Ruthless Reunion

CHAPTER TWO

THE jury were being sworn in.

When her turn came Sanchia knew she would have to stand up, and a small dart of panic shot through her.

It wasn’t enough that the courtroom, with its high arched windows and dark paneling, was oppressive. Or that she could sense the eyes of the awesome-looking defence barrister who was standing nearest the jury box boring into her in a way that was making her feel decidedly self-conscious. No, it was the unsettling feeling on top of all that that she had done something similar before; there was some weird déjà vu in sitting here among the sculpted halls and corridors of this majestic building that was sending spears of pain across her temples, making her palms hot and clammy.

Perhaps she should have claimed exemption when she had been summoned here today. But, having been selected at random under English law, she had wanted to do her duty like any up-standing citizen, believing that she was well enough, keen to start functioning normally again. Putting her few photographic jobs on hold to take two weeks’ compulsory jury service was just another stepping stone towards that normality—another small opportunity to pick up the tenuous threads of her life.

The court official thrust the book towards her as she got shakily to her feet. On top was a card containing the words she had to say.

‘Just a moment, m’lud.’ The deep commanding voice of the defence barrister threatened to rock her off balance as it brought the swearing-in process to an abrupt halt. The panelled walls seemed to throb in the silence that followed. The official made a silencing gesture to Sanchia, who could only stand and stare at the man who had halted the proceedings.

Although it was the judge he was addressing, those grey eyes hadn’t lifted from hers. Sharp, penetrating eyes that would miss nothing, and which marked a calculating intelligence and a keen mind.

In the dark robes of his profession he had a formidable presence, from his commanding height, olive skin and sleek black hair—visible beneath the compulsory wig—to the black winged brows above those intelligent eyes and the dark shading of his jaw, which only served to strengthen an already flagrant masculinity.

‘I’m afraid I have to challenge this juror.’

All eyes were turned towards Sanchia. Hers, though, were still trapped by the power of the man who seemed to dominate the court.

With a crushing sense of foreboding she was struck by the ominous notion that somewhere in another lifetime she had been tried and judged and sentenced by this man. Perspiration beaded her forehead, made her neck feel sticky beneath the neat French pleat and the collar of her pale green jacket, and her head started to throb.

‘I would ask that this juror be removed.’

On his deep-voiced instruction, that was more a command than a request, Sanchia thought her legs were going to buckle under her.

Her face pale against the dark twist of her hair, Sanchia’s eyes questioned his in bewildered challenge. But he didn’t relent—just stood there staring at her, as though he had seen some sort of ghost. And as the court official ushered her away she felt that grey gaze following her until she had left the court, and it was then that her legs finally gave out.

Alex was immensely relieved that he had managed to get a brief but immediate adjournment. All he had wanted to do after he had seen Sanchia walk into that court—heard her name called out so that he had been forced to challenge it and have her removed—was race after her, stop her from leaving the building no matter what it took.

He needed answers to so many questions. Like where had she gone when she had run out on him that day? And what had she been doing for the past two years? Where was she living? And why, when she had first seen him in that courtroom, had she not spoken up and excused herself, as the law required any juror sitting on a case to do if they recognised someone directly involved with it. She had glanced towards him several times, been fully aware that he was there. Perhaps, he speculated, his thoughts whirring round his cool, normally ordered brain, she had been too embarrassed to say anything. Had hoped, through some small miracle, that she’d get away with it. He gritted his teeth against the familiar kick in his loins just from remembering the way she had fixed him with those cool, seductively slanting amber eyes.

Perhaps she had been planning just to sit there and enjoy watching him fazed, he thought, his jaw clenching at the gut-wrenching possibility. She had to know that her presence would have rocked the ground on which he stood. And yet, he thought, puzzled, as his robe billowed behind him in his swift, determined passage to the room where he had instructed one of the ushers to detain her, from that almost intimidated look in those beautiful eyes when he had challenged her earlier he could have sworn she had been as startled to see him as he had been when she had first walked in.

Sitting on the low sofa where someone had settled her down with a glass of water, Sanchia glanced up as the door to the private room swung open to admit the tall figure of the barrister who had challenged her.

Alex Sabre. She couldn’t remember who it was who had told her his name.

‘Hello, Sanchia.’ Her throat went dry as she saw that he had closed the door behind him, watched his purposeful, measured stride across the floor. ‘I really didn’t think you’d still be here,’ he said, and then, in a tone that was softly menacing, ‘After all, you were quick enough to ditch me last time, weren’t you?’

He was standing in front of her now, looking down on her from his commanding height.

‘I’m sorry?’ Sanchia shook her head as though that would somehow clear the fog that seemed to be clouding her senses. In the confines of the quiet room the sheer presence of this man was mind-blowing ‘Do—do I know you?’ she asked tentatively, frowning. Surely he could only have got her name from being in court?

‘Know me?’ Some private emotion chased across his hard, handsome face, deepening the groove between those very masculine brows as his eyes scanned her face with the thoroughness of a laser. But then he laughed. A short, sharp sound, devoid of any humour. ‘Oh, that’s very good! Is the loss of memory permanent? Or was it something you dreamed up when you realised I was the defending advocate? Because, believe me, it was as much a surprise for me in that court just now as it was for you.’

‘Surprise?’ She couldn’t understand what he was talking about.

‘Or perhaps that was the intention?’ he suggested, cutting across her mind-spinning confusion. ‘One final little advantage stroke before you finally agreed to face up to facts.’

‘Facts? What facts?’ she demanded, still shaking her head.

‘You know very well what I mean. Why did you take off the way you did that day? Without a word, without even the courtesy of an explanation! Where did you go? Why were you so determined never to be found?’

‘I’m sorry…’ she said again, out of confusion rather than apology. She put her hand to her forehead, felt the dull ache that throbbed between her temples.

‘I just never dreamt it was so abhorrent to you that you’d actually run away.’

‘Run away?’ From what? Her mind battled in vain for an answer, and through what seemed like a thickening haze came up with nothing except the stirrings of an inexplicable unease. ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ she said shakily.

‘A mistake?’ He laughed again, even more harshly than before. ‘Oh, I made a mistake all right! For goodness’ sake, Sanchia! Credit me with some intelligence. How long are you going to keep this up?’

‘Keep what up?’ she challenged, wondering if it was his daunting anger or something else—something nagging at her memory—that was making her feel vulnerable and afraid. ‘The fact that I don’t know what you’re talking about—don’t even know who you are?’

‘For pity’s sake!’ He slapped his forehead with his hand, his head turning sharply so that his profile was exposed to her in all its hard austerity. What did the girl think she was playing at?

Sanchia’s head hurt from the effort of trying to remember, her thoughts leaping ahead, making connections, blind assumptions. He was a barrister. She had never mixed with barristers, had she? Why would she have had any dealings with one? Unless…

‘Was I a witness, or something? Is that why I ran away?’

‘A witness?’ Something flared in the penetrating grey eyes as he turned back to glare at her with stark incredulity. His teeth were clenched, as though he was doing his level best to hold on to what remained of a frighteningly rigid control. ‘No, my dear girl, you weren’t a witness. And I don’t think I need tell you what I do with those who imagine they can fob me off with lies and generally make an idiot out of me—even with such a first-class performance as you’re giving now.’

He would tear them apart.

Though she didn’t know him, she knew that much, and she shivered, remembering what she had overheard someone saying about him earlier.

Coming from a family involved in investment and property, he had inherited a fortune on his father’s death—which he was well on the way to doubling. Even without the vast professional fees he could command, he didn’t need to work. But perhaps he just liked wielding power over people, Sanchia thought distractedly, because apparently he was known in court circles as being triple ‘R’-rated. Rich, ruthless and respected. So ruthless that anyone who came up against him who wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, didn’t stand a chance.

Now the dangerous softness with which he had spoken sent a violent shudder through her, making her temples pulse with a throbbing pressure. Something stirred in the recesses of her consciousness, a heavy drawn curtain whose dark folds refused to part, no matter how frantically she searched for daylight, for freedom, for clarity.

‘I’m not giving any performance!’ An eternal frustration brought her own anger welling up inside of her. ‘I’ve already told you! I don’t know what you’re talking about—or who you are! You say you know me, but I can’t remember you! I had an accident and lost my memory. I can’t remember you—or anything about you! I can’t remember a thing!’

She dropped her head into her hands, groaning as a wave of nausea washed over her. Through the fog of her consciousness she battled to find the truth, the effort making her head feel as though it were splitting in two.

‘Sanchia?’ He had dropped down on his haunches in front of her. Through the screen of her fingers she could see the pinstriped trousers pulling over his bunched thighs, saw how his robe pooled on the floor behind him like a dark cloak.

‘My God…’ His tone was strung with disbelief and his face was etched with incredulity as he caught her hands, drawing them down in the determined strength of his. ‘If I thought for one moment that you were serious…’

‘Of course I’m serious!’ she breathed, meeting his eyes on the level. They were cold and glittering and clear. But the intimacy of those hard hands clasping hers caused a sudden quickening of her blood, so that finding herself the focus of such a man made her pull back as though from a tremendous shock. ‘Why would I want to lie?’

From the furrow that appeared between his eyes they had registered that disconcerted little action. As they would register everything…

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

Sanchia hesitated. He was a stranger to her, and yet his compelling authority forced her to respond. ‘I had an accident. When I was in Northern Ireland.’

‘Ireland?’ He sounded surprised, but he let her go on.

‘I stepped out in front of a car and was knocked unconscious. When I came to I couldn’t remember a thing. Not what had happened, where I lived, or who I was. Gradually things began to come back. Things further back in the past. I remember my parents. When they died. Where I was. I remember everything until my late teens. But after that some things remain hazy.’ No, not just hazy, she thought. Totally obliterated. ‘Sometimes things just don’t tie up. Like walking in here today…’

‘What about walking in here today?’ Restrained urgency over-laid the deep tones.

‘Sometimes I feel as though I’ve done things before, though I know I couldn’t have.’

‘How do you know you couldn’t have done them?’

‘I just know,’ she answered lamely. ‘There’s a portion of my life I can’t recall, but I can’t have done anything that important or significant.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I’m sure I’d remember it if I had. It’s just a matter of a year or so. Two, maybe. Like where I was before the accident, what I was doing. I’ve never been able to find the link.’

‘How long were you in Ireland?’

A slender shoulder lifted beneath the fluid jacket of her trouser suit. ‘I’m not really sure. I think I’d just moved there before the accident, because I was still in a bed and breakfast. Apparently I’d told the landlady I was an orphan and totally foot-loose and fancy-free, and that I was using a post office box address until I got myself some permanent digs.’

‘How long have you been back in England?’

‘Just a couple of months. I knew I’d lived in London. I just couldn’t remember where, or when I’d left, or why. Until then I was afraid to leave the safety of the places I knew. The doctors said things would probably come back in time, given the right stimulus, but…’ She gave another dismissive little shrug. ‘It’s been over two years now, and they haven’t. They say there might possibly have been something so traumatic in my life before the accident that my brain refuses to remember it. They call it psychogenic amnesia.’ Her tone derided the phrase, as well as her own inability to recover from it.

‘And you?’ He stood up then, with a subtle waft of rather pleasant aftershave lotion. Sanchia was very relieved. Crouched down in front of her like that, his masculinity was far too disturbing. ‘Do you believe that?’

She shook her head, more out of bewilderment than negation. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. How can I know?’ Vaguely sometimes she thought there must have been some boy; she caught a snatch of a voice, a bleary outline of features, a suspicion of being cruelly and brutally hurt.

Perhaps she’d gone to pieces afterwards—had a nervous breakdown. Who knew what was locked away in the depths of her mind?

‘Had you no friends who were able to help you? To try and retrace your steps?’

‘Apparently not. The doctors said I’d told the landlady that I’d been travelling round Britain—going where I pleased—but that I was definitely going to settle there in Ireland. They didn’t give me any reason to suspect I wasn’t telling the truth.’ And then as she remembered, ‘You said—you’d…been looking for me.’ She tilted her face to the strong features that wiped away any trace of the flimsy images in her brain. ‘That I ran away. What from? What was I running from?’ A cold, sick fear crept through her. She’d always known she’d been running from something.

‘…never dreamt it was so abhorrent to you that you’d actually run away.’

As the significance of those words hit home, Sanchia lowered her gaze to stare at the floor, as though she would find the answers stamped on the worn polished boards, her thoughts scouring the dark areas of her mind for the worst possible scenario. She had done something awful! Or been accused of it at the very least. ‘Were you defending me or something?’ The eyes she raised to his were dark with appeal. ‘Is that how we know each other? What did I do? Tell me!’

‘You didn’t do anything.’ A faint smile touched his mouth and was gone again, like a glimpse of the sun in an overcast sky. ‘Nothing unlawful anyway. Though that isn’t to say that what you did do, my lovely Sanchia, couldn’t be construed as criminal.’

Which meant what? she wondered, swallowing, detecting the inflection in his voice, the biting emotion behind the disturbing way he had addressed her held in check, she sensed, only by a formidable will. Involuntarily her gaze moved over his taut robed body, coming to rest again on the strong, hard contours of his face.

‘Who are you?’ she asked shakily, suddenly—inexplicably—afraid.

Alex hesitated. To tell her the truth would be to make a mockery of himself if she were just stringing him along with this preposterous story. And if she weren’t…

One strong masculine forefinger lifted insolently to trace her cheek, making her breath catch from the disturbing intimacy of his action. ‘You really don’t remember?’

She shook her head, recognising the disbelief that still laced the deep tones. Her heart was racing in her breast.

‘Anything?’

In the stillness of the room his voice, like his touch, was caressingly soft.

She didn’t know him, and yet her body responded as though she did—as though he had done this to her before and she had responded in exactly the same way. She closed her eyes at the shocking impulses that rocked her with devastating sensuality.

‘Let’s just say we…’ his hesitation was marked ‘…were acquainted. Very briefly.’

Her wan features were wary, the only colour a splash of pink along her cheekbones from the mind-shattering awareness that had gripped her just now from the lightest brush of his hand. ‘Acquainted?’ Mercifully he wasn’t touching her any more. ‘What do you mean? In what way acquainted?’

He didn’t elaborate at once, as though he were weighing her reactions, his every move calculated, geared to eliciting the truth.

She shot him a sidelong glance, nervous again as she asked, ‘Were we…dating?’

He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘Dating?’ Was that scorn or simple rejection in his voice?