CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
H E HEATED UP the rather delicious-smelling casserole that had been left in the fridge. He laid two places at the kitchen table—not the old scrubbed one that his mother had thrown away, but something designer, involving a ‘river’ of green epoxy between two slabs of oak.
He hated to admit it, but he quite liked it.
Possibly because he found himself comparing the colour of the epoxy with Clemmie’s eyes.
He poured himself a glass of red wine and waited.
After twenty minutes he was on his second glass and he decided to eat.
The food was wasted on him. He stirred it around his plate. There were things aside from food that man needed to survive and stay sane, and Clemmie had lit a fire in him that still flamed hot.
He left the food on the table and wandered through to an opening that his mother had had cut through the wall to the orangery. Fortunately, the orangery itself had escaped the tweaks that jarred in so much of the rest of the house.
It was filled with light from the massive south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on a Gertrude Jekyll–inspired garden, complete with manicured hedges and a long ornamental pond with fountains and carp.
His footsteps echoed in the cavernous green space as he walked across stones worn smooth with age. They were still warmed by the original steam pipes, and the air was scented by the exotic plants that spilled out of raised beds. Rows of orange trees in deep ornamental tubs still lined the stone walls which were covered in carefully trained vines that provided a healthy crop of grapes. The trickle of water from several pools added to the soothing atmosphere.
Joaquin didn’t feel soothed.
Casting his brooding glance over the tranquil scene, he decided that doing the right thing had never felt more wrong. Actually, who was to say it was even the right thing ?
Even as the defiant thought was flickering through his head, he recognised the absurdity of ignoring a bunch of red flags.
In what world , he asked himself, would sleeping with your best friend, who turns out to be a virgin and who is also suffering from amnesia, be considered right?
Clemmie allowed the jets of water to wash the suds from her hair as she continued to work at the ring. No matter what she did, it remained jammed on her knuckle. Tears of frustration streaming down her face, she stepped backwards, hitting the tiled wall. With her right hand holding up her left, she glared at the ring, her thoughts drifting back to that moment in the library when the gaps in her memory had been filled in.
There had been no gentle transition from ignorance to knowledge. It had just hit her with a force real enough that even now she struggled to catch her breath.
Panic attack , diagnosed the voice in her head as her chest tightened.
She had imagined this moment—imagined relief, imagined the truth setting her free.
The opposite was true. This new knowledge made her feel helpless.
The low buzz in her head got louder.
Her legs were shaking.
She was shaking all over.
A whirl of black dots danced in front of her eyes as she stumbled out of the shower, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst out of her chest.
And then it was all a blur.
She didn’t remember pulling on the silky wrap, but felt it flapping against her wet legs as she raced down the stairs.
The kitchen bore signs of recent occupation, but no one was there. Then, through the arch at the end of the room, she saw movement in the orangery.
‘Joaquin!’
He swung back from his grim contemplation of the garden.
Clemmie was standing in the stone archway, barefoot, clad in a thin blue robe that ended just above her knees. Her hair was darkened with water that dripped over her face and left dark patches on the silky fabric of the robe.
‘I’ve remembered. It’s all come back.’
The confession came out in a rush.
She lifted a hand to her head, her brow puckering when it came away wet.
‘I was in the shower...’
The getting out of it was not too clear.
‘I was trying to get the ring off... Sorry I—’ She broke off as she suddenly found it impossible to explain her panic and the impetuous rush to share, which already seemed stupid. ‘I don’t know why I came to tell you...you already know.’
He did know—but not everything. He didn’t know the truth that had been too painful for her to remember.
Her eyes went to the ring on her finger—the ring that she had imagined on another woman’s finger. And that had made her realise that she didn’t just love Joaquin as a friend.
The searing truth that had hit her just before the collision was that she loved him, and that the idea of him marrying another woman made her want to curl up in a ball and hide away in a corner—which she supposed her brain had achieved its own version of when it had blanked her memory.
‘I kept trying to get it off.’
She tugged at it, to illustrate how hard she had tried, and at the first touch the ring slid off her finger and bounced across the stone floor. Eyes wide, she watched it before it vanished down a steel grating.
‘Oh, my God. I’m so sorry!’ she yelped, running over to the grate and falling on her knees. ‘I’ll find it. I promise. Do you have a screwdriver or a...a crowbar?’
‘Oh, let me see...’ He patted his pockets. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’
Her head lifted, reproach in her eyes. ‘This isn’t a joke,’ she sobbed.
‘I can see that.’
‘That thing is probably worth a fortune.’
‘Probably,’ he agreed, crossing to her side and holding out a hand. ‘You do know you look a little bit crazy down there?’
‘Well, your sensitivity lessons really worked, didn’t they?’ she snapped, finally taking his hand. Not because she would admit she needed it, but because she was suddenly very aware that she had nothing on under her robe, and covering all the essentials while getting up unaided would not be easy.
The way Joaquin was looking, and where he was looking, suggested that he was well aware that she was naked under the robe.
He removed his burning stare and his hand at the same moment, and as he took a step back she fought the magnetic tug that made her want to lean into him.
‘As a general rule, I have no objection to women on their knees at my feet.’ His smile deepened. ‘But I do believe you are blushing all over.’
She stifled a gasp and brought her lashes down in a protective shield. ‘The ring...’ she pushed out in desperation, wanting to focus on anything but the internal shudder, the rush of liquid heat between her legs, the nipping contraction of her nipples.
‘Is hideous. And, yes, extremely valuable. I will arrange for it to be retrieved and put in the back of a dark bank vault. Where it belongs. So, forget about the ring and relax. Take some deep breaths...not too deep,’ he added, seeing there was a danger of her hyperventilating.
She sniffed and tightened the belt on her robe, thinking that being able to relax did not seem likely any time before next year—maybe longer. But despite her gloomy prediction she followed his advice, and felt the buzz in her ears recede.
‘Excellent.’
On another occasion she would likely as not have told him where he could shove his pat on the head and patronising approval, but at that moment she was just happy that there were no black dots.
‘Let it go.’
The hand on her shoulder and the thumb massaging her collarbone through the silk was not a recipe for further relaxation. Wearing an inch of armour would not have made her feel relaxed with him...wearing very little made it a laughable concept.
‘Sorry for the drama.’ She stepped back and felt his hand fall away before opening her eyes, not sure if she was going to laugh or cry. Luckily it turned out to be the former. ‘All a bit OTT.’
She left a gap for him to join in with her laughter. But he didn’t. He just carried on looking down at her in that dark, intense, hungry way that made the knot of helpless longing in the pit of her stomach tighten.
‘I just wanted you to know that I had remembered.’
Pity you didn’t remember to put any clothes on , she told herself. Though the cooling updraught on her heated parts was something of a relief...
‘Not the part when you rescued me, because I was pretty out of it then, but I do remember you were in the helicopter. I remember your voice.’
She remembered clinging to it when she felt herself sliding into the darkness. She looked at his chest, at the wall of strength it offered, and wanted to cling again.
‘You held my hand, I think?’ she said.
Something flashed in his eyes. ‘I did. I was terrified.’
‘You...?’
The silence between them stretched, and so did Clemmie’s tension.
‘So, barring the cuts and bruises...’ he ran a light finger over the fading bruise on her cheek ‘...and the loss of a little hair...’
He lifted a wet skein, rubbing it between his fingers before allowing it to fall, allowing his thoughts to drift for a brief, indulgent moment to his private fantasy of wrapping himself in that glorious mane of hair.
With a sharp inhalation, he pushed it away while he still could. ‘And let’s face it, you can spare it. We are back to normal...’
Which of course was what she had told herself she wanted. But now he had come around to her way of thinking it didn’t feel such a desirable outcome—or, for that matter, so normal.
Their ‘normal’ had definitely altered.
Their eyes met and she knew he recognised it too.
‘What’s normal?’ she asked, and the seething frustration and spiralling out-of-control confusion she felt spilled out in words. ‘How can anything be normal after I...?’
‘Told me you were a virgin?’
Her eyes slid from his. ‘I thought we were engaged—I thought there was a we when I told you that!’
‘I’m glad you did. It would have come as something of a shock.’
Her eyes flew upwards, eyelashes fluttering as her breath quickened. ‘You seem to be taking a hell of a lot for granted.’
‘You’re not going to have another panic attack, are you?’
‘Is that what you ask every woman you make love to? Because if so I can imagine it being a bit of a turn-off. I am not having a panic attack!’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing? Making love to you?’
She studied his perfect face. His expression seemed still and almost remote—until she connected with his molten dark stare.
‘I don’t know...’ She hated the quavering note of appeal in her voice.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that was both tender and fierce. ‘Do you want me to?’
Her stomach muscles clenched as his words shocked and excited her.
He arched a brow as the silence stretched.
‘All right,’ she conceded huskily. ‘Yes, I do. But I feel...’
She closed her mouth. They knew each other so well, but this was not the Joaquin she knew.
Hell, she didn’t know herself.
His dark head dipped, his hands sliding to her shoulders to drag her in closer.
‘Tell me how you feel,’ he rasped, his breath wafting over her cheek, his glittering eyes snaring her wide green stare.
‘I can’t,’ she breathed, suddenly hit by a wave of inadequacy as images of the women he’d dated flickered through her head.
He wanted her to be sexy and provocative and... And she was sure she’d just sound lame and stupid. If he laughed at her she might never recover.
‘It’s scary.’
‘You’re scared of me?’ He drew back slightly, not sounding as if he liked the idea.
She lifted a hand to his stubble-roughened cheek and gave him a long, level look. ‘Not of you—not ever.’
The total confidence in her voice smoothed the frown lines in his forehead.
‘The way you make me feel is scary, though,’ she admitted.
‘How do I make you feel?’ he asked, and his soft voice was sinfully suggestive as he placed his hand over hers to keep it there against his cheek for a moment.
When his hand fell away, she missed the warmth.
‘You are fighting it,’ he told her.
‘There is no “it”.’
‘ We are fighting it. Ask yourself why? It’s not as if we don’t already know things will never go back to the way they were.’
He acknowledged it out loud and she agreed with a wistful shake of her head, part of her acknowledging his candour, part of her resenting it.
‘I wish...’
She stopped mid-sentence as his hands slid up her arms, ruffling the light silk covering and coming to rest on her shoulders. The action drew her eyes to his face.
‘Do you want your first time to be with me?’
She swallowed, thinking, I want my first and last time to be with you.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Get real, Clemmie. Just take what you can get. Make memories for when you are a sad old lady with cats.
No cats. She was allergic.
Her internal dialogue was a poor distraction from the driving need inside her. She could never resist Joaquin for the simple reason she didn’t want to.
She wasn’t sure if the truth equated with freedom, but it was a relief to acknowledge the facts.
‘You’re shaking,’ he discovered, drawing her closer until her head rested on his chest. ‘Sorry. I’m rushing this. Recovering your memory must be pretty mind-blowing—’
‘No,’ she said, burrowing in close, breathing in the scent of him, her breath coming in frantic little gasps. ‘You’re not rushing things... I don’t want to wait and you’re right—I want this.’
She lifted her face from the hardness of his chest and tilted her face up to his. Her green eyes glowed half in plea, half in invitation, and he couldn’t resist.
His lowered his mouth to hers, his tongue skimming its lush outline before claiming her lips. It was not a full-on assault. She sensed he was still holding back. It felt more like a question.
A question that she responded to by sliding her tongue between his lips and kissing him.
‘Yes, Joaquin, I do want this.’
The level of tension quivering in his body did not lessen, but it altered as he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, becoming more focused.
He made her feel as though she was the only person in his world.
He was so beautiful!
She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, suddenly unable to stand the sensory and emotional overload.
‘This is really happening?’
‘Only if you want it to.’
Her eyes flew wide. ‘I do, Joaquin, I really do.’
Nothing had ever felt so right.
And then, without warning, like a cold gust of wind, she was suddenly attacked by a fluttering flock of insecurities.
‘I don’t know if...’
He brushed her lips with his again, kissing away her insecurities with a skill and a ruthless efficiency that left her breathless and aching for more.
‘This is not about technique...this is about feeling .’
The words were confident, but they came from a place inside him that he hadn’t known existed.