by Day Leclaire
“And?” he prompted. “What are you afraid to see, Kiley O’Dell?”
“Dante,” she corrected. “I know I wasn’t certain I wanted to take the name when Nicolò and I first married, but I think it’s probably like tapioca pudding. Things that might not have been to my taste before, are now.”
“You are avoiding my question.”
She grinned. “You’re right, I am.” Her smile faded. “I was afraid of whatever I saw. I guess of the accident, of the pain it caused me.”
“Or maybe you were afraid of that other life. Maybe when you had the choice to remember or forget, you chose to forget.”
His words caused her heart to kick up a beat, possibly because they held the weight of truth. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and worried at it. “You think I don’t want to remember?” she finally asked.
Primo shrugged. “The mind is a strange thing. Perhaps it is protecting you. Perhaps when you no longer need its protection, you will remember.” Before she could reply, the door slid open and he gestured for her to precede him. “You will find Nicolò’s office at the end of the corridor to the left. Tell him it is time for you to meet the family. Tell him it is past time, yes?”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
He leaned down and kissed her cheeks again, then headed in the opposite direction. Taking a deep breath, she followed Primo’s directions, pausing outside a door with Nicolò’s name on it. Some jokester had added a shiny gold label beneath his name that read Chief Troublemaker. Her lips twitched and she lifted her fist to knock, hesitating at the last instant.
Was it possible? she couldn’t help but wonder. Was she resisting remembering because she wanted to escape those memories? Could it all be tied in with the fight she’d had with Nicolò? Maybe if he told her what had happened it would cause her memory to return. Because despite how their marriage had functioned before her accident, they’d fully bonded since. And that meant they could find a way to work through whatever had divided them. She was convinced of it.
No matter what secret Nicolò kept from her, one thing was certain. The time had come for the two of them to be totally honest with one another, regardless of how painful the process. That decided, she rapped on the door, then turned the knob and walked in.
To her dismay, she found the room crowded with people. Three men stood in a pile, arguing at full throttle. None were Nicolò, though based on the fact that the three shared a physical similarity to her husband, and two of them were twins, they had to be his brothers. Off to one side sat a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a flushed complexion who silently seethed while he listened to the argument. He was flanked by yet another man, a huge tank-sized black man with black eyes that had been there and seen it all.
Finally, she located her husband, leaning against his desk, a grim expression darkening his face. At her entrance, his head jerked in her direction, and if anything, his expression turned blacker still.
He slowly straightened. “What are you doing here, Kiley?” he demanded in an undertone.
The salt-and-pepper-haired man glanced her way and leapt to his feet, pointing an accusing finger straight at her. “That’s her! My God, you found the little bitch.” He lunged toward her, his forward momentum stopped by the quick action of the three men Kiley had pegged as Nicolò’s brothers. “Get out of my way,” he roared. “I’ve waited a long time for this. Just give me five minutes of uninterrupted time alone with her and you can keep the money she owes me.”
Kiley stumbled backward, relieved to find Nicolò planted in front of her, his stance clearly protective. “You shouldn’t be here.” He threw the comment over his shoulder. “Why did you come?”
“I—I brought you lunch. I wanted to surprise you.” She swallowed, struggling to control the fear and tension tearing at her. “Surprise.”
“Your timing couldn’t have been worse.”
“Who is that man? How does he know me? Why is he so angry?”
“The man is Jack Ferrell and he’s leveled some accusations against you. The three by my desk are my brothers,” he confirmed her guess by indicating the trio of men who’d been arguing when she’d first entered. “And Juice is Dantes head of security. We were trying to get to the bottom of the allegations when you arrived.”
She stepped out from behind her husband, determined to face the accusations aimed at her head-on. The Dantes and Juice continued to restrain Ferrell while he ranted in undisguised fury. “What does he say I’ve done?”
Nicolò hesitated, then reluctantly explained, “He’s accused you of scamming him out of a rather substantial sum of money.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s not possible. I may not remember the past, but I do know myself. I wouldn’t do anything so dishonest.”
He turned to face her. “Kiley—”
“Oh, God.” The lunch basket slipped from her fingers and hit the carpet, spilling its contents. The can of pistachios landed square on the honeysuckle, crushing the fragile blossoms. The sweet scent drifted up between them, sharp as a bee sting. “You believe him, don’t you? You believe I ripped him off!”
Chapter Eight
To Kiley’s horror, Nicolò didn’t deny the accusation.
“Ferrell has proof, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Granted, it’s a bit on the sketchy side, but he insists you ran a con on him involving a fire diamond necklace, one you supposedly inherited from your grandfather.”
“Fire diamonds?” For a split second she saw Francesca and Nicolò staring intently at her as she studied the fire diamonds at Dantes Exclusive, waiting . . . Waiting for what? For her to remember something about this necklace Ferrell referred to? Had they known about the accusations even then? “I don’t understand any of this. What necklace does he mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s something we’ll have to figure out together.” She closed her eyes at his use of the word together. He must have understood how much it meant to her, because he traced his thumb along the curve of her cheek. “Until then, you need to go home.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Jack Ferrell protested. “I want my money. And I want her to pay for what she did to me. I insist you call the police and have her arrested.”
Nicolò spun to face the man. “You signed a binding agreement, Ferrell. One that allows us to settle this matter quietly. It also requires you prove your claims. So far, all we have are accusations.”
“She offered to sell me her grandfather’s necklace. I put half the money down. But when I went to complete the transaction, she’d disappeared, along with my money and the necklace.” He glared at Kiley. “You were slick, I’ll give you that. But you won’t get away this time.”
Kiley shook her head, attempting to reason with the man. “I wouldn’t do something like that. You must have me mixed up with someone else.”
His lips pulled back in a snarl. “Not a chance in hell. You have a birthmark on your hip. It’s shaped like a flower.”
She felt every scrap of color drain from her face. Wordlessly, she shook her head.
“No? Come on, gorgeous. Strip down and show us the birthmark. Prove me wrong.”
“Get out of here, Kiley,” Nicolò interrupted. “I’ll be home as soon as I resolve this.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. Not until the two of us discuss this.” She spared a brief glance toward the other men. “Privately.”
“Think you can sweet-talk your way around him?” Ferrell interrupted. “You’re wasting your time. He’s not the fool I was. With all the information his head of security has assembled, I’ll bet he sees right through you. No way are you slipping out from under this one. Not this time.”
Nicolò spun to face his brothers. “Shut him up, will you? I’ll be right back.” Without another word, he cupped Kiley’s elbow and drew her from the room. “I can spare five minutes. We’ll hash out the rest of it when I get home.”
One look at his expression and everything went numb inside. This man wasn’t her hus
band, wasn’t the man who’d taken her with such crazed desperation on his foyer floor. This was the suspicious-eyed man from those first hours and days after her accident. Dear God. What had she done in that other life? What had she been?
She flinched from the possibility. Or maybe it was all some sort of colossal mistake. She’d never deliberately scam someone, would she? It didn’t matter that Jack Ferrell knew about her birthmark. He could have found out about it somehow.
Kiley wrung her hands. If only she had her memory back, she could prove her innocence. Without it, she was utterly vulnerable. She spared the grim stranger at her side a quick glance, unremitting pain lancing through her.
And utterly alone.
She remained silent and heartsick while Nicolò ushered her into a small conference room. Like everything else she’d seen of Dantes so far, it was a lovely room, but one clearly designed for business. Is that what she’d become? Business? Based on his current attitude, she might as well be.
She fought to gather her self-control, to focus her confusion into some semblance of order, so that at least she’d know what questions to ask. She opened with the first one to come to mind.
“Why did you Dantes’ head of security look into me?”
“I asked Juice to check into some things after your accident.”
“That doesn’t quite answer my question,” she pointed out. “But let’s start there. Did you make the request because of my accident or because of our fight?”
“Does it matter?”
“Is what that man was saying—” She gestured in the general direction of Nicolò’s office. “The necklace and the money I supposedly took from him. Is that what our fight was about? The one before my accident?”
“Indirectly.”
Anger ripped through her. “Stop it, Nicolò. Just stop all the cagey responses and give it to me straight. I’ll believe whatever you tell me.” She laughed, a hard, painful sound. “After all, I don’t have any other choice. Since I don’t remember, I have to accept your version of events.”
“The truth?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Your grandfather and your great-uncle jointly owned a fire diamond mine, a mine they sold to my grandfather, Primo. When we first met it was to discuss the legality of that sale. You claimed there was a problem with the transfer of title, that you still owned a portion of the mine.”
She took a moment to absorb that. “Then, we didn’t meet over a game of Frisbee?”
“No.”
She shook her head in bewilderment. “Why would you make up a story? What difference does it make how or when we met?”
“It mattered.”
Frustration ripped through her. “Why?”
He rubbed a spot between his brows where tension had formed a deep crease. “I didn’t want to bring it up after your accident because I needed time to find out whether your claim on the mine was genuine. I needed time for Juice to unearth the truth while you recovered from your injuries. Time for us to get to know one another, to deal with The Inferno, without the mine coming between us.”
She frowned in confusion. “I still don’t understand. What has the sale of the mine got to do with this necklace Ferrell is going on about?”
“I have no idea. If there’s a connection, I haven’t found it, yet. Juice met Ferrell while investigating you and your claims regarding the mine.”
“This man, Ferrell, he’s convinced I’ve scammed him, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And you? What do you believe?”
“We’re still looking into it, Kiley,” he said with a painful lack of intonation. All the while, a remote darkness swirled in his gaze.
She could feel her heart breaking at the distance he put between them. Despite that, she forced herself to ask the necessary questions. “But it’s possible he’s right?” She could see the answer in Nicolò’s expression and something infinitely precious died inside. It took a moment before she could form her next question, one almost too painful to ask. “Do you believe I was trying to scam you about the diamond mine?”
“Don’t do this, Kiley. Not now.”
“Answer me, Nicolò. When we first met, did you think I was some sort of con artist?”
He hesitated, before reluctantly nodding. “I suspected you might be.”
“Why?” It was a cry from the heart.
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug, his expression one of extreme weariness. “Nothing definitive. Just a feeling I had.”
She wanted to go to him, to wrap her arms around him and reassure him that it would all work out. But she couldn’t. Too much divided them right now, a chasm of doubt and suspicion she had no clue how to bridge. Had no way of bridging without her memory.
“If you suspected me of being that sort of person, why did you decide to date me? How did we end up falling in love? How did we end up married?”
He lifted his hand, palm out. “It would seem The Inferno doesn’t worry about such minor details as—”
“As moral character?” she cut in.
“Kiley—”
She glanced toward the door, realizing she was poised to run, to escape an untenable situation. The urge nearly overwhelmed her. Was it gut instinct, or a pattern so much a part of her it didn’t require memory? She fought it with every ounce of strength she possessed. “Is it true? What Ferrell accused me of? Did I do those things? Is that who I really am?”
“I don’t know.” She could hear the frustration ripping apart his words. “I don’t want to believe it, Kiley.”
“Then don’t.” She dared to approach, dared to splay her hands across his chest and gather that steady, life-affirming heartbeat in her palm. “I need you to believe in me, Nicolò. I need you to fight for me. Maybe everything Ferrell says is true. Maybe I am a horrible person.”
“No.” The word escaped without thought or hesitation and it gave her the first glimmer of hope.
“Okay, was. Maybe I was a horrible person. But what if it’s all a mistake? Since I can’t remember, I can’t defend myself. I have to believe there’s some other explanation, if we can only find it.” She stared up at him, no longer interested in running, but determined to fight. “Please, Nicolò. I need to discover the truth.”
“And if the truth isn’t what you want to hear?”
“At least it’ll be the truth.”
She shouldn’t kiss him, shouldn’t put any more pressure on him. But she couldn’t help herself. Just for a moment or two she needed her husband, needed to coax him out from under his troubleshooter persona.
She slid her arms around his neck and covered his mouth with hers, practically consuming him. She felt his momentary resistance, understood it even as it caused her unfathomable pain. And then she felt the give, the gentle slide from reluctance into acceptance, before it transformed into something desperate and greedy and urgent. The flutter of hope gained in strength. He hadn’t given up on her. Not yet.
She snatched another kiss, a final one. “I need you to promise me something else,” she said.
She could see the shutters slam back into place. “If I can.”
“Promise me you’ll tell me the truth from now on. When you’re done here, we’ll put all the cards on the table.”
He gave a brief nod. “That’s one promise I can make. Until then, go home and I’ll join you there as soon as I’m able.”
His eyes were dark with pain and haunted by secrets. He lowered his head and kissed her again. There was an unmistakable finality in the way he embraced her, as though acknowledging on some level that their relationship would never be the same again. This time when he released her, he took a step backward, distancing himself physically, as well as emotionally.
“Fair warning, Kiley. You won’t like some of those cards I’m going to show you. They may very well end things between us.”
There was nothing she could say to that, no way to reassure him or calm her own fears. He opened the conference room door for he
r and she sleepwalked through it. She headed for the elevators, but found herself continuing past them, unable to convince herself to leave. She never knew how long she wandered the corridors before Primo found her and gathered her up.
Murmuring in soothing Italian, he escorted her to a generous-sized office. He installed her in a large, deep-cushioned chair before crossing to a wet bar. Pouring her a drink, he handed it to her. She cupped her hands around the balloon of the snifter and inhaled the potent brandy before taking a generous swallow.
Primo didn’t say anything to her, but resumed his seat at his desk and occupied himself with paperwork. She sat and sipped the brandy, losing track of time. It could have been minutes or hours. Time flowed in a confusing haze. But at long last she looked up.
“Lunch didn’t go well,” she announced in a low voice.
Primo set aside his papers and capped his pen. “I assumed as much.”
“It’s funny. For the past few weeks I’ve been enjoying so many new experiences. Until today. Today,” She drew and deep breath and pushed out an unsteady smile. “Not so much.”
“Sometimes we learn more from the bad experiences than the good.”
She curled deeper in the chair. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”
He cocked a head to one side in a gesture endearingly reminiscent of Nicolò. “Perhaps you have learned what you now must fix. Would that not allow some good to come from the bad?”
“I can fix being a con artist?”
His gaze sharpened. “So. You believe this man, Ferrell.”
It shouldn’t surprise her he’d heard about what had happened in Nicolò’s office. The Dantes were a tight-knit family. “Ferrell knows things about me. Things he shouldn’t—” Her voice broke and she struggled to control it. She met his golden gaze, caught the compassion gleaming there and allowed it to warm her. “What if he’s right? What if I really am a scam artist?”
“Are you?” He paused a beat. “Or were you?”
