Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride

She nodded, swallowing her regrets and forcing herself to get back to normal. “I think so. It is so beautiful here.”

“Yes.” He looked around again. “Inspirational, even.” He raked fingers through his thick dark hair. “And you’re telling me I didn’t do any sketches while I was here with you?”

“No. Not a one.”

“Strange.”

She shrugged. “Maybe you had other things on your mind.”

He felt a smile forming and gave in to it. “You mean, like that romance thing you were talking about?” he teased her.

She gave him a look and didn’t answer that. Instead, she tried to get back to business.

“Okay, take a good look. Doesn’t anything ring a bell? Tickle your memory? Bring on a feeling of déjà vu?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “No. Not a thing.”

She shaded her eyes and looked at the ocean. It seemed to go on forever. Sometimes being on an island could feel lonely. Everything she’d grown up with was so far away. She didn’t often get that feeling, but right now, she had a little hint of it. And it chilled her a bit. There was reality to face here.

She was going to have a baby. Marco’s baby. Just the thought made her catch her breath and feel ill, so she pushed it away. She would think about that and all its implications once they found his plans and got him safely off the island. Then she would decide what she was going to do. Until then, she had to pretend everything was normal.

Looking up and down the beach, she felt a quiver of nostalgia.

“You really don’t remember this?” She waved her arm in an arc as though indicating the whole panorama before them. “Not even a little tiny bit?”

He shoved his hands down into the pockets of his slacks and hunched over, looking uncomfortable. “That’s right. I don’t get any memory vibes at all.”

She shook her head, looking at him as though she had a hard time believing what he’d said.

“How could you have forgotten?”

She said it softly, more to herself than to him. She remembered. She bit her lower lip and let recollection flow. Their first kiss had happened right there by the jagged outcropping of volcanic rocks. She’d been showing him how the waves had broken through that part of the reef and came rushing in to the shore, depleting as they came but still carrying enough force to make a great display of sea foam against the rocks. As she turned to see if he was impressed, she’d found he was studying her instead of the ocean.

“I love when you get so excited about something,” he had said softly, reaching out to push back a strand of hair that had come loose and was falling across her face. “Your eyes sparkle and your face lights up with a glow, like rose petals.”

She’d blushed, right there on the beach. There was something so sweet and simple about his words and yet they conveyed a warmth she wasn’t used to in men she’d dated. Maybe it was the slight Italian accent, maybe it was the honesty in his tone, the earnest pleasure in his face, but something had struck a spark in her and she’d lifted her face and reached for him.

His arms had come around her and his mouth had found hers, warm and hungry in the coolness of the ocean spray. She’d loved his kiss from the first, and his hard body excited her in ways she didn’t expect. Despite the reputation she’d had over the years, she didn’t usually feel passion with the men she knew. What she did feel was a sort of desperation, a need to blot out loneliness, a hunger for something she never did find. So the sense of sweet desire he conjured up surprised her and took her breath away.

Embarrassed, unsure of how to deal with the new feelings, she’d had to pull away quickly, laughing. Then she ran away and he’d followed her, chasing across the beach until he’d caught her, tackled her from behind and they both went down into the sand.

She treasured that day. She was pretty sure she’d never feel another like it. But that was then. This was now. She glanced at him sideways. How could he be that same person and yet not have that experience in his memory? It was like dating a twin or something.

Suddenly, she wanted him to kiss her again. The feeling swept over her like a wave and she could hardly breathe. She knew how dangerous this was, and that she had to fight it. She was being tossed around by a current of emotion, and she had to remember to keep her head above water.

This isn’t really the man you thought he was, she told herself silently. He turned out to be a deceiver. It wouldn’t be the same.

She knew that. But she still wanted his kiss, ached for it. Turning away, she ran again, just as she had the other day, but this time she wasn’t laughing. Just like before, he followed her. Had she known he would? Had she done this because she was sure of it? She really didn’t know, but when he caught her, when he pulled her around to face him and took her face between his hands and touched his lips to hers, she heard a soft cry and realized, to her horror, that it was hers.

But she forgot that soon enough. His mouth on hers was hard and soft at the same time, cool and hot, rough and smooth. Her arms slipped into a circle around his neck, and she arched her body into his. It felt right and natural, and she wanted him so badly.

The wind tossed her hair and the sun was hot on her shoulders, but all she knew was the smooth warmth of his mouth, the hard excitement of his body, the thrill as his hands began to move up under her shirt.

No. She had to stop this. If she didn’t, she would just be repeating her last mistakes, doing it all over again, falling for a man who wasn’t what he pretended to be. Surely she couldn’t be this stupid. Could she?

Chapter Six

GATHERING ALL HER STRENGTH, Shayna pulled away.

“Shayna…” Marco tried to pull her back again.

“No, don’t say anything,” she said, backing away, her eyes huge with remorse as she fooled with her hair, pulling it back into the ponytail band. “That was a mistake. A big, big mistake. I didn’t mean to do it and…”

His face changed. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that was pain in his dark eyes.

“Don’t say you wish it hadn’t happened,” he told her roughly. “Just don’t tell me that.”

His tone caught her by surprise. He seemed to feel strongly about it. But what the heck, so did she. Her chin rose. “All right. I won’t tell you. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

He looked at her for a moment, then the anger slipped away and he relaxed until he had a soft laugh for her. Shaking his head, he said, “Shayna, you can twist things around so that they mean exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to mean. You drive me nuts.”

“The feeling is mutual,” she said, trying to maintain a huffy exterior but failing on all counts. She shook her head, exasperated but somewhat amused at the same time. “This is too much. You’re doing just exactly what you did before.”

His face was a picture of innocence. “What I did before? What did I do?”

She threw out her hands. “These patterns must be ingrained in you somewhere. Even if your mind doesn’t remember, your body does.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Your body doesn’t have amnesia, Marco. Isn’t that remarkable?”

He frowned, trying to understand her. “Will you tell me what you’re talking about?”

She heaved a sigh and shrugged. “You’re re-creating what happened when I brought you here the first time.”

He made a face. “Because I kissed you?”

“Yes.”

His brow furrowed over that one. “Shayna, any man worth his salt is going to want to kiss you, anytime, anywhere. He doesn’t need to have his body especially trained for it.”

“Oh!” He was being frustratingly dense and she gave up, turning away. “Never mind.” She looked toward the sea, then back at him. “So that’s over now. Don’t feel this changes anything. We’re back to being wary adversaries.”

“We are?” He looked adorably bewildered. “I mean…I didn’t realize that was what we were in the first place.”

“You don’t pay attention.” She studied him, the set of his jaw, the way his eyelashes made lacy shadows across his cheeks in the sunlight, the slight stubble of his beard that was beginning to show, his mouth—oh how she wanted to kiss that mouth again. Against her will, her own smile surfaced.

“Oh, just forget it,” she said in semidespair. “What just happened never happened. Okay? Come on, I’ll show you some caves.”

She started off across the sand, only looking back to see if he was following. He was, though more slowly than she would like. He was obviously thinking over what had happened, even after she’d told him not to. That made her smile, but she turned so he wouldn’t see.

“Here they are,” she said, stopping before an area that looked like an ordinary landslide of rocks.

“Where?” he asked, coming up behind her.

“Look closely,” she said, pointing out the opening.

“Not bad,” he told her admiringly. “I never would have noticed them on my own.”

They had to lower themselves over the slide and then wedge themselves between a couple of large rocks, but finally they were inside, and it was breathtaking. The air was cool, the light was filtered and the ceilings were ten feet high.

“It’s like being in a natural cathedral,” Marco said, speaking softly as though in respect.

“Isn’t it?” She nodded. “I love this place. Come here.” She showed him where they could lie on their stomachs in the cool sand and look out through an opening at the waves on the reef.

“This is like a World War II pillbox,” he told her. “I’ve been in some up in the Marianas Islands.”

“But this isn’t man-made,” she noted.

He turned to look at her, lying so close beside him and yet untouchable—at least if they played by her rules. This wasn’t going to work. Everything she did today was turning him on. If she only knew the thoughts that were going through his head—no body memories needed.

“This is interesting,” he said a bit impatiently, “but you’re getting us off the track. We’re looking for my plans.”

“I know.”

He shrugged and glanced around the edges of the cave. “Have I been here before?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t bring you here.”

“Then why are we here?”

She settled back into a comfortable position, propped by an elbow. “I thought it was a good place to use to go over your memories and try to figure out how and when they stopped.”

“Sounds reasonable. But we’ve got to stay focused or we’ll never find anything.”

“Agreed.”

He met her gaze and winced, as though her eyes were too bright for him. Frowning slightly, he turned his head. “Okay. I’m ready. Ask me anything.”

“I’m not going to ask. You’re going to tell.”

He looked back warily. “Tell what?”

She’d hoped he would be spontaneous about it, but if he needed prompting, she was ready to do that, as well.

“Okay, here’s my idea. Why don’t we backtrack? Try to take your memory up as far as it goes. Maybe that will trigger something.”

He shrugged. Lying here in the cool sand on the floor of a sea cave seemed a strange setting for this, but you never did know what might set off recollections. Actually, her suggestion sounded better than anything he’d received from the psychiatrist.

“Okay. I remember…” He closed his eyes and threw his head back, leaning into the sand. “I remember about a month ago, I was considering three or four different places for my vacation. I wanted a place that was off the beaten path. I needed to rest. I’d just had a big career setback and I needed space and time to use to recover and regroup.”

“A career setback? What do you mean?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I told you about the designer who has been dogging my steps. He actually did steal some plans from me at one point.” He grimaced. “At least, I think he did. The plans he submitted were so close…” He shook his head and grimaced, remembering when Glendenning Hudson had shown him what his rival was offering for sale. “Anyway, just knowing that such unique thinking so close to mine was out there shook me at first. I couldn’t prove they were actually stolen from me, but I wanted to take some time to evaluate the matter and figure out how I was going to get inspiration back. I needed to get away, get my head straight and come up with some new ideas for racing design. I wanted to get back my momentum.”

She nodded. All perfectly understandable. “So you were trying to decide where to go. What were the possible places?”

“Tahiti. The Caribbean. I was also thinking about going back home to Italy, just to lick my wounds.”

She smiled at the picture that conjured up. But her smile quickly faded as she realized the next logical step in this journey. She was going to have to ask him the question that might restore his memory of why he’d come here in the first place. Would he suddenly snap his fingers and say, “Oh, right. It was your father who sent me here and he wanted me to bring you back. How could I forget that?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Carefully positioning herself so that she watch him closely, she asked, “How did you happen to think of coming here?”

His eyes narrowed as he considered the question. She waited, holding her breath. But when he started talking, she let it out again. It was obvious he didn’t remember what she’d feared at all.

“That was a bit odd. Not like my usual decisions. But I’d seen pictures of these islands in the office of my most important client. Glendenning Hudson, in fact. We were talking about him last night. Every time I visited his office, I couldn’t take my eyes off those pictures. They haunted me. The geography was so unique, so beautiful, so peaceful and calm. I just felt I had to go there.”

She looked away, relief mixed with a sense of eerie coincidence. She knew exactly what he meant. She’d sat in that same office and been mesmerized by those same pictures. She could visualize it now, the large pictures that covered the walls, the huge models of racing yachts on pedestals beneath the pictures. It was quite a scene, and one she’d grown up with. When she’d decided to hide herself away from her old life, these islands had been the first place she’d thought of. The only thing that had made her hesitate was fear that it would be the first place her father would look for her, as well.

But she’d risked it. She knew her father’s visits to the islands were from twenty years before. He hadn’t been there since and probably didn’t think of them as relevant to her in any way. And for a long time, it had looked as though she’d guessed right. She kept in touch with her old life through her lawyer. He sent reports and called once a month to check on how she was doing. He also let her father know she was okay, though he did it anonymously so as not to suffer the wrath of Glendenning Hudson. She knew her father was searching for her, but he was one of the main reasons she’d had to run from her old life, and she couldn’t risk seeing him until she was sure she was strong enough to tell him she wasn’t going to be his tagalong ever again. It was only now that she’d had time and space to sit back and look at her life that she realized how much he had used her to enhance his own image. And how he would just use her again if she went back.

“Never going back.” That was what she said to herself every morning after she’d washed her face and looked up into the mirror. “Never, ever going back.”

But she knew he thought he needed her. He was just too big a personality to let her find her own way. He loved it when she trailed along in his orbit.

She’d been nervous when she’d first arrived, jumpy, always sure her father or one of his assistants would show up and ruin everything. But as the weeks passed and that didn’t happen, she’d begun to relax.

And then Marco had arrived.

He talked about her father’s office and the work he’d done for her father without hesitation, making her think his memory loss must include what she assumed was that original assignment to come after her. She only hoped he didn’t remember it until she got him back off the island. Of course, that all presupposed that this was all on the up-and-up—that he was telling her the truth. That this wasn’t just a ruse to get her to let her guard down.

She looked at him strangely. She wanted to believe him. She was ready to believe him. Yes, she’d pretty much accepted that he really didn’t remember that she was the daughter of the man whose pictures he’d been so taken by.

“I went to bed that night determined to make my decision in the morning,” he was saying. “And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital. Almost three weeks had gone by. At that point, I couldn’t even remember who I was.”

She felt a pang of guilt. Sometimes she forgot that he had been in a very bad accident and that he was still suffering. “But most of it came back to you?”

“Yes, little by little. It was some time before I realized no more was coming and I’d just lost two weeks of my life.” He sighed. “Now I want to recapture those weeks.”

“What if they don’t come back to you?”

“Then at least I’ll have your memories to use.” He raised one sleek dark eyebrow her way. “You’re going to tell me everything.”

She stared at him. That wasn’t likely, was it? Did he really think that?

Reaching out, he touched her cheek with the flat of his hand. “You are going to help me remember, aren’t you?” he asked her softly.

Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. “No,” she said quickly, pushing his hand away. “But I will try to help you find the plans you think you’ve lost. I’ve already been doing that. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

He gave her a bittersweet smile. “Here’s an idea. Maybe we should try out more kissing for a while. That might break the logjam.”

She rolled her eyes. “In your dreams.”

“Why not?” Reaching out again, he took a strand of her hair this time and curled it with his fingers. “The evidence suggests you and I were pretty close a few weeks ago.”

She hesitated, then took a deep breath. “We were close at one point. However, by the time you left, we weren’t.”

He frowned, studying her. “The picture…”

“The picture depicts a time before I knew who you really were.” The words were out before she could stop them and she waited, heart beating, for what he would have to say.

His frown had deepened and he obviously thought this whole situation curiouser and curiouser. “So you found out I design fast sailboats. Was that so horrifying you felt you had to drop me like a bad penny?”

She closed her eyes. He still didn’t remember. “Yes.”

“Why?”

She opened her eyes and stared straight into his. “You really don’t remember, do you? Don’t worry. At some point it will come to you.”

Jumping to her feet, she began to brush off the sand. “We’d better get out of here before the tide comes up,” she noted. “Come on. I’m going to take you to visit with an odd friend of mine.”

He straightened reluctantly. “Did you say an odd friend or an old friend?”

She grinned. “Gigi is very definitely odd,” she explained. “And though she’s probably in her forties, she wouldn’t appreciate being called old at all. And doesn’t act it, either.”

They squeezed out through the opening and soon were back on solid sand, marching along toward where they had left the Vespa.

“I take it I’ve met this lady before?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.” She stifled a knowing grin. “Maybe seeing her again will be the shock that starts you on the road to recovery.”

“Sounds good.”

Did it? Shayna sighed. Maybe so. She was certainly getting tired of hiding things from him and waiting to see if he were hiding things from her. She yearned to be free and open with him, to hear his explanation for what he’d done, to tell him her side. He was actually a great guy. Wasn’t he? All evidence seemed to support that. There was only that original flaw—the fact that he’d lied to her. But maybe they could fix that. It wasn’t likely, actually, but if they didn’t try…

Did she dare start that conversation off? Maybe. Maybe soon. If she couldn’t get him to leave, at least she could help him wake up to the reasons he should go.

“Shayna, I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth.” He stopped himself and almost laughed. “Let me start that over,” he said smoothly. “Shayna, I appreciate all you’re doing to help me,” he amended quickly. “But I need to know one thing. How is all this running around the island going to help me find my plans?”

She struck a pose before him. “We’re re-creating your stay. I’m taking you around to see all the places you visited while you were here.”

He looked pained. “But I didn’t carry my portfolio along with me, did I? After all, you saw all my papers right there in the hotel room that last day.”

“Good point,” she agreed breezily, turning on her heel and starting off again. “But you’re overlooking one thing. The people I’m taking you to see were people who came in to see you off that day. There’s a chance they might have seen something, or you might even have given them your papers for safekeeping. Plus, you told me that you always made two sets of papers. I only saw one. You said you often mailed them ahead in a cardboard tube.”

“True.”

“And, bottom line,” she said with a carefree shrug, sashaying in front of him toward the scooter, “seeing these places and people again might just jog your memory.”

Funny how he was finding her more and more appealing. He smiled at her, as indulgent as a lover. “Okay. I’m sold.”

They’d reached the Vespa. Marco turned back for one last look at the gorgeous beach line, but Shayna was still mulling over the possible hiding places for finding his plans. She turned to him.

“Marco, about your portfolio. You carried it separately from your main luggage?”

He nodded. “Sometimes. Sometimes I was able to get it all put into one bag. I just can’t remember what I did that day.”

She frowned. “But the second set…I wonder where it was. I don’t remember seeing it at all.”

He took hold of her shoulders, staring down into her face. “Okay, think back. Try to remember everything you can about the plans, from the first to the last.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see you working on any plans until that last day. You didn’t do it when I was around. Maybe you did it in your hotel room, probably when I was at work at Kimo’s Café. But whenever we were together, you weren’t talking about any plans.”

“Okay, so you came into the room and what did you see?”

She gazed up at him. He was serious about this. When he talked about the missing designs, she saw an intensity he didn’t seem to have about anything else.

“I’ve told you. Your papers were spread out all over the floor where you were organizing them.”

“And that was the first you knew about me designing yachts.”

“Yes.”

His hands dropped from her shoulders and he turned to stare at the horizon. That was odd and didn’t seem like him at all. He hadn’t thought about this much, but it was a mystery why he wouldn’t have told her from the beginning. And this calling himself “Smith” was just another puzzle in the game. He must have had some rationale, but what in the world could it have been?

The only thing he could think of was that he’d decided to stay on Ranai under an assumed name so that Salvo Ricktorre couldn’t find him and send his spies out. That was probably it. But why carry the pretense to such lengths that he wouldn’t have told Shayna the truth? That he actively hid it from her? He really couldn’t fathom that one.

He frowned, kicking the toe of his shoe into the sand. “What’s your theory on that?” he asked her, looking up from under his brows.

That startled her. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Why do you think I didn’t tell you I was a yacht designer?”

Oh, that. She knew the answer to that, but she wasn’t going to tell him. Quickly, she batted the question away. “Why do you think?”