by Day Leclaire
“Yes. No.” Damn it. Why did Sev have to send the logical Dante? “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it so I will. And while you’re at it, explain to me why they’re calling you Mr. O’Dell.”
Nicolò folded his arms across his chest. “I need regular updates about Kiley’s condition. And since they only discuss a patient’s condition if you’re a relative, the hospital staff may be operating under the misunderstanding that I’m her husband.”
“They what?” Lazz shoved a hand through his hair while he fought a perceptible battle for control. “Don’t tell me this is another one of your creative solutions.”
“You never complained when my ‘creative solutions’ worked to Dantes’ advantage.”
“Damn it, Nicolò!”
“Look, it just happened, okay? They needed information about her and since I had her purse with her identification and medical cards, they leapt to a conclusion I didn’t bother correcting, especially since it works to our advantage.”
“It works to our advantage right up until someone recognizes you. It isn’t like the Dantes are exactly low profile here in San Francisco. Our faces have been plastered all over the gossip magazines in recent months, or have you forgotten that minor detail?”
“Sev, you and Marco, may have been prominently featured in The Snitch, but I’ve been maintaining a low profile. As for Kiley…I plan to play the part of Mr. O’Dell for the time being. Eventually, I’ll straighten everything out. Until then—” Nicolò handed his brother Kiley’s purse “—get her information and give it to our private investigator. Tell Rufio that I need anything and everything he can discover about her as quickly as possible.”
“I’m already ahead of you. I put him on it yesterday.”
Nicolò nodded. “Perfect. Also, send someone over to Le Premier. Considering the amount of business we throw their way I don’t think the hotel will give you too hard a time about packing up her belongings and checking her out. I want regular updates on this, Lazz. And once Rufio’s done gathering any surface info on her, I want him to dig for more. Tell him to dig deep. I want to know everything from what size clothes and shoes she wears right down to what brand of makeup she uses. Everything,” he stressed. “Got it?”
“Why? What are you planning?”
Nicolò didn’t dare answer that one. “It’s still fluid.”
“Aw, hell.”
“Look, when I have all the details figured out, I’ll let you know. Also, stop by my place and feed and walk Brutus, will you? I don’t know how long I’m going to be hung up here.”
“You’ve pulled some wild stunts in your time, but this…” Lazz shook his head. “This one makes all the others seem almost normal.”
“This stunt won’t last long. As soon as she wakes, the jig’ll be up and I’ll have to finagle some new plan.”
“Like a way to get us out from under a massive lawsuit?”
Nicolò’s expression fell into grim lines. “That’s only a possibility if she ends up blaming me for the accident as much as I blame myself.”
“You better hope like hell she doesn’t.”
The sudden appearance of a nurse saved Nicolò from having to reply. “Excuse me, Mr. O’Dell?”
“How’s Kiley?” Nicolò immediately asked, turning his back on his brother.
Compassion darkened the nurse’s eyes. “All I can say for certain is that she’s stable. The doctor would like to see you and I’m sure he’ll fill you in on the particulars.” She inclined her head toward a nearby hallway. “If you’ll follow me?”
He instantly fell in step with the nurse, only realizing afterward that from the moment she showed up he’d completely forgotten his brother even existed. Turning a corner, the nurse opened the door to a small conference room barely larger than a cubicle. A doctor sat at a table, making notes in a tight, rapid scribble.
Flipping the chart closed, the man rose and offered Nicolò his hand. “I’m Dr. Ruiz.”
“Just give it to me straight. She’s alive, right?” Nicolò demanded tightly.
“Alive and stable,” Ruiz confirmed. “But she took quite a hit. It was miraculous, given the circumstances, that she didn’t break anything. She has various lacerations that we’ve stitched up and a deep hematoma to her left hip. It’s going to be quite painful and make it difficult for her to get around comfortably for a while.”
“And the bad news?”
“As you’re aware, she experienced a head trauma. A concussion. There’s been some minor swelling to her brain, but she’s responding to the medications we’re giving her to reduce it and all the scans are clear.”
“Is she awake?”
The doctor shook his head. “She woke briefly and seemed highly agitated and disoriented. Since then she’s been unconscious.”
One of the skills that made Nicolò so good at his job was an innate ability to read people. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
Ruiz’s mouth compressed. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Dell. Head traumas can be tricky. Until she wakes, we won’t know the full extent of her injury. She may be perfectly fine, with perhaps a slight loss of memory from around the time of her accident. Or it could be far more extensive. You should prepare yourself for the worst, and hope for the best.”
“When can I see her?”
“She’s in intensive care. You can peek in for a minute or two right now. Then I suggest you go home and get some rest. We’ll call if there’s any change.”
Ten minutes later, an ICU nurse escorted him into one of the dozen three-sided rooms that comprised the unit. Kiley appeared small and frail in the bed, with various wires and tubes connected to her, while a dirge of machines beeped softly in the background. He wished she would open her eyes so he could see the vivid color brimming with that unsettling combination of hot awareness and keen intelligence, so he’d know that she’d fully recover from her injuries.
He felt the kick that urged him to go to her, to link their hands and complete the bond he felt between them. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. As though sensing a similar awareness despite the drugs sedating her, she stirred restlessly. Clearly, The Inferno—if that’s what it was—called to her, as well, for she muttered in whatever twilight land she occupied. Within moments a nurse appeared in response.
“She senses you,” she said, before offering a sympathetic smile. “You’ll need to go now. If you’ll leave a phone number we’ll call you with any updates.”
He did as instructed but found he couldn’t wait for them to contact him, and returned to the hospital first thing the next morning. The ICU nurses all turned to watch him with broad grins that gave him a second’s warning before he stepped into Kiley’s room and heard her attending doctor say, “Here’s your husband now.”
Both Nicolò and Kiley froze, staring for an endless moment at each other. Then she shook her head in wild-eyed disbelief. “That’s not possible,” she denied in no uncertain terms. “There’s no way he’s my husband.”
Nicolò bit back a curse. “Dr. Ruiz—”
“Don’t panic, Mr. O’Dell.” The doctor tossed a reassuring glance over his shoulder. “We warned you that she might have memory issues.”
“No. I’d remember if I’d married him,” Kiley argued.
“It’s all right, Mrs. O’Dell,” the doctor said in a soothing voice. “Your loss of memory is a result of your accident.”
Nicolò shut his eyes. Time to ’fess up. “She’s not—”
The doctor spoke at the same time, his voice rumbling over top of Nicolò’s confession. “Kiley, you don’t even remember your own name,” he said gently. “It’s perfectly natural that you wouldn’t remember you have a husband. I suggest we take this slow and easy. Your memory could come back at any point. Hours. Days. Possibly weeks. In the meantime, we can move you out of ICU and into a regular room while we run a few more tests.”
“Why won’t you listen to me?” Kiley’s gaze landed on Nicolò before flinching away. Tears
filled her eyes and her voice rose with each word, growing steadily more shrill and hysterical. “I’m telling you this isn’t my husband. He can’t be. I’d know if he were.”
Ruiz signaled to one of the nurses, who began to prepare an injection. “Mr. O’Dell, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Once she’s had time to calm down and get accustomed to what’s happened, you can come back.”
Nicolò inclined his head. “Of course. If you’d just give me a second…”
He acted without thought, running on sheer instinct, responding to a call no one heard but him. Crossing to Kiley’s side, he reached down to take her hand in his. Behind him, Ruiz voiced an objection, while Kiley hissed in dismay as she drew back in a vain attempt to avoid his touch. He ignored everything but the demand screaming through him, one that insisted he finally act on the urge that had been clawing at him since the moment he’d met this woman.
He forcibly took Kiley’s hand in his.
The Inferno struck with more ferocity than Nicolò believed possible. Even the machines trilled in momentary alarm before subsiding again into a steady rhythm. Never before had he experienced such a powerful connection. It felt as though every emotion he possessed flowed from his hand into hers before slamming him with a backwash that left him drowning in desire.
He responded without thought. Without giving her time to protest, he bent down and took her mouth in a kiss of utter possession, hard against soft, determination overwhelming uncertainty. She tasted even sweeter than he’d imagined, soft and warm and—after a momentary hesitation—receptive. No. More than receptive. Eager.
He couldn’t resist. He swept inward, taking advantage of her unstinting welcome. Never had he felt such a reaction when he’d kissed a woman, as though every aspect of the touch and taste of her had branded him. A certainty filled him, a certainty that no other woman would ever be quite right for him, except this one. The softest of moans, hungry and eager, slipped from her mouth to his, welcoming him home.
And in that moment he could no longer escape the simple truth. This woman belonged to him.
Kiley froze at the first touch of her husband’s hand, overcome by a sensation so all-consuming, it rendered her speechless. Fiery heat shot from palm to palm, almost painful in its intensity, before settling into a warm, steady connection that soaked deep into that point of melding. Second by second, with each beat of her heart, desire pierced straight through flesh and sinew and bone, until it invaded every part of her. It seemed to lap through her veins, filling her to overflowing with a heavy, irresistible want.
And then he kissed her.
It was a first kiss, worthy of fairy-tale legends. It was also impossible to compare to any that might have come before, since fate had veiled any such occurrences. Even so, she found it the most incredible experience in her very short memory. His mouth ate at hers, his hunger unmistakable, threatening to consume her with that single, unbelievably delectable kiss. Every instinct she possessed screamed to life, telling her this was her man. That he belonged to her and no one else. Her response came without thought or reason. She opened to him, unfurling like a flower beneath the blazing heat of the sun.
He possessed her mouth and she gave back to him with unstinting generosity. In that instant she didn’t care who she was, or who this man claimed to be. All that mattered was that this moment never end. Where before all felt alien and unfamiliar, this she recognized. This she knew. Slowly, he pulled back, his breath escaping in a heated rush, his eyes burning with black fire. And she read in his expression all that she felt, a mating of tumultuous emotions.
She sensed on an instinctive level that she and this man had become permanently entangled, heart, body and soul. But…how was that possible? How could something as basic as joining hands, or exchanging a single kiss, cause such an undeniable reaction? How could this simple contact bind her to a complete stranger with such relentless power?
Her reaction to his touch told her she knew this man, regardless of what she’d claimed only moments before. Slowly she lifted her gaze to her husband’s. Or at least, the man who claimed her for his wife.
Her opinion of him hadn’t changed in the few moments since he’d first stepped into her room. He remained fiercely handsome, a god of war, with hair and eyes of the deepest ink and a stare that silenced with a stony glare. He wore his hair longer than convention dictated and it fell to his neck in heavy waves. Maybe they would have tightened into actual curls if he hadn’t subdued them, no doubt with a single forbidding look, the kind he currently had trained on the nurses and doctors surrounding them.
“Who are you?” she demanded. She waved away his response before it could even form. “I know you claim you’re my husband. I mean, what’s your name?”
“Nicolò. You call me Nicolò.” A smile warmed the stark coldness of his features, touching a mouth that had left an indelible stamp on her own. “Except when you’re angry with me. Then you choose a few more colorful terms of endearment.”
“And how often does that happen?”
His smile grew, stunning in its beauty. “Often enough. We both have rather…tempestuous personalities.”
His gaze lifted to the medical personnel gathered around her bedside and he jerked his head toward the curtain that screened the cubicle. Without a word they filed from the room. It didn’t come as any surprise that they acquiesced. She had a strong suspicion that few dared to argue with Nicolò, and those few who tried, didn’t hold out against him for long.
“I’d also like to set one fact straight,” he said the moment they were alone. “My name isn’t O’Dell, it’s Dante. Nicolò Dante. When you were first brought in, everything happened in such a confusing rush that I didn’t bother to correct the error.”
He watched her closely as he gave her this latest piece of information, his penetrating look making it almost impossible to think rationally. “I don’t understand,” she replied. “If we’re married, why do we have different last names?”
He shrugged. “We haven’t been married long. And you haven’t decided whether or not you want to take on all the baggage associated with mine.”
She had questions, so many they spun, jumbled, around in the dark fog of her mind. She seized one at random. “You said we haven’t been married long. How long is ‘not long’?”
“Only a few days. It was a whirlwind affair.”
For some reason that upset her, possibly because she’d hoped for more. Proof of a lengthy, established history that he could document in word and picture. A connection stretching back across the empty recesses of her mind. Something that would anchor her in this confusing world in which she’d awoken. Instead, he could only offer a mere snippet to sum up the whole of her life.
“A whirlwind affair,” she repeated. Her eyes narrowed in thought. “Somehow, Nicolò Dante, you don’t strike me as the impulsive sort. I’d have pegged you as a very deliberate sort of guy. Someone who gets what he wants when he wants it, no matter who or what stands in his way. Am I wrong?”
At the question, a mask dropped over his face, sharpening the harshly beautiful features into diamond-hardness. “That’s quite an interesting observation after only a minute or two of contact. Or have you remembered something about me?”
Dear Lord, how could she have been so foolish as to wed a man like this? The strength of his personality threatened to overwhelm her, something she wasn’t certain she could prevent even if she weren’t injured and in a hospital bed. She must have been out of her mind to marry this man, to believe for even one tiny second that she could cage herself with a hungry panther and emerge unscathed. Maybe—in that other forgotten life—she liked challenges. Or maybe she was simply crazy. Time would tell.
“To answer your question, I don’t remember you at all,” she confessed. “I wish I did, because then I’d understand how I came to be in this predicament.” She plucked at the sheet covering her. “And in response to your other comment, I’m basing my assumptions about you on how y
ou managed to clear the room with a single look.”
He studied her in silence before conceding her point. “You’re right. I do whatever it takes to accomplish my goals. But my family will tell you I’m the most impulsive of all of them, since sometimes that’s what it takes to succeed. Split-second decisions. Thinking outside the box. Finding a creative solution to an impossible problem.”
“And us?” she couldn’t help asking. “How does our relationship fit into that dynamic?”
A hint of rueful amusement drifted into his eyes. “Even if I weren’t the impulsive sort, you can tell by your reaction to my touch, there were other considerations.”
She could make a fairly accurate guess about one of those considerations. “You mean we were attracted physically.” She didn’t bother to phrase her observation as a question. There wasn’t any question about her reaction to him…or his to her, for that matter.
He studied her in silence for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Apparently, it’s far more than a simple physical attraction, Kiley. It goes deeper than that. If it didn’t, my touch wouldn’t affect you this way. When you lost your memory, it should have severed all of the connections between us.” He held up their linked hands. “And yet, it hasn’t.”
She blinked in surprise to discover their hands were still joined. Despite the warning signals screaming through her system, she accepted the contact between them. More, she clung to it. “You think I recognize you on a subconscious level?” she asked slowly. “Is that even possible with amnesia?”
Again that hesitation, as though he used great care in choosing his words. Apprehension gathered like a hard, tight ball in the pit of her stomach, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he wasn’t telling her. Endless bits and pieces she had no way of guessing at, let alone verifying. Everything about her life, about his, about their past and present, even any plans they may have made for the future—the details were his to select, to shade if he so chose, and she’d be forced to accept them at face value. Only one person held the key to all the information that comprised her former life, a man she had no choice but to trust. Heaven help her!