‘Better.’ She showed him by flexing it with an ease he hadn’t seen before. ‘I took some anti-inflammatories, then fell asleep while I was waiting for them to work. What time is it?’
André glanced at his watch. ‘Five-thirty.’
She nodded and stood up. He was really surprised by the lack of stiffness in her movements. It was almost like the Samantha he used to know.
But that Samantha wasn’t really here, he grimly reminded himself.
Her polite voice intruded. ‘Did your meeting go okay?’
‘Fine,’ he said, then turned his back on her, grabbed the back of his neck and just stood there staring into space while his mind played back a reel of still frames that would look great in a horror movie.
What was he thinking while he stood there like that? Samantha wondered warily. He’d seemed all right. The anger had gone, so too the desire to shock her into reacting. Yet he clearly wasn’t comfortable with what had replaced it. Something must be bothering him or he wouldn’t be standing there looking like a man at a loss to know what to do next.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked him reluctantly, not wanting to provoke a return of their earlier hostilities.
He released an oddly muffled laugh. ‘Actually, no,’ he said, then turned to wing a rueful smile at her. ‘I came back here half expecting to find you’d carried out your threat and made a bolt for it.’
If he’d meant to make her smile, she didn’t even come close to it. ‘Where would I go?’ she asked him bleakly. ‘You may think I like being like this but I don’t,’ she added. ‘I need to find out about myself and, as you rightly pointed out to me, you seem to be the only person who can help me do that.’
‘I don’t think anything of the kind about you.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t doubt for one minute that you must be afraid of what all of this must mean.’
‘Were we…?’ she stopped, changing her mind.
‘What?’ he prompted.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head.
‘You’re going that dreadful shade of grey again,’ he informed her levelly.
‘I’m okay,’ she said and discovered that it was her turn to turn away from him. ‘I think I’ll take a shower…’
‘Good idea,’ he agreed. ‘I think I will do the same.’
Relief quavered through the atmosphere, put there because each was glad of the excuse to escape the other. ‘My room is the one on the left,’ he told her. ‘They are both more or less the same, but if you want to swap I don’t—’
‘The one on the right will be fine,’ she cut in, and began to limp towards it with no sign of the nagging pain. It was amazing what a couple of pills could do Samantha mused wryly.
‘Food,’ he said suddenly. ‘We both need to eat. Let’s make it an early dinner,’ he decided. ‘Say, seven o’clock?’
Samantha nodded in agreement, too eager to escape, now that she had an excuse, to start up a discussion on whether she could swallow a single morsel as her throat felt so tight.
‘Seven it is, then,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ll book a table in the restaurant. Unless you would rather eat up here?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘The restaurant will be fine.’ The last thing she wanted was to be incarcerated in this suite of rooms with him for a whole evening. ‘I…’
‘What?’ he prompted when she carefully severed yet another sentence.
She shook her head, aware of the explosive properties in dryly promising not to show him up by stepping out with him wearing polyester. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she murmured, and found her escape in the bedroom she had already claimed as her own by unpacking her suitcase and hanging up her few clothes.
André watched the door close behind her and at last released the tense sigh he had been holding in check. This wary truce they had managed to achieve was harder to deal with than the constant lightning bolts they’d been delivering across each other’s bows.
Would it last?
No, it wouldn’t last, he acknowledged ruefully. She might be different, but she was still Samantha. A fiery temperament was as much a part of her nature as it was a part of his own. It was the reason why they’d fought so much, loved so much and, in the end, almost destroyed each other.
Well, not this time, he vowed as he moved across the room towards his own bedroom door. Samantha might not understand this yet, but the two of them had been given a second chance and this time they were going to use it wisely.
He was going to use it wisely, he then amended. Because he couldn’t expect Samantha to be wise after an event she didn’t even remember.