Sam let out a heavy sigh and rubbed at his forehead. ‘It was bad, then?’
‘It wasn’t great.’
The waiter arrived with their starters.
The aroma of their food was delightful, the freshness and richness of the juicy tomatoes could not be questioned, and the bread had definitely been made by hand on site and flavoured with herbs and pepper.
Sam hadn’t been sure he wanted to eat after hearing all that, but the sight of the food set his mouth watering.
They ate in silence, and it probably would have continued that way, but he reminded himself that they were here to solve their problems.
Sam sought for a brighter topic, so they could start talking again. ‘Tell me about our wedding.’
Instantly she smiled warmly at the memories. ‘It was a wonderful day. The weather was perfect. Everything went so well. Though I can remember standing outside, waiting to go in, and a honeybee flew under my veil. I panicked so much I think I might have screamed! But thankfully my bridesmaids were much braver than I was and they managed to brush it off me. It set my nerves jangling, but then…when the music started and I walked down the aisle towards you…all my nerves just disappeared. I knew that what I was doing was right, and that the man waiting for me—you—was going to make me the happiest woman in the world.’
He smiled and raised his glass to hers, clinking them together.
‘We had a huge reception—hundreds came, mostly people you knew. We released a pair of doves from the balcony of the hotel, and we had all these cameras on the guests’ tables and they each took pictures of what was special for them. I’ve got all the albums in the house somewhere. I can dig them out for you, if you like?’
He nodded. ‘Tell me about the Monterey.’
‘What can I say? It’s doing better than either of us ever imagined. It helped, I think, that one of our first guests was a Saudi princess who gave birth to twins. She arrived with all these security guards, and she had so many staff, but we were able to accommodate them by allotting them the entire third floor. After that our success rates went through the roof. Everyone wanted to come to us. Everyone wanted to have their babies in the same place that princesses had been born.’
‘And the fertility clinic?’
‘I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but I believe so far we’ve helped over a hundred couples to conceive and successfully carry their children to term. Our manager, Edward, would be able to give you exact numbers. Didn’t you call him before we left?’
‘Yes, I wanted numbers and cost forecasting for the next year.’
Em nodded, aware that Sam had become work-focused yet again, despite all she’d said about the state of their marriage. It was something she was familiar with.
She finished her bruschetta, sliding her knife and fork together on her plate. ‘How do you think it’s all looking? I try my best to keep myself informed, but the money side of things is not my forte. I prefer the hands-on work.’
‘It looks like we’re exceeding expectations. I’m happy about that.’
‘But…?’ She looked at him with concern, knowing there was something else.
‘But I’m not happy that our marriage has gone downhill.’
‘We were both at fault. We allowed the Monterey to be our main focus, and sadly we forgot to put just as much work into us as we did that.’
‘I should never have allowed it to happen.’
‘Like I said, it was both of us.’
He appreciated her trying to let him off the hook, but he still felt that it was his fault. ‘I still can’t believe I don’t remember it.’
‘You were definitely there.’ She gave a slight smile.
‘But I don’t remember, Em! I want to recall the experience of the rush of the Monterey’s opening. The worry about whether we’d succeed and the watching and the observing as everything began to get better. The tweaking of the things that weren’t quite right, answering our patients’ needs and serving them, making their experience the best they could ever imagine. I don’t feel I was part of any of that. I’ve just been handed dry forecasts and accounts of where we are now and apparently, according to you, work is just fine—but we aren’t.’
She reached for her glass of water. Sipped it. ‘We can be okay again, Sam. That’s why we’re here. And you did experience it. You worked so hard. The memory is in there—you’ve just got to be patient.’
‘I know. It’s just…’
‘Frustrating?’
He nodded and sat back as their waiter arrived to clear their dishes. Once he’d disappeared, Sam sat forward again. ‘I feel out of place, Em. I know the Monterey is ours, that we made it happen, but I don’t feel like it’s mine. I feel like it’s something you’ve done. That it’s been your project and you’ve just shown it to me. Does that make any sense?’
‘A little, yes. But you have to know that it will all come back—you’ve already experienced one old memory. And when it does…’
He saw a shadow cross her face and knew why she looked so worried. ‘Yes?’
‘When it does, you’ll know…everything.’ She forced a smile.
‘I hope so. I really do.’
‘Me too.’ She dabbed at her mouth with the serviette. ‘I must just use the ladies’ room. Excuse me.’
He watched her hurry away.
He knew why he was really so frustrated at not being there for the Monterey. It had always been his big project. His dream. He’d put so much work into it when really he should have been putting all the work into his marriage. He could vocalise his concerns about missing out on the Monterey. But he couldn’t vocalise about what had gone wrong in his marriage—because Emily didn’t yet know about Serena.
I’ve got to tell her. We won’t survive otherwise.
Whilst he waited, he stared out across the darkening evening of Paris. The fairy lights had come on around the terrace, bathing them all in soft white light, but the brightest beacon of all was the lit Eiffel Tower, behind him in the distance.
It was a stunning sight—one they would no doubt be able to enjoy from their hotel window.
Sam hoped Paris would be everything they had planned it to be.
He needed his memories back.
He needed to be the man Emily had fallen in love with.
He needed to be strong.
Needed to know who he was and what he had gone through.
Why couldn’t the accident have erased the memory of what happened to Serena?
*
Dinner was superb. The lasagne that Emily had ordered was deliciously sumptuous, and the chocolate mousse they shared for pudding was soft, rich and velvety.
As they sat drinking coffee Sam asked her an awkward question.
‘Considering how things were between us, I take it the baby was a surprise?’
Hurrying to swallow her mouthful of coffee, she almost choked on it. ‘Yes. It was a surprise. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until after the crash, when they ran a few blood tests on me.’
‘You were on the pill?’
‘Yes, I was.’
He sipped his coffee carefully, not meeting her eyes. ‘Did you get sick? Is that what happened?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I certainly never missed any.’
‘It’s never been one hundred percent effective.’
‘There was a lot going on, Sam. We were very busy. I was working long shifts because one of our midwives was off ill and I was covering for her. One night we’d both had a lot of wine and…’
‘It happened?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah. It happened.’
Emily remembered that night so clearly. She had been exhausted, tired and upset. She hadn’t seen Sam for almost three days. He’d been in surgery, or in and out of meetings, and they’d barely spoken. He certainly hadn’t touched her for weeks. Their arguments had grown so awful that they hadn’t talked in what felt like ages.
Emily had gone back to their house and, knowing s
he didn’t have a shift the next day, had poured herself a large glass of wine. She’d almost finished it by the time Sam had arrived home, and something about him had seemed strange. He’d been different.
He’d said he was fed up with their fighting and that he missed her. She’d not let him say another word, had gone straight into his arms, and it had been as if someone had lit a fire. Suddenly everything had been urgent. They’d craved each other’s bodies intensely and they’d made love on the carpet.
Afterwards he’d scooped her up in his arms and carried her to bed, where she’d fallen asleep. But when she’d woken in the morning he’d been gone again. It had been a brief truce, a cessation in their arguments, but when she’d sought him out to talk to him about what had happened he’d been too busy, and had answered her sharply, and before she’d known it they’d been arguing again.
It had been a difficult time for her. She’d been devastated, and then hopeful as she’d lain in his arms that they might be able to work things out—only to be dropped like a hot stone afterwards. Cast aside, feeling used.
Emily didn’t want to tell him any of that. How could she? Here? In this beautiful city? Sam didn’t need to hear any of that. He’d hate to hear it. He’d feel so guilty, and she didn’t want him feeling that. They were here to deepen their love. Not go over old, painful ground which neither of them needed to return to.
She wanted them to be happy! She wanted the fairytale that she saw being played out every day. A happy family, a loving family, with everyone eager and excited about their pregnancy, planning nurseries and buying tiny clothes, getting excited about the approaching labour and thinking of names and choosing godparents. All of it.
She wanted a husband who was thrilled to be a father! She wanted the love that she’d never had. To give her child the stable family home that she had never experienced. There was no way she wanted to go back to the way they’d been before.
When she’d married Sam she’d made a commitment, and Emily believed you should always honour a commitment. If you had a child, you stuck around to love it and raise it. If you got married—well, you worked with the other person to make the marriage the best it could be. You didn’t just give up when things got rough. You didn’t just walk out because life seemed easier chasing another dream.
She looked down at the table. Sam still didn’t know just how bad their arguments had been. How close she had come to leaving him. If he knew what they’d really been like…the amount of times she had stood in the shower and cried…
‘I just want this trip to work so badly. I can’t imagine how you must feel, having lost two years of your life. To wake up to this… I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like if it had happened to me.’
What if she had been the one with amnesia? If she thought he had just proposed and she had forgotten the wedding, the Grand Opening of their business. Their arguments? She would still feel blissfully happy after the proposal, right? Would she want to hear that she had threatened to leave him? Would she want to hear that they weren’t the blissfully happy couple she believed them to be? Would she want to hear about some of the things they’d said to each other in the heat of the moment?
No.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Are you? Without memories of the opening of the birth centre, our wedding, our honeymoon…?’
‘I can get all of that back.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Isn’t that what you keep telling me? Isn’t that why we’re here?’
She nodded. It was. But getting his memories back was a double-edged sword. On the one hand he would have the joy of recalling all the good times they’d shared, but on the other…they could slip apart.
‘Then let’s work towards that. If I have any questions I’ll ask you and you can answer. At least until my memories come back on their own. Okay?’
It would have to do. ‘Okay.’
He smiled at her, his eyes glinting beneath the fairy lights.
The restaurant was beginning to get busy now, but they finished their coffees, paid and headed back out onto the street.
‘Let’s walk for a bit,’ Sam suggested, draping an arm around her shoulder.
Paris at twilight was even more beautiful than it was during the day. There were still just as many people bustling about, and the roads were filled with cars and bikes, but everything seemed just that little bit calmer. As if everyone was more relaxed. Cafés and bistros poured out their lights and their aromatic scents into the streets, and they could hear conversation and muted laughter and people enjoying themselves. They passed a busker or two, food and flower stalls packing up for the day.
Sam bought her a single rose and presented it to her. ‘For madame.’
‘Thank you, kind sir.’ She lifted the bloom to her nose and inhaled its soft sweet scent.
These were the moments that she’d yearned for. The last time they’d been in Paris Emily had been soaking up the atmosphere as much as Sam, but this time she knew it all a little better and so could concentrate more on enjoying being with Sam. Holding his hand. Being in his arms. Being in Paris itself was an added bonus.
Sam and Emily headed back over to the Seine and began to walk along its banks, arm in arm. It was a truce of sorts. Both of them were keen to make this trip work. To become close again.
They could hear accordion music in the distance, against the soft lapping of the water against the banks. A duck swam by, followed by a row of small ducklings, brown and yellow.
Emily sighed and looked about her. Couples sat on benches, hand in hand. Couples walked along the river, just like them. Couples sat on the stone steps, staring at the water. This really was a city meant for happiness. Not marital woes.
Sam kissed the side of her neck, inhaling the perfumed scent of her hair. He looked into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry we’ve argued, and I’m sorry if I haven’t been spending time with you. I guess you thought the same thing was happening again when I locked myself away in the office to catch up on things. Same old Sam, huh?’
She smiled. He was so unaware. So innocent of how bad things had actually become. She wanted to make him feel better.
‘That’s okay. I know you feel the need to catch up. I would do the same thing in your shoes.’
‘I’m so lucky to have you, Em.’
She smiled back at him.
The music was getting closer now, and they could see an old man, sitting on top of the stone steps with a genuine accordion. It wasn’t a recording, or a CD playing, but a real, actual musician. He had an ancient face, but it was filled with passion as he played an old-style Argentinian tango, his fingers moving over the buttons and shaping the accordion with ease. Around him couples were dancing against the backdrop of the river. All ages, all abilities. It didn’t matter. People were just being in the moment.
Sam and Emily watched for a second or two, and then Sam took her hand and led her into the group of dancers.
‘Sam! What are you doing?’ She laughed.
‘We’re going to dance!’
She laughed out loud in disbelief! Did Sam not remember? He’d done this the last time! It didn’t seem as if he knew that.
But who cared? Emily wanted to dance with him. Their honeymoon had been the only time he had danced with her. Apart from at their wedding, of course, and she loved to dance.
At least she loved to dance with him.
The beautiful music was at once sudden and jarring, and had Sam pulling her up tight against his body. At first she laughed, embarrassed, but then she could see Sam smiling, taking the tango seriously, staring deeply into her eyes.
The Argentine tango was a dance made for eye contact and a close embrace. They moved as one. Forward. Back. To the side. Their steps were in tune with the music, first fast, then slow. Their bodies pressed together.
Slowly Emily began to forget that there were other couples dancing with them in the same space. All she concentrated on was Sam’s eyes locked with her own. Feeling the pace and emotion of the music.
He had such piercing blue eyes. Intense. Moving. And they bored into her own with love and adoration as he twisted her this way, then that. The music began to get a little faster. He twisted her out to the side and she swept her foot out wide, as if scraping the floor, her skirt billowing out around her, before he pulled her back in close once again.
He really was a masterful dancer.
Why don’t we do this more often?
She stared once again into his eyes as he pulled her close, making her gasp. This dance represented their relationship so easily. Passionate…tempestuous. Intimate.
She slid her leg up and down his, aware of the way he was breathing with her now in the dance, enjoying their closeness to each other. Aware of the way his body felt against hers.
Oh, how I’ve missed this man.
As the music built to its climax Sam spun them round in tight little movements and then, at the big finish, he dipped her backwards, bending over with her. As everyone began clapping to thank the musician he brought his face towards hers and kissed her deeply.
She fell into the kiss, draping her hands around his neck, unaware that the music had begun once again and the other couples were continuing to dance.
Straightening, they simply stood in the middle of the ‘dance floor’ and kissed.
Emily sank into him, claiming her husband back, claiming his mouth, his tongue, his taste. She wanted him so badly. Did he want her just as much? She hoped so. It had been so long since she had felt his touch upon her like this, so long since he had stared into her eyes like this, and she craved him like a drug.
As the kiss ended they continued to stare into each other’s eyes. For a moment neither of them said anything, and then she felt Sam slip his fingers into hers.
Reunited by Their Pregnancy Surprise Page 7
