The Sweet Caress (4 page)

Jessica began to laugh, really laugh for the first time since she had run away from Hong Kong. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Cissie. I think I’d make a terrible dress saleswoman.’

From the first time she had seen her, Cissie had been attracted to Jessica as much by her beauty and seductive
charm as curiosity as to how a woman like her could have landed in Newbampton. And now she was enchanted by Jessica’s laughter. It gave her another view of this stranger; she felt there was much more to Jessica than even she had imagined. For the first time since they had left Rose Cottage, Cissie was lost for words.

‘But I’ll try,’ Jessica was saying. ‘I am very grateful to you, Cissie. You are my first friend in Newbampton and I will never forget that, nor your generosity of spirit.’

‘And she’s bought you your first Wiggin’s Tavern meal,’ said Bridget Copley as she joined them at their table in time to hear Jessica express her gratitude. ‘How did you find the food? Familiar? Reminiscent of anything?’

‘Just very good, Sheriff,’ replied Jessica.

Luke Greenfield was standing at the window contemplating his life and work. He had walked away from an over-ambitious wife who had been more in love with being the wife of a handsome doctor whom the rich and famous chased after for his expertise than she had been with her husband.

Dr Greenfield was a brilliant diagnostician who had little trouble raising grants for his research work. At twenty-nine, he was a well-respected name in his field of infectious diseases of the brain. When he left his wife, he also left New York and the fast-lane living which he had been dragged into by her, and which he detested. He had chosen to return to Newbampton and now practised at Newbampton General Hospital. He continued his research work at a laboratory he had installed in one of the outbuildings a few steps from the back door of his eighteenth-century American farmhouse set in an old apple orchard.

Luke had been born and bred in Newbampton, educated at Harvard Medical School and did his residency at St Vincent’s Hospital in New York before going into private practice on the fashionable Upper East Side. His wife used
to claim that for all his education, sophisticated Manhattan life and world travel, he had never really left Newbampton. What he was contemplating while looking through the window was how right Deborah had been. Since his return he had been living a happy and satisfying life. He enjoyed what Newbampton offered: poker with his childhood friends – they played every Friday night – morning coffee and town gossip at Ned Palmer’s every morning, the hospitality of friends whose families he had known all his life. He liked the simplicity of life in Newbampton and the opportunities the college town provided to meet interesting people as they came and went: visiting scholars, writers, painters, historians, musicians. The hospital itself now drew patients and medical scholars from great distances, and Luke had the satisfaction of knowing that his work had done much to give it a reputation that rivalled some of the best institutions in the United States.

He ran his hand through his dark hair, which he wore on the long side, and turned from the window. He had brown seductive eyes, a strong and sensuous face, and a tall, slender body that the young female students at the college found irresistible. He looked at his watch. It was nearly time for his four o’clock appointment. He opened his office door and stepped into the corridor.

The corridor was empty save for two women walking towards him. Luke had eyes for only one of them. Her head held high, elegant and stylish, she moved towards him like a gazelle. She had a beauty and seductive quality about her that reached out and touched the very core of his being. His breath caught in his throat. No woman had ever excited his interest as this woman did.

‘Luke, I would like you to meet Jessica Johnson,’ said Bridget Copley.

Chapter 3

Jessica saw the way he looked at her, saw the hunger and sexual desire. It was there for only a few seconds and then vanished as Bridget introduced them. But it was enough, and it struck an answering chord in Jessica. She was instantly attracted and for a moment she allowed her imagination to run riot with thoughts of the erotic flame that lay beneath that cool, controlled exterior. One thing was for sure, she sensed she would be no enigma to Dr Luke Greenfield.

The three of them walked down the corridor to Luke’s consulting rooms, Bridget and the doctor chattering away as old friends who rarely see each other do. Luke had a great deal of time for Bridget Copley. She was a credit to Newbampton, both as a sheriff and as a woman.

Luke loved women, everything about them: the way their minds worked, their humanity, their strength, and their passion. He adored making love to them. They were givers, creators, and the more powerful the woman and the more control she had over her life and work, the more respect he had for her. Bridget Copley was high on his A list of women to be admired.

When he had spoken to her earlier in the day, all she had said was, ‘I wonder if you would see someone for me. A case that I think would interest you greatly. She needs help.’

‘Four o’clock,’ had been his reply and he had thought no more about Bridget or the woman she was bringing.

In his consulting room, he addressed both women. ‘I think the two of you should put me in the picture as to why
you are here and then I would like to talk to each of you separately.’

Luke kept his eyes on Jessica while the sheriff told him what little she had discovered about Jessica Johnson: her rights to Rose Cottage, the vast sum of money hidden in her handbag. She made no judgements, nor did she express any doubts as to whether Jessica was indeed an amnesia victim. Jessica watched the doctor’s face for a reaction to what he was hearing. She could read nothing in it.

When Bridget had finished, Luke stood up and ushered her to the door saying, ‘I think it best if you wait for Jessica in the reception room. I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished my examination.’

Luke took Jessica’s pulse, her blood pressure. He examined her eyes with an instrument that showed a pinpoint of extraordinary bright light. He held her hand and stroked it, assessing its condition. He asked her how she was feeling in herself, whether she had headaches, had fallen down lately, bruised her head in any way. Then he pulled up a stool and sat directly opposite her.

‘You seem well enough physically. You’re articulate and very calm for someone who has lost their memory. Are you not frightened by what has happened to you?’

‘Only marginally.’

‘Not concerned about what you may have lost with your memory – family and friends, a home, children?’

Instinctively, not wanting to pretend she felt other than she really did, Jessica heard herself answering, ‘I know this may sound strange, but no. If I were to get caught in that trap I would create problems for myself I might be unable to cope with. Will my memory come back, doctor? That’s all I want to know.’

‘An interesting question. I think before I answer it we’ll have the sheriff in.’

Once Bridget was seated, Luke turned his attention to her. ‘Sheriff, I know you well enough to believe that you will do
all you can to help this lady and do your job at the same time. I am going to be candid with you both. It is obvious to me that you, Jessica, have an acute intelligence that allows you to understand the extraordinary predicament you are in and deal with it by deciding that you will not allow it to overwhelm you. That’s admirable and no doubt the best way to deal with loss of memory, something we still know little about. It is possible to lose one’s memory from a blow to the head, a psychological trauma, a brain virus or disease, but after a preliminary examination, my guess is that your loss of memory has been most likely caused by psychological trauma.’

‘Can you elaborate on that?’ said Jessica. She noticed a smile come into his eyes. She realised that she had not fooled Dr Luke Greenfield in the least. The smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

The smile that had so briefly appeared had been because he had baited a trap for Jessica and she had risen to it beautifully. He had suggested three possibilities for her loss of memory, and she had followed his lead and homed in on psychological trauma. Most people would have shown at least some concern about the chances of having contracted some sort of virus, but Jessica seemed not the least bothered about the possibility, which told Luke she knew more about her loss of memory than she was telling.

He answered her with, ‘Something so profoundly disturbing happened to you that your mind shut down on the past.’

‘And what can she do to bring it back?’ asked the sheriff.

‘Can it come back?’ asked Jessica.

‘I can’t tell you for sure it will. It is, after all, up to you, Jessica. When you are ready to let go of the trauma, when you’ve found happiness and security and feel well enough to face the past, maybe then snippets might slowly begin to re-emerge and you might begin to build on remembering. Unless, of course, when they do appear your fear is so great
that you block them even further from your mind.’

Turning to face Bridget, he said, ‘In answer to your question, what should Jessica do to bring back her memory, I think she should make an attempt to create as normal a life for herself as is possible under the circumstances while you try your policeman’s best to discover who Jessica is. I have no doubt that in time, if you don’t unravel the mystery of Jessica Johnson, she will do it for us.’

Jessica rose from her chair and offered her hand to the doctor.

‘I would like to book you in for a brain scan,’ said Luke as he shook her hand, ‘just to confirm your brain is as healthy as I believe it to be. The hospital will call you with an appointment.’

His diagnosis gave Jessica a get-out: she could bring back the past and crawl out of her lie when and if she chose to. It was a get-out that she knew she would never use. She had no desire to resurrect her sometimes dark and dangerous past. It was not a matter of guilt or shame, she felt none of those things for the life she had led. She had enjoyed the thrill of living on a knife edge. Only the realisation that she might be made to die for it had given her the strength to call an end to the erotic madness that had taken over her life.

More than ever she wanted to keep her past private, known only to her.

To any observer, the life Jessica was living would have seemed quite bizarre. She resided in one of the most handsome and historic houses in Newbampton and had a staff to maintain it, with all bills paid by the bank from the Rose Cottage trust. Yet she had no clothes but the ones she had been wearing on her arrival and strangers whom she had never met left her hand-me-down garments in the sheriff’s office, and gave her odd jobs to help sustain her. After five weeks in Newbampton, most everyone in town knew her
by sight as the woman without a memory and a fortune of money the sheriff was withholding pending the results of her investigations. Speculation was rife about who she really was and what sort of life she had lived before her arrival in town.

Jessica won over those she met by her unpretentious and cordial manner. She had several part-time jobs: working alongside Cissie in her mother’s dress shop, waitressing at Wiggin’s Tavern when they needed extra hands, and for four hours a week she stacked shelves for the town’s oldest grocery shop. She worked hard and well, and accepted without complaint whatever menial task she was given. She gained a reputation for being reliable and willing to turn her hand to anything to earn her living expenses and keep herself busy. As Candia she would never have contemplated doing such work but as Jessica, while she did not actually enjoy the work, she found it perfectly acceptable. She was experiencing a side of life she had never even thought about. Her life of odd jobs demanded nothing except willingness. It took no brain power, little thought and no need for charm, which was therapeutic and just what she needed to gain the kind of strength she felt she needed.

Every day her Newbampton experience distanced her from the life she had known. Jessica knew she was only just limping along but at least she was here and, helped by her career as an odd job lady, she was beginning to integrate herself into the community. People watched her. They were filled with compassion for her, as they would have been for the town idiot or any other crippled soul who arrived on their doorstep, and they were enthralled by her beauty and charm and the mystery surrounding her.

It was several weeks after she had her brain scan before she saw Dr Luke Greenfield again. He appeared one evening at the door of Rose Cottage. Jessica, who was dressed in a pair of jeans and a much too large cream-coloured heavy knit sweater, was delighted to see him, it
showed in her face. Though she had been attracted to him, she had not realised until now just how carnal her feelings for him had been. His sexuality seemed to wrap itself round her. She wanted him, she ached to experience with Luke Greenfield that most intimate moment between a man and a woman, orgasm, the sweet caress. Jessica felt no embarrassment about that. All things carnal had, since her first sensuous experience, been a natural delight that allowed her to be at ease with her sexual appetites.

‘Is this a doctor’s house call?’ she asked, while the smile on her lips, the seductive twinkle in her eyes told him she knew that it wasn’t.

‘Would you prefer it to be?’

‘Ah, I see, you are a man who answers a question with a question. I don’t think that’s going to get us very far.’

‘Oh, I think it will. It was, after all, a question that stated I am not here on a house call.’

‘A heavily veiled statement,’ Jessica told him.

‘Which you chose to ignore.’

‘You’re playing with me, Dr Greenfield.’

‘No, Miss Johnson, we are playing with each other.’

‘Yes, I suppose we are, though I think I would have put it differently – we’re dancing round each other.’

‘Dancing and teasing as in a fertility dance, the way the birds and the beasts do?’ he asked.

‘Aren’t you being a bit presumptuous?’ she asked good-naturedly.

‘Am I?’ Luke asked.

‘By god, we’re doing it again,’ they both said at the same time and burst into laughter.

Jessica was aware that she had met her match in Luke Greenfield and that excited her interest in him beyond that of being sexually attracted to him. It made her take a closer look at this handsome man. He was bare-headed and was wearing a camelhair coat that had wide lapels and was belted. She could see peeping out from under his coat a
black silk bow tie and just a hint of a fine white linen dress shirt. She was surprised that he should call on her when he was quite obviously on his way to somewhere grand. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. There was something royal about his stance. It reminded her of the way the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, most of the men of the house of Windsor stood.

Jessica felt the bite of the cold autumn wind and said, ‘Maybe we had better take this dance inside before we both catch a chill,’ realising after she had said it how provocative her words sounded. She stepped aside and he entered the hall.

‘Let’s start again. Good evening, Jessica.’ His smile was broad and there was warmth in it. In his eyes was a look of real pleasure at seeing her.

‘Hello, Luke,’ she answered, delighted that he wanted her, she guessed, as much as she wanted him.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he told her.

So he had not, after all, been taking the stance of an English royal but had been hiding a gift behind his back. Jessica was enchanted by the gesture.

For Luke, this was part of the courting game, the chase, the fun of seduction. When Jessica took the violet-coloured box from his hands, he felt a thrill rush through him. For years women had given him enormous pleasure, and not only sexual, but it had been a very long time since he felt about a woman the way he felt about Jessica. His feelings for her were certainly not the same as those he had for his beautiful, sexy students. Their youth and intelligence, the fire of young passion, the joy of seeing them change into sensual, vibrant women during their love affairs with him were the things he loved most in them. He sensed Jessica had all of those things and much more – mystery, secrets locked away from him that she would never reveal even when her memory returned – that is, if indeed she had ever lost it in the first place.

He had a gut feeling that she was lying about having lost her memory. Luke had not expressed this to anyone and had no intention of ever doing so; after all, he had no proof that Jessica had not lost her memory. But Jessica Johnson struck him as a woman of inner strength who still had control of her life. Her appearance in Newbampton, the money, the key, Rose Cottage, and above all her stability and courage all convinced him she was no victim of amnesia. The quiet contentment and joy he saw in her eyes were reason enough not to distress her with accusations of lying, but the fact was he was already in love with her. If her fondest wish was to live without a past, then he would grant her that wish.

These thoughts were running through his mind as he watched her reaction to his bold gift. He somehow knew that she was used to men courting her on rather a grand scale. She had about her an aura of a woman used to men’s attention.

She did not disappoint him when she finally spoke. ‘You’re full of surprises, Luke. Most men would have brought flowers.’

‘Well, I couldn’t very well take you out to dinner wearing roses and nothing else, now could I?’

‘Not really,’ she answered.

‘And you would have charmingly declined my invitation, telling me you have no evening dress, now wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, I would have had to.’

‘And now you see there’s no need.’

‘But there is,’ she told him as she placed the unopened dress box on the table in the hall. Turning back to face him, Jessica went directly to him, undid the belt of his coat and drew the garment open.