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Shewastoo dependent on Lorenzo, she acknowledged with a sinking heart. Lorenzo was irreversibly stitched into everything she had thought and done and worried about since she had first wakened from the coma. Since awakening, she had built an entire life around him, and the idea that their marriage was simply a cruel mirage cut her off at the knees and left her drowning in a sea of insecurity and regrets.
The coffee arrived in record time and she was relieved to have something to occupy her hands as she cradled the bone-china cup and marvelled that it was a cup instead of a beaker. That random thought brought a wry smile to her lips. In truth, she recognised, she was eager to think about anything other than the giant chasm that had opened up beneath her feet.
‘I went to see Paul Jennings’s mother this morning,’ she revealed as an opening.
Lorenzo leant back fluidly against the side of his desk, embracing informality for her benefit while both his exquisitely tailored dark suit and her surroundings screamed huge influential office and very powerful occupant. He was gorgeous, she conceded rather numbly, and it was hardly surprising that she had become attached to the idea that he washers. Any woman in her circumstances would’ve done the same thing, she told herself bracingly. Not only was he gorgeous and sexy and terrific in bed, he had been a rock for her through every step of her recovery process. Whatever the truth of their marriage was, she still owed him gratitude for his generosity.
‘Yes, my PA mentioned your plans. I thought it was great that you were finally emerging from the house,’ Lorenzo commented. ‘So, what went wrong?’
‘Oh...nothing went wrong,’ Brooke assured him tautly. ‘I bought a magazine because I saw my face on the cover.’
‘Dio...’Lorenzo bit out, tensing. ‘I should’ve foreseen that you might do something like that.’
Quite deliberately, Brooke lifted her chin, her violet eyes clear and level, giving no hint of the turmoil inside her. ‘You can’t protect me from everything, Lorenzo...and you shouldn’t betryingto protect me from the truth,’ she told him tightly. ‘If it’s true that we were getting divorced before the accident, you should’ve told me weeks ago.’
Lorenzo shifted a lean brown hand in a sudden imperious movement that sought to silence her as he took a step forward.
‘Of course, I knowwhyyou didn’t tell me because someone like Mr Selby or some other clever doctor warned you that it might be too much for my battered little brain to handle,’ Brooke framed steadily, ignoring his gesture. ‘But I disagree with that kind of over-protective attitude because I’m back in the real world now and Ihaveto adjust to it, no matter how tough or destabilising it is. I’m not a child.’
Lorenzo surveyed her, feeling strangely appreciative of her control and dignity in a very taxing situation, two responses that he had least expected from her. Brooke had always been more about hysterics and ranting and blaming everybody but herself when anything went wrong. He breathed in deep and accepted the inevitable. The truth was out and he couldn’t deny it. ‘Wewerepursuing a divorce at the time of the crash,’ he admitted levelly.
‘Why?’ Brooke asked baldly.
Lorenzo studied her. She looked tiny in that chair and she was as white as a sheet. How was he supposed to tell the woman that she now was that she had played away with multiple men, indeed any man who suggested that he could advance her goal of breaking into the screen industry? Lorenzo had never had the slightest difficulty in delivering bad news. Indeed, it was integral to his role as a banker, but when it came to shattering the woman seated before him, he just couldn’t drop the ugly truth on her at that moment. The divorce would’ve been a big enough blow to a woman who had told him that she thought she might love him only the night before. Never mind that that professed love was simply an assumption brought on by her amnesia. She was still being very brave and he admired that, and bad news was neverquiteas bad if it emerged piece by piece over a lengthier period of time, he told himself grimly.
‘We were ill-suited, different goals, different outlook on life,’ Lorenzo responded. ‘I wanted children but you didn’t. I wanted a home. You only wanted an impressive backdrop for your photos. Divorce was inevitable.’
Brooke nodded valiantly. ‘And...er...the men, the affairs?’
‘Rumours,’ Lorenzo asserted valiantly. ‘But I didn’t enjoy the rumours.’
Brooke bent her head but breathed a little easier at that release from her biggest fear: that she was capable of that kind of betrayal and of cheating on him. ‘Of course not,’ she agreed flatly. ‘Even without my memory, I can see that the woman I was and the man you are weren’t a good match.’
Lorenzo had gone very quiet. He was thinking hard and fast, wondering whether to take her straight to that penthouse apartment he had bought her to cement their separation back into place. In rapid succession he pictured her there alone and potentially lost and he recoiled from that image while questioning his own sanity.
‘And I really shouldn’t be living in your home any more,’ Brooke completed quietly, raising the point she knew she had to raise to set him free from feeling responsible for her.
Lorenzo’s black lashes dropped down over his glittering eyes and every muscle in his lean, powerful frame jerked rigid. Hecouldn’tlet her go, at least,not just yet, he reasoned fiercely. She wasn’t fit to be abandoned to sink or swim and that might not strictly be his business any more, but he stillfeltas though it were. Right now, a separation would be premature.
‘I have a better solution,’ he heard himself say before he had even quite thought through what he was about to say, a divergence from habit that shook him even as he spoke. ‘I suggest you accompany me to Italy this evening.’
‘To Italy?’ Brooke gasped as if she had never heard of the country before, so disconcerted was she by that proposal at that particular moment.
‘Yes, it would be good for you to escape the paparazzi and the publicity and enjoy some breathing space. You’re a UK celebrity, pretty much unknown—’ he selected that last word tactfully ‘—in Italy. We’ll be left alone, free of this constant media speculation. A break is what we need.’
Brooke lifted her head, her heart, which had slowed to a dulled thud, suddenly picking up speed again. ‘We?’ she queried in a near croak.
‘We,’Lorenzo stressed with vigour, some of his tension ebbing now that he could see a provisional way forward out of the current chaos.
‘But we’re getting a divorce,’ Brooke reminded him shakily.
‘The divorce has been on hold since the day of the crash. A few more weeks aren’t going to make much difference at this point,’ Lorenzo informed her with assurance. ‘We can separate or divorce at any time. Let’s not allow past decisions to control us in a different situation. Let’s be patient a little while longer and see how things progress. Your memory may yet return.’
Brooke was plunged deep into shock all over again, the price of having been thrown from one extreme to yet another. She had come to his office to confront him with her heart being squeezed in a steel fist of pain. She had believed that their marriage was an empty charade already all but over and that it was her duty to finally set Lorenzo free, even though she loved him. She remained absolutely convinced that, even though she had made a mess of their marriage, shestillloved him.
But to her astonishment, Lorenzo was reacting in an utterly unexpected way by offering her a second chance at their marriage. Wasn’t that what he meant? For goodness’ sake, what elsecouldhe mean? He didn’t want to immediately reclaim his freedom as she had assumed. He was willing to wait...he was willing to continue living with her as her husband. A shaken, shuddering breath forced its passage up through her constrained lungs because relief was filling her almost to overflowing, liberating all the emotions that she had been fighting to suppress since she read about their divorce proceedings in that awful gossipy magazine. Her eyes stung horribly and flooded. She blinked rapidly, warding off the tears and hastily sipping at her cooling coffee.
Lorenzo reached down and rescued the shaking cup and saucer to set it aside, and scooped her up into his arms. It wasn’t pity driving him, he told himself with ferocious certainty, it was a crazy, impossible mix of lust, responsibility, sympathy and fascination with the woman she now was. He was taking her to Italy with him. It was a done deal.
