Triplets Under the Tree

The images in his head of the redheaded woman were so jumbled and nonsensical because he’d had incomplete, fragmented memories of two different women.

Eleven

A swirl of nausea squeezed Antonio’s stomach as his eyes shut against the shocking revelation. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t take the idea that he’d been intimate with her.

He’d been carrying on an affair with this woman. Cheating on his wife with her.

It was repulsive. Wrong. Not something he’d ever have imagined himself doing.

But clearly, that hadn’t always been his opinion of adultery.

Gagging against the bile rising in his throat, he turned away from Shayla’s prying, too-familiar gaze.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Aren’t you happy to see me? Vanessa is gone and we can finally be together.”

“I don’t...” Remember you. But it was a lie. He remembered her all too well.

Oblivious of his consternation, she put a manicured hand on his arm. He fought the urge to shake it off because it wasn’t her fault he’d forsaken his marriage vows.

His skin crawled under her fingers.

He yanked his arm away and her hand fell to her side as hurt clouded her expression.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly, as pain ice-picked through his skull. “Things are not like you assume.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t understand what’s wrong. You’re alive and it’s a miracle. Why didn’t you call me? I’ve thought you were dead for over a year. Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through?”

His short bark of laughter startled them both. “Shayla, I—” God, he couldn’t even say her name without wanting to cut out his tongue. Swallowing, he tried again. “I have amnesia.”

It was the first time he’d uttered that word out loud. And oddly, naming it, owning it, diminished its power. Not completely, but his spine straightened and he nodded at her stunned flinch.

“Yes, you heard correctly,” he told her a bit more firmly. “The plane crash dumped me on the shore of an island in Indonesia with few memories. I only found my way home a few weeks ago.”

“You don’t remember me.” Her expression caved in and tears shimmered in her eyes. “Of all the things... I thought we’d pick up where we left—I mean, Vanessa is dead. When I heard you’d survived the crash, I figured you—”

“I remember you,” he broke in. “But I didn’t until I saw you.”

As he’d remembered his lawyer and Thomas. But he hadn’t remembered Caitlyn. Or Rodrigo. Which led to the most important question—

Would he remember Vanessa if he saw her?

A perverse need to know overtook him.

“I’m sorry,” he told the tearful redhead before him, determined to get home and discover what else he could extract from the sieve in his brain. “There’s nothing here for you any longer. I’m not in love with you and I never will be.”

She laughed bitterly. “Funny, that’s almost exactly what you said before you left to go to Thailand. Except you were talking about Vanessa at the time. Didn’t stop you from running off on your lovers’ retreat.”

The words blasted through his head, but in his voice as he said them to Shayla one night.

I’m not in love with her and I never will be. There’s nothing left for me in that cold, empty house. The Malibu house. He’d meant the one he’d shared with Vanessa. The one he now shared with Caitlyn and his children.

He’d told Shayla he wasn’t in love with Vanessa. Truth? It might explain why he couldn’t recall what that had felt like. Or had it been something he’d told his mistress to string her along?

After all, he’d gone to Thailand with Vanessa. Had fathered children with her. All while conducting a hot-and-heavy affair with this woman.

What kind of man did such things? When he’d come to LA to find out who he was, he’d never imagined he’d discover such dishonesty and selfishness in his past. Who had he been before the crash?

Some aspects, like being a fighter, he didn’t have to question. That was a part of him. Was being an adulterer part of him, too? A part he couldn’t remove any easier than he could stop fighting? He owed it to himself, his children and Caitlyn to learn everything he could about what kind of person Antonio Cavallari had been. So he could chart a course for the kind of man he wanted to be in the future.