It was the most blissful state.
Eventually Stefano shifted his weight off her and she twisted onto her side to rest her head on his chest.
She kissed the taut skin beneath her. ‘I’m so glad I married you. I would do it again in a moment.’
His response was to tighten his hold on her and kiss the top of her head.
CHAPTER NINE
ANNA CARRIED HER BOWL of cereal to Stefano’s study, eating as she went. For once he’d woken before her, waking her to make love before saying he had a conference call to take and work to catch up on. When she’d asked if there was anything she needed to be getting on with herself, he’d kissed her and reminded her that she was technically still off sick.
She hadn’t protested. Five days of sex, sand and sea had left work far removed from her life. She’d left school at eighteen and had worked constantly since. There had been no grand plan, just a determination to work hard and be self-sufficient. She hadn’t known how wonderful it could be to kick back and relax and to let the cares of the world pass her by and here, in this bustling beach paradise, she’d been able to do just that. In a few hours they’d be heading up Route 17 to San Francisco and their mini holiday in Santa Cruz would be over.
She found Stefano rummaging through a filing cabinet and talking to himself. It took her a moment to realise he was in fact having a video call with someone on his laptop.
He raised a hand and winked to acknowledge her and carried on with his conversation in rapid Italian with a woman Anna couldn’t see from the angle of his laptop but whose voice replied in equally rapid Italian.
Perching herself on his desk, Anna ate her breakfast while the two chatted. Although she couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, judging by Stefano’s tone this was no business talk.
By the time he’d finished the conversation, she’d finished her breakfast and put her bowl on his desk. ‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘My sister.’ He came over to her, took her face in his hands and gave her a kiss.
She looped her arms around his neck. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She doesn’t like her neighbours. She has three male students living in the flat above hers and they make too much noise at night. They ignore her complaints.’
‘Is she not scary like you?’
‘I don’t scare people.’
‘You revel in it.’
He grinned and kissed her again. ‘Only people who deserve it. And I have never scared you.’
‘I’ve never scared easily. So what are you going to do about her neighbours? Kneecap them?’ she joked, then pressed her lips to his.
‘I think a threatening letter will do as a start,’ he said into her mouth.
She nipped his bottom lip. ‘Very wise.’
Laughing, Stefano unlooped her arms from round his neck. ‘I have a conference call to make. Give me an hour and I’ll come back to bed before we leave.’
‘You don’t need me here for it?’ She had never missed a conference call in all the time she’d worked for him...
But then she remembered she had a new role, one she only had patches of memories of. She would have to get a handle on it from scratch.
She wouldn’t worry about that until they were back in London, she decided, sliding off the desk.
‘No underwear?’ he said with a lascivious gleam.
She turned, giving a hint of her bare bottom beneath her skirt. ‘I can sit on your lap.’
‘You can sit on my lap any time you like. Just not when I’m taking a conference call.’ He pushed her playfully. ‘Now go.’
‘Okay, okay, I know when I’m not wanted.’
He gave her a stern look that only made her laugh harder.
She sashayed deliberately to the door, a thought striking her as she made to leave. ‘How do I get on with Christina?’
His brow furrowed.
‘I ask because...well, I’m ashamed to say this but when I saw her getting out of your car last week...it felt like a knife in my heart.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I assumed she was your latest girlfriend.’ She must have seen the darkening in his eyes he wasn’t quick enough to hide for she hastened to add, ‘Don’t forget, I had no idea we were married. I was used to your rolling conveyor belt of girlfriends, it was an easy mistake for me to make. I couldn’t understand why it hurt to see you with what I thought was another lover.’
Stefano made sure not to show any reaction. Lying to Anna had been easy when she’d first had the amnesia diagnosed. Now, every untruth felt rancid in his guts. She didn’t yet have the memories to know that she’d only met his sister the one time, when she’d walked into their London flat early that morning and found Christina wearing her robe. Anna not being able to speak Italian and Christina not speaking English had given them a language barrier that had allowed Anna to assume the worst.
It came to him how Christina had later described the scene.
‘She went white,’ his sister had said. ‘I thought she was going to be sick. I tried to speak to her but she couldn’t understand me; she kept shaking her head as if she’d seen something horrifying, and then she walked out.’
Did that really sound like the actions of a woman calculating how to turn a situation to her advantage?
Now he allowed himself to think about it with some distance from the aftermath, did it not sound like the actions of a woman who’d received a terrible shock?
‘You and Christina have a language barrier,’ he said steadily. That wasn’t a lie.
She eyed him with the look of someone who knew something was being held back. Then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe that’s my cue to start learning Italian.’
He was saved from further talk of his sister by the tone on his laptop ringing out to notify him his conference call was about to start.
Anna shrugged again, a wry smile playing on her lips. ‘And that’s my cue to leave. Have fun.’
After she’d closed the door behind her, Stefano took the seat at his desk and accepted the call. While waiting for the others joining to connect, he rubbed his forehead.
The game he’d been playing, the revenge he’d been savouring...it sat like a bad taste on his tongue.
He’d learned more about his wife in the last week than he had in their entire marriage. Before she’d stormed into his boardroom and humiliated him that day he would never have dreamt she could be a gold-digger or that his trust in her could be unfounded. Every instinct in his guts and in his head were shouting at him that somehow, in some way, everything was wrong.
This was Anna. The woman he’d desired and admired from their very first meeting. The woman he’d trusted enough to pledge his life to...
His head began to burn and his guts twisted with something worse than nausea. With his revenge only hours away, he came to the realisation that he couldn’t go through with it.
When his conference call was over he would call Miranda, the journalist he’d entrusted into his confidence, and tell her the embargoed press statement he’d given to her a week ago was to be scrapped and buried.
He’d get tonight’s awards over with and then he would sit down with Anna and tell her the truth about everything.
* * *
The moment Anna walked into Stefano’s apartment in San Francisco, more memories returned. Throughout their days in Santa Cruz, more and more had appeared. Her memory was like a giant jigsaw puzzle and what had started as a mammoth hunt for the pieces was now coming together rapidly.
‘When did we get a new sofa?’ she asked, surprised to find the plump white one replaced with chocolate-brown leather.
‘You remember it?’
‘It was my favourite thing here.’ This apartment was furnished along the same lines as the London one, with everything designed to show off wealth and great taste. She already missed their Santa Cruz beach house. For all its opulence, it had felt like a home.
He strode to the kitchen. ‘It got damaged a f
ew weeks ago. Tea?’
She followed him in. ‘Looks like the concierge service has been in,’ she said, noting the freshly cleaned scent of the place.
‘I called them to get everything ready for us. We’re eating at the hotel tonight but there’s plenty of snack food if you’re hungry...’ Suddenly he turned to face her. ‘Do you remember the concierge service here?’
She nodded and grinned. ‘Like the one in London but with extra “have a nice day.”’
‘Your memories are coming back quickly now,’ he observed.
‘There are still holes but they’re filling.’
At that, judging by the gleam in his eyes, his mind had taken an entirely different route. She was glad. Tension had been etched on his face since his conference call that not even a long bout of lovemaking before they’d left had been able to erase. When she’d asked what was troubling him, he’d said only that it was to do with work and that he’d tell her about it after the awards. With work still feeling a lifetime away, she didn’t bother to pursue it.
‘You have a filthy mind, Stefano Moretti.’
He pulled her into his arms and nipped at her earlobe. ‘And you love it.’
Yes, she thought, yes, she did. She loved him.
But hadn’t she already known she loved him? That tight, painful feeling that had been in her chest since she’d seen Christina follow him out of his car; that had been a symptom of it. It was liberating to finally acknowledge the truth to herself.
She loved him.
With only flat shoes on, her face was flat against his chest. She inhaled his scent greedily and sighed into him before tugging at his shirt to loosen it and slip a hand up it and onto his back.
The words rolled on her tongue, so close to being spoken aloud, but she held them back.
The last time she remembered saying those words had been to her father in the minutes before they’d turned his life support off.
Stefano gathered her hair and gently tugged her head back. ‘You don’t want tea?’
‘I’m not thirsty.’ She moved her hands to the front of his shirt and began undoing the buttons. She might not yet be able to say the words to him but she could show him. ‘But I am hungry.’
* * *
As was always the case, Stefano was showered, shaved and ready a good hour before Anna, who’d had a beautician provided by the apartment’s concierge service in to help her.
He pressed Miranda’s name on his phone again and tapped his foot while waiting for it to connect.
He hadn’t been able to get hold of her. He’d left her three messages and sent two emails. Anna had disappeared for a couple of hours’ ‘retail therapy’ that afternoon and he’d tried Miranda again, even calling her newsroom.
Miranda Appleton was editor-in-chief of the US’s bestselling celebrity magazine that had an accompanying website with the highest daily click rate of any media in the world. Miranda had her finger on the pulse of all celebrity news and in today’s instant world a billionaire such as himself was considered a celebrity.
He’d chosen Miranda for his scoop because, for all her unscrupulous dealings, she was a woman of her word and he’d known she wouldn’t break the embargo.
And now she had gone off-grid. No one knew where she was. No one could reach her.
His call went yet again to her voicemail.
‘It’s Stefano,’ he hissed quietly down the line. ‘Miranda, I need you to kill that story. I retract my statement. You cannot publish it. Call me back as soon as you can.’
Feeling sick to his stomach, he waited for Anna in the living room, sitting on the new sofa that had been delivered to replace the one he’d ruined when he’d made his first trip to San Francisco after she’d left him. He’d remembered making love to her on it and the rage that had ripped through him, which had caused him to rip up the one item of furniture she’d loved, pulling chunks out of it as she had ripped chunks out of him.
He’d been as out of control as he’d been before prison had cured him of his temper.
Jail itself hadn’t been too bad but the six months he’d served behind bars had dragged interminably. He’d grown to hate the confinement, the suffocation that came from spending all day every day in an enclosed space surrounded by people there wasn’t a hell’s chance of escaping from. He understood why prisoners might turn to drugs, just to relieve themselves of the brain-numbing boredom. As he’d already been hooked on nicotine at the time he’d known better than to take that route himself. But, still, the days had been so long.
His temper had been the reason he’d been incarcerated. He’d walked out of those prison gates with a determination to never let it get the better of him again and until Anna had left him, he never had.
He took a deep breath then got up to pour himself a large measure of bourbon. He downed it in one, then poured another.
The doubts that had been amassing in his head since their arrival in California had grown. Yet he always came back to the fact of that damned letter from Anna’s solicitor demanding a massive slice of his fortune. Whatever had been going on in her head at the time, that demand had come from her. He should not allow fantastic sex and the old sparring easiness they’d shared to overturn the facts of the situation because in that respect nothing had changed.
His plan had worked perfectly. He’d seduced her. She’d even said she would marry him again. That should fill him with satisfaction, not make him feel as if he’d been punched a dozen times in the gut.
Never in his life had he felt such indecision. Since his imprisonment he’d learned to keep a cool head, analyse the facts and then make up his mind. Once it was made up, nothing deterred him from his chosen path.
He shouldn’t let the past week cloud his judgement or deter him from his path now.
But he’d learned more about his wife in the past week than he had in almost a year of marriage and all his instincts were telling him he couldn’t go through with it.
Where on earth was Miranda? Had she got his messages?
They’d planned the timings down to the minute. His statement was due to go online halfway through the awards ceremony.
He heard soft footsteps approaching and composed himself.
Anna entered the living room serenely, like a goddess emerging from an oyster shell.
All the breath left his body.
She wore a floor-length fitted red lace dress that pooled at her feet like a mermaid’s tail. The front plunged in a V showing the tiniest hint of creamy cleavage. Her bare arms glimmered. Her face was subtly made up except for the lips, which she’d painted the same shade as her dress, and her dark hair shone, blow-dried to fall thickly around her shoulders.
She spread her arms out and made a slow twirl. ‘Well?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I think I’m going to be the envy of every red-blooded male in attendance.’
Her eyes sparkled, joy resounding from them. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I found this dress in my dressing room. Did I buy it for tonight?’
‘I assume so. I’ve only been on one shopping trip with you.’
She grinned. ‘I remember that. Was it that bad for you?’
‘I’ve had better times watching envelopes being stuffed.’
‘I’d never been shopping with an unlimited credit card. Can you blame me for getting carried away?’
He shook his head, remembering the glee with which she’d attacked the shopping district he’d taken her to. He’d often given old girlfriends a credit card to buy themselves something for a night out and they’d always played a game; pretending to resist, pretending to want their independence and not wanting to take from him. Anna had made no such pretence. She’d snatched the card out of his hand—a card he’d given her to keep and not just for the one occasion—and raced to the shops like a roadrunner, virtually leaving a trail of dust in her wake. Her chutzpah had made him laugh.
And then he remembered a time before they’d married, when he’d caught her making calculations wi
th a pen and paper. She’d been trying to work out her finances to see if she could afford to pay for her and her sister to go on a five-star spa weekend in Dublin for Melissa’s birthday. He’d offered to pay and she’d dismissed it out of hand. She wouldn’t even discuss it. He’d noticed in the weeks leading up to that particular spa break that she had brought her own lunch into the office rather than eating in the subsidised staff restaurant, and he’d admired that she was prepared to economise when necessary and forego little treats if it meant having a bigger treat at the end of it.
She’d often spent her money on her sister, he remembered, and for the first time wondered if it was her way of making up for Melissa giving up her freedom to raise her. For all Anna’s current happiness, he knew Melissa wasn’t far from her thoughts. He knew Melissa being in Australia with their mother had wounded her in ways he couldn’t understand.
Anna had only been happy to spend his money after they’d married and that had only been to feed her addiction to clothes shopping. She’d cheekily described it as the perk of being his wife.
Miranda, check your damn messages.
‘Where did you say the awards were being held?’ Anna asked, rifling through her small red clutch bag.
‘At the Grand Palace Hotel.’
Her hand stilled and she looked at him. ‘The Grand Palace Hotel?’
‘Sì. It’s been held there for the past five years. What are you looking for?’
‘Double-checking I’ve put my lipstick in,’ she replied, but her eyes had glazed over, her words mechanical and said without any thought, her mind clearly somewhere else.
‘What’s wrong?’
After a moment she blinked and shook her head. Her mouth pulled into a smile but there was a brittleness to it. ‘Nothing. Shall we go?’
Aware that to leave it much longer would make them late, he took her hand and together they left his apartment.
Only the cramping in his guts acted as a warning sign that something was very wrong.
CHAPTER TEN
ANNA’S NAILS, MANICURED FABULOUSLY by the beautician, dug into the palm of her hand. Stefano sat beside her in the back of the stretched Mercedes, filling the silence with talk of a new super-secure Cloud-based system his employees were developing. She made all the appropriate noises and asked all the obvious questions she would always ask but her thoughts were far away. A year ago away.
Once a Moretti Wife Page 11