The Second Mrs Adams

“Well, Mona, I’ll be happy to share this much.” David’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He raised his arm, shot back the cuff of his dark blue suit jacket, and looked at his watch. “Get that mike out of my face and your finger off that button in the next ten seconds or you’re going to regret it.”

“Is that a threat, Mr. Adams?”

“Your word, Mona, not mine.”

“Because it certainly sounded like one. And I’ve got every word, right here, on my tape rec—”

“I never make threats, I only make promises. Anyone who’s had any dealings with me can tell you that.” His eyes met hers. “You’re down to four seconds, and still counting.”

Whatever Mona Washbourne saw in that cold, steady gaze made her jerk her finger from the Stop button and step out of the elevator.

“Didn’t you ever hear of freedom of the press? You can’t go around bullying reporters.”

“Is that what you are?” David said politely. He punched the button for Joanna’s floor and the doors began to shut. “A member of the press? Damn. And here I was, thinking you were a...”

The doors snapped closed. Just as well, he thought wearily, and leaned back against the wall. Insulting the Mona Washbournes of the world only made them more vicious, and what was the point? He was accustomed to pressure, it was part of the way he earned his living.

OK, so the last week and a half had been rough. Personally rough. He didn’t love Joanna anymore, hell, he wasn’t even sure if he had ever loved her to begin with, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t almost gone crazy with fear when the call had come, notifying him of the accident. He wasn’t heartless. What man wouldn’t react to the news that the woman he was married to had been hurt?

And, as it had turned out, “hurt” was a wild word to describe what had happened to Jo. David’s mouth thinned. She’d lost her memory. She didn’t remember anything. Not her name, not their marriage...

Not him.

The elevator doors opened. The nurse on duty looked up, frowning, an automatic reminder that it was past visiting hours on her lips, but then her stern features softened into a girlish smile.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Adams. We thought you might not be stopping by this evening.”

“I’m afraid I got tied up in a meeting, Miss Howell.”

“Well, certainly, sir. That’s what I told Mrs. Adams, that you were probably running late.”

“How is my wife this evening?”

“Very well, sir.” The nurse’s smite broadened. “She’s had her hair done. Her makeup, too. I suspect you’ll find her looking more and more like her old self.”

“Ah.” David nodded. “Yes, well, that’s good news.”

He told himself that it was as he headed down the hall toward Joanna’s room. She hadn’t looked at all like herself since the accident.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she’d asked him, just last evening, and when he hadn’t answered, her hand had shot to her forehead, clamping over the livid, half-moon scar that marred her perfect skin. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?”

David had stood there, wanting to tell her that what he’d been staring at was the sight of a Joanna he’d all but forgotten, one who lent grace and beauty even to an undistinguished white hospital gown, who wore her dark hair loose in a curling, silken cloud, whose dark-lashed violet eyes were not just free of makeup but wide and vulnerable, whose full mouth was the pink of roses.

He hadn’t said any of that, of course, partly because it was just sentimental slop and partly because he knew she wouldn’t want to hear it. That Joanna had disappeared months after their wedding and the Joanna who’d replaced her was always careful about presenting an impeccably groomed self to him and to the world. So he’d muttered something about the scar being not at all bad and then he’d changed the subject, but he hadn’t forgotten the moment.

It had left a funny feeling in his gut, seeing Joanna that way, as if a gust of wind had blown across a calendar and turned the pages backward. He’d mentioned it to Morgana in passing, not the clutch in his belly but how different Joanna looked and his Personal Assistant, with the clever, understanding instincts of one woman for another, had cluck-clucked.

“The poor girl,” she’d said, “of course she looks different! Think what she’s gone through, David. She probably dreads looking at herself in the mirror. Her cosmetic case and a visit from her hairdresser will go a long way toward cheering her spirits. Shall I make the arrangements?”

David had hesitated, though he couldn’t imagine the reason. Then he’d said yes, of course, that he’d have done it himself, if he’d thought of it, and Morgana had smiled and said that the less men knew about women’s desires to make themselves beautiful, the better.

So Morgana had made the necessary calls, and he’d seen to it that Joanna’s own robes, nightgowns and slippers were packed by her maid and delivered to the hospital first thing this morning, and now, as he knocked and then opened the door of her room, he was not surprised to find the Joanna he knew waiting for him.

She was standing at the window, her back to him. She was dressed in a pale blue cashmere robe, her hair drawn back from her face and secured at the nape in an elegant knot. Her posture was straight and proud—or was there a curve to. her shoulders and a tremble to them, as well?

He stepped inside the room and let the door swing shut behind him.

“Joanna?”

She turned at the sound of his voice and he saw that everything about her had gone back to normal. The vulnerability had left her eyes; they’d been done up in some way he didn’t pretend to understand so that they were somehow less huge and far more sophisticated. The bright color had been toned down in her cheeks and her mouth, while still full and beautiful, was no longer the color of a rose but of the artificial blossoms only found in a lipstick tube.

The girl he had once called his Gypsy was gone. The stunning Manhattan sophisticate was back and it was stupid to feel a twinge of loss because he’d lost his Gypsy a long, long time ago.

“David,” Joanna said. “I didn’t expect you.”

“I was stuck in a meeting... Joanna? Have you been crying?”

“No,” she said quickly, “no, of course not. I just—I have a bit of a headache, that’s all.” She swallowed; he could see the movement of muscle in her long, pale throat. “Thank you for the clothes you sent over.”

“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.”

“Evaluate me?” she said with a quick smile.

“Look, the place is known throughout the country. The staff, the facilities, are all highly rated.”

Joanna ran the tip of her tongue across her lips. “I don’t need therapy,” she said brightly. “I just need to remember.”

“The therapy will help you do that.”

“How?” She tilted her head up. Her smile was brilliant though he could see it wobble just a little. “There’s nothing wrong with me physically, David. Or mentally. I don’t need to go for walks on the arm of an aide or learn basket-weaving or—or lie on a couch while some doctor asks me silly questions about a childhood I can’t remember.”

David’s frown deepened. She was saying the same things he’d said when Bright Meadows had been recommended to him.

“Joanna’s not crazy,” he’d said bluntly, “and she’s not crippled.”

The doctors had agreed, but they’d pointed out that there really wasn’t anywhere else to send a woman with amnesia... unless, of course, Mr. Adams wished to take his wife home? She needed peaceful, stress-free surroundings and, at least temporarily, someone to watch out for her. Could a man who put in twelve-hour days provide that?

No, David had said, he could not. He had to devote himself to his career. He had a high-powered Wall Street firm to run and clients to deal with. Besides, though he didn’t say so to the doctors, he knew that he and Joanna could never endure too much time alone together.

There was no question but that Bright Meadows was the right place for Joanna. The doctors, and David, had agreed.

Had Joanna agreed, too? He was damned if he could remember.

“David?”

He looked at Joanna. She was smiling tremulously.

“Couldn’t I just...isn’t there someplace I could go that isn’t a hospital? A place I could stay, I mean, where maybe the things around me would jog my memory?”

“You need peace and quiet, Joanna. Our town house isn’t—”

She nodded and turned away, but not before he’d seen the glitter of tears in her eyes. She was crying. Quietly, with great dignity, but she was crying all the same.

“Joanna,” he said gently, “don’t.”

“I’m sorry.” She rose quickly and hurried to the window where she stood with her back to him. “Go on home, please, David. It’s late, and you’ve had a long day. The last thing you need on your hands is a woman who’s feeling sorry for herself.”

Had she always been so slight? His mental image of his wife was of a slender, tall woman with a straight back and straight shoulders, but the woman he saw at the window seemed small and painfully defenseless.

“Jo,” he said, and he started slowly toward her, “listen, everything’s going to be OK. I promise.”

She nodded. “Sure,” she said in a choked whisper.

He was standing just behind her now, close enough so that he could see the reddish glints in her black hair, so that he could almost convince himself he smelled the delicate scent of gardenia that had always risen from her skin until she’d changed to some more sophisticated scent.

“Joanna, if you don’t like Bright Meadows, we’ll find another place and—”

She spun toward him, her eyes bright with tears and with something else. Anger?

“Dammit, don’t talk to me as if I were a child!”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to reassure you. I’ll see to it you have the best of care. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything,” she said, her voice trembling not with self-pity but yes, definitely, with anger. “You just don’t understand, do you? You think, if you have them fix my hair and my face, and ship me my clothes and make me look like Joanna Adams, I’ll turn into Joanna Adams.”

“No,” David said quickly. “I mean, yes, in a way. I’m trying to help you be who you are.”

Joanna lifted her clenched fist and slammed it against his chest. David stumbled back, not from the blow which he’d hardly felt, but from shock. He couldn’t remember Joanna raising her voice, let alone her hand. Well, yes, there’d been that time after they were first married, when he’d been caught late at a dinner meeting and he hadn’t telephoned and she’d been frantic with worry by the time he came in at two in the morning...

“Damn you, David! I don’t know who I am! I don’t know this Joanna person.” She raised her hand again, this time to punctuate each of her next words with a finger poked into his chest. “And I certainly don’t know you!”

“What do you want to know? Ask and I’ll tell you.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “For starters, I’d like to know why I’m expected to believe I’m really your wife!”

David started to laugh, then stopped. She wasn’t joking. One look into her eyes was proof of that. They had gone from violet to a color that was almost black. Her hands were on her hips, her posture hostile. She looked furious, defiant...and incredibly beautiful.

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you mean, what am I talking about? I said it clearly enough, didn’t I? You say I’m your wife, but I don’t remember you. So why should I let you run my life?”

“Joanna, for heaven’s sake—”

“Can you prove that we’re married?”

David threw up his hands. “I don’t believe this!”

“Can you prove it, David?”

“Of course I can prove it! What would you like to see? Our marriage license? The cards we both signed and mailed out last Christmas? Dammit, of course we’re married. Why would I lie about such a thing?”

He wouldn’t. She knew that, deep down inside, but that had nothing to do with this. She was angry. She was furious. Let him try waking up in a hospital bed without knowing who he was, let him try having a stranger walk in and announce that as of that moment, all the important decisions of your life were being taken out of your hands.

But most of all, let him deal with the uncomfortable feeling that the person you were married to had been a stranger for a long, long time, not just since you’d awakened with a lump on your head and a terrible blankness behind your eyes.

“Answer me, Joanna. Why in hell would I lie?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even saying that you are. I’m just trying to point out that the only knowledge I have of my own identity is your word.”

David caught hold of her shoulders. “My word is damned well all you need!”

It was, she knew it was. It wasn’t just the things the nurses had said about how lucky she was to be the wife of such a wonderful man as David Adams. She’d managed to read a bit about him in a couple of old magazines she’d found in the lounge.

On the face of it, David Adams was Everywoman’s Dream.

But she wasn’t Everywoman. She was lost on a dark road without a light to guide her and the only thing she felt whenever she thought of herself as Mrs. David Adams was a dizzying sense of disaster mingled in with something else, something just as dizzying but also incredibly exciting.

It terrified her, almost as much as the lack of a past, yet instinct warned that she mustn’t let him know that, that the best defense against whatever it was David made her feel when he got too close was a strong offense, and so instead of backing down under his furious glare, Joanna glared right back.

“No,” she said, “your word isn’t enough! I don’t know anything about you. Not anything, what you eat for breakfast or—or what movies you like to see or who chooses those—those stodgy suits you wear or—”

“Stodgy?” he growled. “Stodgy?”

“You heard me.”

David stared down at the stranger he held clasped by the shoulders. Stodgy? Hell, for Joanna to use that word to describe him was ludicrous. She was right, she didn’t know the first thing about him; they were strangers.

What she couldn’t know was that it had been that way for a long time.

But not always. No, not always, he thought while his anger grew, and before he could think too much about what he was about to do, he hauled Joanna into his arms and kissed her.

She gave a gasp of shock and struggled against the kiss. But he was remorseless, driven at first by pure male outrage and then by the taste of her, a taste he had not known in months. The feel of her in his arms, the softness of her breasts against his chest, the long length of her legs against his, made him hard with remembering.

He fisted one hand in her hair, holding her captive to his kiss, while the other swept down and cupped her bottom, lifting her into his embrace, bringing her so close to him that he felt the sudden quickened beat of her heart, heard the soft little moan that broke in her throat as his lips parted hers, and then her arms were around his neck and she was kissing him back as hungrily as he was kissing her...

“Oh, my, I’m terribly sorry. I’ll come back a bit later, shall I?”

They sprang apart at the sound of the shocked female voice. Both of them looked at the door where the night nurse stood staring at them, her eyes wide.

“I thought Mrs. Adams might want some help getting ready for bed but I suppose...I mean, I can see...” The nurse blushed. “Has Mrs. Adams regained her memory?”

“Mrs. Adams is capable of being spoken to, not about,” Joanna said sharply. Her cheeks colored but her gaze was steady. “And no, she has not regained her memory.”

“No,” David said grimly, “she has not.” He stalked past the nurse and pushed open the door. “But she’s going to,” he said. “She can count on it.”

CHAPTER THREE

ALL right. Ok. So he’d made an ass of himself last night.

David stood in his darkened kitchen at six o’clock in the morning and told himself it didn’t take a genius to figure that much out.

Kissing Joanna, losing his temper...the whole thing had been stupid. It had been worse than stupid. Joanna wasn’t supposed to get upset and he sure as hell had upset her.

So why hadn’t he just gone home, phoned her room and apologized? Why couldn’t he just mentally kick himself in the tail, then put what had happened out of his head?

They were all good questions. It was just too bad that he didn’t have any good answers, and he’d already wasted half the night trying to come up with one.