“You were in a relationship with Brittany Freeman. The two of you had a child together. That’s why you agreed to be my bodyguard. You think I’m her, even though I … don’t,” Britt said.
“You don’t?” Lachlan asked, removing all distance between them. His hands rested on Britt’s waist, securing her next to him. He stared into her defiant eyes, consumed with a love she was fighting to deny. But it was there. He could read it like he had seven years ago. “What do you feel right now between us?
“I don’t know what I feel.” Britt raked a hand through her thick tresses.
“Sure you do.”
“How can you be so sure?” Her voice cracked. “I can’t even trust my own mind. My own memories.”
“That’s why your feelings are the one thing you can trust above anything else. I heard what you told Stacy. You told her that I was yours.”
“You are mine,” Britt said, then reached out to caress his face. “I don’t understand why I feel like this toward you. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you’re Brittany Freeman. Because I one hundred percent belong to her?—”
“Then I want to be her,” she said, tears clogging her throat. “I don’t want to be confused about who I am anymore. I want to be yours and for you to be mine. And I want like hell for that littlegirl in that room to be my little dove. The one I felt kicking in my body when I was pregnant. That’s my memory. Mine! That wasn’t in the audio documentary of Brittany’s life.”
“You are Brittany. I know that as surely as I’m breathing.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
"Listen to me.” Lachlan cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. "DNA doesn't create love. Your memories are yours because you lived them."
“What if you’re wrong? I don’t know if I could survive you being wrong, Lachlan! It would be worse than waking up with no memories. To have a life within my reach that I desperately want and then find out from some cruel twist of fate that it’s not mine to have. It would kill me.”
Lachlan slipped his arms around her waist. “There’s an easy way to get answers.”
“How?”
“DNA test.”
“Right. If I’m Brittany Freeman, the DNA test will show that Paloma’s my daughter. And if I’m not …”
“You are,” Lachlan said, certainty resonating in his voice.
“But if I’m not, I lose all of this. I lose you.”
“You’ll never lose me, Britt.”
“Even if I’m not Brittany Freeman. Even if my real face is some other face,” Britt asked, clinching his shirt in her hands. “You can’t tell me that your feelings wouldn’t change.”
“My feelings for you won’t change, regardless of what the DNA test says,” Lachlan said. "You're still you—the woman who knows our daughter's teddy bear, who slaps me when you think I've wronged you. Those aren't coincidences."
“You refuse to consider that it’s possible that test could prove I’m not Brittany Freeman.”
“It won’t,” Lachlan said. “I know who you are, Britt. My soul knows you. You can’t fool me. The DNA test is for you, not me. I just need your permission to do it.”
Britt collapsed against him. Lachlan held her tight, breathing in her familiar scent. Three years of mourning—and here she was, back in his arms, fighting the very truth he'd known from the moment he saw her. His Britt had always been stubborn that way.
Her words were muffled against his chest. “Do it. I want to know if I'm Brittany Freeman."
Chapter 29
Lachlan’s fingers stroked her cheek, then rested beneath her chin, lifting her face to look at him. Britt’s breath caught in her throat at the unabashed love and devotion reflected in his whisky-amber eyes. Every voice in her head screamed that she loved this man, even if none of it made sense. She had no memories of Lachlan. Not of meeting him, falling in love with him, having his child—but the feelings were undeniable. Feelings she didn’t want to go away.
And if keeping them meant being Brittany Freeman, then that’s what she wanted. She hoped like hell Lachlan was right because walking away from him and Paloma felt like the worst possible fate.
“I can do the test?” Lachlan asked.
