Winning Back His Runaway Bride

by Jessica Gilmore

  The sense intensified. After all, a whole year was gone from his memories, wiped away as if it had never been. Anything could have happened in that time—and, God knew, his grandfather hadn’t exactly been in the best of health last year. He’d been so angry with Matteo over his decision to marry as well, although whether it was the swiftness of the courtship or the fact that Charlie was a primary school teacher and not a tycoon or heiress, Matteo didn’t know. But he could remember all too well the choler on the old man’s face as he had shouted that Matteo was no better than his father, led by his emotions and not by his brain.

  He pushed the memory away, wishing for a moment that his amnesia could have wiped that particular scene out as well. ‘Charlie, don’t hide things from me. Is there something I should know? Is he okay?’

  She looked up quickly. ‘Matteo, don’t worry. He’s fine, honestly.’

  ‘But?’ There was more here; he’d stake his life on it.

  She bit down on her lip. ‘Look, he did have a mild stroke last year, but it was very mild. That’s the reason why we left Paris early and didn’t go on our honeymoon, not a business deal like I said. But he made a full recovery and he’s back at work as belligerent and difficult and demanding as ever. Honestly, the only reason I didn’t speak to him yesterday was because by the time I’d left the hospital and made all the arrangements for today it was getting really late. And I was back on the road before breakfast. Besides...’ she grimaced ‘...you should know that I am still not his favourite person. He thinks you could have done a lot better than me. He likes Jo. She handles him better than I do.’

  But Matteo could barely focus on the reassuring words, her first sentence reverberating around his aching head. ‘A slight stroke? In that case there’s no way I should take this time off; he’s going to need me more than ever. We should head back.’

  ‘No.’ Charlie put a hand on his arm and with a jolt Matteo realised how little she’d touched him all day. ‘I promise you he’s fine. Fighting fit. It’s you who needs to take things easy now, and it’s his turn to give you the time and the space to do that. That’s what I’ll be telling him later; it might be a little bit easier now he’s had a night to sleep on it. The only thing I’m keeping from you is that I’m a complete coward who is secretly relieved that Jo was the one who broke the news to him. But I’ll take my medicine later and call him, and you can take yours and stop worrying. Deal?’

  Matteo paused, the familial duty instilled in him by his grandfather making it hard for him to respond. How could he relax when his grandfather, the business needed him?

  ‘Look, Matteo,’ Charlie said softly, ‘we are all hoping you get your memory back sooner rather than later but, even if you don’t, at some point you’ll return to work. And if your memory doesn’t come back then you’ll need an entire year’s worth of decisions and plans explaining to you so you can get up to speed on any changes. It’ll take you time to get to full effectiveness quickly, even without the tiny fact of a severe concussion. I know how hard it is for you to rest, I know you see relaxation as a dirty word, but if you really want to be back at full capacity then you need to recover properly. The last thing anyone needs is for you to have some kind of terrible relapse and be out for even longer just because you didn’t do the right thing now.’

  Matteo frowned but he couldn’t deny the sense in her words. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ Her mouth curved into a teasing smile. ‘Does that mean you’ll do as you’re told?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll go that far, but I will try to relax and not worry about what’s going on back at the office.’

  ‘I guess that’s as much as any of us can ask for.’

  Charlie lapsed into silence again, her focus on her own phone, which had barely left her hands since she had picked him up from the hospital that morning. Matteo leaned back and studied his wife.

  Some things were familiar. The mint-green three-quarter-length trousers had a distinct fifties vibe, especially teamed with a pink flowery twinset, a matching scarf twisted in her hair, but there were changes too. Charlie seemed a little thinner and had deep shadows under her eyes that he devoutly hoped were a result of the last twenty-four hours and not something more permanent. The last time he remembered seeing her—just two days ago to him—she’d had platinum blonde hair, the tips a bright pink, replacing the sky-blue streaks she’d previously sported. Her hair was still blonde, but shorter, just past her shoulders and a darker honey shade, with strands of copper and bronze running through it. A little more sophisticated maybe, but he missed the pink.

  ‘When did you change your hair?’

  She put a hand up and self-consciously pulled on a lock of the shoulder-length waves. ‘A few months ago. The way I usually wore it was okay for a primary school teacher, but I looked a little bit out of place at some of the dinners and events I attended with you.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I love never quite knowing what colour your hair will be, how you will wear it.’

  ‘I...’ She paused, still pulling the silky strand through her fingers. ‘All that bleach takes a toll. I decided to give it a rest and a chance to restore. You know me. I’ll be ready for something new sooner rather than later. Maybe I’ll be a redhead for a bit.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’ But as the car continued purring along the twisty narrow roads Matteo realised that in many ways he didn’t know his wife at all.

  His wife. He’d always known he’d marry one day—there was the title and the company after all. A baronet needed an heir and there had been a Harrington at the head of Harrington Industries for over two centuries. Matteo had known his duty. But he’d assumed he would pick one of the perfectly nice women from his wider circle at some point and they’d spend a perfectly pleasant life together. Nothing exciting, nothing dramatic, just like his previous perfectly pleasant relationships. And that was what he’d thought he’d wanted—after all, he’d grown up seeing all the fireworks and the subsequent messy fallout passion brought. He didn’t need anything like that in his life.

  But then he’d met Charlie and everything he’d thought he’d wanted, thought he’d known, had been swept away. A whirlwind romance, the papers had said, and now he understood what that meant because it had felt as if he had been taken over by uncontrollable forces from the moment he’d walked through the elegantly austere lobby of Harrington Industries to see a vivacious young woman doing her best to disarm their fierce receptionist. Charlie had been wearing a bright paisley shift dress straight out of the nineteen-seventies in lurid swirls of purple and green, her blonde hair sporting matching purple highlights.

  ‘Can I help?’ he’d asked, only to see the brightest smile he had ever witnessed light up vivid features as Charlie explained that she was trying to hand-deliver a box of brownies along with her application to the charitable trust Harrington Industries ran as part of their corporate responsibility programme.

  ‘I promise you, it’s not a bribe,’ she’d said, the bluest eyes he’d ever seen fastened earnestly on him. ‘I just want to show the trustees what’s possible with the kitchen we have now so you can imagine just what we could do with bigger premises.’

  Charmed, he’d offered to take her out for dinner to hear more and found himself captivated by her tales of village life and the small community centre that desperately needed renovating, where she held dance classes and helped her grandmother to organise cooking classes for lonely rural people.

  ‘The brownies I brought were baked by a local farmer who had never cooked as much as pasta in his life. And now he’s turning out the most amazing baking there’s a good chance he’s going to win all the prizes at this year’s village show. Come and see for yourself. Please?’ She’d raised imploring eyes up to him and he was helpless to say no.

  Two days later they’d fallen into bed, a breathless tangle of desire and kisses; a week later he’d known he was falling in love. Less than two months late
r he’d proposed and they’d planned their wedding for three weeks’ time. The earliest they could manage it. ‘Why wait?’ she’d laughed. It was the end of the school year, the perfect time to hand in her notice; her cousin could take over her dance classes. He could see no reason to delay.

  It was as if colour had come whirling into his life, lighting up every dark corner and warming him through, and for once he didn’t care about his grandfather’s warnings, or the slightly amused expressions on his friends’ faces as Charlie swept into the room in yet another gaudy vintage outfit, her hair barely the same colour or style twice, with no knowledge of social protocols. No, that wasn’t true; she was a diplomat’s daughter. She knew the rules perfectly well. She just didn’t care and that, to Matteo, was one of the most attractive things of all. To him image and responsibility were everything. She showed him another way and it was intoxicating, living for the moment.

  It was still hard to get his head around the knowledge that he was actually married to Charlie, that they’d been living together for a year. What was it like, waking up next to her every day? Had they settled into little routines? The problem with a whirlwind romance and a three-week engagement was that it gave him no benchmark. He had never spent more than a night at a time with her, not experienced normal life. It was supposed to be all to come.

  For him it was all to come—he pushed the unwanted doubts to one side. He was married to the woman of his dreams and he couldn’t wait to find out just what that meant.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE MIGHT HAVE spent years studying dance and drama but Charlie realised that, embarrassingly, she was terrible at improvisation, at least when it really mattered. Every time Matteo made a comment or asked her an innocuous question she prickled with defensiveness, as if he were trying to catch her out, not show genuine interest about his missing months. Interest in her. The kind of interest she’d stopped hoping for months ago.

  To be fair, her hair was a sore subject. After all, he was the one who had asked her to look more grown-up and professional and not so much like a children’s TV presenter. The words still hurt. Yet here was the proof that she hadn’t imagined it; he had loved her hair, once. She tugged at a strand, inwardly wincing at the expensively, subtly blended colours. She’d meant to change it back weeks ago, had bought the dye and yet somehow had kept putting it off, hating the unwanted doubt he’d planted in her mind.

  No, she reminded herself, thinking this way was unfair; her feelings were not the issue. Matteo had no clue about the last year, about all that had gone wrong, and so if she was going to be here she needed to act as if she was equally clueless.

  Turning and looking out of the window, Charlie felt some of the tension ease from her tired body. The scenery was utterly glorious, the car smoothly negotiating hairpin bends above an impossibly blue sea stretching out to the sun-filled horizon, picturesque villages clinging to the cliffside below. She inhaled, taking it all in properly for the first time. She was going to be spending at least the next few days in this beautiful place so why not enjoy it? After all, it was only for a finite time. Once Matteo had the all-clear his memory would return—or she’d have to find a way to tell him the truth. Either way, she’d be heading back home. Who knew if she’d get the chance to travel here again? She needed to chill a little, be her normal live-for-the-moment self, not this uncharacteristically nervy person.

  Mind made up, Charlie slipped her phone back into her bag and turned to Matteo, her smile genuine, not plastered on. ‘How gorgeous is this? I can’t wait to explore. Your maternal grandfather left you the villa, have I got that right?’

  Matteo nodded, also visibly relaxing as he took in her enthusiasm. ‘Yes, it’s been in the family for generations. A bolthole and retreat long before this area became so fashionable.’

  ‘It must be old then; wasn’t this an upmarket Roman destination?’ she teased and he laughed.

  ‘It was. We must take a trip to Pompeii so you can see that for yourself. Maybe not that old, but we have owned land here for generations. To be honest, I was surprised when he left the villa to me and not one of my half-siblings or cousins; we weren’t close. Maybe it was a way of binding me to here. My Italian grandparents, especially my grandfather, always felt that I was too English.’

  ‘In what way?’ She shifted round to look fully at him and, despite herself, she couldn’t help hungrily taking in every inch of him. He was still uncharacteristically pale, the olive skin sallow, not glowing, his hair tousled, not ruthlessly tamed, shadows accenting his hazel eyes. All she wanted to do was reach out and hold him, run her hands through his hair, along the sharp defined lines of his jaw, touch her mouth to the pulse in his neck. She pressed her nails into her palm, the sharp pressure helping reinforce the barriers she needed to uphold for both their sakes.

  ‘He was never comfortable with the fact that I was not just born and raised in England but stayed there even after my mother returned to Italy.’

  ‘But didn’t she leave you when you were still a child? You didn’t have any choice in the matter.’ She had never even spoken to his mother, let alone met her, and they hadn’t invited her to their wedding—although, to be fair, they hadn’t invited any of his family. Her parents weren’t able to make it on such short notice so they had decided to keep the ceremony very small and hold a big celebratory party at a later date—but somehow they hadn’t been able to find a date Matteo could commit to and the party had never happened. It was probably for the best. ‘Wasn’t she unfit to look after you? I thought your paternal grandfather had custody?’

  ‘Not quite. My father had legal custody but he left me with my paternal grandfather; a small kid would have just been in the way of his lifestyle. But when my mother remarried I was old enough to choose, and I chose England.’ He half shrugged. ‘So my Italian grandfather had a point, I guess.’

  ‘You didn’t want to live with your mother?’ How had they never discussed this before? She knew Matteo had been raised by his grandfather—if you called boarding school at seven and a series of nannies raised—and was pretty much estranged from his parents, but not that he’d had the chance to live with his mother and turned it down. With so much left unsaid no wonder they hadn’t managed to build the foundations a successful marriage needed.

  ‘Feelings didn’t come into it. It was clear by then that my father would never be fit to take over Harrington Industries, that I was the heir. It was clear back when my parents first divorced. I can see why my grandfather wanted to make sure he brought me up in the right way.’

  By sending you to boarding school before you could even tie your own shoelaces? Charlie managed to bite back the words. It had felt like a meaningful coincidence when they’d discovered they had both been mainly raised by grandparents while their parents lived abroad. But she had soon realised that her own cosy, comfortable upbringing with frequent contact with her loving parents could not have been more different from Matteo’s cold reality: boarding school, his mother busy with a new family, an ageing playboy for a father and a stern, demanding grandfather he spent his life trying to make proud. She’d wanted to give him the family he’d never had, the unconditional love he needed and she’d failed. His scars were too deep for her to heal.

  ‘I hope they knew that, no matter what choices were made for you when you were still a child, you are proud of your Italian heritage.’

  ‘Proud? Of course I’m proud. But I’ve not visited the country much, not since my teens. And I barely use the villa, which I do feel bad about. As you’ll see, it’s far too nice to just be left empty, but as it’s entailed I can’t give it away or sell it. Truth is my mother uses it far more than I do.’ He reached over and squeezed her hand and once again her whole body responded, a sweet, almost painful ache of memory. ‘It will be good to spend some time there. Even if it did take concussion to make it possible.’

  ‘We need to talk about your skewed priorities,’ Charlie
couldn’t help but tell him, even as every part of her focused on the casual touch of his fingers round hers, tightening her own grip, despite herself. She’d missed the feel of him like a deep breath of fresh air. ‘Whatever else comes out of all this, promise me that it won’t take nearly dying for you to take a holiday again.’

  Matteo returned the pressure, his hand wrapping round hers. ‘As long as you promise to be there next to me.’

  ‘I...’ Charlie was saved from having to find an answer as the car took a sharp left and began to make its way up a vertiginously steep road. ‘Oh, look, Matteo.’ The world fell away beneath them, and as she twisted to look behind her she saw a beautiful small town at the foot of the cliff with whitewashed buildings clustered around the picturesque harbour.

  ‘That’s Amalfi,’ Matteo told her. ‘I can’t wait to show you around. You’ll never eat seafood anywhere else in the world to compare. And as for the gelato...’

  ‘I’ve been dreaming of the gelato for the last twenty-four hours,’ she said, transfixed by the scenery as the car kept climbing until they finally reached the small hillside town of Ravello, Matteo pointing out the sights as they went. He sat bolt upright, clearly delighted to be back.

  ‘That’s the Villa Rufolo,’ Matteo said as they passed a spectacular building poised on the edge of the cliff, surrounded by beautiful gardens. ‘Every year the village holds an arts festival—music, ballet, film—over three months, much of it centred there. World-famous performers take part. We should see what’s on; it will start while we’re here.’

  ‘That would be lovely, if you’re recovered that is. No loud noise or bright lights, remember?’

  ‘I remember. But I was thinking, concussion isn’t going to make this much of a second honeymoon, is it? And it sounds like the first one was cut way too short. So let’s spend some real time here, a week or so for me to recover and then a couple of weeks of proper holiday. What do you say?’