Wife To A Stranger
She closed it and put it back. ‘Wasn’t there anything else in the bag?’
‘Some tissues that I threw away. A couple of sodden train and bus tickets. I couldn’t find your address book, or any clue as to where you’d been staying recently. The bag was closed when I got it, but it could have fallen open at some stage. Do you know of anything that’s missing?’
‘No.’ She had no idea what should have been in the bag, couldn’t even remember owning it.
She half-dozed for much of the two-hour drive to the airport. Rolfe dropped off the hire car and hauled out an overnight bag from the back seat. Her only luggage was the plastic boutique bag.
He dug into a side pocket of his bag and produced two passports, stuffing them into the pocket of his light jacket. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’
Stepping off the plane hours later at Auckland’s international airport, she felt disoriented. The feeling remained as they crossed rain-wet tarseal to where Rolfe had parked his car when he’d left the country to race to her side. She was glad now of the jacket he’d bought her. Spring in New Zealand was decidedly nippy.
‘Are you all right?’ Rolfe asked after he’d paid the parking fee and joined the stream of traffic leaving the airport.
‘Yes.’ She felt as though she was in a strange land. ‘How…how long have I been away?’ He’d said they’d talk, but the airport bar in Sydney where they’d filled in half an hour before the flight had seemed too public, and on the plane Capri had fallen asleep again following the meal that had been served after take-off.
Rolfe braked for a traffic light. ‘A couple of months,’ he told her.
A long holiday. ‘I can’t have spent all the time on my own?’ A twinge of anxiety hit her. ‘Was there someone I knew on the train? Someone I was with?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Rolfe answered after a moment. ‘There didn’t seem to be anyone looking for you.’
‘But…some people were killed.’
‘Several, yes. I believe they were all…claimed.’
‘My parents,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do they know—?’
‘I phoned your mother in Los Angeles after the doctors told me they expected you to fully recover. She sends her love.’
‘Thank you. Los Angeles? My mother’s not American.’
Rolfe said carefully, ‘No, she’s Australian, as of course you are by birth, but she’s lived in L.A. for years. So did you, for a while.’
‘And Venetia?’
‘Venetia too. Right now she’s trying to break into films, with a bit of help from your stepfather.’
‘My mother’s remarried?’
‘Her second husband is a photographer with contacts in the movie business.’
‘What about my father? Did you contact him?’
He gave her a probing glance, then returned his attention to the road. ‘I wouldn’t know how to get hold of him, I’m afraid.’
Her father, then, hadn’t kept in touch after the divorce. ‘Why was I holidaying alone?’ she asked. ‘Were you too busy to come with me? You’re in…’ her mind fumbled for clues ‘…electronics or something?’ Swiftly she added, ‘I’m sorry. I should know, but—’
‘It’s okay. I own a manufacturing plant at Albany, just north of Auckland. We make laser equipment for medical and industrial use, selling to both local and international markets. It’s highly specialised. I’m CEO of the firm, but the factory is run on a day-to-day basis by a very competent site manager and a team of engineers.’
‘So you don’t actually work there?’
‘Usually I do. But I’m mainly concerned with design and development, and I have another office at home.’
‘I’m…not sure where that is.’
‘Atianui. A small coastal settlement an hour’s drive from the factory, a bit more from Auckland.’
‘Atianui.’ She stumbled over the Maon syllables.
‘Perhaps you’ll remember it when we get there.’
She looked out of the window. Nothing out there had jelled in her memory. She blinked, lifting a hand to surreptitiously flick an unexpected tear from her cheek.
As she dropped her hand back into her lap, Rolfe’s warm fingers covered hers. ‘Don’t worry, Capri. It will all sort itself out in the end.’
She gave a shaky sigh. His hand on hers was reassuring, strong. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Which question was that?’ Rolfe took away his hand and replaced it on the wheel. He wasn’t looking at her.
‘About…how I came to be holidaying in Australia on my own.’
He didn’t answer immediately, speeding up to pass a couple of cars and change lanes as they approached more traffic lights. ‘You decided on the spur of the moment to take this trip, and I wasn’t able to get away. I can’t just drop everything on a…on an impulse.’
A whim, he meant. ‘But you came to the hospital.’
‘Of course.’
‘Have I disrupted your work?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
She watched him covertly. The car moved smoothly under his guiding hands—houses, trees flashing by the windscreen. His profile was strong, like his hands, his expression remote as he concentrated on driving, only the curve of his mouth hinting at the possibility of gentleness tempering the strength and potent masculinity she’d sensed in him from the moment she’d opened her eyes and seen him standing with his» back to her at the window of her hospital room. Soon they were on the Harbour Bridge, riding up the steep curve over water that sparked and flashed in the afternoon sun. She remembered this, distantly. ‘The Waitemata,’ she murmured, relieved that she was able to name the harbour. ‘Rolfe…?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did we quarrel?’
It was several seconds before he answered. ‘Sometimes.’
‘I mean…before I left. Didn’t I want you to come with me? And if you…couldn’t—’
‘You mean wouldn’t.’ He seemed to think about it. ‘Let’s say,’ he conceded finally, ‘that things were a bit strained. Never mind about that now. I’m taking you home again, and I suggest we let the past go.’
‘I don’t have much choice,’ Capri said wryly. ‘Since I don’t remember it anyway.’
It was scary how few details she could recall of a whole life. Twenty-three years of it.
‘You must be…’ Rolfe hesitated. ‘I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. Confused, disoriented… afraid?’ He accelerated and changed lanes smoothly to pass a lumbering truck.
‘All of the above.’ She tried to sound flippant, failing abysmally.
‘You’re taking it remarkably well.’
‘Am I? What did you expect—hysterics?’
‘It wouldn’t be surprising. I’m grateful you haven’t resorted to that.’
‘I’m not that sort of person—’ She paused there, frighteningly aware that she couldn’t tell what sort of person she was, and willed the wave of panic to subside. ‘Am I?’ she asked him.
He gave a short laugh. ‘None of us sees ourselves as others do,’ he said enigmatically. ‘And I probably know you a lot less well than I think. While you…’
‘I don’t know myself at all, any more,’ she said. ‘That sounds very self-pitying,’ she apologised, and gazed round them at the passing countryside. ‘I still don’t recognise any of this.’
‘At least I can help there.’ He described the various places they passed as if she were a tourist. When they reached the green fields and new buildings around the recently established university campus at Albany he nodded towards a side road. ‘My factory is down there.’
They passed the long sweeping foreshore at Orewa, almost hidden by housing, and later the little town of Warkworth that Rolfe told her lay along a riverbank, invisible from the highway. Soon after that they turned off to take a quieter road that eventually led them to a seaside settlement of mainly new houses.
‘Atianui.’ Rolfe glanced at her. ‘Recognise it?’
Capri shook her head. ‘No.’
He swung round a corner and into a driveway, pausing momentarily to touch a button on a small black box fixed to the dashboard. Wrought-iron gates swung open and he eased the car inside the high stuccoed walls. ‘It was only subdivided ten years ago—as a sort of combination dormitory town and retirement complex. We both liked the idea of living by the sea but not too far away from Auckland.’
The house was Spanish-influenced, long and low and white, with bougainvillaea, its thorny branches barely beginning to show colour, climbing the outer wall and framing an archway between the house and the two-car garage where Rolfe parked.
‘I know the house.’ Her relief was profound. ‘I know I’ve seen it before.’
‘Good. Of course you have.’ A garage door opened and Rolfe parked and pulled on the handbrake before turning to her. ‘It’s your home, Capri.’ He lifted a hand and gently turned her to face him, his fingers warm on her cheek. ‘Welcome back, darling.’
CHAPTER THREE
HIS lips touched hers, sure and firm but not demanding, lingering only moments before he moved away. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you inside.’
A smart little hatchback runabout occupied the other space in the garage. Rolfe said. ‘That’s yours. You probably shouldn’t drive for a few days, though.’ He took both bags from the car and put a hand on her waist to lead her to the house. Inside, she stood in a wide, terracotta-tiled hallway and looked about. ‘How long have we lived here?’
‘Two years,’ Rolfe said matter-of-factly. ‘Since we were married.’
She swallowed a dismaying desire to turn and flee. She’d been married to this man for two years, yet she knew nothing about him. Except that he was doing his best to cope with a situation that must be as difficult for him as it was for her. ‘I…’ She gazed around again, helplessly. ‘It’s not…familiar.’ The disappointment was sickening. She’d been sure that once she was home everything would fall into place. But this didn’t feel like home.
Rolfe touched her arm. ‘I’ll show you…the bedroom. Maybe you’d like to rest for a while.’
‘I am tired,’ she admitted. ‘Although I seem to have slept a lot today.’ Her skin felt stretched, her eyes heavy.
He ushered her into a spacious room overlooking the sea. The carpet was deep turquoise, the furniture white with touches of gold, the sumptuous cover on the double bed patterned in several shades of blue and green.
Most of the wall facing the ocean was tinted glass. Sliding doors opened onto a broad tiled terrace under the roof of the house, and a huge sloping archway outside the room framed the sea.
‘It’s a glorious view,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He had put down the plastic bag that she thought of as holding all her worldly possessions. ‘Can I get you a drink or something? Make you a coffee?’
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll lie down for a while.’
‘Sure.’ He paused. Evidently sensing her nervous tension, he touched her cheek with his hand, the thumb rubbing gently over her skin, waking a tiny tremor of sensuous response deep within her. ‘It’ll be all right, Capri,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing here to frighten you.’ He dropped his hand. ‘Have a good rest. I’ll be around if you need anything. Just yell.’
‘Thank you.’ She watched him leave, still carrying his bag. He closed the door and she stood feeling lost. Hesitantly she approached the long dressing-table against one wall, touched a rather ornate gold-decorated hand-mirror lying on the white surface, and lifted a cutglass perfume bottle, removing the stopper to sniff it. It was the same scent as the one Rolfe had bought her before they left Australia. Spicy, faintly earthy—a very sexy perfume. ‘Your favourite,’ he’d said.
Turning, she opened a door and found a walk-in wardrobe filled with clothes. She touched some of the garments, moved them along on their hangers. They were all her size, colours that suited her. Most of them looked expensive. Easily thirty pairs of shoes sat neatly in pairs along the floor. It seemed an awful lot.
Fingering a peacock-blue silk dress, she frowned. Rolfe was presumably quite well-off. He had a thriving business, and this house in its exclusive coastal enclave was certainly not cheap real estate.
Perhaps she had come from more modest circumstances? Where had they met? She must ask him later.
Nothing here had triggered her elusive memory, and her shoulders drooped as she left the wardrobe and opened another door into a white and turquoise bathroom.
Here too the floor was carpeted. There was a roomy glass-fronted shower, a marble bathtub almost big enough for two, and all the taps were large and goldplated.
Seeing another door on the opposite side of the bathroom, she tapped on the panels and opened it on a bedroom identical to the one she’d come from, right down to the bedspread, on which Rolfe’s overnight bag sat.
She closed the door quickly, her emotions a mixture of shame and relief. Was he going to sleep there?
Rolfe was her husband and she’d been away for two months. Instinctively she knew that he was a man who appreciated sex—his virility was so much a part of his personality she couldn’t be unaware of it The way he looked at her and touched her made her conscious of her femininity, and even that brief welcome-home kiss in the garage had held a hint of sexuality, of passion.
But although she’d reacted blindly to his masculine attraction since she’d woken to see him waiting for her return to consciousness, what she had told him in the hospital was the truth. So far as she was concerned he might have been a total stranger. And she wasn’t a woman who would—or could—make love with a man she scarcely knew.
How could she know that with such certainty? she wondered, stripping the cover from the bed in the room that was evidently to be hers.
Moving slowly, she removed her shoes and lay down, glad to have her head rest on cool, clean linen. She supposed that although her mind for some reason refused to remember events, places or people, deep down she was still the same Capri she’d always been. Personality remained, even when memory was absent. Her essential self hadn’t altered. It was a comforting thought.
She woke to gathering darkness, the room dimmed and the sea outside grey and sleek with gold highlights.
Momentarily disoriented, she sat up and pushed back her hair. The room, the view were alien to her. Remnants of a dream clung. Familiar voices, a house with tall pale trees around it…
Then she remembered the hospital, Rolfe, the journey home, and the wardrobe full of expensive clothing.
She swung her feet to the thick carpeting and crossed to the dressing-table.
There were three drawers along the top, all holding a variety of makeup and grooming products—bottles, jars, mascara wands. She found a comb and closed the drawer, deciding she needed a shower.
In the bathroom a brass shelf held a stack of thick, clean towels above a heated rail. She hung her clothes from a brass hook and stepped into the shower.
Recessed shelves held scented soap and bottles of shampoo and matching conditioners. The water was hot and forceful. She let it run over her for several minutes, shampooed her hair, and closed her eyes to allow the spray to rinse out the foam.
A sound made her turn her head, and through the steam she saw Rolfe standing in the doorway from her bedroom.
Her immediate reaction was to raise one hand across her breasts and lower the other in the Venus pose.
‘Are you all right?’ Rolfe demanded.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
He nodded and withdrew, closing the door.
Stupid, stupid, she chided herself, turning off the water. She grabbed a towel and rubbed at her hair, then quickly took another, dried her body and wrapped the towel about it, tucking the ends firmly under her arms.
When she entered the bedroom Rolfe was standing at the window, reminding her of the first time she had seen him.
No, not the first time, she corrected herself. The first time she remembered seeing him…
He glanced over his shoulder at her, and then reached to draw the curtains across the window. ‘People walk along the beach.’ He turned to face her. ‘Now and then one of them will climb the bank. You don’t want to entertain peeping Toms.’ The room seemed smaller now, more intimate. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’ His slight smile was crooked. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t think…and I was a bit worried. You’re only just out of hospital—’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was…silly of me to be so—’
‘Shy?’ he suggested as she groped for the right word. ‘It certainly didn’t seem like you, Capri.’ His gaze slid over her, making her conscious of her nakedness under the towel.
She felt her body flush. ‘I…suppose I’d got over any shyness with you, after being married for two years.’
‘Oh, I think quite a while before that.’
‘Does that mean we…?’ She paused. ‘I mean, were we…lovers for a long time before we got married?’
‘Several months.’ His eyes glittered and narrowed, as if her thoughtless query had evoked some erotic memory. ‘You’d better get dressed. You’ll be cold.’
It wasn’t in the least cold—the house was surprisingly warm—but she turned to the wardrobe she’d discovered earlier, then hesitated. ‘What should I wear? Are we…do you have any plans for this evening?’
‘Don’t tempt me.’ Again that disconcerting flare of sexual awareness lit Rolfe’s eyes, and she put a hand on the edge of the towel that covered her breasts, nervously checking it was secure.
His voice changed and became crisp. ‘Wear whatever you’re comfortable in. I assumed you wouldn’t feel like eating out tonight, so I got a few supplies in while you were asleep.’
If he knew she’d slept, then he’d looked in on her before. How long had he watched her while she was oblivious?
Mentally she shook herself. He’d been concerned. ‘Do you want me to cook?’ she asked him.
‘Good lord, no! I can rustle up some kind of meal.’
She couldn’t stand around wearing nothing but a towel. Turning to the walk-in wardrobe again, she murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ went in and half shut the door.
When she had dressed and come out again Rolfe had gone. About to close the door of the wardrobe, she paused, surveying herself in the mirror on the back of it. The loose cream silk shirt and dark green trousers suited her colouring and they fitted perfectly. Yet she felt as though she was wearing someone else’s clothes.
Her hair was still damp. She went into the bathroom and hunted in the drawers under the vanity unit, coming up with, as she’d half expected, a hand-dryer. There was a safety plug near the basin, and in ten minutes her hair was dry—silky soft and bouncy with the underlying wave that had always created problems.
Always? For a moment memory seemed almost within her grasp. And then there was nothing.
She brushed the style into shape, then padded back to the wardrobe and, after a brief indecision, slipped her feet into bronze pumps, one of the few pairs of shoes that didn’t have high heels. Then she opened the door and ventured into the turquoise-carpeted passageway.
The aroma of frying meat led her to the kitchen, a spacious room that gleamed with stainless steel and whiteware. Rolfe turned from the stove top set into one of the wide counters. He smiled, his eyes studying her thoroughly and making her skin prickle, not unpleasantly.
‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.
‘Finish off the salad if you like.’ He indicated a glass bowl half filled with lettuce leaves. ‘You’ll find tomatoes and cucumber in the fridge.’ Turning back to the stove top, he took a pair of stainless-steel tongs from a wall rack to flip the chops over.
Looking about, she found the refrigerator, first opening the door of the matching freezer by mistake.
She placed the vegetables on the bench and rummaged in a drawer for a few seconds before Rolfe looked around and asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘A knife?’
He directed her to the wooden block by the refrigerator where she found several knives of different sizes. By the time she’d finished the salad, Rolfe was turning down the heat under the chops. A beeping noise made her look at the microwave oven at one end of the workbench.
‘Can you turn those spuds?’ Rolfe asked her.
She opened the door and dealt with the two potatoes in their jackets, then restarted the machine.
When she turned away again Rolfe was watching her with a curious stare.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘You seem to be familiar with the microwave.’
She hadn’t thought about it. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, momentarily pleased. Perhaps if she just let things happen without thinking too much, skills and memories would return to her. ‘I must have used it before.’
‘Frequently.’ He gave her a slightly taut grin. ‘As soon as the potatoes are done we can eat.’
Rolfe carried their plates to an adjoining dining room while she brought along the cutlery they needed. He’d already flung a cloth over the small table that fitted into a half-circle of windows. A longer table flanked by highbacked chairs occupied most of the remaining floor space.
The curtains were open, and moths and insects flung themselves against the dark glass. A particularly loud thump made Capri glance up from cutting into her baked potato, and she gasped at the huge brown winged beetle, long feelers waving madly, trying to gain access through the window.
‘It’s only a huhu.’ Rolfe got up to jerk the curtains closed over the window, then sat down again.
The beetle hurled itself twice more at the window, and then apparently gave up and flew away. Relieved, she said, ‘The insects here are pretty rampant.’
‘Only at night. How’s your chop?’
‘Fine. You’re a good cook.’
‘I have a few basic skills.’
‘I’ll do the cooking tomorrow.’
He looked up, a fork poised in his hand, then nodded. ‘If you feel up to it.’
She helped him clear the table, and watched as he placed the dishes in a machine. ‘It hardly seems worth it,’ she commented, ‘for just a few dishes.’
He straightened, closing the lid, and his brows lifted slightly. ‘You’ve always had a firm belief that laboursaving devices are there to be used.’
‘Well…I suppose…’ She shrugged. There was some sense in that.
For a moment she had a weird sensation of being lost in a dark, unknown place, blindly groping for something to cling to.
‘Capri?’ Rolfe’s hand was on her shoulder, his eyes probing hers. ‘What is it?’
‘I just…I don’t know. For a minute I…didn’t know where I was.’
He grasped both her shoulders, but not hard. ‘You’re home, Capri,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’
Something snapped. ‘It’s not all right!’ she retorted sharply. ‘I feel like an intruder in my own bedroom, my own wardrobe, I don’t know my way around, and I can’t even remember where the damned knives are kept!’
He gave a small, not unsympathetic laugh, but in her oversensitive state even that stung.
Her voice notched a note higher. ‘It’s not a joke! And how do I know you’re really my husband? I’ve no recollection of being married to you!’
And that, she realised, remembering the wedding photograph in her bag, was a pretty stupid thing to say.
The smile had disappeared from Rolfe’s mouth. ‘Believe me, I don’t think it’s at all funny, Capri. But I am your husband, and you’re my wife!’
The air had thickened between them, and everything seemed to go still. She was overwhelmingly conscious of his strength, his nearness, his masculinity, and her breath caught in her throat, a tiny pulse hammering at its base.
He drew in a breath too, and she remembered that moment in the hospital when he’d seemed to be affected by the scent of her, and she’d seen his nostrils dilate and his eyes darken as they did now.
His hands slipped from her shoulders to the bare skin of her arms. His expression went taut and purposeful. ‘Maybe this will help,’ he said, and pulled her closer, his arms sliding about her as her head involuntarily tipped back, and then he caught her mouth under the warm impact of his.
The kiss was intimate and insistent, the warmth and hardness of his body pressing against hers, unfamiliar and a little frightening, even though her blood sang and her lips involuntarily parted under his persuasion. His hold was firm but deliberately gentle, as if he had remembered that her bruises were still tender.