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Lorenzo lifted the paper he had slapped down in front of her and spread his free hand, long brown fingers flexing. ‘My temper went off like a rocket. I didn’t read it and I’ll inform the clinic about the nurse.’
‘I don’t want her to get in trouble!’ Brooke protested.
‘She sold a photo of you and revealed confidential medical facts. The clinic needs to protect their patients,’ Lorenzo murmured smoothly, still incensed by the condemnation he had immediately laid at his wife’s door and the distress the episode had caused her.
The distresshehad created by jumping to conclusions without proof and venting freely. He swore to himself that it would be the very last time he awarded blame to her on the basis of her past sins. He really hadn’t thought through the extent of the responsibility he was taking on in bringing her back to what had once been her home. And now he was stuck fast, neither married nor divorced, his own life in limbo alongside hers...
And for how long could he tolerate that injustice?
Lorenzo returned to the bank. Brooke went out to the garden, which she loved, strolling along gravel paths, enjoying the sunlight and the flowers and greenery all around her. A little dog bounded out from below the trees and began to bark at her. Brooke laughed because it was a tiny little thing, a mop of tousled multi-shaded brown hair on four spindly legs.
‘Now who do you belong to?’ she asked, settling down on a bench when natural curiosity brought the dog closer. He jumped up against her legs, more than willing to invite attention. She petted him, lifted him and discovered thathewas a girl and laughed again, letting her curl up on her lap and settle there.
The gardener nearby, engaged in freshening up a bed with new plants, glanced across the sunken garden at them in apparent surprise. When she moved on, the little dog followed at her heels and she said to the gardener. ‘Who does the dog belong to?’
‘Topsy’s yours, Mrs Tassini,’ he said without hesitation and she realised that her amnesia was no longer a secret, if it ever had been, in the household.
Only a slight flush on her cheeks, Brooke walked on before stooping to pet the little animal. Her dog had found the way back to her and she smiled, delighted to discover that she had a pet and that she liked animals. It was uplifting to learn that there had been a positive side to the self she no longer remembered because so far she only appeared to be finding out negative stuff, she conceded ruefully, thinking about the extravagance and the lies that had clearly damaged her marriage. At the same time though, it was better to be forewarned that there could be further obstacles ahead, she reflected ruefully. What else had she done that she would be ashamed to find out?
At least, Lorenzo had resisted the very human urge to just dump all her mistakes on her at once, she thought fondly. That had been generous of him in the circumstances. He was doing everything by the book and shielding her from unpleasant truths. How could she not love a man like that?
Brooke dressed for dinner that evening with greater care than usual. Finally, she surveyed her reflection in one of the several mirrors in the dressing room and something strange happened. For a timeless instant as she gazed into the mirror, she became dizzy and she saw another woman. No, it wasn’tanotherwoman, she realised with a spooked shiver of reaction, it was herself clad in a black jacket with her hair straight and wearing a different red dress. She had been sitting in the back of a limousine. She blinked rapidly and realised that she hadfinallyremembered something from the past and she couldn’t wait to tell Mr Selby about that promising little glimmer.
It wouldn’t be worth mentioning it to Lorenzo though, would it? Just as she hadn’t thought to mention that none of the ravishing shoes in the cabinets even fitted her any longer because evidently her feet had grown a little fatter and those shoes pinched like the devil. A tiny little flashback that only involved seeing herself and that showed her nothing important wasn’t worth telling Lorenzo about. Even so, it was a promising start to a complete recovery.
Lorenzo was still upstairs when she arrived in the dining room and she walked out onto the terrace that overlooked the garden, wondering if it would be acceptable to suggest that they ate outside during the summer months because the evenings were so beautiful and she did love the fresh air. Careful in the high heels that she was still a little wobbly in and with Topsy in tow, because the little dog hadn’t left her side all day, she descended the steps that led down to the garden and roved along a path that led into a shrubbery backed by natural woodland. Topsy went scampering ahead and then started barking so ferociously that she almost levitated off the ground.
‘Topsy,’ she began to say and then, before she could gather her breath, a man leapt out of nowhere in front of her and gave her such a fright that she screamed.
And screamed again, backing away in absolute terror, every natural instinct on high alert, her heart thundering in her ears with fear. The man threw up his hands in apparent disbelief and then two men appeared from behind him and pulled him away.
An arm snaked round her quaking figure from behind. ‘Are you all right?’ Lorenzo’s very welcome and familiar voice enquired, and relief made her sag like a ragdoll in his arms. ‘I was in the dining room when I heard you scream. I’ve never moved so fast in my life!’
‘Who was he?’ she prompted shakily. ‘What did he want?’
‘A paparazzo chancing his arm,’ Lorenzo imparted. ‘Didn’t you notice his camera?’
‘No... I thought... I thought he was a rapist or something,’ she contrived to explain unevenly, her breath still see-sawing in and out of her raw throat. ‘That’s what I assumed. I didn’t think about this being a garden and how unlikely that would be, which was stupid.’
Lorenzo’s dark eyes glittered with wildly inappropriate appreciation of that explanation for Brooke’s reaction to a member of the press and he made no comment, seeing for himself that she was still pale and trembling with fright. He closed an arm round her to direct her back indoors. ‘You can blame me for this frightening experience as well,’ he told her instead in an exasperated undertone. ‘I was about to double our security before I saw that newspaper headline this morning and then Iforgot.’
‘You’re allowed to overlook stuff occasionally,’ Brooke told him, still struggling to get her breathing under control. ‘Anyway, how can it beyourfault when it’s obvious that my love of attracting publicity caused all this nonsense?’
‘It wasn’t wrong for you to like attracting publicity,’ Lorenzo countered levelly. ‘That was your world. I shouldn’t have given you the impression that it was a bad choice, because it wasn’t for you.’
But it was a bad choice for anyone married to you, Brooke completed inside her head, for everything about Lorenzo implied that he was a very private man and the last man imaginable to enjoy that kind of exposure. Clearly, her past self hadn’t much cared about that, and she had continued to relentlessly pursue her own goals. She was twenty-eight years old and could scarcely blame that decision on immaturity. She had put her media career first,nother marriage.
‘Topsy!’ she called, and the dog raced over to her, long silly ears flopping madly, tongue hanging. Without hesitation she scooped the little animal up and started telling it that it was a great little watchdog while Lorenzo looked on in disbelief.
Brooke didn’tlikeanimals, but some nameless admirer had gifted her the puppy when handbag dogs were in vogue. She had brought the dog home and abandoned it in the kitchen and, as far as he knew, had never looked at it again. Lorenzo decided it was time for him to have another chat with her psychiatrist and ask how it was possible that his wife could be displaying entirely new personality traits as well as different tastes. Brooke wasn’t even eating salads any longer, never mind fussing about her diet. She no longer used the gym and barely touched alcohol aside of a glass of wine at dinner. The changes were piling up to the extent that he no longer knew what to expect from the wife he would once have sworn that he knew inside out.
‘Would you like a drink after that...er rather unnerving encounter?’ he asked calmly.
‘No, thanks. But thanks for being there this morning and this evening to ground me,’ Brooke murmured in a rush, staring up at him with a great burst of warmth rushing and spreading through her veins, because she was grateful,soridiculously grateful that Lorenzo existed and that she was married to him. He was her rock in every storm.
‘I wasn’t there for you this morning in the way I should’ve been,’ Lorenzo corrected with a sardonic twist of his beautiful shapely mouth, tensing as that warm look in her eyes somehow contrived to arrow straight down to his groin. ‘I attacked you, misjudged you.’
Determined violet eyes connected with his. ‘But I forgive you.’
