Wife To A Stranger

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WHAT?’ She felt her eyes dilate painfully, her throat lock.

A spasm seemed to cross Rolfe’s face. He lifted a hand and thrust back a stubborn strand of dark hair that had strayed to his forehead. ‘Never mind.’

‘I do mind! What did you mean?’

‘Just that you were in my bed within hours of our first meeting. So excuse me if I find it a bit ironic that you’re being so coy about making love to me now.’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Hours?’ She couldn’t comprehend this. It sounded so…wrong.

‘Lust at first sight.’ He grinned narrowly. Then he must have noticed her instinctive recoil. ‘I’m sorry if the word offends you, but one could hardly call it love…’

‘What happened?’ They’d taken one look at each other and fallen into bed? He was a very attractive, sexy man and she could well believe she’d have been tempted, but it seemed so out of character…

Again her lack of real knowledge taunted her. What did she know about her own character, how she might have reacted, what sort of lifestyle she’d led before marrying Rolfe?

‘What happened?’ Rolfe repeated. ‘We met at a party in L.A. You were with someone, I was alone. You were…’ his eyes glazed slightly as though he was looking at a distant memory ‘…stunning.’

Her lips parted, her heart thudding disconcertingly. In some level of her subconscious she was aware this wasn’t the first time she’d been complimented on her looks. Only surely never with the intensity that she heard now m Rolfe’s voice.

His eyes refocused, studying her, and the intensity changed to self-mockery. ‘It was like all the romantic movies you’ve ever seen. We looked at each other across a crowded room and from that moment there was no one else there for either of us. You smiled, I walked over and introduced myself. I tried to be civilised, talk to the man you were with, other people. I have no idea what I said to them. We danced. Your date…’ He paused, a faintly regretful expression darkening his eyes. ‘Your date got drunk and aggressive, and I offered you a lift home. In the car I asked if you’d like to come to my hotel for a nightcap, and you looked straight into my eyes and said yes, that would be nice.’ Again he paused. ‘We hadn’t even kissed. But when we got to the hotel I gave you the choice of having a drink in the public bar or raiding the minibar in my suite. You chose the suite.’ He smiled crookedly, reminiscently, his eyes gleaming under hooded lids as he looked at her. ‘We never did have that nightcap.’

She was staring at him. He shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘You don’t remember any of this?’

Silently she shook her head. He might have been describing some other woman entirely. A woman who was sexually confident to the point of recklessness, willing to take incredible chances with an exciting stranger. ‘Had I been drinking?’

His brows rose. ‘It was a party. But you weren’t drunk. I wouldn’t take advantage of a tipsy woman, Capri.’

But maybe she’d had enough alcohol to affect her judgement, to topple her inhibitions and send her into a stranger’s arms. A stranger who had attracted her so strongly that she’d boldly beckoned him with a smile, had neglected the man who’d accompanied her to the party, and gone home with the interloper. Not only gone home with him, but slept with him that same night. She had no reason to doubt Rolfe’s account of their meeting, and she could believe that she’d been fascinated by his striking looks, his confident sexuality, and his overt interest, but at the same time she was convinced that the behaviour he described wasn’t normal for her.

Rolfe moved towards her, his hands going to her waist. He studied her face, his eyes very dark and enigmatic. Then he tightened his grip and lifted her down, and she felt his lips brush her forehead before he let her go. ‘Maybe we were in too much of a hurry back then. This could give us another chance.’

‘Another chance?’

‘To get to know each other again,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll be…different this time.’

‘I want to get to know you,’ she told him, still feeling breathless. ‘Thank you for being so understanding.’

His continued scrutiny of her turned curious, even puzzled. He nodded. ‘It could be…my pleasure,’ he said rather obscurely.

She looked away from the disturbing light in his eyes. ‘Do you mind if I wander around—familiarise myself with the house?’

‘It’s your home, Capri. Would you like me to come with you?’

‘In case I get lost?’ She gave him a pale smile. It was a big house, but hardly a castle.

‘In case you want to ask questions.’ His eyes cooling, he asked abruptly, ‘You’re not faking this, are you?’

She blinked. ‘Faking?’

Impatiently, Rolfe shook his head. ‘No, of course not,’ he answered himself. ‘There’s no reason—’

‘Well, you’d know better than me about that!’ she said with a spurt of indignation. ‘Why would anyone want to fake amnesia? It’s no picnic!’

‘It was just a thought.’

‘You have very strange thoughts!’

‘You don’t know the half of them.’ His eyes held hers, sending hot shivers down her spine. He moved away from her. ‘Go and take your tour of the house,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the lounge if you want me. You do know where that is?’

‘Yes, we passed it on the way in.’

She left it until last, after she had seen the several bedrooms and another bathroom, the utility room, and one that must be Rolfe’s office, with bookshelves, filing cabinets and a desktop computer. And a room that held a sewing machine, a work-table strewn with paper templates, and shelves filled with pattern books, fashion magazines, and piles of fabric, a sumptuous collection of colour and texture. A dressmaker’s adjustable form stood in one corner, and here too there was a computer, with a box of disks beside it.

She retraced her steps to the wide lobby-cumpassageway and the double doors leading to the lounge. Like the rest of the house, the large room was furnished with taste and discernment—she could almost picture the words in some glossy magazine.

Rolfe was sprawled on a long off-white sofa, reading a newspaper and listening to something she vaguely thought was Mozart. She said, ‘I found the sewing room.’

‘Yes?’ He swung his feet onto the carpet and picked up a remote control, muting the music to a low background sound.

‘Am I a dressmaker?’

Rolfe smiled with a hint of incredulity. ‘A dressmaker? You’d hate to be called that. Come over here.’ He indicated the space on the sofa beside him and folded the paper, putting it aside on an elegant glass table.

Tensely she walked over and sat down, leaving two feet of space between them. ‘It doesn’t look like a home sewing room,’ she said. ‘It’s a workroom. What did I do?’

‘You do some fashion design,’ he said patiently. ‘You’re quite talented. Although…’

‘Although what?’

He shrugged ‘You’ve come close to winning awards a couple of times, but…your temperament isn’t suited to steady work. You have flashes of inspiration, work on them like mad for a few weeks, and need as many weeks to recover—and, I suppose, to allow the creative juices to flow again. It isn’t a style that adjusts well to the business world.’

Digesting that, she glanced around the room. The long sofas arranged in a U-shape with glass end tables, and the group of chairs around another, larger glass table looked comfortable enough. The pictures on the walls were originals and she recognised the signatures on a couple of them.

The drapes that Rolfe had drawn against the night were textured faille silk, well chosen to complement the turquoise carpet used throughout the house, and in the daytime to frame the view of the sea and echo its colours.

Everything was beautifully co-ordinated and money had not been stinted. But she felt like a visitor here. ‘Who decorated the rooms?’ she asked. ‘And who designed the house?’

‘One of Auckland’s top architects did the house. And we hired an interior designer. You wanted perfection and insisted on expert advice. What’s the matter?’

She had shifted restlessly, oddly dissatisfied. ‘Nothing. It’s a lovely room.’

It was a lovely room, only it seemed to lack warmth. She supposed that in summer the cool effect might be an asset.

The music had stopped. ‘Was that Mozart?’ she asked.

‘Yes—I know you’d prefer something a bit livelier. The tapes and discs are over there under the player. Why don’t you choose one?’

Hesitantly she got up and went over to the built-in unit holding the music centre, knelt and opened the top drawer.

Rolfe said, ‘Most of yours are in the second drawer down.’

She opened the next drawer. The first few labels meant little, but then she found a CD that she lifted out with delight—an album by a New Zealand group that had made the pop charts both in their home country and overseas. ‘This is one of my favourites!’

‘Yes.’ Rolfe had approached silently across the carpet and was standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder. ‘You used to play it a lot.’

And her subconscious had remembered. ‘Can we play it now?’ She twisted to look up at him.

‘Feel free.’

She turned back to the music centre, inspecting the rows of buttons and dials. It took her a minute to locate the CD component. ‘Here?’ she asked, checking.

‘Right.’

She slid out the disc that was already there and replaced it with the new one. Nothing happened, and Rolfe said, ‘You need to press the “play” button.’

Her fingers hovered as she read the labels on the various buttons, then touched one. ‘This?’

‘Yes.’

The music began, barely audible, and she asked, ‘Where’s the volume control?’

‘Here.’ His lean fingers turned the knob. A hand briefly lighted on her shoulder, then he offered it to help her up.

Taking it, she rose to her feet. ‘Thank you. Don’t you like pop music?’

‘Some.’ He let go her hand. ‘These guys are musicians. They know what they’re doing.’

‘So we have tastes in common.’

He regarded her strangely. ‘I guess we do.’

Her lips parted, her tongue caught for a moment between her teeth. ‘Of course we do, or we’d never have married.’

His laugh was brief. ‘That’s a remarkably naive view of marriage, for you.’

‘For me?’

‘For anyone,’ he amended swiftly. ‘Don’t they say opposites attract?’

‘Do they? I mean, yes, I know people say that but…I’m not sure it’s a good basis for marriage. Are we opposites?’

‘Some people might have thought so,’ he allowed. ‘But we were both willing to take a gamble on our relationship. Perhaps for different reasons.’

‘Different reasons? What were they?’

He was silent, staring down at her. ‘I can’t speak for you,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. And as for myself…’ Shrugging, he turned away to go back to the sofa. ‘I suppose I was in love.’

‘You suppose?’ Following him, she stopped short as he sat down, facing her.

When he looked up his eyes had a strange, glazed glitter in them. His smile twisted. ‘All right,’ he said, and reached forward, his hand closing about her wrist to tug her down beside him.

He retained his hold, looking at the hand he held, his thumb stroking over the back of it. ‘I don’t know what else to call it.’ His voice was low and strained.

He’d called it lust earlier, she remembered. Lust at first sight, he’d said, describing their meeting.

‘It’s not my habit,’ he told her, ‘to take a woman I’ve just met to bed—no matter how willing she is. For months I could hardly see straight for wanting you. You were…an obsession.’

‘And you resented it.’ She stated the fact baldly.

He seemed startled, his eyes meeting hers, searching her face. ‘Maybe I did in a way. I wasn’t used to that level of…distraction.’

‘Distraction?’

‘I have a demanding, complex business to run. Ever since I left university I’ve been building it, expanding it. There wasn’t time for much else in my life. Or energy. And then suddenly there was you. For a time I felt as if I’d lost control.’

‘You’d hate that.’ She knew as surely as if he’d spelled it out for her that Rolfe liked being in control of himself, of his life.

And of his wife? The wayward thought made her shiver inside. Just how had he felt, how had he reacted, when she’d insisted on visiting Australia without him? She’d sensed anger in him several times since she’d woken in that hospital room—anger controlled and usually well concealed, but simmering beneath the surface.

Rolfe released her hand and sighed, settling into the corner of the sofa, one arm laid along the back. ‘Hate it?’ he repeated. ‘The most exciting sex I’d had in my entire life?’

‘Sex?’ Capri clamped her hands together. ‘You just said you fell in love.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two. Harder, they say, for men than women. Perhaps that’s true.’

‘Perhaps,’ she agreed tentatively. ‘I don’t think I would have found it so difficult.’

‘Don’t you?’ He regarded her pensively.

Her gaze slid aside. Maybe she was wrong. At this moment she was fighting a strong urge to close the small space between them and rest her head against his chest, feel his arms about her. Could that be love? Perhaps her body, her heart, remembered what her mind refused to give up to consciousness.

‘Listen.’ He tipped his head back, angling it to concentrate on the music from the hidden speakers. Two voices blended against a subtle, haunting melody.

Burning like a rocket

exploding into stars

most splendid in its dying

is this love of ours

The song was called ‘Fire in the Sky’. She loved the tune, but the words saddened her, telling of a love that had flared briefly, incandescently.

too bright to last the distance

a fire in the sky.

‘He knows,’ Rolfe murmured.

‘He?’

‘The guy who wrote the song.’ He turned his head, his eyes half closed and gleaming, his mouth cynical. ‘Doesn’t he?’

‘It isn’t like that with me!’

Rolfe’s attitude was relaxed but very still. Something stirred in those almost-hidden dark eyes. ‘How would you know?’ he enquired softly.

‘I know if I really loved someone it would be for ever. Not some flash in the pan, like in the song.’

‘You sound as though you mean it.’

‘I just know that’s how it is, for me.’

‘Really.’ Although he still hadn’t shifted his position, his hand was tightly gripping the back of the sofa. ‘And yet you left me.’

‘Left you?’ She stared at him.

Rolfe stirred then, sitting up but not meeting her eyes. ‘To go off to Australia without me.’

‘But that was a holiday…wasn’t it?’ Doubt sneaked in and a hollow feeling opened in her stomach. ‘Do you mean I didn’t intend to come back? But…if we were separated, I’m here under false pretences—’ The thought was frightening. If their marriage had ended, if he didn’t really want her here, she had no right to be with him, and where could she go? A sliver of fear chilled her.

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