But Melissa was on an aeroplane flying to the other side of the world to visit the woman who’d abandoned them for a new life in Australia with a man she barely knew.
The betrayal sliced through her again, tears burning in her eyes.
‘Anna, your home is with me.’
She closed her eyes in an attempt to drown out Stefano’s hypnotic voice. She wished she could fall into the deepest sleep in the world and wake to find the normal order of things restored.
The sad truth was there was no one else who could take her in or, if there was, she couldn’t remember them.
Whatever was wrong with her head though, wishing for something different wouldn’t change a thing. Her world might be all topsy-turvy but this was her reality now and she needed to deal with it. Bawling her eyes out and burying her head in the sand wouldn’t change anything.
She looked directly at him. ‘I don’t remember it being our home. I don’t remember a thing about us other than that you’re my boss and the bane of my life, not my husband.’
Was it her imagination or was that satisfaction she saw glimmer in his eyes?
‘I will help you retrieve the memories. I don’t deny our marriage can be...what’s the word? Like many storms?’
‘Tempestuous?’ she supplied, fighting the urge to smile.
‘That’s it. We are very tempestuous but we’re happy together.’ He straightened his long frame and rolled his shoulders before flashing his irresistible smile. ‘I need to get back to work and get things arranged so I can care for you like a good husband should. I’ll be back in the morning for when the specialist gets here.’
He handed a business card to the consultant. ‘If you have any concerns, call me.’ Then he leaned over and placed the briefest of kisses on Anna’s lips. ‘Try not to worry, bellissima. You’re the most stubborn woman I know—your memories won’t dare do anything but come back to you. Everything will feel better once you’re home.’
The endearment, bellissima, sounded strange to her ears. The most endearing term Stefano had ever used towards her before had been bambolina, Italian for little doll, which he’d thought hilarious. He’d often said he would mistake her for a princess doll were it not for her blunt tongue.
Anna watched him stroll from the hospital room, the good, faithful husband leaving to sort out his affairs so he could dedicate his next few weeks to caring for his poor, incapacitated wife, and all she could think was that she didn’t trust him at all.
Until her memories came back or until she spoke to Melissa, whichever came first, she would have to be on her guard. She didn’t trust Stefano any further than she could see him.
* * *
Stefano strode through the hospital entrance with a spring in his step. It was at times like this, when he had something to celebrate, that he wished he still smoked. But smoking was a habit he’d kicked a decade ago.
He was going to bring his wife home. The woman who’d used, humiliated, left him and tried to blackmail him was going to be back under his roof. He had big plans for her.
Those plans would have to wait a few days while she recovered from the worst of her concussion but in the meantime he fully intended to enjoy her confinement. Anna hated being fussed over. She was incapable of switching off, always needing to be doing something. Having to rest for a minimum of a fortnight would be her worst nightmare.
It cheered him further to know he would be there to witness her live through this horror.
Stefano intended to keep his word and ensure she was well-looked-after while back under his roof. He might despise her all the way to her rotten core but he would never let her suffer physically. He could still taste the fear he’d experienced when she’d dropped in a faint at his feet and knew he never wanted to go through anything like that again. It amazed him that she’d been able to get into his offices without collapsing, something the consultant had been surprised by too. If he hadn’t been so angry at her unexpected appearance and unprepared for seeing her for the first time in a month, he would have paid more attention to the fact she’d looked like death warmed up.
Fate had decided to work for him.
Anna didn’t remember anything that had happened between them. The whole of the past year had gone, wiped clean away. He could tell her anything and with her confined to his sole care and her sister on the other side of the world, there was no one to disprove it. Judging from the way she’d blanched when she’d learned Melissa had gone to Australia, she would be too angry to make contact with her any time soon.
All he had to remember was to keep his bitterness that she’d fooled him into marrying her inside. Anna could read him too well.
He’d called Melissa as soon as they’d arrived at the hospital, knowing Anna would want her sister there. He’d been put through to her boss and told that Melissa was on leave and had been planning her trip for months. Considering Anna had never mentioned it—and she surely would have done—he guessed Melissa had put off telling her for as long as she could. Certainly, when the two sisters had gone away for their trip to Paris, which he had paid for as a treat for his wife and which Anna had returned from early, determined to catch him up to no good, she hadn’t known anything about it.
He found Anna alone in her private room flicking through a magazine, dressed in the same black jersey dress from the day before. She greeted him with a wary smile.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Better.’
He sat down in the visitor’s chair. ‘You look better.’ Then he grinned and ran a finger down her soft cheeks, causing her eyes to widen. ‘But still too pale.’
She jerked her face away and shrugged. ‘I slept but it was patchy.’
‘You can rest when we get home.’ The consultant had told him in private that the best medicine for concussion was sleep.
‘I just can’t believe I’ve lost a whole year of my life.’ She held the magazine up. ‘Look at the date on this. To me, it’s the wrong year. I don’t remember turning twenty-four. There are stories in here about celebrities I’ve never even heard of.’
‘Once we get you home I’m sure your memories will start to come back.’ But not too soon, he hoped. He had plans for his wife. ‘Do you not remember anything about our marriage?’ He wanted to make double sure.
‘Not a thing. The last I remember you were dating that Jasmin woman.’
Jasmin had been the date who’d got food poisoning an hour before his scheduled flight to California for the industry tech awards. It had been her illness that had given him the chance to coerce Anna into attending with him in her place. It was only because it was far too short notice for him to get another date that she’d agreed. That, and the designer dress he’d had couriered over from the designer personally had helped make her decision. The awards evening had ended with Anna insisting the only way she would have sex with him was if he married her.
He didn’t doubt her memories of their time together would eventually return. If anyone could bring them back, it would be his wife, the most stubborn, determined woman he’d ever met in his life. But in the meantime...
‘Our marriage is a shock for you.’
‘That’s one way to describe it,’ she murmured. ‘I’d promised myself I would rather date a baboon than go on a date with you, never mind marry you. Have you really never cheated on me?’
He forced his tone to remain light through the blood roaring in his veins. ‘Not once. We’ve had a few issues but nothing serious. We’ve been working through them.’
A few months ago he’d been pictured dining with one of his new Swedish directors, a blonde statuesque beauty he hadn’t felt even a flicker of attraction towards. Anna had shrugged the ensuing press melee off but he’d known it bothered her. A second photo a fortnight later, this time of him dining with one of his female employees in San Francisco, had only added fuel to the fire. He’d explained his innocence, proving the picture had cropped out the other half-dozen employees also dining with them, and
she had outwardly accepted it. But her distrust had grown and she’d no longer bothered to hide it. Her attitude had infuriated him so much he hadn’t cared to explain that he liked socialising when he travelled abroad without her because it made the time pass so much quicker.
He should have known from that point that she’d wanted to catch him out just as much as the media had. She had wanted proof of his supposed infidelity.
Her hazel eyes were filled with the suspicion he’d become too familiar with. ‘What kind of issues?’
‘You’ve found it hard to be my wife. You don’t like the media.’ That much at least was true. Anna loathed being under the media spotlight. ‘There have been many stories about our marriage being in trouble. If we were to believe the press we’ve split up a hundred times since we married. It is all poppycock. We married quickly. It is natural for us to have the teething problems.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘When you found me in your office it was as if you’d found the Antichrist trespassing. What was the argument about that made me sleep at Melissa’s? Was it that woman I saw you with?’
Dio, even with amnesia her mind ran to suspicion. He’d already told her there was no one else. There hadn’t been anyone else since they’d flown to California and their relationship had irrevocably changed.
‘That woman you saw me with is my sister.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ She looked shamefaced. ‘I saw her getting out of the car after you and...’
‘And you assumed I was having an affair.’ She’d made that exact same assumption when she’d found Christina in their apartment. Finally she’d found the proof she’d been waiting for from the very moment they’d made their vows. If she’d bothered to ask for the truth he would have given it, but she hadn’t cared for the truth. All she’d wanted was evidence of infidelity so she could bleed him for as much of his hard-earned money as she could get her grasping hands on.
He’d planned to reveal his sister in court, in front of a judge, so the law could see Anna’s accusation for the entrapment it was. He’d looked forward to her humiliation. Now he had a different kind of humiliation in mind, one that would be far more pleasurable. If she retrieved her memories before he could pull it off then so be it. He would enjoy it while it lasted.
‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I thought you were an only child.’
‘So did I until recently. I’ll tell you about it when you’re not so exhausted.’
On cue, she covered her mouth and yawned widely, then blinked a number of times as if trying to keep her eyes open.
‘Lie down and rest,’ he said. ‘The specialist will be here soon and then we’ll be able to go home and you’ll be able to sleep as much as you need.’
As much as he despised the very air she breathed, seeing her vulnerable and weak sat badly inside him, made him feel strangely protective. It made him want to hold her close and stroke her hair until she fell asleep. He much preferred it when her wits were sharp. It put them on equal footing. Her amnesia was a weapon in his own arsenal that he would use to his advantage but he wouldn’t unleash its full force until he was satisfied she was over the worst of her concussion.
She nodded and lay down, curling up in the foetal position she always favoured when she slept. After a few minutes of silence when he thought she’d fallen asleep, she said, without opening her eyes, ‘What did we argue about that was so bad I spent the night at my flat?’
‘It wasn’t anything serious. It’s still your flat too and you often stay there. We’ve both been playing games. We’re both stubborn, neither of us likes to admit to being wrong, but we always make it up.’
‘If it wasn’t serious, why were you so angry with me yesterday? You were grumpy for most of the time in the hospital too.’
Typical Anna. When she wanted an answer to something she was like a dog with a bone until she got it.
‘I was hurt that you rejected me. I didn’t understand you had amnesia. I was out of my mind with worry about you. Worry makes me grumpy. I’m sorry for behaving like that.’
Her eyes opened, an amusement he hadn’t seen for a long time sparkling in them. ‘An apology and an admission to hurt feelings? Have you damaged your brain too?’
He laughed and leaned over to press a kiss to her cheek. She scowled at the gesture, which made him laugh more.
It was as if this Anna beside him had been reset to factory settings before marriage had even been mentioned between them.
‘I know you have no memories of us. I have to be hopeful they will return.’ But not too soon. Too soon and he wouldn’t be able to fulfil the plan that had formed almost the instant the consultant had informed him that his estranged wife had amnesia.
Their wedding anniversary was now only nine days away. To celebrate it, he had a surprise planned for her that no amount of amnesia would ever allow her to forget.
CHAPTER THREE
ANNA GAWKED AS the driver came to a stop along the Embankment. She’d always been curious about Stefano’s home, situated in a high-rise residential complex overlooking the Thames, which, at the time of building, had been the most expensive development in the world. So naturally, Stefano owned the most expensive apartment within it: the entire top floor.
The driver opened Stefano’s door. Before he could get out she touched his arm, only lightly but with an instinctive familiarity she’d never used before. ‘You could be telling me anything about our relationship. I can’t disprove any of it. How do I know I can trust you?’
‘In all the time you worked for me did you ever know me to lie?’ he answered steadily.
‘I never caught you out in a lie,’ she conceded. In the eighteen months she’d worked for him their relationship had been nothing less than honest, brutally so on occasion.
‘So trust me.’ He held her gaze with that same intense look that sent tendrils of something curling up her spine.
‘It doesn’t seem I have much choice.’
If she could remember her phone’s pin code she could reach Melissa and ask her but even if she could, she knew she wouldn’t make that call. Not yet. The thought of speaking to her sister made her feel sick. She wouldn’t call her until she could trust she wouldn’t scream down the line at her and say things she knew she would regret.
She must have known about Melissa’s trip. Melissa’s letter had said as much. She’d asked for her forgiveness.
How could she forgive that? After everything their mother had done and put them through? Their father had been six feet under for less than six months when their mother had started seeing an Australian man she met through a dating agency. Anna, who’d been desperately grieving the loss of the father she’d adored, had tried to understand her mother’s loneliness. She really had. She’d resisted the urge to spit in the usurper’s tea, had been as welcoming as she could be, believing Melissa’s private assertion that it was nothing but a rebound fling by a lonely, heartbroken woman and that it would fizzle out before it really started. If only.
Three months after meeting him, nine months after she’d buried her husband, Anna’s mother had announced she was emigrating to Australia with her new man.
Stefano pressed his thumb to her chin and gently stroked it. ‘When your memories come back you will know the truth. I will help you find them.’
Her heart thudding, her skin alive with the sensation of his touch, Anna swallowed the moisture that had filled her mouth.
When had she given in to the chemistry that had always been there between them, always pulling her to him? She’d fought against it right from the beginning, having no intention of joining the throng of women Stefano enjoyed such a legendary sex life with. To be fair, she didn’t have any evidence of what he actually got up to under the bed sheets; indeed it was something she’d been resolute in not thinking about, but the steady flow of glamorous, sexy women in and out of his life had been pretty damning.
One of her conditions for accepting the job as his PA was that he must never ask her to be a go-between between hi
m and his lovers. No way would she be expected to leave her desk to buy a pretty trinket as a kiss-off to a dumped lover. When she’d told him this he had roared with laughter.
When had she gone from liking and hugely admiring him but with an absolute determination to never get into bed with him, to marrying him overnight? She’d heard of whirlwind marriages before but from employee to wife in twenty-four hours? Her head hurt just trying to wrap itself around it.
Had Stefano looked at her with the same glimmer in his green eyes then as he was now? Had he pressed his lips to hers or had she been the one...?
‘How will you help me remember us?’ she asked in a whisper.
His thumb moved to caress her cheek and his voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I will help you find again the pleasure you had in my bed. I will teach you to become a woman again.’
Mortification suffused her, every part of her anatomy turning red.
I will teach you to be a woman again?
His meaning was clear. He knew she was a virgin.
Anna’s virginity was not something she’d ever discussed with anyone. Why would she? Twenty-three-year-old virgins were rarer than the lesser-spotted unicorn. For Stefano to know that...
Dear God, it was true.
All the denial she’d been storing up fell away.
She really had married him.
And if she’d married him, she must have slept with him. Which meant all her self-control, not just around him but in her life itself, had been blown away.
She’d taken such pride in her self-control after her mum had left. Events might fall out of her power but her own behaviour was something she controlled with iron will. All those teenage parties she’d been to when alcohol, cigarettes and more illicit substances were passed around and couples found empty spaces in which to make out... She’d been the one sitting there sipping on nothing stronger than a cola and taking great pride in the fact that she was in control of all her faculties. Her self-control was the only thing she’d had control of in a life where she’d been powerless to stop her father dying or her mother moving to the other side of the world and leaving her behind.
Once a Moretti Wife Page 3