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‘Only once I have had time to confirm the extraordinary facts you have given me,’ Lorenzo told her flatly.
Milly suppressed a shudder, feeling dismissed, sidelined, set back at a new and disturbing distance from him while he worked out whether she was a fantasist or a woman having a breakdown. All of a sudden everything had changed between them. Lorenzo was changing before her very eyes. It was as though their personal relationship had never happened, she acknowledged painfully. But then it had all been a lie, based on the false premise that Brooke was still alive, and at this moment Lorenzo was fathoms deep in shock and struggling to deal with the reality that his wife was dead. That was all he had the ability to consider right now and how could she expect anything more from him?
She studied his tall dark figure and the forbidding tension locking his facial muscles tight. It was selfish of her to feel rejected by his new reserve when she had no claim on him or his attention. She was nothing to him, never had been. Everything he had done for her had really been done for Brooke. On his terms she didn’t really exist. And now that he knew that shedidexist, he would never touch her again and would never look at her again as he once had.
And she had to deal with that reality and come back down to earth again, which would be challenging. After all, she had been living a kind of fantasy life with Lorenzo, a waitress from a very ordinary background, suddenly swept off into a billionaire’s luxury lifestyle with private jets, servants and a level of wealth and comfort previously beyond her imagining. But it wasn’t those expensive trappings she would miss, she conceded wretchedly, it would be Lorenzo.
Lorenzo, whom she loved to pieces, who didn’t want her any more, who would never want her again. She felt as though her heart were breaking in two inside her and, tensing her slight shoulders, she compressed her lips, determined not to say or do anything emotional. Right now, Lorenzo didn’t need that added stress and probably didn’t even want to recall that he had had sex with her believing that she was his wife. No, the faster she got back out of his life again, the happier Lorenzo would be.
Lorenzo was looking back down through the months and marvelling that he had allowed the medics to silence his every misgiving about the woman who had come out of the coma. From her first wakening every atom of his ESP and intelligence had combined to send him continual warnings that Brooke’s personality and character had apparently changed out of all recognition. He had listened to the doctors because it had naturally never occurred to him that the woman in the convalescent clinic could be anyone other than his wife.
Dio mio, she had been identified as his wife at the scene of the crash, presented to him as his wife when he was handed her jewellery for safekeeping before surgery. That an appalling mistake could’ve been made had not once crossed his mind or anyone else’s. How could it have done when nobody had been aware of the striking resemblance between the two women? Of course, he hadn’t had access either to her clarifying explanation about the nature of her relationship with Brooke. Brooke, indeed, had probably only latched onto her half-sister in the first place because of that resemblance, seeing how she could use that to her advantage. Milly had been acting as Brooke’s stand-in, herlookalike. Distaste with her for having taken on such a deceptive role flared inside him, chilling his hard dark eyes to granite.
‘I’ll move out as soon as I can,’ Milly muttered in a rush.
‘Where are you planning to go?’ Lorenzo lifted an ebony brow. ‘Straight to the press to sell the story of the century for a fat price?’
Milly was aghast that he could even harbour such a suspicion and she turned white as milk, her violet eyes standing out stark against her porcelain skin. ‘Of course not! I wouldn’t do that to you or me.’
‘Not even for the money?’ Lorenzo prompted doubtingly.
Lorenzo’s brain was awash with disconnected confused thoughts. He could not yet process what he had just learned. He struggled looking back through the long months with the woman he had believed to be his wife and accepting that she was an entirely different woman. And a stranger, his logic chipped in. A complete and total stranger. He grasped that he needed time and peace to come to terms with what he had just learned.
Milly went rigid, struggling to credit that only the night before Lorenzo had been making passionate love to her and holding her close in the aftermath as if she meant something to him. ‘No, not even for the money,’ she said sickly.
Lorenzo swung away from her as he could no longer stand to look at her. ‘Pack,’ he instructed grimly, recognising that he had to immediately get her out of the house if he was to avoid a sordid scandal. ‘I have somewhere for you to live sitting ready for occupation and you might as well live there. Once I’ve checked out the information you’ve given me and consulted my lawyers, we’ll sort this mess out.’
Pack?
Pure shock resonated through Milly and momentarily her head swam, and she felt dizzy. Evidently, he couldn’t wait to get rid of her and the immediacy of his demand that she pack and move out disconcerted her. She might have told herself that he would want her to leave as soon as possible but her mind had yet to accept that idea. She hadn’t been prepared for that change to take place so quickly and she blinked rapidly, her eyes dazed.
‘I have nothing to pack. I don’t own anything here,’ she said flatly, because it was true when she didn’t even own the clothes she wore because he had paid for everything.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Lorenzo growled. ‘Anythingyou have worn,anythingthat you have been using, is yours to take with you. Brooke is gone and she’s not coming back.’
Milly nodded jerkily and quickly stood up, the dizziness she was still enduring dampening her face with perspiration. She felt ill, nauseous, but that was a weakness she had to hide. Lorenzo might be throwing her out but she was not about to play the poor little victim who couldn’t cope. She had had enough of being weak and vulnerable while she was still in medical care.
As she opened the door to leave, Topsy hurled herself at her knees in greeting.
‘You can take the dog with you too,’ Lorenzo murmured. ‘She’s got used to you now. It would be cruel to separate you.’
But, seemingly, it wasn’t cruel to kick out a bogus wife at such short notice, Milly reflected, heading upstairs with a straight spine, still battling to hold the dizziness at bay. Some sort of stupid virus she couldn’t shake off, she thought wearily. As soon as she got settled, she would go and see a doctor, she promised herself. The clothes she had worn in Italy were still in the cases they had returned in and not yet unpacked, but even as she started to assemble the few items that she hadn’t taken abroad with her, a maid arrived with empty cases for her to use. Lorenzo had already told the staff that she was leaving and her still-sensitive stomach rebelled to send her racing into the en suite to be sick.
Afterwards, she cleaned her teeth and with all the animation of a robot she went back to doggedly packing. She didn’t have very much to show for her months in Lorenzo’s life. She stripped off the rings, the diamond-studded watch and the sapphire pendant and laid them on the dressing table because they weren’t hers, or at least had been gifts that weren’t intended for her.
She might feel as though her life were over but, really, it was only beginning another phase, she tried to tell herself. Being hurt that Lorenzo wanted her out of his house was foolish. He had to mourn Brooke and adjust to the knowledge that the wife he had watched over for months while she was in a coma had not survived as he had believed. He had to draw a line under the past months and obviously he didn’t want her around while he was trying to do that.
The cases were stowed in the limo and Milly climbed into the passenger seat, clutching Topsy to her like a tiny hairy comfort blanket. Lorenzo emerged last from the house, his lean, darkly handsome face wiped clean of emotion or any form of warmth, and barely a word was exchanged during the drive into London.
It was a fabulous apartment with its own private lift. Milly stood looking around her at the sea of crisp white furnishings and swallowed apprehensively.
‘I had it decorated for Brooke,’ Lorenzo breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘She loved it.’
‘It’s spectacular,’ she said woodenly, wanting him to leave so that she could ditch her game face. But at the same time, she was dreading the moment when he would actually leave and already wondering how long it would be before she saw him again.
‘It’s yours now. You can make any changes you want...at my expense,’ he added impatiently when she glanced at him in astonishment. ‘Legally, this will ultimately beyourapartment.’
Milly frowned in bewilderment. ‘How on earth could it ever be mine?’ she queried.
