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Lorenzo froze as though she had paralysed him. It was an interesting response from a husband in receipt of such a proclamation, she acknowledged unhappily.
‘You can’t love me...you don’t know me,’ he told her levelly.
‘I beg to differ. It’s almost three months since I came out of that coma and throughout that time you have been my biggest and best support team,’ Brooke countered strongly. ‘I have got to know you. I have got to see how you put me and my needs firstevery time. I have been here while you lived through a profoundly challenging situation with me and still took nothing for yourself. So please don’t tell me that Ican’tlove you because I don’t know you. I do know what I’ve seen and how it makes me feel. I’mdefinitelyfalling for you.’
Lorenzo took a deep breath and parted his lips as if he was about to say something. But then he closed his mouth again and tugged her back down to him. ‘Whatever,’ he breathed, urgently conscious of her curvy body moving over his groin. ‘I still want you.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Brooke assured him, her colour rising headily as he gazed up at her full of blatant sexual intent.
‘Dio...cara mia,’Lorenzo ground out, all self-discipline beaten down, even that affectionate label extracted from him by the encouraging feel of her in his arms. ‘So, I’m free to live out my every fantasy, then?’
‘Pretty much,’ she whispered, barely recognising herself from the shy, uncertain woman she had been a mere hour earlier.
‘I have quite an appetite built up,’ he warned her thickly.
‘It seems I have too,’ Brooke whispered, recognising the hot tight sensation in her pelvis for the desire that it was this time around and ever so slightly proud of herself for no longer feeling either so ignorant or insecure about her own body. Lorenzo wanted her; indeed he had said that every time he looked at her, he wanted her. Why hadn’t she had the perception to see that for herself in the man she had married? Why was her brain so dense where he was concerned? Why wasn’t there even a glimmer of natural insight?
Stashing away her increasing frustration with her inability to remember what she needed to remember, Brooke fell into Lorenzo’s blazingly sexual kiss, every concern about her ability to be sexy laid to rest. She was enough forhimand really, at that moment, that was all that mattered to her or seemed the least bit important. He settled her down over him and raised her hips and, seconds later, she realised that it was all beginning again as he eased into her slow and sure, controlling her every movement in an innately dominant way while touching her in a way that sent her flying off the planet again within minutes. Exhausted then, she rested her head down on a smooth brown muscular shoulder and smiled dizzily.
Lorenzo surveyed his wife over breakfast with a faintly dazed light new to his shrewd dark gaze. There she was, curled up in a chair being all affectionate, playful and teasing while munching on toast and feeding Topsy pieces of crust. Brooke didn’t eat carbohydrates; Brooke treated carbs like poison. He had never known her to be affectionate or playful either, even before he had married her. Within the hour, he was meeting with her psychiatrist in search of advice.
‘Yes, I think it’s perfectly possible that she could be averydifferent person without that celebrity frame of reference that was once so crucial to her self-image,’ the older man declared with confidence. ‘There are documented examples of cases of this nature but I’m afraid I can’t tell you how to proceed. That isyourdecision, but I suspect it may soon be time to tell her that you were pursuing a divorce before the accident.’
Lorenzo mulled that challenging suggestion over on the way to the Tassini Bank for a board meeting and he grimaced. Last night they had had sex. Today he admits they’re in the midst of a divorce? He breathed in slow and deep and groaned. That wouldn’t work. He would sense the right moment to tell her when it arrived, he reasoned, recognising that he didn’t want to rock the boat or cause her distress. It was still his role to be supportive,notdestructive.
On the other hand, he was equally aware that he would never considerstayingmarried 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 hadonefriend, 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 dreamtthat...?
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
‘YOURWIFE’SHEREto 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. Thisisthe 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.
