Unknown (16 page)

'Your memories are distorted,' she countered swiftly. 'Do you think I'm still so fragile I can't face the truth?'

'What truth?' He moved abruptly, sending her recoiling in fright, but he merely registered her movement with grim amusement then strode away from her towards the window on the opposite side of the room. He braced his arms against the sill and half sat against it, his expression brooding. 'The truth according to your warped memory of it— or reality?'

'You never wanted me,' Annabel said crisply. She came a few feet into the room, leaned one hip against the wall, crossed her ankles and folded her arms defiantly. 'You gave in because you were so sick of me chasing you, and you offered to marry me because you felt guilty you'd taken my virginity. I didn't expect it, you know. I mean, I longed for that, but to me then that was like longing for the moon. I never expected it to happen. I realise you probably felt as if it was the right thing to do but you shouldn't have felt obliged. Were you shocked when I said yes?'

'No. And your virginity wasn't a surprise to me.' His eyes narrowed. 'Why else did you think I waited so long to take it away from you?'

'As I said, you never wanted me. Or at least never in the way I wanted you.' Her mouth tightened. 'You gave in because I'd been pestering you for so long that you were sick of me and it was my graduation and you knew how much I craved you so out of some misguided spirit of altruistic kindness you decided to give me a present.'

'For heaven's sake, Annie.' He swung abruptly upright again and she tensed, forcing herself to hold her ground this time lest she amuse him again, but he merely turned away from her to stare out the window.

'Even from you, I've never heard anything so insane. I have never wanted any woman the way I wanted you. I only had to think of you to—' He broke off abruptly. 'Remember how it was when we were eventually together,' he ordered. 'I couldn't keep my hands off you. I couldn't come near you without touching you. Remember that and tell me again that all that time you think I was forcing myself.'

'We were married,' she said roughly. 'You knew how much I loved you and you decided to make the best of it. You felt obliged to keep me happy—'

'Obliged?
You're mad.' He turned around again and glared at her. 'What was last week about, then?' he demanded savagely. 'You think I felt obliged again when I tore off your clothes and went for your breasts, Annie? Hmm? Do you think I did that because I felt obliged?'

'Why did you do that?' she demanded hoarsely. 'You make sense of it, then. Why did you do that?'

'Work it out for yourself.'

The hurtful thing was that she could. She could work it out. 'You felt sorry for me because I'm so ugly now,' she cried.

'Ugly?'
Luke scowled. 'Where the hell did that come from?'

'You said—'

'I said you were repressed and frustrated, and you are. Physically, you're an attractive woman, Annabel. Once you enjoyed that but now you cover yourself up so no man can see you properly and you live the life of a celibate. I was trying to wake you up to yourself. I hate seeing you like this.'

'What, happy?' she countered swiftly.

'Bitter.' The gaze that raked her was hard and green and utterly without compromise. 'Emotionally neutered and frightened and embittered. What happened to you, Annabel? What happened to change you so much? Were you...? Did someone do something bad to you?'

She stared up at him. 'What?'

'Did someone
attack
you?'

'What?'

He frowned. 'I wondered—'

'Don't,' she said faintly. 'Don't wonder. No one attacked me. But someone
hurt
me, Luke.' There was concern but no knowledge in his face, and she knew he was still light years away from understanding. 'You've got no idea, have you?' She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe he didn't understand.

'Luke,
you
hurt me. Don't you understand yet? I didn't marry you because you were good in bed. I married you because I
loved
you. You were my world, but to you I was simply an inconvenience, standing in the way of your ambitions and your career, and one night you packed and left me and I never saw you again.'

'
I
did this?' He lifted one hand towards her, his face utterly drained of colour now, but when she turned her face away from him she saw the movement of his arm dropping.
'Me?'

'The other day, when I told you I picked myself up quickly and went back to work?' she reminded him huskily. 'I lied. Losing you just about killed me. I did go back to work that Monday but only because I had to and because work was the only way I could keep functioning. I'm sorry I've offended you, by not bouncing back from that with some great long triumphant procession of lovers and babies, but my feelings for you were never quite as insubstantial as yours for me. I went off sex the same night you went off me.'

'What are you talking about?' he demanded rawly. 'You might have shed a nostalgic tear or two but—'

'It doesn't matter.' She shook her head, then looked back at him, pleased by the stark pallor of his skin because that told her she'd shocked him and he deserved to be shocked. But, still, it wasn't in her nature to deliberately inflict pain. 'You needn't worry too much,' she said eventually. 'You didn't drive me round the twist or anything. I didn't try to slit my wrists or jump off any bridges. And I got over it.'

'Your father said you barely blinked—'

He broke off, but Annabel had heard him. 'You spoke to Daddy about me?' she asked hoarsely.

'Frequently, in the months after I left. He said you were fine.' He looked sick. 'He was unhappy about the divorce plans but he didn't think there was a problem on your side. He said you'd told him it was a relief to be free to live your own life again.'

'I said that so he wouldn't worry. He was upset enough already, you see, and I didn't want to add to that. I pretended I didn't really mind too much.'

'But you knew it was over, Annabel. You told me over and over that if Boston was that important to me I could just go alone. You didn't seem to care. The night I left you told me if I refused you a child there would be no reason to stay together. I thought that meant you were admitting we had nothing left, that you weren't in love with me any more. And you were talking about leaving medicine and that would have been disastrous for you. I have never doubted that separating then was the right thing for both of us.'

'Now you're the one putting words into my mouth,' she whispered. 'I was angry because I knew you still resented me for saying no to America. And I wanted a child because I desperately wanted your baby, as well as because I thought that would keep you with me. I could tell you were restless and it seemed as if there were so many women ready to step in and...I felt insecure.'

'Everything I said, you fought against me,' he said hoarsely. 'Annie, it wasn't just the fundamental things like where we should live or whether it was the right time for a baby—it was everything in our lives. You'd disagree over even the simple things, like whose turn it was to do chores or what night we should visit your father. You argued with me on principle. I could see no other reason but that you regretted marrying so soon and you wanted your freedom.'

'I wanted you to see me as an equal,' she argued. 'If I didn't fight I thought you'd lose respect and walk all over me. I wanted you to recognise me as an individual, as your partner, and not just a silly child who'd manipulated you into a marriage you never wanted.'

'But I already saw you as an equal. You were my wife. Why didn't you tell me how you felt at the time?'

'I tried to,' she protested. 'Or at least I used to try to, but you'd get so frustrated that I was disagreeing with you that you'd stop listening and drag me to bed instead, and for a little while everything would seem all right—only later it would all start over again.'

'I'm sorry.' She'd walked slowly towards him and now he turned to her and took her face between her hands and kissed her gently. 'I'm sorry, Annie. If I'd known...' He didn't finish that. 'I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't realise I had.'

Annabel stared up at him, her face hot beneath his hands. 'I decided eventually that you did the right thing,' she whispered. 'If you hadn't left I would just have gone on resenting you for not loving me as much as I loved you, and that would have just kept on getting worse.'

He kissed her nose softly. 'But I did love you.'

'In an indulgent, amused-adult sort of way,' she conceded gravely. 'Not the way you're supposed to love the woman you marry. It didn't take me long to realise that, you see, and it hurt. You should never have asked me to marry you, Luke.'

'I didn't want anyone else to have you,' he said huskily.

She froze as finally, finally, she began to understand what might have motivated him. 'You certainly got your way on that,' she said distantly.

'Ah, Annie.' He made a sound, half impatience, half sigh. 'You're wrong to think I wasn't in love with you.' He slid his hands down from her cheeks to her neck and then her shoulders, sparking waves of heat and sending them spreading across her skin. 'I was. You were passionate and loving and generous and responsive. I couldn't look at you and not want you.'

'That's not love, Luke.' She lifted her own hands and put them over his, wanting to hate him for what he'd done but instead finding herself loving the heated scent arising from the column of his throat and the rough texture of his hands against her palms and fingers. 'That's something much more common and far less noble. You wanted me as a possession, like a toy. Then, when you discovered I wasn't an obedient doll who'd always act the way you wanted me to act, you stopped wanting me.'

'Stopped wanting you?' he said, his soft, rasping words stirring her senses as much as his hands were, moving restlessly beneath hers against her shoulders. 'Do you believe that?'

'Isn't it the truth?' she whispered.

'You haunted me for years.' His expression preoccupied now, he ran his hands slowly down the sides of her breasts to her waist then over the soft swell of her hips to her thighs. 'It was years before I could look at another woman and not see you in her place.'

Her chest tightened at the thought of him with anyone at all, but he bent his head and touched his mouth to hers, softly, gently and so benignly that her tension eased and she felt no alarm. She kissed him back, slowly, and just as quietly, offering no resistance as he gently eased her mouth open and kissed her properly.

Annabel dropped her hands and stood there, submissive and trance-like, not objecting as his hands slowly ran over her outline again. When he drew her forward against him, his mouth leaving hers to track across her cheeks to her forehead and to her hair, she laid her face against his throat, breathing in the male-scented warmth of him, taking what comfort she could from their embrace and letting him do what he wanted.

His hands slid restlessly up from the backs of her thighs to cup her bottom, and she lifted herself against him and murmured incoherent words, her body starting to tremble.

'I used to dream about holding you like this.' Luke's fingers stroked the skin between her thighs and the rise of her buttocks repeatedly, probing her flesh through her skirt. His hands spread, cupping and caressing her. 'I used to dream about the way your body curves here.' His hands ran over the shape of her buttocks and dipped to her thighs again. 'Remembering how silky your skin was used to drive me insane.'

Until that moment his touch had been seductively languorous and comforting, a form of quiet physical apology and reconciliation, but then he shifted his body against her, parted her knees and slid one hard thigh between hers.

The overt, unmistakable sexuality of the movement sent alarm bells clanging in Annabel's head. She recoiled. 'Feeling generous, Luke?' she demanded, remembering how cruelly he'd criticised her the night before. 'Trying to shake me up? Trying to wake me up to myself again?'

She drew back from him strongly. Luke dropped his arms and made no attempt to prevent her but merely watched her, his eyes narrowed, his face unexpectedly flushed and heated, as she backed quickly away from him on trembling legs.

She looked down at her shaking hands disparagingly. 'And there I was, resigned to you being determined not to take on that particular task,' she said jerkily. 'Well, don't fret on my account. Geoffrey might be out of contention but I expect if I get desperate enough I'll find some man eventually. I'd like you to leave now, please,' she added, when Luke still said nothing, merely stood there, watching her, with a dangerous glitter in his eyes. 'Naturally you can consider my invitation to you to stay rescinded.'

'Because we just kissed?' He tilted his head slightly, his gaze unwavering. 'You're overreacting, aren't you, Annie? All you had to say was stop.'

'I'm sure your hotel's not as bad as you made it sound,' she told him feverishly. 'At least not bad enough to warrant you taking on the harrowing chore of having to make love to me. Goodnight, Luke.'

'All right, Annabel, have it your way.' When he strode towards her she pressed herself back against the wall but he just regarded her impatiently, before walking past her and down the stairs. 'I'll go.'

However, at the bottom he paused and looked up at her again. 'I was trying to contact you today because I've been going over the budgets from this year. Your Wednesday and Thursday clinics have been running too long every week. Yesterday was a disgrace. You're costing the hospital money it can't afford in nursing overtime. You've got two weeks to cut back your numbers or I'll start doing it for you.'

Then, while she stared at him in mute shock, Luke merely smiled coldly, opened her front door and walked out.

'He's threatened to cut my Wednesday clinic,' Annabel told Geoffrey the next morning, too distraught still from Luke's autocratic command to handle the issue as discreetly as she knew she should have. 'Who does he think he is?'