‘Quite a surprise,’ he commented dryly. ‘For both of us, I would imagine.’
Now Magenta recognised a transatlantic lilt in his deep tones that she somehow knew hadn’t been there six years ago, and with another kick from the darker corners of her mind she recognised that the healthy bronze of his skin owed as much to time spent living in the States as to his Anglo-Italian roots.
His well-layered hair was shining like polished jet beneath the lights, but he looked bigger, broader and tougher than the young man surfacing from her memory banks. This man was harder and more forceful. His maturity was reflected in the span of his wide shoulders, and in that commanding air that said he had done a lot of living, while his darkly shaded jaw and the dark hair that was curling above the open neckline of his casual yet beautifully tailored striped shirt seemed to scream of his virility.
‘I have to admit,’ he was saying, oblivious to the turmoil going on inside her, ‘this isn’t the sort of place I would have expected to find you.’
His thinly veiled cynicism stopped her from telling him that her job there two evenings a week was just one of her means of being gainfully employed. That she had a day job as a typist and would shortly be moving on to better things if the position she had been shortlisted for and was pinning every last hope on came good during the course of the coming week.
The need to recover those lost months of her life was more pressing than the need to maintain her self-esteem, so now, overcoming her fear of what the answer might be, she ventured to ask, ‘Wh-where exactly had you expected to find me?’
His mouth jerked down at one side in a gesture of increasing cynicism. ‘Is that meant to be some sort of joke?’
The hardness of his eyes made Magenta feel as though she was being touched by cold steel. But, whatever he had expected of her, he wasn’t aware that she had lost her memory, was he?
She wanted to tell him but he seemed so hostile, and yet she was trying to make sense of the wildfire he’d ignited in her blood the second she had seen him walk into the bar.
Even the solid barrier of the counter between them couldn’t protect her from the images which were bursting from her memory banks. Images of this man kissing her. Undressing her. Of his deep voice whispering sensual phrases that had driven her mindless for him as he’d pleasured and worshipped her body...
She might have forgotten but her body hadn’t. This realisation hit her with frightening clarity. And yet the specifics of the bitter conflict that stood so obviously between them continued to elude her memory.
Trying again, she uttered almost involuntarily, ‘I don’t remember you,’ and flinched as her flat little statement produced a sharp, incisive laugh from him.
‘You mean you don’t want to,’ he amended with a humourless smile.
I mean I don’t. I don’t remember what happened.
She put her hand to her forehead, trying to smooth out the chaos of jumbled pieces that were floating up from that part of her brain that remained dormant. In denial.
‘You were younger.’ She brought her hand down slowly. ‘Thinner.’ And surely possessing only a fraction of the dynamism of the man who stood before her now?
‘Most probably, as I was only twenty-three.’
And working like a slave in your father’s restaurant.
Where had that come from? Magenta wondered as another recollection kicked in to bring her hand up to her head again.
‘Are you all right?’
Through the buzz of conversation she caught an element of concern in the deep, masculine voice.
‘Has seeing me again been too much for you? You look a little pale.’
‘Well, anyone would compared to you,’ she said snappily, realising that he still didn’t understand or believe her. ‘You look disgustingly healthy.’
‘Yes, well...’ His hard mouth quirked, tugging in a gesture that was all at once familiar, lazy and disturbingly sensual. ‘Life’s been good.’
He seemed to need to tell her that, she decided, sifting through the chaff and debris in her mind to try and discover what it was that had brought them from lovers to this hostile place where they now found themselves. But just at that moment her gaze fell to the two tumblers that Thomas had come to put down on the counter in front of them.
A Scotch and soda for Andreas and a bottle of orange juice for...
Trying not to be too obvious, Magenta made a quick survey of the crowded space behind him, catching his mocking expression before she was able to assess who he might have brought with him. She asked quickly, ‘Do you come here often?’
Had she really asked him something so trite? So totally banal? she thought, cringing.