November Harlequin Presents 1(119)

She couldn’t remember too clearly the actual words that had been used. But there was no way she would be here now if Andreas hadn’t actually given his permission for her to be here.

But had that been before or after he had lost his memory? And was it the lover he believed she still was that he had asked for—or the wife he had rejected so completely?

Behind the door of the bathroom, the noise of the shower running jolted her back to the present, dragging her thoughts in the last possible direction that she wanted them to go. It was impossible to hear the driving sound of the water and not think of the times when she had had the freedom to join him in the shower, to share the hot water as it pounded down onto Andreas’ hard, lean body, cascading over the bronzed skin, flowing down from the broad, straight shoulders, past his narrow waist, over the tight curves of his…

‘No!’

Becca shook her head sharply as the word escaped her, just the image of what she was remembering enough to drive her into motion, pushing her towards the door as fast as she could go.

‘I can’t take this—can’t do it…’

She would find Leander, explain that there had been a mistake. A terrible mistake.

And then she would get out of here.

She would run from Andreas as she had run a year before. Putting as much distance between him and herself as she possibly could.

She would run and run and she would never come back.

She should never have come back. Never, ever have come back to the island, to the villa—to the man she had once loved so deeply and so desperately.

What could have possessed her to even think that she could talk to him, persuade him to listen to her, to help her…?

She was almost at the top of the stairs when the word ‘help’ sounded in her thoughts again, stopping her dead, reminding her of the real reason why she was here. The reason she had forgotten.

Oh, how could she have forgotten Macy? And most of all, how could she have forgotten little Daisy?

Daisy was just a baby—and her life, her tiny, precious life, depended on the way that Becca acted now.

Without her help, Daisy would die. And Becca had promised that she would do anything she could—everything she could—to help.

Standing with her hand on the newel post, fingers clenching tight over the polished wood, Becca sighed, half turned, looked back at the still slightly open door into the bedroom from which she had just fled in a panic-stricken rush.

She had promised—and she would keep that promise, no matter what it took. She needed Andreas’ help and she would have to get that help, whatever she had to do to get it. She had no choice.

If the only way she could stay in the villa, the only way she could get close to Andreas and stay there until at last he remembered who she was and what she had asked of him—the money he had promised to provide—was to pretend to be the mistress that he believed her to be, then she was going to have to do it. She would play the part to the best of her ability and pray that it wouldn’t take too long for Andreas’ memory to return.

She had to—for Daisy’s sake.

Drawing in a long, ragged breath and letting it out again on a heartfelt sigh, she made herself place first one foot on the staircase and then another, straightening her shoulders, holding her chin up high as she headed downstairs.





CHAPTER THREE




ANDREAS turned up the power and the temperature on the shower so that it pounded down savagely onto the top of his head, thudding onto his skull, leaving him incapable of thinking.

At least that was the plan. But somehow, when he needed it most, the plan didn’t seem to be working.

He wanted to forget about the moments out in his bedroom when he had touched Becca.

When he had wanted to do so much more than touch. Certainly much more than fasten his hand around hers, or to stroke his fingers along the peachy softness of her cheek.

He had wanted to kiss her so badly. The hunger to take her lips with his had been like a nagging ache throughout his whole body, adding further discomfort to the already painful bruises that made his muscles throb, tugged at his ribs when he drew in his breath sharply. He wanted to hold her, caress her. He had felt his heart kick up, his blood pulse through his veins.

He had felt himself come alive for the first time in days.

In the days that he could remember anyway. The days that had registered in the void that had been his mind since he had come round from the unconsciousness that that car crash had put him into.

And for the first time since the accident he had felt like a man again, passionate and burning with a hot, hungry desire.

But a desire he really shouldn’t give in to.

‘Hell and damnation!’

Andreas swore viciously and reached up to change the temperature of the water yet again, shuddering as this time an icy blast thundered onto his soaked hair, his bare shoulders. A long cold shower was what he needed to cool the heat in his blood, the fire that threatened to destroy his ability to think at all.