Читать книгу: «The Second Mrs Adams»

CHAPTER ONE

THE siren was loud.

Painfully, agonizingly loud.

The sound was a live thing, burrowing deep into her skull, tunneling into the marrow of her bones.

Make it stop, she thought, oh please, make it stop.

But even when it did, the silence didn’t take the pain away.

“My head,” she whispered. “My head.”

No one was listening. Or perhaps no one could hear her. Was she really saying anything or was she only thinking the words?

People were crowded around, faces looking down at her, some white with concern, others sweaty with curiosity. Hands were moving over her now, very gently, and then they were lifting her; oh, God, it hurt!

“Easy,” somebody said, and then she was inside a...a what? A truck? No. It was an ambulance. And now the doors closed and the ambulance began to move and the sound, that awful sound, began again and they were flying through the streets.

Terror constricted her throat.

What’s happened to me? she thought desperately.

She tried to gasp out the words but she couldn’t form them. She was trapped in silence and in pain as they raced through the city.

Had there been an accident? A picture formed in her mind of wet, glistening pavement, a curb, a taxi hurtling toward her. She heard again the bleat of a horn and the squeal of tires seeking a purchase that was not to be found...

No. No! she thought, and then she screamed her denial but the scream rose to mingle with the wail of the siren as she tumbled down into velvet darkness.

She lay on her back and drifted in the blue waters of a dream. There was a bright yellow light overhead.

Was it the sun?

There were voices... Disembodied voices, floating on the air. Sentence fragments that made no sense, falling around her with the coldness of snow.

“...five more CC’s...”

“...blood pressure not stabilized yet...”

“...wait for a CAT scan before...”

The voices droned on. It wasn’t anything to do with her, she decided drowsily, and fell back into the darkness.

The next time she awoke, the voices were still talking.

“...no prognosis, at this stage...”

“...touch and go for a while, but...”

They were talking about her. But why? What was wrong with her? She wanted to ask, she wanted to tell them to stop discussing her as if she weren’t there because she was there, it was just that she couldn’t get her eyes to open because the lids were so heavy.

She groaned and a hand closed over hers, the fingers gripping hers reassuringly.

“Joanna?”

Who?

“Joanna, can you hear me?”

Joanna? Was that who she was? Was that her name?

“...head injuries are often unpredictable...”

The hand tightened on hers. “Dammit, stop talking about her as if she weren’t here!”

The voice was as masculine as the touch, blunt with anger and command. Blessedly, the buzz of words ceased. Joanna tried to move her fingers, to press them against the ones that clasped hers and let the man know she was grateful for what he’d done, but she couldn’t. Though her mind willed it, her hand wouldn’t respond. It felt like the rest of her, as lifeless as a lump of lead. She could only lie there unmoving, her fingers caught within those of the stranger’s.

“It’s all right, Joanna,” he murmured. “I’m here.”

His voice soothed her but his words sent fear coursing through her blood. Who? she thought wildly, who was here?

Without warning, the blackness opened beneath her and sucked her down.

When she awoke next, it was to silence.

She knew at once that she was alone. There were no voices, no hand holding hers. And though she felt as if she were floating, her mind felt clear.

Would she be able to open her eyes this time? The possibility that she couldn’t terrified her. Was she paralyzed? No. Her toes moved, and her fingers. Her hands, her legs...

All right, then.

Joanna took a breath, held it, then slowly let it out. Then she raised eyelids that felt as if they had been coated with cement.

The sudden rush of light was almost blinding. She blinked against it and looked around her.

She was in a hospital room. There was no mistaking it for anything else. The high ceiling and the bottle suspended beside the bed, dripping something pale and colorless into her vein, confirmed it.

The room was not unpleasant. It was large, drenched in bright sunlight and filled with baskets of fruit and vases of flowers.

Was all that for her? It had to be; hers was the only bed in the room.

What had happened to her? She had seen no cast on her legs or her arms; nothing ached in her body or her limbs. Except for the slender plastic tubing snaking into her arm, she might have awakened from a nap.

Was there a bell to ring? She lifted her head from the pillow. Surely there was a way to call some...

“Ahh!”

Pain lanced through her skull with the keenness of a knife. She fell back and shut her eyes against it.

“Mrs. Adams?”

Joanna’s breath hissed from between her teeth.

“Mrs. Adams, do you hear me? Open your eyes, please, Mrs. Adams, and look at me.”

It hurt, God, it hurt, but she managed to look up into a stern female face that was instantly softened by a smile.

“That’s the way, Mrs. Adams. Good girl. How do you feel?”

Joanna opened her mouth but nothing came out. The nurse nodded sympathetically.

“Wait a moment. Let me moisten your lips with some ice chips. There, how’s that?”

“My head hurts,” Joanna said in a cracked whisper.

The nurse’s smile broadened, as if something wonderful had happened.

“Of course it does, dear. I’m sure the doctor will give you something for it as soon as he’s seen you. I’ll just go and get him...”

Joanna’s hand shot out. She caught the edge of the woman’s crisp white sleeve.

“Please,” she said, “what happened to me?”

“Doctor Corbett will explain everything, Mrs. Adams.”

“Was I in an accident? I don’t remember. A car. A taxi...”

“Hush now, dear.” The woman extricated herself gently from Joanna’s grasp and made her way toward the door. “Just lie back and relax, Mrs. Adams. I’ll only be a moment.”

“Wait!”

The single word stopped the nurse with its urgency. She paused in the doorway and swung around.

“What is it, Mrs. Adams?”

Joanna stared at the round, kindly face. She felt the seconds flying away from her with every pounding beat of her heart.

“You keep calling me...you keep saying, ‘Mrs. Adams...’”

She saw the. sudden twist in the nurse’s mouth, the dawning of sympathetic realization in the woman’s eyes.

“Can you tell me,” Joanna said in a broken whisper, “can you tell me who... What I mean is, could you tell me, please, who I am?”

The doctor came. Two doctors, actually, one a pleasant young man with a gentle touch and another, an older man with a patrician air and a way of looking at her as if she weren’t really there while he poked and prodded but that was OK because Joanna felt as if she wasn’t really there, surely not here in this bed, in this room, without any idea in the world of who she was.

“Mrs. Adams” they all called her, and like some well-trained dog, she learned within moments to answer to the name, to extend her arm and let them take out the tubing, to say “Yes?” when one of them addressed her by the name, but who was Mrs. Adams?

Joanna only knew that she was here, in this room, and that to all intents and purposes, her life had begun an hour before.

She asked questions, the kind she’d never heard anywhere but in a bad movie and even when she thought that, it amazed her that she’d know there was such a thing as a bad movie.

But the doctor, the young one, said that was what amnesia was like, that you remembered some things and not others, that it wasn’t as if your brain had been wiped clean of everything, and Joanna thought thank goodness for that or she would lie here like a giant turnip. She said as much to the young doctor and he laughed and she laughed, even though it hurt her head when she did, and then, without any warning, she wasn’t laughing at all, she was sobbing as if her heart were going to break, and a needle slid into her arm and she fell into oblivion.

It was nighttime when she woke next.

The room was dark, except for the light seeping in from the hushed silence of the corridor just outside the partly open door. The blackness beyond the windowpane was broken by the glow of lights from what surely had to be a city.

Joanna stirred restlessly. “Nurse?” she whispered.

“Joanna.”

She knew the voice. It was the same masculine one that she’d heard an eternity ago when she’d surfaced from unconsciousness.

“Yes,” she said.

She heard the soft creak of leather and a shape rose from the chair beside her bed. Slowly, carefully, she turned her head on the pillow.

His figure was shrouded in shadow, his face indistinct She could see only that he was big and broad of shoulder, that he seemed powerful, almost mystical in the darkness.

“Joanna,” he said again, his voice gruff as she’d remembered it yet tinged now with a husky softness. His hand closed over hers and this time she had no difficulty flexing her fingers and threading them through his, clasping his hand and holding on as if to a lifeline. “Welcome back,” he said, and she could hear the smile and the relief in the words.

Joanna swallowed hard. There was so much she wanted to ask, but it seemed so stupid to say, “who am I?” or “who are you?” or “where am I?” or “how did I get here?”

“You probably have a lot of questions,” he said, and she almost sobbed with relief.

“Yes,” she murmured.

He nodded. “Ask them, then—or shall I get the nurse first? Do you need anything? Want anything? Water, or some cracked ice, or perhaps you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Answers,” Joanna said urgently, her hand tightening on his, “I need answers.”

“Of course. Shall I turn up the light?”

“No,” she said quickly. If he turned up the light, this would all become real. And it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. “No, it’s fine this way, thank you.”

“Very well, then.” The bed sighed as he sat down beside her. His hip brushed against hers, and she could feel the heat of him, the strength and the power. “Ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer.”

Joanna licked her lips. “What—what happened? I mean, how did I get here? Was there an accident?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“I seem to remember... I don’t know. It was raining, I think.”

“Yes,” he said again. His hand tightened on hers. “It was.”

“I stepped off the curb. The light was with me, I’d checked because... because...” She frowned. There was a reason, she knew there was, and it had something to do with him, but how could it when she didn’t...when she had no idea who he...

Joanna whimpered, and the man bent down and clasped her shoulders.

“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right, Joanna.”

It wasn’t, though. The touch of his hands on her was gentle but she could feel the tightly leashed rage in him, smell its hot, masculine scent on the carefully filtered hospital air.

“The taxi...”

“Yes.”

“It—it came flying through the intersection...”

“Hush.”

“I saw it, but by the time I did it was too late...”

Her voice quavered, then broke. The man cursed softly and his hands slid beneath her back and he lifted her toward him, cradling her against his chest.

Pain bloomed like an evil, White-hot flower behind her eyes. A cry rose in her throat and burst from her lips. Instantly, he lay her back against the pillows.

“Hell,” he said. “I’m sorry, Joanna. I shouldn’t have moved you.”

Strangely, the instant of pain had been a small price to pay for the comfort she’d felt in his arms. His strength had seemed to flow into her body; his heartbeat had seemed to give determination to hers.

She wanted to tell him that, but how did you say such things to a stranger?

“Joanna? Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. I just—I have so many questions...”

He brushed the back of his hand along her cheek in a wordless gesture.

“I need to know.” She took a breath. “Tell me the rest, please. The taxi hit me, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And an ambulance brought me to... What is this place?”

“You’re in Manhattan Hospital.”

“Am I... am I badly hurt?” He hesitated, and she swallowed hard. “Please, tell me the truth. What kind of injuries do I have?”

“Some bruises. A cut above your eye... they had to put in stitches—”

“Why can’t I remember anything? Do I have amnesia?”

She asked it matter-of-factly, as if she’d been inquiring about nothing more devastating than a common cold, but he wasn’t a fool, she knew he could sense the panic that she fought to keep from her voice because the hands that still clasped her shoulders tightened again.

“The taxi only brushed you,” he said. “But when you fell, you hit your head against the curb.”

“My mind is like a—a blackboard that’s been wiped clean. You keep calling me ‘Joanna’ but the name has no meaning to me. I don’t know who ‘Joanna’ is.”

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the shadowy darkness; she could almost see him clearly now. He had a hard face with strong features: a straight blade of a nose, a slash of a mouth, hair that looked to be thick and dark and perhaps a bit overlong.

“And me?” His voice had fallen to a whisper; she had to strain to hear it. “Do you know who I am, Joanna?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Should she remember him? Should she at least know his name?

“No,” she said. “No. I don’t.”

There was a long, almost palpable silence. She felt the quick bite of his fingers into her flesh and then he lifted his hands away, carefully, slowly, as if she were a delicate glass figurine he’d just returned to its cabinet for fear a swift movement would make it shatter.

He rose slowly to his feet and now she could see that he was tall, that the broad shoulders were matched by a powerful chest that tapered to a narrow waist, slim hips and long, well-proportioned legs. He stood beside the bed looking down at her, and then he nodded and thrust his fingers through his hair in a gesture instinct told her was as familiar to her as it was habitual to him.

“The doctors told me to expect this,” he said, “but...”

He shrugged so helplessly, despite the obvious power of his silhouette, that Joanna’s heart felt his frustration.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

His smile was bittersweet. He sat down beside her again and took her hand in his. She had a fleeting memory, one that was gone before she could make sense of it. She saw his dark head bent over a woman’s hand, saw his lips pressed to the palm...

Was the woman her? Was he going to bring her hand to his mouth and kiss it?

Anticipation, bright as the promise of a new day and sweet as the nectar of a flower, made her pulse-beat quicken. But all he did was lay her hand down again and pat it lightly with his.

“It isn’t your fault, Joanna. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

She had the feeling that there was, that she owed him many apologies for many things, but that was silly. How could she owe anything to a man she didn’t know?

“Please,” she said softly, “tell me your name.”

His mouth twisted. Then he rose to his feet, walked to the window and stared out into the night. An eternity seemed to pass before he turned and looked at her again.

“Of course.” There was a difference in him now, in his tone and in the way he held himself, and it frightened her. “My name is David. David Adams.”

Joanna hesitated. The black pit that had swallowed her so many times since the accident seemed to loom at her feet.

“David Adams,” she murmured, turning the name over in her mind, trying—failing—to find in it some hint of familiarity. “We—we have the same last name.”

He laughed, though there was no levity to it:

“I can see you haven’t lost your talent for understatement, Joanna. Yes, we have the same last name.”

“Are we related, then?”

His mouth twisted again, this time with a wry smile. “Indeed, we are, my love. You see, Joanna, I’m your husband.”