Milly, she thought numbly. My name is Milly. She fought to concentrate on thoughts that were whirling like tangled spaghetti inside her blitzed brain. She studied the people whom she had believed were her parents with a deep sense of pain and dislocation. ‘How long have you known that I wasn’t your daughter?’
The silence thundered. Seemingly neither wished to discuss that point.
Gianni had no such inhibition. ‘They’ve known for about eighteen months. They only admitted their suspicions to each other then—’
‘We sat up all night talking,’ Robin Jennings cut in heavily. ‘We just didn’t know what to do. You’d accepted us. We loved you and Connor. We’d introduced you everywhere as our daughter—’
‘You kept quiet sooner than face the embarrassment of admitting that you could make such an appalling mistake,’ Milly, who still so desperately wanted to be Faith, condemned, at that instant hating everybody in the room. They all knew who they were and where they belonged. But she was an outsider.
‘We were happy with the way things were,’ Davina argued vehemently. ‘Nor do we see why anything should change!’
Milly surveyed her dully.
‘I will make every possible effort to trace your real daughter,’ Gianni promised the older couple. ‘But Milly can’t stay here any longer.’
‘She can if she wants to,’ Robin Jennings asserted curtly.
‘She can stay in touch with you. She can even visit. But as who she really is, not as who you’d like her to be!’ Gianni’s attention was on Milly’s stark white face and the blank horror growing in her eyes. ‘She had another life, and she needs to see that life before she makes any decisions.’
‘For heaven’s sake, she’s engaged…she’s getting married!’ Davina exclaimed.
‘And how do you think Edward is likely to react to this fiasco?’ her husband groaned. ‘I’ll deal with that. I’ll see him this morning and explain everything.’
With a sense of numb disbelief, Milly studied them all. Gianni stood apart, his self-discipline absolute. His dark, deep flashing eyes held hers, and she saw the pity he couldn’t hide and just wanted to die. She stood up, and walked out of the room.
As Davina leapt up to follow her Gianni planted a staying hand on her arm. ‘You can’t help Milly with this, Mrs Jennings. Not right now, you can’t,’ he asserted. ‘She feels betrayed by the two people she relied on most. She needs time to come to terms with this.’
‘And what exactly are your plans for her, Mr D’Angelo?’ the older woman demanded bitterly.
Gianni viewed his companions with concealed hostility. They might love Milly, but they had damaged her. Three years ago they had denied her the further professional help she’d needed. They had done nothing to help her regain her memory. And, unforgivably, when they had realized their mistake they had selfishly refused to put it right. They had ignored the reality that the unknown woman they had erroneously identified as their daughter must have had a life elsewhere.
They also acted as if they owned Milly, and as if she couldn’t speak or think for herself. It was an attitude which filled Gianni with violent antipathy. After all, if Milly belonged to anybody, she belonged to him!
She was the mother of his son. He knew her better than anybody alive. He could put her back into the world she had left behind. Leaving Milly anywhere within reach of the Jennings would hamper her recovery. They didn’t want to let go even briefly. They wanted her to go on living a fake life while he could not wait to free her from an existence that struck him as suffocating. Milly was very much a free spirit…
The free spirit stared at herself in the bedroom mirror.
Who am I? Who is Milly Henner?
This was not her home. This was not where she had grown up. Those people downstairs were not her parents. Nothing that she had believed was hers was really hers. Not the share of the shop her supposed father had insisted on buying for her, not her car, which had been a birthday present—presented on a day that probably wasn’t really her birthday. Only Connor was really hers…
As the world she had innocently believed and trusted in caved in around her, Milly experienced an instant of pure terror that threatened to wipe her out entirely.
‘Milly…come back to the hotel with me.’
She spun round and focused on Gianni. Naked loathing rippled through her. He had done this to her. He had ripped her life apart. ‘I hate you…’ she framed, trembling with the force of her emotions.
‘You’ll get over that,’ Gianni informed her, without an ounce of uncertainty.
‘I want Edward,’ she admitted shakily, and turned away again.
‘You’ll get over that too,’ Gianni asserted harshly.
‘You can’t take him away from me!” Milly suddenly slung wildly. ‘You can take everything else but not Edward!’
‘You can’t love him.’ Gianni’s gaze was black as a stormy night, his tone pure derision. ‘You can
’t. He’s nobody; he’s nothing!’