Modern Romance April 2020 Books 1-4

Lorenzo shifted a lean brown hand in a sudden imperious movement that sought to silence her as he took a step forward.

‘Of course, I know why you didn’t tell me because someone like Mr Selby or some other clever doctor warned you that it might be too much for my battered little brain to handle,’ Brooke framed steadily, ignoring his gesture. ‘But I disagree with that kind of over-protective attitude because I’m back in the real world now and I have to adjust to it, no matter how tough or destabilising it is. I’m not a child.’

Lorenzo surveyed her, feeling strangely appreciative of her control and dignity in a very taxing situation, two responses that he had least expected from her. Brooke had always been more about hysterics and ranting and blaming everybody but herself when anything went wrong. He breathed in deep and accepted the inevitable. The truth was out and he couldn’t deny it. ‘We were pursuing a divorce at the time of the crash,’ he admitted levelly.

‘Why?’ Brooke asked baldly.

Lorenzo studied her. She looked tiny in that chair and she was as white as a sheet. How was he supposed to tell the woman that she now was that she had played away with multiple men, indeed any man who suggested that he could advance her goal of breaking into the screen industry? Lorenzo had never had the slightest difficulty in delivering bad news. Indeed, it was integral to his role as a banker, but when it came to shattering the woman seated before him, he just couldn’t drop the ugly truth on her at that moment. The divorce would’ve been a big enough blow to a woman who had told him that she thought she might love him only the night before. Never mind that that professed love was simply an assumption brought on by her amnesia. She was still being very brave and he admired that, and bad news was never quite as bad if it emerged piece by piece over a lengthier period of time, he told himself grimly.

‘We were ill-suited, different goals, different outlook on life,’ Lorenzo responded. ‘I wanted children but you didn’t. I wanted a home. You only wanted an impressive backdrop for your photos. Divorce was inevitable.’

Brooke nodded valiantly. ‘And...er...the men, the affairs?’

‘Rumours,’ Lorenzo asserted valiantly. ‘But I didn’t enjoy the rumours.’

Brooke bent her head but breathed a little easier at that release from her biggest fear: that she was capable of that kind of betrayal and of cheating on him. ‘Of course not,’ she agreed flatly. ‘Even without my memory, I can see that the woman I was and the man you are weren’t a good match.’

Lorenzo had gone very quiet. He was thinking hard and fast, wondering whether to take her straight to that penthouse apartment he had bought her to cement their separation back into place. In rapid succession he pictured her there alone and potentially lost and he recoiled from that image while questioning his own sanity.

‘And I really shouldn’t be living in your home any more,’ Brooke completed quietly, raising the point she knew she had to raise to set him free from feeling responsible for her.

Lorenzo’s black lashes dropped down over his glittering eyes and every muscle in his lean, powerful frame jerked rigid. He couldn’t let her go, at least, not just yet, he reasoned fiercely. She wasn’t fit to be abandoned to sink or swim and that might not strictly be his business any more, but he still felt as though it were. Right now, a separation would be premature.

‘I have a better solution,’ he heard himself say before he had even quite thought through what he was about to say, a divergence from habit that shook him even as he spoke. ‘I suggest you accompany me to Italy this evening.’

‘To Italy?’ Brooke gasped as if she had never heard of the country before, so disconcerted was she by that proposal at that particular moment.

‘Yes, it would be good for you to escape the paparazzi and the publicity and enjoy some breathing space. You’re a UK celebrity, pretty much unknown—’ he selected that last word tactfully ‘—in Italy. We’ll be left alone, free of this constant media speculation. A break is what we need.’

Brooke lifted her head, her heart, which had slowed to a dulled thud, suddenly picking up speed again. ‘We?’ she queried in a near croak.

‘We,’ Lorenzo stressed with vigour, some of his tension ebbing now that he could see a provisional way forward out of the current chaos.

‘But we’re getting a divorce,’ Brooke reminded him shakily.

‘The divorce has been on hold since the day of the crash. A few more weeks aren’t going to make much difference at this point,’ Lorenzo informed her with assurance. ‘We can separate or divorce at any time. Let’s not allow past decisions to control us in a different situation. Let’s be patient a little while longer and see how things progress. Your memory may yet return.’

Brooke was plunged deep into shock all over again, the price of having been thrown from one extreme to yet another. She had come to his office to confront him with her heart being squeezed in a steel fist of pain. She had believed that their marriage was an empty charade already all but over and that it was her duty to finally set Lorenzo free, even though she loved him. She remained absolutely convinced that, even though she had made a mess of their marriage, she still loved him.

But to her astonishment, Lorenzo was reacting in an utterly unexpected way by offering her a second chance at their marriage. Wasn’t that what he meant? For goodness’ sake, what else could he mean? He didn’t want to immediately reclaim his freedom as she had assumed. He was willing to wait...he was willing to continue living with her as her husband. A shaken, shuddering breath forced its passage up through her constrained lungs because relief was filling her almost to overflowing, liberating all the emotions that she had been fighting to suppress since she read about their divorce proceedings in that awful gossipy magazine. Her eyes stung horribly and flooded. She blinked rapidly, warding off the tears and hastily sipping at her cooling coffee.

Lorenzo reached down and rescued the shaking cup and saucer to set it aside, and scooped her up into his arms. It wasn’t pity driving him, he told himself with ferocious certainty, it was a crazy, impossible mix of lust, responsibility, sympathy and fascination with the woman she now was. He was taking her to Italy with him. It was a done deal.

‘I’m sorry,’ she briefly sobbed against his shoulder before she got a grip on herself again and glanced up at him with a grimace of apology. ‘It was the shock. I was expecting—’

‘Keep it simple, like me,’ Lorenzo urged. ‘I’m practical and calculating and very typical of the male sex. I’m expecting you in my bed at night.’

An indelicate little snort of laughter escaped Brooke then, drying up the tears at source. ‘Is that so?’ she mumbled, a sudden shard of happiness piercing her.

‘You haven’t even asked me yet what I did wrong in our marriage,’ he reproved. ‘The mistakes weren’t all on your side. I worked long hours, left you alone too much and only took you to boring dinner parties where everyone was talking about finance. You weren’t happy with me either.’

‘We’ll see how Italy goes,’ Brooke murmured softly. ‘As you said, we can choose to part at any time, so neither of us need to feel trapped.’

‘You’re feeling trapped?’ Lorenzo demanded without warning, an arctic light gleaming in his beautiful dark eyes.

‘No...’ Brooke toyed with a button on his jacket, striving not to flatter him with too much enthusiasm. ‘I don’t feel trapped at all. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit from the person I was before the crash. Obviously I’ve changed. I don’t seem to want people with cameras chasing me. I seem to have lost what seems to have been an overriding interest in fashion and clothes...gosh, I’m going to be forced out shopping if you’re taking me travelling. A lot of the clothes, and particularly the shoes, don’t fit me now,’ she confided ruefully.

‘I’ll organise someone to come to the house this afternoon and kit you out. I’ll postpone the flight until early tomorrow morning,’ Lorenzo informed her arrogantly. ‘But that means I’ll have to work late tonight... OK?’

‘OK,’ she agreed breathlessly.

Lorenzo stared down at her heart-shaped face while a what-the-hell-am-I-doing? question raced over and over through his brain. He concentrated instead on that luscious pink mouth and the ever-present throb at his groin and bent his head to taste those succulent lips.

Brooke fell into that kiss like honey melting on a grill. Her insides turned liquid and burned. It happened every time he kissed her, a shooting, thrilling internal heat that washed through her like a dangerous drug, lighting up every part of her body. She wanted to cling, but she wouldn’t let herself, stepping back with a control that she was proud to maintain after her earlier emotionalism.

She reddened as she connected with his brilliant dark eyes, which packed such a passionate punch. Maybe this very hunger was what had first brought them together and kept them together even when their relationship didn’t work in other ways. Sadly, it was a sobering thought to accept that sexual attraction might have been the most they had ever had as a couple and all she had left to build on.

Obviously, naturally, she wanted more, she reflected ruefully. She wanted him to stop feeling as responsible for her as a man might feel about a helpless child. She wanted him to see and accept that she no longer needed to be handled with kid gloves, that she was an adult and able to cope with her own life, even if it did mean losing him in the process. And possibly that was what it would mean, she conceded unhappily, bearing in mind that their marriage had apparently been rocky from the start.

Yet where had the ambition-driven woman she had been gone? Where had all the knowledge she must have accumulated from the fashion world gone? Why didn’t she care now about what style was ‘in’ and what was ‘out’? Why was she most comfortable in a pair of ordinary jeans? Where now was the brash confidence that had fairly blazed out of the magazine cuttings in her press scrapbooks? Those were questions that only time, or the recovery of her memories, would answer. But facing up to more challenging situations alone would probably strengthen her and do her good, she told herself fiercely. She resolved to make that visit to the café to ask about Milly Taylor on the drive home. Perhaps that would help her work out what the connection had been between two ostensibly very different women.

The café was also a bakery and Brooke waited patiently until the queue of customers had gone and the older woman behind the counter looked at her for the first time. The woman’s eyes rounded, and she paled, stepping back as though she had had a fright.

‘Milly?’ she exclaimed shakily, her hand flying up to her mouth in a gesture of confusion as she stared at the younger woman. ‘No, no... I can see you’re not Milly, but just for a moment there, the resemblance gave me such a shock!’

Brooke’s brow pleated as she asked the woman if they could have a chat. ‘I’m Brooke Tassini. Milly died in the crash that I was injured in. You seem to think I resemble her... I’ve lost my memory,’ she explained with a wince. ‘I’m still trying to work out who Milly was to me.’

‘Brooke? I’m Marge,’ the middle-aged woman said comfortably as she moved out from behind the counter. ‘When I get a better look at you, the resemblance isn’t as striking as I first thought it was. But Milly had the same long curly hair and the same colour of eyes. Look, come and see the photo of her.’

Brooke crossed the café to scrutinise the small staff group photo on the wall, but it wasn’t a very clear picture and she peered at the smiling image with a frown because she could see the extraordinary similarity of their features and colouring. ‘When she was working here, did she ever mention me? I’m wondering now if she could be some distant relation, a cousin or something?’

‘Milly didn’t ever mention you,’ Marge told her apologetically. ‘She was a quiet girl. To be honest, I don’t think she had much of a life outside work and she only worked here for a couple of months. I got the impression that she had moved around quite a bit, but I was still surprised that morning when she chucked her job in, because she had seemed content here. She said she had to quit because she had a family crisis.’ Marge made a face. ‘She seemed to forget that according to what she had once told me, she didn’t have a family.’

‘Oh...’ Brooke breathed, acknowledging that she was no further on in her need to know who her companion had been and why they had been in the limousine together. The resemblance, though, that was a new fact, something that hadn’t come out before, possibly because Marge wasn’t in the right age group even to know who Brooke Tassini was or what she looked like, she reasoned while thanking the woman for her time.

As she walked to the door to leave, a startling image shot through her brain and for a split second it froze her in her tracks. In the flashback a man was standing over her where she sat in the café and shouting drunkenly at her while Marge flung the door wide to persuade him to leave. Brooke tried to hang onto that snapshot back in time, frantic to see more, know more. But nothing else came to her and embarrassment at the time she had already taken out of Marge’s working day—Marge, who was already serving a new queue of customers at the counter—pushed her back out onto the street again in a daze.

Why did she never remember anything useful? she asked herself in frustration. Obviously she had visited the café at some point, presumably to see Milly, and Marge hadn’t remembered her, which wasn’t that surprising in a busy enterprise. What did still nag at Brooke, though, was the resemblance that Marge had remarked on and she had seen for herself. That was a rather strange coincidence, wasn’t it? But how could it relate in any way to why that woman had been with her in the car?

CHAPTER SEVEN

BROOKE WAS RELAXED and calm on the drive from the airport in Florence.

Even the crack of dawn flight had failed to irritate her because the change of scene was a relief and an escape from her repetitive and anxious thoughts. Those exact same thoughts had threatened to send her out in search of more gossipy magazines that would enable her to find out additional stuff about her marriage. Aware of that temptation and the futility of such an exercise, when she already knew as much as she needed to know for the present, she had made herself concentrate instead on the selection of a capsule wardrobe with the stylist, who had arrived at Madrigal Court the previous afternoon. It had been a disappointment, though, that Lorenzo had come home so late that he had evidently chosen to sleep in his own room.

The crisp white and blue sundress she wore was comfortable in the heat of an Italian summer. It was neither edgy nor trendy but it was elegant and flattering, skimming nicely over those curvy parts of her that she was beginning to suspect were a little too curvy. Was a tendency to gain why she had once watched her diet with such zeal? But she had been too thin when she emerged from the coma and was now content to be a healthy weight, she reasoned. In any case, Lorenzo had been with her when she was flawless in figure and physically perfect and, clearly, it had done nothing to save their marriage. Now she had scars and more curves and neither seemed to bother him, although, to be fair, the scarring was minimal, thanks to the expert cosmetic surgery she had received, she acknowledged gratefully.

‘Have I ever been to this house of yours before?’ she asked Lorenzo.

‘No. I tried to bring you here a couple of times, but it never fitted your schedule. There was always some event, some opening or fashion show that you couldn’t miss.’

‘Did you grow up in this house?’ she prompted with curiosity.

Lorenzo surprised her by laughing, amusement gleaming in his lustrous dark golden eyes. ‘No. I bought and renovated it. Sometimes, I forget how little you know about me now. I grew up in a splendid Venetian palazzo on the Grand Canal with my father.’

‘No mother around?’ she pressed in surprise.

‘No, sadly she died bringing me into the world. She had a weak heart,’ Lorenzo volunteered. ‘And I don’t think my father ever forgave me for being the cause of her death. He told me more than once that she was the only woman he had ever loved and that I had taken her from him.’

‘But that’s so unjust. I mean—’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Lorenzo sent her a wryly amused glance at her bias in his defence. ‘He was a self-centred man. My mother wanted a baby and took the risk of getting pregnant against doctor’s orders and I got the blame for it. I believe my father could have adjusted quite happily to not having a son and heir. Maybe a daughter would’ve brought out a softer side to him...who knows? He died last year, and we never had a close relationship.’

‘That’s so sad, such a waste.’ Brooke sighed regretfully. ‘I wish my parents had lived long enough for you to meet them and then you could have told me something about them.’

‘Being without family never seemed to bother you. I think that it was natural for you to be a loner.’

‘Is that why you think I didn’t want children?’ she asked abruptly.

Lorenzo expelled his breath in a measured hiss. ‘No, you had multiple reasons for that. The effect on your body, the risk to your potential career, the responsibilities that would eat into your ability to come and go as you pleased.’

Brooke nodded, getting the message that in the past she had definitely not wanted a child. Evidently, her career had meant everything to her and that tough decision surprised her because she had found herself watching young children visiting their relatives in the clinic and had easily and quickly warmed to their presence. But Lorenzo had to know the woman he had married best, particularly now that he was no longer glossing over the more sensitive subjects simply to keep her in the dark and supposedly protect her from herself. But how on earth was anyone to tell her how to cope with a self that she, increasingly, didn’t like very much?

‘Did I tell you that I didn’t want a family before we got married?’ she pressed.

‘No,’ Lorenzo framed succinctly. ‘Knowing that I wouldn’t have married you but, to be fair, you didn’t lie about it either. Later, I realised that you had merely avoided saying anything that would’ve committed you.’

Brooke still saw that as sly, just as he had once labelled her, but she said nothing because the picture of their marriage she was getting was still better than the blank she had had before, even if the more she learned, the more she suspected that saving such a troubled relationship could be a steeper challenge than even she had imagined.

‘Why are we even talking about this?’ Lorenzo demanded with wry amusement. ‘The last complication we need now is a child.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed a little stiffly because it was true: they had quite enough on their plate with her amnesia. ‘So, what happened to the Venetian palazzo you grew up in? Or didn’t you inherit it?’

‘I did inherit. I converted it into an exclusive boutique hotel. I had no personal attachment to the place. My childhood memories aren’t warm or fluffy,’ he admitted.

‘I wonder if mine are,’ she murmured ruefully.

‘I should think so. The way you told it, you were an adored only child.’ Lorenzo closed a hand over her restive hands where they were twisting together on her lap. ‘Stop fretting about what you don’t know and can’t help.’

‘I’ve had a couple of flashbacks!’ she heard herself admit rather abruptly. ‘Mr Selby thinks that’s very hopeful.’

Lorenzo frowned in disconcertion, annoyed that she hadn’t told him first. ‘What did you remember?’

‘Only an image of me seated in a limo and one of me in that café where Milly Taylor worked and where I must have gone to meet her. Not very helpful or interesting,’ she remarked with a sigh.

‘But promising,’ Lorenzo commented, wondering why he didn’t feel more excited over the prospect of her reclaiming her memory and, consequently, her life. Was it possible that after so many months he had reached some stage of compassion fatigue and disappointed hopes where he was simply guilty of secretly wishing that his life would return to normal?

Dannazione, why didn’t he just admit the truth to himself? This current version of Brooke was his unparalleled favourite. He was in no hurry to reclaim the original version. As she was now, she was likeable, desirable and surprisingly appealing. Naturally he preferred her this way, he conceded with gritty inner honesty, no great mystery there. Only a masochist would have craved the old Brooke. What was wrong with being truthful about that? The woman he was with now was neither the woman he had married nor the woman he had been divorcing.

Brooke peered out of the windows as the limo drove up a steep twisting lane hedged in by dense trees and her eyes widened with appreciation as the lane opened out to frame the rambling farmhouse that sat on top of a gentle hill, presiding, she suspected, over a spectacular view of the Tuscan countryside. ‘It’s a beautiful site,’ she remarked.

‘It’s remote,’ Lorenzo warned her as he climbed out of the car. ‘You may find it quite isolated here while I’m away on business.’

‘I think I’ll be fine,’ Brooke declared, waiting for the driver to open the car and bring Topsy’s travelling carrier out. She bent down to release the little animal, accepting the frantic affection coming her way with a wide grin. ‘I can go for walks with Topsy, sit out and read, maybe even do a little exploring.’

‘I’m not planning to work every day,’ Lorenzo told her with a sudden flashing smile. ‘I don’t want you going too far on your own, so save the exploration until I’m here and it will be much more comfortable for you.’

Topsy bouncing at her heels, Brooke walked into the house, violet eyes sparkling with pleasure at everything she saw. Her hand stretched out to brush the weathered pale sun-warmed stone of the house as if she couldn’t resist its appeal. ‘I love old things,’ she told him cheerfully.

Lorenzo stoically resisted the urge to contradict her with his superior knowledge of her tastes. ‘She’s discovering herself again,’ the psychiatrist had told him. ‘Give her that freedom.’

‘When did you buy this place?’ she asked.

‘Long before I met you. I wanted a home base in Italy, and I assumed I would use it for holidays but, to be frank, I’ve hardly been here since the renovation project was completed.’

Brooke gave his shoulder a playful mock punch. ‘Because you work too hard,’ she pointed out, gazing around the rustic hallway and caressing the smooth bannister of the old wooden staircase that led up to the next floor.

‘You used a designer, didn’t you?’ she guessed, moving from doorway to doorway to study the pale drapes and the subtle palate of colours employed to provide a charming and tranquil backdrop to antique rustic furniture and comfortable contemporary sofas.

Lorenzo laughed, his lean dark features extraordinarily handsome in that moment as he stood in the sunshine flooding through the open front door. ‘How did you guess?’ he mocked.

‘Whoever you used was really good,’ Brooke was saying appreciatively when a sparely built older man appeared in the hallway and greeted them in a flood of Italian.

‘This is Jacopo. He and his wife, Sofia, look after us here,’ Lorenzo informed her, closing a hand round hers to urge her towards the stairs. ‘When would you like lunch?’

‘Midday? After our early start, I’m quite hungry.’ She shot an uncertain glance up at his lean dark face, ensnared by vibrant and lustrous black-lashed golden eyes that left her breathless.