The Forgotten Gallo Bride. Natalie Anderson
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‘That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you said he had injuries, you meant his memory. Because there isn’t anything else. He’s very...fit.’ She drew in a shuddering breath and leaned against the kitchen counter. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? He’s lost his memory.’ She waited for his reply. ‘Jasper?’
‘I can’t tell you. I promised him.’
‘I’m different.’ She wasn’t just anyone. She’d been the man’s wife.
‘No. Not even you,’ Jasper muttered, sounding older than his years. ‘He saved my life too, you know.’
‘Jasper—’
‘He needs help.’ Jasper suddenly interrupted her. ‘He’s not left that house all year. All he does is work—’
‘He doesn’t need my help. He needs professional help.’ She wasn’t a professional anything. She blinked back the tears as she whispered, ‘I’m not the right person. He deserves better than this.’ He deserved better than her.
Jasper had been wrong in setting them both up like this. He’d lied to Tomas and made her an accessory. She hated that.
The phone cut out a couple of times and she guessed someone else was trying to phone Jasper, but he ignored it.
She thought of that lonely gallery up there with Tomas’s life in pictures and articles on the wall. The notes he had and what must be a desperate attempt to make sense of it all. ‘Can he remember anything?’
‘I can’t talk about it, Zara. I promised him I wouldn’t. But he’s lost so much. You can see how isolated he is. I thought if he just saw you...’
But she’d been nothing in Tomas’s life—only a moment, a whimsy. She hadn’t truly touched him or made any lasting impression on him. He’d turned her world upside down, then walked away without so much as a backwards glance. All done in a little over a day.
She’d meant nothing to him.
‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. Jasper had trapped her in a situation she’d never have agreed to had she known the truth.
‘You must,’ Jasper said firmly. ‘It will take a couple of days until I get there. Work as his housekeeper. I can get him to agree to that.’
‘No—’
‘You can’t leave, Zara.’ He overrode her.
‘Why not?’
There was a hesitation, then a sigh. ‘Because you’re still married to him.’
‘What?’ Every muscle in her body weakened and she almost dropped the phone. ‘What?’
‘You’re still married. The annulment was never processed. I’m sorry.’
She was still married to Tomas? Goosebumps skittled over her skin. She drew in a breath so jagged it seemed to slice her lungs. ‘How is that possible?’ she whispered.
‘After the accident, I was so distracted it slipped my mind.’
‘But the paperwork... I signed—’ She broke off, too stunned to speak.
‘It burned in the car. We were in hospital for weeks. Tomas was there for months. Then I was concerned about him—protecting him.’
She’d read in the newspaper about the car accident in France less than a week after their crazy wedding. She’d felt sick at the time as she’d learned how Tomas had fought to get Jasper free of the wreckage before the car had exploded. But they’d both survived the accident and the blast and, according to the reports, both were going to be fine. There’d been little about the man in his bio on his business website. Other online searches had been business related and largely fruitless.
Not long after that that she’d forced herself to stop searching for information on him. She couldn’t turn into some sad obsessive. She’d had to forget him to move forward with her life. But her repayment plan had always burned in the background. In the long term she’d aimed to track him down, successful, a whole new woman. With the money plus interest to return to him. She’d wanted to impress him with her transformation and her success.
She’d never do that now.
‘No one knows?’ She turned and stared at the dark window but she could see nothing but her own pale face in the glass.
‘No one knows anything about you. Only his medical team know about...’
She felt the ground had been cut out from under her. All this time they’d been married? And all these months he’d been so hurt?
‘You’re coming here now, aren’t you? Please,’ she begged. She couldn’t handle this alone. ‘He has to know,’ she said, her old anxiety rushing to the fore. She should go in there right now and tell him, but she couldn’t do it. More than that, he wouldn’t believe her. She had no proof. He’d think she was crazy. And she wouldn’t blame him. ‘Please, you have to tell him...’
She didn’t want to do more harm than good. She didn’t want to make anything worse for him. And she didn’t want him to know how weak she’d been.
Truth?
She was still weak. And she was still half in love with him.
She heard the series of interruptions signalling Jasper was getting another call, but again he ignored it.
‘We both owe him, Zara.’
She closed her eyes against the emotional manipulation. So many times that had been used against her. But this time was different. Because this time she did owe.
Tomas. Everything.
‘I know,’ she said softly.
‘Stay until I get there.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. Defeated.
‘Is that Jasper you’re talking to?’
She jumped at the question that cracked across the room like a bullwhip. Tomas stood in the kitchen doorway, looking furious, his own mobile phone in his hand. How long had he been standing there? What had he heard?
Then it hit her. She was staring at her husband.
‘Zara?’
She didn’t answer Jasper’s sharp query because in two steps Tomas was across the room and had snatched the phone from her limp fingers.
‘Never ignore my calls,’ he said furiously into her phone to Jasper, not taking his eyes off her.
She heard Jasper’s immediate reply. She hadn’t got that apologetic deferential tone from him. The grim look on Tomas’s face deepened as Jasper muttered something else she couldn’t hear because now her mind whirled at the implication of Jasper’s words.
She was still married to Tomas. She was his wife. She quivered as a frisson of intimacy that she had no right to feel skittered down her spine.
She’d always been too aware of him, too attracted, too ready to say yes.
Now she was here in this huge house alone with him and while he might have no clue about the truth, that didn’t mean he wasn’t totally, utterly in control.
And she wasn’t. Not of herself. Not of those stupid yearnings she’d felt when he—and only he—was near. She’d been too isolated. Too inexperienced. Too insecure.
She licked her lips nervously as she watched his anger flare at Jasper.
At totally the wrong moment that one precious memory slipped its leash to torment her.
* * *
‘You can’t sleep?’
She shook her head, feeling her colour mount because he’d found her awake and alone at two in the morning, pacing the corridor outside