from his neighbour, Doug Peterson.
‘Max, pick up the damn phone.’
Then, an earlier message.
‘Max, it’s Doug. I’m ringing from the Jilljinda Hospital. I’m afraid Carrie’s had an accident. Can you give me a call?’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a64a07c2-68c4-5ac7-af02-a8417e71dc76)
‘GOOD MORNING, MRS KINCAID.’
Carrie sighed as the nurse sailed into her room. She’d told the hospital staff several times now that her name was Barnes, not Kincaid. More importantly she was Ms, or at a pinch Miss, but she had certainly never been Mrs.
Now this new nurse, fresh on the morning shift, removed Carrie’s breakfast tray and set it aside, then slipped a blood pressure cuff on her arm. ‘How are we this morning?’
‘I’m fine,’ Carrie told her honestly. Already the headache was fading.
‘Wonderful.’ The nurse beamed at her. ‘As soon as I’m finished here you can see your visitor.’
A visitor? Thank heavens. Carrie was so relieved she smiled. It was probably her mum. She would set this hospital straight, sort out the mistake, and tell the staff that her daughter was Carrie Barnes of Chesterfield Crescent, Surry Hills, Sydney. And most definitely not, as everyone here at this hospital mistakenly believed, Mrs Kincaid of the Riverslea Downs station in far western Queensland.
The blood pressure cuff tightened around Carrie’s arm and she resigned herself to being patient, concentrating on the view through the window. It was a view of gum trees and acres of pale grass, flat as football fields, spreading all the way to low purple hills in the distance. There was also a barbed wire fence and she could hear a crow calling...
Carrie experienced an uncomfortable moment of self-doubt.
The scene was so unmistakably rural, so completely different in every way from her home in the busy Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. She was used to trendy cafés, bars and restaurants, small independent bookstores and funky antique shops. She had no idea why she was here. How had she got all the way out here?
‘Hmm, your blood pressure’s up a bit.’ The nurse was frowning as she released the cuff and made notes on the chart at the end of Carrie’s bed.
‘That’s probably because I’m stressed,’ Carrie told her.
‘Yes.’ The nurse sent her a knowing smile. ‘But you’re sure to feel much happier when you see your husband.’
Husband?
Carrie flashed hot and cold.
‘But my visitor...’ she began, and then had to swallow to ease her suddenly dry mouth. ‘It’s my mother, isn’t it?’
‘No, dear. Your husband, Mr Kincaid, is here.’ The nurse, a plump woman of around fifty, arched one eyebrow and almost smirked. ‘I can guarantee you’ll cheer up when you see him.’
Carrie felt as if she’d woken up, but was still inside a nightmare. Fear and confusion rushed back and she wanted to pull the bedclothes over her head and simply disappear.
Last night the doctor had told her a crazy story: She’d fallen from a horse, which was laughable—the closest she’d ever been to a horse was on a merry-go-round. A couple called Doug and Meredith Peterson had brought her to the hospital after this fall, apparently, but she’d never heard of them, either. Then the doctor told her that she’d hit her head and had amnesia.
None of it made sense.
How could she have amnesia when she knew exactly who she was? She had no trouble rattling off her name and her phone number and her address, so how could she possibly have forgotten something as obvious as the doctor’s other preposterous claim—that she had a husband?
‘I’m sure I’m not married,’ she told the nurse now, just as she’d told the other white coats last night. ‘I’ve never been married.’ But even as she’d said this, hot panic swirled through her. She’d seen the pale mark on the ring finger of her left hand.
When had that happened?
How?
Why?
When she’d tried to ask questions the medical staff had merely frowned and made all sorts of notes. Then there’d been phone calls to specialists. Eventually Carrie had been told that she needed CT scans, which were not available here in this tiny Outback hospital. She would have to be transported to a bigger centre.
It had all been so crazy. So frightening. To Carrie’s shame she’d burst into tears and the doctor had prescribed something to calm her.
Obviously the small white pill had also sent her to sleep, for now it was already morning. And the man who claimed to be her husband had apparently driven some distance from his cattle property.
Any minute now he would be walking into her room.
What should she expect?
