Modern Romance April 2020 Books 1-4

Trembling, Brooke lifted the tabloid newspaper, shaken to see the photo of her in the blue dress she had worn at the clinic now adorning the front page. She recalled the friendly nurse who had asked if she could take a picture on her phone. Brooke had said yes, had believed that it was the dress that the woman was interested in. She hadn’t known enough about safeguarding herself from such exploitation to say, no, sorry, she conceded in dismay. So, it was absolutely her fault, just as Lorenzo believed, that that picture was in a newspaper.

‘Obviously it was more than your vanity could bear to have the press speculating that you could be scarred or in a wheelchair!’ Lorenzo bit out in raw condemnation. ‘You tell me you don’t want media attention and then you do...this? You give an interview to them? Madre di Dio, why the hell am I acting surprised?’

‘An interview?’ she whispered, turning the page with shaking fingers, intimidated more than she liked to admit by his sheer dark fury. There was more volatile emotion than she had ever thought he possessed emanating from him and lacing the atmosphere with brutal tension. Unfortunately, it wasn’t how she would’ve wanted to discover that he was much more emotional in nature than he was prepared to show.

‘Sì, an interview. While I’m busy hiring extra security to protect you, you’re still feeding the fire to gain the attention you crave from your admirers!’

Brooke took a mental step back from the toweringly tall, dark man raging over her and concentrated on the article. She was quick to recognise that stray comments she had made and medical info that should’ve been kept confidential had been cobbled together and leaked in the form of an interview that had been faked. ‘I didn’t give anyone an interview, Lorenzo. I did let one of the nurses take a photo of me and I’m sorry she gave it to the press, but I didn’t exactly know who I was supposed to be then or that I shouldn’t allow that,’ she confided uncomfortably. ‘Read it properly and you’ll see I’m telling the truth. It’s a fake interview. I wouldn’t want people to know that I’m suffering from amnesia because that’s embarrassing—’

‘Unfortunately for you,’ Lorenzo countered glacially, ‘I already know that I can’t trust a word you say because you’re a gifted liar. You lie about the most ridiculous things and then shrug indifferently when the truth comes out. I’ve never been able to trust you!’

While Brooke had contrived to remain calm and in control while Lorenzo vented his wrath over a naïve mistake she had made, those words fell on her like hand grenades that exploded on contact with her shrinking body. In shock, she drew up her knees and hugged them. All her natural colour had gone into retreat while her tummy stirred sickly. She had told her husband lies and he had found her out in them? She was a liar? It dawned on her then that for the very first time Lorenzo was giving her what he deemed to believe was the absolute truth about herself, yet only raw anger had drawn that honesty from him. For just a few minutes he had forgotten to treat her like someone too delicate to handle reality.

All of a sudden, she was being forced to face the fact that, regardless of how hard she had tried to explain away her husband’s cool attitude towards her, their relationship did have problems. Indeed, Lorenzo saw her as a liar he couldn’t trust. Shaken and appalled by that revelation, she rocked back and forth where she sat, struggling to deal with that new sobering knowledge.

Lorenzo stared down at her and then he blinked and the explosive rage that had powered him, most ironically a rage that had never once seized him with Brooke before, vanished as though it had never been. Stricken by what he had dumped on her in a temper, he came down on the side of the bed and hauled in a deep shuddering breath, cursing his lack of control and the damage he had inflicted. She looked so small, so lost, so unlike the woman he remembered, the woman he needed to bury and forget about because that version of Brooke might never return, he finally acknowledged.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper,’ Lorenzo conceded heavily and reached for her hand. ‘When I saw that paper, a fuse just blew somewhere inside me and—’

‘We’re both living in a very stressful situation,’ Brooke pointed out in a wobbly undertone. ‘It’s sure to be affecting you as well.’

Lorenzo didn’t feel that he was in a stressful situation because naturally he was in possession of facts she had yet to learn. But he did feel guilty, horrendously guilty for shouting at her, condemning her and causing her distress. When her hand pulled away from his, rejecting that hold, he was disconcerted by that withdrawal.

‘You don’t need to pretend any longer, Lorenzo,’ Brooke sighed in explanation. ‘You’ve let the cat out of the bag. We don’t have a good marriage, which actually explains a lot.’

Unprepared for that far-reaching conclusion being reached at such speed, Lorenzo hesitated only a moment before reaching across the bed and bundling her small resisting figure into his arms and settling her down across his long muscular thighs with an intimacy he had never dared to embrace before. ‘No, it only explains that I have a terrible temper, which I usually manage to keep in check,’ he breathed as he heard her swallow back the sobs making her tremble within his grasp. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘But you said I was always telling lies and that you couldn’t trust me!’ Brooke sobbed outright.

Lorenzo was usually very fast at thinking on the back foot, as it were, but a quicksilver tongue somehow evaded him when he had Brooke struggling to hold back sobs in his arms. He had done that; he alone had distressed her to that extent. Yet she had borne every unsettling, scary development bravely from the outset of her recuperation. Even so, he had, and for the second time, reduced her to tears. He felt like a complete heel. When had he become so tough, bitter and selfish that he only went through the motions of giving her a roof over her head while at the same time utterly ignoring her presence in every other way? Of course, she had noticed that he wasn’t behaving like a husband, of course she had become anxious about it.

‘Did I lie about money?’ Brooke whispered chokily. ‘I mean, I can see by that wardrobe that I was kind of a bit...spendthrift.’

Lorenzo seized on that option with intense relief. He was rich enough to support a thousand spendthrift wives but rows over extravagance and lies concerning that extravagance were far less damaging to her self-image than the truth would be. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, relieved to feel some of the jerking rigidity in her small frame drain away. ‘Nothing I couldn’t deal with, but you kept on doing it.’

‘Well, I won’t any more,’ Brooke whispered shakily, the worst of her crushing anxiety draining away. ‘I promise you, absolutely promise that I won’t tell you any lies or spend too much money. There’s no limit on those credit cards you gave me, is there?’

Lorenzo breathed in deep and slow. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that now. You’ve only spent a couple of hundred pounds since you arrived,’ he reminded her ruefully. ‘Believe me, you can be a lot more spendthrift than that. I don’t want you worrying about that either.’

‘Maybe getting married to someone with money like you have sort of went to my head and I got carried away,’ Brooke suggested thoughtfully.

Lorenzo registered the one salient fact that he should have shared with her sooner. ‘No, you weren’t penniless when I married you—your father left you a decent trust fund. He was an affluent wine importer and you were an only child.’

Brooke focused huge violet eyes on him as she flung her head back. ‘I have money of my own?’ she exclaimed incredulously.

‘Yes, although we agreed when we married that I would take care of all the bills.’

But Brooke was still gripped by amazement that she had her own money. ‘That really surprises me because I don’t feel like I’ve ever had money. I suppose that sounds weird to you when I obviously have, but everything like the staff here and the limousines and the grandeur makes me feel...overwhelmed,’ she finally confided. ‘I assumed it was because I hadn’t had time yet to become accustomed to your lifestyle.’

‘Your parents weren’t rich, only comfortably off,’ Lorenzo suggested, the feel of her body heat, the brush of her breasts against his shirtfront and her proximity combining to increase the hard arousal thrumming at his groin and remind him of just how long it had been since he had had sex. As gently as he could, he scooped her up, rose upright and laid her back down on the bed. ‘You should rest. I upset you.’

Brooke sat up again. ‘I’m fine now. The nurse that took that photo was called Lizzie and if you read the supposed interview, you can see it’s just put-together stuff aside of the amnesia.’

Lorenzo lifted the paper he had slapped down in front of her and spread his free hand, long brown fingers flexing. ‘My temper went off like a rocket. I didn’t read it and I’ll inform the clinic about the nurse.’

‘I don’t want her to get in trouble!’ Brooke protested.

‘She sold a photo of you and revealed confidential medical facts. The clinic needs to protect their patients,’ Lorenzo murmured smoothly, still incensed by the condemnation he had immediately laid at his wife’s door and the distress the episode had caused her.

The distress he had created by jumping to conclusions without proof and venting freely. He swore to himself that it would be the very last time he awarded blame to her on the basis of her past sins. He really hadn’t thought through the extent of the responsibility he was taking on in bringing her back to what had once been her home. And now he was stuck fast, neither married nor divorced, his own life in limbo alongside hers...

And for how long could he tolerate that injustice?

Lorenzo returned to the bank. Brooke went out to the garden, which she loved, strolling along gravel paths, enjoying the sunlight and the flowers and greenery all around her. A little dog bounded out from below the trees and began to bark at her. Brooke laughed because it was a tiny little thing, a mop of tousled multi-shaded brown hair on four spindly legs.

‘Now who do you belong to?’ she asked, settling down on a bench when natural curiosity brought the dog closer. He jumped up against her legs, more than willing to invite attention. She petted him, lifted him and discovered that he was a girl and laughed again, letting her curl up on her lap and settle there.

The gardener nearby, engaged in freshening up a bed with new plants, glanced across the sunken garden at them in apparent surprise. When she moved on, the little dog followed at her heels and she said to the gardener. ‘Who does the dog belong to?’

‘Topsy’s yours, Mrs Tassini,’ he said without hesitation and she realised that her amnesia was no longer a secret, if it ever had been, in the household.

Only a slight flush on her cheeks, Brooke walked on before stooping to pet the little animal. Her dog had found the way back to her and she smiled, delighted to discover that she had a pet and that she liked animals. It was uplifting to learn that there had been a positive side to the self she no longer remembered because so far she only appeared to be finding out negative stuff, she conceded ruefully, thinking about the extravagance and the lies that had clearly damaged her marriage. At the same time though, it was better to be forewarned that there could be further obstacles ahead, she reflected ruefully. What else had she done that she would be ashamed to find out?

At least, Lorenzo had resisted the very human urge to just dump all her mistakes on her at once, she thought fondly. That had been generous of him in the circumstances. He was doing everything by the book and shielding her from unpleasant truths. How could she not love a man like that?

Brooke dressed for dinner that evening with greater care than usual. Finally, she surveyed her reflection in one of the several mirrors in the dressing room and something strange happened. For a timeless instant as she gazed into the mirror, she became dizzy and she saw another woman. No, it wasn’t another woman, she realised with a spooked shiver of reaction, it was herself clad in a black jacket with her hair straight and wearing a different red dress. She had been sitting in the back of a limousine. She blinked rapidly and realised that she had finally remembered something from the past and she couldn’t wait to tell Mr Selby about that promising little glimmer.

It wouldn’t be worth mentioning it to Lorenzo though, would it? Just as she hadn’t thought to mention that none of the ravishing shoes in the cabinets even fitted her any longer because evidently her feet had grown a little fatter and those shoes pinched like the devil. A tiny little flashback that only involved seeing herself and that showed her nothing important wasn’t worth telling Lorenzo about. Even so, it was a promising start to a complete recovery.

Lorenzo was still upstairs when she arrived in the dining room and she walked out onto the terrace that overlooked the garden, wondering if it would be acceptable to suggest that they ate outside during the summer months because the evenings were so beautiful and she did love the fresh air. Careful in the high heels that she was still a little wobbly in and with Topsy in tow, because the little dog hadn’t left her side all day, she descended the steps that led down to the garden and roved along a path that led into a shrubbery backed by natural woodland. Topsy went scampering ahead and then started barking so ferociously that she almost levitated off the ground.

‘Topsy,’ she began to say and then, before she could gather her breath, a man leapt out of nowhere in front of her and gave her such a fright that she screamed.

And screamed again, backing away in absolute terror, every natural instinct on high alert, her heart thundering in her ears with fear. The man threw up his hands in apparent disbelief and then two men appeared from behind him and pulled him away.

An arm snaked round her quaking figure from behind. ‘Are you all right?’ Lorenzo’s very welcome and familiar voice enquired, and relief made her sag like a ragdoll in his arms. ‘I was in the dining room when I heard you scream. I’ve never moved so fast in my life!’

‘Who was he?’ she prompted shakily. ‘What did he want?’

‘A paparazzo chancing his arm,’ Lorenzo imparted. ‘Didn’t you notice his camera?’

‘No... I thought... I thought he was a rapist or something,’ she contrived to explain unevenly, her breath still see-sawing in and out of her raw throat. ‘That’s what I assumed. I didn’t think about this being a garden and how unlikely that would be, which was stupid.’

Lorenzo’s dark eyes glittered with wildly inappropriate appreciation of that explanation for Brooke’s reaction to a member of the press and he made no comment, seeing for himself that she was still pale and trembling with fright. He closed an arm round her to direct her back indoors. ‘You can blame me for this frightening experience as well,’ he told her instead in an exasperated undertone. ‘I was about to double our security before I saw that newspaper headline this morning and then I forgot.’

‘You’re allowed to overlook stuff occasionally,’ Brooke told him, still struggling to get her breathing under control. ‘Anyway, how can it be your fault when it’s obvious that my love of attracting publicity caused all this nonsense?’

‘It wasn’t wrong for you to like attracting publicity,’ Lorenzo countered levelly. ‘That was your world. I shouldn’t have given you the impression that it was a bad choice, because it wasn’t for you.’

But it was a bad choice for anyone married to you, Brooke completed inside her head, for everything about Lorenzo implied that he was a very private man and the last man imaginable to enjoy that kind of exposure. Clearly, her past self hadn’t much cared about that, and she had continued to relentlessly pursue her own goals. She was twenty-eight years old and could scarcely blame that decision on immaturity. She had put her media career first, not her marriage.

‘Topsy!’ she called, and the dog raced over to her, long silly ears flopping madly, tongue hanging. Without hesitation she scooped the little animal up and started telling it that it was a great little watchdog while Lorenzo looked on in disbelief.

Brooke didn’t like animals, but some nameless admirer had gifted her the puppy when handbag dogs were in vogue. She had brought the dog home and abandoned it in the kitchen and, as far as he knew, had never looked at it again. Lorenzo decided it was time for him to have another chat with her psychiatrist and ask how it was possible that his wife could be displaying entirely new personality traits as well as different tastes. Brooke wasn’t even eating salads any longer, never mind fussing about her diet. She no longer used the gym and barely touched alcohol aside of a glass of wine at dinner. The changes were piling up to the extent that he no longer knew what to expect from the wife he would once have sworn that he knew inside out.

‘Would you like a drink after that...er rather unnerving encounter?’ he asked calmly.

‘No, thanks. But thanks for being there this morning and this evening to ground me,’ Brooke murmured in a rush, staring up at him with a great burst of warmth rushing and spreading through her veins, because she was grateful, so ridiculously grateful that Lorenzo existed and that she was married to him. He was her rock in every storm.

‘I wasn’t there for you this morning in the way I should’ve been,’ Lorenzo corrected with a sardonic twist of his beautiful shapely mouth, tensing as that warm look in her eyes somehow contrived to arrow straight down to his groin. ‘I attacked you, misjudged you.’

Determined violet eyes connected with his. ‘But I forgive you.’

‘Too easily,’ Lorenzo chided, trying to keep some distance between them while he was as hard as rock and throbbing with arousal.

Brooke realised that she was literally backing him into the wall and she laughed in surprise, wondering if Lorenzo was always so slow on the uptake, so businesslike, so prone to saying and doing only the right thing that he couldn’t even grasp when his wife was coming on to him! She lifted her hands and ran them up over his ribcage over the shirt below his tailored jacket, sensitive fingertips learning the lean mouth-watering musculature hidden beneath, and she stretched up and literally face-planted her mouth on his.

Two very masculine hands sank into her mane of ringlets and held her fast and she smiled against his parting lips, her mouth opening eagerly for the plunging urgency of his. It was everything she remembered from the clinic, a chemical explosion of sheer hunger and demand. Oh, yes, her husband wanted her all right, she savoured with pleasure, he only needed encouragement while she needed no encouragement whatsoever when keeping her hands off him was more of a challenge. Her body was coming alive with a host of sensations from the tightening of her nipples, to the swell of her breasts, to the aching hollowness that tugged at the heart of her.

There was a sound somewhere behind her and Lorenzo yanked her back from him as though he had been burned. Stevens was muttering an apology and Lorenzo assured him that dinner right now was fine.

Her face hot as hellfire, so hot she wanted to die for a split second, Brooke retreated to her designated dining chair and grasped her wine glass with new fervour. She couldn’t look at Lorenzo, she absolutely couldn’t look at him in that instant, she was so mortified by her own forward behaviour, but honestly, it was as if he were a magnet that pulled at her until she couldn’t resist the charge any more. She was convinced that she had never felt desire so strongly before...and yet how could that be?

Lorenzo infuriated her then by acting as if nothing had happened. He asked her about her day and her enjoyment of the garden. Slowly, painfully, her equilibrium returned. It wasn’t his fault that she wanted him to be the sort of guy who said to hell with dinner and carted her off to the nearest private spot to take advantage of her willingness...was it?

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS NOW or never, Brooke challenged herself, because on a deep inner level she was cringing about what she was about to do.

The many mirrors in her dressing room showed a slender figure garbed in a white satin and lace nightdress. Wearing it felt weird because Brooke was convinced that, at heart, she was a pyjama girl rather than the fashionable, sexier image she was sporting, but, going by the decorative lingerie collection in the dressing room, her past self had never given way to the weakness of putting comfort first. Pyjamas weren’t sexy though and she needed sexy, needed it desperately, she acknowledged apprehensively, because in spite of reading the book she had found in the bedside cabinet on ‘how to thrill your lover,’ she still felt as if she didn’t have a clue!

After all, suppose Lorenzo rejected her? How would she ever rise above that humiliation? She breathed in deep. Her need to have a normal marriage, added to the desire she definitely felt for him, was motivating her and what was wrong with making a major effort? Why would he reject her when he kissed her as though his life depended on it? she asked herself, striving to bolster her flagging courage as she ranged closer to the connecting door between their bedrooms and reached for the handle. The blasted door was locked! She couldn’t believe it, and so afraid was she of losing her nerve altogether that she stalked straight out of her bedroom and walked down the corridor to let herself into his room with a fast-beating heart.

She couldn’t believe her luck when she heard the shower running in the en suite. In one frantic leap she made it into the bed and hit the lights on the wall to plunge the room into darkness. Maybe that was a little too cowardly, she reasoned with a grimace, because that amount of self-consciousness wasn’t sexy either. Stretching up, she put the lights back on and surveyed his bedroom décor, which was much warmer and comfier in ambience than her own stark white bower of rest.

Brooke was still all of a quiver, like a real scaredy-cat. She shrank at the prospect of being confronted by Lorenzo’s shock, surprise and, ultimately, his rebuff. But if he said no, he would have to explain why not, wouldn’t he? And then another little piece of the mystery of their marriage would fall into place, so, at the cost of her dignity, she would find out more even if he did dismiss her.

Lorenzo was in a dark brooding mood as he stepped out of the shower and snatched at a towel to dry off his hair. It was a challenge for him to believe that sharing a roof with Brooke could wind him up like a clockwork toy with sheer lust. How had that happened? When had that happened? It was damned near three years since he had experienced that hunger and then Brooke had woken up after the accident and somehow that primal urge had come back with a vengeance, engulfing him without reason or logic. It infuriated him.

When Lorenzo strode naked out of the bathroom and saw her lying in his bed, the last chain of restraint snapped inside him and set him free. Suddenly he had had it with self-discipline and had it with continually hearing his legal team’s warnings in the back of his mind and all he could think about was that there were no cameras in his bedroom and he could do whatever the hell he liked with the woman he had married. Brooke was still his wife. He wanted her and she wanted him. If he kept it that simple, he didn’t need to even think about anything else, and it was simple, basic sexual instinct and nothing more.