Suddenly Angelo was there, squatting before her, holding her unsteady hands in his big, firm ones.
‘It’s early days. You need time. Ally, do you hear me?’ His hands squeezed hers and she looked up to find his dark eyes glowing with concern.
A weight shifted inside her and she breathed again.
‘Of course.’ She wasn’t sure she believed it but if she said it often enough... ‘Soon I’ll remember everything. Then I can go home.’
Ally’s breath caught.Home. It sounded wonderful.
She just prayed shewouldremember where that was. And that she’d survive living with Angelo Ricci until then.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALLYSMILEDASEnzo laughed. It was the happiest sound she’d heard in the four days she’d been here.
Her smile became a grin as she jammed the hat down, turning her head to give him a profile view as if she modelled haute couture instead of a tatty straw sunhat.
It was kind of him to produce the hat for the sun beat down brightly. The sky and sea were a brilliant blue and even the storm-battered garden was vivid with colour.
‘The hat may be worn but it’ll do the job. Thank you, Enzo.Grazie.’
It was one of her two bits of Italian, the other beingper favore, which meant please.
He nodded and said something she didn’t understand. It didn’t matter. She’d puttered happily beside him in the garden for half an hour and gestures had been sufficient.
Ally kept catching her breath at the nooks and stunning vistas in this garden perched high above the sea. It was like something from a travel brochure or a sophisticated magazine. Stunningly beautiful.
Yet it wasn’t familiar. Surely, as Angelo’s ex-wife, she should feeldéjà vu?
In Angelo’s arms she’d experienced, if notdéjà vu, then at least a sense of rightness, as if, finally, everything had fallen into place. Yet since then, nothing.
Shouldn’t she remember the elegant wisteria loggia, where she’d found Enzo raking up leaves stripped by the storm? Or the rose arbour, sleepy with the hum of bees? Or the secluded pond with its exquisite marble statue of a boy fishing?
Each garden within a garden made her pause as pleasure washed through her.
That, she suspected, was why Enzo let her tag along. He saw how she admired the place. To her delight she even knew the names of some of the plants.
Did that mean she had a garden of her own somewhere? The idea tantalised but led nowhere. Her past was still a blank. Frustratingly, scarily so.
Putting on the gloves he’d provided, Ally gathered up bougainvillea cuttings and put them in the wheelbarrow. The hot pink cascade of battered flowers was so bright it almost hurt the eye and she paused, mesmerised.
Everything here seemed saturated with brightness and warmth, from the vibrant red geraniums to the blazing white of the garden balustrades against the opalescent sea beyond. It was so different to what she was used to. So—
‘Ally? What are you doing?’
She blinked and shivered, vainly trying to grasp the thought that had entered her brain so easily and now disintegrated like a tantalising wisp of smoke.
Not what she was used to. Different to...what?
‘Ally?’ That deep voice was closer and the thought was gone. Completely disappeared.
She drew a shuddery breath and tried not to mind. Surely it would return. But dismay and frustration feathered her spine. Would sheeverremember?
Warmth encompassed her bare elbow and she turned, gaze locking with eyes the colour of her morning espresso, rich, dark and addictive.
She blinked, scurrying to revise that thought. Not addictive. She wouldn’t let it be so.
Even if she found herself thinking about Angelo too often. Even if her dreams featured a dark, enigmatic man who seduced her again and again, leaving her breathless and unsettled, wishing she weren’t alone in her vast bed.