Her Last Night of Innocence Read online

  ‘Love to know that I’m not over it?’ He cut her off sharply, as if that would also help him cut off the urge to cross the room and take her face in his hands and kiss that soft mouth again. ‘That I have this…this gap? Can you imagine what would happen if it got out that I have no memory of that evening? How many women would come forward and claim I was with them? That I slept with them, assaulted them, fathered their children? The tabloid newspapers would have enough salacious front pages for the next three years, and there would be nothing I could do—nothing—because I can’t remember.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was more like a defeated exhalation than a properly enunciated word. Tugging her jumper down over her hands, as if she was cold, she shook her head slightly, so that her soft hair shimmered in the light of the lamp. ‘I didn’t think of it like that. Why would anyone do that? Make things up?’

  He gave a harsh laugh. ‘How about for five minutes of fame and a few hundred grand? Even if a story could be disproved, with a DNA test or an alibi, by that time the damage would already have been done.’

  She stood up, wrapping her arms around herself for a moment and looking around as if she was disorientated. ‘Well, you don’t need to worry about that any more. You were with me.’ She looked at him then, straight in the eye, and gave a painful smile that seemed to reach down inside him and twist at his heart. ‘I know what happened, and I promise you I’m not going to spread it all over the front pages. You can relax. Get back to your party and your adoring fans and stop worrying about it.’

  Her voice was soft, resigned. Cristiano tried to focus on what she was saying—to make sense of it—but the ache in his head had intensified so that it felt as if someone was hitting the inside of his skull with a sledgehammer.

  ‘I have no intention of going back,’ he said tersely, remembering how he had planned to spend the rest of the night. In bed with her. Seducing her into telling him everything he so badly wanted to know. But he had underestimated her, he realised now. He had assumed she would fall into bed with him at the merest hint of an opportunity, like any one of the scores of women across the square who were no doubt searching the Casino for him right now. The fact that she hadn’t was intriguing, as well as surprisingly painfully frustrating.

  He thrust his hands in his pockets, gritting his teeth against the throbbing in his head—and in other, more basic parts of his anatomy. ‘I’m going away for a while.’

  She had moved across to the bed again and was leaning forward, unzipping the case she’d just finished packing. Her hand stilled. ‘Oh? Where to?’

  ‘A chalet in the Alps. It belongs to a friend.’

  His voice was rough in the quiet room. From a long way off he could just about hear the sounds of the party in the Casino—the pulse of the music and the muffled sound of a lot of voices raised to speak over it. Suddenly he was profoundly glad to have escaped.

  To be here.

  Slowly she lifted her head and looked up. Her eyes were wide, the blue almost swallowed up by the darkness at their centre.

  ‘You’re going tonight?’

  He nodded, not letting his gaze move from hers. Not able to. ‘I’m going now.’

  Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips. ‘Alone?’

  It was barely more than a whisper, and it felt like a caress. Cristiano felt desire slam into him with all the force of a head-on collision. The air between them throbbed with sudden possibility.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said softly.

  Chapter Four

  IT WAS a starless night.

  Sitting in the low passenger seat of Cristiano’s expensive sports car, Kate bit her lip and stared out into the darkness, trying to stop the convulsive tremors that gripped her

  The car’s headlamps lit the empty road ahead, but beyond them there was nothing but velvet blackness. She had no idea where they were, or exactly where they were going. There was no north star to use as a compass, no moon to light the way.

  It seemed crushingly symbolic.

  The surge of hope she had felt when he’d told her about his memory loss had completely ebbed away now, leaving a hollow despair in its place. At first she had been overwhelmed with relief that there was a reason why he had forgotten her, that it wasn’t that she just hadn’t been significant enough for him to remember. It had all seemed so wonderfully simple—as if someone had handed her the missing part of the jigsaw, the vital clue that made sense of the last four years. She had barely hesitated for a heartbeat when he asked her to go with him.

  But it wasn’t simple at all.

  She was nothing more than a stranger to him now. The crash hadn’t just stolen a few hours from his memory, it had also robbed him of the ability to trust. If she told him what they’d shared that night he’d think she was one of those grasping fantasists he’d described in the hotel room, not only demanding money and fame but something more sinister and exploitative.

  Demanding his heart.

  She clasped her hands together in her lap to stop her fingers nervously pleating the blue satin dress she hadn’t even thought to change out of. At that moment he looked across at her. The greenish light of the high-tech instrument panel gave his perfect face a chilling remoteness which seemed to reinforce her worst fears.

  ‘OK?’

  She nodded quickly, struggling to find something harmless to say. ‘It’s a very impressive car.’

  Alex would adore it, she thought with a stab of anguish.

  ‘It’s the latest Campano sports model,’ Cristiano said tonelessly, slowing down as a lorry appeared in front of them. ‘I’m testing it for Silvio so I can casually mention it in every interview I do at the start of the racing season.’

  He was meant to be testing it anyway, he thought wearily, although the way he was driving it tonight was hardly doing justice to its almost mythical capabilities. For some reason having her in the passenger seat was making him stick to speed limits and hold back from overtaking cars he would otherwise have left standing.

  ‘How far is it to where we’re going?’ Kate asked, looking out to where the first snowy peaks of the Alps loomed palely in the distance.

  There was something about her tone that made him think she was regretting coming almost as much as he was beginning to regret asking her. He should have talked to her back in the hotel. Made her go over the events of that night and then left for the chalet in the morning. Alone.

  ‘Probably about another three hours. It’s right up in the mountains, so the roads aren’t great. Do you ski?’

  She bent her head so that her face was screened from his view by the soft curtain of her hair. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  She wasn’t your type at all.

  Suki’s words came back to mock him, and he felt his lips quirk into an ironic smile of tacit acknowledgement. All his girlfriends skied and snowboarded and scuba-dived. As well as having supermodel looks, those were pretty much the qualifications for the job.

  ‘I’ll just have to teach you, then.’

  ‘In this?’ She gave a nervous laugh, her fingers plucking at the slippery fabric of her evening dress. Long fingers, he noticed. Long and delicate. ‘I’ve hardly got the right clothes for skiing.’

  He looked back at the road again, frowning. ‘I’m sure Francine has ski stuff there you can borrow.’

  ‘Francine?’ There was a tiny note of alarm in her voice.

  ‘My neurologist. It’s her house.’

  And her idea, he thought grimly. Right now it didn’t feel like one of her better ones. Already the thought of being away from the track and the team was making him feel on edge, and that feeling was only exacerbated by the idea of being with Kate Edwards. It would have been one thing seducing her in the hotel, spending the night with her to see if it brought back any memories of the last time, but spending a couple of days alone with her was quite another. The whole point of the exercise had been to relax, per l’amore di Dio.

  ‘Anyway, I’d be rubbish at skiing,’ she was saying now, in her soft, l
ow voice. ‘And terrified. I’m the girl who had to be rescued from halfway up an indoor climbing wall on a Clearspring team-building exercise. I’m the least white-knuckle person on the planet. That night when we—’

  She broke off. Cristiano glanced across at her sharply.

  ‘Go on. Tell me.’

  ‘That night in Monaco, you drove me from the track to your house to do the interview.’ She darted him a sideways look and smiled shyly. ‘I was scared out of my wits by your driving.’

  He gave an ironic smile, but in the light of a passing car Kate noticed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed bone-white through his tanned skin. ‘With good reason, as it turned out,’ he said cuttingly. ‘Given what happened the next day.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she muttered in anguish, closing her eyes and tensing as he pulled out to overtake the lorry they’d been following for the last few miles. The car surged forward with a powerful, muted roar. When Cristiano spoke again his voice was thoughtful.

  ‘You’re not much of a fan of motor racing, are you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, staring dully out at the dark houses of the small town they were driving through, picturing the children asleep behind the closed shutters. ‘But my brother was a huge fan of yours, which meant I was just about clued up enough to do the interview.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘He’d been killed in a car accident the year before.’ She attempted a rueful laugh. ‘That’s probably why I freaked out about your driving—and the fact that my dad had died the same way when I was younger. Cars have always made me nervous, and Will’s death was still a bit raw.’

  Letting go of the steering wheel, Cristiano rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Did you tell me about it at the time?’

  Kate leaned her head back against the leather upholstery. She felt suddenly very tired. ‘Not while we were in the car.’ She gave a faint smile. ‘I was too scared to open my mouth then. But we talked about it…later.’

  God, she remembered it as if it was yesterday. She’d been so disapproving of Cristiano Maresca and what he did for a living, so determined to be cool and professional and not to be swayed by his legendary good-looks and notorious sex appeal. But the moment she’d reluctantly lowered herself into the passenger seat of his terrifying car her pretence at sophisticated detachment had been completely shattered. By the time they’d reached his villa in the hills she’d been a wreck—a fact that had been impossible to disguise. It had also broken down the professional distance between them.

  She closed her eyes, shifting restlessly in her seat as jagged arrows of desire pierced her, not wanting to think about what had happened next.

  ‘Do you feel scared now?’

  In the velvet darkness behind her closed lids Cristiano’s voice was like gravel. But still it made her shiver, because it was the voice that she had heard in her dreams for so long.

  Mutely she shook her head.

  Not of the car or the road anyway. But the strength and force of her own longing, held in check for all these years, terrified her.

  As they drove further north the clouds parted and the stars came out. It was suddenly much colder. Stopping for petrol and to fit snow chains on the tyres, Cristiano could feel the ice in the air. The mountains lay all around, like giant slumberous beasts.

  Walking back to the car, after paying the awestruck teenage boy in the kiosk for the petrol, he flexed his cramped shoulders, putting off the moment when he’d have to get back into the driving seat. The Campano CX8 might be hailed as one of the fastest and most desirable cars in the world, but it wasn’t going to be winning any awards for its spacious interior. Something about the intimacy of the small space; the warmth inside and the cool scent of Kate Edwards’ skin, the darkness and cold outside, made him feel restless and edgy.

  As he reached the car he saw that she was still asleep, and felt an unfamiliar clenching sensation in his chest. Frustration, probably, he told himself sourly as he opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. If he’d been alone he would have reached the chalet ages ago.

  Starting the engine, he thought about what she’d said. She’d been afraid in the car with him before, because of her brother. Did that explain why, from the moment they’d left Monte Carlo, he’d been driving with such uncharacteristic caution? On some level did he know about her fear? Somehow, somewhere in his head, did he remember?

  His mind raced as possibilities rushed through it. And hope. He’d recognised her. Not consciously, but as soon as he’d seen her at the party earlier he’d responded viscerally—physically, dammit—proving that his body remembered her even if his head didn’t. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? All those memories were there. He just needed to access them, and hopefully spending the next twenty-four hours with her would see to that.

  The powerful V8 engine gave a gratifying roar as he pulled away from the garage, the kiosk attendant watching open-mouthed through the window.

  There were lots of tunnels on the road up into the mountains, and every one he drove through brought his thoughts back to the one at Monaco, where his car had left the track and hit the barrier. He’d watched the footage countless times, but still he couldn’t remember it. Six weeks until the start of the season, he thought bleakly. Abandoning his rigorous training schedule at this stage was a huge gamble—God only knew what Silvio would say when he found out. But ultimately he had no choice. He’d do whatever it took, gamble everything he had, to get his life back.

  Because if he lost this, he lost everything. There was nothing else. Never had been. He had been a sixteen-year-old on a fast track to self-destruction when he’d spotted Silvio’s car parked outside the theatre in Naples on that hot summer night and hotwired it. If Silvio hadn’t given him a chance, hadn’t seen some glimmer of potential in him that had singularly eluded both his mother and the nuns at school, Cristiano would almost certainly have been in prison long ago. Or dead.

  Racing wasn’t just his career, it was his life. It was his means of proving to the world that he wasn’t the failure everyone had told him he was as a boy. And winning was his justification for destroying his mother’s life. His vindication.

  A not-quite-complete moon had broken free from behind the mountaintops and now floated above him, turning the road ahead into a river of silver and making diamonds glitter in the snow at the side of it. Eventually a sign for the exclusive mountain resort where Francine Fournier’s chalet was situated loomed out of the darkness. As he turned off the main road onto the narrow mountain pass Kate stirred, arching her back and seeming to fight for a moment against the restriction of the seatbelt. Cristiano kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the narrow road ahead as the Campano’s wheels spun on the ice and Kate’s head fell sideways onto his shoulder.

  He stiffened instantly, gritting his teeth as the pulse in his head was joined by an increase in the persistent throb of desire that he had been trying to ignore for the last four hours. Scowling out into the darkness, he tried to block out the butterfly whisper of her breath against his throat, the scent of her hair, and concentrate instead on finding Francine’s house…

  Chalet les Pins.

  The headlamps lit up the sign on the gatepost—and the huge snowflakes that were now silently swirling out of the blackness. Grazie a Dio. Cristiano felt dizzy with exhaustion as he drove the last two hundred metres down the track towards the house and switched the engine off.

  There was a light on over the porch of the chalet. He opened the car door and got out stiffly, taking care not to move suddenly and wake Kate as the icy air rushed at him like an avalanche. Collecting the bags from the Campano’s tiny boot, he wearily climbed the steps and unlocked the front door, depositing them just inside and switching on the light before going back to get her.

  He opened the passenger door. She had barely stirred for the last couple of hours and was still deeply asleep, so that even the sudden cold didn’t wake her. Turned sideways in the seat towards him, she had one hand tucke
d under her cheek. The car’s harsh interior light gave her skin an unearthly pallor and made her long lashes cast spiky shadows over her cheeks.

  He couldn’t bring himself to wake her. Gathering her into his arms, taking care not to hit her head on the low roof as he eased her out of the car, he felt an odd, light-headed sensation. Her body was pliant and warm against his, and he had to clench his jaw against the lust that stabbed him in the gut as she sighed and shifted in his arms. He kicked the car door shut behind him.

  Her eyelids flickered, and he felt her stiffen. He tightened his grip.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘It’s OK.’ His voice, rusty from the long hours of silence, seemed to echo slightly in the cavernous night. ‘We’re here. Go back to sleep.’

  Inside the house it was blissfully warm. The front door opened straight into a large open-plan room that was typically Alpine in style, and as he headed straight for the stairs that rose from one end Cristiano was vaguely aware of a huge sofa in front of the central fireplace, soft rugs in faded shades of crimson and indigo, and the soothing scent of woodsmoke and pine resin. He felt a moment of gratitude to Francine Fournier.

  At the top of the stairs he pushed open the nearest door. The room was filled with moonlight from a large window, and it fell across a bed. Gently he placed Kate down on it, feeling her body go momentarily rigid as he let her go.

  She breathed in sharply, struggling to sit up. An expression of exquisite desolation flickered across her face.

  ‘Cristiano…’

  ‘I’m here.’ He answered automatically, instinctively lowering his voice to a whisper in the velvety silence of the dark house.

  Her eyes opened. They were filled with anguish, swimming with tears. For a moment they fixed on his face with a sort of hazy, unfocused pain, and then they closed again, the tears silently spilling over.

  ‘Kate…’

  His heart faltered. Without thinking he lowered himself to sit on the bed beside her and pulled her against him, pressing his mouth against her hair and murmuring soothing sounds that were somewhere between English and Italian. Her hair smelled clean and sweet, and her body felt soft and voluptuous in his arms.