Ruthless Reunion

‘That’s my favourite,’ she remarked, after the waiter had gone, approving the expensive bottle of Sancerre Alex had chosen to accompany their meal.

‘Yes,’ he affirmed softly, taking her by surprise, until she remembered.

Of course. He knew her—probably knew things about her she hadn’t retained any knowledge of herself. Suddenly she felt much too vulnerable, totally and uncomfortably disadvantaged.

Under the soft lighting his hair was gleaming like jet, and the unfastened neck of the black and grey striped shirt he wore beneath his jacket exposed the crisper hair of his body, curling against skin that would tan easily.

Unconsciously Sanchia’s gaze slid down over his torso, visualising, as clearly as though she knew every contoured muscle, the lean, hard power and sinewy strength of him beneath those expensively tailored clothes.

Her head swam in a fog while the throb of a base guitar from concealed speakers echoed her heartbeat, providing the sensually hypnotic backing to a sultry ballad.

She was looking at him, Alex thought, like a sleepwalker. She started suddenly, and embarrassed colour crept into her cheeks—as though she had been jolted awake to find him watching her.

‘How did we meet?’

Reaching for one of the rolls from the basket the waiter had left at their table, Alex broke it apart and began buttering it, snatching a few moments to try and work out what to tell her, giving himself time. ‘You’ve no glimmer of recollection?’

Sanchia made a hopeless little gesture, saw the lines scoring that strong intellectual forehead.

‘It was at a party.’

‘A party?’

‘Around two years ago.’

‘Two years…?’ She was starting to sound like an echo, but she couldn’t help it. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said despairingly, with her elbows resting on the table, her splayed fingers pressed to her temples as she searched for memories that wouldn’t come.

‘For me it was a mix of business and pleasure, and you—you were there taking photographs.’

‘Photographs? So I was working?’

‘No, not that night.’

Sanchia frowned. ‘So where was it? Whose party was it?’ Her expression was pained with the effort of trying to remember.

‘Those details aren’t really important for the time being.’

‘Was I on my own?’

There was a moment of hesitancy before he answered. ‘Yes.’

‘I was?’ She shook her head, as though the movement could shift the eternal fog that clouded her mind. What confidence she must have had, she thought, because she certainly wouldn’t do that now. ‘So we met at this party,’ she went on contemplatively, ‘and…you asked me out?’

Alex’s breath felt like a ton weight in his lungs. How could he tell her that he had used her to sate pure animal lust, to relieve himself of the guilt and grief he had been burdened with on the death of his half-brother? He didn’t even want to bring up Luke’s name.

‘Not…exactly,’ he answered her, with a kind of grimace.

‘Oh?’ Sanchia’s eyes widened as a startling possibility dawned. ‘I asked you out?’ She couldn’t believe she would have had the courage to be that forward with a man like him—knew she wouldn’t have in a million years—and she was certain her character couldn’t have changed that much. Yet deep down in the recesses of her mind something nagged, worried, rubbed away at the fringes of her consciousness like a scouring pad over a raw wound.

‘The night of that party,’ Alex was telling her. ‘I didn’t even find out your name.’

‘How come?’

His mouth twitched mirthlessly. ‘You didn’t seem too disposed to tell me,’ he said, his lashes coming down over the steel-grey of his eyes.

‘Why not?’ She gave an incredulous little laugh. ‘Was I playing it that cool?’ His revelation amazed her. She couldn’t believe she would have acted that way with anyone—least of all a man like him.

He wasn’t laughing with her. He was simply watching her. Watching, waiting and assessing her reactions. As he would watch and wait and assess the reactions of those unfortunate enough to come under his hard interrogation in court.

‘You probably terrified me,’ she admitted with a little shiver.

‘Do you find me that threatening, Sanchia?’ he asked softly.

She didn’t answer. What could she say? I don’t know you. How do I know what kind of man you are? And yet somehow she felt she did know—could tell simply from being with him that behind that air of authority and that mind-blowing sexual charisma was a code of honour he would do his utmost to preserve.

‘So what happened after that?’

After that? He didn’t know how to handle this. He would always assess the currents, always chart his course, before instigating any line of action. Yet now, for almost the first time in his life, he felt dangerously close to being out of his depth.

He had already misled her about their first meeting—by omission if not with wilful untruths. And yet to tell her the truth at this stage, he thought, curbing a raging frustration to do so, would probably only succeed in driving her from him again. Because what was the truth? That they had nothing on which to build a relationship other than a hopeless abandoned hunger for each other?

‘When we met again…it was…under far…different circumstances. I…’

He spoke with some hesitancy, as though he were having difficulty recalling the exact details. As though he’d simply filed the information away as too insignificant to retain, she thought, seeing the dark intensity in his eyes and the lines scoring his forehead as he flipped a mental chart of what must be dozens of discarded girlfriends until he brought up the page marked Sanchia Stevens.

‘You were working for a small provincial newspaper. As a freelance photographer.’

‘Did I work for a newspaper…?’ She shook her head, trying to stir some recollection of that time, but nothing would come.

‘I walked into their offices on a day when you happened to be there.’

‘Really?’ The coincidence made her brows shoot up before she asked, with a nervous little smile, ‘And was I more co-operative this time?’

He sat forward, resting his arms on the table. ‘You were never co-operative,’ he murmured, and there was such dark sensuality in the firm curve of his mouth that a little frisson ran through her.

What had he meant by that?

She didn’t doubt that a full red-blooded male like him would be a dynamic and demanding lover. So had he wanted her while she had denied him? Was that what had eventually broken them up?

‘So I gave you the run-around for a while,’ she decided aloud, and before she could stop herself added, ‘But we obviously didn’t embark on a long and glorious affair?’

She couldn’t believe she had said it—couldn’t believe that she was responsible for the predatory smile that tugged at his lips as he returned softly, ‘Are you intimating that you wish we had, Sanchia?’

‘I didn’t say that!’ Shaming colour crept up her throat into her cheeks and she knew he would see it and recognise it for what it was. Pure, unadulterated embarrassment. Because surely he couldn’t know what she was thinking: that she couldn’t possibly have been involved with a man like him without finding herself in the midst of a wildly torrid affair. He was certainly affair material, and had he wanted more than a platonic relationship with her she couldn’t imagine how she could have resisted…

‘What were you doing at the newspaper office?’ she enquired rather breathlessly, for something to say—because what did it matter? All she wanted was to steer the conversation away from the disturbing turn it had taken.

‘Oh…’ He pursed his lips, his eyes reflective yet watchful. ‘Chasing information.’