The Second Mrs. Adams Read online

  Morgana seemed to hesitate. Then she took the outstretched hand, leaned forward and pressed her cheek lightly to Joanna’s.

  “What a lovely surprise.” She drew back, looked at David and smiled, and it struck Joanna that the smile seemed strained. “You never said Joanna would be joining us, David.”

  “No.” His eyes held Joanna’s. “But then, it’s a surprise to me, too.”

  Joanna flushed and disentangled her fingers from Morgana’s. “I only decided to come at the last minute,” she lied. “I was just telling David, I…I suppose I should have let him know…”

  “Ah-ha! Here we are. Tico, I do believe that this is the lovely lady we have to thank for tonight’s marvelous party!”

  Joanna swung around and blinked in astonishment. A man and a chimpanzee, dressed in identical tuxedos and trailed by a crowd of onlookers, had appeared at her side.

  “You are Mrs. Adams,” the man said, “are you not?”

  “Why…why yes, I—”

  “Joanna,” someone called, “yoo-hoo, over here!”

  Joanna looked past the man in the tux. A woman with diamonds blazing at her ears and throat was waving at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Joanna said, “I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “Tico insisted you weren’t Mrs. Adams,” the man in the tux said. Joanna turned toward him again and he shot her a blazing smile. “But I said, yes, of course you were, and I was right.” He sighed dramatically. “Tico can be so stubborn.”

  “Jo? Over here. It’s so great to see you again. You remember me, don’t you?”

  Joanna’s gaze flew from face to face. “No,” she said, “actually, I’m afraid that I—”

  “Anyway, Tico was determined to meet you.”

  “Are you talking about, ah, about the chimp?” Joanna said, looking at the man in the tux again.

  “We don’t call him that. Not to his face, anyway. It tends to upset him, but then, you know how artistes are, they have such delicate…”

  “Oh, Joanna,” a voice squealed, “I didn’t know they’d let you out. How lovely!”

  “No one ‘let me out’,” Joanna said, staring at the blur of faces. “I mean, I’m not sick. Or crazy. I’m just—”

  “…egos.”

  She swung back to the man with the chimp. “Egos?”

  “Egos,” he said, and nodded. “Delicate ones. All artists are like that, don’t you agree?” He stepped closer and breathed into Joanna’s face. She pulled back from the scent of…bananas? “Tico, particularly. It truly upsets him to be referred to as a primate.”

  “As a primate,” Joanna repeated stupidly. She looked down at the chimp and it looked back at her.

  “Exactly. Oh, do forgive me for not introducing myself. My name is Chico.”

  “Chico,” Joanna repeated. A nervous giggle rose in her throat. “He’s Tico? And you’re…?”

  “Mrs. Adams.” A youngish man with his hair sprayed firmly into place shoved forward and stabbed a microphone into her face. “Tom Jeffers, WBQ-TV news,” he said with a self-important smile. “Would you care to tell our viewers how you’re feeling?”

  “Well…” Joanna blinked as the hot lights of a video camera suddenly glared into her eyes. “Well, I’m feeling—”

  “Is it true you lost your memory and that you were in a coma for two weeks?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but—”

  A lush, bleached blonde in a miniskirt jammed a tape recorder under her nose.

  “Mona Washbourne, from the Sun. Mrs. Adams, what about the rumors that you’d broken all the bones in your body?”

  “That’s not true. I didn’t—”

  “How about the plastic surgery they had to do on your face. Any comment?”

  “Actually, I—”

  “Mrs. Adams.” Chico and his tuxedo were all but bristling. “Tico is not accustomed to being kept waiting. If you wish to meet him, you’ll have to—”

  “All right,” David said brusquely, “that’s enough.”

  His arm, hard and warm and comforting, swept around Joanna’s waist. She sagged against him, her knees weak.

  “My wife has no comment.”

  “Of course she does,” the blonde snapped. “Women are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Adams?”

  Joanna shook her head in bewilderment. “Please,” she whispered, “I don’t…I can’t…”

  A flashbulb went off. Joanna cried out, turned and buried her face in David’s chest.

  “That’s it,” he said grimly, and he swung her into his arms. She made a strangled sound and wound her arms around his neck. Another flashbulb went off in her face. “Bastards,” David snarled, and without any apologies he shouldered his way through the mob.

  Joanna didn’t lift her head until she felt the sudden coolness of the night air on her skin. Carefully, she looked up and peered behind her.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  The crowd had followed them with Chico and Tico, in their matching tuxedos, leading the parade.

  “Mrs. Adams!” Chico’s high-pitched voice trembled with indignation. “If you don’t speak with Tico this instant, he’s going to be dreadfully upset!”

  “Give him the banana you were saving for yourself,” David muttered. “How did you get here, Joanna? Did Hollister bring you?”

  She nodded. “He said he’d wait around the corner.”

  “At least you did something right,” he snapped.

  A moment later, they were safely inside the Bentley, with the privacy partition up, racing through the darkened streets toward home. Joanna was still in David’s arms, held firmly in his lap.

  Her heart thumped. He was angry. He was furious! She could feel it in the rigidity of his body, in the way he held her, so hard and close that it was almost difficult to breathe.

  “David?” She swallowed dryly. “David, I’m sorry.”

  In the shadowed darkness, she could just make out the steely glimmer of his eyes as he looked down at her.

  “Really,” she said unhappily, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry. I never dreamed…I mean, I never thought…”

  “No,” he growled, “hell, no. You never dreamed. You never thought. Not for one damned minute, not about anybody but yourself.”

  “That isn’t true! I didn’t mean to make a scene. It never occurred to me that—”

  “What did you think would happen, once the sharks smelled blood in the water?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, I never imagined they’d—”

  “What in bloody hell was the point in my working my tail off to keep them away from you in the hospital?”

  “David, if you’d just listen—”

  “And what were you thinking, showing up looking like this?”

  Joanna’s cheeks flushed. “OK, I suppose I deserve that. I know you prefer me to dress more demurely. It’s just that the other night…I thought you said…I realize now, I must have imagined it, but I thought you said you didn’t like my hair in a chignon and the kind of dress I was wearing, and…and…”

  “Dammit, Joanna, you should never have showed up tonight!”

  A rush of angry tears rose in her eyes. She put her hands against David’s chest and tried to push free.

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear,” she said, “and I promise you, I won’t bother you and your little playmate again.”

  “Playmate? What playmate?”

  “Morgana,” she said stiffly, “that’s what playmate. Damn you, David, if you don’t let me go I’ll…I’ll…”

  “What?” he said, and suddenly his voice was low and soft and almost unbearably sexy. “What will you do, Gypsy?”

  She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t think of an answer. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had because his arms tightened around her, his mouth closed on hers, and suddenly he was kissing her as if the world might end at any second.

  Joanna hesitated. Then, trembling with pleasure, she buried her fingers in her hu
sband’s thick, silky hair and kissed him back.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HIS mouth was hot, and so were his hands.

  And she was burning, burning under his touch.

  This is wrong, Joanna’s brain shrieked, it’s wrong…

  How could it be wrong, when the searing flame of David’s kiss felt so wonderful?

  She whispered his name and he drew her even closer, until she was lying across his lap, her hair spilling over his arm, her hands clutching his shoulders desperately as his mouth sought and found the tenderness of hers.

  “Open to me, Gypsy,” he breathed and she did, parting her lips under the heat of his, moaning softly as he nipped her bottom lip, then stroked the sweet wound with the tip of his tongue.

  He groaned and she felt his fingers at the nape of her neck, undoing her zipper, sliding it down until the bodice of her dress fell from her shoulders.

  “No,” she said, clutching at the silky fabric, “no, David, we can’t…”

  He cupped the back of her hand, his fingers tangling almost cruelly in her hair as he tilted her head back.

  “The hell we can’t.”

  “Hollister…”

  “The partition’s up. Hollister can’t see or hear us.” In the dark, his eyes gleamed with an almost predatory brilliance. He bent to her and kissed her until she was trembling in his arms.

  “This is our own little world, Gypsy. No one can see us. No one even knows we’re here.” He kissed her again. “And you are my wife.”

  His wife.

  Joanna’s breath caught. The simple words were as erotic as any a man had ever whispered to a woman.

  And he was right. In the night, surrounded by the anonymity of the city, she felt as if they were alone in the universe.

  She sighed with pleasure as he kissed her throat, and then the delicate flesh behind her ear.

  “I never forgot the taste of you,” he whispered thickly. His kisses were soft as rain, warm as sunlight against her skin. “Like honey. Like cream. Like…”

  His lips closed over her silk-encased nipple and she cried out softly and her body arched toward him, a tautly strung bow of consummate sensation.

  “Yes,” he said, as she whispered his name and wound her arms tightly around his neck.

  He groaned softly and shifted her, positioning her over him so that she was kneeling on the leather seat, her short, full skirt draping over his legs like the downturned petals of a flower.

  His hand slid under the skirt, cupping her, feeling her wetness, teasing it until finally he hooked his fingers into the fragile crotch of her silk teddy and tore it aside.

  Joanna gasped and jerked her head back.

  “We’re alone, Gypsy,” David whispered against her mouth. “There’s no one here but you and me. And I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman in my life.”

  He kissed her, hard, and she responded with an ardor that equaled his. It was what she wanted, too. No preliminaries. No sweet words. Just this, the blinding passion, the urgent need, the coupling that their flesh demanded.

  That her heart desired.

  Joanna’s breath caught.

  How could she have been so blind? She loved him. She had always loved him, this stranger who was her husband.

  Her injury might have made her head forget him but her soul and her flesh remembered. He was a part of her, he always had been, and now her blood was throbbing his name with each beat of her heart.

  “Gypsy?”

  He was waiting, waiting for her to give him her answer. And she gave it, blindly, gladly, lifting her mouth to his for the sweet, possessive thrust of his tongue, clasping his face in her hands and dragging it down to hers.

  He groaned softly, a primitive sound of triumph and need.

  “Unzip me,” he said, and she hurried to obey, her hands shaking with the force of her desire.

  Her fingertips brushed over the straining fabric of his trousers. She felt the pulsing hardness of his erection.

  “Joanna,” he said urgently, and his hand moved, his fingers seeking, finding, caressing her secret, weeping flesh.

  She was sobbing now, aching for him, empty without him; she had been empty for a long, long time.

  “David,” she whispered, and her fingers closed on the tab of his zipper…

  The Bentley lurched. A horn blared, and the big car lurched again.

  Joanna blinked. She pulled back in David’s arms. “What was that?”

  David cursed softly. “I don’t know.” His arms tightened around her. “And I don’t care.”

  “No. No, wait…” She lay her palms against his chest. “David, stop.”

  “Come back here!” His voice was rough with desire; he cupped her face in one hand and kissed her. “I’m crazy with the need to be inside you, Gypsy. I want to feel your heat around me, to hear you cry out my name as you come.”

  Joanna felt as if she were awakening from a deep, drugged sleep. The Bentley had slowed to a crawl. She turned her head to the window, peered out the dark glass. They were moving through a construction zone; yellow caution lights blinked in the road.

  She felt her face grow hot. No one could see in, she knew that. The tinted glass made it impossible. But that didn’t keep her from suddenly feeling as if she and David were on display.

  His hand stroked over her naked shoulders.

  “David,” she said, “please…”

  His mouth burned at her breast.

  “No. Stop it.” She began to struggle. “David,” she said sharply, “stop!”

  He lifted his head. His eyes were dark, almost unfocused; his breathing was ragged. A frisson of fear tiptoed down her spine. All at once, her husband seemed more a stranger than ever.

  “David.” She shoved harder against his chest and shoulders. “Let me go, please.”

  “Don’t be a fool! You know you want this—need this—as badly as I do. Come back here and—”

  “No!” She tried to twist away from him but he wouldn’t let her. “You don’t know the first thing about what I want.”

  “I know exactly what you want. And you damned well almost got it.”

  Her hand cracked against his jaw. They stared at each other and then David let go of her and she scrambled off his lap. He turned away and lay his forehead against the cool window glass.

  What in hell was the matter with him?

  Here he was, a grown man, sitting in the back seat of a limousine with his wife straddling his lap, the bodice of her dress down at her waist and her skirt hiked up to her hips, and if she hadn’t stopped him he’d have taken her here, on the cold leather seat, with no more finesse than a boy out on his first date.

  And he was angry at Joanna?

  God, what a pathetic excuse for a man he was.

  She hadn’t done a thing. Not one damned thing. She’d simply appeared from out of the blue, looking the way he’d never stopped remembering her, sounding the way she’d once sounded, and against all the rules of logic and reason he’d gone crazy, first with rage and then with lust and all because the terrible truth was that he’d never stopped loving the woman he’d thought he’d married.

  For all he knew he might never, ever stop loving her.

  What a joke.

  He’d called Joanna a fool but if she was a fool, what did you call a man who was in love with a woman who’d never really existed?

  Whoever this Joanna was, once her memory returned, she’d vanish as quickly as she had the first time. And then they’d be right back where they’d been before the accident, two people with nothing in common but his status and their impending divorce.

  It would have made things easier if she understood. But what could he tell her? That the loss of her memory had made her a better person? That while she prayed for the return of her memory, he dreaded it?

  David drew a shuddering breath. Making love to Joanna would have been like making love to a dream.

  It was a good thing she’d stopped him. A damned good thing.
<
br />   It had probably taken all her courage to show up at the party and he’d repaid that courage by being a selfish bastard.

  “Joanna?” He reached out his hand and she slapped it away. “Jo, listen, I know how you feel—”

  She turned toward him. He’d expected to see anguish in her eyes, that her mouth—that soft, sweet mouth—would be trembling, but he was wrong.

  What he saw wasn’t anguish but rage.

  “You’re truly remarkable,” she said bitterly. “First you know what I want, now you know what I feel.”

  “Jo, I’m trying to apologize. I should never have…”

  The limousine pulled to the curb. The engine shut off and the silence of the night settled around them. Joanna glared at him in the darkness.

  “If you ever touch me again,” she said, “so help me, David, I’ll—I’ll…”

  Her voice broke. The door swung open. He caught a quick glimpse of Hollister’s startled face as Joanna shoved past him, ran up the steps and disappeared inside the house.

  * * *

  At five in the morning, David was still sitting in the darkened living room.

  He’d been there for hours, ever since they’d come in. His jacket was off, his tie was gone and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. His shoes lay beside his chair. There was an open decanter of cognac on the table beside him and a glass in his hand. He wasn’t drunk though, God knew, he’d done his best.

  Footsteps sounded softly on the stairs.

  He rose to his feet and ran his hand through his hair. Then he walked quietly to the door and into the pool of pale yellow light cast by the lamp in the foyer.

  “Joanna?” he said softly.

  She paused, midway down the stairs. She was wearing a long yellow robe, her hair was caught back in a loose braid, and if she was surprised to see him, it didn’t show on her face.

  “Hello, David,” she said tonelessly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t. Shadows lay like bruises below her eyes.

  “I was just…” He raised his cognac snifter. “Would you like some?”

  “No. No, thank you.” She lifted both hands to her face and lightly touched her fingertips to her temples. “Actually, I came down for some aspirin. I couldn’t seem to find any in my bathroom.”