November Harlequin Presents 1(114)

‘So what took you so long?’

The look of shock combined with blank astonishment on her fine features told him better than his own ears how aggressive and hostile he had sounded. That was the result of the sudden, violent tug of attraction throwing him off balance with its hint of how things had once been—in the life he could no longer remember.

‘Forgive me,’ he added automatically. ‘I don’t find it easy living with everyone knowing more about me than I do myself. It’s just a relief to see a familiar face.’

But then something about the way she looked, some movement of her head, a flash of wariness in her eyes, hastily concealed, set his nerves on edge and had him clamping his jaw tight shut on the anger that almost escaped him.

Had he got things wrong? Was Becca here because of what was still between them or had Leander decided to call her as a way of getting round the doctor’s unwelcome suggestion that he have a nurse? If that was the case, then the way that Andreas’ explicit instructions had been so blatantly ignored made anger well up inside him.

‘We are still together, aren’t we? Or are you just here as the damn nurse?’

‘Am—I…?’

Becca’s thoughts spun as she saw the way that Andreas’ face had changed. It seemed as if in the few brief moments since he had opened his eyes and focused on her sitting there, watching him, he had swung from one extreme of mood to another with such devastating speed that she had difficulty interpreting his feelings or keeping up with each new change.

Disbelief she had been prepared for, suspicion too. After all, they had parted on such terrible terms that she couldn’t imagine that he would truly be happy to see her, even though she had been told that he had asked for her. The last memory she had of him was of him standing in the doorway of his villa, this villa, watching her walk away, his face set into stony, unyielding lines, rejection stamped into every muscle in his tautly held body. She had known without even glancing back that his arms were folded tight across his broad chest, his powerful body filling the door space, blocking it, so that there was no hope of her getting back into the house if she had been foolish enough even to try.

But she hadn’t tried. Even if she had wanted to, she knew she would be a fool to consider it. One glance into those cruel black eyes, seeing the hatred and the dark fury that had burned there, had been enough to keep her feet moving doggedly forward, even though tears blinded her eyes until she could hardly see the path in front of her. And even without that black fury, she had vowed that she was never going back. Never.

‘I married you for sex—for that and nothing else,’ he had said, and from somewhere deep in her soul she had dragged, up a fierce, savage hatred for Andreas. A hatred that burned away all the love she thought she had felt for him and left it shrivelled into ashes in what remained of her heart. She had clung on to that hatred, and fuelled it by reminding herself over and over and over just what he had said, the way he hadn’t believed her.

And that hatred, that fury had been enough to get her out of there and into the taxi that he had called to take her away.

It was only when the car had rounded the corner out of sight of the villa that she had let the bitter tears fall.

But it seemed from his behaviour now that Andreas remembered nothing of that. It was the only explanation she could think of for the way he was behaving.

Memory problems, Leander had said and, tense and jittery with nerves, she hadn’t thought to ask for details of what had happened. Now it seemed that she might have to face the fact that to Andreas she was the woman he had known—what? A year before? Fifteen months? It couldn’t be much more than that because they had married after only four months together.

But it seemed that that wedding and the dreadful events that had followed it had been wiped from his mind. He obviously recalled nothing about their break up—or the reasons for it. So how was she to cope with that—and how was she to behave now?

‘Well?’

The question was snapped out curtly. She’d hesitated too long. Patience had never been a virtue that Andreas Petrakos held in high esteem and it seemed that that at least hadn’t changed.

‘Has Leander brought you in to act as the nurse they threatened me with?’

‘Do you see having a nurse to look after you as a threat?’ Becca hedged, unable to control the way an instinctive smile curled up the corners of her mouth.

Of course Andreas saw the idea of having a nurse to look after him as some sort of imposition—a threat. He’d hate the thought of needing to be looked after in any way at all. And his pride would make him fight against the prospect of that happening.