A Little Revenge Omnibus

by Penny Jordan

  ‘On her own?’ Ward queried. He suspected that, like many others, the hospital might be short of beds and, although he knew the consultant would never have discharged Anna if he wasn’t confident that it was medically safe to do so, Ward certainly did not feel, judging from what he had seen, that she would be anywhere near strong enough yet to cope by herself.

  The consultant’s eyebrows rose, his voice suddenly a few degrees cooler as he heard the criticism in Ward’s voice.

  ‘I take it you will be there with her?’ he responded.

  Him?

  Ward was just about to deny any such thing when the consultant continued carefully, ‘Of course, there is this added problem of her temporary loss of memory—it’s a complication which does occur sometimes with head injuries. Fortunately, in our experience, the patient’s full memory eventually returns in almost one hundred per cent of cases. In Anna’s case, it just seems to be her recent memories she isn’t able to recall. She knows her name and her family background, for instance, but she was unable to tell us what she had done today or who she had seen; the last memory she seems to recall is over several months ago.’

  ‘She’s lost her memory?’ Ward started to frown, and the words ‘and you’re sending her home’ trembled on his lips, but he controlled himself long enough to suppress them. Had Anna been a member of his own family, right now he would have been ruthlessly bypassing the harried man in front of him and insisting not just on a second opinion but on Anna being referred to a private hospital.

  Anna, though, was not a member of his family. Anna was nothing whatsoever to do with him—apart from the fact that she owed him five thousand pounds.

  ‘Of course, if she should start to complain of suffering any kind of head pains, double vision, sickness, that kind of thing, then bring her straight back in.’

  ‘If she should... Is she likely to?’ Ward demanded tersely.

  ‘Not so far as I am able to judge,’ the consultant assured him.

  ‘And you say that she will regain her memory...’

  ‘I should think so. Although, of course, I can’t say when. Sometimes patients experience a flashback and total recall; other times their memory returns in stages.’

  The consultant’s bleeper started to go off. He was already turning away, his body language indicating that he was a busy man.

  Damn, Ward cursed under his breath as he watched him hurry down the corridor. Now what was he supposed to do? Realistically he owed Anna nothing. Quite the opposite. And he had a perfect right to walk out of the hospital and leave her to sort out her own problems. Realistically, perhaps, but what about morally...?

  Morally...

  What about her moral obligations to his half-brother and the others she had cheated?

  So she was a liar and a cheat; did that mean he had to descend to the same level of callousness? Ward asked himself quietly. He might not want to help her but it simply went against his whole character for him to walk off and leave her in her present condition.

  ‘Mr Hunter?’ a nurse enquired, coming up to him. ‘The consultant has already informed Anna that she can go home. She’s just getting dressed, so if you’d like to come with me...’

  As he turned to follow the nurse onto the ward, a sudden thought struck Ward—a possible escape route from the unwanted chore of taking charge of Anna until she either regained her memory or someone more appropriate turned up to take over from him.

  Stopping abruptly, he asked the nurse curtly, ‘This amnesia—I don’t suppose it could be...imaginary...could it?’

  ‘Imaginary amnesia?’ The nurse gave him a sharp look. ‘Sometimes we do have patients who fake memory loss for one reason or another, but our consultant here would soon detect any sign of that in a patient. Why do you ask?’ she questioned him curiously. ‘Do you have some reason to suppose that Anna is faking her amnesia? Occasionally we have patients who have suffered such intense trauma that their only possible escape route is to pretend that it has never happened, but in Anna’s case...’

  ‘No. No...’ Ward hastened to reassure her. Good grief, the next thing he knew the nurse would probably be accusing him of causing Anna’s trauma.

  ‘I can assure you, Mr Hunter,’ the nurse said tartly, ‘that if Anna has been diagnosed by our Mr Bannerman as suffering from temporary amnesia, then temporary amnesia is exactly what she is suffering from.’

  They had reached the entrance to the ward now and Ward could see Anna standing forlornly beside her bed, her expression anxious and strained.

  No matter what she might have done, Ward couldn’t help feeling a small surge of compassion for her. To be unable to remember even the most basic detail of one’s current life was not a position he would want to be in.

  Anna’s eyes lit up as she saw the nurse. Obviously she recognised her, Ward decided, and then he realised with a sharp frisson of unfamiliar emotion that it was him she was looking at, not the nurse.

  ‘Ward?’ She said his name uncertainly and tremulously, her eyes more grey than blue and stomach-achingly haunted.

  ‘You recognise me?’ he demanded, ignoring the small, disapproving shake of her head the nurse was giving him.

  Immediately Anna’s mouth trembled betrayingly.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘But Nurse James told me your name. She said I could go home,’ she added, her eyes brightening and then darkening again at this thought.

  The nurse had slipped diplomatically away, leaving them alone together.

  ‘I...I’m sorry I don’t remember you,’ Ward heard Anna telling him softly, biting her lip before continuing in a small rush, ‘But in a way I do. I can sense...feel that...that there’s something very special between us...’

  She started to flush a little, her glance meeting Ward’s and then sliding away almost shyly.

  ‘You can sense that?’ Ward queried, his voice suddenly disconcertingly gruff when he had intended it to sound sarcastic.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I can,’ Anna confirmed. And then, to Ward’s bemusement, she reached out and touched his face very gently with her fingertips, the look on her face one of tender joy.

  ‘I know that I can’t recognise or remember you at the moment, Ward, and I can understand how hard that must be for you. I know how concerned you are about me.’

  A pair of dimples suddenly appeared at either side of her mouth as she smiled teasingly at him.

  ‘The consultant told me how you’d interrogated him about me...’

  God, but she looked so heart-achingly vulnerable. The trust in her eyes, in her touch, made Ward’s throat close up. He shuddered to think of the appalling and dangerous situation she could have found herself in with someone less honourable than himself.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here with me, Ward,’ Anna confided. ‘It feels so odd not being able to remember...so frightening. Mr Bannerman told me that you aren’t my husband...’

  ‘No,’ Ward agreed shortly.

  ‘But we are partners. He said you’d told the ambulance staff that,’ Anna continued.

  Ward ground his teeth. He had told them no such damned thing. They had made the assumption that he and Anna were a pair, because their laughable urgency in getting her to hospital had not given him any opportunity to correct their misinterpretation of his presence at her house.

  ‘How much exactly can you remember?’ he demanded brusquely.

  Uncertainly Anna stepped back from him, her hand dropping away. Ridiculously he felt oddly bereft, as though a part of him had actually enjoyed having her touch him.

  ‘Everything, and then nothing since some time early this year.’ Anna gave him a painful smile. ‘I can’t remember how we met or when, how long we’ve been together.’

  Her eyes filled with tears which she immediately tried to blink away, her fingers twisting her wedding ring in
agitation.

  ‘Well, don’t worry about it,’ Ward told her, trying to comfort her. ‘The consultant says you’ll get your memory back fully eventually. Come on, let’s get you home,’ he added, starting to guide her towards the door, but, to his consternation, instead of preserving the small distance he had placed between them, Anna closed it, snuggling up to his side and slipping her arm through his.

  ‘Home. Well, at least I know where that is.’ She stopped, her face shadowing again. ‘Where do we live, Ward? I can’t remember.’ Ward could see the panic darkening her eyes. ‘I know where my house is, but...’

  ‘That’s where we’re going,’ Ward told her.

  What the hell was he doing? Ward asked himself as he guided her out to his car. Why the hell hadn’t he simply told the consultant the truth? Now just look at the situation he had got himself into. Anna quite plainly thought they were lovers, which was ironic when he thought of the real relationship between them, and that was bad enough. How the hell he was going to manage to fabricate answers for the questions she was bound to ask him he had absolutely no idea.

  When he had given in to his chivalrous, protective male instinct and the moral code instilled in him by his mother and his stepfather, he hadn’t realised the complications it was going to cause. But what was taxing him even more than that was the apparent total change in Anna’s character. Did bumps on the head and amnesia do that? Could she have changed at a blow from an avaricious, self-seeking, heartless flirt, who preyed on the innocent and unaware, into this gentle, vulnerable, tender-eyed woman who made no pretence of being anything other than thoroughly relieved to be able to lean on him?

  He had heard that blows to the head could cause bizarre behavioural changes, but not, surely, quite like this?

  It was one o’clock in the morning now. Ward had, to say the least, had a challenging day, and right now he simply didn’t have the energy to pursue the issue.

  Ultimately, of course, he was going to have to tell Anna the truth—if she didn’t regain her memory in the next few days he would have no option but to do so—once he had tracked down someone close to her who could take responsibility for her, of course. There was no way he could simply walk out and leave her in her present condition. And, of course, whilst he stayed close to her there was no way she was going to be able to disappear without repaying Ritchie’s five thousand pounds.

  ‘Oh, this is your car!’ Anna exclaimed in obvious surprise as they reached the Mercedes and Ward unlocked it. Ward frowned. Why was she so surprised? It was an expensive car, yes, but then, to judge from what he had seen of her home, her own living standards must be reasonably comfortable, and from what he knew of her lifestyle she was surely not the type of woman who would be unfamiliar with things such as luxury cars. Far from it, he would have suspected.

  Suddenly Anna saw the little dog curled up on the back seat of the car and immediately her face broke into a delighted smile.

  ‘Oh, Missie,’ she breathed.

  ‘You recognise her,’ Ward commented unnecessarily.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Anna confirmed. ‘I got her last year; she’d been abandoned and...’ She paused. ‘I know she’s mine, Ward, but when was last year? I...’

  To Ward’s consternation her eyes filled with tears again.

  ‘It’s all right, you will remember.’ He tried to reassure her, opening the passenger door of the car and urging her towards it, but Anna had other ideas. Ward was totally unprepared when she turned to him instead of the car and buried her head against his shoulder. She whispered, ‘Hold me, Ward—oh, please, just hold me...I’m so frightened.’

  Uneasily Ward hesitated. This wasn’t something he had taken into account at all. He was, generally speaking, a man who prided himself on keeping his head in any kind of crisis—or at least he had been—but there was something about the soft warmth of Anna pressed so trustingly against him that caused the normal logical thought processes of his brain to be thrown into complete disarray.

  ‘It’s all right, don’t worry, I’m here...’

  Even as he heard himself saying the words, Ward knew that he had crossed a fateful Rubicon, but he told himself he was far too practical a person to listen to the unfamiliar inner voice warning him of danger.

  How, after all, could he be in any possible danger? He knew exactly what kind of woman Anna really was and when she got her memory back she would be throwing him out, not herself into his arms.

  Her hair smelled of roses and Ward could feel her trembling slightly as he held her.

  Instinctively he lifted his hand to her hair to stroke it and then dropped it again.

  ‘I think perhaps we haven’t been together all that long,’ Anna told him several seconds later, half laughing and half embarrassed as she moved away from him. In the illuminated car park Ward could see that her face was prettily flushed and that she looked both amused and self-conscious, her mouth curving into a slightly rueful smile.

  She told him, ‘That’s what my body says, anyway, judging by the way I’m reacting to you. I don’t think I’d still be trembling in your arms quite so—so intensely if we were long-time lovers.’

  Trembling in his arms. Ward closed his eyes and swallowed—hard.

  ‘We did meet only recently,’ he admitted a little hoarsely as he helped her into the car.

  It was, after all, the truth. He just hoped she wouldn’t ask him how recent ‘recently’ actually was, but fortunately, when he got into the driver’s seat, she was too busy hugging Missie to ask him any more questions.

  As he drove Anna home, Ward’s mind was busy. He would have to call at the hotel tomorrow and pay his bill. But what about his clothes? He hadn’t known how long he would need to be in Rye so he had packed a suitcase, but there was hardly enough in it if he was supposed to be living with Anna; he would need rather more than what he had.

  And then there was his own life. Fortunately he had his laptop with him, and even more fortunately there was no one in his life who was likely to question his absence. He would have to ring Mrs Jarvis, though, his twice-weekly cleaner, to warn her that he wasn’t going to return home for a while.

  * * *

  ANNA CLOSED HER eyes and leaned her head back against the head-rest.

  It felt so odd not being able to remember properly. She knew who she was and where she came from; she could remember quite clearly her family, her friends, her way of life here in Rye and the tragedy which had originally brought her here. But meeting Ward, their life together, the events of the last few months and even Ward himself—these were all things of which she had no memory whatsoever.

  The consultant had explained to her that she had suffered a blow to her head through standing on a garden hoe.

  ‘You were concussed, and although there was what looked like a lot of blood fortunately no real damage was done.’

  ‘Apart from the memory,’ Anna had reminded him.

  ‘Apart from that,’ he had agreed. ‘Try not to worry too much about it. It will return.’

  ‘But when?’ Anna had asked him anxiously.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible to say,’ he had told her.

  ‘Will I...will I have to stay here in hospital?’ Anna had asked him anxiously.

  ‘No,’ he had assured her. ‘Although if there wasn’t someone at home to look after you it would be different.’

  Someone at home. Ward. The man who had brought her here to the hospital.

  Anna felt oddly breathless and dizzy just thinking about him, her heart starting to race. He was so big, so masculine. Her skin started to heat as she realised the direction her thoughts were taking. Heavens, surely a woman of her age shouldn’t get so giddily excited just thinking about her partner...her lover...

  Ward... So familiar to her in some ways—she had immediately felt at home in his arms, recognised his scent,
his feel—and yet a complete stranger to her in so many others. She was going to have to learn all about him all over again. Where had they met and when? Did he have a family? Had he ever been married? Did he have children?

  Tomorrow she would ask him, Anna decided tiredly as Ward swung his car between the gates to her house.

  At least she could recognise and remember that! She had no idea why Ward was living with her here. Why had she and Ward decided that they should live in her house? They must have had a reason—but she had to admit that she was pleased that they were living here. Having to contend with a house she couldn’t even remember would have been far too daunting a prospect right now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘YOU SIT DOWN; I’ll put the kettle on and make us both a drink.’

  ‘No, Ward, let me do it,’ Anna insisted. They were both in her kitchen, Missie tucked up happily in her basket whilst, next to her, the huge cream and brown cat, Whittaker, stretched languidly in his.

  On the point of insisting that she needed to rest, Ward suddenly remembered that he would be expected to know his way around Anna’s kitchen and the rest of her house.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure you’ll be okay,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll just get your stuff out of the car and take it upstairs.’

  Anna had refused to put the blood-stained jacket she had been wearing back on and the hospital had also supplied her with some ointment to put on the broken skin of her scalp. On the pretext of disposing of them he could have a brief look round the upstairs of the house and familiarise himself with its layout, Ward decided.

  In the morning before Anna woke up he would also have to slip out to the hotel, but that was a problem he could worry about then.

  He had collected everything from the car and was halfway upstairs when he heard Anna calling out urgently to him. Dropping her jacket and the ointment, he rushed back to the kitchen.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded abruptly. ‘Are you ill? Do you feel sick? Are your eyes—?’

  ‘Oh, Ward, I’m sorry...it’s nothing like that,’ Anna assured him remorsefully. ‘I just wanted to know how you like your coffee... I’m afraid I can’t remember...’