About the Authors

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, to an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, who knocks everything over, a very small terrier, who barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby and would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading them—and writing them—ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.

Also by Lynne Graham

The Italian’s Inherited Mistress

His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir

The Greek’s Surprise Christmas Bride

Indian Prince’s Hidden Son

Billionaires at the Altar miniseries

The Greek Claims His Shock Heir

The Italian Demands His Heirs

The Sheikh Crowns His Virgin

Also by Michelle Smart

The Sicilian’s Bought Cinderella

Her Sicilian Baby Revelation

Cinderella Seductions miniseries

A Cinderella to Secure His Heir

The Greek’s Pregnant Cinderella

Passion in Paradise collection

A Passionate Reunion in Fiji

Rings of Vengeance miniseries

Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

Marriage Made in Blackmail

Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Innocent’s Forgotten Wedding & His Greek Wedding Night Debt

Lynne Graham and Michelle Smart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90017-5

THE INNOCENT’S FORGOTTEN WEDDING & HIS GREEK WEDDING NIGHT DEBT

The Innocent’s Forgotten Wedding © 2020 Lynne Graham His Greek Wedding Night Debt © 2020 Michelle Smart

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

The Innocent’s Forgotten Wedding

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

His Greek Wedding Night Debt

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

The Innocent’s Forgotten Wedding

Lynne Graham

The Italian husband she can’t remember

…or resist!

After a terrible car crash, Brooke can’t remember her own name—much less her wedding day! Finding irresistible Lorenzo Tassini at her bedside—and a gold band on her finger—is shocking.

Honor-bound to care for his estranged wife, Lorenzo whisks her to his luxury Tuscan villa. But Brooke’s nothing like Lorenzo remembers! Her sweetness surprises him, as does the chemistry between them, blazing like never before. Stunned to discover her virginity, Lorenzo must uncover the secrets of the woman wearing his ring…

CHAPTER ONE

MILLY’S HEARTBEAT SPEEDED UP with excitement when she saw Brooke’s name flash across the screen of her cheap mobile because it had been a while since she had heard from her famous and glamorous half-sister.

When Brooke phoned, however, it meant that Brooke needed her and that truth more than made up for Brooke’s often cold and seemingly critical attitude towards her. Milly loved being needed and, in any case, deep down inside, Milly was convinced that her sister cared about her even though she might be too proud to admit it.

After all, why else would Brooke confide in her about so many private things if she did not, at heart, see Milly as a trustworthy friend and sister? Furthermore, aside of each other, neither one of them had a single living relative. Nor was it surprising that Brooke would need her services again when her life was in such turmoil, thanks to that dreadful possessive tyrant of a man she had mistakenly married. What sort of a man would try and come between Brooke and her career? What sort of man would divorce a wife as beautiful and talented as Brooke simply over ugly rumours that she had had an affair?

‘He won’t listen to a word I say!’ Brooke had wept when she’d confided in Milly. ‘He set me up because he wants rid of me. I’m convinced he paid that creep to lure me into a hotel room and lie about having sex with me!’

‘Brooke?’ Milly exclaimed warmly as she answered her phone.

‘I need you to pretend to be me for a few days.’

‘A few…days?’ Milly stressed in dismay, for that request went far beyond anything her sister had asked of her before. ‘Are you sure I’ll be able to manage that? I’m OK until people speak to me and expect me to be you!’

‘You’ll be holed up in a fancy hotel in the heart of London,’ Brooke told her drily. ‘You won’t be required to talk to anyone but room service. You won’t need to leave the room at all.’

Milly frowned. ‘For how long?’ she pressed anxiously.

‘Five or six days. That’s all,’ Brooke informed her briskly.

‘I can’t, Brooke,’ Milly protested apologetically. ‘I’ve got a job and I don’t want to lose it.’

‘You’re a waitress, Milly, not a brain surgeon,’ her half-sister reminded her tartly. ‘You can pick up casual work anywhere at this time of year. And if it’s a matter of me paying your rent again for you, I’ll do it!’

Milly flushed and subsided again because it was true, she could find another job relatively easily, and if Brooke made up her loss of wages to cover the rent on her bedsit as well, she had no grounds for complaint either. When it occurred to her that she had ended up sleeping on a friend’s sofa the last time she’d needed help to cover her rent, she suppressed the memory. Brooke had forgotten to give her the money she had promised but Milly felt that that oversight was her own fault because she had been too embarrassed to remind Brooke. She couldn’t help but shrink from highlighting the financial differences between her and her sister, and wasn’t one bit surprised that Brooke had always refused to be seen in public with her or invite her into her more exciting world even briefly, except in Milly’s guise as a lookalike. What else could she expect? Milly asked herself ruefully. In truth, she was lucky to have any kind of relationship with her sibling at all…

Brooke had first sought out Milly when she was eighteen and fresh out of a council home for foster kids. Milly had already known that she was illegitimate, but she had been shocked by what her newly discovered half-sister had to tell her—well, shocked and initially repulsed by Brooke’s view of the circumstances of her birth. But then, slowly, she had come to understand Brooke’s feelings of betrayal and had forgiven her sister for her offensive wording.

‘Your mother was the slut who almost broke up my parents’ happy marriage!’ Brooke had told her sharply.

To be fair to Brooke, Milly’s mother had been the other woman who slept with a married man, inflicting considerable suffering on that man’s innocent wife and child. Brooke and Milly’s father, William Jackson, a wealthy wine importer, had had a long-running affair with a model called Natalia Taylor and had threatened to leave his wife over her.

Sadly, a heart attack had taken William’s life when Brooke was fifteen and Milly was nine. Natalia had died in a bus crash only a couple of years later and Milly had ended up in council care, where she had remained until she reached eighteen. At first meeting, both young women had been taken aback by the likeness between them, for they had both inherited their father’s white-blonde curly hair and dark blue eyes. Milly, however, had had a large bump in her nose and somehow the features that made Brooke a stunning beauty had blurred in Milly’s case, putting her into the pretty rather than beautiful category.

It had been Brooke’s idea that she could use Milly as a stand-in either to avoid an event she considered boring or, more frequently, to mislead the paparazzi that dogged her footsteps and who occasionally followed her places where she didn’t want to be seen or photographed her with individuals whom she didn’t wish to be seen with. Brooke was obsessed with airbrushing and controlling the public image she wanted to show the world.

In the same way she had pointed out that Milly couldn’t help her unless she was prepared to go that extra mile and have her nose ‘done’ so that it mirrored Brooke’s far more elegant nose. At first, Milly had said a very firm no to that idea, not because she was fond of her less than perfect nose but just because it was hers and she was accustomed to her own flaws.

Brooke had had a huge row with her over her refusal and Milly had been devastated when her half-sister had cut off all contact with her. When Brooke had called her again six weeks later, Milly had been so grateful to hear from her that she had agreed to the surgical procedure and before she could change her mind she had been whisked into a private clinic and her nose had been skilfully enhanced to resemble Brooke’s. Once that had been achieved, expert make-up had completed her transformation.

The first time Milly had pretended to be Brooke to enable her sister to evade a boring charity event, she had been terrified, even dressed in her sister’s clothes and made up to look like her, but nobody had suspected a thing and, for the first time in her life, Milly had felt like an achiever. Brooke’s gratitude had made her feel wonderfully warm inside and the second time, when Milly had had to simply step out of a limousine and walk into a shop while Brooke was many miles away, she had felt even better. She had discovered that it was fun to dress up in expensive clothes and pretend to be someone she was not and there had been very little fun in Milly’s life before Brooke entered it.

And with Brooke in her current predicament, struggling to deal with her broken marriage, Milly knew that she should definitely go that extra mile for her sister. ‘Where will you be while I sit in this hotel?’ she asked curiously.

‘Having a very discreet little holiday, so I’ll need your passport,’ Brooke advanced. ‘I daren’t travel on my own.’

And Milly frowned at that reference to her passport but could only smile at the mention of a holiday. A holiday was exactly what her poor sister needed at this stressful time in her life and if Milly room-sitting in some fancy hotel was all that was required, it would be utterly selfish of her to refuse to help. ‘OK. I’ll do it.’

‘You can only bring one small bag with you. I’ve packed a case for you, and you can change into my clothes in the car,’ Brooke informed her. ‘I’ll do your make-up in the car too. I’m better at it than you are.’

After Brooke had arranged to pick her up, Milly straightened her hair and threw her passport, fresh underwear, a couple of books and a range of craft items into a bag before heading out. It was a filthy wet day and she didn’t step out onto the pavement until she had her umbrella up to protect her hair for Brooke’s hair was always a perfect blonde fall without even a hint of curl.

First, however, Milly took ten minutes to walk down the street and quit her waitressing job in a local café, mentioning a family emergency. She hated letting people down, but Brooke had been right, she would probably find another job quite quickly, she reasoned, guilty at having let an employer she liked down at short notice. But, my goodness, Brooke did deserve a holiday after everything she had recently been through and if she could help her sibling achieve that, then she could be proud of herself because family needs came first, family should always come first, she thought ruefully, regretting that neither of her parents had lived by that truth.

Brooke looked amazing when Milly glimpsed her inside the limo, all groomed and flawless in a black jacket, a tomato-red sheath dress and very high-heeled stilettos. It was likely, though, to be a struggle for her sibling to get out of that dress in the back of the limo, no matter how spacious it was, Milly ruminated.

‘Quick, get in!’ Brooke snapped at her. ‘We can’t be seen together!’

‘What about the driver?’ Milly asked in bemusement as the passenger door closed to seal the two women into privacy.

‘I pay him well to keep quiet!’ Brooke fielded, snapping shut the privacy screen between the front and the rear seats. ‘Now help me out of this dress… Oh, yes, don’t forget that I need your passport too.’

‘It has to be against the law for you to travel on my passport,’ Milly muttered uncomfortably. ‘Do you have to borrow it?’

Brooke settled furious dark blue eyes on her. ‘I don’t have a choice. I’ll be traced if I travel under my own name. With your name, I’m nobody, and nobody is the slightest bit interested in me or where I go.’

Reluctantly accepting that reality, Milly handed over her passport and proceeded to help her sibling out of her tight dress.

‘Good grief, I don’t see you for a couple of months and you let yourself turn into the ugly sister. Your nails are awful!’ Brooke complained, snatching at one of Milly’s hands to frown down at the sight of nails that were an unpainted and modest length. ‘I’m always perfectly groomed. When you’re checking in, keep them hidden and get a manicurist to come to the room and fix them before you check out again!’ she instructed impatiently.

‘I’m sorry,’ Milly muttered, choosing not to point out that she couldn’t afford to have her nails done professionally. Brooke regarded expensive treatments in the beauty field as essential maintenance and never ever considered the cost of them. ‘When do you think you’ll be back?’

‘Hell…you’re putting on weight again too, aren’t you?’ Brooke said in frustration as she urged Milly to breathe in to enable her to get the zip up on the fitted dress.

Milly had been born curvier and almost an inch shorter than Brooke and she didn’t respond. She knew she wasn’t overweight but since meeting Brooke, who was thinner, she had deliberately dropped almost a stone so that she could fit better into her sister’s clothes. Unfortunately, that had meant avoiding all her favourite comfort foods and reining in her love of chocolate. Beside her, Brooke kicked off her shoes and began to dress in jeans and a long concealing top, bundling her hair up under a peaked cap. Digging into her bag she produced moist wipes and began to wipe off her make-up.

‘It’s like being a spy,’ Milly remarked with helpless amusement.

‘Don’t be so childish, Milly!’ Brooke snapped impatiently. ‘Have you any idea how much is riding on this holiday I’m having? This is too important to joke about. I’m meeting someone while I’m away who may put my name forward for a film part.’

‘Well, it’s exciting for me,’ Milly confided with a little wrinkle of her nose and a look of guilty apology. ‘Sorry. I expect it’ll be pretty boring stuck in that hotel room though, so this is the fun part.’

‘You’ll need my rings…for goodness’ sake, don’t lose them! I may need to sell them somewhere down the road,’ Brooke admitted stiffly, threading her wedding and engagement rings off her long manicured finger and passing them over. ‘That bastard, Lorenzo! He could have slung me a few million for the sake of it, but he stuck to the letter of the pre-nup. I’m not getting a penny I’m not due. Still, he’ll just be a bad memory a few years down the road. My next husband will be a fashion icon or an actor, not a banker!’

Disappointed by her sister’s bad mood, Milly donned the rings and slid her feet into the shoes while Brooke passed her bag and jacket over. ‘Do you think that when you come back we could spend an evening together?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Why would I want to do that?’ Brooke demanded.

‘It’s been ages since we spent any real time together,’ Milly pointed out quietly. ‘I would really enjoy that and maybe talking over things would make you feel better.’

‘I’m feeling fine.’ Brooke snapped open the privacy screens and lifted her make-up kit before pausing to communicate with the driver and telling him to speed up because she didn’t want to check in late for her flight. ‘When I first went looking for you, I was curious about you. But I’m not curious any more. I’ve been very good to you too, sprucing you up, fixing your face. What more can you expect from me? It’s not as though we could ever be friends, not with your mother having slept with my father while he was still married to my mother. Do you realise that my poor mother tried to kill herself over their affair?’

Milly paled at that new revelation and dropped her head. ‘I am so sorry, Brooke, but I’ve been hoping that in time…well, that we could get over that history because we’re still sisters.’

Brooke pushed up Milly’s chin to outline her mouth with lip liner. ‘Smile…yes, that’s the ticket. There is no getting over the fact that your mother shagged my father and I don’t do friends. Friends let you down and talk behind your back.’

‘I wouldn’t ever!’ Milly protested.

‘Well, you haven’t so far,’ Brooke conceded grudgingly. ‘And you’ve been very useful to me, I’ll agree. But we have nothing in common, Milly. You’re poor and uneducated and you wouldn’t even be able to talk properly if I hadn’t sent you to elocution classes. You knit and you go to libraries. What would we talk about? I’d be bored stiff with you in five minutes.’

Milly paled and stiffened and called herself all kinds of a fool for running blindly into such abuse. She had closed her eyes too long to Brooke’s essential coldness towards her, hoping that Brooke would eventually accept her as her sister and leave the sins of their mutual parents behind her in the past where they belonged. But for the first time, she was recognising that Brooke was as angry and resentful now about their father’s affair as she had been when she’d first met her. Brooke tucked away her make-up kit and told the driver yet again to speed up, the instruction sharp and irritable in tone.

The rain had got so heavy that it was streaming down the windows and visibility was poor. It was a horrible day weather-wise, Milly conceded wryly, suppressing her hurt at being labelled boring. It was true that she and her sister had little in common apart from their paternity and their physical likeness to one another. Evidently, however, Brooke didn’t feel an atom of a deeper connection to her because of their blood bond. When Brooke had confided in her about her problems, had it meant anything to her at all? Possibly, Brooke had grasped that Milly was trustworthy in that line and unlikely to reveal all to some murky tabloid newspaper. Or maybe Milly had just been there at the right moment when Brooke had needed to unburden herself.

‘This will be the last time I stand in for you, Brooke,’ Milly said quietly but firmly. ‘If I’m honest, I kind of wish I’d never started it.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, why do you have to start getting difficult right now?’ Brooke demanded wrathfully.

‘I’m not being difficult and I’m not about to let you down,’ Milly responded tautly. ‘But once this is over, I won’t be acting as your stand-in again.’

Brooke flashed one of her charming smiles and stretched out her hand to squeeze Milly’s. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been short with you but this has been such a frantic rush and I’m living on my nerves. We’re almost at your hotel. Make sure you don’t get into any conversations with staff. I never chat to menial people. Stay in your room and eat there too and don’t eat any rubbish. I am known for my healthy eating regime and I have an exercise video in the pipeline. You can’t be seen after you’ve checked in. People will understand. They know my marriage is over and I wouldn’t look human if I wasn’t seen to be grieving and in need of some private downtime…’

Milly was not fooled by that fake smile or the apology. She could see that she was only receiving it because Brooke was scared she would pull out on her at the last minute and it saddened her to see that lack of real feeling in the sister she had come to care deeply for.

Their driver was travelling fast when he suddenly jammed on the brakes to a jolting halt to make a turn. Milly peered out at the traffic. There was a large truck coming through red stop lights towards them and she gasped in fear.

Beside her Brooke was shouting at the driver and as Milly braced herself and offered up a silent prayer she tried to reach out for Brooke’s hand, but her sister was screaming and she couldn’t reach her. There was a terrible crunch on impact that jarred every bone in her body and then she blacked out in response to the wave of unimaginable pain that engulfed every part of her. Brooke… Brooke, she wanted to shriek in horror, because her sister had released her seat belt while she was changing…

Lorenzo Tassini, the most exceptional private banker of his generation and a renowned genius in the field of finance, was in an unusually good mood that morning because his soon-to-be ex-wife had finally signed the divorce papers earlier that day.

It was done. Within a few weeks, Lorenzo would be free, finally free, from a wife who’d lied, cheated, slept around and created endless embarrassing headlines in the newspapers. Brooke hoped to build an acting career on the back of her notoriety. Lorenzo might despise her, but he blamed himself more for his poor judgement in marrying her than he blamed her for letting him down. In retrospect, he could barely comprehend the madness that had taken hold of him when he had first met Brooke Jackson, a woman totally outside his wide and varied experience of the opposite sex. Lust had proved to be his downfall, he reflected grimly.

Brooke’s white-blonde beauty had mesmerised him but the two years he had been with her had been filled with rage, regret and bitterness, for the honeymoon period in their marriage had been of very short duration. The ink had barely been dry on their marriage licence before he’d realised that his dream of having a wife who would give him a happy home life was unlikely to come true with a woman who had absolutely no interest in making a home or in having a child or indeed spending time with him any place other than a noisy nightclub.

But then what did he know about having a happy home life? Or even about having a family? Indeed, Lorenzo would’ve been the first to admit his ignorance in those fields. He, after all, had been raised in a regimented Italian palazzo by a father who cared more about his academic triumphs than his happiness or comfort. Strict nannies and home tutors had raised him to follow in the footsteps of his forebears and put profit first, and his dream of leading a more normal life in a comfortable home had died on the back of Brooke’s first betrayal. All that foolish nonsense was behind him now though, he assured himself staunchly. From now on, he would simply revel in being very, very rich and free of all ties. He would not remarry and he would not have a child because ten to one, with his ancestry, he would be a lousy parent.

The police called Lorenzo when he was on the way out to lunch. He froze as the grim facts of the crash were recited. The driver was dead, one of his staff. The other passenger was dead. What other passenger? he wondered dimly, reeling in shock from what he was hearing. His wife was seriously injured, and he was being advised to get to the hospital as soon as possible. He would visit the driver’s family too to offer his condolences, he registered numbly.

His wife? Seriously hurt? The designation shook him inside out because he had already stopped thinking of himself as a husband. But in an emergency, he was Brooke’s only relative and if she was hurt, she was entirely his responsibility, and no decent human being would think otherwise, he told himself fiercely. Without hesitation, he headed straight to the hospital. He had stopped liking or respecting his wife a long time ago, but he would never have wished any kind of harm on her.

The police greeted him at the hospital, keen to ask what he might know about the other woman, who had died. According to the passport they had found, her name was Milly Taylor, but he had never heard of her before. The police seemed to think that, with it being a wet day, Brooke might have stopped the car to give some random woman a lift, but Lorenzo couldn’t imagine Brooke doing anything of that nature and suggested that the unknown woman might be one of Brooke’s social media gurus or possibly a make-up artist or stylist because she frequently hired such people.

He wondered if the accident had been his driver’s fault. Consequently, was it his fault for continuing to allow Brooke the luxury of a limo with driver? Although the pre-nup Brooke had signed had proved ironclad in protecting his assets and his fortune, Lorenzo had been generous. He had already bought and given Brooke a penthouse apartment in which to live and had hesitated to withdraw the use of the car and driver as well until she had officially moved out of Madrigal Court, his country home. And Brooke had stalled about actually moving out because it suited her to have staff she didn’t have to pay making her meals for her and doing the hundred and one things she didn’t want to have to do for herself. Madre di Dio…what total nonsense was he thinking about at such a grave moment?

The police reassured him that the accident had not been his driver’s fault. A foreign truck driver had taken a wrong turn, got into a panic in the heavy traffic and run a set of stop lights, making an accident unavoidable.

Brooke, he learned, had a serious head injury and he was warned by the consultant neurosurgeon about to operate on her that she might not survive. Lorenzo spent the night pacing a bland waiting room, brooding over everything that he had been told. Brooke had facial injuries. The tiny glimpse he’d had of her before she went into surgery, he had found her unrecognisable and he was appalled on her behalf because he had never known a woman whose looks meant more to her. He would engage the very best plastic surgeons to treat her, he promised himself, shame and discomfiture assailing him. As long as she was alive, he would look after her in every way possible, just as if she were still a much-loved and cherished wife. That was his bounden duty and he would not be tried and found wanting in a crisis.

When he learned that she had come through the surgery he breathed more freely again. She was in a coma. Only time would tell when she would come out of it or what she would be like when she came round, because such head traumas generally caused further complications and even if she recovered she might be different in some ways, the exhausted surgeon warned him. Furthermore, Brooke was facing a very long and slow recovery process.

He was given her personal effects by a nurse. He recognised her engagement ring, the big solitaire he had slipped on her finger with such love and hope, the matching wedding band he had given her with equal trust and optimism. He swallowed hard, recognising that he was at a crossroads and not at the crossroads of freedom he had expected to become his within weeks. Brooke was his wife and he would look after her and support her in whatever ways were necessary. In the short term, he reflected tautly, he would put the divorce on hold until she was on the road to recovery and capable of expressing her own wishes again.

CHAPTER TWO

THE WOMAN IN the bed was drifting weightless in a cocoon, her awareness coming to her in weird broken flashes.

She heard voices but she didn’t recognise them. She heard sounds like bells, buzzes, and bleeps but she didn’t recognise them either. And she couldn’t move, no matter how hard she strained her will to shift a finger, wriggle a toe or even open her eyes. Her body felt as heavy as lead. And then she heard one voice and, although she didn’t recognise it either, she clung to it in her disorientation as though it were a lifeline.

It was a man’s voice, deep and dark and measured. It made her listen but at first she couldn’t distinguish the words, and even when she began picking up stray words she couldn’t string them together into a coherent sentence or think about what the words meant. Maybe it was a television, she thought, wondering why it was constantly tuned to a foreign channel because early on she identified a faint but very definite foreign accent that stroked along his vowel sounds like silk, sometimes softening them, sometimes harshening them. Time had no meaning for her while she listened to the voice.

And then there was the music that came and went in the background. It was the sort of music she had never listened to before, mainly classical. But occasionally she heard birdsong or the surge of waves on the shore or even noises she imagined might be heard in a jungle, as if someone had compiled a diverse sound collection just for her. She loved the birdsong because it made her feel that if she could only try a little harder to wake up, she would waken to a fresh new day.

Lorenzo studied his wife while he stood at the window of her room. Superficially, if one discounted all the machinery and the tubes, Brooke looked as though she were simply asleep, her cascade of white-blonde curls tumbling off the side of the bed in a glorious curtain. They called her, ‘the sleeping beauty’ in the high-tech care home he had moved her to when the hospital could do no more. She had moved from the coma into a vegetative state and there was no sign of recovery after fifteen months.

Fifteen months, Lorenzo conceded, driving a long-fingered hand through his luxuriant black hair, for fifteen crisis-ridden months, his life had revolved around her treatment. Fifteen months during which she had been in and out of Intensive Care, in and out of surgery, both major and minor, and now she was repaired, broken limbs mended, cuts and bruises healed, her face restored by the very best surgeons and daily physiotherapy keeping her muscles from wasting…but still, she wasn’t fixed.

Fixing her every problem, banishing the physical damage caused by the accident and readying her for a return to the living had kept Lorenzo going, even when the hopes of the medical staff had begun to fade. He could not let her go, he could not allow those machines to be switched off, not while there was hope, and he was fortunate that he was wealthy enough to fly in specialists from round the world, only unfortunately all of them had different opinions on Brooke’s prospects of recovery. He had never been humble but it was finally beginning to dawn on Lorenzo that he was not omnipotent and that she might never be fixed and might never open her eyes again.

He sat down by the bed and scored a forefinger over the back of her still hand. Her nails were polished, just as her hair was regularly washed and styled. They had wanted to cut her hair short but he had simply brought in a hairdresser to take care of it instead, just as he had brought in nail technicians. It was what Brooke would’ve wanted, although he had told the hairdresser to stop straightening her hair and leave the natural curls. He knew she would never have agreed to that change and if he accidentally brushed a hand through those glorious tumbling white-blonde ringlets he felt guilt pierce him.

‘I did love you once,’ Lorenzo said almost defiantly in the silent room.

And a finger twitched. Lorenzo froze and studied her hand, which remained in the same position, and he told himself he had imagined that movement. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had imagined such a thing and he was being fanciful.

It bothered him that Brooke was so alone and that he was her sole visitor aside of the occasional specialists. He had never realised how isolated she was until after the accident when paparazzi had tried to sneak in and catch pictures of her but not one single friend had shown up. There had only been cursory phone calls from her agent and various other people engaged in building her career and those enquiries had soon fallen off once the news that she was in a coma spread. The fame she had gloried in had, sadly, proved fleeting. There had been a burst of headlines and speculation in the wake of the crash but now she seemed to be forgotten by everyone but him.

Early the following morning, alarm bells rang and lights flashed from the machinery by the bed. The woman came awake and went into panic, eyes focusing on an unfamiliar room and then on the arrival of two nurses, their faces both concerned and excited at the same time. She clawed at the breathing tube in her throat because she couldn’t speak and the women tried to both restrain and soothe her, telling her over and over again that the doctor was coming, everything would be all right and that there was nothing to worry about. She thought they were crazy. Her body wouldn’t move. She could only move one hand and her arm felt as if it didn’t belong to her. How could she possibly have nothing to worry about? Why were they talking nonsense? Did they think she was stupid?

The panic kept on clawing at her, even after the doctor arrived and the breathing tube was removed. He kept on asking her questions, questions she couldn’t answer until she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. She didn’t know who she was. What was her name? She didn’t know why she was lying in a hospital bed. She didn’t have a last memory to offer because her mind was a blank, a complete blank. It was a ridiculous relief to receive an approving nod when she evidently got the name of the Prime Minister right and contrived to name colours correctly.

‘What happened to me?’ she whispered brokenly, her breath rasping. ‘Have I been ill?’

‘You were in an accident.’ The doctor paused there, exchanging a glance with the staff surrounding the bed.

‘What’s my name?’ she asked shakily.

‘Your name is Brooke… Brooke Tassini.’

The name meant absolutely nothing to her, didn’t even sound slightly familiar.

‘Your husband will be here very soon.’

Brooke’s eyes widened to their fullest extent in shock. ‘I have a husband?’

For some reason, the nurses smiled. ‘Oh, yes, you have a husband.’

‘A very handsome husband,’ one of the women added.

Brooke stared down at her bare wedding finger. She was married. Oh, my goodness, she was married. Did she have children? she asked. No…no children as far as they knew, they said, and a tinge of relief threaded through the panic she was only just holding at bay. Then she felt guilty about that sense of relief. She liked children, didn’t she? But it was scary enough to have a husband she didn’t remember—it would be simply appalling if she had contrived to forget her children as well.

Lorenzo stood outside in the corridor studying the middle-aged doctor babbling at him. And it was babble because the care-home staff were not accustomed to their comatose patients waking up and excitement laced with frank worry had taken over.

‘It’s post-traumatic amnesia, perfectly understandable after a serious head injury. You need someone more qualified than me in the psychiatric field to advise you on her condition, but I would warn you not to tell her anything that might upset her more at the moment. I wouldn’t mention yet that other people died in the accident or that you were…er…splitting up at the time of the crash,’ the doctor muttered hurriedly, visibly uncomfortable with getting that personal. ‘She’s in a very high state of stress as it is. Try to calm her, try to keep it upbeat without divulging too much information.’

Lorenzo had been in an early board meeting when the phone call came. He had been so shocked by the news that Brooke had recovered consciousness that he had walked out without a word of explanation. Now that he was on the brink of speaking to her again, he was, for once, at a loss. Brooke didn’t remember him? Could he believe that of a woman willing to use anything and everything to create a furore in the media? What better way to spring back into the public eye than with an interesting story to tell? When he had first met her, such suspicion would have been foreign to him and momentarily he was furious that he had to consider that she could be faking it. But he had learned the hard way that Brooke was a skilled deceiver.

The door opened and Brooke froze against the pillows, her chest tightening as she snatched in a breath. And there he was in the doorway and there was nothing familiar about him. Indeed, it immediately occurred to her that no normal woman could possibly have forgotten such a man.

He stood well over six feet tall, wide-shouldered, lean of hip and long of leg, and he wore a dark pinstriped suit with a blue tie and white shirt. And he was, undeniably, absolutely breathtaking in the looks department. His hair was black and cropped short and it was the sort of thick springy hair that a woman wanted to run her fingers through. His bronzed features were all high cheekbones and interesting hollows, dissected by a narrow blade of a nose, while his wide sensual mouth was accentuated by the faint dark shadow of stubble surrounding it. His eyes, deep set and very dark and framed with lashes lush as black fans, were even more arresting and resting on her now with a piercing gleam. She could feel her skin heating because that appraisal could have stripped paint.

No, he couldn’t be her husband, she decided immediately. He had to be some sleek, highly qualified consultant come to suss her out. Instinct seemed to be telling her that her husband would be a much more ordinary sort, maybe a bit homely, a bit tousled, but when his wife woke up after being in a coma, he would, at least, be smiling with relief and happiness. This guy didn’t look as if he smiled very often. He was downright intimidating even in the way he stood there, radiating raw masculinity and authority.

‘Brooke…’ he murmured without any expression at all, walking in and shutting the door behind him and then those amazing eyes were locking to her again and it was a challenge to breathe. ‘How are you feeling?’

Her heart was hammering so hard with nerves she felt her throat close over, her already sore throat, still tender from the removal of the breathing tube. But when he spoke, she froze in wonderment because his voice was familiar. ‘I know your voice… I know your voice!’ she gasped with a sense of attainment. ‘In fact it’s the first thing I’ve recognised since I woke up…but I don’t recognise you. Who are you?’

‘Lorenzo Tassini.’

‘I’m married to you?’ Brooke yelped in open disbelief.

Lorenzo’s brows drew together. He was trying very hard not to stare at her because she was a vision of natural beauty, this woman he had married who had only shown him the ugliness she kept hidden on the inside. With her dishevelled hair hanging across her shoulders, framing her entrancing heart-shaped face, and those huge incredible dark blue, verging-on-violet eyes, she looked utterly angelic. And different, startlingly different, because he didn’t think he had ever seen Brooke without her cosmetic enhancements. Brooke would climb out of bed at dawn to put her make-up on, no matter how often he had told her she didn’t need it to look good.

But, of course, there were differences in her appearance. She was thinner, for a start, painfully thin in spite of the nourishing diet she had been fed by tube. She looked frail and somehow younger. The surgeons had restored her to perfection, but his acute gaze had already spotted the changes. Her mouth seemed a little wider, a little lusher in its pout, her nose shorter, less defined, and her eyes, those beautiful violet eyes were as bright and inquisitive as a bird’s. And he had never ever seen such an expression on Brooke’s face before. Brooke rarely showed emotion of any kind but, right now, he was seeing uncertainty, shock and intense curiosity fleeing across her face and it was a novelty for him to be able to interpret her feelings.

‘Yes, you’re married to me,’ he confirmed flatly, recalling the doctor’s warning, striving to abide by it when his conscience wanted him to throw the truth out there and be damned for it because he wanted no more lies between them. But if he told her about the divorce, he would lose her trust, her ability to depend on him, and she needed him right now. She needed to trust that he would not harm her and that she could rely on him because he knew there was no one else to take his place.

Brooke swallowed painfully and closed her eyes. A headache was beginning to pulse behind her brow. She was ridiculously tired for someone who had only been awake for a couple of hours.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Lorenzo prompted, lifting the glass with the straw in it.

‘Yes…thanks.’ Her eyes flickered open again and she sucked eagerly on the straw, the cool water easing her throat. ‘I’ve got so many questions.’

‘We’ll answer them one by one.’

‘But why don’t I remember you when I remember your voice?’ she exclaimed in frustration. ‘How long have I been here? Nobody would tell me.’

‘You’ve been here over a year.’ Lorenzo watched her eyes round in further disbelief and once again savoured the newness of being able to read her face. ‘After the first few weeks, when you failed to come out of it, the prognosis wasn’t optimistic, so it is a source of great satisfaction for me to see you awake.’

‘It is?’ Brooke repeated, brightening in receipt of that acknowledgement. ‘Then why don’t you show it?’

‘Show it?’ He frowned.

‘Smile, look happy. You walked in here looking like the Grim Reaper,’ she told him, reddening at her boldness in being that blunt. ‘I feel so alone here.’

Ramming his ever-present doubts about Brooke’s veracity to the back of his mind, Lorenzo closed a hand over her limp fingers. ‘But you’re not alone.’

‘Sit down beside me…here, on the bed,’ she heard herself urge.

He looked as startled as if she had suggested he get into the bed with her and she stiffened in mortification. Instead of doing as she asked, he backed away and sank into the chair by the window. He was very reserved, she decided, adding to her first impression of him, not a guy who relaxed or who was easy with informality. It was impossible to imagine that she had ever been in bed with him and, at the thought, her face burned.

‘How long have we been married?’ she pressed.

‘Three years now.’

Then, she had definitely been in bed with him, Brooke realised, and she would have squirmed with embarrassment had she had the ability to move normally. But nothing was normal about her body or her brain throwing up random embarrassing thoughts, she conceded ruefully, and nothing was normal about their situation either, and it had to be causing Lorenzo equal discomfort that he had a wife who didn’t remember him.

‘I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry I don’t know you and that I’ve caused you all this trouble.’

‘You haven’t caused me any trouble whatsoever,’ Lorenzo lied, wondering what was wrong with her because Brooke’s view of the world was generally one-sided. She didn’t consider other people or their needs. She valued those around her strictly in accordance with the benefits they could bring her. She could be charm personified to get what she wanted but would then dispense with a person’s services the instant she achieved her objective. But, of course, he reminded himself darkly, he was valuable to Brooke at this precise moment when she had nobody else to fall back on.

‘It’s kind of you to say that but all these months I’ve been lying here like a rock and I must’ve been the most awful worry for you,’ she mumbled, her words slurring.

‘I think you need to rest now,’ Lorenzo told her, rising from his seat. ‘I need to make arrangements for you to be moved to a more suitable facility where you can convalesce.’

Her head heavy, she turned her eyes back to him. ‘I just want to go home,’ she whispered weakly.

‘I’m afraid that’s not an option. Right now, you need a rehabilitation programme to regain your strength and medical support to deal with your amnesia,’ Lorenzo explained smoothly.

‘How did we meet?’ she muttered drowsily, her brain spinning on and on, in spite of her exhaustion, wanting answers to countless questions.

‘At a party in Nice. I was there on business.’

‘You’re a businessman?’ she slurred.

‘A banker,’ he advanced.

‘I don’t like banks,’ she mumbled, and then thought in surprise, Where did that thought come from?

Brows pleating, Lorenzo paused at the door to look back at her searchingly. ‘Why don’t you like banks?’

With an enormous effort she opened her eyes again and there he was, standing directly below the lights, his hair blue-black, his eyes transformed into liquid-gold pools of enquiry. He looked devastatingly handsome and she smiled at him sleepily. ‘I don’t know. It was just a random thought that came out of nowhere,’ she admitted.

‘Go to sleep, Brooke,’ he urged. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘No kiss goodbye?’

Lorenzo froze at what struck him as an almost childlike question, which was laughable, he told himself, for anyone acquainted with Brooke’s past history. ‘No kiss. You’re too sleepy and I like my women awake.’

‘That’s mean,’ she mumbled.

Lorenzo stood at the foot of the bed watching her sleep. He should’ve been on the phone looking into convalescent facilities. He should’ve been seeking out a top psychiatrist to treat her. He should’ve told her that he wouldn’t see her tomorrow because he was flying to Milan for an international banking conference. But he did none of those sensible things. He stood and he watched her sleep, feeling guilty at leaving her but all the while thinking in rampant disbelief that he might have married Brooke, but suddenly he was feeling as though he didn’t know her either. Everyone had layers, he told himself irritably. Maybe this was how Brooke was when she was unsure of herself and no longer knew who she was. Restored to her fantastic wardrobe and her make-up and her headlines, she would once again become the woman he remembered.

Brooke sank into a seat in front of Mr Selby, her psychiatrist, and stowed the stick she was using. After a physio session she was always very sore and the slight limp she still had made her clumsy as she tired towards the end of the day, but she didn’t complain because just being able to walk again felt like a precious enough gift.

‘How have you been over the last few days?’ the psychiatrist enquired over the top of his eccentric half-moon glasses.

‘Great, but no flashes, no memories yet,’ she said uneasily. ‘Everything still feels so strange. Lorenzo brought me this giant metal case of cosmetics to replace the one that was destroyed in the accident and I think he was expecting me to be ecstatic, but I couldn’t identify half the stuff in the box. I used a bit of it for his next visit. I didn’t want him to think his present was a disappointment.’

‘You seem to care about Lorenzo a great deal,’ her companion remarked.

‘Surely that’s healthy when I’m married to him?’ Brooke replied.

‘Of course, you’ve been forced to depend on him, but it will be even more healthy for you to embrace a little independence as you recover your physical strength.’

Brooke’s nod of acknowledgement was stiff. Over the past two months, she had learned just to let advice she didn’t relish pass over her head. Everyone she met in the rehabilitation centre seemed to want to give her advice. She had dealt with surprise after surprise since her arrival. She had discovered that she was married to an extremely wealthy man and piece by piece she had learned that, before the crash, she had been a minor celebrity, a known fashion icon and often a source of media interest.

Those revelations hadn’t felt natural to her and hadn’t seemed to fit in very well with the quieter, less confident image she had slowly been developing of herself. But when she asked Lorenzo when she could go on the Internet to research her own previous life, he had insisted that it would be the wrong thing to do and that her memories would have a much better chance of returning if they weren’t forced.

‘What will I do if the memories never come back?’

‘You will rebuild yourself. You’ve been very lucky. Your injury was severe, but you have no other ongoing problems,’ Mr Selby reminded her bracingly.

Except a husband she still couldn’t remember, a reality that tormented Brooke every time he visited her. But he wasn’t able to visit her as often as he had hoped because he was an exceptionally busy banker, who went abroad several times a month. And her initial impression of Lorenzo had been spot on in its accuracy. He was very reserved. He rarely touched her in even the most fleeting way. It was a little as though she had an invisible force field around her, she conceded with a regretful grimace. Obviously he was deeply uncomfortable with the fact that she didn’t remember him but his hands-off approach wasn’t helping her to feel any closer to him. It was a subject she needed to tackle…and soon, she told herself ruefully.

He hadn’t walked away while she was in a coma, so why was he keeping his distance now? Did he love her? Did he still find her attractive? Or was their marriage in trouble?

She agonised over the options in the giant box of make-up because he was coming to see her that evening. She even leafed through the totally impractical garments he had had brought to her, which hung in the wardrobe, and selected a dress because greeting Lorenzo in the yoga pants that she wore for physio sessions hadn’t got her anywhere. Lorenzo was used to a fashion queen, so she would strive to please and maybe that would warm him up.

Her skin heating at that enterprising thought, she did her face and put on the electric-blue dress that she thought was hideously bright, almost neon in shade, but presumably she had bought it and liked it once. She slid into it and then embarked on the matching shoes. She wasn’t supposed to wear heels yet but she wouldn’t be moving around much, which was just as well because the shoes pinched painfully at the toes.

Lorenzo stepped out of his chauffeur-driven limo and studied the modern building with disfavour as he braced himself for another visit to his wife. If she didn’t recover her memories soon, he was likely to be forced to the point of telling her the truth about their marriage. And the psychiatrist had warned him that Brooke wasn’t ready to deal with that reality, that he had become her ‘safe place’ and if that support was suddenly withdrawn, it might well disrupt her fragile mental state and send her hurtling back into panic mode, which would set back the recovery process.

He was already in major conflict with his lawyers’ warnings. They didn’t take a humane approach to the situation he was in, merely cautioning him that frequent visits to his estranged wife would only convince a judge that granting him a divorce would get in the way of what could be viewed as a potential reconciliation. And he didn’t want to do that, no, he definitely did not want to stay married to Brooke. There had to be a hard limit to his compassion and care. But that wasn’t what was really bothering him, was it?

He wanted her: that was the real problem. In fact, he lusted after her more, it seemed, than he had ever lusted after her. Why? Because she was different, so different he couldn’t believe it sometimes and, quite ridiculously, he liked her now. How was that possible? Logic told him that he was seeing Brooke as she might have been before the lust for fame and the infatuation with her own beauty had taken hold of her. Even more shockingly, Brooke au naturel was a class act.

Only he didn’t think it was an act any longer because he was convinced that the woman he remembered could never ever have carried off that outstanding mix of artless naivety and innocence she showed him. In short, Brooke was all sorts of things she had never been before with him…caring, unselfish, undemanding. She had made him like her again, but he was determined not to be sucked back into that swamp a second time, he reminded himself grimly. She was recovering well and soon he would be able to cut their ties again and slot her into that penthouse apartment.

Lorenzo strode in and Brooke leapt upright at speed, wanting him to see that she had made the effort, wanting him to see that she was truly getting back to normal…and ready to go home.

‘You look…more like yourself this evening,’ Lorenzo commented as she regarded him expectantly.

Her violet eyes, bright with what he recognised as excitement, unsettled him.

‘I think I’m ready to leave here…to come home,’ she told him urgently. ‘I’m sure it would be better for me to be in a familiar place. They’re very kind to me here but I’m going crazy cooped up like this and it’s so boring and uneventful. Your visits are the only highlights in my week.’

With difficulty, Lorenzo mastered his consternation. ‘I’ll speak to your doctors tomorrow. We don’t want to rush into anything. After all, you couldn’t even walk two months ago.’

‘I’m getting stronger every day!’ Brooke argued. ‘Why don’t you see that?’

‘I do see it,’ Lorenzo countered levelly. ‘But until you recover your memory, it’s too risky.’

Brooke’s hands coiled into tight fists, the sudden burst of temper that ignited inside her an explosion of the frustration she had been fighting off for days. ‘Am I going to stay here for ever, then, as a patient?’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Because I’ve already been told, and you must also know, that I might never get my memory back!’

Lorenzo gritted his teeth. He did know that, but he had confidently put the warning to the back of his mind because every time he saw her, he expected to see her change back into the woman he remembered. ‘Sit down,’ he urged. ‘We’ll discuss this calmly.’

Brooke dropped down on the side of the bed. Lorenzo studied her. She had been all built up to ask him to take her home and now she was upset, and he felt as if he was being cruel even though he knew that he had no other choice. Sitting there, she was a picture with her tangled ringlets half concealing her piquant face, the faint pout of her luscious pink mouth, the long length of her legs displayed to perfection in that dress and those shoes. A punch of lust tightened his groin and he tensed, willing back his desire, fighting for control. The yoga pants had driven him crazy, showing every curve, every indent, but Lorenzo wasn’t easily tempted, not where Brooke was concerned, and he had fought that reaction every rigorous step of the way. He stood by the window gazing out at the tranquil courtyard garden in the centre of the building, striving to calm himself.

‘Before the accident…’ Brooke began hesitantly. ‘Our marriage was in trouble, wasn’t it?’

At that moment she didn’t want the positive answer she suspected to be her new reality. Even so, she felt she still had to ask and had to be strong enough to confront such an unwelcome truth because, in that scenario, pretending wasn’t fair to either of them.

Disconcerted, Lorenzo froze in position. ‘What makes you think that?’ he enquired in a deliberately mild tone.

‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist,’ she framed a little unevenly. ‘You never touch me unless you can’t avoid it. You never mention anything personal and if I ask questions in that line you stall. You don’t want me home either. Just be honest, Lorenzo. I can take it. And then, just go home or back to the bank because you seem to work eighteen hours a day.’

Lorenzo almost ground his teeth in frustration. It would have been the perfect moment to speak had he not had to consider her condition. He glanced across at her and saw the tears shimmering like sunshine on water in her eyes.

Angrily aware of the tears prickling, Brooke dashed them away with an impatient hand. ‘Stop treating me like a child, stop choosing your words. I’m twenty-eight years old, for goodness’ sake, not a little girl! It’s bad enough not remembering stuff, but it’s a torment to be sitting here wondering all the time what sort of relationship we have…’

In disconcertion, Lorenzo strode forward just as she leapt up in haste, determined not to cry in front of him. ‘Just go home!’ she told him fiercely as she headed for the door and the sanctuary of the patients’ lounge. ‘I’ll see you another day—’

But she tried to move too fast in the high heels and her weaker leg flailed and tipped her over. She was within inches of crashing down painfully on the hard floor when Lorenzo snatched her up, lifting her clean off her tottering feet and settling her down in front of him in the circle of his arms. The scent of him that close was like an aphrodisiac to her senses, an inner clenching down in her pelvis instantly responding. She closed her arms round his neck because she had decided that if he couldn’t even kiss her, obviously he no longer felt attracted to her, and she would get her answer to how he felt about her one way or another.

Lorenzo collided with her wonderfully unusual eyes and, involuntarily, he bent down and kissed her, damning himself for even that momentary surrender. But he was too clever by half with women not to guess that she was giving him the green light to test him. One brief kiss and nobody was catching it on camera, he reminded himself, and then her soft, succulent mouth opened invitingly under his and suddenly all bets were off because the taste of her went to his head and his groin like a bushfire licking out of control.

She tasted like…she tasted like… His primal nature threatened to take over, almost made him forget that since she had lost her memory this was their first kiss as far as she was concerned. Quite deliberately he tried to rein himself back. But Brooke was still blown off her feet by the explosion of passion Lorenzo delivered with his mouth. His lips were hard and urgent and demanding, somehow everything she had been craving without realising it for endless weeks, and he crushed her to his tall, powerful frame.

It was off-the-charts exciting.

Her hands bit into his broad shoulders to keep her upright while the intoxicating chemistry of his mouth on hers left her breathless and dizzy and afflicted with all sorts of reactions that felt entirely new to her. Of course, they couldn’t be new to her, but her heart was racing and her nipples became tight and almost sore in their sensitivity beneath her clothes. At the apex of her thighs, there was a burn, a sort of pulsing ache that inflamed her senses and, against her abdomen, she could feel the literal effect she was having on Lorenzo as well and somehow that shocked her when it shouldn’t have done.

Indeed, for Brooke, Lorenzo’s sizzling kiss was the first true gift she had had in all the weeks of her frustrating convalescence while she worried and wondered about who she truly was and wondered even harder how Lorenzo wanted her to behave. She was in constant conflict, struggling between what little she knew about her past self and the newer and equally unknown self that often prompted her to behave differently. But that kiss restored her equilibrium. It was acceptance, it was proof positive that her husband still wanted her and that she had been fretting herself into a state about nothing.

As he lowered Brooke down onto the bed and broke their connection with a slight shudder of recoil, Lorenzo was reminded very much of a saying a teacher of his had been fond of recounting to him: ‘between a rock and a hard place’. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,’ struck him as more apt. Still, what was one kiss? he reasoned wrathfully, instantly going into damage-limitation mode and stepping back from her. He was awesomely aware of the arousal he couldn’t hide below the finely tailored trousers, the coolness he couldn’t yet slide into place, and so furious with himself for succumbing to her again that his lean brown hands clenched into fists.

Lorenzo had once liked to pride himself on being an unemotional man like his late father but the unemotional man who had married Brooke had discovered otherwise. He had felt tortured by the endless dramas and he had shut that weak and disturbing part of himself away again, closed it down, re-embraced his calm, his control, his…sanity. He wasn’t going back there, no, not even for the sake of honour or decency!

‘That was wonderful.’ Brooke gave him a huge smile, utterly impervious to his feelings at that moment. ‘I feel so much better about us.’

‘Good,’ Lorenzo gritted between his perfect teeth, because it felt like another nail in his coffin that she had come alive in his arms as she never had before. He was in shock, he conceded, acknowledging the fact that Brooke had never kissed him back that way in their entire acquaintance, had never shown him an atom of the desire he had assumed she had for him when he married her. He shook his handsome dark head slightly as though to clear it. She was so different, but hadn’t the doctors warned him of that possibility?

He trained his dark deep gaze on her. ‘I’m not an emotional man, Brooke.’

‘You don’t really need to tell me that. It’s kind of obvious,’ Brooke pointed out. ‘You’ve never shown me any emotion in your visits and it worried me about us but obviously we managed to get married anyway and right now I can see how tense you are.’

Lorenzo was starting to feel like the accused in the dock. ‘I’m not tense,’ he insisted.

But the tension was engraved in his lean, darkly handsome features, Brooke recognised with relief. Lorenzo might be locked up tight in his reserve, but he had shown her wonderfully strong emotion in that kiss…hadn’t he? Or had that only been sexual hunger? And why didn’t she know the difference? The way she seemed to just know other things? Like the names of the seasons, the days of the week? She swallowed hard, afraid to get carried away by her expectations of him, afraid to expect too much.

‘Will you bring me home this week?’ she just asked him baldly. ‘I’m ready even if the doctors fuss about the idea. I can’t stay here for ever…unless that’s what you’d prefer?’

That anxious question shot through Lorenzo much like a whip because he could see the stress and the level of concern she was trying, very poorly, to hide from him, and he marvelled all over again at the complete absence of her once unrevealing shuttered expressions. ‘Of course not,’ he responded by rote. ‘I’ll speak to them.’

Content to have received that response, Brooke slid off the bed and walked over to him. ‘I won’t be any trouble to anyone. It’s not like I’m depressed or mentally troubled in some way. I’ve only lost my memory. I just want my life…’ and my husband, she added inwardly, ‘back.’

Suddenly, Lorenzo found himself smiling at the almost enthralling prospect of reuniting Brooke with her wardrobe, her jewellery and her precious scrapbooks and files of headlines and articles. Nothing surely was more likely to revive her memory than her possessions and her media triumphs? What the hell had he hoped to achieve when he kept her in a sterile medical environment? Deprived of everything she valued and enjoyed in life? Nothing in the private clinic was familiar to her and nothing here would appeal to her tastes. In such a place there was no stimulation that could help her to recover her memory. Sì… He would take her to her supposed home and in all likelihood she would recover there and remember that she hated him. He could bear a few more weeks—couldn’t he?

Even more enchanted by his rare smile, Brooke went pink. She had virtually thrown herself at him and, while it had taken a lot of initiative to act that way with him and had felt horribly pushy, the ploy had indisputably worked. As long as she didn’t mention their marriage or love or anything of that nature, Lorenzo could handle it, but for the first time she was questioning what in their marriage or in his background had made him so uncomfortable about ordinary feelings.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE LIMOUSINE that wafted her down the long driveway towards the giant building that sat at the bottom, Brooke sat wide-eyed with wonder but striving to conceal the fact. It seemed that she was married to a man who was very much wealthier than she had understood, and that was a shock too. But acting shocked got old quickly and she was slowly trying to learn how to school her face into less revealing reactions every time she got a surprise about herself. This was her life, after all, she reminded herself soothingly, her home.

And Madrigal Court was gorgeous, she thought helplessly, as the sunlight glinted off the rows of windows and the old brick with its intricate designs and so many chimneys—a country house that must’ve been hundreds of years old. Tudor? she wondered with a frown, disconcerted to find that term popping up in the back of her brain. Seemingly she knew more about old buildings than she had assumed, or could it have been a memory? She was desperate to recall something concrete: an event, an image, a face, a fact, anything really, she acknowledged ruefully, but so far there had been nothing and that had to be incredibly frustrating for Lorenzo.

Without even thinking about it, she reached for his hand because she had been so very flattered that he had taken a day off to share her homecoming with her. She was extremely conscious that he worked very hard and for very long hours and she thought that might have been why she had concentrated equally hard, it seemed, to make a separate role and career for herself. Clearly, Lorenzo had married a strong, independent and confident woman and Brooke was desperately trying to shore up those traits in herself.

There would be no clinging, no whinging, when he disappeared abroad for days at a time, no mention of the truth that she missed him terribly when he was gone. He wouldn’t want to hear that kind of stuff and he would be disappointed in her. And hadn’t he had enough disappointment already, sufficient to end many a marriage, she reminded herself, when his wife wakened and didn’t know him from a stranger in the street?

Totally shocked by that gesture, Lorenzo flicked a covert black-lashed glance down at their linked hands and breathed in deep and slow to embrace calm. His enthralling vision of her walking into her wardrobe and shrieking in delight, ‘I’m home!’ still refused to retreat. But this new version of Brooke didn’t shriek, and her voice was low-pitched, just one of the many, many changes in her that unsettled him. It was almost as though she had had a personality transplant, he mused. Per Dio, she had cried when he told her that her parents had passed away before he met her and that she had no other relatives, nobody, who could fill in the blanks of the memory loss she was enduring now. Of course, there might be photos of her family somewhere in Brooke’s stuff, he reflected hopefully, because he knew that would please her.

At her request, he had retrieved her wedding ring from the home safe and she had threaded it on as though it were something special, not the plain band that she had originally dismissed as ‘not very imaginative’. Nothing that didn’t glitter with valuable jewels had once incited Brooke’s admiration.

She listened to his advice now as well. She hadn’t asked for a phone or even the Internet again, which impressed him as being even more weird, for Brooke had lived on her phone. How could she not be missing it? Of course, she didn’t know who or what she had to miss, did she? Lorenzo’s lean bronzed face hardened. Not least the very married film star who had recently had an aide contact Lorenzo to enquire after his wife’s health, evidently having heard a rumour that Brooke was recovering from the accident. Lorenzo suspected there had been an affair between them, but he reminded himself that Brooke’s sex life was, thankfully, no longer any of his business. They might remain legally married but there was nothing deeper involved.

Brooke walked up the worn stone steps into the house and smiled at the middle-aged man opening the door for their arrival. ‘And you are?’

‘Stevens, madam,’ the older man supplied in surprise.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, moving indoors and stopping dead to take in the big imposing entrance hall made cosy by the low fire burning in the ancient fireplace to one side. ‘Oh, this is beautiful!’ she claimed, startling Lorenzo.

‘You hated this house,’ Lorenzo heard himself murmur in soft contradiction. ‘You wanted a modern home, a McMansion. I refused to move because this was my mother’s family home and, although I never knew her, I enjoyed the knowledge that she had once lived here.’

‘Hated it?’ Brooke exclaimed in disbelief, spinning round to look at him. ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

Watching her flounder with uncertainty as soon as she had spoken and accepted that such a former attitude was perfectly possible, Lorenzo registered his error in being that honest and at speed he strode over to a door to throw it wide. ‘Lots of married couples have different tastes.’ He dismissed that hint of contention smoothly. ‘This room is more your style.’

What style? Brooke almost asked for every piece of furniture was gilded and the drapes, the upholstery and even the carpet were pristine white. Even the vase of flowers on the low table was filled with white blooms. In her opinion, it was stark and uninviting, but it certainly gave a striking effect.

‘And this is you…’ Lorenzo indicated the large professional photograph on the wall in which she posed on the same sofa for a Dream House magazine interview she had, according to him, given only weeks before the accident.

Brooke stared in fascination at the woman in the photograph and her fingers went up to pluck uneasily at her loose ringlets as she studied that smooth straight fall of hair in the image. ‘I should be straightening my hair!’ she gasped suddenly.

‘I like it natural,’ Lorenzo dared to impart.

‘Honestly?’ she queried tautly as she stared at that flawlessly groomed, almost inhumanly perfect image with a sinking heart. It was undeniably her, but it was not the version of her that she was currently providing him with.

‘Honestly.’

In that moment, Brooke felt overwhelmed. Coming home was proving more of a challenge than she had expected. Was it possible that the head injury had altered her tastes? She supposed it was. When she had expressed her concern about such changes to Mr Selby, he had been very reassuring, never failing to remind her that she was lucky to be alive and relatively unscathed as if the loss of her every memory from childhood was something she simply had to accept. And perhaps it was, and there was nothing less attractive than self-pity, she told herself fiercely, moving back into the hall.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Lorenzo urged. ‘I’ll show you your room.’

Your room, Brooke noted. ‘Don’t we share?’

Lorenzo cast her a lazy, careless smile because he was fully rehearsed on that answer. ‘You like your own space and you often took your stylist up there to decide on outfits. Sharing wasn’t practical.’

‘You know more about my life than I know about yours,’ Brooke couldn’t help commenting.

‘I don’t think that there’s anything in the world of finance that would interest you,’ Lorenzo parried. ‘Unless, of course, you’ve decided to set up a business or something of that nature.’

‘Not just at the minute, no,’ she quipped, breathing in deep.

So, separate bedrooms, little wonder Lorenzo was so physically detached from her and prone to treating her as though she were a friend rather than a wife. Even though they lived in an enormous house, they didn’t seem to share much as a couple. Not a bed, not taste, not their lives. It was unhealthy but perhaps Lorenzo liked his marriage that way even if it didn’t appeal to her, she ruminated worriedly. How had she let the man she loved move so far from her in every way?

Obviously she loved him. She couldn’t believe that she would have married him for any other reason. His money, his giant house and his servants all made her feel intimidated. But he didn’t intimidate her, he made her…happy. Mr. Selby had urged her to think about whether or not that was just her insecurity talking and had asked her how she could possibly still love a man she didn’t remember. But she knew that she did in the same way she knew that the sun would rise in the morning. She had remembered Lorenzo’s voice and it was the only thing she remembered, which to her signified and proved his overwhelming importance in her life.

Brooke walked into another blindingly white room, but this time it was a bedroom and she decided that the absence of colour did give a certain feel of tranquillity.

‘And then there’s your favourite place,’ Lorenzo proclaimed, casting wide another door.

Brooke froze on the threshold of an amazing dressing room. But it was so big, so packed with stuff it didn’t really qualify for that description. Racks and racks of shoes and bags lined the walls in glass cabinets. Rails and rails of zingy, colourful garments hung in readiness. It was a feast of conspicuous consumerism, a rebuttal of the ‘less is more’ mentality, and she thought, Oh, dear heaven, I’m greedy and extravagant and spoilt rotten! And then a calmer voice switched on inside her, reminding her that being a fashion icon had sort of been her job. She forced herself deeper into the room to browse through the clothes, hoping for something to jar her memory, glancing at labels and surprised that she only recognised the household names of famous designers that everyone knew. In the general knowledge sense, her fashion antenna seemed to be running on an empty tank.

‘Of course, you’ll have to throw it all out.’

Brooke whirled, violet eyes huge. ‘Throw it out?’ she gasped incredulously.

‘Because everything in here is old and out of fashion now.’ Lorenzo tossed out that award-winning lure with deep satisfaction because he had already worked out how best to occupy his soon-to-be ex-wife. ‘Your wardrobe is out of date. You’ll need to start from scratch again and replace it all.’

‘But that would be horribly wasteful,’ Brooke framed in disbelief, fingering through a rack of jeans, searching for an ordinary pair but finding only slashed, sparkly or embroidered ones, marvelling that her former self had apparently never succumbed to a desire to simply wear something comfortable.

‘It’s the way that you live.’ Lorenzo shrugged, brilliant, thickly lashed dark eyes cynical and assured. ‘Every season you start again, so I imagine you’ll be shopping until you drop for weeks.’

Brooke nodded jerkily since it seemed to be what he expected from her. ‘It seems a very extravagant way to live,’ she remarked uneasily.

‘I can well afford extravagant,’ Lorenzo intoned, wondering why she wasn’t one bit excited at the prospect of shopping, wondering why she looked kind of lost standing there in the middle of the room, rather like a little girl contemplating a giant dress-up box that frightened her. This was Brooke’s world, from the fashion magazines piled on the coffee table to the immaculate shoe collection. And she didn’t recognise any of it, he acknowledged grimly.

At least now, she could explore her life, Brooke reminded herself, for there had to be personal things tucked away somewhere within the two rooms, surely photos of her late parents and that kind of stuff, she reasoned as Lorenzo departed. As for the fashion end of things, she clearly wasn’t able to become a fashion icon again in her current state of mind and she would just have to move on from that and find something else to keep her busy. Reinventing yourself was all the rage these days, she reminded herself dully. It was not as though she had a choice when she couldn’t imagine wearing a see-through lace dress or jeans that exposed her bottom cheeks.

That reflection, however, threw yet another obstacle into her path. Almost certainly that more audacious woman was the woman Lorenzo knew and had chosen to marry. Brooke paled at that acknowledgement. A sexier woman. Was that the common denominator at the heart of her marriage? That together sexier Brooke and more reserved Lorenzo meshed like magnets? Was that why Lorenzo was now so distant with her? Because she wasn’t putting out the right vibes any longer with her clothing and her manner? Well, she was just going to have to fake it, wasn’t she?

What do you know about being sexy? she asked herself limply. But she had to know those things to make such daring clothing choices! She relived that kiss and a slow burn reignited low in her pelvis and she shifted restlessly. Maybe she was sexier in bed than she imagined and when it happened it would all just come seamlessly together for her…but what if it didn’t? What if her apparent stock of general knowledge didn’t include the bedroom stuff? What if she lay there like a graven image and freaked him out? And why was she even having these thoughts, she asked herself, when to date even getting a kiss out of Lorenzo had entailed practically falling on him? Maybe she was the partner who made all the sexy, inviting moves, she thought anxiously, and if that was true, the onus would be on her…

Perhaps Lorenzo had simply been waiting to bring her home, she reasoned, and tonight, when she was tucked up in bed, he would visit?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I’D LIKE SOME details about the accident,’ Brooke declared over dinner two weeks later.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Lorenzo informed her lazily.

For the first time ever, Brooke wanted to slap her husband for still treating her like a vulnerable child to be protected from every ill wind. ‘I disagree. Since I wasn’t driving—I mean, you told me that—who was driving?’

‘An employee. I’m afraid that he died,’ Lorenzo told her smoothly.

Brooke lost colour and stilled. ‘Oh, how dreadful! I should go and see his family. Will you give me the address?’ she pressed.

‘He didn’t have a family as such. He lived with an elderly mother. I’ve ensured that she is financially secure. You don’t need to get involved,’ Lorenzo assured her.

‘I think the least I can do is visit his mother to offer my condolences,’ Brooke responded firmly.

Lorenzo almost rolled his eyes at this new caring, sharing display of Brooke’s. He compressed his hard mouth. Every time he saw her, she annoyed him by being so beautiful, so…tempting. There she sat, hair foaming in ringlets and cascading round her like some cartoon mermaid, triangular face bare of cosmetics, violet eyes bright and friendly and natural and, in truth, she remained drop-dead gorgeous. Yet she was wearing jeans, simple plain jeans, and flat shoes. She was another almost unrecognisable incarnation of Brooke and one he didn’t intend to waste time on because the transformation wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly last. Inevitably, her indomitable will, her piranha-fish appetites for sex, media exposure and money would resurface and he, for one, would be a great deal happier.

He didn’t want to be reminded of that treacherous kiss in the clinic when he had inexplicably contrived to overlook all the other men she had betrayed him with. Of that kiss, it was enough to recall that she had burned him alive and filled him with a hunger he refused to satisfy. He was even more astonished that she could still have that effect on him. Only days before the accident he had enjoyed the definitive proof that he was completely impervious to her looks and her seductive wiles. He could only suppose that being forced into a protective role for so long with his estranged wife had somehow softened his previous hard shell of cold disinterest. After all, he had never been the kind of foolish man who returned to explore his worst mistake and that was what Brooke genuinely was to him: his worst mistake.

‘Do you want the full story of the accident? Even if it’s distressing?’ he prompted, reminding himself that keeping such secrets from her wasn’t doing anything to help her adapt to her return to the land of the living.

Feeling a little threatened now and worried about what he might have held back from her, Brooke nodded urgently. ‘Yes.’

‘There was another woman in the limo with you and she died as well. We don’t know what she was doing with you because, although I looked into her history before the funeral, I couldn’t see anything relevant that would have brought you together that day.’

Brooke’s smooth brow furrowed. ‘That’s a puzzle. Who was she?’

‘She was a waitress in a London café, although she’d quit her job that same day, quoting a family emergency, but when I investigated it turned out that she had no family and there was nothing of interest about her,’ Lorenzo recounted with a fluid Italian shrug of dismissal. ‘I suppose we’ll never know what she was doing in the car with you that day unless you regain your memory.’

Brooke was troubled by the discovery that some mystery woman had been with her on the day of the crash. She had already discovered a severe absence of personal possessions in her bedroom. She had waded through a dozen files packed with press clippings and some rather suggestive headlines, depicting her with other men in nightclubs, but she hadn’t found a single picture of her parents or indeed of anyone else. Her life, evidently, had been lived solely through the media and nothing else had much mattered to her, and that saddened her because her previous existence now seemed shallow to her and empty of real purpose.

As for her marriage, she ruminated regretfully, it didn’t appear to be much healthier than her lifestyle had been because she barely saw Lorenzo except at the dinner table. When she had made the effort to rise at dawn to breakfast with him, he had not seemed remotely appreciative of her company and had buried his nose back in the Financial Times, the one and only media publication that came to the house.

It was ironic that she had actually been spending more personal time with her husband when he had been visiting her at the clinic. Now that she was back home, he was perfectly polite and pleasant, but it was almost as if she didn’t really exist on his terms, which was weird, wasn’t it?

But everything was weird in their relationship, she conceded wretchedly. Why didn’t he sleep with her? Why didn’t he want sex when popular parlance suggested that men always wanted sex? What was wrong with her? Or what was wrong with their marriage? She had tried to ignore the signs that something was not quite right but after a fortnight of being treated like a house guest rather than a wife, Brooke felt that she could no longer disregard suspicions that were a deep source of concern to her. After all, if Lorenzo didn’t want her any more, what was she doing living in his house? Obviously she could only be uncomfortable with the fear that she wasn’t truly welcome below the roof of the place she had mistakenly assumed was her true home.

‘Why do you never take me out anywhere with you?’ Brooke asked with a directness she had not dared to utilise with Lorenzo before.

Lorenzo glanced up from his plate, beautiful dark deep-set eyes shrewd and level, and she experienced that same maddening little prickling of awareness that his gaze always evoked and her heart started to thump faster inside her tight chest. ‘We’ve always had separate social lives. And, unhappily, if we are seen in public together, you would be mobbed by the paparazzi because you are the former beauty maven who has now returned from the dead and many people are very curious about you. I don’t like press attention in my private life…however, you do.’

‘Oh…’ Brooke breathed, crushed by those truths delivered so instantaneously. ‘You think there might be headlines?’

‘I know there would be. Brooke…’ Lorenzo sighed and lounged back in his chair, devastatingly good-looking and infuriatingly calm. ‘There have been cameras waiting at the foot of the drive to catch a photo of you since the day I brought you home. If you’d even once gone shopping, you would’ve seen them there. Maybe you don’t feel like having that media attention right now?’

‘I don’t,’ she confirmed.

‘But it’s still a very large part of who you used to be,’ Lorenzo reminded her. ‘And the paps aren’t going to give up and go away any time soon.’

Having dealt that final blow, Lorenzo left for the Tassini Bank while Brooke retired to her white bedroom to read a book she had bought online about Italians, seeking in some small way to redress her ignorance of her husband. But there seemed little point reading about how Italians highly valued their families and seeking such a trait in Lorenzo. He was diligent in assuring that her medical needs were covered with regular online sessions with Mr Selby and physio sessions with a personal trainer, but his care never ever got more personal than that. She was fed, housed, clothed, medicated and that was that.

Along with jeans and casual tops, she had bought a dress, low-necked, short and scarlet in hue, and high heels. She viewed the more decorative fitted outfit as a move forward, a first step in becoming the woman whom Lorenzo obviously expected her to be. Now, sadly, she wasn’t even sure she would have the nerve to wear it because he had shut her down again.

Two other people had died in that accident and she had survived. She was much luckier than she had ever appreciated, and she knew that her first outing would include a visit to the driver’s mother and a respectful call at the cemetery to the grave of the woman who had been with her that day. Maybe she had been a friend, Brooke reflected sadly, for she could hardly have failed to note that she didn’t seem to have friends in the way that other women had. Hadn’t she liked other women? Hadn’t other women liked her? The lack of a friend or relative to turn to sometimes made her feel very alone…

Blasted self-pity, she told herself off firmly, and returned to her book while wondering if she had the nerve to wear that dress for dinner and whether Lorenzo would even notice what she wore, because he didn’t seem to look at her that much.

Just then, however, when she was least expecting it, the door literally burst open and she jerked bolt upright on top of the bed, her violet eyes wide with surprise.

The very image of innocence, Lorenzo thought in a rage as he strode across the room to slap the newspaper he had bought for that purpose down on the foot of the bed. The lurid headline ran: She Doesn’t Know Who She Is!

He was furious with himself most of all for starting to trust her again even though he knew she was a liar and a manipulator. It wasn’t like him to lose his temper, but when he had seen that newspaper headline, he had felt betrayed, and then he had wondered why he felt betrayed when Brooke was only doing what she had always done in seeking to shape her public image and stoke press interest. He should’ve been better prepared, should’ve expected such behaviour from her. It was his own fault that he felt as though she had deceived him. When, after all, had he begun to forget what kind of a woman she was?

‘I should’ve guessed that you’d have your own more direct but sly way of dealing with the media!’ Lorenzo fired down at her.

Brooke was frozen to the spot in disbelief by his behaviour because Lorenzo had never once raised his voice to her before. But at this moment, he was ferociously angry with her and it showed in every honed, hard lineament of his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Go on…look at the article and tell me you’re not responsible for this outrage!’ he challenged with contempt.

Trembling, Brooke lifted the tabloid newspaper, shaken to see the photo of her in the blue dress she had worn at the clinic now adorning the front page. She recalled the friendly nurse who had asked if she could take a picture on her phone. Brooke had said yes, had believed that it was the dress that the woman was interested in. She hadn’t known enough about safeguarding herself from such exploitation to say, no, sorry, she conceded in dismay. So, it was absolutely her fault, just as Lorenzo believed, that that picture was in a newspaper.

‘Obviously it was more than your vanity could bear to have the press speculating that you could be scarred or in a wheelchair!’ Lorenzo bit out in raw condemnation. ‘You tell me you don’t want media attention and then you do…this? You give an interview to them? Madre di Dio, why the hell am I acting surprised?’

‘An interview?’ she whispered, turning the page with shaking fingers, intimidated more than she liked to admit by his sheer dark fury. There was more volatile emotion than she had ever thought he possessed emanating from him and lacing the atmosphere with brutal tension. Unfortunately, it wasn’t how she would’ve wanted to discover that he was much more emotional in nature than he was prepared to show.

‘Sì, an interview. While I’m busy hiring extra security to protect you, you’re still feeding the fire to gain the attention you crave from your admirers!’

Brooke took a mental step back from the toweringly tall, dark man raging over her and concentrated on the article. She was quick to recognise that stray comments she had made and medical info that should’ve been kept confidential had been cobbled together and leaked in the form of an interview that had been faked. ‘I didn’t give anyone an interview, Lorenzo. I did let one of the nurses take a photo of me and I’m sorry she gave it to the press, but I didn’t exactly know who I was supposed to be then or that I shouldn’t allow that,’ she confided uncomfortably. ‘Read it properly and you’ll see I’m telling the truth. It’s a fake interview. I wouldn’t want people to know that I’m suffering from amnesia because that’s embarrassing—’

‘Unfortunately for you,’ Lorenzo countered glacially, ‘I already know that I can’t trust a word you say because you’re a gifted liar. You lie about the most ridiculous things and then shrug indifferently when the truth comes out. I’ve never been able to trust you!’

While Brooke had contrived to remain calm and in control while Lorenzo vented his wrath over a naïve mistake she had made, those words fell on her like hand grenades that exploded on contact with her shrinking body. In shock, she drew up her knees and hugged them. All her natural colour had gone into retreat while her tummy stirred sickly. She had told her husband lies and he had found her out in them? She was a liar? It dawned on her then that for the very first time Lorenzo was giving her what he deemed to believe was the absolute truth about herself, yet only raw anger had drawn that honesty from him. For just a few minutes he had forgotten to treat her like someone too delicate to handle reality.

All of a sudden, she was being forced to face the fact that, regardless of how hard she had tried to explain away her husband’s cool attitude towards her, their relationship did have problems. Indeed, Lorenzo saw her as a liar he couldn’t trust. Shaken and appalled by that revelation, she rocked back and forth where she sat, struggling to deal with that new sobering knowledge.

Lorenzo stared down at her and then he blinked and the explosive rage that had powered him, most ironically a rage that had never once seized him with Brooke before, vanished as though it had never been. Stricken by what he had dumped on her in a temper, he came down on the side of the bed and hauled in a deep shuddering breath, cursing his lack of control and the damage he had inflicted. She looked so small, so lost, so unlike the woman he remembered, the woman he needed to bury and forget about because that version of Brooke might never return, he finally acknowledged.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper,’ Lorenzo conceded heavily and reached for her hand. ‘When I saw that paper, a fuse just blew somewhere inside me and—’

‘We’re both living in a very stressful situation,’ Brooke pointed out in a wobbly undertone. ‘It’s sure to be affecting you as well.’

Lorenzo didn’t feel that he was in a stressful situation because naturally he was in possession of facts she had yet to learn. But he did feel guilty, horrendously guilty for shouting at her, condemning her and causing her distress. When her hand pulled away from his, rejecting that hold, he was disconcerted by that withdrawal.

‘You don’t need to pretend any longer, Lorenzo,’ Brooke sighed in explanation. ‘You’ve let the cat out of the bag. We don’t have a good marriage, which actually explains a lot.’

Unprepared for that far-reaching conclusion being reached at such speed, Lorenzo hesitated only a moment before reaching across the bed and bundling her small resisting figure into his arms and settling her down across his long muscular thighs with an intimacy he had never dared to embrace before. ‘No, it only explains that I have a terrible temper, which I usually manage to keep in check,’ he breathed as he heard her swallow back the sobs making her tremble within his grasp. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘But you said I was always telling lies and that you couldn’t trust me!’ Brooke sobbed outright.

Lorenzo was usually very fast at thinking on the back foot, as it were, but a quicksilver tongue somehow evaded him when he had Brooke struggling to hold back sobs in his arms. He had done that; he alone had distressed her to that extent. Yet she had borne every unsettling, scary development bravely from the outset of her recuperation. Even so, he had, and for the second time, reduced her to tears. He felt like a complete heel. When had he become so tough, bitter and selfish that he only went through the motions of giving her a roof over her head while at the same time utterly ignoring her presence in every other way? Of course, she had noticed that he wasn’t behaving like a husband, of course she had become anxious about it.

‘Did I lie about money?’ Brooke whispered chokily. ‘I mean, I can see by that wardrobe that I was kind of a bit…spendthrift.’

Lorenzo seized on that option with intense relief. He was rich enough to support a thousand spendthrift wives but rows over extravagance and lies concerning that extravagance were far less damaging to her self-image than the truth would be. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, relieved to feel some of the jerking rigidity in her small frame drain away. ‘Nothing I couldn’t deal with, but you kept on doing it.’

‘Well, I won’t any more,’ Brooke whispered shakily, the worst of her crushing anxiety draining away. ‘I promise you, absolutely promise that I won’t tell you any lies or spend too much money. There’s no limit on those credit cards you gave me, is there?’

Lorenzo breathed in deep and slow. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that now. You’ve only spent a couple of hundred pounds since you arrived,’ he reminded her ruefully. ‘Believe me, you can be a lot more spendthrift than that. I don’t want you worrying about that either.’

‘Maybe getting married to someone with money like you have sort of went to my head and I got carried away,’ Brooke suggested thoughtfully.

Lorenzo registered the one salient fact that he should have shared with her sooner. ‘No, you weren’t penniless when I married you—your father left you a decent trust fund. He was an affluent wine importer and you were an only child.’

Brooke focused huge violet eyes on him as she flung her head back. ‘I have money of my own?’ she exclaimed incredulously.

‘Yes, although we agreed when we married that I would take care of all the bills.’

But Brooke was still gripped by amazement that she had her own money. ‘That really surprises me because I don’t feel like I’ve ever had money. I suppose that sounds weird to you when I obviously have, but everything like the staff here and the limousines and the grandeur makes me feel…overwhelmed,’ she finally confided. ‘I assumed it was because I hadn’t had time yet to become accustomed to your lifestyle.’

‘Your parents weren’t rich, only comfortably off,’ Lorenzo suggested, the feel of her body heat, the brush of her breasts against his shirtfront and her proximity combining to increase the hard arousal thrumming at his groin and remind him of just how long it had been since he had had sex. As gently as he could, he scooped her up, rose upright and laid her back down on the bed. ‘You should rest. I upset you.’

Brooke sat up again. ‘I’m fine now. The nurse that took that photo was called Lizzie and if you read the supposed interview, you can see it’s just put-together stuff aside of the amnesia.’

Lorenzo lifted the paper he had slapped down in front of her and spread his free hand, long brown fingers flexing. ‘My temper went off like a rocket. I didn’t read it and I’ll inform the clinic about the nurse.’

‘I don’t want her to get in trouble!’ Brooke protested.

‘She sold a photo of you and revealed confidential medical facts. The clinic needs to protect their patients,’ Lorenzo murmured smoothly, still incensed by the condemnation he had immediately laid at his wife’s door and the distress the episode had caused her.

The distress he had created by jumping to conclusions without proof and venting freely. He swore to himself that it would be the very last time he awarded blame to her on the basis of her past sins. He really hadn’t thought through the extent of the responsibility he was taking on in bringing her back to what had once been her home. And now he was stuck fast, neither married nor divorced, his own life in limbo alongside hers…

And for how long could he tolerate that injustice?

Lorenzo returned to the bank. Brooke went out to the garden, which she loved, strolling along gravel paths, enjoying the sunlight and the flowers and greenery all around her. A little dog bounded out from below the trees and began to bark at her. Brooke laughed because it was a tiny little thing, a mop of tousled multi-shaded brown hair on four spindly legs.

‘Now who do you belong to?’ she asked, settling down on a bench when natural curiosity brought the dog closer. He jumped up against her legs, more than willing to invite attention. She petted him, lifted him and discovered that he was a girl and laughed again, letting her curl up on her lap and settle there.

The gardener nearby, engaged in freshening up a bed with new plants, glanced across the sunken garden at them in apparent surprise. When she moved on, the little dog followed at her heels and she said to the gardener. ‘Who does the dog belong to?’

‘Topsy’s yours, Mrs Tassini,’ he said without hesitation and she realised that her amnesia was no longer a secret, if it ever had been, in the household.

Only a slight flush on her cheeks, Brooke walked on before stooping to pet the little animal. Her dog had found the way back to her and she smiled, delighted to discover that she had a pet and that she liked animals. It was uplifting to learn that there had been a positive side to the self she no longer remembered because so far she only appeared to be finding out negative stuff, she conceded ruefully, thinking about the extravagance and the lies that had clearly damaged her marriage. At the same time though, it was better to be forewarned that there could be further obstacles ahead, she reflected ruefully. What else had she done that she would be ashamed to find out?

At least, Lorenzo had resisted the very human urge to just dump all her mistakes on her at once, she thought fondly. That had been generous of him in the circumstances. He was doing everything by the book and shielding her from unpleasant truths. How could she not love a man like that?

Brooke dressed for dinner that evening with greater care than usual. Finally, she surveyed her reflection in one of the several mirrors in the dressing room and something strange happened. For a timeless instant as she gazed into the mirror, she became dizzy and she saw another woman. No, it wasn’t another woman, she realised with a spooked shiver of reaction, it was herself clad in a black jacket with her hair straight and wearing a different red dress. She had been sitting in the back of a limousine. She blinked rapidly and realised that she had finally remembered something from the past and she couldn’t wait to tell Mr Selby about that promising little glimmer.

It wouldn’t be worth mentioning it to Lorenzo though, would it? Just as she hadn’t thought to mention that none of the ravishing shoes in the cabinets even fitted her any longer because evidently her feet had grown a little fatter and those shoes pinched like the devil. A tiny little flashback that only involved seeing herself and that showed her nothing important wasn’t worth telling Lorenzo about. Even so, it was a promising start to a complete recovery.

Lorenzo was still upstairs when she arrived in the dining room and she walked out onto the terrace that overlooked the garden, wondering if it would be acceptable to suggest that they ate outside during the summer months because the evenings were so beautiful and she did love the fresh air. Careful in the high heels that she was still a little wobbly in and with Topsy in tow, because the little dog hadn’t left her side all day, she descended the steps that led down to the garden and roved along a path that led into a shrubbery backed by natural woodland. Topsy went scampering ahead and then started barking so ferociously that she almost levitated off the ground.

‘Topsy,’ she began to say and then, before she could gather her breath, a man leapt out of nowhere in front of her and gave her such a fright that she screamed.

And screamed again, backing away in absolute terror, every natural instinct on high alert, her heart thundering in her ears with fear. The man threw up his hands in apparent disbelief and then two men appeared from behind him and pulled him away.

An arm snaked round her quaking figure from behind. ‘Are you all right?’ Lorenzo’s very welcome and familiar voice enquired, and relief made her sag like a ragdoll in his arms. ‘I was in the dining room when I heard you scream. I’ve never moved so fast in my life!’

‘Who was he?’ she prompted shakily. ‘What did he want?’

‘A paparazzo chancing his arm,’ Lorenzo imparted. ‘Didn’t you notice his camera?’

‘No… I thought… I thought he was a rapist or something,’ she contrived to explain unevenly, her breath still see-sawing in and out of her raw throat. ‘That’s what I assumed. I didn’t think about this being a garden and how unlikely that would be, which was stupid.’

Lorenzo’s dark eyes glittered with wildly inappropriate appreciation of that explanation for Brooke’s reaction to a member of the press and he made no comment, seeing for himself that she was still pale and trembling with fright. He closed an arm round her to direct her back indoors. ‘You can blame me for this frightening experience as well,’ he told her instead in an exasperated undertone. ‘I was about to double our security before I saw that newspaper headline this morning and then I forgot.’

‘You’re allowed to overlook stuff occasionally,’ Brooke told him, still struggling to get her breathing under control. ‘Anyway, how can it be your fault when it’s obvious that my love of attracting publicity caused all this nonsense?’

‘It wasn’t wrong for you to like attracting publicity,’ Lorenzo countered levelly. ‘That was your world. I shouldn’t have given you the impression that it was a bad choice, because it wasn’t for you.’

But it was a bad choice for anyone married to you, Brooke completed inside her head, for everything about Lorenzo implied that he was a very private man and the last man imaginable to enjoy that kind of exposure. Clearly, her past self hadn’t much cared about that, and she had continued to relentlessly pursue her own goals. She was twenty-eight years old and could scarcely blame that decision on immaturity. She had put her media career first, not her marriage.

‘Topsy!’ she called, and the dog raced over to her, long silly ears flopping madly, tongue hanging. Without hesitation she scooped the little animal up and started telling it that it was a great little watchdog while Lorenzo looked on in disbelief.

Brooke didn’t like animals, but some nameless admirer had gifted her the puppy when handbag dogs were in vogue. She had brought the dog home and abandoned it in the kitchen and, as far as he knew, had never looked at it again. Lorenzo decided it was time for him to have another chat with her psychiatrist and ask how it was possible that his wife could be displaying entirely new personality traits as well as different tastes. Brooke wasn’t even eating salads any longer, never mind fussing about her diet. She no longer used the gym and barely touched alcohol aside of a glass of wine at dinner. The changes were piling up to the extent that he no longer knew what to expect from the wife he would once have sworn that he knew inside out.

‘Would you like a drink after that…er rather unnerving encounter?’ he asked calmly.

‘No, thanks. But thanks for being there this morning and this evening to ground me,’ Brooke murmured in a rush, staring up at him with a great burst of warmth rushing and spreading through her veins, because she was grateful, so ridiculously grateful that Lorenzo existed and that she was married to him. He was her rock in every storm.

‘I wasn’t there for you this morning in the way I should’ve been,’ Lorenzo corrected with a sardonic twist of his beautiful shapely mouth, tensing as that warm look in her eyes somehow contrived to arrow straight down to his groin. ‘I attacked you, misjudged you.’

Determined violet eyes connected with his. ‘But I forgive you.’

‘Too easily,’ Lorenzo chided, trying to keep some distance between them while he was as hard as rock and throbbing with arousal.

Brooke realised that she was literally backing him into the wall and she laughed in surprise, wondering if Lorenzo was always so slow on the uptake, so businesslike, so prone to saying and doing only the right thing that he couldn’t even grasp when his wife was coming on to him! She lifted her hands and ran them up over his ribcage over the shirt below his tailored jacket, sensitive fingertips learning the lean mouth-watering musculature hidden beneath, and she stretched up and literally face-planted her mouth on his.

Two very masculine hands sank into her mane of ringlets and held her fast and she smiled against his parting lips, her mouth opening eagerly for the plunging urgency of his. It was everything she remembered from the clinic, a chemical explosion of sheer hunger and demand. Oh, yes, her husband wanted her all right, she savoured with pleasure, he only needed encouragement while she needed no encouragement whatsoever when keeping her hands off him was more of a challenge. Her body was coming alive with a host of sensations from the tightening of her nipples, to the swell of her breasts, to the aching hollowness that tugged at the heart of her.

There was a sound somewhere behind her and Lorenzo yanked her back from him as though he had been burned. Stevens was muttering an apology and Lorenzo assured him that dinner right now was fine.

Her face hot as hellfire, so hot she wanted to die for a split second, Brooke retreated to her designated dining chair and grasped her wine glass with new fervour. She couldn’t look at Lorenzo, she absolutely couldn’t look at him in that instant, she was so mortified by her own forward behaviour, but honestly, it was as if he were a magnet that pulled at her until she couldn’t resist the charge any more. She was convinced that she had never felt desire so strongly before…and yet how could that be?

Lorenzo infuriated her then by acting as if nothing had happened. He asked her about her day and her enjoyment of the garden. Slowly, painfully, her equilibrium returned. It wasn’t his fault that she wanted him to be the sort of guy who said to hell with dinner and carted her off to the nearest private spot to take advantage of her willingness…was it?

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