The Wedding Party Collection

‘You’re excited about shopping?’

‘It’s not shopping, it’s haggling. It’s a blood sport.’

‘Is anything even open yet?’

‘Couple of stalls are.’

‘What did you buy?’

‘Carpet. But I haven’t bought it yet. I’ve just had it set aside so I can think about it.’

‘Uh-huh. How much?’

‘That’s what we’re negotiating.’

‘Ballpark.’

‘It’s a really nice carpet. Silk.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Seven thousand dollars was a lot to pay for a two metre by one point six metre bit of mat that people walked on. ‘It’s an investment piece.’

‘Is it magic?’

‘I didn’t ask. Maybe you should come with me when I go back.’

‘When are you going back?’

‘After I’ve shopped around.’

‘Who are you and what have you done with Trig?’

‘Could be I’m nesting,’ he said. Way to harp on a tricky subject. ‘You all the way awake yet?’

‘No.’

‘Because if you are, now would be a good time to tell me if you’re going to go out with me.’

‘Still weighing the pros and cons.’

There was just no rushing her these days. ‘I brought you breakfast. That would be a pro.’

‘You also woke me up at five a.m.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He could make her snort. That had to count for something.

‘How’s the body this morning?’

‘Functional,’ she said around a mouthful of yoghurt. ‘Stop fussing. Boyfriends don’t fuss.’

‘Now you’re just making shit up.’

‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s true.’

He shook his head, slid her a sideways glance. ‘Pursuit aside, how are we tracking with regards to our regular relationship? The one that doesn’t have me in knots. We good?’

‘Yeah.’ She sounded a little uncertain. ‘We’re good.’

* * *

They made it through the morning, mostly because Trig headed back out again to look at carpets, and then it was time to meet Carter, with Lena taking point and Trig bleeding into the bustle at the gate. Another tourist, one of many, and maybe he was meeting someone or perhaps he was just taking a breather before diving into the next shop full of goodies. Either way, nothing untoward here.

He spotted Carter moments before the older man made him, but they didn’t acknowledge each other. He and Carter had worked together before, albeit briefly, back in the days when Carter had worked for ASIS. Carter would know Trig was running surveillance on the meet. Carter probably had someone else doing the same.

Carter approached Lena and held out his hands and she took them and smiled as he kissed her on each cheek. Old acquaintances and all for show. Trig ground his teeth and watched some more as Carter and Lena strolled through the gate and into the bazaar, their pace leisurely and their conversation animated.

Trig made a process out of checking his phone as he waited to see who else might be headed that way before he too took a stroll. It was a busy gate. A lot of people followed Carter and Lena into the bazaar.

He kept them in sight while he browsed and they browsed and then five minutes later Carter bought Lena a scoop full of candied citrus, presented it to her with a smile, kissed her once again on each cheek and, between one blink and the next, disappeared into the ether.

Lena didn’t look back at Trig; she knew this game too well for that. She bought three silk scarves and a handful of sugared almonds. She paused outside a shop filled with carpets and the vendor—and probably his brother—instantly tried to woo her in. She offered them almonds, which they refused. They offered her apple tea, and carpet viewing, which she refused. With a great deal of hand waving all round, everyone called it quits and Lena moved on.

No one but Trig followed her, and no one followed him, but he stayed on her tail just that little bit longer because they didn’t know what Jared was into and because Carter was just that little bit unpredictable when it came to who he was working for at any one time.

Lena turned down a side lane of the bazaar, and then another. They’d reached a narrow walkway full of fabrics—an explosion of colour pinned to walls and strung across ceilings. Fabric everywhere and a group of youths with fierce eagle eyes coming towards them. They passed Lena, jostled her, and no one reached out to break her fall as she went down hard. She hit her head on the metal foot of a display rack. She didn’t get up.

By the time Trig reached her, her wallet was gone and so were the youths. A few people yelled out. No one gave chase.

‘Lena.’ She looked so very small and crumpled. She wasn’t conscious and he didn’t want to move her. He reached for the pulse point at her wrist. ‘Lena.’

Other people had crouched down beside them. ‘She’s with you?’ one man asked and Trig nodded. Hands reached out to gently shake her. He didn’t know who they belonged to.

Don’t,’ he growled and pushed all those other hands away, dog with a bone and he didn’t care who knew it. ‘Don’t touch her.’

Someone else tried to get the crowd around them to move back a step. Someone passed a cloth through to the man who’d spoken earlier and he handed it to Trig. ‘For her head,’ the man said and used gestures to suggest that Trig wipe her face.

The cloth was wet and smelled only of water. Trig drew it across Lena’s forehead.

She didn’t even flinch.

Trig looked for a bump on Lena’s skull and found it towards the back of her head. Not that big, according to his fingers, but big enough to knock her unconscious nonetheless. ‘Can you call me an ambulance?’ he asked the man.

‘Private or public?’

‘Private.’

‘Take taxi—is faster,’ said a woman, but the man held up his finger and shook his head, and then started arguing with the woman, too fast for Trig to even try to understand. They weren’t a threat. They were trying to help. He thought the man might be the proprietor of the nearby stall.

Lena stirred and Trig wiped the cloth across her forehead again. Her eyelashes fluttered.

‘Lena?’

But she didn’t come round fully.

Another person handed him an unopened bottle of water. ‘Thank you,’ he said as the crowd around them grew larger and talk turned to the pickpocket gangs and notifying the police that they were back in the area. Lena opened her eyes again and this time they stayed open while Trig checked her pupils for unevenness and then covered her eyes with his palm.

‘Try and keep your eyes open and in a few more seconds I’ll take my hand away,’ he told her quietly, while his heart thundered and his mind flashed back to the ambush in East Timor. Some injuries were messy. This one was not. Didn’t mean the outcome couldn’t be catastrophic. ‘I’m going to check your pupils for responsiveness to light.’

‘You’re a doctor?’ asked Trig’s new best friend, the one who’d called for an ambulance.

‘Medic.’ He had some combat first-aid training, that was all. ‘Not a doctor.’ Please don’t let her pupils be blown.

He took his hand away from Lena’s eyes and her pupils responded. Lena looked bewildered. Her eyes searched the crowd and finally came to rest back on him.

‘Where am I?’ she asked.

‘The Grand Bazaar.’ And when that didn’t seem to ring any bells, ‘Istanbul.’

‘Oh.’

‘You fell and hit your head. Pickpockets. They got your wallet.’

‘Gonna be sick,’ she said and rolled onto her side, but she wasn’t sick, she just closed her eyes and put her cheek to the floor and slipped into a state of not-quite-thereness.

He tried not to let that worry him as he held the wet flannel to the bump on her head, and damn but it felt bigger.

She opened her eyes again a few minutes later. ‘Just rest,’ he told her. ‘Don’t need to move you yet. An ambulance is on its way.’

‘Here’s hoping I have insurance,’ she murmured, and fixed him with a dazed gaze.

‘’Course you do.’

‘Next question—’

He had to lean down to even hear her.

‘—Who are you?’

* * *

She didn’t like hospitals. She could barely remember her own name, but she knew with utter certainty that she did not like hospitals. And that she’d been in them a lot. Her body confirmed it when they sent her for the MRI and asked her to change into a gown. The scars on her lower belly and high on her leg told of a major collision between her body and...something. Car crash, maybe.

She couldn’t quite remember.

‘You have titanium pins and plates in your left leg and hip,’ the big guy had said when he’d helped her fill out a medical history form, finally taking the clipboard and pen from her and filling out the information sheet himself. ‘You’ve had several recent operations and intensive and ongoing physiotherapy.’

He knew her blood type and he knew her name.

Lena Sinclair.

She knew her name was Lena. Bits and pieces of her memory were starting to come back. The scarves hanging in the marketplace. The impression that someone, or several someones, had been following her. Her name was Lena, Lena Sinclair, and the big guy, who she couldn’t quite remember...

He was her husband.

His name was Adrian. She’d read it on his credit cards and on the hospital forms. Adrian Sinclair. Husband. And he seemed so familiar, hauntingly familiar, and he made her feel safe, and he’d hovered while the doctors had seen to her, and if she couldn’t quite remember much about him at the moment, well, there were a lot of things she couldn’t quite remember at the moment.

He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

‘My name’s Lena, Lena Sinclair,’ she told the doctors. ‘I’m Australian and I was shopping in the Grand Bazaar when thieves knocked me to the ground and took off with my wallet.’

There’d been mutterings then, about the crime rate in the city. The police had been notified. Cards would be cancelled. Her husband would take care of it. ‘Lena, relax,’ he’d told her firmly. ‘First things first. Just get the MRI done.’

Lena. Lena Sinclair.

She could remember pretty much everything that had happened since waking up in the bazaar. As for her life before then... She was Australian and she’d grown up on the beach with two brothers and a sister whose names she couldn’t quite recall.

‘Concussion,’ the doctor told her. ‘Minor head trauma.’

A cracking headache, nausea and, heavens, why did the lights have to be so bright?

‘Temporary confusion and memory loss are both symptoms of concussion,’ the doctor told her when Lena confessed to scrambled memories and a whole lot of fog. ‘The painkillers I’ve given you won’t have helped. You remember who you are?’

‘Lena. Lena Sinclair.’

‘You remember your family and your past?’

‘Sort of.’

‘It’s common not to remember the events leading up to the knock on the head.’

Good to know she was common.

‘Do you remember your husband?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She remembered that he made her feel safe. She remembered his hands.

‘You need to rest your body and your brain,’ the doctor told her. ‘I’ve given you pain medication and something to minimise the swelling. I’m releasing you into the care of your husband, and if he hovers or wakes you several times through the night, it’s because I’ve told him to. If you start to feel anxious, let him know. Should your headache or nausea worsen, should you become disoriented, should your co-ordination worsen...you let him know and he’ll bring you back here.’

‘Okay.’

‘You already have co-ordination issues due to your previous injuries. I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about new limitations, just so we’re clear.’

‘Clear,’ she said faintly. She just wanted to get out of the hospital.

She hated hospitals.

And then they were out of the hospital and the street was unfamiliar and the smell of the city invaded her nostrils and she immediately wanted away from there too.

A taxi stood waiting for them. Her husband must have arranged it because the driver seemed to know him. ‘Your lady wife must stay close to you,’ he kept telling her stony-faced husband. ‘It’s not always safe here. Where did you and your lady wife go?’

‘Just take us back to the hotel.’ He could sound menacing when he wanted to, this husband she couldn’t quite recall. He could make talkative taxi drivers shut the hell up and drive.

The hotel was a pleasant, mid-range affair, with a buffet restaurant that her husband glanced at as they headed across the foyer towards the lifts.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him.

‘I could eat.’

He’d been at her side all day. In waiting rooms and examination rooms. He’d been her voice when she couldn’t remember what she’d done to her leg. There’d been no time for him to slip out and grab some food.

‘We could eat at the buffet,’ she said, and made it sound like a question.

‘I was thinking room service.’

Which could take some time to arrive. ‘Or we could eat now.’

‘You’re hungry?’

‘No, but you are. You fill up. I’ll pick and choose. Everyone’s a winner.’

‘I’d rather get you back to the room.’

‘The head is woolly but I’m feeling no pain,’ she assured him. ‘The painkillers are good and the food is right there. How about I let you know the minute I’ve had enough?’

He didn’t look convinced.

‘Okay, how about you watch me intently all through dinner and you let me know when I’ve had enough?’

‘You look like you’ve had enough already.’ Blunt, this husband of hers.

‘I think I can stretch it another twenty minutes. Or we could stand here arguing.’

He smiled at that, really smiled, and Lena watched, mesmerised, for it was a wicked, charming smile full of warmth and wide approval.

‘It is you,’ he murmured, and steered her towards the restaurant entrance. He gave the maître d’ their room number and saw her seated, but he didn’t sit.

‘I’m going to go change our booking. Get us another couple of days here. You be okay here while I do that?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

She watched him go. Broad shoulders, slim hips, long legs and all gorgeous.

And then he disappeared from sight and it took all her effort to quell the panic that arrived with his disappearance. Breathe, Lena. Everything was fine. She was fine.

They were staying here, they had a room here, and if she needed to get to it all she had to do was ask the front desk for a number and a key. Her memory would be back soon and her husband wasn’t going anywhere. He’d be back soon too.

A waiter asked if she wanted anything to drink with dinner and she ordered fizzy water for them both. She had a feeling her husband drank beer, but she didn’t know if he would want one with their meal. The waiter assured her that he would return once her husband did.

Five minutes later her husband returned.

‘Done?’ she queried.

‘Done.’

‘Where were we supposed to go after this?’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘No.’ No need to alarm him with how much she didn’t remember. Yet. ‘I’m a little fuzzy on the details.’

‘We were going to Bodrum to find Jared.’

‘Oh.’ Was now a good time to tell him that she had no idea who Jared was? ‘Right.’

Her husband, Adrian, was looking at her funny. And that name...her husband’s name...didn’t sit altogether right with her either. ‘Do I call you something other than Adrian?’

‘Trig,’ he said gruffly. ‘You call me Trig.’

‘Okay.’ She started to nod and then thought the better of it. ‘Okay. Oh, and the waiter came by and I ordered you a soda water. I wasn’t sure whether you’d want anything alcoholic.’

‘Not tonight.’ He followed her to the buffet. Stayed behind her while she browsed and added little spoonfuls of this and that to her plate. She waited for Trig to load up his plate, which he did—with generous helpings of pretty much everything.

Trig frowned at her half-filled plate.

‘I’m probably going to have seconds,’ she lied.

‘You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?’

She hadn’t known that. She added a spoonful of what looked like sweet potato to her plate.

They returned to the table and sat. Trig ate, and Lena mostly watched. He took her close scrutiny in his stride.

‘Why aren’t we wearing our wedding rings?’ she asked finally, and watched as her husband choked on his food.

He coughed, eyes watering, and reached for his water. ‘What?’ he croaked.

‘At first I thought the thieves must have taken them too, but then I noticed that you’re not wearing one either, and I’m pretty sure I gave you one.’

He blinked at that and took another great gulp of his water.

‘Lena, exactly how much do you remember about your past?’ Her husband’s words came out measured and even but his gaze could probably have penetrated steel.

‘Lots of bits and pieces,’ she said. ‘Lots. But I don’t remember our wedding.’

‘What’s your maiden name?’

‘Um—’

‘Your brothers’ names?’

‘Dan. No, Damien.’ One of them was called Damien.

‘Damon.’

‘Yes, Damon.’ An image of a laughing, dark-haired boy on a surfboard came to her. ‘He surfs. He loves the sea.’ Trig remained stony-faced and Lena’s confidence faltered. ‘Doesn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘See? Memory on the mend.’

But her husband didn’t seem to think so. ‘Lena, can you remember why we’re even in Turkey?’

‘Not really, no. Everything’s foggy. But I do remember you. I know you. Feel safe with you. You’re my husband.’

Trig.

A new and startling thought occurred to her—one that explained away her husband’s grimness and their current lack of wedding rings. ‘We’re not just...just-married, are we? Were we going to buy rings here?’ It made sense. It was almost coming back to her. ‘Are we on our honeymoon?’

He didn’t say anything for a very long time, and then he looked her dead in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’

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