FORTY-EIGHT

CLARE

DAYS ago, I woke up on a cold park bench, asking myself how I’d gotten there. Tonight, I was asking myself the same question. Only this time I was sitting in a great white room with a ceiling as high as a wedding chapel and an ex-husband as sullenly silent as a corpse staring at his own grave.

How I arrived at this Hamptons address was no mystery. What I needed to know—what I was desperate to know—was how I’d gotten to this place in my life?

I was engaged to be married, and this was news to me.

Dozens of questions were flooding my brain—

Where had I met my alleged fiancé?

How long had we been together?

What made us fall in love?

And what could possibly have possessed me to say yes to another wedding in this lifetime? Was I deluding myself, making another stupid mistake? It seemed I was. After all, where the heck was this guy?

What kind of man would allow his fiancée to be spirited away by Matteo Allegro for a weekend in the Hamptons? And what did that say about this person’s affection for me, not to mention his intelligence quotient? Was I engaged to a gullible idiot?

The biggest question in my mind, however, the one looming largest (and scariest), was the one I’d already asked my uncooperative ex-husband—

“If you’re not my impending groom, then who is?”

After a full minute of caustic silence, Matt finally said: “If you can’t remember on your own, Clare, I’m not going to tell you.”

I stared at Matt in a kind of low-level shock. “Have we entered another dimension? Don’t you understand? As long as I’m betrothed to a man I can’t remember, I’m effectively engaged to a complete stranger.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t be engaged to him.”

I blinked. “Did you actually say that? How could you be so presumptive? So arrogant!” I sprang off my chair. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to come out here with you. I knew it!”

Pacing the great room, I spat invectives like machine-gun bullets. Since Matt couldn’t get a word in, he simply sat on his bar chair, arms folded, jaw clenched, taking the hits.

“How could you lie to me again? How?!”

Taking a breath, I waited for an answer. It came in a surprisingly calm voice.

“I never lied to you, Clare.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie. You manipulated me for your own ends, your own benefit, just like you did during our marriage!”

“No! Back then, I was young and stupid. Tonight, what I’ve been doing is trying to help you restore your life, or at least your memory of that life.”

“Without remembering to even mention I was engaged to another man?”

“That’s right, because you didn’t remember him.” Matt rose up off the chair. “But you remembered me.”

As he stepped closer, I backed away. “Are you . . . trying to confuse me?”

“Of course not.” Seeing my retreat, Matt stopped moving. “What’s going on between us isn’t complicated. Not if you understand a simple fact.” Standing firm, he met my gaze. “I still love you. I know deep in your heart, you still care for me, which means this memory loss of yours could be our second chance.”

Our second chance? All of a sudden, I was out of comebacks—and energy. Like a deflating balloon I sank into the cloudlike cushions of the overstuffed sofa, wishing they could spirit me away.

Seeing the fight go out of me, Matt got the wrong impression. Feeling encouraged, he took a step closer, then another, but slowly and cautiously, as if he were approaching an unpredictable cheetah on the African veldt.

What will she do? Lash out? Bolt? Both?

Personally, I was leaning toward both. I might have grown tired of fighting, but I was still furious with Matt’s obvious intentions to manipulate me. He claimed he was simply trying to help me regain my memories, but his decisions were still all about him and what he wanted.

What if I had slept with him? How would I have felt in the morning if I’d suddenly remembered, Oh, that’s right. I’m engaged to be married to (insert name here).

“Clare, you’re tired,” Matt purred, inching closer. “It’s been a long day. How about a drink? Gin and ginger will take the edge off. Then we can go upstairs, relax, and—”

“I don’t want alcohol. And I’m not going upstairs. I want to leave this house. Right now. There must be a hotel around here somewhere.”

“That’s a terrible idea. Remember, we’re trying to keep you hidden.”

“Then drive me back to the city.”

“It’s too late for that, and I’m too tired—”

“Give me the keys to the van. I’ll drive myself.”

“That’s crazy. Look . . .” Hands up, he backed off. “How about if I get out of the house? Right this minute. How about that?”

“You’re going to a hotel?”

“No . . .” He pulled on his hoodie and zipped it up. “There’s a twenty-four-hour supermarket on Montauk Highway. I’ll take my time, buy us some food for the weekend, some staples for the pantry—”

“How is that going to solve our problem?”

“For one thing, it will give our argument a rest. You’ll have some privacy. Go upstairs to the master bedroom. When I get back, I won’t disturb you. Lock the door, if it will make you feel better, and I’ll see you in the morning. You’ll see things differently after a good night’s sleep. If not, we’ll get you out of here. Or maybe we’ll have Joy come for a visit. Would you like that?”

“Yes. I would.”

“Good, great. That’s a step in the right direction. Okay, I’m going . . .”

Seconds later, I heard the door firmly shut. Then the van’s motor started up and slowly faded down the long driveway.

The house went quiet after that, and I would have climbed the stairs to bed, but I had too much adrenaline coursing through me. So I washed the dishes and cleaned the pans. It didn’t take long, less than ten minutes—

That was when the doorbell chimed.

Matt must have forgotten something, I assumed, his wallet most likely. Easy to do when you’re hurrying toward the exit in a desperate attempt to keep your ex-wife from fleeing your house. The doorbell was obviously his way of warning me that he was back sooner than expected—either that or he’d forgotten his house key, too.

Without bothering to glance out the peephole, I yanked open the door to find a man standing in front of me.

He was not my ex-husband.