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She remembered nothing, not even the cause of her strange, debilitating illness, because she couldn’t call the fragmented comments that occasionally fell from her lips remembering. She didn’t like needles. She was fond of the color blue. She liked seafood and fresh fruit—and spring flowers. At least, she thought those were her feelings. But each time one of those comments slipped from her, Melissa’s eyes narrowed, and Lexi felt like a laboratory animal under examination.
And no one had explained the nature of the illness that had robbed her of her memory. Nor would anyone tell her anything about her past other than the basic facts of her identity.
“It’s best for you to remember for yourself,” Melissa had said, not unkindly but with a determination that told Lexi that arguing would be futile.
And Richard, the dark stranger who was her husband, seemed at times even less approachable than Melissa.
Now they were taking her home. But even as they sat almost in isolation in the first-class section of the jet that carried them inland from Boston, they had granted her only the general destination. Oklahoma. Lexi had a fragmented concept of that state, dimly calling up pictures of prairie and dust, Indians and teepees, but the terrain she saw from the window of the small plane into which they had transferred at Dallas was anything but flat or dry.
They had flown for miles over mountains—tall hills, Lexi amended mentally. There were no jagged peaks, only timber and rock-covered mounds pushing up from the surface of the earth. And in the center of those hills, seeming to stretch forever from south to north, with great fingers reaching out from it, lay a vast lake.
“What is it called?” Lexi asked.
“Eufaula,” Richard said.
“Eufaula.” Lexi tried the word experimentally. Yew-fall-lah. “Is it a French name?”
“Creek,” he told her. “Indian.”
Melissa, seated in a front seat next to the pilot, seemed engrossed in some papers she had carried with her, and Lexi sensed a different mood in Richard from that which had held him locked in silence.
“Was our home built near the lake?” she asked, hesitant, but needing to test that mood.
“Not exactly.”
Lexi felt a small stab of disappointment. “Oh.”
Richard frowned and leaned closer to her, speaking in a soft, conspiratorial voice hidden from the others by the drone of the single engine. “Why do you sound so deflated?”
“You’re always doing that,” she said, for the moment not the least intimidated by the man who had complete control over her life. “It isn’t fair, you know, for you to expect answers and never give any.”
She thought she had destroyed the fragile moment. Richard’s lips thinned, and his eyes—they were black, she had long since discovered—bore into her. “Perhaps it isn’t,” he admitted. “Why were you disappointed, Lexi?”
She had destroyed the moment. “It isn’t important,” she said.
“You don’t know that!”
“No. No, I don’t, do I?” Her frustration had been building almost daily, and now she vented it in softly hissed words. “I know nothing but what you choose to tell me. And you choose to tell me very little. Why, Richard? What are you hiding from me?”
Their time in the Boston hotel room even with his frequent absences had done nothing to improve Richard’s pallor. Now he seemed to pale even more with her words. He gripped her shoulders with both hands, as though he wanted to shake her, she thought, or—or pull her against the strength of his chest and hold her there with arms that now trembled with the effort of doing neither.
“Why were you disappointed?” he repeated.
His strength was too much for her; his determination was too much for her. “I just—” What? It had been so fleeting, she couldn’t call it a memory. “I just thought it would be pleasant to live near the water.”
He closed his eyes and released a long breath. Then, as though realizing how tightly he held her, he loosened his grip on her shoulders.
“And so you shall,” he said.
She looked away from his face in confusion, to where his left hand rested warmly against her, to the raw scars that ran across the back of that hand to be partially hidden beneath the sleeve of his shirt. She had wondered about the scars, had wondered if there was any connection between them and her loss of memory. But this was of her past and therefore a forbidden subject, as were so many, and she had exhausted her small store of energy.
She sighed in defeat and closed her eyes to hide the sheen of tears that gave evidence to it.
“Your answer was important, Lexi.”
It was a concession, and she knew she should be grateful for it. “But you won’t tell me why?”
“I can’t,” he said. A note of insistence crept into his voice. “Be patient, even if I sometimes seem to be just the opposite. We have to trust Mel’s judgment in this, at least for a while longer.”
The plane banked and began circling to land. Richard leaned back in his seat. Taking her hand in his much larger one, he laced his fingers with hers. Lexi glanced out the window, but the rough terrain leaped to meet her. She twisted away from the sight.
Richard was watching her, emotionlessly, and for the moment she didn’t mind his scrutiny. The trip had tired her more than she thought possible, but she saw her own exhaustion mirrored in his eyes, in the tight set of his jaw, in the gray cast to his skin. How long had it been since he had slept an entire night? Even though with the coming of dawn he withdrew from her, he was always there for her in the night when she needed him.
She felt a nameless fear rising up to meet her, even as the ground below seemed to. Richard held his hand out to her. Closing her eyes and her mind to that fear, she leaned back against the seat and held on to his hand—her lifeline.
“My God,” Lexi said in a shocked whisper.
The drive from the private landing strip had been unremarkable, and in the growing darkness she had only had impressions of the rough, timbered hillside. A pause at two stone gateposts and massive iron gates that opened electronically, even the mass of the house seen dimly when the car pulled up to the unimposing double front doors, had not prepared her for the shock that awaited her inside.
The three of them had climbed a short flight of marble steps to the wide, rose-colored marble hall that stretched away on each side of them. Across it, and down two steps, she saw a massive reception chamber. Twisted Corinthian columns rose to an arched and muraled ceiling.
Lexi looked up at the man beside her. No wonder he hadn’t told her about this. How could he have prepared her? “Do we live here?” she asked.
“Well, well. The weary travelers finally return.”
“Greg!”
Lexi heard emotion in Melissa’s voice for the first time as the woman started toward the man approaching them painfully slowly with the aid of crutches.
“Surprised, Wife, dear? I told you I wouldn’t stay in that damned wheelchair forever.”
“But your hands—” Melissa said.
“Forget my hands!”
The man stopped in front of them. He raked his gaze over Lexi. Should she know him? She thought she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. She knew he was Richard’s brother—half brother—and she did see a resemblance, although he was not as tall, not as lean as the man who stood beside her with tension stiffening his body even as he draped his arm over her shoulder. But know him?
“So you’re the woman who finally trapped my brother?”
Lexi flinched from the bitterness in the man’s voice.
“That’s enough, Greg.”
Richard spoke softly, but Lexi heard the implied command, and apparently Greg did, too. His face twisted into a smile.
“Of course, Richard. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone, would we?” He shifted his weight on his crutches and turned. “Your oh-so-efficient housekeeper has a light supper waiting for you, as well as a list of telephone messages. At least six of them are from your agent.”
“Alexandra is tired,” Richard said, interrupting Greg and tightening his arm on her shoulder, urging her to turn. “I’ll take her to her room now, but I’ll see you in the library in a few minutes.”
This time the command was not implied. Lexi turned, grateful to be leaving a scene she couldn’t begin to understand, and let Richard guide her up the staircase.
Upstairs, although the floor of the hallway was polished oak, not marble, Oriental runners and arrangements of massive furniture carried out the oppressiveness of the first floor.
Lexi cast a covert glance at the man walking silently beside her. Who was he? She thought she had seen all facets of him during the long weeks in Boston, from gentleness to impassive detachment, but never had she seen him exercise authority with such a sure knowledge of his right to do so. Could it be the house? No. She discarded that thought immediately. If anything, the house was a mere reflection of him, not the other way around. And he seemed to belong. She could see that now. From his erect carriage and the proud tilt of his head to the well-tailored suit and Italian shoes, he fit his surroundings. While she...?
She knew nothing about him—nothing more than she had known the morning she awoke to find a stranger beside her bed—a stranger who told her he was her husband.
Her husband.
Melissa, omniscient Melissa, had finally told Richard that Lexi was well enough to return home. Had she also told him that she was well enough to resume her conjugal duties?
Lexi stumbled, and immediately Richard turned, steadying her. She looked up at him, half expecting him to have read her thoughts, but there was wary concern in his eyes, nothing more. She felt the pressure of his hands on her arms, felt the strength inherent in those hands, and the gentleness. Would it be a duty? she wondered. Had it been only that in the past? Or had it been much, much more?
She offered him a tentative smile in apology for her clumsiness, and her thoughts, and he rewarded her by the softening of the concern in his eyes.
“Are you all right?”
No, she wasn’t. As she stood in the dim light of the alien hallway, with Richard looming darkly over her, she was more aware of that fact than she had been since her first moment of panic.
She didn’t know how she would have answered him in the past. She didn’t know how he expected his wife to answer him now. She only knew the irony of his words.
“Silly question, Richard,” she said, throwing her head back so that she could meet his penetrating gaze. “You must know that I’m terrified.”
He almost smiled. She was sure of that.
“Of what, Lexi?” he asked, still holding her. “Of my house, of my family, of what you can’t remember? Of me?”
“Yes.”
Even as she said the word, she knew it was not the truth. Richard’s eyes lost all traces of warmth, and he dropped his hands to his side.
“Not—not of you,” she said softly. “But of what—what you expect from me. And maybe of what I expect from myself.”
“And if I were to tell you that I expect nothing from you?”
“But you won’t tell me that, will you?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly. “No.”
He took her arm, and beneath all the layers of fabric, her flesh felt and came alive at his touch. It wasn’t fear, Lexi told herself, so much as it was an awareness of the power he held over her—physically, emotionally, even financially. No. Not fear. Not once since awakening to find him beside her bed had she feared him. Perhaps she should, she thought fleetingly. Perhaps one day she would. She pushed back those unwanted thoughts, not knowing what had called them forth and not wanting to examine the chill that had accompanied them.
The room he took her to was at the end of the long hallway. Opening a recessed door, Richard moved back to let her enter first.
She stepped into a room large enough to have been overpowering had it been furnished as the reception hall and hallway were. But it wasn’t. Soft lamps had been lit, casting warm circles of light throughout the room. Decorated in shades of blue, the room was delicate but not cloyingly so.
Lexi shrugged out of her coat, with Richard’s assistance, and while he dropped it onto a nearby French chaise, she surveyed the room, letting her smile play across her features.
Apart from the chaise, she saw no other French influence. The tables were English of Hepplewhite design, and their dark surfaces gleamed in the subdued light. The upholstered pieces were substantial, but not ungainly. Two club chairs and a matching sofa in softly tailored oyster white linen fronted a fireplace with a delicately veined white marble mantel.
Across the room, an alcove with two walls of windows and a third of French doors, all covered with tailored silk draperies, sheltered an overlarge, king-size bed.
She turned to find Richard watching her reaction.
“Is this better?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” Even knowing this must be his room, too, even seeing how he seemed to belong in these surroundings, she couldn’t keep the relief from her voice. “I was half expecting gargoyles and griffons on the ceiling and bedposts.”
“No. No monsters, Lexi. That’s something you won’t tolerate.”
Then, perhaps thinking he had said too much, he half turned from her. “Your bath and dressing rooms are through there,” he said, nodding toward a door on a railed landing raised a few steps from the floor of the room. “I think you’ll find everything you need. I’ll bring you a tray when I come back upstairs. I shouldn’t be too long, but you’ll probably have time for a bath before I return.”
“Richard?”
He completed his turn, walked to a door near the hallway, and opened it.
“I’ve had my things moved into the adjacent room,” he said. “There is a key for the hall door, but I’d appreciate it if you would leave this door partially open so that I can hear you if you need me in the night.”
“Richard?” She watched him in confusion. He had reverted to impassive detachment. Polite, impersonal, he was treating her like a dependent stranger while she had questions spinning through her mind. He’d had his things moved. He helonged in this room. And while she wasn’t brave enough—didn’t know him well enough—to ask him to stay, there were questions she had to ask.
“We shared this room?”
He paused in the doorway. “Yes.”
“And that bed?”
His glance flicked toward the bed and back to her without revealing anything. “Yes.”
“Were we happy here?” she persisted. “Did we love each other?”
“Lexi.” His voice held a soft groan. “Why are you asking me?”
“Who else can I ask?” She walked to his side. Hesitantly she placed her hand on his arm. “You tell me this is my home, but I can’t remember. You tell me you are my husband. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t remember that, either. Can’t you give me at least this much?”
“And you’d believe me?”
She gazed up at him, pleading. “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”
“If I told you that you loved me beyond reason, and the two of us were happier here than any two people had a right to be, you’d believe me?”
She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But she saw the flash of pain in his eyes, hastily banked, when he spoke.
“Or if I told you that you feared me, that you hated this place, that you only waited for a chance to escape, would you believe that?”
She felt his arm tense beneath her hand.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “Why won’t you tell me?”
He lifted her hand from his arm, holding it between both of his—safe? imprisoned? she wondered—before he released it.
