by Lucy King
‘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.
Copyright © 2020 by Lynne Graham
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ISBN: 9781488059414
A Scandal Made in London
Copyright © 2020 by Lucy King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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