Dawson grimaced. ‘Gianni…if it is her, she’s living under another name, and she’s been doing it successfully for a very long time.’
‘That’s insane, and utterly impossible!’ Gianni asserted in instant dismissal.
‘Three years ago, Faith Jennings was found by the side of a country road in Cornwall. She had been seriously injured and she had no identification. She was the victim of a hit and run. The police think she was robbed after the accident—’
‘Dio!’ Gianni exclaimed in shaken interruption.
‘But she was pregnant at the time of the accident,’ Dawson confirmed. ‘And she does have a child.’
Gianni drew in a stark breath, incisive dark eyes flaming to bright gold in anticipation. ‘So the child must be two and a half…right? A girl or a boy?’ he prompted with fierce impatience.
‘A little boy. She calls him Connor. He’ll be three in May. He was born before his mother came out of the coma she was in.’
Gianni screened his unusually revealing eyes as he mulled over those bald facts. ‘So…’ he murmured then, without any expression at all. ‘Explain to me how Milly Henner could possibly be living under another woman’s name.’
‘It was a long time before she was able to speak for herself, but she was apparently wearing a rather unusual bracelet. Her face had been pretty badly knocked about and she needed surgery.’ For the first time in his life Dawson saw his employer wince, and was sincerely shaken by the evidence of this previously unsuspected vein of sensitivity. ‘So as a first move the police gave a picture of the bracelet to the press. She was swiftly identified as a teenager who had run away from home when she was sixteen. Her parents came forward and identified her—’
‘But Milly doesn’t have parents alive!’ Gianni cut in abrasively.
‘This woman never recovered her memory after the hit and run, Gianni. She’s a total amnesiac—’
‘A total amnesiac?’ Gianni broke in, with raised brows of dubious enquiry.
‘It’s rare, but it does happen,’ Dawson assured him ruefully. ‘I spoke to a nurse at the hospital where she was treated. They still remember her. When she finally recovered consciousness her mind was a blank, and when her parents took her home she still knew nothing but what they had told her about her past. I gather they also discouraged her from seeking further treatment. The medics were infuriated by their interference but powerless to act.’
‘Normal people do not take complete strangers home and keep them as their daughters for three years,’ Gianni informed him with excessive dryness.
‘I should add that the parents hadn’t seen or heard from their missing daughter in seven years, but were still unshakeable in their conviction that the young woman with the bracelet was their child—’
‘Seven years?’ Gianni broke in.
‘The police did try to run a check on dental records, but the surgery which the daughter attended before she disappeared had burnt down, and the most her retired dentist could recall was that she had had excellent teeth, just like the lady in the hospital bed. This is a very well-known story in the town where Faith Jennings lives—her miraculous return home in spite of all the odds.’
‘There was no return, miraculous or otherwise…that was Milly at the airport! Seven years…’ Gianni mused with incredulous bite. ‘And Milly was in a coma, at the mercy of people no better than kidnappers!’
Dawson cleared his throat. ‘The parents are respectable, comfortably off—the father owns a small engineering plant. If there’s been a mistake, it can only have been a genuine one, and most probably due to wishful thinking.’
Gianni was unimpressed. ‘While Milly was still ill, that’s possible, but when she began to recover they must’ve have started to suspect the truth, so why didn’t they do anything?’ he demanded in a seething undertone. ‘What about the fiancé?’
‘Edward Benson. A thirty-eight-year-old company accountant.’
Gianni lounged back against the edge of his desk like a panther about to spring. ‘An accountant,’ he derided between clenched teeth.
‘He’s her father’s second-in-command,’ Dawson filled in. ‘Local gossip suggests that the engagement is part of a business package.’
‘Check me into a hotel down there.’ Gianni straightened, all emotion wiped from his lean, strong face, eyes ice-cool shards of threat. ‘I think it’s time I got to meet my son. And isn’t that going to put the cat among the pigeons?’
Dawson tried not to picture the onslaught of Gianni, his powerful personality, his fleet of limos and his working entourage without whom he went nowhere on a small, peaceful English town…and the woman who against all reason and self-preservation had contrived to forget her intimate involvement with one of the world’s richest and most influential tycoons. A lot of people had a lot of shock coming their way…
‘So you just tell Edward you refuse to live with his mother!’ Louise Barclay met Faith’s aghast look and simply laughed. A redhead with green eyes and loads of freckles, Louise looked as if she was in her twenties but she was actually well into her thirties, and the divorced mother of two rumbustious teenage boys.
‘Sometimes you’re such a wimp, Faith,’ Louise teased.
‘I’m not—’
‘You are when it comes to your own needs. All your energy goes into keeping other people happy, living the life they think you should live! Your parents act like they own you body and soul, and Edward’s not much better!’ Louise informed her in exasperation.
Faith stiffened. Louise was her best friend and her business partner, but she had little understanding of the burden of guilt that Faith carried where her parents were concerned. ‘It’s not like that—’