Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride

“But you see, that’s the paradox. He was the lie. Byebye Marco Smith.” She pretended to wave a fond farewell toward the doorway. “Marco DiSanto, on the other hand, was not very nice to me. He told the truth, but it was a truth I didn’t want to hear.”

She stared into his eyes, looking for any tiny sign of regret he might be willing to bestow. Just a hint. It might have made her feel better.

For just a moment, she remembered how he used to laugh with her, his white teeth flashing against his tan skin. She would give almost anything to see that laughter now, that warmth. Instead, she saw amusement, but she couldn’t tell if he was smiling with her or against her. He had a sense of reserve in his face as he looked at her. She wanted passion and he was giving her polite appreciation instead. A little passion, a bit of memory, would have cancelled out a lot of her resentment.

But instead, he asked her a question she wasn’t expecting.

“Do you always tell the truth, Shayna?”

That startled her. She turned away. He knew the answer to that. He knew she’d lied to him about who she was for two weeks, just like she lied to everyone. She supposed it was only fair that he bring it up, since she’d brought up his lies. But still…

He went on, speaking softly.

“Truth can be a slippery thing. You know what they say. One man’s truth is another man’s fairy tale.”

She sighed. It seemed he did want to make her suffer. Well, she could give as good as she got. She gave him a direct look.

“Telling stories did seem to be a talent of yours when you were here before,” she noted.

He barely acknowledged her dig, waving it away as though he had larger things on his mind.

“Okay, here’s some truth for you, Shayna.” He paused, took a deep breath, and let it out. “I don’t know you.”

Her head whipped around and she stared at him. For a few seconds, she went back over his words in her head. Had she really heard what she’d thought she heard?

“What are you talking about?”

He met her gaze firmly. “I don’t have any idea who you are. I feel like I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

For a second or two, she felt sick. The room seemed to sway. She closed her eyes and steadied herself, then looked him in the eye again, searching hard. The man she’d spent all that time with just a few weeks ago had to be in there somewhere, but she couldn’t find any sign of him at the moment.

“Is this some kind of game, Marco?”

“No. It’s not.” He shook his head, holding her gaze. “I’m serious as a midnight clock.”

She pulled her arms in close around her. It was a steamy tropical day, but she was shivering. Something in his words, something in his attitude, had chilled her to the core.

“I do not know who you are. I can’t remember a thing.”

Chapter Three

“I KNOW THIS IS HARD to believe,” Marco said, running a hand distractedly through his thick dark hair. “I can hardly accept it myself.”

Shayna drew her breath in softly, then let it out again. “Accept what, exactly?” she asked, surprised that her voice wasn’t trembling. “Please explain.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then laughed shortly. “You see, that’s the problem. How can I explain what I can’t remember?”

“Marco…”

“Okay, I’ll try.” He grimaced. “When I left here, on my way back to Rome, I must have taken a regular flight, since that’s all that comes through here. But somewhere along the way, I transferred to a small plane, a commuter flight, and we went down in the Mediterranean off Sicily.”

She gasped. “Oh, Marco!”

“The pilot and another passenger were killed, but somehow I was rescued. I woke up in a hospital in Napoli. I couldn’t even remember who I was, much less where I’d been.”

She had to hold herself back. Every instinct cried out to go to him, to touch him, to convey her feelings as best she could. Despite everything, she cared about him more than she’d ever cared for any other man. Whatever it was she felt for him was pretty darn close to love. You couldn’t just throw that away at will. It tended to linger.

“Were you hurt? Are you all right?”

He looked at her and managed a slight smile. “I’m fine, Shayna. Physically. And over a few days, most of my memory came back.”

She nodded slowly, feeling very much at sea. These were circumstances she’d never dealt with before. It was hard to imagine how this could be true.

“But not all.”

“No, not all. I seem to have totally lost those two weeks I spent here on Ranai. I can’t remember a thing about them.”

She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around this weirdness. And at the same time she had to decide whether or not she believed him. Could this really be true? Was there any reason he might want her to think this in order to gain some sort of advantage—though she couldn’t say what that might be. Just the thought of that made her feel a bit guilty. After all, didn’t she trust him?

Hell, no! The man had lied to her from the beginning. Marco Smith indeed.

She didn’t say it aloud, but her eyes flashed and she wondered if he realized this whole story was a bit hard to swallow. Memory loss. Amnesia. She’d never known anyone to have it before. Why him? Why now? What did he want?

“How odd,” she said softly.

“Yes. Odd and awkward.”

Her brow furrowed as she purposely tried to harden her heart toward him. She had to stay objective if she had any hope of finding out the truth. There were certain questions that came up about this. Her eyes narrowed as she studied his face. Time to see if he had answers.

“If you couldn’t remember anything about those weeks, how did you know where you’d been?” she asked.

He didn’t seem surprised that she had questions. “I had a copy of my plane tickets, and records of my reservations at home in my office.”

“In Naples?”

He nodded. “Yes. That is where I live most of the year.”

She nodded. That seemed reasonable enough.

“Do you know why you came?”

He hesitated. “I was probably looking for a vacation of sorts. A getaway. A place to work in peace on…some ideas and problems I had.”

Hah. That wasn’t the half of it. But maybe he didn’t remember that part. It hadn’t been until that last day that she’d even known he was a world-famous racing yacht designer—and worked with her father. Glendenning Hudson loved competitive sailing and had the money to hire the best. Marco DiSanto was his designer, his ace in the hole when he competed in some of the biggest offshore races. And Marco had very carefully kept all that from her for those two weeks and probably wouldn’t have told her at all if she hadn’t walked in on him in his hotel room and seen the evidence with her own eyes.

“Why did you come here in the first place?” she challenged. “To Ranai, I mean.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Damned if I know,” he muttered. “That’s part of the mystery.”