'You're always dressed so formally,' she commented. 'Don't you ever relax? You're meant to be on holiday.'
'Perhaps I need someone to teach me how to unwind,' he suggested smoothly.
Lorel caught the glint in his eyes, and decided she definitely wasn't going to volunteer.
Lewis gave her a sideways smile, and then swung open the heavy front door. 'Ready?' he asked.
She nodded, and they stepped out into the sunshine.
Lewis led the way confidently through the maze of narrow streets and alleyways. Lorel was completely lost after the first couple of twists and turns, and she just hoped that he really did know where he was going. She knew that most men would never admit that they were lost, even if they didn't have the slightest idea where they were. It dented their macho image, she supposed.
They crossed a small bridge over one of the side canals, and Lorel paused in the middle for a few moments, peering over the edge to the murky water below.
'The canals look a lot more romantic from a distance,' she said a trifle ruefully, gazing down at the rubbish floating on the water. 'They smell a lot better, too!'
'It's far worse in summer, when it gets really hot,' Lewis remarked. Then, as she went to cross the rest of the bridge, he added, 'Mind the steps.'
She negotiated them carefully, and then realised that Lewis was watching her with a rather intent expression on his face.
'What is it?' she asked curiously.
'This is where you fell and hit your head,' he told her.
'Here?' She looked around in surprise; then she stared up at the surrounding buildings with their faded splendour, peeling paintwork, and narrow, wrought-iron balconies. 'Sorry,' she said, with a small shrug. 'None of this seems in the least familiar. I really don't remember being here before.' Then she frowned. 'What was I doing here, anyway? It seems quite a way from any of the main tourist spots.' When Lewis didn't answer immediately, she added half to herself, 'Perhaps I got lost. I haven't got much of a sense of direction.'
'Perhaps you did,' he said, in what seemed to her to be an unnecessarily curt voice. Then he gave a slightly frustrated gesture with his hands. 'If none of this means anything to you, we'd better move on.'
'I'm trying to remember,' Lorel said apologetically. 'But it's no good, there's just nothing there.'
Lewis looked as if he didn't entirely believe her. Lorel scowled at his back as he turned away from her. Did he still think she was faking the amnesia? Surely he didn't really believe she would do something as stupid as that?
She gave a brief sigh, and then trudged after him as he strode on ahead. Lewis Elliott was a very difficult—in fact, an impossible—man to fathom out. She didn't understand the reasons for most things he did, and had absolutely no idea what his true feelings towards her were. More often than not, he gave the impression that he found her nothing more than a nuisance, someone who had come charging into his life and disrupted it in a way that he found distinctly irritating. Other times, she wasn't quite so sure. He had developed the habit of looking at her in a manner that made her nerves curl rather pleasantly. And, of course, there had been that kiss last night...
Lewis suddenly turned round and looked at her at that point. Lorel instantly felt her cheeks grow uncomfortably hot. He couldn't possibly know she had been thinking about that kiss, she argued with herself. He wasn't a mind-reader!
All the same, he seemed to be studying her very intently. Lorel stared back at him rather crossly. Being under such close scrutiny made her feel distinctly edgy, and she didn't like it.
To her relief, he released her from that blue gaze only a few seconds later.
'We're getting near St Mark's Square now,' he told her.
She could have guessed that, because the narrow streets were beginning to fill up with people. They walked on, and after turning a couple more corners the square lay in front of them, basking in the spring sunshine and filled with people and pigeons.
Lorel let her gaze slide over the familiar landmarks: the belltower, the Basilica of St Mark's, and the huge square itself. Then she sighed. It was only familiar because she had seen so many pictures of it. She certainly couldn't remember being here in person.
'You don't remember going to the top of the bell-tower?' queried Lewis. 'Or sightseeing inside the Basilica?'
Lorel shook her head. 'No,' she said gloomily.
Lewis gave a brief frown. 'I suppose that now we're here, we may as well stay a little longer. Let's go and have a cup of coffee.'
He steered her towards one of the tables set outside the cafes that lined the square. When the coffee arrived, Lorel slowly sipped it, feeling unexpectedly depressed.
'What were you expecting?' asked Lewis perceptively. 'A sudden bolt of lightning inside your head, and all the missing pieces tumbling right back into place?'
'I suppose so,' she admitted.
'Stop thinking about it,' he advised. 'Just let it come back naturally. You'll probably remember everything when you're least expecting it.'
'That's an odd piece of advice, coming from you!' she retorted. 'You're the one who's so anxious for me to remember everything. That's why we're here, isn't it? Because you thought it might jolt my memory if you brought me to a familiar place?'
He didn't answer straight away. 'This morning, it doesn't seem quite so important,' he said at last, in an unexpectedly quiet voice.
She looked at him in surprise. 'Why not? Don't you want to know what I did with your briefcase?'
One of his eyebrows lifted. 'Then you're willing to accept that you did steal it?'
'Certainly not,' she said with some determination, angry at the way she had let him lead her into that admission. 'I'm just pointing out that you seem to have changed your tune.'
'It's probably only temporary,' He said with a smile. 'Put it down to the fact that it's a beautiful morning, and I'm feeling good about certain things.'
Lorel looked at him suspiciously. 'What sort of things?'
He gazed back at her calmly. 'Maybe that kiss last night is one of them,' he suggested.
Uneasiness spread through her stomach. To try and hide it, she put on her most blasé expression.
'I'm surprised you still remember it. I'd forgotten about it, until you mentioned it.'
This time, he actually laughed out loud. 'Lorel Parker, you are an extremely bad liar,' he said at last, still grinning broadly. 'You remember it as well as I do. Perhaps even better,' he added, his eyes positively gleaming now. As the colour flared brightly in her face again, he sat back and continued to look at her with great amusement. 'All right, if you don't want to talk about it, we'll change the subject. Why did you take your holiday so early in the year? Wouldn't it have been more fun for you if you'd waited until the summer, and come with some friends?'
'I really felt as if I needed the break,' she explained, glad of the opportunity to talk about something else. 'I didn't want to wait a couple more months. Then that legacy from my great-aunt arrived out of the blue, and I decided to blow the lot on a luxury holiday, to cheer myself up. Travelling on the Orient-Express seemed about as luxurious as you could get, and I thought I'd probably be able to make friends with people of my own age once I got to Venice.'
'Why did you need cheering up?' asked Lewis. 'Or had it something to do with the death of your parents?' he went on perceptively.
Lorel wrinkled her nose. 'I'd forgotten I'd told you about that.' She twisted her fingers together a little restlessly. 'You don't really want to hear about it, do you? It's a fairly long and dull story.'
'Try me,' he invited.
She gave a faint sigh. 'Well—first of all, I suppose you've got to understand what my parents were like. They were—very frivolous,' she said with some reluctance, not particularly eager to talk about such a private and personal subject. 'They thought life was one long round of parties and fun. They never took anything seriously.'
'Is that such a bad way to be?' suggested Lewis, much to her surprise.
; 'I didn't think you'd approve of that sort of attitude to life!'
'Everyone has to find their own way of getting through each day.'
This time, her eyebrows really did shoot up. 'Are you trying to tell me that you find life boring?'
Lewis lifted his shoulders non-committally. 'Sometimes, it does seem to be all work, with very little time for relaxation or pleasure.'
'The stresses of being a top executive?' she said drily. 'Come on, surely it's got its compensations. All that power—and money!'
'You think they're important?'
Something in his tone puzzled her. 'No,' she said, after a moment's hesitation. 'But a lot of people do.'
'And you think I'm one of them?'
Lorel decided she didn't want to get any deeper into this. 'I don't know you well enough to make that sort of judgement,' she said firmly.
'No?' Then he seemed to decide that he, too, had said more than enough on the subject. 'How did we get side-tracked like this?' he said, much more briskly. 'We were talking about your parents, and their approach to life. How did you fit into all their non-stop partying and relentless fun?'
'Not very well,' she admitted. 'Don't get the wrong impression,' she added quickly. 'They certainly loved me, in their own way. I don't think it was their fault that I couldn't seem to fit in.'
'Did you have a lonely sort of childhood?' asked Lewis.
'No, not really. Even when my parents had sloped off somewhere, there were always lots of other people around to look after me. My parents kept a sort of open house. Their friends were coming and going all the time, and they were all pretty fond of me. I was never left on my own, and I certainly wasn't unhappy. I just felt—well, sort of out of place. I tried to fit in, but I couldn't seem to manage it. I think I was born conventional,' she added wryly.
'Conventional?' repeated Lewis, with obvious disbelief. 'From my experience of you, that's about the last word I'd use to describe you!'
'Well, I might have acted out of character these last few days, but that's really the way I am. At least, compared with my parents,' she said, with a grimace. 'But I suppose anyone would seem a bit staid, next to them.'
'Did it hit you hard when they died?'
'Yes. It was like a great black hole in my life. I never thought I'd miss anyone so much. And it changed my whole life in a way that I hadn't expected.'
'How?' asked Lewis with interest.
'I blamed the way they died on the way that they lived,' she explained. Seeing his slightly puzzled look, she went on, 'They were always rushing off and doing things on the spur of the moment. They'd get together with a few friends, someone would suggest a party, a trip to the coast, a couple of days away somewhere, and they'd be up and off without even thinking about it. I know exactly what happened on the day they died. The sea was rough, and the forecast was for the weather to get even worse. When someone suggested a few hours' sailing, though, they didn't even stop to think about it. They piled into the boat with a couple of their friends, sailed off without giving a thought to even simple safety precautions—and drowned.'
Even now, she couldn't quite keep the bitterness out of her voice.
'You think their deaths could have been prevented?' said Lewis quietly.
'I know they could! If they had just behaved responsibly for once in their lives ‑' She broke off rather abruptly. She couldn't seem to say anything else, not at the moment.
'Do you want some more coffee?'
She shook her head.
'Then how about something stronger?'
'No, thanks,' she muttered, finding her voice again.
Lewis sat back. 'How did all of this change your life?'
'I decided I didn't want to be like them in any way, I didn't want to live the way they had. I suppose it was a kind of backlash reaction,' she admitted. 'The trouble was, I took it to extremes. Until then, I'd rather flitted around from job to job. I'd done some modelling, worked in local radio for a while, even got involved with a pop group for a few months, although that didn't really come to anything. Probably because I'm a lousy singer,' she admitted, with a wry smile. 'None of it offered any long-term career prospects, of course, but my parents were always encouraging me to try something different, and telling me I should only take jobs that seemed like fun. I didn't know if it was what I wanted or not, but I went along with it. I suppose I was trying to please them, and still making some kind of effort to fit in with their own sort of life-style. After they died, though, I chucked all that in and went to business college for a year. Then, when I'd got some basic qualifications, I took a job with a firm of accountants.'
'You certainly couldn't get much more staid than that,' Lewis commented drily. 'My guess is that it wasn't much fun, though.'
'No fun at all,' she admitted. 'Looking back, I can see that I rather went over the top. I hardly ever went out anywhere, I lost touch with most of my friends, and I put all my energy into work. I must have been the ideal employee!'
'What made you change?'
She lifted her shoulders in a rueful gesture. 'I don't really know. I just woke up one morning and thought how ridiculous the whole thing was. I was twenty-three years old, and behaving as if I were already middle-aged. My life was totally dull, and I could see it wasn't going to change unless I made a real effort. When that small legacy from my great-aunt turned up so unexpectedly, I realised it was a great chance to haul myself out of the rut I'd dug myself into. I chucked in my job, booked a luxury holiday, and hightailed it off here, to Venice.' She gave a faint grin. 'I suppose it wasn't a very wise thing to do, but at least the last few days haven't been dull. At least,' she amended, 'the ones that I can remember haven't been! Until I get back the rest of my memory, I won't know about the rest.'
She was a little surprised to find that Lewis wasn't smiling back at her. In fact, his face had gone rather dark, as if he were thinking about something that didn't particularly please him.
'You realise that you may never get your memory back?' he said rather abruptly.
Lorel blinked. 'Did the doctor say that was likely?'
'Not in so many words. You've got to face the fact that it's a possibility, though.'
'That would be very inconvenient for you,' she pointed out.
'Would it?' he replied, rather enigmatically.
'Well, of course! You wouldn't get your briefcase back.'
'Forget about the damned briefcase for a while!'
His unexpectedly terse reply made her shake her head in bewilderment. 'I don't understand you. For the last few days, practically all you've talked about is that briefcase. Now you're behaving as if it isn't even important.'
Lewis growled something under his breath; then he signalled to the waiter to bring more coffee. Lorel could see that she wasn't going to get any explanation out of him for his odd behaviour. She gave a slightly impatient sigh, and then turned her head away from him, watching instead the crowds of people who were either standing around admiring the views, or feeding the pigeons that massed in the square, looking for titbits.
When she finally looked back at Lewis again, she found his blue gaze was now fixed on her with unswerving intensity. She had the feeling that he had been studying her like that for quite some time and, for some reason, it made her skin prickle.
'You keep staring at me today as if I've got two heads!' she said irritably. 'I wish you would stop it.'
The dark expression disappeared from his face, and in its place came a more familiar bland look.
'I do apologise,' he said a little mockingly. 'In future, I'll only look at you when I'm actually talking to you.'
'Don't be silly,' she muttered. 'I just meant ‑'
'Meant what?'
But Lorel didn't want to go into it any deeper. She didn't have the faintest idea why it so unsettled her when Lewis looked at her in a certain way, and she certainly didn't know why it made her legs feel uncomfortably weak.
'We've spent practically the whole morning talking about my fami
ly,' she said, deciding it was definitely time to get on to another subject. 'How about telling me something about yours?'
'What do you want to know?'
'Everything,' she said promptly. 'Do you realise that I know hardly anything about you, except for your name?'
'I told you quite a few details on the train.'
'Well, that's not much good, since I can't remember them. You'd better tell me all over again.'
With a small shrug, he began to talk about his company, Elliott Communications. Lorel listened carefully, but none of it seemed familiar. It was as if she were hearing it for the first time.
'Do you enjoy your job?' she asked at last. Then she pulled a face. 'I suppose that's rather a silly question. You wouldn't be doing it otherwise. Anyway, I should think that most men would give their right arm for the sort of position you've got.'
'Maybe. I didn't have much choice, though. When my father died suddenly, I had to take over the company.'
'Didn't you want to take it over?' she asked, surprised.
He didn't answer straight away. 'It was what I was trained for, what it was always assumed I would do,' he said at last. 'My father would have hated it if an outsider had been brought in to run the company, after he had gone. I don't actually dislike my job, and I do it well. But I sometimes think ‑'
'Think what?' she asked curiously.
'That it would have been nice to have had a choice.'
'You could have just told your father that you had other plans for your life,' Lorel said bluntly. 'I'm sure he would have understood.'
'I dare say he would,' agreed Lewis. 'But that wouldn't have made it any less painful for him. He was always obsessed with the idea of handing the company down from father to son.'
'You can't make your own life miserable because of someone else's obsession.'
'Didn't you tell me only minutes ago that you took jobs you didn't really want, because you thought it would please your parents?' he reminded her.
'Yes, but ‑' She frowned briefly. 'It's not the same—is it?' she finished uncertainly.
'It seems exactly the same to me,' replied Lewis. His gaze held hers steadily. 'Perhaps we've more in common than we realised.'
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