by Lynne Graham
Brooke walked into another blindingly white room, but this time it was a bedroom and she decided that the absence of colour did give a certain feel of tranquillity.
‘And then there’s your favourite place,’ Lorenzo proclaimed, casting wide another door.
Brooke froze on the threshold of an amazing dressing room. But it was so big, so packed with stuff it didn’t really qualify for that description. Racks and racks of shoes and bags lined the walls in glass cabinets. Rails and rails of zingy, colourful garments hung in readiness. It was a feast of conspicuous consumerism, a rebuttal of the ‘less is more’ mentality, and she thought, Oh, dear heaven, I’m greedy and extravagant and spoilt rotten! And then a calmer voice switched on inside her, reminding her that being a fashion icon had sort of been her job. She forced herself deeper into the room to browse through the clothes, hoping for something to jar her memory, glancing at labels and surprised that she only recognised the household names of famous designers that everyone knew. In the general knowledge sense, her fashion antenna seemed to be running on an empty tank.
‘Of course, you’ll have to throw it all out.’
Brooke whirled, violet eyes huge. ‘Throw it out?’ she gasped incredulously.
‘Because everything in here is old and out of fashion now.’ Lorenzo tossed out that award-winning lure with deep satisfaction because he had already worked out how best to occupy his soon-to-be ex-wife. ‘Your wardrobe is out of date. You’ll need to start from scratch again and replace it all.’
‘But that would be horribly wasteful,’ Brooke framed in disbelief, fingering through a rack of jeans, searching for an ordinary pair but finding only slashed, sparkly or embroidered ones, marvelling that her former self had apparently never succumbed to a desire to simply wear something comfortable.
‘It’s the way that you live.’ Lorenzo shrugged, brilliant, thickly lashed dark eyes cynical and assured. ‘Every season you start again, so I imagine you’ll be shopping until you drop for weeks.’
Brooke nodded jerkily since it seemed to be what he expected from her. ‘It seems a very extravagant way to live,’ she remarked uneasily.
‘I can well afford extravagant,’ Lorenzo intoned, wondering why she wasn’t one bit excited at the prospect of shopping, wondering why she looked kind of lost standing there in the middle of the room, rather like a little girl contemplating a giant dress-up box that frightened her. This was Brooke’s world, from the fashion magazines piled on the coffee table to the immaculate shoe collection. And she didn’t recognise any of it, he acknowledged grimly.
At least now, she could explore her life, Brooke reminded herself, for there had to be personal things tucked away somewhere within the two rooms, surely photos of her late parents and that kind of stuff, she reasoned as Lorenzo departed. As for the fashion end of things, she clearly wasn’t able to become a fashion icon again in her current state of mind and she would just have to move on from that and find something else to keep her busy. Reinventing yourself was all the rage these days, she reminded herself dully. It was not as though she had a choice when she couldn’t imagine wearing a see-through lace dress or jeans that exposed her bottom cheeks.
That reflection, however, threw yet another obstacle into her path. Almost certainly that more audacious woman was the woman Lorenzo knew and had chosen to marry. Brooke paled at that acknowledgement. A sexier woman. Was that the common denominator at the heart of her marriage? That together sexier Brooke and more reserved Lorenzo meshed like magnets? Was that why Lorenzo was now so distant with her? Because she wasn’t putting out the right vibes any longer with her clothing and her manner? Well, she was just going to have to fake it, wasn’t she?
What do you know about being sexy? she asked herself limply. But she had to know those things to make such daring clothing choices! She relived that kiss and a slow burn reignited low in her pelvis and she shifted restlessly. Maybe she was sexier in bed than she imagined and when it happened it would all just come seamlessly together for her...but what if it didn’t? What if her apparent stock of general knowledge didn’t include the bedroom stuff? What if she lay there like a graven image and freaked him out? And why was she even having these thoughts, she asked herself, when to date even getting a kiss out of Lorenzo had entailed practically falling on him? Maybe she was the partner who made all the sexy, inviting moves, she thought anxiously, and if that was true, the onus would be on her...
Perhaps Lorenzo had simply been waiting to bring her home, she reasoned, and tonight, when she was tucked up in bed, he would visit?
CHAPTER FOUR
‘I’D LIKE SOME details about the accident,’ Brooke declared over dinner two weeks later.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Lorenzo informed her lazily.
For the first time ever, Brooke wanted to slap her husband for still treating her like a vulnerable child to be protected from every ill wind. ‘I disagree. Since I wasn’t driving—I mean, you told me that—who was driving?’
‘An employee. I’m afraid that he died,’ Lorenzo told her smoothly.
Brooke lost colour and stilled. ‘Oh, how dreadful! I should go and see his family. Will you give me the address?’ she pressed.
‘He didn’t have a family as such. He lived with an elderly mother. I’ve ensured that she is financially secure. You don’t need to get involved,’ Lorenzo assured her.
‘I think the least I can do is visit his mother to offer my condolences,’ Brooke responded firmly.
Lorenzo almost rolled his eyes at this new caring, sharing display of Brooke’s. He compressed his hard mouth. Every time he saw her, she annoyed him by being so beautiful, so...tempting. There she sat, hair foaming in ringlets and cascading round her like some cartoon mermaid, triangular face bare of cosmetics, violet eyes bright and friendly and natural and, in truth, she remained drop-dead gorgeous. Yet she was wearing jeans, simple plain jeans, and flat shoes. She was another almost unrecognisable incarnation of Brooke and one he didn’t intend to waste time on because the transformation wouldn’t, couldn’t possibly last. Inevitably, her indomitable will, her piranha-fish appetites for sex, media exposure and money would resurface and he, for one, would be a great deal happier.
He didn’t want to be reminded of that treacherous kiss in the clinic when he had inexplicably contrived to overlook all the other men she had betrayed him with. Of that kiss, it was enough to recall that she had burned him alive and filled him with a hunger he refused to satisfy. He was even more astonished that she could still have that effect on him. Only days before the accident he had enjoyed the definitive proof that he was completely impervious to her looks and her seductive wiles. He could only suppose that being forced into a protective role for so long with his estranged wife had somehow softened his previous hard shell of cold disinterest. After all, he had never been the kind of foolish man who returned to explore his worst mistake and that was what Brooke genuinely was to him: his worst mistake.
‘Do you want the full story of the accident? Even if it’s distressing?’ he prompted, reminding himself that keeping such secrets from her wasn’t doing anything to help her adapt to her return to the land of the living.
Feeling a little threatened now and worried about what he might have held back from her, Brooke nodded urgently. ‘Yes.’
‘There was another woman in the limo with you and she died as well. We don’t know what she was doing with you because, although I looked into her history before the funeral, I couldn’t see anything relevant that would have brought you together that day.’
Brooke’s smooth brow furrowed. ‘That’s a puzzle. Who was she?’
‘She was a waitress in a London café, although she’d quit her job that same day, quoting a family emergency, but when I investigated it turned out that she had no family and there was nothing of interest about her,’ Lorenzo recounted with a fluid Italian shrug of dismissal. ‘I suppose we’
ll never know what she was doing in the car with you that day unless you regain your memory.’
Brooke was troubled by the discovery that some mystery woman had been with her on the day of the crash. She had already discovered a severe absence of personal possessions in her bedroom. She had waded through a dozen files packed with press clippings and some rather suggestive headlines, depicting her with other men in nightclubs, but she hadn’t found a single picture of her parents or indeed of anyone else. Her life, evidently, had been lived solely through the media and nothing else had much mattered to her, and that saddened her because her previous existence now seemed shallow to her and empty of real purpose.
As for her marriage, she ruminated regretfully, it didn’t appear to be much healthier than her lifestyle had been because she barely saw Lorenzo except at the dinner table. When she had made the effort to rise at dawn to breakfast with him, he had not seemed remotely appreciative of her company and had buried his nose back in the Financial Times, the one and only media publication that came to the house.
It was ironic that she had actually been spending more personal time with her husband when he had been visiting her at the clinic. Now that she was back home, he was perfectly polite and pleasant, but it was almost as if she didn’t really exist on his terms, which was weird, wasn’t it?
But everything was weird in their relationship, she conceded wretchedly. Why didn’t he sleep with her? Why didn’t he want sex when popular parlance suggested that men always wanted sex? What was wrong with her? Or what was wrong with their marriage? She had tried to ignore the signs that something was not quite right but after a fortnight of being treated like a house guest rather than a wife, Brooke felt that she could no longer disregard suspicions that were a deep source of concern to her. After all, if Lorenzo didn’t want her any more, what was she doing living in his house? Obviously she could only be uncomfortable with the fear that she wasn’t truly welcome below the roof of the place she had mistakenly assumed was her true home.
‘Why do you never take me out anywhere with you?’ Brooke asked with a directness she had not dared to utilise with Lorenzo before.
Lorenzo glanced up from his plate, beautiful dark deep-set eyes shrewd and level, and she experienced that same maddening little prickling of awareness that his gaze always evoked and her heart started to thump faster inside her tight chest. ‘We’ve always had separate social lives. And, unhappily, if we are seen in public together, you would be mobbed by the paparazzi because you are the former beauty maven who has now returned from the dead and many people are very curious about you. I don’t like press attention in my private life...however, you do.’
‘Oh...’ Brooke breathed, crushed by those truths delivered so instantaneously. ‘You think there might be headlines?’
‘I know there would be. Brooke...’ Lorenzo sighed and lounged back in his chair, devastatingly good-looking and infuriatingly calm. ‘There have been cameras waiting at the foot of the drive to catch a photo of you since the day I brought you home. If you’d even once gone shopping, you would’ve seen them there. Maybe you don’t feel like having that media attention right now?’
‘I don’t,’ she confirmed.
‘But it’s still a very large part of who you used to be,’ Lorenzo reminded her. ‘And the paps aren’t going to give up and go away any time soon.’
Having dealt that final blow, Lorenzo left for the Tassini Bank while Brooke retired to her white bedroom to read a book she had bought online about Italians, seeking in some small way to redress her ignorance of her husband. But there seemed little point reading about how Italians highly valued their families and seeking such a trait in Lorenzo. He was diligent in assuring that her medical needs were covered with regular online sessions with Mr Selby and physio sessions with a personal trainer, but his care never ever got more personal than that. She was fed, housed, clothed, medicated and that was that.
Along with jeans and casual tops, she had bought a dress, low-necked, short and scarlet in hue, and high heels. She viewed the more decorative fitted outfit as a move forward, a first step in becoming the woman whom Lorenzo obviously expected her to be. Now, sadly, she wasn’t even sure she would have the nerve to wear it because he had shut her down again.
Two other people had died in that accident and she had survived. She was much luckier than she had ever appreciated, and she knew that her first outing would include a visit to the driver’s mother and a respectful call at the cemetery to the grave of the woman who had been with her that day. Maybe she had been a friend, Brooke reflected sadly, for she could hardly have failed to note that she didn’t seem to have friends in the way that other women had. Hadn’t she liked other women? Hadn’t other women liked her? The lack of a friend or relative to turn to sometimes made her feel very alone...
Blasted self-pity, she told herself off firmly, and returned to her book while wondering if she had the nerve to wear that dress for dinner and whether Lorenzo would even notice what she wore, because he didn’t seem to look at her that much.
Just then, however, when she was least expecting it, the door literally burst open and she jerked bolt upright on top of the bed, her violet eyes wide with surprise.
The very image of innocence, Lorenzo thought in a rage as he strode across the room to slap the newspaper he had bought for that purpose down on the foot of the bed. The lurid headline ran: She Doesn’t Know Who She Is!
He was furious with himself most of all for starting to trust her again even though he knew she was a liar and a manipulator. It wasn’t like him to lose his temper, but when he had seen that newspaper headline, he had felt betrayed, and then he had wondered why he felt betrayed when Brooke was only doing what she had always done in seeking to shape her public image and stoke press interest. He should’ve been better prepared, should’ve expected such behaviour from her. It was his own fault that he felt as though she had deceived him. When, after all, had he begun to forget what kind of a woman she was?
‘I should’ve guessed that you’d have your own more direct but sly way of dealing with the media!’ Lorenzo fired down at her.
Brooke was frozen to the spot in disbelief by his behaviour because Lorenzo had never once raised his voice to her before. But at this moment, he was ferociously angry with her and it showed in every honed, hard lineament of his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Go on...look at the article and tell me you’re not responsible for this outrage!’ he challenged with contempt.
Trembling, Brooke lifted the tabloid newspaper, shaken to see the photo of her in the blue dress she had worn at the clinic now adorning the front page. She recalled the friendly nurse who had asked if she could take a picture on her phone. Brooke had said yes, had believed that it was the dress that the woman was interested in. She hadn’t known enough about safeguarding herself from such exploitation to say, no, sorry, she conceded in dismay. So, it was absolutely her fault, just as Lorenzo believed, that that picture was in a newspaper.
‘Obviously it was more than your vanity could bear to have the press speculating that you could be scarred or in a wheelchair!’ Lorenzo bit out in raw condemnation. ‘You tell me you don’t want media attention and then you do...this? You give an interview to them? Madre di Dio, why the hell am I acting surprised?’
‘An interview?’ she whispered, turning the page with shaking fingers, intimidated more than she liked to admit by his sheer dark fury. There was more volatile emotion than she had ever thought he possessed emanating from him and lacing the atmosphere with brutal tension. Unfortunately, it wasn’t how she would’ve wanted to discover that he was much more emotional in nature than he was prepared to show.
‘Sì, an interview. While I’m busy hiring extra security to protect you, you’re still feeding the fire to gain the attention you crave from your admirers!’
Brooke took a mental step back from the toweringly tall, dark man raging over her and concentrated o
n the article. She was quick to recognise that stray comments she had made and medical info that should’ve been kept confidential had been cobbled together and leaked in the form of an interview that had been faked. ‘I didn’t give anyone an interview, Lorenzo. I did let one of the nurses take a photo of me and I’m sorry she gave it to the press, but I didn’t exactly know who I was supposed to be then or that I shouldn’t allow that,’ she confided uncomfortably. ‘Read it properly and you’ll see I’m telling the truth. It’s a fake interview. I wouldn’t want people to know that I’m suffering from amnesia because that’s embarrassing—’
‘Unfortunately for you,’ Lorenzo countered glacially, ‘I already know that I can’t trust a word you say because you’re a gifted liar. You lie about the most ridiculous things and then shrug indifferently when the truth comes out. I’ve never been able to trust you!’
While Brooke had contrived to remain calm and in control while Lorenzo vented his wrath over a naïve mistake she had made, those words fell on her like hand grenades that exploded on contact with her shrinking body. In shock, she drew up her knees and hugged them. All her natural colour had gone into retreat while her tummy stirred sickly. She had told her husband lies and he had found her out in them? She was a liar? It dawned on her then that for the very first time Lorenzo was giving her what he deemed to believe was the absolute truth about herself, yet only raw anger had drawn that honesty from him. For just a few minutes he had forgotten to treat her like someone too delicate to handle reality.
All of a sudden, she was being forced to face the fact that, regardless of how hard she had tried to explain away her husband’s cool attitude towards her, their relationship did have problems. Indeed, Lorenzo saw her as a liar he couldn’t trust. Shaken and appalled by that revelation, she rocked back and forth where she sat, struggling to deal with that new sobering knowledge.