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The Second Mrs Adams
Sandra Marton
An accident… Amnesia… . A chance to fall in love again! David Adams is going to have to let his wife back into his life. He'd been about to divorce Joanna, when she had the accident. True, she's undergone a complete personality change since then, and has turned back into the lovely girl he married. But does that mean he's going to fall right back in love with her?David is convinced that what he feels for Joanna right now is lust. But he must resist their reborn attraction… because, once Joanna's memory has returned, this pretense of a real marriage must surely be over… ?
About the Author (#u54da1d68-dada-5cec-be4f-3fcf4b510d63)Title Page (#u24d92606-bdd1-5a92-823c-be740a78ee4d)CHAPTER ONE (#u0ca5124e-270b-5db7-a94c-0a43bf4877c8)CHAPTER TWO (#u7b670331-7748-58e1-9585-270773bf5beb)CHAPTER THREE (#u155f7801-4551-5eab-8dae-14171ec021f6)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)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)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Sandra Marton is the author of over 30 books for Harlequin Presents. Here’s what the reviewers said about her book, A PROPER WIFE:
“The Brilliant storyteller
Sandra Marton...pens an impassioned
tale brimming with vividly real
characters, thrilling scenes and simply
crackling chemistry... Another sure
keeper for your bookshelf.”
—Romantic Times
(Awarded RT’s Gold Medal.)
“Ms. Marton has written a super
entertaining story full of conflict, humor,
romance and love. An excellent read.”
—Rendezvous Magazine
SANDRA MARTON is the author of more than thirty romance novels. Readers around the world love her strong, passionate heroes and determined, spirited heroines. When she’s not writing, Sandra likes to hike, read, explore out-of-the-way restaurants and travel to faraway places. The mother of two grown sons, Sandra lives with her husband in a sun-filled house in a quiet corner of Connecticut where she alternates between extravagant bouts of gourmet cooking and take-out pizza. You can write to her (SASE) at P.O. Box 295, Storrs, Connecticut 06268.
The Second Mrs Adams
Sandra Marton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
THE siren was loud.
Painfully, agonizingly loud.
The sound was a live thing, burrowing deep into her skull, tunneling into the marrow of her bones.
Make it stop, she thought, oh please, make it stop.
But even when it did, the silence didn’t take the pain away.
“My head,” she whispered. “My head.”
No one was listening. Or perhaps no one could hear her. Was she really saying anything or was she only thinking the words?
People were crowded around, faces looking down at her, some white with concern, others sweaty with curiosity. Hands were moving over her now, very gently, and then they were lifting her; oh, God, it hurt!
“Easy,” somebody said, and then she was inside a...a what? A truck? No. It was an ambulance. And now the doors closed and the ambulance began to move and the sound, that awful sound, began again and they were flying through the streets.
Terror constricted her throat.
What’s happened to me? she thought desperately.
She tried to gasp out the words but she couldn’t form them. She was trapped in silence and in pain as they raced through the city.
Had there been an accident? A picture formed in her mind of wet, glistening pavement, a curb, a taxi hurtling toward her. She heard again the bleat of a horn and the squeal of tires seeking a purchase that was not to be found...
No. No! she thought, and then she screamed her denial but the scream rose to mingle with the wail of the siren as she tumbled down into velvet darkness.
She lay on her back and drifted in the blue waters of a dream. There was a bright yellow light overhead.
Was it the sun?
There were voices... Disembodied voices, floating on the air. Sentence fragments that made no sense, falling around her with the coldness of snow.
“...five more CC’s...”
“...blood pressure not stabilized yet...”
“...wait for a CAT scan before...”
The voices droned on. It wasn’t anything to do with her, she decided drowsily, and fell back into the darkness.
The next time she awoke, the voices were still talking.
“...no prognosis, at this stage...”
“...touch and go for a while, but...”
They were talking about her. But why? What was wrong with her? She wanted to ask, she wanted to tell them to stop discussing her as if she weren’t there because she was there, it was just that she couldn’t get her eyes to open because the lids were so heavy.
She groaned and a hand closed over hers, the fingers gripping hers reassuringly.
“Joanna?”
Who?
“Joanna, can you hear me?”
Joanna? Was that who she was? Was that her name?
“...head injuries are often unpredictable...”
The hand tightened on hers. “Dammit, stop talking about her as if she weren’t here!”
The voice was as masculine as the touch, blunt with anger and command. Blessedly, the buzz of words ceased. Joanna tried to move her fingers, to press them against the ones that clasped hers and let the man know she was grateful for what he’d done, but she couldn’t. Though her mind willed it, her hand wouldn’t respond. It felt like the rest of her, as lifeless as a lump of lead. She could only lie there unmoving, her fingers caught within those of the stranger’s.
“It’s all right, Joanna,” he murmured. “I’m here.”
His voice soothed her but his words sent fear coursing through her blood. Who? she thought wildly, who was here?
Without warning, the blackness opened beneath her and sucked her down.
When she awoke next, it was to silence.
She knew at once that she was alone. There were no voices, no hand holding hers. And though she felt as if she were floating, her mind felt clear.
Would she be able to open her eyes this time? The possibility that she couldn’t terrified her. Was she paralyzed? No. Her toes moved, and her fingers. Her hands, her legs...
All right, then.
Joanna took a breath, held it, then slowly let it out. Then she raised eyelids that felt as if they had been coated with cement.
The sudden rush of light was almost blinding. She blinked against it and looked around her.
She was in a hospital room. There was no mistaking it for anything else. The high ceiling and the bottle suspended beside the bed, dripping something pale and colorless into her vein, confirmed it.
The room was not unpleasant. It was large, drenched in bright sunlight and filled with baskets of fruit and vases of flowers.
Was all that for her? It had to be; hers was the only bed in the room.
What had happened to her? She had seen no cast on her legs or her arms; nothing ached in her body or her limbs. Except for the slender plastic tubing snaking into her arm, she might have awakened from a nap.
Was there a bell to ring? She lifted her head from the pillow. Surely there was a way to call some...
“Ahh!”
Pain lanced through her skull with the keenness of a knife. She fell back and shut her eyes against it.
“Mrs. Adams?”
Joanna’s breath hissed from between her teeth.
“Mrs. Adams, do you hear me? Open your eyes, please, Mrs. Adams, and look at me.”
It hurt, God, it hurt, but she managed to look up into a stern female face that was instantly softened by a smile.
“That’s the way, Mrs. Adams. Good girl. How do you feel?”
Joanna opened her mouth but nothing came out. The nurse nodded sympathetically.
“Wait a moment. Let me moisten your lips with some ice chips. There, how’s that?”
“My head hurts,” Joanna said in a cracked whisper.
The nurse’s smile broadened, as if something wonderful had happened.
“Of course it does, dear. I’m sure the doctor will give you something for it as soon as he’s seen you. I’ll just go and get him...”
Joanna’s hand shot out. She caught the edge of the woman’s crisp white sleeve.
“Please,” she said, “what happened to me?”
“Doctor Corbett will explain everything, Mrs. Adams.”
“Was I in an accident? I don’t remember. A car. A taxi...”
“Hush now, dear.” The woman extricated herself gently from Joanna’s grasp and made her way toward the door. “Just lie back and relax, Mrs. Adams. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Wait!”
The single word stopped the nurse with its urgency. She paused in the doorway and swung around.
“What is it, Mrs. Adams?”
Joanna stared at the round, kindly face. She felt the seconds flying away from her with every pounding beat of her heart.
“You keep calling me...you keep saying, ‘Mrs. Adams...’”
She saw the. sudden twist in the nurse’s mouth, the dawning of sympathetic realization in the woman’s eyes.
“Can you tell me,” Joanna said in a broken whisper, “can you tell me who... What I mean is, could you tell me, please, who I am?”
The doctor came. Two doctors, actually, one a pleasant young man with a gentle touch and another, an older man with a patrician air and a way of looking at her as if she weren’t really there while he poked and prodded but that was OK because Joanna felt as if she wasn’t really there, surely not here in this bed, in this room, without any idea in the world of who she was.
“Mrs. Adams” they all called her, and like some well-trained dog, she learned within moments to answer to the name, to extend her arm and let them take out the tubing, to say “Yes?” when one of them addressed her by the name, but who was Mrs. Adams?
Joanna only knew that she was here, in this room, and that to all intents and purposes, her life had begun an hour before.
She asked questions, the kind she’d never heard anywhere but in a bad movie and even when she thought that, it amazed her that she’d know there was such a thing as a bad movie.
But the doctor, the young one, said that was what amnesia was like, that you remembered some things and not others, that it wasn’t as if your brain had been wiped clean of everything, and Joanna thought thank goodness for that or she would lie here like a giant turnip. She said as much to the young doctor and he laughed and she laughed, even though it hurt her head when she did, and then, without any warning, she wasn’t laughing at all, she was sobbing as if her heart were going to break, and a needle slid into her arm and she fell into oblivion.
It was nighttime when she woke next.
The room was dark, except for the light seeping in from the hushed silence of the corridor just outside the partly open door. The blackness beyond the windowpane was broken by the glow of lights from what surely had to be a city.
Joanna stirred restlessly. “Nurse?” she whispered.
