by Lynne Graham
The helicopter that they had boarded in Geneva landed on a purpose-built helipad. Having lifted her out with easy strength, Roel engulfed her hand in his to walk the last few yards. She watched him frowning into the sun and lowering his proud dark head as though the bright light were a knife.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked worriedly.
‘I’m a little tired, nothing more.’ His dark, deep drawl was brusque, dismissive and laced with all the annoyance of a male unaccustomed to anything less than a full quota of buoyant energy. ‘I went into my office at five this morning—’
Hilary stopped dead. ‘You did…what?’
‘I am the Sabatino Bank. It cannot easily manage without me,’ Roel countered drily. ‘I had to familiarise myself with current events, ensure that business could continue without me and deal with what I did not understand.’
‘I can’t believe that less than twenty-four hours after your doctor told you to rest you went into that wretched bank at the crack of dawn!’ Hilary fired at him in shaken reproof.
‘I did what had to be done.’
She studied his hard jaw line. It might as well have been etched in stone. He was so stubborn she could have screamed. In the unforgiving strong light his olive complexion had an ashen quality. He looked exhausted.
‘You really don’t have any respect for your own health.’
As Roel strode beneath the ancient arched entrance to the Castello Sabatino he shot her a hard-edged impatient glance. ‘Did you imagine that I could simply stage a vanishing act? Were I to absent myself from the bank without an explanation, it could cause a panic that would ultimately damage business.’
‘So what was your explanation?’ Hilary prompted, watching what she was quite certain were lines of pain settle between his pleated ebony brows.
‘I said that the impact of the accident had left me suffering from double vision and that I must rest my eyesight. In that way I was able to access useful information from my executive assistants without creating comment.’
‘Really, really sneaky,’ Hilary conceded in grudging admiration.
‘I added that I would take advantage of the enforced break from work to enjoy a vacation with my wife.’
‘My goodness…were people surprised?’ Hilary asked, dry-mouthed, for Umberto’s dumbfounded response to the news that Roel had a wife had given her the impression that with the exception of his aunt, Bautista, he had indeed kept their marriage a closely guarded secret. So any seemingly casual reference to his suddenly having acquired a wife would certainly have startled his staff at the bank.
‘Their surprise was understandable,’ Roel fielded. ‘I am not in the habit of taking time off. By the way, you should have discussed barring all my phone calls with me.’
Hilary went pink. ‘You would’ve insisted that you could handle them.’
‘In the short term, it was good thinking.’ Acknowledging the respectful greeting of a middle-aged housekeeper whom he addressed as Florenza, Roel stilled at the foot of a mellow stone staircase. ‘But don’t take action again on my behalf without prior consultation,’ he concluded with measured censure.
Stung by that reproof, Hilary opened her mouth on heated words.
Roel pressed a taunting forefinger against her parted lips and she shivered, suddenly achingly conscious of the size and power of his lean, hard physique that close to her own. ‘You know I’m right—’
‘No, I don’t know that you’re right…what’s wrong?’
Roel was staring down at her with brooding concentration. For perhaps a tenth of a second, his lush black lashes swept down and he frowned before lifting them again to focus on her with dazed and questioning force. ‘You ran out into the street after me…’
In the wake of that strange statement, Hilary regarded him with incomprehension. But when he pressed an uncertain hand to his damp brow, she reacted. ‘Roel? For goodness’ sake, come and sit down—’
‘No…’ Roel incised almost roughly and he closed an imprisoning arm round her narrow waist instead. ‘We’ll go upstairs and talk about this in private.’
‘Talk about what?’ she whispered, her nerves leaping about like jumping beans.
And then the proverbial coin dropped and she understood: you ran out into the street after me.
‘You’ve just remembered something from the past…’ Hilary framed, her tummy lurching with fierce tension. ‘And you’ve remembered something about me…’
‘It was as though someone had flashed an old photograph in front of me…’ In an impatient movement, Roel thrust open a door into an elegant reception room. Although that brief flare of lost recollection had disconcerted him, he had gained visible strength from it. ‘You were trying to return the tip I’d left…’
‘Yeah…’ Her hands wound together and then parted and then laced back together again to flex.
Roel gazed at her in bewildered disbelief. ‘Why would I have been tipping you? Was that a joke or something?’
Hilary turned pale as death and hurt as much as if he had slapped her. She could already see the chasm opening up between them. She was not what he had expected her to be. She was not and could never be a part of his privileged world. ‘I’d just cut your hair…’
‘My hair?’ Roel stared at her much as if she had suddenly started performing back flips for his amusement.
Hilary compressed her lips and gave a tight nod of confirmation. ‘I’m…I’m a hairdresser. That business with the tip you left happened the very first time we met—’
‘Inferno! I can recall everything I was feeling and thinking in that one tiny moment in the street! You had me as hard as a rock,’ Roel admitted with shattering frankness, his fierce gaze wholly pinned to her. ‘I wanted to haul you into the limo, check into a hotel and have a lost weekend.’
Hot pink flooded her triangular face and then slowly and painfully receded again. Well, at least he wasn’t throwing her any false sentimental lines. She should be grateful to learn that he had found her attractive even though he had been far too aloof to show the fact. But she wasn’t grateful. She was hurt and furious. A lost weekend? Was that all she had seemed good for? A right little tart likely to go to a hotel with a guy she barely knew for casual sex? Anguish arrested her feverish thoughts at that point. She would have gone. Maybe not that first day but later, if he had asked, she would have gone because by that stage she had been so besotted she would have settled for anything she could get. Even if that did encompass just the physical side of things, she conceded, her throat closing over with angry tears.
‘Scusate! I should not have said that.’ Roel lounged back against the wall, visibly struggling to master the total exhaustion weighting him.
‘Oh, don’t let it worry you. I’m not thin-skinned,’ Hilary told him in an artificially bright voice. ‘Please lie down for a while. You look ill.’
Shedding his tie and unbuttoning his shirt where he stood, he strode heavily through to the connecting bedroom.
‘I think I should call the doctor,’ Hilary remarked from the doorway.
‘Dannazione…there’s nothing the matter with me!’ Roel slashed back at the speed of a cracking whiplash. ‘Stop fussing.’
Hilary watched him sink down onto the bed and then tumble back against the pillows. He had not even removed his shoes. She pulled the blinds at the windows. Eyes semi-closed, he extended a lean hand in a graceful conciliatory gesture.
‘You should know by now that I make my own decisions, cara mia.’
‘That’s not a problem,’ Hilary assured him tenderly, strolling back and sitting down on the bed to let her small fingers curl into the warm clasp of his. No, his desire to make his own decisions was not a problem as long as his decisions agreed with her own conclusions.
‘What I said…that flash of memory caught me off guard and I was crude.’
‘Not crude,’ Hilary responded in a quiet voice as sweet as honey, for she was determined to get her own back for the hurt he had caused he
r. ‘A bit basic, but I can forgive you this once because the rest of the time you are the most romantic guy I’ve ever known.’
Roel’s grip on her hand loosened and his spiky black lashes lifted on stunned dark golden eyes. ‘Romantic…?’ he parroted.
Even in the shattered state he was in, his wide sensual mouth was ready to curl with extreme scorn at such a suggestion. ‘You’re teasing me…’
‘No, I’m not,’ Hilary asserted.
Roel tugged her below a powerful arm and muttered sleepily. ‘You can stay until I fall asleep.’
She almost made the mistake of asking him if his mother had done that, but mercifully recalled that no such cosy events could have figured in his childhood. He had only been a year old when his mother had taken off with her lover and never come back even for a visit. Unable to avoid answering her nosy questions, he had once told her that in a single derisive sentence that had pierced her tender heart.
When he was asleep, she went downstairs. She ate a beautiful meal in a superb dining room filled with enormous furniture. Her heart was too full to allow her thoughts to settle on anything other than Roel. It seemed obvious that before very long she would be going home again and instead of being happy at that possibility she felt unbearably sad because it meant that she was going to lose Roel again. He had already remembered something from those missing five years in his memory bank and it had happened even sooner than she had expected.
She had suspected that Dr Lerther was being rather too optimistic when he had repeatedly stated that Roel’s amnesia would be of a very temporary nature. Now she could see that the consultant had been right on target with his forecast. Soon Roel would recall everything about the five years he had forgotten. He wouldn’t need her any more. Had he ever really needed her? Or had that just been her own wishful thinking?
She curled up in a chair by the bed to watch over Roel while he slept. From now on, she told herself that she would ensure that their relationship remained strictly platonic. When he had remembered the truth about their supposed marriage how would he look at her? Would he think it strange that she had slept with him? Would he even care? He was a guy, a little inner voice protested soothingly. He was not going to waste loads of time agonising about why she might have done certain things. No, he would only want to get back into his real life. He would probably be very relieved to learn that, in strictly conventional terms, he did not really need to think of himself as a married man. In fact when he had regained his full memory he would most likely laugh at how events had developed.
When Hilary wakened she was lying in bed. Daylight was striking through a slender gap in the curtains and gleaming over Roel’s proud dark head as he looked down at her. At some stage of the night he had stripped. His bare bronzed chest was just inches away from her and she was incredibly conscious of the hair-roughened masculine thigh lying against her own.
‘What time is it?’ she mumbled, taken aback by the fact that they were in the same bed again.
Brilliant dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘Five after seven. I slept the clock round. I feel amazing…’
‘I don’t remember coming to bed—’
‘You didn’t. You were sleeping in the chair. You shouldn’t worry so much about me, cara,’ Roel reproved. ‘I’m brilliant at looking after myself.’
The dark, husky timbre of his accented drawl shimmied down her taut spinal cord. Without responding to any conscious prompting, she found herself shifting even closer to him. It was like being possessed, she thought in panic at her own behaviour. There was to be no more intimacy, she reminded herself wretchedly, and in a sudden movement she made herself sit up.
Without hesitation, Roel tipped her right back again, lean, strong face intent, smouldering dark golden eyes full of unashamed sexual hunger. ‘You’re not going anywhere, Signora Sabatino.’
If anything his use of that form of address made Hilary’s conscience hurt even more. ‘But—’
‘You’re very restless this morning.’ Laughing, Roel slid a thigh between hers to anchor her in place beneath him. ‘But you’re not allowed out of bed until I say so.’
As she gazed up into his darkly handsome features her heart jumped and she felt weak with lust and longing. In the interim he brought his intoxicatingly sensual mouth down on hers. His hungry urgency sent her temperature rocketing.
Golden eyes bright with male appreciation, Roel bared her creamy rose-tipped breasts. Something pulled tight low in her pelvis and made her squirm up her hips. He cupped her swollen flesh, let knowing fingers play over her distended nipples and excited a low cry from her throat.
‘You want me, bella mia,’ Roel stated with satisfaction.
‘Yes…’ Hilary could not believe how fast it had become impossible to think, never mind fight what she was feeling. She craved his mouth and the erotic mastery of his touch. Her body was burning with impatience, eager and hot. That craving made it all the easier for her to suppress the little voice at the back of her mind that warned that she was doing wrong.
Eager for the hard demand of his mouth on her own, she rejoiced in his passion. She luxuriated in the right to shape his proud dark head, sink her fingers into the springy depths of his black hair and stroke her palms over the satin-smooth skin covering his muscular shoulders. She licked his skin there and thought he tasted sublime. Tingles of eager response shock-waved through her slender length and drove her to a fever pitch.
‘You make me so hungry for you,’ Roel growled and he flipped her over and into a position she didn’t expect before he plunged into her with one driving thrust.
The wave of wicked pleasure took her in a stormy tide that made her whimper in shock at the delight of such sensation. The damp, sensitive place at the heart of her had become a fiery furnace. Ecstasy had her in its hold and there was no room for pride or shame in her passionate response. When the rush of sweet pleasure became unbearable, she surged into a shattering release with an abandoned cry, her excitement only heightened by the shudders of climax racking him in concert.
Still engulfed in the after shocks of rapture and with her eyes misted with happy tears, Hilary tumbled back against the pillows and held Roel’s big powerful body close. He kissed her long and slow and deep and she struggled to catch her breath again.
She looked up at him, marvelling at his hard male beauty. A giant wave of love and appreciation was engulfing her. His slumberous dark golden eyes withstood her tender inspection and her fair skin warmed with self-conscious colour, but still she could not stop revelling in the very right to stare at him. High cheekbones slashed his bold dark features into proud planes and hollows. He was stunningly handsome even with dark stubble roughening his hard jaw line.
‘You take my breath away…’ she whispered shakily, laying her fingers against his wide, sensual mouth.
He caught her hand in his and then gazed down at her bare fingers with palpable surprise. ‘Where’s your wedding ring?’
Hilary froze in consternation. That a husband might reasonably expect his wife to be wearing a ring should have occurred to her, but it had not. ‘I…er…I didn’t want to wear one—’
Resting back against the pillows, Roel surveyed her with brooding intensity. ‘Why not?’
Beneath that grim scrutiny, Hilary went scarlet and stammered, ‘I—I just thought rings were a bit old-fashioned and didn’t see why I should bother.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Roel decreed without hesitation. ‘I married you and I expect you to wear a wedding ring.’
Feeling horrible that she was allowing herself to tell more lies to protect her own masquerade, Hilary could no longer meet his gaze. ‘I’ll think that over.’
‘No. You won’t think anything over. I’ll buy a wedding ring. You’ll wear it. End of discussion,’ Roel delivered with derisive force and sprang out of bed to pull on a pair of black silk boxer shorts.
Halfway across the room his long forceful stride came to a halt and he swung back to her. His lean dark face was
impassive, his brilliant eyes decidedly challenging. ‘You know, you never did tell me why my wife was still a virgin…?’
‘And I’m not going to when you speak to me in that tone,’ Hilary fielded, tautly defensive, sitting bolt upright in the vast bed, clutching the sheet round her as though it were her only sanctuary in the storm.
‘You’ll have to do better than that, cara mia,’ Roel drawled.
Her eyes flashed and she stormed back at him in Italian. ‘No, I don’t! When you get your memory back you’ll realise that there’s no big mystery on the score of my lack of experience—’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘And you’re not going to think it’s remotely important either!’ Hilary completed.
‘Tell me just one thing,’ Roel fired at her. ‘Why did I marry you?’
Hilary stilled and finally muttered indistinctly, ‘You married me for all the usual reasons…’
‘Are you saying that I fell in love with you?’ Roel demanded.
‘I’m not saying anything…’ Colliding unwarily with his shimmering dark golden eyes, she decided that she might as well tell him what he expected to hear so that the issue could be laid to rest. ‘OK…you fell in love with me.’
Roel paced back a step towards her, his tension palpable. ‘So I bought into the whole fairy tale?’
‘Why not?’ Hilary asked, her voice rising a little with strain.
‘No reason.’ Roel bent down and scooped her off the mattress. ‘But if I went for the whole fairy tale, it means you’ll definitely be the kind of woman who wants to share the shower with me,’ he teased.
‘Is that blackmail?’ she dared unevenly.
Over breakfast in a charming sunlit courtyard ornamented with lush flowering climbers and pots overflowing with greenery, Hilary asked Roel about the history of the castle. That he loved every time-worn stone was obvious to her. She tried not to think about the lies she had told him earlier. He had stopped asking awkward questions and he was no longer concerned about their relationship. Since Dr Lerther had advised her to give Roel nothing to worry about, didn’t that mean that she had done the right thing? A couple of soothing little fibs was not going to cause any lasting damage, she reasoned.