Sandra Marton - The Second Mrs Adams

“Don’t be silly. I should have thought of having your own things delivered to you days ago.”

The tip of her tongue snaked across her lips. She looked down at her robe, then back at him.

“You mean...I selected these things myself?”

He nodded. “Of course. Ellen packed them straight from your closet.”

“Ellen?”

“Your maid.”

“My...” She gave a little laugh, walked to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “I have a maid?” David nodded. “Well, thank her for me, too, please. Oh, and thank you for arranging for me to have my hair and my makeup done.”

“It isn’t necessary to thank me, Joanna. But you’re welcome.”

He spoke as politely as she did, even though he had the sudden urge to tell her that he’d liked her better with her hair wild and free, with color in her cheeks that didn’t come from a makeup box and her eyes dark and sparkling with laughter.

She was beautiful now but she’d been twice as beautiful before.

David frowned. The pressure of the past ten days was definitely getting to him. There was no point in remembering the past when the past had never been real.

“So,” he said briskly, “are you looking forward to getting sprung from this place tomorrow?”

Joanna stared at him. She knew what she was supposed to say. And the prospect of getting out of the hospital had been exciting... until she’d begun to think about what awaited her outside these walls.

By now, she knew she and David lived in a town house near Central Park but she couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of life they led. David was rich, that much was obvious, and yet she had the feeling she didn’t know what it meant to lead the life of a wealthy woman.

Which was, of course, crazy, because she didn’t know what it meant to lead any sort of life, especially one as this stranger’s wife.

He was so handsome, this man she couldn’t remember. So unabashedly male, and here she’d been lying around looking like something the cat had dragged in, dressed in a shapeless hospital gown with no makeup at all on her face and her hair wild as a whirlwind, and then her clothes and her hairdresser and her makeup had arrived and she’d realized that her husband preferred her to look chic and sophisticated.

No wonder he’d looked at her as if he’d never seen her before just last evening.

Maybe things would improve between them now. The nurses all talked about how lucky she was to be Mrs. David Adams. He was gorgeous, they giggled, so sexy...

So polite, and so cold.

The nurses didn’t know that, but Joanna did. Was that how he’d always treated her? As if they were strangers who’d just met, always careful to do and say the right thing? Or was it the accident that had changed things between them? Was he so removed, so proper, because he knew she couldn’t remember him or their marriage?

Joanna wanted to ask, but how could you ask such intimate things of a man you didn’t know?

“Joanna, what’s the matter?” She blinked and looked up at David. His green eyes were narrowed with concern as they met hers. “Have the doctors changed their minds about releasing you?”

Joanna forced a smile to her lips. “No, no, the cell door’s still scheduled to open at ten in the morning. I was just thinking about...about how it’s going to be to go...to go...” Home, she thought. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, but then, she didn’t have to. She wasn’t going home tomorrow, she was going to a rehab center. More white-tiled walls, more high ceilings, more brightly smiling nurses... “Where is Big Meadows, anyway?”

“Bright Meadows,” David said, with a smile. “It’s about an hour’s drive from here. You’ll like the place, Jo. Lots of trees, rolling hills, an Olympic-size swimming pool and there’s even an exercise room. Nothing as high-tech as your club, I don’t think, but even so—”

“My club?”

Damn, David thought, damn! The doctors had warned him against jogging her memory until she was ready, until she began asking questions on her own.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Do I belong to an exercise club?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You mean, one of those places where you dress up in a silly Spandex suit so you can climb on a treadmill to work up a sweat?”

David grinned. It was his unspoken description of the Power Place, to a tee.

“I think the Power Place would be offended to hear itself described in quite that way but I can’t argue with it, either.”

Joanna laughed. “I can’t even imagine doing that. I had the TV on this morning and there was this roomful of people jumping up and down...they looked so silly, and now you’re telling me that I do the same thing?”

“The Power Place,” David said solemnly, “would definitely not like to hear you say that.”

“Why don’t I run outdoors? Or walk? Didn’t yóu say I—we—live near Central Park?”

His smile tilted. It was as if she was talking about another person instead of herself.

“Yes. We live less than a block away. And I don’t know why you didn’t run there. I do, every morning.”

“Without me?” she said.

“Yes. Without you.”

“Didn’t we ever run together?”

He stared at her. They had; he’d almost forgotten. She’d run right along with him the first few weeks after their marriage. They’d even gone running one warm, drizzly morning and had the path almost all to themselves. They’d been jogging along in silence when she’d suddenly yelled out a challenge and sped away from him. He’d let her think she was going to beat him for thirty or forty yards and then he’d put on some speed, come up behind her, snatched her into his arms and tumbled them both off the path and into the grass. He’d kissed her until she’d stopped laughing and gone soft with desire in his arms, and then they’d flagged a cab to take them the short block back home...

He frowned, turned away and strode to the closet. “You said you preferred to join the club,” he said brusquely, “that it was where all your friends went and that it was a lot more pleasant and a lot safer to run on an indoor track than in the park. Have you decided what you’re going to wear tomorrow?”

“But how could it be safer? If you and I ran together, I was safe enough, wasn’t I?”

“It was better that way, Joanna. We both agreed that it was. My schedule’s become more and more erratic. I have to devote a lot of hours to business. You know that. I mean, you don’t know it, not anymore, but...”

“That’s OK, you don’t have to explain.” Joanna smiled tightly. “You’re a very busy man. And a famous one. The nurses all keep telling me how lucky I am to be married to you.”

David’s hand closed around the mauve silk suit hanging in the closet.

“They ought to mind their business,” he said gruffly.

“Don’t be angry with them, David. They mean well.”

“Everybody ought to mind their damned business,” he said, fighting against the rage he felt suddenly, inexplicably, rising within him. “The nurses, the reporters—”

“Reporters?”

For the second time that night, David cursed himself. He could hear the sudden panic in Joanna’s voice and he turned and looked at her.

“Don’t worry about them. I won’t let them get near you.”

“But why...” She stopped, then puffed out her breath. “Of course. They want to know about the accident, about me, because I’m Mrs. David Adams.”

“They won’t bother you, Joanna. Once I get you to Bright Meadows...”

“The doctors say I’ll have therapy at Bright Meadows.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of therapy?”

“I don’t know exactly. They have to evaluate you first.”