that—
Once again she fainted. No more warning than that. She just went limp in his arms and knew nothing for long seconds.
This time when she came round she wasn’t lying but sitting, with him standing over her pressing her head down between her knees with a very determined hand.
‘Stay there,’ he gritted when she tried to sit up. ‘Just wait a moment until the blood has had a chance to make it back to your head.’
She stayed, limp and utterly exhausted, taking in some carefully controlled breaths of air while she waited, waited for…
Nothing, she realised. No bright blinding flood of beautiful memories. Not even ugly ones. Nothing.
Carefully she tried to move, and this time he allowed her to, his dark face decidedly guarded as she sat back and looked at him.
‘What?’ he demanded jerkily when she didn’t say a word.
Empty-eyed, she shook her head. She knew what he was thinking, knew what he was expecting. She had been expecting the same thing herself.
His dark eyes glinted, a white line of tension imprinting itself around his mouth. Then he sucked in a deep lungful of air and held onto it for a long time before he let it out again.
‘Well, we aren’t going to try that again,’ he decided. ‘Not until we’ve consulted an expert to find out why you faint every time you’re confronted with yourself.’
Not myself, she wanted to correct him. You.
But she didn’t, didn’t want to get into that one. Not now, when it felt as if her whole world was balancing precariously on the edge of a great, yawning precipice.
‘So that settles it,’ he declared in the same determined tone. ‘You’re coming with me.’ He bent down to pick up the scattered papers, his lean body lithe and graceful even while it was clearly tense. ‘I’m going to need to make a few phone calls,’ he said as he straightened, then really surprised her by dropping the photograph back onto her lap. ‘While I do that, you can go and pack your things. By then I should be finished and we can get on our way—’
‘Do I have any say in this at all?’ she asked cuttingly.
‘No.’ He swung round to show her a look of grim resolve. ‘Not a damned thing. I’ve spent the last twelve months alternately thinking you were dead and wishing you were dead. But you aren’t either, are you, Samantha?’ he challenged bluntly. ‘You’re existing in some kind of limbo land to which I know for a fact that only I have the key to set you free. And until you are set free, I won’t know which of my alternatives I really prefer, and you won’t know why you prefer to stay in limbo. The newspaper report on you said they took you to a hospital in Exeter after the accident, which I presume means you received all your treatment there?’
She nodded.
So did he. ‘Then, since Exeter is where we are going, we don’t mention the past or anything to do with the past until we’ve received some advice from someone who knows what they’re talking about.’ He settled the matter decisively. ‘All you have to do is accept that I am your husband and you are my wife. The rest will have to wait.’
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