November Harlequin Presents 1(115)

The look her instinctive teasing brought her stabbed like a stiletto. Not because of any anger in it, but because there was a gleam in those deep black eyes that told her he’d caught the faint shake of laughter in her words, the twitch of her mouth.

It was an expression that forced memories from the back of Becca’s mind where she had tried to hide them away for so very long. Memories of a time when she had thought that she couldn’t be happier; when she had believed that this stunning, devastating man had actually loved her as much as she had loved him. She had been very definitely and very bitterly disillusioned.

‘I told the doctor I didn’t need any nurse fussing over me.’

‘But you haven’t—been well.’

To her despair, her voice caught on the words, something sharp and uncomfortable twisting in her heart at the thought of the powerful, muscled body before her being bruised and torn in the car accident she had been told about. Even as she spoke, he shifted uncomfortably, and the movement revealed more bruising, this time along his ribs, and down to the lean waist.

She would feel that way about anyone who was injured, she tried to assure herself. All that it was was a natural compassion for anyone who had been hurt. There was nothing left in her heart to make it any more.

‘The hospital believed I was well enough to be sent home, and I do not need any further attention!’

‘Not even from someone who doesn’t fuss?’

What was she doing? Becca’s thoughts reeled as she heard what she’d actually said. She’d practically offered to take on the job of caring for him. And to her horror that was what Andreas obviously thought too.

‘You’re saying you’ll never fuss over me?’

The beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, put a gleam in those deep, dark eyes. He couldn’t be flirting with her—could he? The contrast with the memory of the way that she had last seen those black eyes, burning with an icy flame of hatred, made her shift uncomfortably in her seat.

‘No…’

Too unsettled now to sit still, Becca got to her feet, wanting to move restlessly about the room, then suddenly thinking better of her actions and returning to perch awkwardly on the arm of the chair.

‘I…I’m not saying that.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

Andreas’ tone had sharpened as his eyes followed her uneasy movements.

‘I’m not…’

The words shrivelled into nothing, drying her mouth so that she had to slick a nervous tongue over her parched lips as she tried to find some sort of answer to give him.

She didn’t know this Andreas—or, rather, she had known him once but so briefly and so unbelievably that she had to struggle to remember it.

He hadn’t flirted with her when they had first met. Then he had been focused, determined, his devastating personal power concentrated totally on her, so strongly that she had found it almost impossible to breathe.

Certainly, it just hadn’t seemed possible that this stunning man, this multi-multimillionaire with everything in the world that he wanted—a hundred times over—and every woman in the world prepared to fall at his feet could possibly want anything to do with plain, simple, unimpressive Rebecca Ainsworth.

And it seemed that Rebecca Ainsworth was whom he remembered. Not the fact that she had ever become Rebecca Petrakos. She didn’t know what she could tell him about what had happened in the time he couldn’t recall, but there had to be something. If she announced now, starkly and matter-of-factly that she was his wife—his alienated wife, the wife he had thrown out of his home with the furious order never, ever even to think of coming back there—did she even know if he would believe her?

She remembered once being told how an amnesia victim ‘forgot’ the time they didn’t want to remember. That the condition could be as much psychological as it was physical. And if that was the case, had Andreas forgotten her because he couldn’t bear to remember that they had been married? Some time soon, inevitably, he must get his memory back properly. And then he would know only too well just who she was.

Her heart lurched painfully at the thought. But still she wasn’t brave enough to give him the truth and risk her instant dismissal.

‘Andreas, you know I’m not one to fuss unnecessarily,’ was all she could manage uncomfortably.

‘Then I’m glad you’re here to save me from someone who might.’

Andreas’ tone said that that was the end of the matter, no chance of discussion, and she was still wondering just how she could take this any further when he shifted in the bed, pulling himself up even more against the pillows.