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The name meant absolutely nothing to her, didn’t even sound slightly familiar.
‘Your husband will be here very soon.’
Brooke’s eyes widened to their fullest extent in shock.‘I have a husband?’
For some reason, the nurses smiled. ‘Oh, yes, you have a husband.’
‘A very handsome husband,’ one of the women added.
Brooke stared down at her bare wedding finger. She was married. Oh, my goodness, she was married. Did she have children? she asked. No...no children as far as they knew, they said, and a tinge of relief threaded through the panic she was only just holding at bay. Then she felt guilty about that sense of relief. She liked children,didn’t she? But it was scary enough to have a husband she didn’t remember—it would be simply appalling if she had contrived to forget her children as well.
Lorenzo stood outside in the corridor studying the middle-aged doctor babbling at him. And itwasbabble because the care-home staff were not accustomed to their comatose patients waking up and excitement laced with frank worry had taken over.
‘It’s post-traumatic amnesia, perfectly understandable after a serious head injury. You need someone more qualified than me in the psychiatric field to advise you on her condition, but I would warn you not to tell her anything that might upset her more at the moment. I wouldn’t mention yet that other people died in the accident or that you were...er...splitting up at the time of the crash,’ the doctor muttered hurriedly, visibly uncomfortable with getting that personal. ‘She’s in a very high state of stress as it is. Try to calm her, try to keep it upbeat without divulging too much information.’
Lorenzo had been in an early board meeting when the phone call came. He had been so shocked by the news that Brooke had recovered consciousness that he had walked out without a word of explanation. Now that he was on the brink of speaking to her again, he was, for once, at a loss. Brooke didn’trememberhim? Could he believe that of a woman willing to use anything and everything to create a furore in the media? What better way to spring back into the public eye than with an interesting story to tell? When he had first met her, such suspicion would have been foreign to him and momentarily he was furious that he had to consider that she could be faking it. But he had learned the hard way that Brooke was a skilled deceiver.
The door opened and Brooke froze against the pillows, her chest tightening as she snatched in a breath. And there he was in the doorway and there was nothing familiar about him. Indeed, it immediately occurred to her that no normal woman could possibly have forgotten such a man.
He stood well over six feet tall, wide-shouldered, lean of hip and long of leg, and he wore a dark pinstriped suit with a blue tie and white shirt. And he was, undeniably, absolutely breathtaking in the looks department. His hair was black and cropped short and it was the sort of thick springy hair that a woman wanted to run her fingers through. His bronzed features were all high cheekbones and interesting hollows, dissected by a narrow blade of a nose, while his wide sensual mouth was accentuated by the faint dark shadow of stubble surrounding it. His eyes, deep set and very dark and framed with lashes lush as black fans, were even more arresting and resting on her now with a piercing gleam. She could feel her skin heating because that appraisal could have stripped paint.
No, hecouldn’tbe her husband, she decided immediately. He had to be some sleek, highly qualified consultant come to suss her out. Instinct seemed to be telling her that her husband would be a much more ordinary sort, maybe a bit homely, a bit tousled, but when his wife woke up after being in a coma, he would, at least, be smiling with relief and happiness. This guy didn’t look as if he smiled very often. He was downright intimidating even in the way he stood there, radiating raw masculinity and authority.
‘Brooke...’ he murmured without any expression at all, walking in and shutting the door behind him and then those amazing eyes were locking to her again and it was a challenge to breathe. ‘How are you feeling?’
Her heart was hammering so hard with nerves she felt her throat close over, her already sore throat, still tender from the removal of the breathing tube. But when he spoke, she froze in wonderment because his voice was familiar. ‘I know your voice... Iknowyour voice!’ she gasped with a sense of attainment. ‘In fact it’s the first thing I’ve recognised since I woke up...but I don’t recognise you. Who are you?’
‘Lorenzo Tassini.’
‘I’mmarriedtoyou?’ Brooke yelped in open disbelief.
Lorenzo’s brows drew together. He was trying very hard not to stare at her because she was a vision of natural beauty, this woman he had married who had only shown him the ugliness she kept hidden on the inside. With her dishevelled hair hanging across her shoulders, framing her entrancing heart-shaped face, and those huge incredible dark blue, verging-on-violet eyes, she looked utterly angelic. And different, startlingly different, because he didn’t think he had ever seen Brooke without her cosmetic enhancements. Brooke would climb out of bed at dawn to put her make-up on, no matter how often he had told her she didn’t need it to look good.
But, of course, there were differences in her appearance. She was thinner, for a start, painfully thin in spite of the nourishing diet she had been fed by tube. She looked frail and somehow younger. The surgeons had restored her to perfection, but his acute gaze had already spotted the changes. Her mouth seemed a little wider, a little lusher in its pout, her nose shorter, less defined, and her eyes, those beautiful violet eyes were as bright and inquisitive as a bird’s. And he had never ever seen such an expression on Brooke’s face before. Brooke rarely showed emotion of any kind but, right now, he was seeing uncertainty, shock and intense curiosity fleeing across her face and it was a novelty for him to be able to interpret her feelings.
‘Yes, you’re married to me,’ he confirmed flatly, recalling the doctor’s warning, striving to abide by it when his conscience wanted him to throw the truth out there and be damned for it because he wanted no more lies between them. But if he told her about the divorce, he would lose her trust, her ability to depend on him, and sheneededhim right now. She needed to trust that he would not harm her and that she could rely on him because he knew there was no one else to take his place.
Brooke swallowed painfully and closed her eyes. A headache was beginning to pulse behind her brow. She was ridiculously tired for someone who had only been awake for a couple of hours.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Lorenzo prompted, lifting the glass with the straw in it.
‘Yes...thanks.’ Her eyes flickered open again and she sucked eagerly on the straw, the cool water easing her throat. ‘I’ve got so many questions.’
‘We’ll answer them one by one.’
‘But why don’t I rememberyouwhen I remember your voice?’ she exclaimed in frustration. ‘How long have I been here? Nobody would tell me.’
‘You’ve been here over a year.’ Lorenzo watched her eyes round in further disbelief and once again savoured the newness of being able to read her face. ‘After the first few weeks, when you failed to come out of it, the prognosis wasn’t optimistic, so it is a source of great satisfaction for me to see you awake.’
‘Itis?’ Brooke repeated, brightening in receipt of that acknowledgement. ‘Then why don’t you show it?’
‘Showit?’ He frowned.
‘Smile, look happy. You walked in here looking like the Grim Reaper,’ she told him, reddening at her boldness in being that blunt. ‘I feel so alone here.’
Ramming his ever-present doubts about Brooke’s veracity to the back of his mind, Lorenzo closed a hand over her limp fingers. ‘But you’re not alone.’
‘Sit down beside me...here, on the bed,’ she heard herself urge.
