Triplets Under The Tree

“There’s one way.” Before she lost her courage, she pointed to her chest over her heart as her pulse raced at the promise. “Antonio has a rather elaborate tattoo. Right here. Do you?”

It wouldn’t be impossible to replicate. But difficult, as the tattoo had been commissioned by a famous artist who had a unique tribal style.

Without breaking eye contact, he set his water glass on the side table and unbuttoned his shirt to midchest. Unbuttoned his shirt, as if they were intimate and she had every right to see him unclothed.

“It says Falco. What does it mean?” he asked.

The truth washed through her even before he drew his shirt aside to reveal the red-and-black falcon screaming across his pectoral muscle. Her gaze locked on to the ink, registering the chiseled flesh beneath it, and it kicked at her way down low with a long, hot pull, exactly the way she’d always reacted to Antonio.

She blinked and refocused on his face. The sight of his cut, athletic torso—sun browned and more enthralling than she’d ever have expected—wouldn’t fade from her mind.

That tattoo had always been an electrifying aspect of his dangerous appeal. And, oh, my—it still was.

“It means that’s proof enough for me to know you’re Antonio.” She shut her eyes, unable to process the relief flooding through his gaze. Unable to process the sharp thrill in her midsection that was wholly erotic...and felt an awful lot like trouble. Stunning, resplendent, forbidden Antonio Cavallari was alive. “And we have a lot of hurdles in front of us.”

Everything in her world had just slid off a cliff.

The long, legal nightmare of the past year as she’d fought for her right to the babies had been for nothing. Nearly two years ago, she’d signed a surrogacy agreement, but then a year ago Vanessa and Antonio had crashed into the South China Sea. After months of court appearances, a judge had finally overturned the rights she’d signed away and given her full custody of her children.

Oh, dear Lord. This was Antonio’s home. It was his money. Her children were his. And he had every right to take them away from her.

Two (#ulink_3a3f4817-11f0-5fd3-ab89-7e0c30d946ab)

Antonio—he rolled the name around on his tongue, and it didn’t feel wrong like Falco had. Before Indonesia, he’d been called both Antonio and Falco by blurry-faced people, some with cameras, some with serious expressions as they spoke to him about important matters. A crowd had chanted Falco like a tribal drum, bouncing off the ceiling of a huge, cavernous arena.

The headache nearly flattened him again, as it always did when he tried too hard to force open his mind.

Instead, he contemplated the blushing, dark-haired and very attractive woman who seemed vaguely familiar but not enough to place her. She didn’t belong in his house. She shouldn’t be living here, but he had no clue where that sense came from. “What is your name?”

“Caitlyn. Hopewell,” she added in what appeared to be an afterthought. “Vanessa is—was—my sister.” She eyed him. “You remember Vanessa but not me?”

“The redhead?” At Caitlyn’s nod, he frowned.

No, he didn’t remember Vanessa, not the way he remembered his house. A woman with flame-colored hair haunted his dreams. Bits and pieces floated through his mind. The images were laced with flashes of her flesh as if he’d often seen her naked, but her face wouldn’t quite clarify, as though he’d created an impressionist painting of this woman whose name he couldn’t recall.

Frustration rose again. Because how was it fair that he knew exactly what an impressionist painting was but not who he was?

After Ravi had knocked loose the memories of his house, Antonio had left Indonesia the next morning, hopping fishing boats and stowing away amidst heavy cargo containers for days and days, all to reach Los Angeles in hopes of regaining more precious links with his past.

This delicate, ethereally beautiful woman—Caitlyn—held a few of these keys, and he needed her to provide them. “Who is Vanessa to me?”

“Your wife,” she announced softly. “You didn’t know that?”

He shook his head. Married. He was married to Vanessa? It was an entire piece of his life, his persona, he’d had no idea existed. Had he been in love with her? Had his wife looked for him at all, distraught over his fate, or just written him off when he went missing?

Would he even recognize Vanessa if she stood before him?

Glancing around the living room for which he’d instantly and distinctly recalled purchasing the furnishings—without the help of anyone, let alone the red-haired woman teasing the edges of his memory—he asked, “Where is she?”

“She died.” Grief welled up across her classical features. The sisters must have been close, which was probably why Caitlyn seemed familiar. “You were both involved in the same plane crash shortly after leaving Thailand.”

“Plane crash?” The wispy images of the red-haired woman vanished as he zeroed in on Caitlyn. “Is that what happened?”

Thailand. He’d visited Thailand—but never made it home. Until now.

Eyes bright with unshed tears, she nodded, dark ponytail flipping over her shoulder. “Over a year ago.”

All at once, he wanted to mourn for this wife he couldn’t remember. Because it would mean he could still experience emotions that stayed maddeningly out of reach, emotions with clinical definitions—love, peace, happiness, fulfillment, the list went on and on—but which had no real context. He wanted to feel something other than discouraged and adrift.

His head ached, but he pressed on, determined to unearth more clues to how he’d started out on a plane from Thailand and ended up in a fishing village in Indonesia. Alone. “But I was on the plane. And I’m not dead. Maybe Vanessa is still alive, too.”

Her name produced a small ping in his heart, but he couldn’t be certain if the feeling lingered from before the crash or if he’d manufactured it out of his intense need to remember.

Hand to her mouth, Caitlyn bowed her head. “No. They recovered her...body,” she murmured, her voice thick. “They found the majority of the fuselage in the water. Most of the forty-seven people on board were still in their seats.”

Vivid, gory images spilled into his mind as he imagined the horrors his wife—and the rest of the passengers—must have gone through before succumbing to the death he’d escaped.

“Except me.”

For the first time, his reality felt a bit like a miracle instead of a punishment. How had he escaped? Had he unbuckled himself in time to avoid drowning or had he been thrown free of the wreckage?

“Except you,” she agreed, though apparently it had taken the revelation of his strange falcon tattoo to convince her. “And two other passengers, who were sitting across the aisle from you in first class. You were all in the first row, including Vanessa. They searched for survivors for a week, but there was no trace.”

“They were looking in the wrong place,” he growled. “I washed up on the beach in Indonesia. On the south side of Batam Island.”

“I don’t know my geography, but the plane crashed into the ocean near the coast of Malaysia. That’s where they focused the search.”

No wonder no one had found him. They’d been hundreds of miles off.

“After a month,” she continued, “they declared all three of you dead.”

But he wasn’t dead.

The other two passengers might have survived, as well. Look for them. They might be suffering from memory loss or ghastly injuries. They might be frightened and alone, having clawed their way out of a watery crypt, only to face a fully awake nightmare. As he had.

He had to find them. But he had no money, no resources—not at this moment anyway. He must have money, or at least he must have had some once. The sum he’d paid for this house popped into his head out of nowhere: fifteen point eight million dollars. That had been eight years ago.

Groaning, he rubbed his temples as the headache grew uncontrollable.

“Are you okay?” Caitlyn asked.

Ensuring the comfort of others seemed to come naturally to this woman he’d found living in his house. His sister-in-law. Had she always been so nurturing?

“Fine,” he said between clenched teeth. “Is this still my house?”

He could sell it and use the proceeds to live on while he combed the South China Sea.

Caitlyn chose that moment to sit next to him on the couch, overwhelming him with the light scent of coconut, which, strangely, made him want to bury his nose in her hair.