LITMIR.BIZ

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How could any woman forget him?

      The nurse who came in after he’d gone was different from the one before, but kindness itself. She insisted on helping Karen across to the en suite bathroom. A welcome hand, Karen found when she stood up.

      There was a full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The face looking back at her was pale, throwing into sharp contrast the purpling bruise at the temple. The wide-spaced green eyes looked bruised too, the soft, full mouth vulnerable. There was some grazing across cheek and jawline, though superficial enough to make any scarring unlikely.

      If nothing else had convinced her of the passage of time, the couple of inches her hair had grown since she last recalled looking at it would have done so. Natural silver-blonde in colour, it fell curtain straight to her shoulders.

      Luiz would be in his early thirties, she calculated. The kind of man most women would find devastatingly attractive, she had to acknowledge. She could well imagine the impact he would have had on her at first sight: an impact deep enough to make her willing to give up everything she’d ever known just to be with him.

      Which made the idea of her having had an affair with another man within three months of marrying him even harder to believe.

      The nurse waiting outside knocked on the door. ‘You are well?’ she called.

      Karen gathered herself together. There was nothing to be gained from standing here grappling with matters she had no knowledge of. All she could hope for was eventual enlightenment.

      A sleeping pill gave her a good night’s rest, but morning brought no change. Awake at five-thirty, with little of yesterday’s physical unsteadiness left, she got up to take a shower and wash her hair. She had no make-up to hand, and nothing but the gown left by last night’s nurse to put on, but at least she felt bodily refreshed.

      Where she went from here she had no clear idea. She was married to a man she not only didn’t remember, but whose trust she had apparently betrayed. Even if he was prepared to take her back, could she bear to go with him?

      Yet what other choice did she have when it came right down to it? She had neither home nor job to return to in England, even if she still had the means left to get there.

      Back in the bedroom, she drew the window blind to look out on a picture postcard view of sparkling white skyscrapers and green parks stretching down to a sea the same deep blue as the great bowl of sky above it. Rising from a jutting peninsula, the conical shape of Sugar Loaf Mountain was recognisable from a multitude of travelogues.

      Built up here in the foothills of the backing mountains, this was no common or garden hospital, Karen realised—something she should have known already from the standard of both furnishings and facilities. Luiz Andrade was obviously a man of some means.

      She dismissed the idea that that might have had something to do with her readiness to marry him. If the very thought of it turned her stomach now, it would certainly have done the same then.

      Breakfast was brought by yet another nurse, who spoke no English at all. Karen picked at the fruit and cereal, mind still going around in circles. Physically she was surely well enough to leave the hospital today, which made it imperative that she come to terms with her predicament.

      Luiz Andrade was her husband. That much she had to accept. What concerned her the most at present was what he might expect from her. She had no idea of a wife’s rights here. For all she knew, he could be within his in demanding an immediate resumption of marital relations, regardless of her condition. There had been an element of ruthlessness about him last night when he’d spoken of what he might have done had he caught up with her missing lover. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that she might have suffered some form of retribution herself before being dragged back to wherever it was that they lived.

      She was in a state bordering on panic by the time Luiz put in an appearance. He was wearing the same white jeans and shirt—both items freshly washed and pressed from the look of it.

      ‘I brought no change of clothing,’ he said, correctly interpreting the unspoken question. ‘There was no time. The hotel where I spent the night provides laundry facilities.’ He studied her, dark eyes revealing nothing of his thoughts. ‘How do you feel now?’

      ‘Much the same,’ she acknowledged, fighting the urge to throw a wobbly. ‘Mentally, at any rate. Physically, I don’t think there’s a great deal wrong with me.’

      ‘We’ll allow the doctors to decide that.’ He moved to take a seat on the edge of the bed itself, registering her involuntary movement with a narrowing of his lips. ‘You certainly look more yourself this morning. Apart from the bruising, of course. Is your head very painful still?’

      ‘Only if I move it too sharply.’ Karen was doing her best to maintain a stiff upper lip, vitally aware of the warmth radiating from the well-honed body. ‘I’d feel a whole world better for a touch of lipstick!’

      ‘You have no need of cosmetics to enhance your looks,’ he declared. ‘Your hair alone is colour enough.’

      ‘I washed it,’ she said, desperate to keep the conversation on an inconsequential level. ‘It was filthy.’

      ‘Hardly surprising after being dragged in the dust.’ Luiz put up a hand to tuck a still damp strand back from her cheek, refusing this time to be put off by her jerky movement. ‘Is my touch so obnoxious to you?’

      ‘It’s an automatic reflex,’ she said. ‘Nothing personal. I just can’t get my head round this whole situation.’

      ‘I find it difficult myself,’ he admitted. ‘You gave no indication that you no longer found my attentions desirable. Our lovemaking the very night before you left was—’

      ‘Don’t!’ Karen was trembling, the muscle spasm high in her inner thighs a hint that her body might remember what her mind did not. ‘Can’t we talk about something else?’

      ‘What would you suggest?’ he asked drily.

      She cast around. ‘Your home?’

      ‘Our home,’ Luiz corrected. ‘The home to which we shall be returning.’ He shifted from the bed to the chair he had occupied the night before, face expressionless again. ‘São Paulo is many kilometres from here, the city the largest in Brazil, the state one of the richest. Guavada is a cattle ranch lying to the northwest of the city.

      Nothing of what he was telling her meant anything. A cattle ranch!

      ‘You’re a manager or something?’ she hazarded.

      About to answer, Luiz broke off as the door opened to admit the same white-coated doctor from the night before, getting to his feet to greet the man.

      The latter came to examine the bruise on Karen’s temple, shining a torch into each eye before finally pronouncing himself satisfied with her condition.

      ‘You are fortunate,’ he said, ‘that the damage was no worse.’

      ‘I don’t see amnesia as a light matter,’ she retorted. ‘Have you any idea how long it might last?’

      The man hesitated, obviously reluctant to commit himself to a prognosis. ‘Your memory could return at any time,’ he said at length. ‘Shock can do many things to the mind. You must be patient and try not to worry about it.’

      Easy enough to say, Karen reflected hollowly. How could she not worry about it?

      Luiz walked with the man to the door, returning to announce that she was cleared to leave the hospital.

      ‘Your bag will be brought for you to select fresh clothing,’ he said. ‘Shall you need help in dressing?’

      ‘No!’ The denial came out sharper than she had intended, drawing another of the cynical smiles.

      ‘I was thinking of a nurse’s assistance, not my own.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ She made a helpless little gesture. ‘It isn’t that

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