Enticed by His Forgotten Lover (Pregnancy & Passion 1)

“Yeah, well, Rafael? This time don’t get into an accident. I’d really like not to have to wait months to see you again.”

He tweaked her nose. “Smart-ass. If it’s all the same, I have no desire to ever crash again. Once was enough. I know how lucky I am to be alive. I plan to stay that way for a long time to come.”

She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him. “Good. Because I have plans for you that are going to take a very, very long time to fulfill.”

He gave her a questioning look. “Just how long are we talking about?”

“As long as you can keep up with me,” she murmured.

“In that case, it’s going to be a very long time indeed.”

She kissed him and then reluctantly pulled away. “You should probably go back home so you can shower and get packed. It’ll be light soon and you’ll need to be down to catch the ferry. Rush-hour traffic going into Houston is a bitch and you’re going to be hitting it at a bad time.”

“You sure you’re okay with me driving your car?”

She laughed. “The question should be whether it’s going to hurt your pride to drive my MINI. I could always have Silas drive you to Galveston and you could get a car service to the airport.”

He shook his head. “Your car is fine. Right now my only concern is that it gets me there so I can hurry up and return to you.”

She rested her forehead on his chest. “I’ll miss you, Rafe. I won’t lie, the idea of you leaving panics me because I keep thinking of the last time I said goodbye to you thinking I’d see you again in a few days.”

He cupped her face and tilted her head back so she looked up at him. “I’m coming back, Bryony. A plane crash and the loss of my memory didn’t keep us apart last time.”

“I love you.”

He kissed her. “I love you, too. Now go get some rest. I’ll call you when I land in New York.”

Nineteen

“It’s about damn time you got your ass up here,” Cam said grimly as he got out of his car in passenger pickup at LaGuardia and strode around to help Rafael with his bags. “Devon’s been in a snit ever since you left. Your delaying the groundbreaking just pissed him off even more. Copeland has got him over a barrel with this whole marrying-his-daughter thing. Ryan has been stewing over private investigator reports. I swear no one’s head is where it should be right now. Except mine. It’s obvious that any time a woman’s involved disaster follows,” he said sourly.

“Cam?” Rafe said mildly as he opened the door to the passenger side.

Cam yanked his gaze up and stopped before climbing into the driver’s seat. “What?”

“Shut the hell up.”

Cam got into the car grumbling about flaky friends and vowing all the while never to mix business and friendship again. Rafael rolled his eyes at his friend’s consternation, considering that the four had always done business together.

“So what the hell is going on, Rafael? Dev says you’ve gotten cold feet.”

“I don’t have cold feet,” Rafael growled. “I just think there has to be another way of making this deal go through that doesn’t involve using the property on Moon Island.”

Cam swore again. He went silent as traffic got snarled and he expertly weaved in and out, making Rafael white-knuckle his grip on the door handle.

Anyone riding with Cam deserved hazard pay. Not that he drove often. Cam almost always had a driver and it wasn’t because he was too good to drive himself. Quite simply he was so busy that he utilized every moment of his time to conduct his business affairs and if he had a driver, he had that much more time to work.

Rafael figured Dev must have leaned on him pretty hard to get him to drive himself to the airport to pick up Rafael.

“So you still don’t remember anything?” Cam asked when they’d cleared one particularly nasty snarl. “No. Nothing.”

“And yet you believe her? Have you even started the process for paternity testing yet?”

“It doesn’t matter what happened before. I love her now,” Rafael said quietly.

There was dead silence in the car. Only the sounds of traffic and car horns penetrated the thick silence inside the car.

“And the resort deal?” Cam finally asked.

“There has to be something we can work out. It’s why I’m here. We have to fix this, Cam. My future depends on it.”

“How nice of you to be so concerned about your future,” Cam muttered. “Nothing about the rest of ours, though.”

“Low blow, man,” Rafael bit out. “If I didn’t give a damn about you and

Ryan and Dev, I wouldn’t be here. I would have just called off the whole damn thing and told all the investors to go to hell.”

Cam shook his head. “And you wonder why I’ve sworn off women.”

“Planning to play for the other team?” Rafael asked for a grin.

Cam shot him the bird and glowered. “You know damn well what I mean. Women are good for sex. Anything more and a man might as well neuter himself and be done with it.”

Rafael chuckled. “You know I look forward to the day that I get to shove those words down your throat. Even better, I can’t wait to meet the woman who does it for you.”

“Look, I just don’t understand what’s changed. Four months ago you were on top of the world. You got what you wanted. And now suddenly it’s not what you want.”

They pulled to a stop in front of Rafael’s apartment building. Rafael turned to Cam. “Maybe what I want has changed. And how the hell would you know that I got what I wanted four months ago? I didn’t see you until I woke up in a hospital bed after the plane crash.”

Cam shook his head. “You called me the day before you left. You were all but crowing. Said you’d closed the land deal that day and that next you were going to be on a plane back to New York. I asked if you’d had a good vacation since you’d been gone for four damn weeks. You told me that some things were worth the sacrifice.”

Rafe went still. Suddenly it was hard to get air into his lungs. His chest squeezed painfully as pain thudded relentlessly in his head.

“Rafael? You okay, man?”

Still images flashed through his head like photos. The pieces of his lost memory shot out of a cannon. Random. Out of order. It all hurled at him at supersonic speed until he was dizzy and disoriented.

“Rafe, talk to me,” Cam insisted.

Rafael managed to open the car door and stumble out onto the curb. He put a hand back toward Cam when his friend would have gotten out, too.

“I’m fine. Leave me. I’ll call you later.”

He hauled his luggage out of the trunk and then walked mechanically toward the entrance. His doorman swung open the glass doors and offered a cheerful greeting.

Like a zombie, Rafael got into the elevator, clumsily inserted his card and nearly fell when the elevator began its ascent.

Memories of the first time he saw Bryony. Making love—no, having sex with her. The day at the closing agent’s office when Bryony had signed over her land and he’d given her the check. Of the day he’d told her goodbye.

It all came back so fast his head spun trying to catch up.

He was going to be sick.

The elevator doors opened and it took him a full minute to force himself inside his apartment. Leaving his luggage inside the doorway, he staggered toward one of the couches in the living room, so sick, so devastated that he wanted to die.

He slumped onto the sofa and lowered his head to his hands.

Oh, God, Bryony would never forgive him for this.

He couldn’t forgive himself.

“Mamaw, would it really be so terrible if they built a resort here?” Bryony asked quietly as the two women sat on Mamaw’s deck.

Mamaw glanced over at Bryony, her eyes soft with love. “You’re taking on too much, Bryony. You have to decide what’s best for you. It’s not your responsibility to make the entire island happy. If this resort is coming between