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“Well, we’ll try it and see how it goes.”
“It’ll go just fine. I’m looking forward to doing things for myself.”
“As long as you don’t push too hard,” he said. “I want you to promise to take it easy for a week or two.”
“I will.” Joanna looked down at her folded hands. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“For what?”
“For changing your mind and agreeing to take me…to take me home.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “There’s no need to thank me. The more I thought about it, the more sensible it seemed. Anyway, I knew it was what you wanted.”
But not what he wanted. The unspoken words hung in the air between them. After a moment, Joanna sighed.
“Is it much farther?”
“Only another half hour or so.” He glanced over at her. “You look exhausted, Jo. Why don’t you put your head back, close your eyes and rest for a while?”
“I’m not tired, I’m just…” She stopped in midsentence. How stupid she was. David’s suggestion had been meant as much for himself as for her. He might be taking her home but he didn’t have to spend an hour and a half trying to make polite conversation. “You’re right,” she said, and shot him a quick smile, “I think I will.”
Joanna lay her head back and shut her eyes. This was better anyway, not just for him but for her. Let him think she was tired. Otherwise, she might just blurt out the truth.
The closer they got to their destination, the more nervous she felt.
Nervous? She almost laughed.
Be honest, she told herself. You’re terrified.
All her babbling about wanting to go home was just that. What good could come of returning to a house she wouldn’t recognize with a man she didn’t know?
Mars might be a better place than “home.”
She looked at David from beneath the sweep of her lashes. Oh, that rigid jaw. Those tightly clamped lips. The hands, white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
She wasn’t the only one with second thoughts. It was clear that her husband regretted his spur-of-the-moment decision, too.
Why? Had their marriage really been so awful? It must have been. There was no other way to explain the way he treated her, the careful politeness, the distant, unemotional behavior.
The only real emotion he’d shown her had been the night in her hospital room, when he’d kissed her.
The memory made her tingle. That kiss…that passionate, angry kiss. It had left her shaken, torn between despising his touch and the almost uncontrollable desire to go into his arms and give herself up to the heat.
Joanna’s breath hitched. What was the matter with her? She’d been so caught up in wanting to go home that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what it might really mean. She and David were husband and wife. Did he expect…would he expect her to…? He hadn’t so much as touched her since that night in the hospital, not even to kiss her cheek. Surely, he didn’t think…
She shivered.
“Jo? What is it?”
She sat up straight, looked at David, then fixed her eyes on the ribbon of road unwinding ahead.
“I…I think you’re right. I am feeling a little cold.”
“I’ll turn on the heat.” He reached for a knob on the dashboard. “You always said that the heating system in this old heap was better suited to polar bears than people.”
“Did I?” She smiled and stroked her hand lightly over the seat. “Actually, I can’t imagine I ever said an unkind word about this beautiful old car.”
He looked over at her. “Beautiful?”
“Mmm. What kind is it, anyway? A Thunderbird? A Corvette?”
“It’s a ’60 Jaguar XK 150,” he said quietly.
“Ah,” she said, her smile broadening, “an antique. Have you had it long?”
“Not long.” His tone was stilted. “Just a few years.”
“It must take lots of work, keeping an old car like this.”
“Yeah.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Yeah, it does.”
Her fingers moved across the soft leather again. “I’ll bet you don’t trust anybody to work on it.”
David shot her a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. It just seems logical. Why? Am I wrong?”
“No.” He stared out at the road, forcing himself to concentrate on the slick asphalt. “No, you hit it right on the head. I do whatever needs doing on this car myself.”
“Untouched by human hands, huh?” she said with a quick smile.
A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Somebody else who worked on the car with me used to say that, a long time ago.”
“A super-mechanic, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah,” he said briskly, “something like that.” There was a silence and then he shifted his weight in his seat. “Will you look at that rain? It’s coming down in buckets.”
Joanna sighed. For a minute or two, it had looked as if they were going to have a real conversation.
“Yes,” she said, “it certainly is.”
David nodded. “Looks like the weatherman was wrong, as usual.”
Such banal chitchat, Joanna thought, but better by far than uncomfortable silence.
“Still,” she said brightly, “that’s good, isn’t it? One of the nurses was saying that it had been a dry Spring.”
David sprang on the conversational lifeline as eagerly as she had.
“Dry isn’t the word for it. The tulips in the park barely bloomed. And you know those roses you planted three summers ago? The pink ones? They haven’t even…”
“I planted roses? I thought you said we lived in New York.”
“We do.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “But we have another place in…” His words trailed off in midsentence. “Hell,” he muttered, “I’m sorry, Jo. I keep putting my foot in it today. I shouldn’t have mentioned the damned roses or the house.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not?” He glared at her. “Because you can’t possibly remember either one, that’s why not.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about them. If we’re going to avoid mention of anything I might not remember, what will there be left to talk about? Nothing but the weather,” Joanna said, answering her own question, “and not even we can talk about the possibility of rain all the time.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right! I don’t expect you to censor everything you say. Besides, maybe it’ll help if we—if you talk about the past.”
“I just don’t want to put any pressure on you
, Joanna. You know what the doctors advised, that it was best to let your memory come back on its own.”
“If it comes back at all.” She flashed him a dazzling smile, one that couldn’t quite mask the sudden tremor in her voice. “They also said there were no guarantees.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he said with more conviction than he felt.
Joanna turned on him in sudden fury. “Don’t placate me, David. Dropping platitudes all over the place isn’t going to…” The rush of angry words stuttered to a halt. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean…”
A jagged streak of lightning lit the road ahead. The rain, which had been a steady gray curtain, suddenly roared against the old car. Fat drops, driven by the wind, flew through Joanna’s window. She grabbed for the crank but it wouldn’t turn. David made a face. He reached across her, grasped it and forced it to move.
“Got to fix that thing,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
Joanna nodded. She was sorry, he was sorry. They were so polite, like cautious acquaintances. But they weren’t acquaintances, they were husband and wife.
Dear heaven, there was something terribly wrong in this relationship.
Her throat tightened. Whatever had possessed her to want to go home with this man?
She turned her face to the rain-blurred window and wished she had stayed at Bright Meadows. It hadn’t been home, but at least it had been safe.
* * *
David looked at his wife, then at the road.
Well, he thought, his hand tightening on the steering wheel, wasn’t that interesting?
His soft-spoken, demure wife had shown her temper again.
A faint smile touched his lips.
Four years ago, that quick, fiery display wouldn’t have surprised him. Not that the Joanna he’d married had been bad-tempered. She just hadn’t been afraid to let her emotions show. In his world, where people seemed to think that sort of thing wasn’t proper, his wife’s willingness to show her feelings had been refreshing and endearing.
Not that it had lasted. Not that it could. David’s hands clamped more tightly on the steering wheel. It had been a pose. His beloved wife had worn a mask to win his heart and once she’d decided it was safe to let it slip, she had.
