Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

T EN MINUTES LATER Joaquin walked into a room with the medic, who was explaining that his fiancée was asleep.

On the point of correcting him, Joaquin paused. It seemed worth playing the fiancée card...the risk that came with denying it might restrict the access he had finally been granted.

Would he live to regret his split-second decision?

That was not a question he asked himself.

‘Your fiancée has sustained some bruises and grazes, and a head injury, but other than that she is fine.’

Joaquin glossed over the fiancée reference once more—that was a correction for the future. His focus was the fact that Clemmie did not look fine to him at all.

He voiced his opinion. And then it was one of those occasions when his identity had gone before him. Because moments later—or at least it felt that way—the suits arrived.

He quickly separated the medics from the managers and addressed his questions to the medics, making it clear that he did not wish to patronised.

The replies he received were soothing, but it didn’t change the sick feeling of anxiety in the pit of his belly that he couldn’t even pretend was not fear. Not that this inner fear showed on his face; he had perfected his mask a long time ago and few people could see beyond it.

Clemmie could—but then he didn’t have to disguise things around her. She was a rare someone who would never exploit a weakness.

He controlled his impatience and listened to the doctor who had brought him here explaining the situation. Irritatingly, he was clearly of the mindset that favoured never using one word when ten would do and throwing in a few technical terms to baffle his audience.

But when he took away the word salad it seemed to Joaquin that the main concern was Clemmie’s head injury. His stomach contracted viciously as his dark, silvered glance slid to the line of neat stitches on Clemmie’s brow, surrounded by a darkened swelling that was half hidden by her red hair. Someone had made a passing attempt to wash out the blood.

‘The X-rays and scans are clear,’ the medic reiterated. ‘And, as I said, other than some cuts and bruises—’

‘Then why isn’t she awake?’

‘Head injuries are unpredictable, and when she does wake she might be totally fine.’

Joaquin heard the ‘might’ .

‘And if she’s not totally fine?’ His expression gave no clue to the fact that he had to force the question out—that this was a question he did not even want to think, let alone voice.

She had been in his car; he had been driving. Anything that happened would be his responsibility.

‘Head injuries are unpredictable,’ the doctor reiterated, lifting his hand as if to clasp the younger man on the arm and then changing his mind. He didn’t have to be psychic to know he was dealing with a man who wanted facts, not empathy. ‘After a concussion there can be some...confusion, but we are not anticipating any permanent cognitive impairment in your fiancée’s case.’

Again with the word ‘fiancée’ .

What sort of world was it when you needed a ring to show you cared? He’d always cared about Clemmie and always would.

He looked at her face and felt emotion swell in his throat. He would have given everything he had in the world to see her open her eyes and grumpily tell him to stop making a fuss.

He could make more money.

There was only one Clemmie.

The last thing that Clemmie remembered thinking was that she didn’t really want to die. Not yet, not here, not now.

She must have said the words out loud, because a reply floated into her head.

‘You’re not dying today.’

The corners of her lips tugged into a half-smile at the memory—or was it happening now?—and then faded.

She was alive, but what if Joaquin wasn’t?

Had she dreamt Joaquin was there?

He was in New York.

Was this New York?

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt heavy. Finally they budged a little for her, and she looked at her hands, half expecting to see them clutching the car’s leather armrest in a white-knuckled death grip.

Instead, she found that her hands were resting on her chest. She flexed her fingers. Her fingernails were broken and caked with blood. Then she saw the ring, her eyes widening when it caught the light.

‘How...?’

The croak brought the attention of the occupants of the room to her bedside.

There were just two people—a young woman in white scrubs and...

As she identified the second figure some of the fear clenching in her belly let go.

He was alive!

Her head was spinning, but also aching.

Was any of this real?

Had there even been a car crash?

Now she wasn’t sure. Her memory of the events felt like a dream...already fading, vanishing like smoke.

‘Is this New York?’

‘No, we were in my car.’

‘Car? Why am I in New York in a car with you? God, do I look as bad as you?’ Her eyes closed again. A moment later they opened, and she blurted with feeling, ‘You look awful!’

‘You are not in New York. This is Dorset.’.

He watched as she batted her hand at the nurse, who attempted to shine a torch in her eyes.

‘I still don’t know why you are here, Joaquin.’

‘You rang and I came.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember that.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘All in good time—no need to rush things.’ The medic, who had presumably been summoned by the nurse, walked across to his patient in the bed. ‘I’m glad to see you are back with us. There might be a few gaps in your memory.’ He half turned to include Joaquin in the conversation as he continued, ‘Your fiancée needs rest.’

Fiancée? There were three people in the car? Joaquin was engaged?

Emotion thickened in her throat, but the tears pricking her eyes were, she told herself, nothing to do with Joaquin’s marital plans and everything to do with her weakened state.

They said she’d been in some sort of accident. Surely she was allowed to cry!

‘Is she all right?’ Clemmie asked.

‘Is who all right?’ asked the nurse.

Clemmie’s heavy-lidded gaze shifted groggily from the nurse to Joaquin. ‘Your fiancée?’ She ran her tongue across the dry outline of her lips and told herself she was happy for him. ‘Congratulations.’ Clemmie closed her eyes. ‘I’m a bit tired.’

‘Of course you are. Do you have any pain?’ the nurse asked, adjusted the IV dripping into her arm before smoothing the pristine white sheet beneath it. ‘Such a beautiful ring...’

The comment tickled a hazy memory in Clemmie’s head, but it remained frustratingly out of reach. There had been a ring—but she didn’t wear rings. Her brow furrowed and she opened one eye, squinting at her hand. A moment later both eyes flew wide as she held up her hand and began to struggle to raise herself.

‘That’s not mine!’ she cried as she collapsed back on the pillows in an untidy heap. She turned her glance of appeal to Joaquin, hoping for him to provide some sort of answer, but saw the doctor was speaking to him in a low monotone.

Joaquin had been listening to the doctor voicing soothing medical platitudes, with an expression of interest on his face, while most of his attention was focused on Clemmie’s pale face. The pallor was now alleviated by twin bright red spots on her cheeks.

If he hadn’t been so focused on her injuries he might have anticipated this situation, but he hadn’t. Going along with the assumption they were engaged had seemed harmless enough, but less so now. There had been some vague idea in his head of the ring on her finger scenario being a story they would both laugh about on some later date over a glass of wine.

There was no laughter in her face now. Just confusion and, yes, alarm. Her response to the idea of being engaged to him appeared to be a combination of panic and horror.

Well, he always had been able to rely on Clemmie to puncture his ego, he reflected. But he was not smiling at the thought because she looked so anxious that he wanted to hug her.

‘Joaquin...?’ she said, as if she was registering his presence all over again. ‘How are you here? Why are you here? You are in New York.’

‘I came back.’

‘You might have told me you were coming back. I would have booked a day or two off work.’

‘There was car crash...we were in my car.’

‘How was I in your car?’ she croaked, her hoarse voice rising in panic. She shifted restlessly in the narrow bed and clutched her head with her hand. ‘I’m in hospital... Oh, God, I can’t be in this place.’

He moved towards the bed. ‘Relax, Clemmie, there was an accident.’

‘This isn’t mine.’ She shook her head and stared at the ring on her finger.

‘It was my grandmother’s. Don’t you remember?’

She shook her head. ‘No, you are in New York.’

‘Well, he’ll just have to propose again, won’t he, darling?’

Ruth Leith stepped into the room.

‘Mum?’ Clemmie felt tears press at the back of her eyes. She sniffed. ‘I want to go home. And Joaquin didn’t propose to me. He is never going to get married; he promised me he wouldn’t get married. Married people hate each other.’

Her mother swept across the room. ‘Oh, your poor little face,’ she said selecting an unbruised spot to kiss. There were tears in her eyes as she turned her gaze to Joaquin. ‘You saved my baby. How can I ever thank you? When I saw the news report, I thought... Then the news reader said it was a miracle there were no fatalities.’

Struggling to follow her mother’s emotional outpouring, Clemmie moved her gaze to Joaquin, who stood there looking uncomfortable.

‘You saved me? Was I stuck up a tree?’

‘You were coming home with Joaquin. There was a crash,’ her mother said, enunciating the words slowly. She got to her feet and turned to the doctor. ‘She seems very confused, Doctor,’ she added in a worried aside.

Resting one hand on the wall above her head, Joaquin bent over her. ‘Not a tree this time. We were in a car crash.’

Clemmie pushed into her memory, the struggle to recall anything feeling as if she was fighting her way through a cotton wool fog.

‘You said that you remember...?’

‘No, I don’t think so, Joaquin. I’d know if I was in a crash.’

Over his shoulder, Joaquin threw a look at the medic that prompted the man to join them.

‘Things sound a bit echoey to me...’ said Clemmie.

‘Same here, but I’m told it’s only temporary. There was a loud bang.’

She looked at him blankly. ‘After the crash...? Are you okay?’ Then, as if seeming to notice for the first time, she added in a concerned voice. ‘Is that why you look so terrible? You should be in hospital.’ The comment seemed to wake her up to her surroundings once more. ‘Mum, I can’t stay here. I want to go home.’

Watching the interchange, Joaquin drew the doctor a little way apart.

‘She knew what had happened when we were in the helicopter and when she woke up, but now she seems the be getting more confused.’

‘It’s not unusual for someone to blank out the trauma. I wouldn’t read too much into this.’

‘All this doesn’t help.’ His gesture took in the room. ‘Clemmie is not good with hospitals.’

‘Not many people like hospitals.’

Joaquin reacted to this patronising, pat-on-the-head tone with a forceful, ‘Clemmie is not “many people”.’

A flustered expression briefly slipped through the man’s professional mask. ‘Of course. Your fiancée is—’

His eyes flickered across to the bed, where Clemmie had drifted off to sleep holding her mother’s hand.

‘I have known Clemmie for twenty years,’ said Joaquin, cutting across the man, his protective instincts in full flow and his impatience stamped on his lean features as he relayed her history in a tone devoid of the emotion the memory always kicked up in him.

‘Shortly before we first met she lost her twin sister to cancer. She had spent weeks visiting her sister in hospital every day, watching her get sicker. I think the fact that she had been told by the well-meaning idiot doctor caring for her sister that her twin would get better added another layer to her grief when her twin died.’

He had learnt the full story only after Clemmie had reacted with tearful fury to the mocking comment he had made about a stuffed toy he had seen sticking out of her rucksack, not knowing the special meaning it held.

It had belonged to her twin.

‘I think she is allowed to dislike hospitals,’ he finished quietly.

‘Of course, and I will make staff aware of her history.’ The doctor hesitated, before saying formally. ‘If you would like a second opinion...?’

‘I would like a first opinion,’ Joaquin cut back grimly. ‘What is your diagnosis?’

‘It’s early days...’ the man began, but his voice trailed away when he saw Joaquin’s expression. ‘You might be aware that confusion is not unusual after a head injury—even temporary amnesia?’

‘You are saying she has amnesia...on what basis?’

Not used to people demanding facts like this, the man blinked. ‘I am suggesting it is a possibility ,’ he continued carefully. ‘One you should be aware of. Tomorrow, when she has rested, we will be able to—’

‘I am assuming there are experts in this field?’

‘Of course, but we—’

‘I will arrange a second opinion. Could you make yourself available to consult tomorrow morning?’

The doctor blinked, his faintly patronising air evaporating. Feeling very much less in charge, he found himself agreeing without demur to the arrangements being made.

‘Try not to worry. We’ll give her something to help her sleep, and in the morning the world will seem a much less confusing place.’

After Joaquin had spoken to Ruth, arranged transport for her home, as she was clearly too upset to drive, and agreed to her suggestion that he spend the night at the manor, he contacted his PA, who had clearly heard the news.

‘Congratulations! Is Clemmie going to be okay?’

Even though they had only ever spoken on the phone, his PA and Clemmie were on first name terms.

‘We are not engaged.’ He saw no reason to go into details.

‘Oh,’ his PA said, sounding disappointed. Then, more professionally, ‘Do you want me to put out a press release to that effect?’

‘No.’

Then he listed what he did want her to do, which was to arrange a team of consultants in the relevant specialities to provide second opinions, no later than tomorrow morning.

‘And I need a car, and I need a fresh set of clothes here. Now. You can send the rest straight to Maplehurst. Oh, and also I’ll need a new laptop. Anything else... I’ll send the details with you.’

Leaving the practicalities in her capable hands, he made his way back to Clemmie’s room. The light above her bed illuminated her sleeping face, highlighting the bruises, her blood-matted hair lying on the white pillow.

The palette of clashing emotions he felt as he stared down at her was as complex and confused as the multi-coloured bruise on her cheek.

It could have been worse, he told himself, not allowing himself to think of how much worse.

He didn’t make it to the manor until three a.m., having fallen asleep in the chair beside Clemmie’s bed. He fell on to the bed fully clothed and got a couple of hours’ sleep.

It would have been too much to say he awoke refreshed, but a shower and a shave did make him feel slightly more like part of the human race.

He was anxious to be gone. With luck, Clemmie would have got her memory back. If not he would fill in the blanks. Hopefully she would see the funny side of it. Most women wouldn’t—but then Clemmie was not most women.

He drank his coffee while choosing a clean set of clothes from the selection that had arrived before him. He hadn’t expected Ruth to be ready, and she wasn’t, but she had packed some of the clothes Clemmie kept at the gatehouse and they were in the hallway.

He explained to Ruth that a car and a driver for her use for as long as she needed would be arriving within the hour and then set off for the hospital.

His plan to get to Clemmie was thrown off course from the outset. When he arrived, the team of consultants ready to give second opinions were already on the job. He was met as he entered the building and directed to the medical director’s office, where the consultant from the previous day had been joined by the three experts his PA had managed to get on site.

As he took a seat they explained that the results of the tests were in and they had all spent two hours with Clemmie. Apparently there was now a diagnosis.

Joaquin gave his attention to their individual contributions, which appeared to overlap.

There was a consensus.

Clemmie, aside from some bruising, was suffering only from mild concussion and amnesia.

‘Temporary?’ he asked.

On this there was no consensus—just a lot of options. He found the ambiguity frustrating.

‘How can she have amnesia?’ he asked, directing his question to the group and not just one individual. ‘She knows who I am, and when she first woke up it seemed as though she knew she had been in an accident. Are you saying that now she doesn’t? How is that possible?’

One of the experts responded. ‘The brain, Mr Perez, has a way of protecting itself from painful trauma—physical and emotional—that it is not ready to deal with. Retrograde amnesia is often a protective mechanism. It would appear from our examination that she has no memory of the last six weeks.’

‘What does she remember?’

‘Her last clear memory is apparently from over a month ago, when she was helping clear away a Christmas display at the library where she works.’

Joaquin nodded.

‘But...’ The speaker hesitated, then, ‘She has no memory of being engaged to you.’

‘Well, that is not surprising. We are not engaged.’

A wave of collective shock went around the room.

Joaquin didn’t notice; he was suffering from guilt. He had contributed to Clemmie’s confusion and possibly even to her memory loss by allowing the mistake to stand.

The medics exchanged glances but if they were tempted to ask for further details they repressed their curiosity.

‘It is my intention to clear that up right now,’ he added, rising decisively to his feet.

The doctor on his home ground was the first to speak, though the others nodded agreement at his words.

‘That might not be the best course of action at this stage.’

Another nodded, before voicing his support. ‘There might be some danger at this stage in pushing things. There is every chance that she will remember the period she has lost.’

‘So, I am meant to lie?’

‘You are meant to allow her to fill in the gaps in her own time.’

‘What if she never fills them in?’

An image floated across his vision of him lifting a veil to reveal Clemmie staring up at him, her green eyes shining.

Weddings were the subject of his nightmares, but on this occasion he found himself not running from the preposterous image but allowing it to linger.

Someone laughed.

‘Well, obviously this advice is a very short term. If her memory does not return, we will adapt to that circumstance.’

Joaquin did not ask what form this adaptation might take—he just felt the need to be out of there. He needed to see for himself that Clemmie was okay.

‘In the meantime, our initial problem is... We were hoping you would use your influence... Your fiancée... Sorry, Miss Leith has discharged herself.’

‘She has what ?’ Joaquin closed his eyes and shook his head before biting out. ‘Of course she has. She is—’

He compressed his lips and felt sorry for the man who would marry her for real as he raked a frustrated hand through his hair.

‘I am assuming you told her that was not advisable?’

‘I told her that we would prefer she stayed with us for another twenty-four hours, but actually I had no power to stop her.’

‘Well, I have!’ Joaquin intoned grimly.

‘I am not sure that would be a good idea. As she has pointed out, all her tests are clear, and she might just as well “lie there staring at the ceiling” at home.’

‘I can almost hear her...’

The medic’s lips twitched at his tone ‘She is a very determined woman.’

‘She is mule-stubborn.’

‘Her mother, who has just arrived, is also very determined.’

‘Perhaps Ruth can make her see sense.’

‘I would prefer not to see the patient distressed...and taking into account her hospital phobia...’

The other medics nodded in agreement.

‘Of course she’s distressed—she doesn’t remember.’

And doesn’t know there is nothing to remember.

His frustration rose. If he could fill in the blanks things would go back to the way they were before.

‘We are simply asking that you do not put pressure on her...do not push.’

Joaquin sighed. ‘I don’t want to hurt Clemmie. I just want her memory to come back.’

‘Excellent! Then perhaps you could speak to her mother? I am afraid she has upset our patient...especially after she insisted that her daughter must remember getting engaged.’

Thirty very uncomfortable minutes later, Joaquin stood between the two women who had at least stopped yelling.

‘So, this is settled?’ he said. ‘Clemmie will come home and return for tests on Friday?’

‘I’ve already had tests!’ Clemmie pouted.

Give me strength, Joaquin prayed, as he forced a calm smile.

‘And you have endured them with stoicism. However...’ He flashed a high-voltage smile at her mother. ‘As your mother has said, a full MOT will calm our collective nerves.’

Ruth hadn’t said any such thing, but she looked complacent.

Clemmie glared at them both and pushed her feet into the furry slippers on the floor as she stood up.

In the midst of his frustration and guilt Joaquin found himself smiling. Five feet two in her fluffy slippers, with her hair its usual spectacular fiery mess and her small chin lifted aggressively, she looked—

The half-smile faded from his face. She looked like the sexiest female he had ever seen in his life: strong, brave and in-your-face furious, but so, so incredibly sexy...

‘All right...’ Clemmie said slowly, dividing her killer glare between her mother and her...her fiancé?

Even the thought felt wrong—on several levels. The transformation felt as though she had jumped from newborn to teenager in one hour! And, actually, she had had a terrible short-lived crush on Joaquin in her teens.

It seemed weird to know they were engaged when she couldn’t even remember their first proper kiss, she mused, staring at the sexy curve of his mouth and feeling a quiver low in her belly.

She tried not to acknowledge it—then realised that she didn’t have to ignore it now; she was allowed to lust after him.

God, this felt as if she’d started reading a story in the epilogue and had missed all the chapters that led up to it.

Realising she had been staring at his mouth for a long time, she lifted her gaze. ‘It really is overkill,’ she said.

Seeing that maternal love was about to make Ruth explode into deadly ire, Joaquin intervened. ‘You’re probably right, but these medics...it’s best to humour them. Ruth?’ he said, adding a full thousand volts to his smile. ‘Am I being a total pain in wanting us to stay at the manor for the next few days?’

‘Where else would you go?’ she asked, looking offended.

‘And I can’t wait to meet your Harry. Clemmie has told me all about him.’

‘She has?’

Clemmie reached for her bag and watched Joaquin do what he did best and charm her mum. It appalled her, but it was so convenient. She was utterly exhausted—too exhausted for a fight. It took everything she had to move from A to B.

The doctors had warned her that fatigue was a normal consequence, post head injury, but this this leaden-limbed, buzzy head feeling was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

It took half an hour to get from the hospital to Maplehurst, and Ruth Leith kept up a steady flow of chatter for the entire journey.

Clemmie, who appeared lost in her own thoughts, didn’t say a word, and Joaquin, who produced a polite grunt or nod when required, was also mostly quiet as guilt continued to ride him—hard.

He was not in the habit of second-guessing his decisions, but his choice of following the medics’ advice and letting this charade play out did not sit easily with him.

All well and good to wait for her to remember—but when would that be? He could not see his explanation that he had been following doctors’ orders by not filling in the blanks cutting much ice with Clemmie. She was going to be as mad as hell and he couldn’t blame her.

And what if she never remembered?

By the time they drew up at the gatehouse at the end of the manor’s drive, Joaquin had learnt several things from the one-sided conversation. The most frequently mentioned being that short engagements were the best.

Clemmie, who hadn’t said a word for the entire journey, seemed to come out of her trance-like state as the car came to a halt.

‘We’re here.’

‘No, don’t get out, darling,’ her mother said, leaning forward from the back seat to press a kiss to her daughter’s cheek. ‘Stay in the warm. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Joaquin watched the confusion in Clemmie’s eyes slide into realisation before her lashes fell to conceal panic.

‘Of course. I’ll...see you, Mum.’

Having seen Ruth into the cottage, Joaquin slid back into the car.

‘You thought you’d be staying here with your mum, didn’t you?’ he said.

She turned in her seat and grimaced. ‘Sorry. I just don’t feel... I wonder why I didn’t tell Mum about our engagement?’

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t something we discussed.’

‘Sorry, this must be hard for you too.’

‘There is no need for you to be sorry.’

There was plenty of need for him to be sorry. He fought the need to tell her the truth; was that a selfish need to offload his guilt or genuine remorse? asked the cynical voice in his head.

He still didn’t know how he’d managed to get himself into this situation.

Yes, you do. You said nothing.

‘The doctor asked me what the last thing I remember is.’

‘And what is the last thing you remember?’ he asked, even though the doctor had told him.

‘Dismantling the Christmas display at work. The pre-schoolers had made some lovely collages in one of the craft sessions we have at the library. I thought that was last week, but Mum has told me it was last month. I’m missing more than a whole month—or big bits of it. I’m scared, Joaquin. What if I never get that time back?’

Glancing at her stricken face, he pulled the car over, its wheels sending up flurries of gravel. He switched on the interior light, which illuminated her pale face and the bruises on her forehead and cheek, and felt a wave of protective warmth that made him want to reach out and drag her into his arms.

She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I am not going to fall apart and cry on you. I’m not that sort of person. At least I don’t think I am.’ She gave a wild little laugh. ‘Who knows? I might be. I mean, nothing could be weirder than being engaged to you.’

She looked at the heavy ring on her finger and felt nothing.

‘Don’t overthink it, Clemmie...don’t force it.’

Her eyes lifted. ‘Overthink? I can barely think at all.’

Joaquin felt a fresh surge of protectiveness, and extended his hand to push back the curls that had fallen across her brow. ‘Do you still have a headache?’

He retracted his hand, his face clenched in a pained grimace when she went rigid.

‘Did I hurt you?’

He cursed himself for forgetting the damage that was hidden under curls so abundant that the small area where the hair had been cut away to suture a scalp wound was totally concealed.

She shook her head and laid a hand on his arm, her face filled with excitement, not pain. ‘No... No, I remember something!’

He tensed, his expression guarded. The moment he had wanted and also dreaded appeared to be here.

‘What do you remember?’

Would she laugh or would she hate him?

Her nose wrinkled as she put the flashes of images and sensations into words, haltingly at first, and then with more confidence, afraid that if she didn’t share what she was seeing and feeling the memory might vanish again.

‘I was looking out of my bedroom window and I saw someone. I knew it was you, even though you were too far away for me to see your face.’ A little smile flickered across her face as she looked at him. ‘You move... You have a very distinctive walk. So I must have been expecting you.’

He felt the small fingers on his forearm tighten and swallowed. ‘You were.’

She nodded. ‘I remember watching as you got closer, and I remember feeling...’ She pressed a hand to her chest and her wide, wondering eyes lifted to his face. ‘I felt excited and kind of nervous ...’

But it had been more than that. Her forehead furrowed and her eyes half closed as she tried to articulate the surge of emotions she experienced as she relived the moment.

The scene playing again in her head felt like real time, not a memory.

‘Is that it?’ he asked. ‘Or do you remember anything else?’

‘There’s more... I know there is,’ she said huskily, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue. It was so frustrating. It was as if an open door had slammed in her face, just after she had opened it. ‘But the next part is vivid.’

‘What part?’

‘I ran down the stairs and opened the door. You were standing there, and my heart was thudding and butterflies were kicking in my stomach.’

‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

‘You smiling and me wanting to kiss you so badly that it was an ache. Did I?’

He shook his head. His body had reacted to this artless confidence with painful arousal and a fresh stab of guilt. If he had been able to find the words to bring this charade to a stop there and then, doctors’ warning or not, he would have. He was rarely at a loss for the right words, but he was at that moment. The reason being that his brain was involved in creating a very detailed what if? scenario.

What if Clemmie had followed through with the impulse and kissed him?

Would he have kissed her back?

Where would it have stopped if he had explored her mouth and felt her warm body plastered up against him?

The thought shook free the memory that still surfaced regularly, of a very tipsy Clemmie, just eighteen, lying there, linking her arms around his neck and pouting as she demanded a birthday kiss.

He had done the honourable thing and pushed her away. He had seen the hurt in her eyes a little later, when she had been packing up the remains of their picnic. He had walked fully clothed into the lake, hoping an icy swim would relieve his agony. He’d pretended that when he had slipped.

Where was an icy lake when you needed one?

‘No,’ he said.

A sliver of sympathy flickered into her wide green eyes as she studied his face, the lines etched around his dark eyes and the deep grooves around his mouth. It looked likely that Joaquin was suffering the sort of headache that was drumming into her own temples.

‘I wonder why?’ she said, her voice vague, her thoughts drifting as she struggled to retain an interest in anything beyond the distracting pain drilling into her skull.

He realised she remained oblivious to the fact that she had taken the genie out of the bottle. The rules had changed. She had taken away the forbidden, leaving the attractively possible in the vacuum.

He couldn’t stop the what ifs. It had always felt like an unspoken pact, what was between him and Clemmie, and it had been. It was safe that way... But now she had spoken out, in the mistaken belief that those barriers no longer existed.

He knew himself. He knew that he would never settle for one woman, that sex was nothing more to him than a physical outlet, and he knew—he had always known—that Clemmie would never understand.

The idea of hurting her was anathema to him, but there were parts of playing her fiancé he knew he would enjoy.

‘I remember looking at your mouth...’ Her eyes drifted in that direction as she spoke, lingering there. ‘And wanting to kiss you... That’s a good start, isn’t it?’

His words were strangled in his throat as he looked into her eyes. He was helpless to control the fresh rush of arousal.

Clemmie couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t kissed him—unless they had fought, or she was the sort of woman who waited for a man to make the first move?

She really hoped she wasn’t that sort of woman.

She wouldn’t be that sort of woman.

A smile curving her mouth, she reached across, entwining her fingers behind his head as she dragged herself upwards and fitted her mouth to his.

The effort it cost him not to respond to those soft lips tapped into a better self he hadn’t even been sure existed. Was this pain the cosmic payback for years of self-indulgence? He asked himself.

Hurt and confusion and embarrassment jostled for supremacy as inside Clemmie as she pulled back, looking at him with big, confused eyes. Presumably they had already shared wild, head-banging sex, but all she remembered was trying to kiss him and getting rejected—twice now.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

She looked so hurt, but he knew she would be more hurt if he followed his baser instincts; this was a lesser hurt.

‘You are just out of hospital,’ he pointed out, with a lightness he was far from feeling. ‘And the general consensus is that you should still be there. I don’t think making out in the back seat of a car would be medically approved.’

‘It’s not the back seat... But I suppose you might be right,’ she conceded. ‘Are you being noble because I don’t remember?’

Noble? He stifled a bitter laugh. ‘Memory loss or not, you know me better than that, Clemmie.’

‘You did save my life. I watched the video.’

‘Did they get my good side?’

She sighed. ‘You don’t have a bad side. You’re a very beautiful man—though I’ve tried not to think of you that way.’ She shook her head. ‘I wish I knew what changed between us.’

He was sweating, and as for his control—he could almost see the single frayed thread that was holding it in place.

‘I can’t intimidate you...that much hasn’t changed. If I could you’d still be in hospital.’

‘I couldn’t stay there.’

‘I get that.’

‘Have we spoken about having a family? I’d have to have a home birth—you do realise that?’

Out of nowhere, an image of Clemmie holding a baby to her breast flashed into his head, and he had to remind himself that childbirth and babies were not sexy.

Her breasts were, though.

He swore low, under his breath.

She heard and mistook the cause of his frustration. ‘I do want to remember!’

‘I know, but for God’s sake cut yourself some slack,’ he cried, wrenching the rear-view mirror around. ‘Look!’

She did, and winced. ‘I don’t look very kissable, do I?’

‘You look...’ His throat worked as he swallowed. ‘You are bruised and hurting. What you need is rest. Tomorrow you have your MOT.’

‘You make me sound like an old banger...’

That drew a laugh from him, which faded as his dark glance slid over the lissom curves of her body, awakening in him an ache he could no longer pretend was not constant.

I’ve already had a load of tests,’ she sighed out.

‘That was the bargain. Your mum has more faith in the medical establishment than you do. It will make her less anxious.’