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‘Thereisnothing more important than your mental health,’ Lorenzo contradicted, sending her a censorious glance from his position by the door. ‘Why did you keep quiet about this? Why didn’t you immediately tell me what you were going through last night?’
‘I had to get my head straight,’ she protested. ‘It was a big shock for me too and I feel terrible about everything that’s happened. I don’t know how the heck you’ll ever sort out all the legal stuff.’
An imperious ebony brow elevated. ‘What legal stuff?’
Milly dragged in another steadying breath. ‘Brooke’s... Brooke’s dead, Lorenzo, and I’ve been declared dead but I’m still alive. That mistake will have to be rectified...somehow.’
Lorenzo was holding his phone so tightly between his fingers that he almost crushed it. Was she suffering from what he had heard referred to as a psychotic break? He studied her pale, rigid face, reading her distress. She reallybelievedthis stuff she was telling him, he registered in consternation: she had decided that she was not his wife, that she was the other woman in the car. Why would she do that?
‘Brooke was my sister,’ she murmured tautly.
‘Brooke doesn’t have a sister,’ he overruled.
‘Not officially. I’m illegitimate,’ Milly admitted stiffly. ‘William Jackson had an affair that went on for years with my mother and I was born during their affair. He never recognised me as his child and never treated me as if I was his and I didn’t know back then that he was a married man with another family. Brooke traced me and came to see me out of curiosity when I was eighteen and just leaving foster care. She was my half-sister...’
Lorenzo released his breath in a slow, measured hiss. He hadn’t had Milly Taylor’s birth and background checked out, hadn’t considered her past relevant in establishing who she had been to his wife. He could not yet accept the enormity of what he was being told but he also could not imagine how or why his wife could have come up with such a detailed and fanciful story overnight.
‘Brooke would’ve mentioned a sister.’
‘She didn’t tell anyone about me and was careful never to be seen in public with me. My very existence was...’ Milly hesitated before forging on with a frown ‘...pretty much a source of resentment and annoyance to her. She knew about the affair and the amount of unhappiness it had causedhermother. My mother was dead by the time Brooke sought me out, but I suspect that the bitter anger she felt towards my mother transferred to me to some extent.’
Lorenzo was frowning. ‘A half-sister? But that doesn’t explain anything! If Brooke didn’t like you or find you useful in some way, what would you have been doing in that car with her on the day of the crash? Nothing about this story makes sense!’
Milly stood up slowly, her violet eyes deeply troubled. ‘I can help it make sense but you have to try to keep your temper.’
Lorenzo flung his arrogant dark head back and dealt her a scorching appraisal. ‘Of course, I can keep my temper, but I still don’t think you’re going to be able to explain this nonsense, and discussing it as if it’s true fact isn’t helping the situation or you.’
‘Brooke used me as her stand-in on several occasions,’ Milly admitted starkly. ‘We looked very alike, even more alike after I had had cosmetic surgery done on my nose,’ she continued doggedly as Lorenzo continued to stare at her as though she had sprouted horns and cloven hooves. ‘Brooke paid for the procedure and I didn’t want to get it done but when I said no, she dropped me, and I was so desperate to hang onto our relationship that eventually I agreed.’
Lorenzo was frowning in disbelief. ‘You looked alike? What was wrong with your nose?’
‘It was too big. Nobody would have mistaken me for her if I hadn’t agreed to the surgery. After that, she used me a couple of times to stand in for her at charity events where I didn’t have to do much pretending. I’m no actress,’ she confided tightly. ‘Sometimes, she didn’t want to attend events or she wanted to mislead the press about where she was and then she would phone me up and ask me to go in her place. She would give me her clothes and her jewellery to wear.’
His frown had laced his bone structure with hard lines of tension. ‘You are telling me that you engaged in deception with Brooke to trick other people, including me?’
Milly bridled. ‘That isn’t how I saw it and you were never involved. I was just helping my sister out. Smoothing out her life when she was too busy to meet all the demands on her time,’ she protested.
‘You were deceiving people,’ Lorenzo contradicted with glacial disapproval. ‘If this far-fetched story is true, tell me where you were going on the day of the crash.’
Milly winced. ‘I was to go to a hotel and stay there for several days pretending to be Brooke while she was away somewhere on holiday, having travelled on my passport. But, of course, we never got as far as the hotel or the airport...’
‘She was usingyourpassport?’ Lorenzo demanded incredulously. ‘But that’s illegal! Where was she going?’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t tell me,’ Milly replied numbly. ‘Sometimes she told me stuff, sometimes, she told me nothing. It depended on her mood.’
And thatwasa startlingly accurate description of Brooke’s unpredictable, temperamental nature, Lorenzo conceded grudgingly, because in spite of all logic he was beginning to listen, beginning to put facts together to finally see a picture forming that could make some kind of sense. He could certainly check out whether a Milly Taylor had failed to turn up for her flight that day and he could look deeper into her background to see if he could establish an official link that would bear out her story.
From Milly’s point of view, Lorenzo’s attitude seemed oddly detached. He was dealing with the facts, avoiding the harsher realities of their situation, she suspected ruefully.
‘Well, anyway,’ she mumbled. ‘That’s what I was doing in the limo on the day of the crash. Brooke gave me the clothes she was wearing and her jewellery and I put them on while she got changed. I expect that is how I came to be identified as her.’
‘You were unrecognisable,’ Lorenzo admitted starkly, shifting his attention away from her as if he could no longer bear to look at her, his big, powerful frame rigid. ‘You are telling me that my wife is dead, that she actually died eighteen months ago in the accident...’
‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about everything that’s happened!’ Milly muttered in a driven rush of regret. ‘If I hadn’t been suffering from amnesia, I could have identified myself and you would have known the truth months ago...’
Lorenzo expelled his breath and raked a long-fingered brown hand roughly through his cropped black hair, his emotional turmoil palpable. ‘Brooke is gone...’
‘Yes,’ Milly whispered, tears lashing her eyes. ‘Do you believe me now?’
