Passionate Pregnancies: Enticed by His Forgotten Lover / Wanted by Her Lost Love / Tempted by Her Innocent Kiss. Maya Banks
Flip-flops.”
Maybe the doctor had been right. He lost his memory because he wanted to forget. Flip-flops? It was all he could do not to stare down at his very expensive leather loafers and imagine wearing flip-flops.
“And I wore this … beachwear.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You did. We bought swim trunks, too. I don’t know of anyone who goes to an island and doesn’t pack something to swim in, so we got you some trunks and I took you to my favorite stretch of the beach.”
So far her version of the weeks missing from his memory was so divergent from everything he knew of himself that it was like listening to a story about someone else. What could have possessed him to act so out of character?
“How long did this relationship you say we had go on?” he croaked.
“Four weeks,” she said softly. “Four wonderful weeks. We were together every day. By the end of the first week, you gave up your hotel room and you stayed with me. In my bed. We’d make love with the windows open so we could listen to the ocean.”
“I see.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me.”
“Bryony,” he said carefully. “This is very difficult for me. I’m missing a month of my life and what you’re telling me sounds so fantastical, so utterly out of character for me, that I can’t even wrap my head around it.”
She pressed her lips together but he could still see them tremble. “Yeah, I get that this is difficult for you. But try to see things from my perspective for just a few moments. Imagine that the person you were in love with and thought was in love with you suddenly can’t remember you. Imagine what kind of doubts you have when you discover that everything he told you was a lie and that he made you promises he didn’t keep. How would you feel?”
He stared into her eyes, gutted by the sorrow he saw. “I’d be pretty damn upset.”
“Yeah. That about covers it.”
She stood and pushed the serving cart back so that she could step around it. Her hand crept around the back of her neck and she rubbed absently as she stood just a short distance from where he sat on the edge of the bed.
“Look, this is … pointless. I’m really tired. You should probably go now.”
He shot to his feet. “You want me to go?” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she was out of her damn mind, but that wouldn’t win him any more points with her. “After dumping this story on me, after telling me I’m going to be a father, you expect me to just walk away?”
“It’s what you did before,” she said wearily.
“How the hell can you say that? How do you know what I did or didn’t do when I don’t even know? You said you loved me and that I loved you. I’ve just told you I can’t remember any of it. How do you get that I walked away from you? That I somehow betrayed you? I was in an accident, Bryony. What was the last day you saw me? What did we do? Did I dump you? Did I tell you I was leaving you?”
Her face was white and her fingers were balled into tiny fists at her sides.
“It was the day after we closed on the land. You said you had to go back to New York. It was some emergency you had to attend to personally. You said it wouldn’t take more than a day or two. You told me you’d be back, that you couldn’t wait to come back, and that once you’d returned, we’d discuss what we’d do with the land,” she said painfully.
“What day was it? The date, Bryony. The exact date.”
“June third.”
“The day of my accident.”
She looked stricken. Her hand flew to her mouth. She looked so unsteady that he thought she might fall. He reached out, snagged her wrist and pulled her down to sit beside him. She didn’t fight. She just stared at him numbly.
“How? What happened?”
“My private jet went down over Kentucky,” he said grimly. “I don’t remember a lot. I woke up in a hospital and had no idea how I’d come to be there.”
“And you remember nothing?” she asked hoarsely.
“Only those four weeks. I have some other gaps but it’s mostly people I’m supposed to know or remember but don’t. I didn’t initially remember the circumstances surrounding my decision to fly down to Moon Island, but that’s easy enough to figure out since I bought a piece of property while I was there.”
“So you just forgot me,” she said with a forced laugh.
He sighed. “I know it’s not easy to hear. Try to understand that I’m having the same difficulty believing all you’ve told me. I may not remember you, Bryony, but I’m not a complete bastard. It doesn’t bring me any satisfaction to see how much this hurts you.”
“I tried to call,” she said bleakly. “At first I waited. I told myself all sorts of excuses. It was a bigger emergency. You’re a really busy guy. But then I tried to call the number you’d given me. No one would let me speak to you. There were always excuses. You were in a meeting. You were out of town. You were at lunch.”
“There was a pretty tight security net around me after the accident. We didn’t want anyone to know of my memory loss. We were afraid it would make investors lose their confidence in me. Any sign of weakness will make many people pull out of a deal.”
“It looked—and felt—like a brush-off, and it pissed me off the more time that passed because you didn’t have the balls to tell me to my face.”
“So why now? Why did you wait so long to come here and confront me?”
She stared warily at him as if determining whether he was suspicious of her motives. And maybe he was. It certainly made sense that if she’d been that angry—and pregnant—she wouldn’t have waited four months to confront him.
“I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was nearly ten weeks along. And Mamaw was having health problems so I was spending a lot of time with her. I didn’t want to upset her by telling her that I suspected you’d seduced me and lied to me—to us—about your plans for the land. It would have broken her heart. Not just about the land. She knew how much I loved you. She wanted me happy.”
Well, damn. He felt about two inches tall.
He ran a hand through his hair and wondered how the hell someone’s life could change so drastically in a single day.
“We have some decisions to make, Bryony.”
She turned and tilted her head in his direction. “Decisions?”
He met her gaze. “You’ve told me that I was in love with you. That you were in love with me. You’ve also said that you’re pregnant with my child. If you think I’m just going to walk out of your hotel room and not look back, you’re insane. We have a hell of a lot to work out and it isn’t going to be resolved in a single night. Or day. Or week even.”
She nodded her agreement.
“I want you to come with me.”
Her eyes widened. Her mouth parted and her tongue swept nervously over her bottom lip.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“If everything you say is true, then a hell of a lot of my life and future changed on that island. You and I are going to go back to where it all started.”
She stared in bewilderment at him. Had she expected him to walk away? He wasn’t sure if he was angry or resigned over that fact.
“We’re going to relive those weeks, Bryony. Maybe being there will bring it all back.”
“And if it doesn’t?” she asked cautiously.
“Then we’ll have spent a