Perhaps it had been her imagination playing a trick on her. Why now and never before? She lifted her head and then suddenly dropped it down again, shutting her eyes tight, unable to meet Gianni D’Angelo’s cool, measured gaze. A dulled throb of tension now pulsed behind her temples.
She recalled his derision, the blunt immediacy of what had been a rejection couched in the most humiliating terms. And then she relived what had prompted that crushing response from him. Oh, dear God, she thought with stunned shame, in those first moments of recovering consciousness she had focused on him and experienced the most unbelievably powerful surge of physical hunger. She was shattered by that realisation. It rewrote everything she had believed she knew about that side of her nature.
The sound of brisk footsteps sent her eyes flying open again. She gaped at the sight of the uniformed older man who appeared in the doorway to extend, of all things, a brandy goblet. Gianni took it from him with a nod and a dismissive move of one authoritative hand. He strode back to Faith and slotted the glass into her nerveless fingers. ‘Drink it. You’re as white as a sheet,’ he instructed grimly.
‘Wh-where did that man and this drink come from?’ she stammered in unwilling wonderment.
Gianni frowned, as if that had been a very stupid question. ‘When you passed out, I called my driver on the car phone and told him to bring it in.’
Faith slowly nodded, studying him with slightly glazed eyes. Did he have a bar in his car? It had to be a big car. He wasn’t giving her a bottle to swig out of. Her sense of dislocation from reality increased. The gulf between them felt immeasurable. According to Louise, Gianni D’Angelo was a very wealthy and powerful tycoon, and certainly he looked the part. What sort of relationship could she possibly have had with such a man? Suddenly she really didn’t want to know.
‘Drink the brandy,’ Gianni pressed with controlled impatience.
‘I hardly ever touch alcohol…’
‘Well, you weren’t on any wagon when I knew you,’ Gianni informed her without hesitation.
Shaken by that come-back, and the daunting knowledge that was his alone, Faith tipped the glass to her lips. The spirit raced down her dry throat like liquid fire and burned away the chill spreading inside her. She swallowed hard and then breathed in deep. ‘It seems you once knew me…I want that photograph back!’ she added the instant she recalled its existence, anxious eyes lowering to see if it still lay on the floor. It didn’t.
‘Forget it; it’s mine. But isn’t that just like a woman?’ Gianni growled with incredulous scorn. ‘I only showed you that photo to make you accept that we once had a certain bond, and now you can only concentrate on a complete irrelevance!’
It didn’t feel irrelevant to Faith. Right at that moment she saw that revealing photo as shocking evidence of a past she wanted to leave buried, and she certainly didn’t want it left in his possession. ‘Look, Mr D’Angelo—’
‘Mister D’Angelo?’ he queried, with a slashing smile that chilled her to the marrow. ‘Make it Gianni.’
That ice-cold smile was like a threat. It shook her. He was poised several feet away, still as a predator about to spring. She recognised his hostility and recoiled from it in sudden fear. ‘You hate me…’
He froze.
The silence thundered.
Suddenly he swung away from her. ‘You don’t remember me…you don’t remember anything, do you?’
‘No…I don’t,’ she conceded tautly.
‘I thought you would’ve been full of questions. This isn’t any easier for me,’ he ground out in a charged undertone, spinning back to her with graceful but restive rapidity. Stormy dark eyes assailed her and she paled even more. ‘At the airport, I admit I wanted to strangle you. I didn’t know you’d lost your memory. I don’t like you looking at me like I’m about to attack you either!’
Intimidated by the powerful personality that he was revealing, Faith did nothing to soothe him when she instinctively cowered back into the chair.
‘Milly…’
‘That’s not my name!’ she protested.
He let that go past.
‘Look…’ He spread the fingers of one lean and eloquent hand. ‘You’re scared because I’m rocking your cosy little world. It’s not me you’re afraid of. You’re scared of the unknown that I represent.’
Faith gave a slight wary nod that might or might not have signified agreement, but her expressive eyes revealed her surprise that he could make that distinction. She wasn’t used to the sensation of someone else trying to get inside her head and work out how she felt.
‘I don’t want to frighten you, but anything I tell you is likely to cause you distress, so I’ll keep it basic.’
‘How did you find out where I was living? How did you know I was an amnesiac?’ Faith suddenly demanded accusingly.
‘Naturally I had you followed from the airport. Then I had some enquiries made,’ Gianni supplied with a fluid shrug.
Rising in one sudden motion from the chair, Faith gave him a stricken look of bemusement. ‘But why would you do something like that? Why would you go to so much trouble? Why are you here now? Just because we had some relationship years ago?’
‘I’m working up to that. I did have this rather naïve hope that you might start remembering things when you saw me again,’ Gianni confided with a sardonic laugh, his smooth, dark features broodingly taut. ‘But it looks like I’m going to have to do this the hard way. I suggest you sit down again.’
‘No.’ Faith braced her slim shoulders, a sudden powerful need to regain control of the situation driving her. ‘I don’t need to put myself through this if I don’t want to. I don’t need to listen to you—’
Gianni murmured, ‘I’m afraid you do…’
‘No, I don’t. I just want you to go away and leave me alone,’ Faith admitted truthfully, suppressing the little inner voice that warned her that that was craven and short-sighted. For here it finally was, the opportunity she had once yearned for: the chance to knock a window, however small, into that terrible wall that closed her out from her own memory. Yet because she didn’t know, indeed strongly feared what she might glimpse through that window, she was rejecting the chance.
Gianni D’Angelo surveyed her with disturbing intensity, brilliant eyes semi-screened by his lush lashes to a glimmer of gold. ‘That’s not possible. You asked me why I was here. So I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple. When you disappeared out of my life, you were pregnant with my child…’
A roaring sounded in Faith’s ears. Her lips parted. She stared back at him in horror as that cosy little world he had referred to with such perceptible scorn lurched and tilted dangerously on its axis.
‘Connor is my son,’ Gianni spelt out levelly.
The very floor under Faith’s feet seemed to shift. Her eyes were blank with shock.
As she swayed, Gianni strode forward. Curving a powerful arm to her spine to steady her, he took her out of the conservatory and back through
