by Lynne Graham
On the other hand, he was equally aware that he would never consider staying married to Brooke—he could not pardon either her lies or her infidelity. And that acknowledgement plunged him straight back into the same, ‘damned if he did’ and ‘damned if he didn’t’ scenario...
* * *
Quite unaware of Lorenzo’s thorny dilemma, Brooke was getting dressed to go out, which was something of a challenge given the glitzy nature of the contents of her dressing room. She knew that she didn’t have to wear black to offer condolences, but it seemed a matter of respect for her to wear something other than a party outfit. She chose a navy pencil skirt and a silk striped top but she couldn’t get the skirt to zip up and had to take it off again and accept with a wince that she had evidently put on weight. A pair of loose dark palazzo pants replaced the skirt. As she left the house for the first time since her arrival, she felt stronger and braver and relieved that she had finally got the gumption to do what she felt she had to do to lay her accident to rest in her own mind.
Lorenzo’s PA at the bank had sounded surprised when Brooke phoned her but had been happy to pass on the address and the details she knew about the driver and the passenger who had died in the crash. Brooke bent her head out of view when she saw the cluster of paparazzi at the foot of the drive. Lorenzo’s disdain for their interest in his wife had been palpable and she marvelled that she had married a man who cherished his privacy when her own interests had clearly pushed her in a very different direction.
The driver’s mother was delighted with her gift of flowers and pleased to have the chance to talk about her late son. She referred several times to the substantial tips that Brooke had regularly given her son and Brooke smiled, relieved to hear that she had been generous. Visiting Milly Taylor’s grave, however, put her in a more sombre mood. Although enquiries had been made, only the young woman’s former employer had claimed to know her, and that café would be Brooke’s final destination.
The gravestone was simple. Brooke set down her floral offering and sighed, wondering if the woman had been a friend. It would make sense that she had had one friend, wouldn’t it? But would she have made friends with someone from such a very different background? What would they have had in common?
The café was within walking distance of the cemetery and she had asked her driver to pick her up in half an hour. On the way there she passed a newsstand on the pavement and something caught her eye on a front page. She paused to lift the magazine. It was her face and across it was splashed: Divorce or Reconciliation?
‘You need to buy it to read it,’ the vendor told her irritably and she dug into her purse for the cash, her face heating.
She stood in the street reading the article inside and shock went crashing through her in wave after wave. Her tummy succumbed to a queasy lurch and she felt dizzy. Suddenly everything she had believed she knew about Lorenzo was being turned on its head! And equally, everything she had believed she knew about herself was being torn to shreds. Rumours of affairs? Yes, she had seen those photos of her in nightclubs with other men, but she had assumed those men were work contacts or social connections, had never dreamt that...?
And Lorenzo had a business trip to Italy, for which he was leaving that very evening, and he would be away for a week. If she wanted the chance to speak to him, she couldn’t afford to wait, no, she needed to see him immediately...
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOUR WIFE’S HERE to see you,’ Lorenzo was informed an hour later at the bank.
Taken aback by that unexpected announcement, because Brooke had never once in all the time he had known her come to see him at the bank, Lorenzo rose from behind his desk.
Brooke entered and the instant he saw her face he knew that something was badly wrong. Her eyes had a sort of glazed look and she was very pale, her stance as she paused uncertainly halfway towards him stiff and unnatural.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked quietly. ‘Although possibly I should be asking you what’s right. This is the first time you’ve emerged from the house since you left the clinic.’
‘I shouldn’t have come here...er...where you work,’ Brooke muttered in belated appreciation of what she had done in her distraught frame of mind. ‘I should’ve waited until you came home, so I’m going to just do that and we can talk before you leave for the airport.’
Lorenzo hauled out a chair from the wall before she could leave again. ‘No, sit down. I can see that you’re troubled about something. Tea? Coffee?’
‘A coffee would be good,’ she conceded flatly, hoping the caffeine would cut a path through the tangled turmoil of her emotions and miraculously settle her down at a moment when she felt as though the floor beneath her feet had fallen away.
She was too dependent on Lorenzo, she acknowledged with a sinking heart. Lorenzo was irreversibly stitched into everything she had thought and done and worried about since she had first wakened from the coma. Since awakening, she had built an entire life around him, and the idea that their marriage was simply a cruel mirage cut her off at the knees and left her drowning in a sea of insecurity and regrets.
The coffee arrived in record time and she was relieved to have something to occupy her hands as she cradled the bone-china cup and marvelled that it was a cup instead of a beaker. That random thought brought a wry smile to her lips. In truth, she recognised, she was eager to think about anything other than the giant chasm that had opened up beneath her feet.
‘I went to see Paul Jennings’s mother this morning,’ she revealed as an opening.
Lorenzo leant back fluidly against the side of his desk, embracing informality for her benefit while both his exquisitely tailored dark suit and her surroundings screamed huge influential office and very powerful occupant. He was gorgeous, she conceded rather numbly, and it was hardly surprising that she had become attached to the idea that he was hers. Any woman in her circumstances would’ve done the same thing, she told herself bracingly. Not only was he gorgeous and sexy and terrific in bed, he had been a rock for her through every step of her recovery process. Whatever the truth of their marriage was, she still owed him gratitude for his generosity.
‘Yes, my PA mentioned your plans. I thought it was great that you were finally emerging from the house,’ Lorenzo commented. ‘So, what went wrong?’
‘Oh...nothing went wrong,’ Brooke assured him tautly. ‘I bought a magazine because I saw my face on the cover.’
‘Dio...’ Lorenzo bit out, tensing. ‘I should’ve foreseen that you might do something like that.’
Quite deliberately, Brooke lifted her chin, her violet eyes clear and level, giving no hint of the turmoil inside her. ‘You can’t protect me from everything, Lorenzo...and you shouldn’t be trying to protect me from the truth,’ she told him tightly. ‘If it’s true that we were getting divorced before the accident, you should’ve told me weeks ago.’
Lorenzo shifted a lean brown hand in a sudden imperious movement that sought to silence her as he took a step forward.
‘Of course, I know why you didn’t tell me because someone like Mr Selby or some other clever doctor warned you that it might be too much for my battered little brain to handle,’ Brooke framed steadily, ignoring his gesture. ‘But I disagree with that kind of over-protective attitude because I’m back in the real world now and I have to adjust to it, no matter how tough or destabilising it is. I’m not a child.’
Lorenzo surveyed her, feeling strangely appreciative of her control and dignity in a very taxing situation, two responses that he had least expected from her. Brooke had always been more about hysterics and ranting and blaming everybody but herself when anything went wrong. He breathed in deep and accepted the inevitable. The truth was out and he couldn’t deny it. ‘We were pursuing a divorce at the time of the crash,’ he admitted levelly.
‘Why?’ Brooke asked baldly.
Lorenzo studied her. She looked tiny in that chair and sh
e was as white as a sheet. How was he supposed to tell the woman that she now was that she had played away with multiple men, indeed any man who suggested that he could advance her goal of breaking into the screen industry? Lorenzo had never had the slightest difficulty in delivering bad news. Indeed, it was integral to his role as a banker, but when it came to shattering the woman seated before him, he just couldn’t drop the ugly truth on her at that moment. The divorce would’ve been a big enough blow to a woman who had told him that she thought she might love him only the night before. Never mind that that professed love was simply an assumption brought on by her amnesia. She was still being very brave and he admired that, and bad news was never quite as bad if it emerged piece by piece over a lengthier period of time, he told himself grimly.
‘We were ill-suited, different goals, different outlook on life,’ Lorenzo responded. ‘I wanted children but you didn’t. I wanted a home. You only wanted an impressive backdrop for your photos. Divorce was inevitable.’
Brooke nodded valiantly. ‘And...er...the men, the affairs?’
‘Rumours,’ Lorenzo asserted valiantly. ‘But I didn’t enjoy the rumours.’
Brooke bent her head but breathed a little easier at that release from her biggest fear: that she was capable of that kind of betrayal and of cheating on him. ‘Of course not,’ she agreed flatly. ‘Even without my memory, I can see that the woman I was and the man you are weren’t a good match.’
Lorenzo had gone very quiet. He was thinking hard and fast, wondering whether to take her straight to that penthouse apartment he had bought her to cement their separation back into place. In rapid succession he pictured her there alone and potentially lost and he recoiled from that image while questioning his own sanity.
‘And I really shouldn’t be living in your home any more,’ Brooke completed quietly, raising the point she knew she had to raise to set him free from feeling responsible for her.
Lorenzo’s black lashes dropped down over his glittering eyes and every muscle in his lean, powerful frame jerked rigid. He couldn’t let her go, at least, not just yet, he reasoned fiercely. She wasn’t fit to be abandoned to sink or swim and that might not strictly be his business any more, but he still felt as though it were. Right now, a separation would be premature.
‘I have a better solution,’ he heard himself say before he had even quite thought through what he was about to say, a divergence from habit that shook him even as he spoke. ‘I suggest you accompany me to Italy this evening.’
‘To Italy?’ Brooke gasped as if she had never heard of the country before, so disconcerted was she by that proposal at that particular moment.
‘Yes, it would be good for you to escape the paparazzi and the publicity and enjoy some breathing space. You’re a UK celebrity, pretty much unknown—’ he selected that last word tactfully ‘—in Italy. We’ll be left alone, free of this constant media speculation. A break is what we need.’
Brooke lifted her head, her heart, which had slowed to a dulled thud, suddenly picking up speed again. ‘We?’ she queried in a near croak.
‘We,’ Lorenzo stressed with vigour, some of his tension ebbing now that he could see a provisional way forward out of the current chaos.
‘But we’re getting a divorce,’ Brooke reminded him shakily.
‘The divorce has been on hold since the day of the crash. A few more weeks aren’t going to make much difference at this point,’ Lorenzo informed her with assurance. ‘We can separate or divorce at any time. Let’s not allow past decisions to control us in a different situation. Let’s be patient a little while longer and see how things progress. Your memory may yet return.’
Brooke was plunged deep into shock all over again, the price of having been thrown from one extreme to yet another. She had come to his office to confront him with her heart being squeezed in a steel fist of pain. She had believed that their marriage was an empty charade already all but over and that it was her duty to finally set Lorenzo free, even though she loved him. She remained absolutely convinced that, even though she had made a mess of their marriage, she still loved him.
But to her astonishment, Lorenzo was reacting in an utterly unexpected way by offering her a second chance at their marriage. Wasn’t that what he meant? For goodness’ sake, what else could he mean? He didn’t want to immediately reclaim his freedom as she had assumed. He was willing to wait...he was willing to continue living with her as her husband. A shaken, shuddering breath forced its passage up through her constrained lungs because relief was filling her almost to overflowing, liberating all the emotions that she had been fighting to suppress since she read about their divorce proceedings in that awful gossipy magazine. Her eyes stung horribly and flooded. She blinked rapidly, warding off the tears and hastily sipping at her cooling coffee.
Lorenzo reached down and rescued the shaking cup and saucer to set it aside, and scooped her up into his arms. It wasn’t pity driving him, he told himself with ferocious certainty, it was a crazy, impossible mix of lust, responsibility, sympathy and fascination with the woman she now was. He was taking her to Italy with him. It was a done deal.
‘I’m sorry,’ she briefly sobbed against his shoulder before she got a grip on herself again and glanced up at him with a grimace of apology. ‘It was the shock. I was expecting—’
‘Keep it simple, like me,’ Lorenzo urged. ‘I’m practical and calculating and very typical of the male sex. I’m expecting you in my bed at night.’
An indelicate little snort of laughter escaped Brooke then, drying up the tears at source. ‘Is that so?’ she mumbled, a sudden shard of happiness piercing her.
‘You haven’t even asked me yet what I did wrong in our marriage,’ he reproved. ‘The mistakes weren’t all on your side. I worked long hours, left you alone too much and only took you to boring dinner parties where everyone was talking about finance. You weren’t happy with me either.’
‘We’ll see how Italy goes,’ Brooke murmured softly. ‘As you said, we can choose to part at any time, so neither of us need to feel trapped.’
‘You’re feeling trapped?’ Lorenzo demanded without warning, an arctic light gleaming in his beautiful dark eyes.
‘No...’ Brooke toyed with a button on his jacket, striving not to flatter him with too much enthusiasm. ‘I don’t feel trapped at all. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit from the person I was before the crash. Obviously I’ve changed. I don’t seem to want people with cameras chasing me. I seem to have lost what seems to have been an overriding interest in fashion and clothes...gosh, I’m going to be forced out shopping if you’re taking me travelling. A lot of the clothes, and particularly the shoes, don’t fit me now,’ she confided ruefully.
‘I’ll organise someone to come to the house this afternoon and kit you out. I’ll postpone the flight until early tomorrow morning,’ Lorenzo informed her arrogantly. ‘But that means I’ll have to work late tonight... OK?’
‘OK,’ she agreed breathlessly.
Lorenzo stared down at her heart-shaped face while a what-the-hell-am-I-doing? question raced over and over through his brain. He concentrated instead on that luscious pink mouth and the ever-present throb at his groin and bent his head to taste those succulent lips.
Brooke fell into that kiss like honey melting on a grill. Her insides turned liquid and burned. It happened every time he kissed her, a shooting, thrilling internal heat that washed through her like a dangerous drug, lighting up every part of her body. She wanted to cling, but she wouldn’t let herself, stepping back with a control that she was proud to maintain after her earlier emotionalism.
She reddened as she connected with his brilliant dark eyes, which packed such a passionate punch. Maybe this very hunger was what had first brought them together and kept them together even when their relationship didn’t work in other ways. Sadly, it was a sobering thought to accept that sexual attraction might have been the most they had ever
had as a couple and all she had left to build on.
Obviously, naturally, she wanted more, she reflected ruefully. She wanted him to stop feeling as responsible for her as a man might feel about a helpless child. She wanted him to see and accept that she no longer needed to be handled with kid gloves, that she was an adult and able to cope with her own life, even if it did mean losing him in the process. And possibly that was what it would mean, she conceded unhappily, bearing in mind that their marriage had apparently been rocky from the start.
Yet where had the ambition-driven woman she had been gone? Where had all the knowledge she must have accumulated from the fashion world gone? Why didn’t she care now about what style was ‘in’ and what was ‘out’? Why was she most comfortable in a pair of ordinary jeans? Where now was the brash confidence that had fairly blazed out of the magazine cuttings in her press scrapbooks? Those were questions that only time, or the recovery of her memories, would answer. But facing up to more challenging situations alone would probably strengthen her and do her good, she told herself fiercely. She resolved to make that visit to the café to ask about Milly Taylor on the drive home. Perhaps that would help her work out what the connection had been between two ostensibly very different women.
* * *
The café was also a bakery and Brooke waited patiently until the queue of customers had gone and the older woman behind the counter looked at her for the first time. The woman’s eyes rounded, and she paled, stepping back as though she had had a fright.
‘Milly?’ she exclaimed shakily, her hand flying up to her mouth in a gesture of confusion as she stared at the younger woman. ‘No, no... I can see you’re not Milly, but just for a moment there, the resemblance gave me such a shock!’
Brooke’s brow pleated as she asked the woman if they could have a chat. ‘I’m Brooke Tassini. Milly died in the crash that I was injured in. You seem to think I resemble her... I’ve lost my memory,’ she explained with a wince. ‘I’m still trying to work out who Milly was to me.’