The Second Mrs. Adams Read online

  “You’re all right,” he said gently. “You fainted, that’s all.”

  “Fainted.” She made a sound he supposed was a laugh. God, her face was as pale as the pillow sham. “I couldn’t have fainted. It’s—it’s so Victorian.”

  “Sir?” David looked around. Ellen was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide, with a basin of ice and a towel.

  “That’s fine, Ellen. Just bring that to me—thank you. And shut the door after you when you leave.”

  Joanna stared up at him, her face still pale. “I can’t believe I fainted.”

  “Well, you did. You overdid,” he said grimly. “Too much, too soon, that’s all. Can you turn your head a bit? That’s the way.”

  “My head hurts,” she said, and winced. “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting you out of this dress.”

  She caught his hand but he shrugged her off and went on opening the tiny jet buttons that ran down the front of the black silk dress.

  “David, don’t. I’m OK. I can—”

  “You can’t,” he said, even more grimly, “and you won’t. Dammit, woman, how can a dress be tight enough at the throat to cut off your air and so loose everyplace else that it turns you into a sack of potatoes?”

  “A sack of…” Joanna flushed. “You don’t like this dress?”

  “I don’t like flour sacks. What man does? And what the hell does what I like or not like have to do with what you Wear? Sit up a little. That’s it. Now lift your arm…the other one. Good girl.”

  She stared at him as he tossed the dress aside. “But I thought…I assumed…” She thought of the closetful of ugly clothes, of the awful furniture in the room, of the servants David had so pointedly said were hers, and her mouth began to tremble.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Turn on your side.”

  She obeyed without thinking. His voice was toneless, his touch as impersonal as a physician’s. She felt his hands at the nape of her neck, and then her hair came tumbling down over her shoulders.

  “There,” he said, “that’s better. No wonder your head hurts. You’ve got enough pins stuck into your scalp to…to…”

  His angry, rushed words ground to a halt. He had turned her toward him again and as he looked down at her, his heart seemed to constrict within his chest.

  She was so beautiful. So much the woman he still remembered, the woman he’d never been able to get out of his mind. Stripped of the ugly dress, her hair flowing down over her creamy shoulders, her eyes wide and fixed on his, she was everything he remembered, everything he’d ever wanted, and the name he’d once called her whispered from his lips.

  “Gypsy,” he said huskily.

  Who? Joanna thought, who? It wasn’t her name, surely… and yet, as she looked up in David’s eyes and saw the way he was looking at her, she felt as if she were falling back to another time and place.

  Gypsy, she thought, oh, yes, she would be his Gypsy, if that was what he wanted, she would dance for him by firelight, she would whirl around him in an ever-tightening circle until she fell into his waiting arms. She would do whatever he asked of her, she would love him forever…

  “Joanna,” he whispered.

  He bent toward her, then hesitated. Joanna didn’t think, she simply reached up, clasped his face and brought him to her.

  His mouth closed over hers.

  His kiss was gentle, soft and sweet. But she could feel him trembling and she knew what was happening, that he was fighting to control what was raging through him, the need to plunder her mouth, to ravage her until she cried out with need. She knew, because it was raging through her, too.

  “David,” she sighed.

  He groaned and his arms swept around her as he came down on the bed beside her. Her body was soft as silk and hot as the sun against his; his hand swept up and cupped her breast; she moaned and he felt her nipple spring to life beneath the silk of her slip and press against his palm…

  “Mr. Adams?”

  He raised his head and stared blindly at the closed door. Someone was knocking on it and calling his name.

  “Mr. Adams? It’s Ellen, sir. Dr. Corbett’s arrived. Shall I send him up?”

  David looked down at Joanna. Her face was flushed with color, her eyes were dark as the night. Her mouth was softly swollen and pink from his kisses….

  But it meant nothing. Nothing. If he valued his own sanity, he had to keep remembering that.

  His wife, his beautiful, lying wife, was unexcelled at this game. Her body still remembered how to play, even if her mind did not.

  “David?”

  Her voice was as soft as it always was. It was her heart that was hard.

  “David,” she said again, and he stood up, took her robe from where it lay at the foot of the bed, and tossed it to her.

  “Cover yourself,” he said coldly, and then he turned his back on his wife and on temptation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JOANNA was stunned by the tone of cold command in her husband’s voice.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he growled. “Cover yourself—unless you don’t object to Corbett knowing what you were up to a minute ago.”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. “What I was up to?”

  “All right. What we were up to. Does that make you feel better?”

  She grabbed the robe he’d tossed to her and shoved her arms through the sleeves. She was trembling, not with the aftermath of desire but with the fury of humiliation.

  “Nothing could make me feel better,” she said shakily, “except being able to start my life beginning the day before I met you.”

  “My sentiments exactly. The sooner you get your memory back, the better it will be for the both of us.”

  Joanna swung her legs to the floor and stood up, stumbling a little as she did. David reached out to help her but she swatted his hands away.

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again. Do you understand?”

  David stared at his wife. Her eyes blazed black in her face. Suddenly, he was overcome with guilt. What had just happened was as much his fault as hers. Hell, who was he kidding? It was all his fault. She had no memory but he—he remembered everything. And she was right. She hadn’t started this ugly scene, he had.

  “Joanna,” he said, “listen—”

  “Get out of my room.”

  “Jo, please, I’m trying to apolo—”

  She snatched a perfume bottle from the vanity and hurled it at him. He ducked and it whizzed by his head and shattered against the wall just as the door banged open.

  Doctor Corbett paused in the doorway. He looked at the shards of glass that glittered against the carpet, then cleared his throat and raised a politely inquisitive face to David and Joanna.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “is there a problem here?”

  “Yes!” Joanna glared at David. “I want this man out of my room!”

  Corbett turned to David. “Mr. Adams,” he said gently, “perhaps you’ll give me a few moments alone with your…”

  “Be my guest, Doctor. Take a few years, if you like,” David snarled.

  The door slammed shut after him. The doctor waited and then cleared his throat again.

  “Well, Mrs. Adams,” he said briskly, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”

  Joanna swung toward him. “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she said furiously. “I’ll tell you what’s…what’s…” Her shoulders slumped. She felt the rage that had been driving her draining from her system. “Oh, hell,” she muttered, “hell!” She sank down on the edge of her bed and wiped her sleeve across suddenly damp eyes. “I want my memory back,” she said in a choked whisper. “Is that asking so much?”

  “My dear Mrs. Adams—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Joanna’s head snapped up, her eyes gleaming once again with anger. “It’s bad enough I’m married to that—that cold-blooded Neanderth
al! I certainly don’t need to be reminded of it all the time.”

  Corbett sighed. Then he pulled a Kleenex from a box on the table beside Joanna’s bed and handed it to her.

  “Suppose you tell me what happened tonight,” he said quietly. “All I really know is that your housekeeper phoned my service and said you’d collapsed.”

  “I didn’t collapse!” Joanna dabbed at her eyes, wiped her nose, then balled up the tissue and threw it into a wicker wastebasket. “David blew what happened out of all proportion. I just felt woozy for a minute, that’s all.”

  “Woozy,” Corbett repeated.

  “Yes. I know it’s not the sort of fancy medical term you use, but…” She stopped, bit her lip, and looked at him. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know why I’m letting my anger out on you.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s myself I’m angry at.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you mean, for what?” She threw her arms wide. “For everything! For having something as stupid as amnesia, that’s for what!”

  “There’s nothing ‘stupid’ about amnesia,” Corbett said gently. “And you didn’t have a choice in acquiring it. You suffered a head injury, and it’s going to take time to heal.”

  “It will heal though, won’t it? You said—”

  “There are no guarantees but, as I’ve told you, I’ve every reason to believe your memory will return.” Corbett drew out the bench from the vanity table and sat down facing her. “Right now, I’m more concerned about what you call this ‘wooziness’ you felt tonight. Did it come on suddenly? Or was it precipitated by some event?”

  She sighed. “It didn’t happen out of the blue, if that’s what you’re asking. I…I remembered something. Not much, there was just a momentary flash…but it startled me.”

  “So, it was the shock of remembering that made you feel…what? Dizzy? Weak?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “And then?” Corbett prompted.

  “And then, David told Mrs. Timmons to phone you and he brought me up here and…and…” Her voice trailed off.

  “And you quarreled?”

  She thought of how David had undressed her, of how he’d let down her hair. Of how he’d kissed her and how she’d responded with heated, almost unbearable passion…and of how he’d reacted then, with an anger that had bordered on disgust.

  “Joanna?”

  Color washed over her skin. “You could say that,” she murmured, and looked down at her lap.

  Corbett reached for his leather medical bag. “Very well. Let’s just check a few things, shall we?”

  “Check whatever you like. There’s nothing wrong with me. Not physically, anyway.”

  She was right. The doctor’s examination was thorough and when it was over, he pronounced her in excellent health.

  “In excellent health,” Joanna said with a bitter smile. “It’s like that awful old joke, the one about the operation being a success but the patient dying.”

  “You’re making fine progress. You’ve started to remember things.”

  “A picture of a bottle of beer flashing through my head isn’t exactly the same as getting my memory back, Doctor.”

  “Joanna.” Corbett took her hand in his. “You must have patience. I know this is difficult for you and for your husband, but—”

  “Oh, please!” Joanna snatched back her hand. “Don’t waste your sympathy on David!”

  “Surely, you realize your condition is affecting him as well as you?”

  “Look,” she said, after a brief hesitation, “I know I must sound like a shrew. But you can’t imagine what David’s like.”

  “No,” Corbett said mildly, “I can’t. I only know what I’ve observed, that he came to the hospital every evening of your stay, that he agreed to bring you home when you seemed unhappy at Bright Meadows, that he’s stood by you during a most difficult period.”

  Joanna stared at the doctor. Then she gave a deep, deep sigh.

  “You’re right, I suppose. And I have tried to keep in mind that this can’t be easy for him.”

  “Joanna, the worst thing about loss of memory is the pressure it brings to bear on a relationship. That’s why you both need to be patient as you restructure yours.”

  “Yes, but…” She hesitated. “But it’s hard,” she said softly, “when you don’t know what things were like between you in the first place. I mean, what if…what if things had been shaky for a couple—a hypothetical couple—in the past? How could they possibly restructure a relationship successfully? One of them would know the truth and the other—the other would be working in the dark.”

  Corbett smiled. “There are those who would say the one working in the dark was fortunate.”

  “Fortunate?” Joanna’s head came up. “That I don’t know—that this hypothetical person doesn’t know what sort of marriage she had?”

  “Without a past, there can be no regrets. No anger, no recriminations… It’s like starting over again with a clean slate.”

  Joanna laughed softly. “I didn’t know they taught Optimism in med school.”

  “Philosophy was my love before I decided on medicine.” Corbett chuckled. “Sometimes, it still comes in handy.” He patted her hand, then stood up. “I’m going to give you something to help you sleep. And I’m going to leave you a prescription you must promise to follow.”

  “What kind of prescription? You said I was healthy.”

  “I want you to stop worrying about the past. Carpe diem, Joanna. Seize the day. The past is lost to all of us, not just to you. It’s today and tomorrow that matter.”

  A slight smile curved across Joanna’s lips. “More leftover class notes from Philosophy, Doctor?”

  “Just an old-fashioned mother who loved quoting the classics.” Corbett took a vial of tablets from his bag, shook two into her palm and poured her a glass of water from the thermos jug on the night table. “It’s time you started living your life again.”

  “That sounds terrific, Doctor Corbett, but I don’t know what ‘my life’ is.”

  “Then find out,” he said briskly, snapping shut his bag. “Surely you had friends, interests, things you enjoyed doing…?”

  “From what I can gather, I seem to have made an art of doing as little as possible,” she said with a faintly bitter smile.

  “Then try something new. Something you can share with David, perhaps. But don’t go on moping and feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Me?” Joanna handed him the glass. Her voice rose in indignation. “But I haven’t…” Her gaze met Corbett’s. She laughed and fell back against the pillows. “That’s some combination,” she said wryly, “philosophy and medicine.”

  Corbett grinned. “Just think of me as Ann Landers, M.D.” He waved a hand in salute and shut the bedroom door.

  * * *

  The doctor’s advice made sense.

  She couldn’t recall the past. Much as it upset Joanna to admit it, she didn’t even have any guarantee that she ever would.

  So whatever condition her marriage had been in didn’t matter. It was what she made of it now that counted.

  David didn’t seem to like her very much. Well, she thought early the next morning as she pulled on a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top, maybe she hadn’t been a very likeable person.

  No. That couldn’t be, she thought with a smile…

  But it was possible, wasn’t it?

  Or maybe they’d hit a rough patch in their marriage. Maybe they’d begun to drift apart.

  Not that it mattered. The doctor was right. Carpe diem. The past was gone and only the present mattered, and when you came down to it, she didn’t know all that much about the present, either, especially as it related to her husband.

  Share something with David, Corbett had advised.

  But what? What did her husband do with his spare time? What were his interests? Who were his friends?

  Joanna glanced at her watch as she
pulled her hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a coated rubber band. She had lots of questions and hardly any answers. Well, starting today, she was going to go after those answers.

  Quietly, she opened the door to her bedroom and stepped out into the corridor.

  David was in for a surprise.

  * * *

  “Surprise” wasn’t the right word.

  “Shocked” came closer to the truth, judging by the look on his face when he came trotting down the steps ten minutes later and saw her.

  “Joanna?” He stared at her as if she might be an hallucination. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  She smiled at him over her shoulder. She’d been doing stretching exercises while she waited, using one of the marquetry benches that flanked the foyer door for support.

  “Good morning,” she said, as she finished her last stretch. “And it’s not really so early, is it?”

  He tore his astonished gaze from her and glanced at his watch.

  “Are you kidding? It’s just after six.”

  “Well, I was awake so I figured, instead of just lying in bed vegetating, I might as well get up and do something useful.” She jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen. “I made a pot of coffee.”

  “Yes. Yes, I thought I smelled coffee.”

  “Would you like some?”

  “No. Ah, no, thank you.” He edged past her, as if she might vaporize if touched. “I prefer to wait until after my run but you go ahead and, ah, and have a cup.”

  “I already did.” She followed after him, to the front door. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “That you made coffee? No, of course not.”

  “That I’ve decided to run with you.”

  He swung toward her. “That you’ve…?” His gaze flew over her again, taking in her gray sweat shorts, her tank top, her ponytail, her running shoes. She’d decided to run with him? His brain couldn’t seem to process the information. She hadn’t run with him in months. In years. She hadn’t done any of this in years, gotten up at this hour, put up the morning coffee, worn this tattered outfit that had once made his pulse beat quicken…hell, that still made his pulse beat quicken because she was the only woman he’d ever known who could fill out a shirt that way, or pair of shorts, the only one whose early morning, unmade-up face was a face that would have put Helen of Troy to shame…