One Life at a Time Read online

  'Ariel…' he mumbled, as if to himself. 'Ariel Stewart, is that right?'

  She nodded, holding her breath. For an endless moment he seemed to be struggling with his memory, trying to make a connection. But finally he shook his head. She knew he was seething with angry frustration.

  'I… I'd better be going now,' she said softly, when the silence threatened to tear her nerves to shreds.

  'Wait!' His voice was louder, slightly menacing. 'I have one more question to ask you.'

  Ariel stopped, one foot over the threshold of the lounge. 'Turn around,' he ordered and then softened his harsh command with a grudging 'please.' She obeyed, but kept her eyes down.

  He didn't speak for a long moment. 'We've known each other before, haven't we.' It wasn't a question. He was stating a fact. 'And I don't mean those hit-and-run encounters you've been staging around London either, so don't try to be funny. I know I've heard your laughter before.'

  She carefully chose her words so that she wouldn't be lying outright. 'Of course you have. It's exactly like Daria's. We were both amazed by the similarity.'

  'Yes, quite, but that's not what I meant,' he said absently. 'I had the same feeling when I heard Daria laugh. That's why I have such a soft spot for her, I suppose.' He shook his head, as if impatient with himself for lapsing into that unguarded confession. 'Just tell me. Have we met before?'

  'I… I don't think so.' She was trembling inside but her voice came out light and impersonal. 'You must be confusing me with someone else.'

  She suffered his long, careful scrutiny unflinchingly. Then she could breathe freely again as his stern mouth softened in a grin. 'My mistake, then. And the job is yours, if you still want it.'

  There was no sense of glowing triumph, no relief. Only an instant awareness that her troubles were only just beginning.

  'I do,' she said when she could trust her voice. 'Thank you.'

  'Don't mention it,' he mumbled drily. 'I'm willing to give it a trial run but don't get me wrong. I still don't trust you.'

  Left raw and vulnerable by those few unexpected minutes of close contact, she almost reeled under the candid cruelty of his statement. 'I understand,' she said tightly. 'When… when do you want me to start?'

  'Tomorrow morning,' he said shortly, throwing the words over his shoulder as he strode back towards the spacious lounge, forcing her to hurry after him. 'We'll give it a go for a few days, before we make a final decision. Meanwhile, I suggest you move in here. As I said, I don't stick to normal working hours and I'd rather you didn't drive home alone late at night.' Abruptly, he turned around and gave her an impersonal, cool look. 'Marjorie, my housekeeper, lives here permanently, in case you were wondering.' He was perfectly civil but the dry voice assured her that her virtue was the last thing he was interested in. 'Is that all right with you?'

  Again she nodded, trying to match his cool impersonal manner. 'Would you mind if I brought my word-processor? It's portable and I write… I mean, I type much faster with it.'

  'Don't bother.' He smiled mechanically. 'You can use mine. It's in the study. Ask Daria or Marjorie to show you around. Is there anything else you'd like to know?'

  She shook her head, aware of his obvious impatience to bring the interview to an end. He was standing by the oak door which led into the hall, blocking her exit, one hand on the brass knob. 'I'll… I'll see you tomorrow,' she stammered, wondering how she would manage to squeeze past him on her way out.

  She bent down to collect her shoulder bag and the heavy unbound manuscript, his steady gaze making her feel clumsy and uneasy.

  'Ariel…' She stopped dead as the sound of her name engulfed her like a physical caress. 'Yes?' she said, turning her eyes on him.

  He went on in the same warm, low voice. 'There's one thing I'd better mention before we start. Since we're going to be living in each other's pocket, I suppose I'll have to let you in on the secret. The family skeleton, so to speak. You're bound to hear about it from Daria or from some other member of my loving family, so you might as well get it from me. I won't insult you by suggesting that you keep it to yourself.'

  Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure he could hear it.

  'You have heard about my disappearing act some three years ago?'

  Ariel nodded. 'I… I read about it.'

  'Yes, I thought you had. Well, wouldn't you like to know what happened to me during those unaccounted-for six months in my life?'

  'Yes.' Ariel's voice was hardly a whisper.

  'It's quite simple, my dear,' he went on, his voice dry and colourless. 'The truth is, I don't know myself. You see, I have lost my memory.'

  His voice sounded so casual, so matter-of-fact, as if he was talking about a slight headache, yet Ariel was well aware of the inner turmoil, the effort it had taken him to say these words out loud.

  She didn't attempt to break the long silence. At last, she raised her eyes to meet his, directly.

  Chris smiled. 'You don't look surprised, or shocked. Maybe you didn't understand me properly. There's a black hole in my life… a six-months' blank. Six months in which I lived as another person, and I haven't got the foggiest idea of where, how or who I was. What's more,' he continued softly, menacingly, 'I don't know what I have been up to during those months. For all I know I could have killed, robbed, raped or—'

  'Or just wandered about, lost and confused but probably just as sane as you are now,' she finished, almost vehemently.

  Her forceful interruption startled him. She gave him a slight, apologetic smile. 'My brother is a psychiatrist,' she explained. 'So I've heard of such cases before. I seem to remember him saying that, like in a hypnotic state, a man who suffers from temporary amnesia rarely acts against his basic nature.'

  'Only rarely?' he mocked her gently. 'So there are a few exceptions to the rule, nevertheless.'

  'I suppose there are, but somehow I don't think you are one of them. And you don't believe it either, Mr Donahue,' she finished, almost angrily.

  The handsome face broke into a wide grin and for the first time she had heard him laugh out loud: 'All right, then. And my name is Chris, by the way.' He offered his hand, in a gesture of mock formal introduction. Ariel hesitated, but finally let him take her hand in a strong, warm grasp.

  'We'll assume then that I'm no psychotic killer or rapist.' He grinned down at her. 'But you will find me moody, unpredictable and unreasonable. And you'd better not ask me questions at such times or try to be sympathetic. I can be quite temperamental when something touches a raw nerve. Like when—'

  'Like when you heard me laughing.' She didn't mean to say that, but the words just came out.

  The silence that followed terrified her. She stole a look through her lashes, expecting an exasperated rebuke at her uncalled-for intervention. Instead, he just looked down at her, with a curiously warm smile in his eyes. Yet she knew it wasn't her he was seeing but someone else. Someone without a face or a body… a ghost.

  'Yes,' he said softly, almost to himself. 'Like when I heard you laughing. I'm sure I've heard that laughter before, but it belongs in another place… somewhere warm and humid, where the sea is slow and lazy and the horizon is always misty… Just sounds, smells, texture, that wonderful, breathless laughter and…' His distant gaze came down to fasten, as if in a question, on the palms of his hands. 'And my hands buried in long, flowing, sun-warmed hair…

  His eyes strayed towards her own short-cropped hair and then saw her large dark eyes, glinting with unshed tears. 'Oh, for Heaven's sake! Don't look at me with those big, unhappy eyes!' His tone was dry and impatient again but almost instantly it softened again, thinking he had terrified her by letting her have a glimpse of the gaping black hole which tormented him. 'Sorry, darling. It's only my blasted memory playing hide-and-seek with me again. Don't let it upset you.'

  She nodded dumbly.

  'Come on, Ariel. I want to hear you laugh again.'

  She swallowed, her lips too rigid to respond even with a smile. 'I can
't. I'm sorry.'

  He looked at her for a second, trying to dispel her fear with his warm, friendly smile, and then, as if losing interest or patience, he turned away and in his graceful loose-limbed stride, left the room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I want to hear you laugh again…

  The same voice, the same warm smile, the same intimate command… as if the cold marble shell of the writer had cracked open to let through the man she had lost three long years ago.

  'Oh, Kane!'

  The room echoed with the sound of his old name and she looked around in panic, in case her unguarded moan was heard by anyone. But there was no one there and she sank into the deep armchair in which he had sat before, finding some comfort in the imagined warmth of his body.

  Kane…

  She gave him that name when he had told her, his voice dull with horror, that he had none. She wasn't sure why she had pounced on that specific name. But hard and unyielding, it reflected something of the man who had been banished from his past by the loss of his memory and stumbled into her island and into her life.

  A Creole fisherman had found his unconscious body on the beach and carried him to the shelter of his nearby shack. There was no sign of a yacht or even a sailing boat, so it was assumed that he had swum over from one of the larger islands, had collapsed mid-way and had been washed ashore. He was in a coma for two days before the Creole's wife, who happened to be the Stewart children's old nanny, noticed the alarming swelling of the bruise at the back of his head and decided to confide in her old charges. The man needed medical care and luckily Dr Mike, Ariel's older brother, was home from England, on his Christmas holiday.

  Michael wasn't exactly enthralled by the prospect of getting involved with this particular case. The kindly Creole couple had found no passport, no cards, nothing in fact which could identify the unconscious man, and Michael's first thought was that he could be a political or criminal fugitive. St Patrick had been often used as a haven for such people: it was scantily inhabited and mostly by Creoles, the Stewarts being the only European family. And being politically insignificant, it had no police, no government representatives and no tourist facilities whatsoever. As such, the island offered a perfect temporary hide-out for wanted men.

  Nevertheless, being a doctor, Michael could hardly refuse to see a sick man no matter how suspicious the circumstances, and Ariel, who could never resist her insatiable curiosity, insisted on coming with him.

  That's how Kane invaded her life.

  She was nineteen years old and just back from six long years of boarding school in England. Her parents felt she should go back to England, perhaps take a university degree, but she kept putting it off. She loved her island passionately and had missed it terribly while away at school. She had been back a year now, and she was still enchanted, by its primeval beauty and the slow, peaceful pace of the uneventful days. The outside world meant a relentless rat-race of the competitive challenges which she was in no hurry to join. As for social life, she found all the fun and companionship she needed among the many friends she had on the larger islands, and careerwise, she had long ago decided on writing, and her stories were already being published regularly in England, so there was no need for her to pursue her career away from St Patrick.

  Love… well, that was another matter. She wanted it, fantasised about it, wrote about it endlessly in her stories, but never came across it until she met Kane.

  He was lying on the rush bed, in the sparse Creole shack, his deathly pale face hardly discernible behind several days' growth of beard, which like the overgrown dark blond hair was dull and sticky with sea-water. His eyes were shut, and his lean body, naked under the threadbare blanket, was alarmingly still.

  'He's dead, Michael, isn't he?' Ariel turned her eyes away in sick horror.

  Michael, with four years' hospital practice behind him, coolly ordered her out of the house if she was going to be a nuisance. 'He isn't dead, you twit. Badly concussed, though. No bones broken, as far as I can judge, and no signs of exposure. He must be as tough as doornails to have survived that nasty head blow and God knows how many hours at sea.'

  It might have been the sound of an English voice, or just plain coincidence, but the heavy eyelids fluttered and suddenly his eyes were open and he was staring straight into hers.

  Even in the dim light of the single naked bulb, the dark-blue gaze shone with piercing brilliance, deep and unguarded, too hazy to erect any barriers between them. He was welcoming her not as a stranger but as a trustworthy friend. She smiled at him and her heart leaped to her throat when he responded with a weak grin. Later she confessed that she fell in love with him at that very moment.

  'Do you speak English?' Michael asked cautiously, unaware of the mute but shattering exchange between his sister and his patient.

  The man could only give a weak nod and tried to sit up. Michael laid a restraining hand on his shoulder: 'Lie down. And don't try to talk. You've been unconscious for several days, and not having any facilities here, I can't judge how bad your condition is. I might have to move you to the main hospital on Mahe.'

  There was another weak nod and the eyes seemed to transmit meek acceptance. She could see no sign of fear or anxiety.

  'Michael is a doctor.' She hurriedly fell into an elaborate explanation, afraid he might go to sleep again and she would lose the contact with those wonderful deep blue eyes. 'He's my brother, by the way and my name is Ariel. Like Ariel in The Tempest. Do you know it?' He nodded weakly, mouthing the word 'Shakespeare'.

  'Shut up, Ariel.' Michael decided his patient had had enough for now. 'There's nothing more I can do right now. We'll wait till tomorrow and see how you're getting along. Sleep, hopefully, will do the trick. I'll be back in the morning.'

  'Hey, wait a minute, Mike. You're not thinking of leaving him here?' Ariel interrupted with her customary impulsiveness. 'We're moving him to the house.'

  'Oh no, we're not!' Michael cut her short. 'Leaving aside the fact that he can't be moved anywhere in his condition, I also don't think Dad will be overjoyed by the prospect of harbouring a wanted man.'

  'He isn't, Mike.' She didn't bother to lower her voice. 'He didn't seem at all anxious when you spoke of moving him to the main island. Which he would have been if he were a fugitive.' The humorous glint which lit up the dark blue gaze was her reward for her impulsive trust.

  She was there again the next day, and the day after. In fact, she hardly left her old nanny's shack. She was a hopeless nurse but fortunately, he needed very little nursing. He just slept, seeming to grow stronger in staggering stages. Michael no longer talked of moving him to a hospital.

  Three days went by before he became fully awake and could speak to her. His first words were unpredictable, almost whimsical. Later on she became utterly fascinated by his habit of coming up with the most unexpected but oddly perceptive remarks. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside his makeshift bed, devouring a huge slice of mango and getting her face all smeared with the juice, when his voice made her jump out of her skin.

  'So they do eat after all.' His low, attractive voice reached down to her and if she hadn't been already infatuated, that wonderful caressing voice would have done the trick. 'And I always thought that spirits were above such things as food.'

  'Of course they are,' she answered, recovering from her momentary shock. 'And I'm not a spirit.'

  'So it isn't really enchanted then?' he asked.

  She knew immediately what he was referring to, as if their minds were tuned together. 'Our island? Not really. But my mother likes to think of it as Prospero island. That's why she called me Ariel.'

  He nodded, his blue eyes glinting with amusement. 'Sure you're not a spirit?' he mumbled.

  Ariel burst out laughing and saw his eyes widen momentarily with warm pleasure. 'No, certainly not a spirit. Too exasperatingly human, if you asked Michael or my father.'

  He didn't need to ask more about the island or about herself, she had been feedin
g him with endless information for days now. In fact, having been discarded by her nanny as a nurse, she limited her usefulness to interminable and probably exasperating babble.

  She still had no inkling of the man's real problem. Nor had he, to judge by his tranquil, untroubled blue gaze and his amused responses to her endless chirpy chatter. The truth burst on them all when Ariel suddenly remembered that they still didn't know his name.

  It was then that she saw for the first time the bewildered, frantic look which dulled the sparkle of his deep blue gaze. 'I don't know,' he said after a long pause, and repeated as if to himself, 'God help me, I don't know…'

  She could never forget those dreadful hours when the horror of his situation gradually dawned on him. He remembered absolutely nothing. His home, his parents, his occupation, not one single detail of his past. All they could tell was that he was English, somewhere in his early thirties and probably a public-school and Oxbridge man, going by his accent and his manners. That was about it. The rest was a terrifying blank vacuum in which he stumbled blindly. Desperately, helplessly lost. A man without a past!

  When Michael was informed of the man's predicament, he took matters into his own hands. 'Look, friend,' he said practically. 'It's probably a temporary loss of memory. It can happen in bad cases of concussion. You won't help matters much by getting all tense and frantic about it. Give it time.'

  'Kane,' Ariel blurted out of the blue, breaking into her brother's cool reasoning. 'I'll call you Kane.'

  'Why?' Michael asked.

  'I don't know. Its just seems to fit. Do you mind?' she turned to the newly baptised man.

  Something in her unshakeable, infectious high spirits seemed to have broken through the shocked horror of his predicament. Chuckling with relief, she saw the cloudy eyes come to life, and the firm, tight mouth relax in the lazy grin which had already enslaved her. 'Why not?' he said. 'What's in a name, after all? I suppose I should be grateful to you for not baptising me Neville, or Nigel or Christopher.'