found the magic word. “Heavens, no!” she exclaimed with a shudder. “That’s the one thing I couldn’t face.”
“Then I’ll say good-night.” Keeping a safe distance between them, he bent and brushed his mouth across her cheek. But even so chaste a benediction tempted him beyond bearing. The fabric of her dress whispered over her skin in invitation, reminding him of the smooth, creamy flesh it concealed. And the color, a purple as deep as midnight in the tropics, turned her beautiful eyes an iridescent amethyst.
Clinging to him suddenly, she said on a trembling breath, “I am going to remember us eventually, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“You have my word.” He disentangled himself and shooed her away. “Off you go now. Sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
With a last doe-eyed look, she went. Expelling a breath of relief, he strode to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff measure of grappa. The brandy seared his throat, but did nothing to ease the turmoil consuming him.
He hadn’t climbed to the top of the corporate ladder through indecision, but through sound judgment and an uncanny ability to read other men. He could sense weakness, detect lack of integrity before an opponent so much as opened his mouth. Yet she left him riddled with self-doubt.
Had she surrendered to his kiss because the desire that had run riot in him had taken her hostage, too, or because she saw pandering to his sexual appetite as a way to buy forgiveness for past transgressions? When she’d talked of abiding by her promises and he’d hinted at her duplicity, had her dismay been sincere or a disingenuous cover-up?
He had no answers. Not for her or himself.
That night she dreamed of home. Except it wasn’t home any longer. Someone else had moved into her apartment and she stood at her parents’ graveside, with all her worldly possessions stacked around her in various crates and traveling trunks. “I’m going away and never coming back,” she told her mother and father, “but you’ll always be with me in my heart.”
The leaves on the trees chattered in a gust of wind. “You can’t go. You belong here.”
“I must,” she protested, indicating a shadowy figure in the distance. “He needs me. I hear him…”
“No.” The branches swooped low, binding themselves around her. The leaves piled on top of her, smothering her, holding her captive.
She awoke, tangled in fine cotton sheets, her body bathed in sweat, the blood thundering in her ears. Sunlight flooded the room.
Desperately she tried to hold on to the dream, certain she’d been on the brink of a memory breakthrough. Closing her eyes, she fought to recall the image of that elusive background shape, but the clouds that had inhabited her mind for so long now, closed in again, blotting out the picture. Perhaps tonight or tomorrow…
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