by India Grey
The knock at the door made her jump and stopped her mid-sentence.
Rushing to open it, she was dimly aware that she was still wearing the blue satin dress and had just put all the rest of her clothes in the suitcase. What was it about Cristiano Maresca that made it impossible to think straight?
‗Good evening, mademoiselle.‘
It was the concierge—a short, sleek man, with a neat moustache like Hercule Poirot. A strange mixture of relief and panic churned inside her at the thought of leaving here now. Walking away down the wide, thick-carpeted corridor. Walking away from Cristiano for good.
‗You asked to be booked on a flight back to Leeds, England, as soon as possible?‘ the concierge asked politely.
‗Yes. I‘ll just get my—‘
‘Pardonez-moi, mademoiselle, but I‘m afraid I have bad news. Due to thick fog over Leeds tonight many flights have been cancelled, and the remaining ones are being diverted to Heathrow. I‘m afraid there are no seats available on any UK
flight with any airline at the moment.‘
Kate felt the air whoosh from her lungs and the ground tilt a little beneath her feet as she took in this information. It felt like absorbing a physical blow.
‗But that can‘t be right, surely? There must be something…‘
‗I‘m afraid not, mademoiselle,‘ the concierge murmured gravely. ‗I have checked with all the airlines. Of course,‘ he added doubtfully, glancing at her very obviously un-designer jumper, ‗if it is urgent I could possibly look into a private charter…?‘
Kate shook her head, swallowing back the hysterical bubble of laughter that rose inside her. Dominic was notoriously relaxed when it came to expenses, but she suspected that even he might balk at private jet hire. And, since most weeks she struggled to afford petrol for her ancient car, it certainly wasn‘t going to come out of her own pocket.
‗Very well, mademoiselle.‘ The concierge gave a little bow. ‗I am sorry not to have been able to help. If there‘s anything more I can do for you, please don‘t hesitate to call down to Reception.‘
‗Thank you,‘ Kate murmured faintly, shutting the door behind his departing back and leaning against it for a moment while she struggled to control her desolation.
She wanted so much to go home—back to Alexander. Dominic had given them all a week off to enjoy the considerable luxury of the hotel and explore the city, so their scheduled flight home wasn‘t until Friday. She hadn‘t argued because, she now realised, deep down she‘d secretly hoped that she‘d be with Cristiano.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She turned round abruptly, gritting her teeth as a crashing wave of homesickness and despair washed over her, not knowing what to do now. Cristiano was at the window. He had pulled the curtain back and was standing by the doors to the balcony, the lurid lights from the square outside casting hollows beneath his cheekbones and making his olive skin look strangely bleached of colour.
‗So, it looks like you‘re not going home after all,‘ he said, without turning round to look at her.
‗You don‘t have to sound so pleased.‘ She hated the bitterness and misery in her tone, but was suddenly too tired to hide them any more. Too tired to pretend.
He dropped the curtain, so his face was suddenly plunged into shadow again.
‗I don‘t want you to run away until we‘ve had a chance to talk.‘
‗What about?‘
Oh, God. For the first time it occurred to her that he might somehow have already found out about Alexander. Nausea rolled through her. She wanted to sink down onto the bed, but knew she‘d feel at a disadvantage with him towering over her, so settled instead for perching on the edge of the dressing table. Her heart was battering against her ribs as he came towards her, and she searched his face for clues.
There were none. Apart from a muscle flickering in his lean, tanned cheek it was very still and completely blank.
‗The night we spent together.‘
She gave an anxious laugh. ‗I don‘t know why. It clearly didn‘t make it onto your list of top ten one-night stands, so unless you need the details to put in some kind of no-holds barred, X-rated autobiography there‘s really not much point in going over it.‘ Nerves were making her talk too much, too fast, and tears stung at the back of her eyes. ‗It‘s funny,‘ she went on. ‗Although on some level I understand that when you sleep with a man who is known throughout the world as a heart-breaking, womanising playboy you can‘t exactly expect flowers and a card on your anniversary, it would at least be nice to think that he‘d recognise you again. Especially after—‘
She stopped, suddenly breathless. An image, suppressed for the last four years, rose to the surface of her mind. The sun rising over the sea, bathing their naked bodies in rosy pink light, painting streaks of gold into his hair while, bleak-faced and rigid, he told her about his past.
‗After what?‘
The man in front of her looked the same—agonisingly, mockingly the same—and yet so different. Tears welled in her eyes and she got sharply to her feet.
‗Forget it.‘ Impatiently she dashed the tears away as she made to move past him, and gave a broken laugh. ‗Oh, but of course you already have—haven‘t you?‘
He gave a low, savage curse. Catching hold of her arm, he pulled her back so that she hit the hard wall of his chest.
‗Yes,‘ he rasped, his face ashen, his eyes like glittering pools of tar. ‗Yes, I bloody well have. I‘ve forgotten everything from the time I got into that car to qualify for the race to the moment I hit the barrier. It‘s lost. Twenty-four hours of nothingness. So that‘s why we need to talk. I want to know what happened.‘
For a long, shivering moment it felt as if time had stopped as their gazes locked. But then her hoarse whisper broke the silence. Broke the spell.
‗Oh, God, Cristiano. I—I‘m sorry.‘
Letting go of her abruptly, Cristiano spun round and walked back to the window, raising a hand to his pounding forehead. Why the hell had he just said that? He had come up here to get out of her whatever he could, using whatever means it took—he had intended to seduce her, not confide in her, per l’amore di Dio. He didn‘t want anyone to know about this. Never mind some girl he didn‘t know, didn‘t trust not to go to the papers.
‗I had no idea.‘
‗No. Well, it‘s not exactly something I want to broadcast,‘ he said icily.
‗But why?‘ There was a curious tension in her voice, and the light from the lamp beside her turned her skin to gold satin and reflected in her eyes, making it look as if there was a flame leaping in their depths. ‗I mean, you had a terrible accident, and people would—‘
‗Love to know that I‘m not over it?‘ He cut her off sharply, as if that would also help him cut off the urge to cross the room and take her face in his hands and kiss that soft mouth again. ‗That I have this…this gap? Can you imagine what would happen if it got out that I have no memory of that evening? How many women would come forward and claim I was with them? That I slept with them, assaulted them, fathered their children? The tabloid newspapers would have enough salacious front pages for the next three years, and there would be nothing I could do— nothing—because I can’t remember.‘
‗Oh.‘ It was more like a defeated exhalation than a properly enunciated word. Tugging her jumper down over her hands, as if she was cold, she shook her head slightly, so that her soft hair shimmered in the light of the lamp. ‗I didn‘t think of it like that. Why would anyone do that? Make things up?‘
He gave a harsh laugh. ‗How about for five minutes of fame and a few hundred grand? Even if a story could be disproved, with a DNA test or an alibi, by that time the damage would already have been done.‘
She stood up, wrapping her arms around herself for a moment and looking around as if she was disorientated. ‗Well, you don‘t need to worry about that any more. You were with me.‘ She looked at him then, straight in the eye, and gave a painful smile that seemed to reach down inside him and twist a
t his heart. ‗ I know what happened, and I promise you I‘m not going to spread it all over the front pages. You can relax. Get back to your party and your adoring fans and stop worrying about it.‘
Her voice was soft, resigned. Cristiano tried to focus on what she was saying—to make sense of it—but the ache in his head had intensified so that it felt as if someone was hitting the inside of his skull with a sledgehammer.
‗I have no intention of going back,‘ he said tersely, remembering how he had planned to spend the rest of the night. In bed with her. Seducing her into telling him everything he so badly wanted to know. But he had underestimated her, he realised now. He had assumed she would fall into bed with him at the merest hint of an opportunity, like any one of the scores of women across the square who were no doubt searching the Casino for him right now. The fact that she hadn‘t was intriguing, as well as surprisingly painfully frustrating.
He thrust his hands in his pockets, gritting his teeth against the throbbing in his head—and in other, more basic parts of his anatomy. ‗I‘m going away for a while.‘
She had moved across to the bed again and was leaning forward, unzipping the case she‘d just finished packing. Her hand stilled. ‗Oh? Where to?‘
‗A chalet in the Alps. It belongs to a friend.‘
His voice was rough in the quiet room. From a long way off he could just about hear the sounds of the party in the Casino—the pulse of the music and the muffled sound of a lot of voices raised to speak over it. Suddenly he was profoundly glad to have escaped.
To be here.
Slowly she lifted her head and looked up. Her eyes were wide, the blue almost swallowed up by the darkness at their centre.
‗You‘re going tonight?‘
He nodded, not letting his gaze move from hers. Not able to. ‗I‘m going now.‘
Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips. ‗Alone?‘
It was barely more than a whisper, and it felt like a caress. Cristiano felt desire slam into him with all the force of a head-on collision. The air between them throbbed with sudden possibility.
‗I hope not,‘ he said softly.
Chapter Four
IT WAS a starless night.
Sitting in the low passenger seat of Cristiano‘s expensive sports car, Kate bit her lip and stared out into the darkness, trying to stop the convulsive tremors that gripped her
The car‘s headlamps lit the empty road ahead, but beyond them there was nothing but velvet blackness. She had no idea where they were, or exactly where they were going. There was no north star to use as a compass, no moon to light the way.
It seemed crushingly symbolic.
The surge of hope she had felt when he‘d told her about his memory loss had completely ebbed away now, leaving a hollow despair in its place. At first she had been overwhelmed with relief that there was a reason why he had forgotten her, that it wasn‘t that she just hadn‘t been significant enough for him to remember. It had all seemed so wonderfully simple—as if someone had handed her the missing part of the jigsaw, the vital clue that made sense of the last four years. She had barely hesitated for a heartbeat when he asked her to go with him.
But it wasn‘t simple at all.
She was nothing more than a stranger to him now. The crash hadn‘t just stolen a few hours from his memory, it had also robbed him of the ability to trust.
If she told him what they‘d shared that night he‘d think she was one of those grasping fantasists he‘d described in the hotel room, not only demanding money and fame but something more sinister and exploitative.
Demanding his heart.
She clasped her hands together in her lap to stop her fingers nervously pleating the blue satin dress she hadn‘t even thought to change out of. At that moment he looked across at her. The greenish light of the high-tech instrument panel gave his perfect face a chilling remoteness which seemed to reinforce her worst fears.
‗OK?‘
She nodded quickly, struggling to find something harmless to say. ‗It‘s a very impressive car.‘
Alex would adore it, she thought with a stab of anguish.
‗It‘s the latest Campano sports model,‘ Cristiano said tonelessly, slowing down as a lorry appeared in front of them. ‗I‘m testing it for Silvio so I can casually mention it in every interview I do at the start of the racing season.‘
He was meant to be testing it anyway, he thought wearily, although the way he was driving it tonight was hardly doing justice to its almost mythical capabilities. For some reason having her in the passenger seat was making him stick to speed limits and hold back from overtaking cars he would otherwise have left standing.
‗How far is it to where we‘re going?‘ Kate asked, looking out to where the first snowy peaks of the Alps loomed palely in the distance.
There was something about her tone that made him think she was regretting coming almost as much as he was beginning to regret asking her. He should have talked to her back in the hotel. Made her go over the events of that night and then left for the chalet in the morning. Alone.
‗Probably about another three hours. It‘s right up in the mountains, so the roads aren‘t great. Do you ski?‘
She bent her head so that her face was screened from his view by the soft curtain of her hair. ‗I‘m afraid not.‘
She wasn’t your type at all.
Suki‘s words came back to mock him, and he felt his lips quirk into an ironic smile of tacit acknowledgement. All his girlfriends skied and snowboarded and scuba-dived. As well as having supermodel looks, those were pretty much the qualifications for the job.
‗I‘ll just have to teach you, then.‘
‗In this?‘ She gave a nervous laugh, her fingers plucking at the slippery fabric of her evening dress. Long fingers, he noticed. Long and delicate. ‗I‘ve hardly got the right clothes for skiing.‘
He looked back at the road again, frowning. ‗I‘m sure Francine has ski stuff there you can borrow.‘
‗Francine?‘ There was a tiny note of alarm in her voice.
‗My neurologist. It‘s her house.‘
And her idea, he thought grimly. Right now it didn‘t feel like one of her better ones. Already the thought of being away from the track and the team was making him feel on edge, and that feeling was only exacerbated by the idea of being with Kate Edwards. It would have been one thing seducing her in the hotel, spending the night with her to see if it brought back any memories of the last time, but spending a couple of days alone with her was quite another. The whole point of the exercise had been to relax, per l’amore di Dio.
‗Anyway, I‘d be rubbish at skiing,‘ she was saying now, in her soft, low voice. ‗And terrified. I‘m the girl who had to be rescued from halfway up an indoor climbing wall on a Clearspring team-building exercise. I‘m the least white-knuckle person on the planet. That night when we—‘
She broke off. Cristiano glanced across at her sharply.
‗Go on. Tell me.‘
‗That night in Monaco, you drove me from the track to your house to do the interview.‘ She darted him a sideways look and smiled shyly. ‗I was scared out of my wits by your driving.‘
He gave an ironic smile, but in the light of a passing car Kate noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed bone-white through his tanned skin. ‗With good reason, as it turned out,‘ he said cuttingly.
‗Given what happened the next day.‘
‗Don‘t,‘ she muttered in anguish, closing her eyes and tensing as he pulled out to overtake the lorry they‘d been following for the last few miles. The car surged forward with a powerful, muted roar. When Cristiano spoke again his voice was thoughtful.
‗You‘re not much of a fan of motor racing, are you?‘
‗No,‘ she admitted, staring dully out at the dark houses of the small town they were driving through, picturing the children asleep behind the closed shutters.
‗But my brother was a huge fan of yours, which meant I w
as just about clued up enough to do the interview.‘
‗Was?‘
‗He‘d been killed in a car accident the year before.‘ She attempted a rueful laugh. ‗That‘s probably why I freaked out about your driving—and the fact that my dad had died the same way when I was younger. Cars have always made me nervous, and Will‘s death was still a bit raw.‘
Letting go of the steering wheel, Cristiano rubbed a hand over his face. ‗Did you tell me about it at the time?‘
Kate leaned her head back against the leather upholstery. She felt suddenly very tired. ‗Not while we were in the car.‘ She gave a faint smile. ‗I was too scared to open my mouth then. But we talked about it…later.‘