psyche. The past days since she’d come back, he hadn’t been able to contemplate putting more than a few minutes’ distance between them. It had been all he could do not to camp out in her room as he had during her coma. He had constantly curbed himself so he wouldn’t suffocate her with worry, counted down every second of the three hours he’d imposed on himself between visits.
After he’d controlled the urge, he’d summoned Consuelo, had dragged himself away. Then he’d heard Consuelo’s shout.
He hadn’t barged into the room only because he’d frozen with horror for the seconds it took him to realize Consuelo had exclaimed Stop, and Consuelo’s gregarious tones and Cybele’s gentler, melodic ones had carried through the door, explaining the whole situation.
Now he heard Cybele’s raised voice as she chattered with Consuelo from the bathroom. In a few minutes, Consuelo would make sure Cybele was tucked in bed and would walk out. He had to be gone before that. Just not yet.
He knew he was being obsessive, ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. The scare was too fresh, the trauma too deep.
He hadn’t been there for Mel, and he’d died.
He had to be there for Cybele.
But to be there for her, he had to get ahold of himself. And to do that, he had to put today behind him.
It had felt like spiraling down through hell. Taking her to that airfield, realizing too late what he’d done, seeing his foster parents after months of barely speaking to them, only to give them the proof of his biggest failure. Mel’s body.
The one thing mitigating this disaster was Cybele’s memory loss. It was merciful. For her. For him, too. He didn’t know if he could have handled her grief, too, had she remembered Mel.
But—was it better to have reprieve now, than to have it all come back with a vengeance later? Wouldn’t it have been better if her grief coincided with his? Would he be able to bear it, to be of any help if she fell apart when he’d begun healing?
But then he had to factor in the changes in her.
The woman who’d woken up from the coma was not the Cybele Wilkinson he’d known the past year. Or the one Mel had said had become so volatile, she’d accused him of wanting her around only as the convenient help rolled into one with a medical supervisor—and who’d demanded a baby as proof that he valued her as his wife.
Rodrigo had at first found that impossible to believe. She’d never struck him as insecure or clingy. Just the opposite. But then her actions had proved Mel right.
So which persona was really her? The stable, guileless woman she’d been the past five days? The irritable introvert she’d been before Mel’s accident? Or the neurotic wreck who’d made untenable emotional demands of him when he’d been wrecked himself?
And if this new persona was a by-product of the accident, of her injuries, once she healed, once she regained all her memories, would she revert? Would the woman who was bantering so naturally with Consuelo, who’d consoled him and wrestled verbally with him and made him forget everything but her, disappear?
He forced himself away from the door. Consuelo was asking what Cybele would like for breakfast. In a moment she’d walk out.
He strode away, speculations swarming inside his head.
He was staring at the haggard stranger in mourning clothes in his bathroom mirror when he realized something.
It made no difference. Whatever the answers were, no matter what she was, or what would happen from now on, it didn’t matter.
She was in his life now. To stay.
Seven
You don’t have post-traumatic amnesia.”
Cybele’s eyes rounded at Rodrigo’s proclamation.
Her incredulity at his statement was only rivaled by the one she still couldn’t get over; that he’d transferred a miniature hospital to his estate so he could test and chart her progress daily.
Apart from wards and ORs, he had about everything else on site. A whole imaging facility with X-ray, MRI, CT machines and even a PET scan machine, which seemed like overkill just to follow up her arm’s and head’s healing progress. A comprehensive lab for every known test to check up on her overall condition and that of her pregnancy. Then there were the dozen neurological tests he subjected her to daily, plus the physiotherapy sessions for her fingers.
They’d just ended such a session and were heading out to the barbecue house at the seafront terrace garden to have lunch, after which he’d said they’d explore more of the estate.
He was walking beside her, his brows drawn together, his eyes plastered to the latest batch of results from another dozen tests. So what did he mean, she didn’t have …?
Terrible suspicion mushroomed, clouding the perfection of the day.
Could he think she’d capitalized on a transient memory loss and had been stringing him along for the past four weeks? Or worse, that she’d never had memory loss, that she was cunning enough, with a convoluted enough agenda, to have faked it from the start?
And she blurted it out, “You think I’m pretending?”
“What?” He raised his eyes sluggishly, stared ahead into nothingness as if the meaning of her words was oozing through his mind, searching for comprehension. Then it hit him. Hard. His head jerked toward her, his frown spectacular. “No.”
She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t, buried his head back into the tests.
So she prodded. “So what do you mean I don’t have PTA? I woke up post-trauma with amnesia. Granted, it’s not a classic case, but what else could it be?”
Instead of answering, he held the door of the terrace pergola open for her. She stepped out into the late March midday, barely stopped herself from moaning as the sweet saltiness of the sea breeze splashed her face, weaved insistent fingers through her hair.
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