Secret Heirs And A Forever Family

Really, it was all good. Except the not remembering part. But that would come back in time. Surely no woman would forget falling in love with Dario De Rossi for long?

‘I…’ She paused. She didn’t want to lie to Dario, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings either. And if they were engaged, she must have agreed to it. ‘I think I remember it.’

‘Do you remember anything about your father? About what happened?’ the doctor said.

Thoughts butted into her head. Not happy, or floaty thoughts, this time, but sharp, discordant, jarring ones. Panic tore at her raw throat, and she began to shake.

The beeping in her ears got louder, more persistent.

‘I don’t…’ She couldn’t speak past the blockage in her throat, that dark, scary figure lurking nearby, encroaching on her peripheral vision. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’

She didn’t know why, but she knew thinking about her father would be bad.

‘Shh, Megan.’ Dario leant over her, still holding her hand; he stroked her hair back from her forehead, the intense look pulling her away from the fear. ‘It’s okay. Look at me, cara.’ He caught her chin in firm fingers, making her concentrate on him, that turbulent blue gaze forcing the fear back. ‘You’re okay. Do you understand?’

The words echoed in her heart, folding around her like a soft blanket, keeping her safe.

‘Yes, but don’t go.’ She wanted to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t stop shaking, the terror still too close.

‘I won’t,’ he said, his voice so determined she knew he meant it. ‘Te lo prometto.’

I promise you.

‘Relax, Megan,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m going to give you something to help with that.’ A warm tingling feeling seeped into her vein, spreading up her arm and enveloping her in a beautiful fog. She floated on it, sinking into the cloud, soothed by the pressure of Dario’s hand and his deep compelling voice telling her again that everything would be okay.

She held on to his hand, knowing it was true, as long as she didn’t let him go.

‘What just happened in there?’ Dario could feel his frustration levels rising as he stalked after Dr Hernandez. He and Katie had been double teaming for ten hours, waiting for Megan to come out of her coma. And now this. ‘How can she remember nothing of the attack?’ he demanded as the doctor stopped at the nurses’ station.

He shoved his fists into the pockets of his trousers, the fear on Megan’s face still haunting him. How had this happened? He didn’t feel less responsible now, he felt more so.

‘Your fiancée has suffered a serious emotional and physical trauma, Mr De Rossi,’ the doctor said with complete equanimity as she jotted something down on Megan’s chart. ‘It’s quite possible she has blanked some of the events from that day.’ The woman’s clear brown gaze focused on his face. ‘The good news is, she remembers you and your engagement. Your presence calmed her down considerably, which will be useful in the weeks and months ahead as she recovers.’

Months. He couldn’t be responsible for her for months. He wasn’t even her real fiancé. He knew he should point this out to Hernandez, but the memory of Megan clutching his hand and looking at him with such faith in her eyes made the words clog in his throat. He could not deny the connection now.

Until Megan was well again, and she had her memory back—all her memories back—she would be defenceless.

‘I can’t believe you proposed after one night!’ Katie appeared at his elbow. ‘That must have been some night.’ The girl’s scepticism was, of course, entirely justified, but the astonished look spiked his annoyance.

‘Your sister is a remarkable woman,’ he heard himself say.

‘I know she is,’ the girl said. ‘But I’m surprised you do.’

He could hear the bite of cynicism in her tone. And it occurred to him that, although Katie was the younger sister, she had none of Megan’s faith in the inherent goodness of people.

‘He certainly never did,’ she added.

‘I am not your father,’ he said, the comparison annoying him more. ‘I appreciate your sister.’

‘I get that, or I guess you wouldn’t have asked her to marry you,’ she said, not sounding convinced. ‘But you still don’t strike me as the sort of guy to fall hopelessly in love in the space of one night.’

She was certainly correct about that.

‘Who said anything about love?’ he asked, his temper kicking up another notch. He didn’t need the fifth degree from a teenager. ‘Megan and I are well matched. And she understands this engagement is one of convenience.’ Or she would, as soon as she regained her memory and he could break it off.

But until then he would have to maintain this fiction. He could not leave Megan so vulnerable.

There was the police investigation to consider, the subsequent trial and, on top of all that, the press, who had been camped outside the hospital for days. How could he leave the young woman who had gripped his hand with such fear in her eyes to fend off all that alone?

Maybe he had not wanted the job, but who else was there? A nineteen-year-old art student was the only other candidate.

‘I don’t believe you.’ Katie interrupted his thoughts. ‘Underneath all her pragmatism and business savvy, Megan’s a romantic. If she agreed to marry you, she must think she’s in love with you.’

‘She needs someone to protect her. I have the money and resources to do that until she is well. She understands that.’

Megan had struck him from the first as a pragmatic young woman, astute and intelligent. Maybe she had a blind spot where her father was concerned, but however fragile her mental state she must have made a choice to agree with Dario’s deception in there. A subconscious choice maybe, but a choice nonetheless. However faulty her memory, she could hardly have remembered a proposal that did not occur.

He flexed his fingers, recalling the feel of her hand, so small, clasping his, as she begged him not to leave her. And another memory swirled in his consciousness, making his lungs squeeze in his chest.

Please save me, Dario.

He took a steadying breath, forcing himself to shake off the debilitating images from his past.

He had to concentrate on the present. The way forward was simple. He could not abandon Megan until she was well. But their situation had nothing to do with love. He and Megan understood that, even if Megan’s sister did not.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m having a go at you,’ Katie said, as the fluorescent lighting caught the bluish smudges under her eyes. The girl was exhausted. She’d been keeping this vigil a great deal longer than he had, he realised. She dragged her hand through her hair. ‘I’m the one who let her walk into that room.’

‘It is pointless to blame yourself.’ He gave the girl an awkward pat on the shoulder. Then shoved his hand back into his pocket.

Consoling distraught teenagers was as far out of his comfort zone as pretending to be someone’s fiancé.

‘You should go home, get some sleep,’ he said. ‘I will stay and ascertain what is to be done next and contact you in the morning.’

Katie looked at him, then back at the door to Megan’s room, clearly torn. He was struck by the closeness of the bond between the two sisters, despite their personality differences. He would do well to remember that.

‘There is little more either one of us can do now,’ he added. He might not want this responsibility, but he was not about to shirk it—until he had come up with a coherent plan for Megan’s recovery.

‘Okay, I guess she trusts you,’ she said. ‘And you did save her life.’

The words should have made him feel more burdened, but, oddly, instead he felt strangely relieved as he watched Megan’s sister leave. As long as he had complete control of the situation, he would be in a position to resolve it, to everyone’s satisfaction.

‘Dr Hernandez…’ He turned to the doctor, who had been scribbling on Megan’s chart while he and Katie talked. ‘Can you tell me when Megan’s memory will return?’ The first order of business was to discover the depths of the problem.

‘I’m afraid not. Medicine is not an exact science, Mr De Rossi. We’ll run some more tests, have her speak to a psychiatrist to ascertain as much as we can about the amnesia. If there is no neurological cause, though, I would expect Megan to remember the events in more detail once she is emotionally strong enough to deal with them.’

‘Get her whatever she needs. Money is no object,’ he said, prepared to pay whatever it took.

‘Either way, she should be ready to leave the hospital in a week or so,’ the doctor continued. ‘Her physical injuries are healing well. And she’ll be able to get the rest and recuperation she needs much better in a home environment.’

He swore under his breath. The doctor was right, of course, but what home environment did she have? She could not return to her old apartment, which had been repossessed as soon as Whittaker had been arrested and the state of his finances revealed. And anyway, it was the site of the attack. Katie was now staying with the girls’ old housekeeper in Brooklyn, having refused his offer of financial aid. But Megan couldn’t stay there—it was too small and would not protect her from press attention. He and Katie had been running the gauntlet of photographers and reporters while taking it in turns to visit the hospital. Megan would need somewhere far away from the media spotlight.

‘By the way, Mr De Rossi,’ the doctor cut into his thoughts as she finished writing on Megan’s chart and handed it back to the nurse. ‘You mentioned the possibility of Megan being pregnant. We ran the test as requested and it came back negative.’

Thank goodness.

Dario’s lungs released, the relief making him light-headed. He’d requested the test a few hours before, his mind finally functioning well enough to realise that Megan might not have had time to take the necessary precautions before her father attacked her. Maybe she hadn’t even needed the emergency contraception. Either way, this at least was good news.

But before he could suck in another calming breath the doctor added, ‘Of course, there’s always a slight chance of a false negative this soon after possible conception, but it’s unlikely.’

A false negative? What on earth did that even mean?

CHAPTER NINE

‘HEY, MAN, WASN’T expecting you tonight.’ Jared yawned, then squinted at Dario out of sleep-deprived eyes.

Dario glanced at his watch. And winced. Two a.m. ‘Sorry, I did not realise the time.’

‘No problem. Come on in.’ His friend wearing only a pair of sweat pants pushed open the heavy metal door to his loft apartment. ‘Want a beer? You look like you could use one,’ Jared added, padding into the apartment ahead of Dario.

He probably shouldn’t have come over at this hour. But for the first time in his life, he needed help and complete confidentiality, and Jared was the only person he trusted that much.

The guy was the closest thing Dario had to family. Or what Dario figured a brother would be like. Someone who would help you out in a jam, no questions asked, but didn’t pry into your private life. And that was what he needed right now. Because he’d been roaming Murray Hill like a zombie for a couple of hours, ever since he’d left Megan at the hospital, trying to figure out a workable solution.

‘You look terrible,’ Jared said as he cracked open a beer and handed it to Dario.

‘It’s been a long four days.’ Dario took the beer and chugged a mouthful of the yeasty lager. Had it really been only four days since he’d had Megan in his arms? Soft and sweet and sobbing for release?

Stop right there, amico.

He took another long pull of lager, struggling to ignore the inevitable swell of heat.

He needed to stop torturing himself with thoughts of that night, because he wasn’t going to have Megan in his arms again. The only way to square the subterfuge with his conscience was if he didn’t sleep with her. She was fragile, emotionally as well as physically, so until she was fully recovered he couldn’t even consider making love to her. He swallowed. Sleeping with her again, he corrected.

And not even then.

She was trusting and innocent and this situation had become far too complex already. He preferred women who knew the score, so that he could keep his sex life simple and his affairs shallow and short-lived. Megan had got under his skin to an extent that no other woman ever had, and circumstances had done the rest. All of which made him supremely uncomfortable.

‘Yeah, I gathered that from the press reports on late-night TV.’ Jared took a swig of his own beer and leaned against the counter top, the searching look only winding the knot in Dario’s gut tighter. ‘How’s the new fiancée doing?’

The beer hit Dario’s tonsils and he jerked forward in mid-sip.

Jared gave him a hearty thump on the back.

‘The press got hold of that already?’ Dario managed at last, his voice a hoarse whisper. Someone at the hospital must have leaked the information—which was all the more reason to get Megan out of there, out of the city, as soon as she was well enough to travel.

‘So it’s true?’ Jared said dispassionately, but the relaxed pose was history. ‘You guys are engaged?’

‘Yes,’ Dario said, his tired brain starting to knot along with his gut. He needed to get some sleep. He’d been running on adrenaline for hours; it was dulling his thought processes.

‘You want to tell me how that happened?’ Jared said.

‘It’s complicated,’ Dario said.

‘I gathered that.’ Jared picked his beer back up off the counter, and used it to point at the long leather couches that made up the apartment’s seating area. ‘Let’s take a load off.’ He led the way across the large open-plan living space. Dario followed.

Jared settled on one of the luxury couches. The leather creaked as he propped his bare feet on the coffee table. And waited for Dario to speak. The younger man’s pragmatic presence helped to settle the nerves dancing in Dario’s stomach as he stared out at the night time NoHo cityscape visible through the wall of glass that had replaced the old loft’s loading bay doors. But the compulsion to explain the situation to Jared still surprised him.

He never talked about his personal life to anyone. He’d been a self-contained unit since he was eight years old. Had forced himself to be. Leaning on other people, relying on them, just made you weak. But his personal life hadn’t been this complicated ever. And he hadn’t been blindsided like this, by events beyond his control, since he was that eight-year-old boy. And he didn’t like it, because that was a feeling he’d promised himself he’d never have again.

‘Megan doesn’t remember what happened with her father,’ he said, fixing his gaze on the blinking light of a plane above the dark shapes of the city’s skyline. ‘They ran some tests, got the opinion of the top psychologist in NYC and a head trauma specialist from Baltimore who’s supposed to be the best in her field.’ He’d had the woman flown in especially, to give a second opinion. ‘They don’t think the memory loss is to do with her head injury, which was minor.’ The relief he felt at that piece of information was still palpable. ‘More likely it’s to do with the emotional trauma. A form of PTSD. A man Megan loved and trusted turned on her like an animal, so she’s blacked it out.’

He drew his thumbnail through the label on the beer bottle, watched it tear into jagged pieces.

There was only one thing to do. It didn’t matter if it would complicate his life for a while. Seeing Megan’s anguish when Hernandez had mentioned her father, her vibrant hair rioting around that alabaster face and her deep emerald eyes wild with terror, had pulled at something deep inside him that he could not deny. She’d gripped his fingers as if he were the only solid object in the midst of a hurricane. She needed him and he couldn’t simply desert her.

‘I see what you mean by complicated,’ Jared said.

Dario looked up from his contemplation of the beer bottle, remembering his friend was there.

‘She needs rest and as little stress as possible, according to the doctors,’ he said. ‘The press furore is only going to get more insane when Whittaker is charged. I think it is best if I take her out of the country. If she is my fiancée I am in a position to make those arrangements, to keep her safe and protected until she recovers.’

Jared sent him a level stare. ‘If? So this isn’t a real engagement. Does she know that?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. But she has accepted it without question, so it hardly matters,’ Dario said. Maybe it was complicated and confused, but it all made perfect sense if you looked at it rationally.

Megan was in no position to make these decisions for herself. And even if she hadn’t been assaulted, Dario didn’t trust her to make sensible decisions about her own safety. She was far too trusting at the best of times, and these were not the best of times.

‘Okay.’ Jared leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees—accepting Dario’s reasoning.

But then, he hadn’t expected Jared to question him.

His friend was even more cynical about relationships than he was. To the best of Dario’s knowledge, Jared had never kept a lover for more than one night. Manhattan high society was strewn with the bruised hearts of women Jared had cast off before they could mean anything to him. He suspected that emotional isolation had something to do with Jared’s childhood, or rather the lack of it, but he’d never asked; any more than he had asked about the cigarette burns on his friend’s forearms, which were barely visible now, or the other scars that had faded in the years since he’d offered Jared a bed for the night in his apartment, before referring the homeless boy to the proper authorities. Because Jared’s past was none of his business.

‘I was going to work up a report for you on the case,’ Jared said. ‘You want the high points, before we discuss the particulars of how you’re going to get your new fiancée out of the country?’ Jared asked, the efficient, down-to-earth approach reassuring.

Dario nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Just as you suspected, Megan’s father was high as a kite when he attacked her,’ Jared began. ‘According to my contact in the NYPD he’s had a major cocaine habit for years. His girlfriend Annalise Maybury—now his ex-girlfriend—told the detectives as much under questioning. And there’s something else, something I found out on my own after doing some digging,’ Jared continued, the cynicism in his voice even sharper than usual. ‘They’re not his daughters.’

‘What?’

‘Megan and her sister, they’re not his biological kids. He’s known for years—got them paternity tested without their knowledge when they were children after the mom ran off with one of her lovers. Whittaker only kept them around, pretended he was still their old man, because he was busy mooching off the trust fund their mom left them. Which is all gone now, just in case you were wondering.’

‘Bastardo!’ Dario’s anger curled around his heart, turning from red-hot rage to ice-cold fury.

He’d known Whittaker was a poor excuse for a CEO, and an even worse excuse for a father. But he’d never suspected the cocaine use, or the violence, so adding embezzlement and exploitation to that didn’t seem like much of a stretch. But how much more vulnerable did this make Megan?

Megan and her sister had no money. And the press were bound to find out the truth about her parentage and splash it all over the papers and the Internet to feed the public’s insatiable hunger for scandal. He’d seen the paparazzi shots of her as a teenager at her mother’s funeral. She’d been scared and alone but also fiercely protective of her little sister.

When the press got hold of this story, it would be worse.

The memory of the welts on Megan’s shoulder blades leapt out from the recesses of his tired mind, only to blur into a bloodier, more terrifying image. The sickening thuds of fists hitting flesh, the high-pitched sound of his mother’s screams and the scent of stale cigarette smoke and cheap chianti assaulted him.

‘Hey, man, are you okay?’

Jared’s question drew him back to the present.

He blocked the image out, the way he had learned to over the years. But the return of the old nightmare left him shaken. His hand trembled as he took a last swig of his beer. Something he did not need Jared, or anyone else, to see.

‘Yes.’ He placed the bottle on the table between them. ‘Can you give this information to the police?’

‘Sure. I’ll send them a copy of my report. Anything else you need on this?’

‘I need your help to get Megan and her sister, Katie, out of the country without alerting the press as soon as Megan is well enough to travel. And me as well.’ His mind was made up. There was no other solution. And with Katie there as a chaperone, he ought to find it easier to keep his mind out of the gutter.

Megan’s memory would return soon, he had to believe that, because he intended to do everything in his power to ensure she felt safe and secure and well rested enough for that to happen—which included him being by her side. And when her memory did return, he wanted to be there. Just in case there were other complications.

The possibility of a pregnancy was small, according to Hernandez, after she had dropped her bombshell about a false negative on the test, and he wasn’t going to worry about it overmuch. But he also wasn’t taking any chances.

‘I’d advise against taking the kid sister with you,’ Jared said, interrupting Dario’s thoughts.

‘What? Why?’

‘She might need to be available for Whittaker’s arraignment,’ he said.

‘But surely our sworn statements are enough until the case comes to trial?’ Dario asked. Witnesses weren’t usually called for an arraignment.

‘True enough, but I wouldn’t risk it. Whittaker might be low on funds, but he’s no fool. He’s managed to beg, borrow and steal enough for a top-flight legal team. He’s saying you inflicted the wounds on your lover in a jealous rage. Neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office are buying that. But if Megan’s lost her memory, Katie is the only reliable witness to the actual assault. You can make a good case for taking Megan out of the country to recuperate until the trial, and if you’re her fiancé it makes sense for you to go with her. But you spirit Katie out of the country too, just before the guy’s arraigned, and I guarantee you Whittaker’s defence team will try and use it. The kid sister stays, or you’re taking a risk of this case not even getting to trial.’

Dario swore, his head starting to pound. ‘Okay, Katie stays. I’ll tell her tomorrow. She won’t like it.’ And neither did he. Being alone with her big sister wasn’t going to make resisting Megan any easier. ‘We cannot risk having Whittaker weasel out of paying for what he has done. Katie will understand that.’ Because he suspected, unlike Megan, Katie had never had any delusions about their father. Or rather, the man who had pretended to be their father. ‘Can I ask you another favour in that case?’

‘Fire away,’ Jared said.

‘Can you protect Katie from the press once we’re gone?’ The girl was brave and bold, but she was also reckless and unpredictable and young.

Jared nodded. ‘Consider it done.’

‘I should warn you though,’ Dario said, recalling his run-in with Katie earlier that day. ‘She may not be co-operative. She is not as trusting or as amenable as Megan.’

‘I think I can handle a hot-headed kid,’ Jared said. ‘I happen to be a professional.’

Dario’s lips lifted in what felt like his first smile in days at the wry tone. ‘Thanks.’

Downing the rest of the beer, Dario got up from the couch and shook Jared’s hand. ‘I’ll speak to Katie tomorrow.’ Not a conversation he was looking forward to. ‘In the meantime, can you liaise with the police and the prosecutor’s office to let them know what’s going on? Then work up a plan to get us out of the country undetected.’