Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Hilary moved back from him. She did something she’d thought she would never do. With unsteady hands she closed her fingers to the hem of her top and peeled it off. Then she unzipped her skirt, let it fall and stepped out of it.

‘I suspect I married you because you keep on surprising me,’ Roel commented rawly as he hauled her back to him with impatient hands and captured her mouth with devastating passion.

‘It’s out of this world.’ Hilary’s voice wavered. ‘I just don’t know what to say…I wasn’t expecting this.’

She stroked a wondering finger over the delicate platinum band on her ring finger and gazed at Roel with dreamy gratitude. A wedding ring. She was touched to the heart that he should have wanted to see her wearing the symbol that signified marital commitment.

His brilliant dark golden eyes were level. ‘I will not fail at anything, cara,’ he admitted. ‘I intend our marriage to be a success.’

A stab of discomfiture pierced the veil of fantasy behind which Hilary had buried all her misgivings about the role she was playing. For four whole days she had refused to think further than one minute into the future. She had revelled in every moment she had spent with Roel and if it was possible she had fallen even more deeply in love with him. He was bitterly frustrated by the reality that he had yet to recover his memory. The return of that one tiny recollection had only increased his impatience. But he had demonstrated extraordinary strength of character in the way he dealt with his amnesia and made her more than ever aware of his rock-solid assurance and self-discipline.

Now, made uneasy by his grave sincerity on the topic of their supposed marriage and wounded too by the wretched awareness of what she could not have, Hilary dragged her attention from his lean, extravagantly handsome features and made herself study her surroundings instead. After all, it was a gorgeous day and the landscape was spectacularly beautiful. They were sitting on the stone terrace of an exclusive restaurant set high above the lake at Lucerne. The sky was a dense bright blue and the picturesque medieval city was spread out below them.

‘Hilary…?’

Roel reclaimed her attention with a frown just as a broadly built man with earnest features and blonde hair came to a halt several feet away and said, ‘Roel?’ in a tone of pleased surprise.

His rare smile forming, Roel immediately vaulted upright to greet him. Hilary was aghast to recognise the man as Paul Correro, who had acted as a witness at their wedding. Sheer panic filled her and she was paralysed to the spot by the lawyer’s intent scrutiny. This was someone who knew that she was a fake wife, who had been paid to perform a service. He had to be astonished to see her in Switzerland in Roel’s actual company!

CHAPTER SIX

HEART thumping out her state of alarm like a manic road drill, Hilary decided that she had no choice but to attempt to brazen the situation out.

‘Anya and I are staying with friends,’ Paul Correro was telling Roel, who was kissing the cheek of the pretty pregnant redhead standing by his lawyer’s side.

Arrogant dark head turning, Roel cast Hilary a glance that queried her lack of participation. Perspiration beading her upper lip and a fixed smile on her tense mouth, Hilary got up from the table and moved forward on legs that felt as clumsy as solid wood.

‘Hilary…’ Paul Correro dealt her a smooth smile that somehow contrived to send a shiver of foreboding down her rigid spine. ‘London’s loss is our gain!’

At that gibe, Hilary almost flinched and she stood like a criminal waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall. But Roel mercifully removed his lawyer’s attention from her by engaging him in a low-pitched dialogue. As the two men lounged back against the stone balustrade several feet away, Paul’s companion approached her.

‘I’m Paul’s wife, Anya,’ she announced, her gaze coldly assessing.

‘Yes.’ Nervous as

a cat on hot bricks and quite unable to think of anything to say in the face of that hostile appraisal, Hilary stole a strained glance over at Roel and Paul and wondered frantically what they were talking about. An urgent desire for escape overcame her and, with a muttered excuse, Hilary headed for the cloakroom.

How dared Paul and Anya Correro look at her as though she were some sort of criminal? She was hot and bothered and her tummy was churning. She ran cooling water over her hands while she fought to get a grip on her seething emotions. Everything she had done she had done for Roel’s sake and, for a guy of his temperament still frustrated by a five-year gap in his memory, Roel was managing very well! But was Paul Correro telling Roel right now that Hilary and their apparent marriage were twin giant fakes?

Hilary emerged from the cloakroom only to find Paul Correro waiting to corner her. Already pale, she turned the colour of bleached bone.

‘What’s your game?’ the blonde man demanded. ‘Roel has just explained why he has barely been seen since the accident.’

‘I’m glad he’s taken someone else into his confidence,’ Hilary mumbled, wondering if Roel had already been told that she was not quite the wife she had allowed him to believe she was. Her heart sank like a stone.

‘Don’t treat me like an idiot,’ Paul Correro condemned in a harsh undertone. ‘The head of Roel’s security team called me yesterday to ask for my advice. Imagine how astonished I was to learn that you had shown up at the clinic claiming to be Signora Sabatino! This meeting is no coincidence. I interrupted my vacation to come here. How could you think that you could pull a scam like this off?’

Beneath the lash of his scorn, Hilary was trembling. A security team worked for Roel? They had been so discreet she had had no idea of their existence. ‘There hasn’t been any scam. Have you told Roel the truth about our marriage?’

‘In a restaurant?’ the blonde man derided. ‘I intend to call at the Castello this afternoon—’

Her eyes raw with appeal, Hilary closed a desperate hand over his sleeve. ‘Let me tell Roel. Give me until tomorrow to sort all this out—’

‘No. I’ll give you until this evening. That’s long enough, and if you don’t keep your word I’ll take care of it for you,’ Paul Correro warned her, his distrust unconcealed.

It took enormous courage for Hilary to meet his accusing scrutiny. ‘I’m not what you think I am. I love him. I’ve always loved him—’

The lawyer winced. ‘Whatever,’ he cut in dismissively. ‘He’ll never forgive this level of betrayal.’