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‘Don’t give me that. You’re on one of your power trips. You’re loving having me at your mercy.’
‘I don’t have the power trips.’
‘But you don’t deny that you love me being at your mercy.’
His voice dropped to a murmur as he leaned close to speak in her ear. ‘I love nothing more than having you at my mercy, bellissima. And you love it too.’
‘And you can stop with the innuendoes,’ she snapped. ‘You’re supposed to be helping me get my memories back. All you’re doing is alluding to sex. Is that all our marriage amounts to?’
‘It’s the best part of it.’
‘Well, from now on you can take it as read that I know we have a fantastic sex life.’ She could feel her cheeks burn as she spoke but refused to allow herself to be distracted. ‘So I would appreciate it if you would remember that I know nothing of our life together and am relying on you to fill the holes—and if you make an innuendo out of that I shall get a flight straight back to London.’
His lips twitched and he settled back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Where we are going for a start!’
Right on cue, his driver took them over the border into the hip, arty city of Santa Cruz.
‘We’re going to our beach house,’ he confirmed. ‘We bought it a few months ago. This is the city we got married in.’
Slightly mollified, she said, ‘Why did we marry here?’
‘California allows quick marriages. I told you to name your city. You chose Santa Cruz.’
‘I chose? You didn’t frogmarch me to a register office?’
‘Marriage was your idea.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. You flew to San Francisco with me as my guest for the awards ceremony. At the end of the evening I got my driver to drop you at your hotel first.’ He spread his arms. ‘We had our first kiss in this car. Things got a little...hot but you wouldn’t let me come to your room. I asked what it would take to get you into my bed and you said marriage.’
‘I must have been joking.’ She must have been. Anna had never even thought of marriage, had assumed she would grow into a grey-haired spinster surrounded by dogs—not cats—and had been comfortable with that. Singledom was safe. It wasn’t men specifically that she didn’t trust, it was people. People were selfish. People put their own needs and wants first. They broke hearts and left others to pick up the shattered pieces.
‘You said you were.’ He shrugged again and in the movement she thought she glimpsed a darkening of his features that passed so quickly she guessed she’d imagined it. ‘But the idea took hold with both of us. I came back to your hotel in the morning knowing I was going to marry you that day. It was what we both wanted.’
‘But why?’
‘We wanted each other and we’d both reached our limit of you keeping me at arm’s length. Think about it, bellissima—what couple was better suited to marry? We’d worked closely together for eighteen months. We’d seen the worst of each other. We’d fought. We spent more time together than with anyone else but we never quit. If a man and a woman could truly be friends then that’s what we were.’
‘You’re my boss. I’m paid to be nice to you.’ But even as she made the jest she was wondering where love had come into it. That was why people married, wasn’t it? Because they trusted someone enough to give them their heart as well as their body? It was why she’d never thought she would marry.
He snorted with laughter. ‘When did that ever stop you saying what you think of me? We married knowing exactly what we were getting into. It made perfect sense.’
And as Stefano finally explained how he’d worn her defences down, a warm feeling spread through her.
For all their sniping at each other in the workplace, they’d forged a strong camaraderie. A bond. She would attend meetings with him, sit in on interviews for both staff and acquisitions, travel the world with him... She’d got to know him so well she would know his opinion on a person or situation before he’d opened his mouth to vocalise it.
She’d learned that though he was an exacting taskmaster, his word was his bond. She might even have learned to trust him.
Suddenly she could see exactly why she’d married him.
Not only was he the sexiest man to walk the planet, but by marrying her Stefano had proven he wanted her as more than just another notch on his endless bedpost.
Love must have been a gradual progression between them. It appeared Stefano was wisely avoiding talk of it knowing it was pointless to talk of love with someone who had no memory of it. His pride must be so hurt with it all, she thought, feeling a twinge of compassion for him, having to be the one to hold her steady until her memories of the life they’d forged together returned; having to trust that they would return and that she would remember all they’d meant to each other.
‘I can see how it happened,’ she said quietly, nodding slowly as she processed it all. ‘But I must have asked for some kind of reassurance that you would be faithful. Your track record with women hardly inspires confidence.’
