Her Forgotten Lover's Heir. Annie West

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER ONE

      SHE WOKE TO a sense of disorientation.

      Blinking, she took in the dimly lit room. The visitor’s chair, bedside table and small window. Now she knew where she was. Rome. The hospital they’d brought her to after she’d been knocked down on the street.

      Yet, instead of feeling calmer, her pulse quickened. The sense of disorientation didn’t ease. How could it when everything beyond this room was a blank?

      Her name.

      Her nationality.

      What she was doing in Rome.

      She didn’t recall anything.

      Impulsively, she reached out to the bedside table, fingers running over the small comb and vanilla lip-balm that were the only possessions she could call her own. Her clothes had been so torn and bloodied they were unwearable and whatever bag or wallet she’d carried was missing.

      She shut her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. Forcing down the fear at not knowing anything.

      After all, she did know some things.

      She wasn’t Italian. She spoke English, with only a smattering of tourist Italian.

      She was in her twenties. Pale-skinned with regular, if ordinary, features. She had grey-blue eyes and tawny hair that looked limp after the blood had been washed out.

       And she was pregnant.

      Her breath hissed in as she struggled with fear at the thought of being pregnant, nameless and alone.

      The amnesia would pass. The doctors were hopeful. Well, most of them were hopeful. She was determined to cling to that. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate. She’d feel better in daylight when the medical staff bustled around the ward. Even the continual barrage of tests would be a welcome change from lying here, utterly alone and...

      Something tugged at her senses. The hairs on her nape rose and her skin tickled with the awareness someone was watching her.

      Slowly, since quick movement made her head ache, she turned towards the door.

      She blinked, then blinked again. Wasn’t it enough that her memory was shot? Had she begun hallucinating too?

      In the shadowed doorway stood a man who surely didn’t belong here. Tall, broad-shouldered and lean enough to wear his dark suit to elegant perfection, he looked like a model for designer menswear. That square jaw, the hint of a groove low in each cheek and those soaring cheekbones were all ultra-masculine and stunningly attractive.

      A fillip of emotion stirred in her belly. Surprise, obviously. And attraction. As a distraction from self-pity he was perfect—the epitome of the ‘tall, dark and handsome’ cliché.

      Except, as he stepped into the room, she discovered he wasn’t anything so simple as a pretty face.

      There was an underlying toughness about him that made her skin prickle. He was the sort of guy who made designer stubble sexy instead of effete. His nose was strong rather than suave and his eyes hinted at shrewd, calculating intelligence. His height made him dominate the room and the effect was magnified when he stopped by her bed.

      She tilted her head up, heart pounding.

      ‘Who are you?’ It seemed vital she sound calm, though everything inside her quickened.

      Maybe he was some fancy consultant. That might explain his lack of bedside manner. No cheery smile, no platitudes about time being a great healer. No stethoscope. She couldn’t picture anything so mundane draped over that superbly fitted suit.

      His eyes bored into hers and she saw now why they looked so unusual. They were brown flecked with gold and glowed with an inner fire, their colour unexpected given his olive skin and dark hair.

      His silent scrutiny made her uncomfortable. ‘I said—’

      ‘You don’t remember me?’ His voice was honey and whisky, velvet and steel, and it would have made her hang on his every word even if he’d recited from a phone book. But when he implied...

      She scrambled to sit up then winced as the movement made her head pound.

      ‘Are you all right? Should I call someone?’

      Not a doctor, then.

      ‘Should I remember you? Have we met?’

      Something she couldn’t identify flared in those golden eyes.

      ‘Do you know me?’ She leaned towards him, silently pleading for him to say he did.

      Someone somewhere held the key to her identity.

      ‘I—’