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‘The date you gave to the doctor was the right day, right month last year. And you are not twenty-three, but twenty-four. The accident, the injury to your head, left you with partial amnesia. It’s not just the last few days that you can’t remember. You’ve lost a year of your life.’
CHAPTER THREE
YOU’VE lost a year of your life. A year of your life. A year.
The words Rafael had flung at her formed a tormenting, thudding refrain inside her skull whenever she wasn’t thinking about anything else.
And she had too much time to think. Nothing held her attention; nothing distracted her from the appalling fact that she could not manage to come to terms with.
In the daytime she could try to read, or watch television, but inevitably she had found it was impossible to concentrate. She would find that she had been staring blankly at the screen or a page on which not a single word had registered, and all the time those impossible, incredible words had swung round and round in her mind, beating at her brain with a bruising sense of horror. But the nights, in the silence and the darkness, were much, much worse.
You’ve lost a year of your life.
How was it possible? How could this have happened? More importantly, why had it happened? How could she simply forget about a year that she had lived? How could something wipe out twelve months, three hundred and sixty-five days of her existence, destroying it and leaving not a trace of anything behind?
‘No!’
She cried the word aloud in an attempt to drive away the demons of fear and panic that seemed to prowl around her, hidden in the shadows, tormenting her.
She wouldn’t give in to this, she vowed. Wouldn’t go down under the waves of horror that threatened to engulf her. She would fight them with everything at her disposal. Her past couldn’t stay buried for ever. Her memories would have to emerge some day, and she would do everything she could to make sure that day came just as soon as possible.
Not that she had much to go on. Her few belongings were no help. The clothes she had been wearing at the time of the accident had been ruined, but she was assured that they had been strictly anonymous, inexpensive chainstore items, with no distinguishing marks on them at all, ditto her shoes. And the small, battered brown leather handbag that had been picked up at the crash scene held only a purse containing just a few pounds in cash, a comb, a packet of tissues and a key. That was all.
‘If only there’d been a diary, or something with an address on it!’ Serena had wailed when Dr Greene had assured her that nothing had been taken or hidden from her.
‘It’s been left exactly as it was handed to us, I’m afraid. The police have investigated that address in Yorkshire that you gave us, but it turned out to be a dead end.’
‘No help at all?’
The doctor shook her dark head, grey eyes sympathetic.
‘I’m sorry, no. It was just one bedsit out of a dozen or so in an old house that’s usually rented out to students. Apparently when you lived there everyone who shared the house with you was in their final year. They’ve all moved on, far and wide, and very few of them even bothered to leave forwarding addresses.’
‘And Leanne?’
Leanne was someone she’d remembered. A friend from her student days. Her best friend.
‘I went to university late, because my mother was so ill,’ she’d told the doctor, sadness clouding her eyes at the memory. ‘She had ovarian cancer and I postponed my starting date because I wanted to stay at home and nurse her. So I was twenty-two when I started my course. It seemed that everyone else was so much younger than me, and I didn’t really make any friends until I moved into Alban Road. That was where I met Leanne.’
‘You said she’d emigrated to Australia?’
‘That’s right. She was engaged to an Australian doctor and she was going to live with him after the wedding.’
Serena had been invited to the wedding, she knew that much. And she was sure she would have gone. There was no way she would have missed her friend’s big day. But, try as she might, she couldn’t recall anything about it. It seemed that the start of Leanne’s marriage marked the end of the lifetime she could remember.
‘But Australia’s a huge place when you’ve no idea where to start looking. Worse than the proverbial needle in a haystack. I would have had her address somewhere; I know I would! But I’ve no idea where it is now.’
That address must be wherever she had lived in the year since she had left Yorkshire. Because she had learned that much at least. Something had happened to her; something so important or traumatic that she had thrown up her university course and…
And what? Lying awake in the darkness, Serena thumped her pillow in a rage of impotent frustration. The answer to that question was lost, along with her memory.
‘So what do I do now?’
Because she had to do something. The injuries she’d received in the crash were well on their way to mending, the cuts all but healed, even the worst of the bruises fading away completely. Physically, there was nothing to keep her in the hospital any longer.
‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that.’ Dr Greene smiled. ‘Mr Cordoba has it all in hand.’
‘Just what are you up to now?’
Rafael had barely had time to get through the door into her room that evening before Serena rounded on him, flinging the furious question into his face.
‘Up to? My dear Miss Martin, precisely what are you talking about?’
‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about!’
Serena faced him defiantly across the room, black coffee-coloured eyes flashing fire, her chin up, every inch of her slender body stiff with rejection of his high-handed way of behaving. He hadn’t brought Tonio with him this time, she noted gratefully, knowing that the little boy would distract her from the questions she had to ask.
‘And I’m not your “dear Miss Martin”! I’m not your “dear” anything! You can’t just move in and take over my life.’
‘And how—exactly—am I supposed to be doing that?’
The coolly drawled question incensed her, as did the slow, indolently assessing way those brilliant eyes swept over her, narrowing slightly as they considered the oatmeal-coloured loose trousers and cream tee shirt she was wearing. The insolent sensuality of the survey made her heart kick against her ribs, her breathing catch for a second.
‘The clothes suit you well.’
‘Don’t change the subject!’ Serena exploded, bitterly conscious of the fact that if it had not been for Rafael she would have had nothing to wear, or at least something far less expensive and stylish.
‘This is my life we’re talking about. And you can’t take people’s lives and assess them as if they were some sheet of figures you’ve been handed to check through. You can’t just add up the income and the outgoings, take away the number you first thought of, decide if it’s worth the investment you were planning on, and then draw a nice neat line under everything—done—finished—sorted out!’
Rafael’s laughter had a disturbing edge to it, one that took his response to a point a long, long way from true amusement and turned it into something that sent a trickle of icy apprehension sliding down her spine.
‘Who the devil thought to name you Serena with a temper like that?’ he murmured sardonically, moving to throw his long body down into the easy chair that stood beside the window. ‘But then I suppose I should have expected it from…’
‘From what?’ Serena demanded when he let the sentence trail off unfinished, his eye apparently caught by something in the street outside. ‘You should have expected it from whom?’
She regretted the angry emphasis she had put on the last word as Rafael’s proud head snapped round again, his beautiful eyes no longer warm with any degree of amusement but cold and sharp as if carved from golden ice.
‘From someone with your hair colouring,’ he told her curtly. ‘Fiery hair, fiery temper—isn’t that true?’
‘I—’ Serena began indignantly, but, meeting a flashing warning glance that made her toes curl in fearful response, she hastily gulped down the irritable protest, forcing herself to begin again.
‘Believe it or not, I’m not usually like this. As a matter of fact, I’m usually pretty equable. Oh, don’t you dare look at me like that!’ she flung at him when the twist of his mouth, a tilt of his head questioned her assertion without words.
‘I rest my case,’ he murmured with silky cynicism.
‘If you must know, you make me lose my temper! You drive me to it.’
‘And why is that, do you think?’
‘Why…?’
Totally at a loss, Serena could only shake her head. Why did he affect her in this way? Why was her mental equilibrium so precariously balanced whenever he was around that just a look, a word, a gesture was enough to throw it out completely?
She had never thought of herself as an emotionally volatile person, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, yet somehow when she was with Rafael she became as uncontrolled as a weathercock, swinging this way and that in response to his passing mood.
‘Because you have to be the most provoking man I’ve ever come across. And the way you’ve behaved is a decidedly excessive reaction simply because I was hurt in your car.’
‘I was brought up always to meet my responsibilities.’
Like Tonio. The thought flashed into Serena’s mind in a moment. Rafael had never explained just what had happened to the baby’s mother, but it was patently clear that he had no intention of being an absentee father. Or had he just moved in on the poor woman, as he was now doing with Serena herself, taking control, taking over, no matter what anyone else wanted?
‘There’s meeting responsibilities and there’s trampling other people underfoot!’
Rafael’s exaggeratedly patient sigh brought her up short, painfully aware of the way it warned her that his grip on his temper was loosening rapidly.
‘Are you going to rant at me like this for the rest of the evening?’ he enquired in a voice laced with acid. ‘Or do you ever intend to enlighten me as to just what is bugging you?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? The thing that’s “bugging” me—’ Serena matched his satire word for word ‘—is that you think you can just make plans for my future and I’ll fall in with them as soon as you snap your fingers. So when were you going to tell me? Today? Tomorrow? When it suited you? Or were you just going to present me with a fait accompli and say, This, and this, and this is what’s going to happen. If you don’t like it—tough!?’
The fact that Rafael didn’t honour her outburst with a reply, but simply continued to regard her stonily, brilliant eyes carefully blanked off, told her all she needed to know. When he looked down his aristocratic nose at her like that, she felt like some out-of-control two-year-old indulging in a petulant tantrum in front of a decidedly bored and critical parent. And that feeling only incensed her more, driving her to rush on without waiting for him to answer.
‘That was it, wasn’t it? I wasn’t going to get a choice. So, tell me, what exactly did you have in mind for my future?’
‘I thought you could come and live with me.’
‘What?’
Unable to believe she had heard right, Serena shook her head disbelievingly.
‘Live with you! No way!’
‘And what else do you propose to do?’ he came back at her swiftly, abandoning his indolent pose and pushing himself to his feet in one easy, lithe movement. ‘You have no money, nowhere to live, no way of supporting yourself…’
‘Do you think I’m not aware of that?’
The fact that only a short time before she had detailed exactly those points to herself did nothing to ease her edgy state of mind. If anything, it made her feel worse.
‘So you had some alternative to suggest?’
The Spanish Inquisitor was back, with a vengeance. Uneasily Serena took a step or two backwards, edging away from his imposing height, the sheer physical force of his presence.
His movement had brought a wave of scent to her nostrils. The clean, crisp tang of some light cologne he wore, and underneath it the deeper, muskier, more intensely personal scent of his body. A perfume that brought all her senses onto red alert, making her head swim, hazing her thoughts.
‘Not yet,’ she hedged warily.
‘Then what is wrong with coming to live with me until you decide what you want to do?’
‘You know what’s wrong with it!’
‘Enlighten me.’
It seemed that the more her temper grew, the more impassive and withdrawn Rafael became, until she felt as if she was banging her fists hard against an unyielding brick wall in a vain attempt to get through to him.
‘I know what you want—what you’re thinking!’
‘Oh, so now you’re a mind-reader. So tell me, Señorita Martin, just what it is that you believe I want from you?’
‘I—you…’ she floundered, unable to find a way to put her thoughts into words.
He must know what she meant. He had to!
Wasn’t he aware of what was between them? Couldn’t he feel it, sense it in the air around them, like the heavy, lowering build-up in the atmosphere just before a violent electrical storm? That the storm hadn’t broken yet was more by luck than good management.
Away from the restricting confines of her present surroundings, it could be a different story entirely. Just the thought of moving into his house made all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up, her skin prickle with tension.
‘Are you going to say what you mean?’ Rafael demanded sharply. ‘Or are you going to stand there all day, throwing out veiled hints because you don’t have the nerve to be honest?’
Not have the nerve! Serena thought indignantly. Right, he’d asked for it.
‘I think you have strong sexual feelings for me!’
There! It was out now, and no matter what she did she couldn’t wish it back. Emboldened by his silence, by the fact that nothing had blown up in her face, she rushed on.
‘Th-that you want me in your bed. I can see it in your eyes, in the way that you look at me when you think I’m not looking. Sometimes I can hear it in your voice too. And don’t tell me I’m imagining things because…’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Rafael inserted silkily, taking her breath away. ‘Why should I deny something that must be obvious to anyone who looks at me? I’d be all sorts of a fool even to try.’
His voice had deepened, dropping a couple of octaves, becoming huskily sensual so that it coiled round her like warm, perfumed smoke.
‘I don’t want to try.’
She hadn’t seen him move, but suddenly he was close, so close. His awesome height and strength was intimidating, making her breath catch in her throat. If she wanted to, she could reach out and touch him, feel that warm velvet skin beneath her fingertips, slide her fingers through the black silk of his hair.
If she wanted to! Serena almost laughed aloud at the thought.
Oh, she wanted to! She wanted it so much that it was like a pain in her heart. But she didn’t dare. Some inner sixth sense warned her that if she gave in to the yearning, the need that clenched in her stomach, coiled round her body, then the repercussions of that simple act would be cataclysmic. It would be a case of light the blue touchpaper and stand well back. And when the smoke and debris of the resulting explosion cleared there would be nothing left that she recognised, no trace of the world she had known, the life she had lived.
‘You’re a very beautiful woman, Serena Martin. So beautiful that you twist my guts into knots, make me ache to possess you. From the moment I saw you I had one thought in my mind…’
‘One th-thought?’ Serena could only echo his words, her mind refusing to function so that she could form any of her own.
‘In the instant that I saw you there, in that hospital bed, I knew I could never rest until I’d held you, kissed you like this…’
Rafael suited actions to the words, reaching out and folding his arms around her, gathering her close. And she went into his embrace like a sleepwalker, feeling as if this had been meant, as if it had been ordained from the moment she had been born. She had no thought of resistance, of asking why. She only knew that this was how it had to be.
So when that arrogant dark head lowered, she automatically raised hers to meet it, her mouth already softening for his kiss.
But when that kiss came, it had nothing of gentleness. Instead it was as fierce and demanding as the touch of a flame, searing over her skin, scorching her senses, taking, plundering right to the depths of her soul. A raw, shaken cry was driven from her as she swayed on her feet, her arms reaching up to clasp around his neck, slender fingers digging into the powerful muscles that corded his shoulders, clinging on for support.
