CHAPTER TWO

IMOGEN KEPT HER gaze on the horizon and away from the man who had refused to take a seat on the launch transporting them to the fast-approaching yacht and instead stood with feet planted apart, one hand braced on the side of the sleek vessel.

The man whose piercing, narrow-eyed gaze swung metronomically between the yacht and her face, oftentimes staying for several nerve-tingling seconds before retreating.

She didn’t know if whatever information he was seeking had been evident in her face. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Her emotions were still twanging wildly from what had taken place in that church. And, goodness, what had taken place after had been equally astonishing.

Once Zephyr had decided he would investigate her claims for himself, nothing would sway him from it.

His departure hadn’t been without distress for those left behind. For Petros especially. She hadn’t needed to understand Greek to know the old man had implored Zeph to reconsider, nor did she need a body-language expert to decipher the scathing looks he’d thrown Imogen while he did so. The elderly woman had wept quietly, and she’d been the one Zeph had spent most time with, speaking gently but firmly to her until she’d pressed a hand to his hard cheek in forgiving understanding.

As for the woman he’d intended to marry, she’d only worn a solemn, worried expression mostly directed at her father and the old woman Imogen guessed was her grandmother. The looks she’d cast Zeph weren’t filled with censure or heartbreak, making Immie wonder—with something eerily akin to relief she didn’t want to fully explore—whether their intended marriage had been one of convenience just as hers was.

All in all, it’d taken less than an hour for Zephyr to cut ties with the life he’d known for ten months. Immie couldn’t say she was surprised. The man she’d had no choice but to be tied to was nothing if not ruthlessly efficient.

He hadn’t spoken a word since they left Efemia—and his almost-bride and her family—behind.

The whole trip took less than five minutes, but by the time that gaze pinned her one more time and he held out his hand to help her off the boat, Imogen was a bag of nerves. Enough for her to hesitate before she slid her hand into his. Enough to suppress a wild gasp that shook into her throat at the first true and meaningful contact she’d had with her husband since he slid that cold diamond onto her finger in that sterile room in Athens almost two years ago.

Then, she’d been too distraught by the circumstances of how she’d become the sacrificial lamb for her family to accommodate the electrifying effect he seemed to effortlessly conjure out of her.

Sure, she’d been aware of the devastatingly handsome Zephyr Diamandis, the man who’d dated more than a handful of the most beautiful women in the world. Which had also begged the question, why her? The answer had been too glaringly obvious to dismiss—revenge. That knowledge had pushed everything else into the background.

Now she’d seen him again, solid and alive and, hell, thriving, the recollection of why this man hated her bubbled forth now.

Revenge born of the age-old demon that often sprang from the wells of thwarted regard or respect. In their families’ case—and in Zephyr Diamandis’s eyes—it’d been disregard for fairness.

Her grandfather and father’s blithe disregard for the deal they’d struck with Zeph’s grandfather had driven his family into bankruptcy, a fact Imogen’s father still refused to fully accept responsibility for even now. Even after offering her, his only child, as penance to save himself from destitution.

But she’d done her homework, enough to know the shocking consequences her family’s actions had produced.

The Diamandises had lost everything after her father and grandfather failed to honour the terms of the shipping deal Zeph’s family had sunk their every last euro into.

Overnight, they’d gone from being on the brink of indecent wealth to being destitute. Pariahs who’d been vilified in Athens. His grandfather had suffered a heart attack very soon after that. And one by one, his father, then his mother had also been lost, working themselves into an early death while attempting to salvage what little they’d been left with, leaving an embittered young boy behind. A boy who’d been thrown into the foster-care system and effectively left to bring himself up, steeped in the knowledge that one family—the Callahans—had been responsible for the drastic course his life had taken.

So no, she wasn’t surprised that this man hadn’t touched her since he’d draped the millstone of his name around her neck and then estranged himself from her.

Now, however, she couldn’t discard the sensations of tiny fireworks he evoked with his touch as their palms slid together. As his strong fingers curled around hers, firm and masculine, to help her onto the lower deck. As midnight-blue eyes stared forcefully and blatantly into hers, ruthlessly excavating her every secret.

Reminding her that a different reality was setting in.

Zephyr. Zeph.

Her long-lost husband was back. And he’d lost his memory. Apparently.

God, she still couldn’t believe she’d found him.

Alive and well. Powerfully masculine and even more handsome...

And staring at her mouth as if...as if...

She sucked in a deep, composure-craving breath as the staff, lined up beside the pilot, and wearing looks of shock and muted elation, watched their employer step aboard the boat he’d disappeared off ten long months ago.

Alongside the shock, she also saw wide-eyed surprise. The same emotion unravelling through her at the transformation in the formidable, forbidding man she’d known for the last two years.

Because for his departure from the little hamlet he’d resided in since he went missing, Zeph hadn’t chosen a suit or even a pair of trousers and a button-down shirt. Instead, the multibillionaire who could shift fiscal landscapes as easily as a gardener turned soil had changed into a pair of khaki shorts and a white T-shirt.

For a man who she’d never seen dressed any way but formally—courtesy of the exclusive dozen bespoke tailors spread across three continents at his beck and call—it’d been a shock to see him in shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. Imogen was sure the Zeph of old wouldn’t have known what flip-flops were if a pair had jumped out at him.

And even more shocking was the fact that... Immie liked this informal side of him.

More than liked.

She dragged her gaze from his mile-wide shoulders and the muscles—much thicker than the streamlined sleekness he’d sported before his disappearance—stretching beneath the thin cotton, past the strong throat and the wisps of silky hair peeking up from the neckline, to the lush brown locks ruffling in the slight breeze, and the way he casually wove his tanned fingers through them as he greeted his staff.

With a smile.

Good heavens. At this rate, she was sure she’d expire from astonishment before noon.

Titos, the pilot of the Ophelia I, broke into excited Greek chatter, a suspicious sheen in his eyes that looked like tears as he pumped his boss’s hand in greeting.

Zeph responded in Greek before greeting his other staff, leaving awed, blinking staff in his wake.

When, after several minutes in conversation, the head steward herded them away—following her firm request that for now Zeph’s reappearance was to be kept confidential—her breath caught all over again when Zeph turned to her, the remnants of his smile still in place.

‘Is something the matter?’ he rasped.

And she realised she was gawping at him. ‘I...you’re smiling,’ she blurted before she could stop herself.

A shade of that smile disappeared. Immie bit her tongue as his eyes narrowed a second later.

‘You say that as if you’re surprised.’

She shivered at the cool query in that observation. Cleared her throat as she thought of how to respond. Hadn’t she read somewhere that volunteering unguarded information to amnesia patients could be detrimental?

‘Miss Callahan?’

She bristled. Then immediately felt irritated with herself for doing so. Wasn’t this what she ultimately wanted? Wasn’t this why she’d searched high and low and under every rock for this man, driven by a visceral instinct she couldn’t deny? Instinct that insisted that he was alive? So she could find him—despite the authorities and his board of directors urging her to have him declared dead—and draw a line one way or another under the past two years and reclaim her life? Her independence? To return to being Immie Callahan and not Imogen Diamandis, trophy wife of one of the wealthiest, most influential men on earth?

Yes, but his calling her by her maiden name was making a specific point. One she didn’t appreciate.

She raised her chin. ‘If you’re attempting to cast doubt on the fact that we’re married by using my maiden name, you’re wasting your time.’

‘I may not remember who I am, but I know not to take everything I’m told at face value.’

This was the Zeph she remembered. The terrifying Greek shipping tycoon and financier who could make grown men quake in their boots. Why that made something heavy inside her plummet, she refused to examine. ‘What reason would I have to lie to you?’

‘The same reason you’re holding yourself so stiffly. The reason everyone around here seems pleased to see me except you.’ Silk and danger. Those were the two components of his voice. And they sent a different shiver down her spine.

Because he’d spoken to her like that before his disappearance. Just her. No one else.

Whether he remembered it or not.

‘Would you care to elaborate as to why that is?’ he pressed.

She attempted a calm and composed shrug. ‘I’m concerned about your well-being. This must be all new and...different from what you’ve been used to these last ten months. Maybe you should rest?’

That devastating smile broke through again and everything inside her roused to rude life. ‘Again, I may not know myself as much as I’d wish to, but I’m confident I’m made of sterner stuff...dear wife.’ He drawled the last two words out, his eyes pinned on her face.

So he probably didn’t miss the unguarded gasp she tried to suppress. Then she rallied hard to get herself together. Answered the question still lingering in the air. ‘Titos, your pilot... I don’t speak Greek so I don’t know if he reminded you of your childhood together. I’m sure he can corroborate whatever you need to know.’

His gaze didn’t waver from her face for one instant. ‘He seems a good man, but I’m not getting best friend and confidant vibes from him,’ he replied.

And she couldn’t refute that.

Zeph Diamandis has always been a lone wolf, an apex predator who ruled his world alone and with a titanium fist. Sure, he had dozens of business acquaintances and alliances, but true, lifelong friends? She hadn’t come across a single one in the full year she’d been shoved into his orbit, then shackled to him in a game of pure retribution.

‘Your hesitation tells me I’m right,’ he drawled when she remained silent.

Immie cleared her throat. ‘Okay, yes... I mean, no, you weren’t best friends.’

‘Then I’m certain there was a reason for it.’

The thinly veiled question sent alarm through her. Because suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to provide him with vivid details of their relationships. Wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him that far from being a conventional married couple, they’d been enemies, thrown together by the Diamandis code for retribution he’d vowed never to waver from.

The wrongs her family had done his had left a trail of devastation it’d taken Zephyr’s father, then Zeph himself to right. And he’d risen from those ashes determined that a Callahan would pay.

That Callahan had been her.

He strode towards her, and she was reminded all over again—as if that phenomenon were ever far from her mind—how devastatingly handsome he was; how he could command a room without so much as speaking a word.

Even the wide, endless deck seemed like an enclosed cave as he pinned those laser-beam eyes on her. Eyes that made her intensely aware of every sensitive square inch of her skin. Aware of the tightening of her nipples and the sensitivity in her breasts.

What had he asked her again?

Friends. Relationships.

She licked her lips. ‘I know you want answers, and we’ll get around to it eventually—’

‘Ne, I want answers,’ he concurred, his Greek accent thickened. ‘And you can start by telling me where you were last night. What you were doing going out dressed like that when your husband was missing.’

‘Excuse me? How dare you?’ Affront was immediate—and welcomed. She could hang on to that, suppress the other sensations he triggered in her. Sensations that reminded her far too vividly that she was a woman. Albeit a woman with negligible sexual experience. Because she didn’t want to dwell on that hot, tight space between her legs that grew hotter with every scent of him she took into her nostrils, every glimpse of those sensual lips. Every ripple of those thick muscles. Every time her gaze fell on his callused hands and she imagined them on her body, deliciously chafing in their caresses.

‘I’m not criticising your choice of attire, although I must admit to feeling a little...disgruntled that other men get to enjoy the sight of those spectacular legs.’

Her mouth dropped open in shock. Then she snapped it shut. ‘Then...why? Because you...you sound...jealous.’ The notion was absurd to speak aloud. Just as absurd as the spiky little thrill it sent through her!

‘Do I? Is that as new a phenomenon as wanting to know my wife’s whereabouts?’

As quickly as her ire had risen, it dissipated. Because again, he’d knocked the wind out of her with this staggering observation. The Zephyr Diamandis she knew hadn’t exhibited an iota of emotion towards her, jealousy or otherwise.

Hell, she’d have been lucky if he’d shown anything other than stone-cold indifference. All he’d wanted was the convenient respectability of marriage to secure the biggest deal of his life—the acquisition of the multibillion-dollar conglomerate that was Avalon Inc.

Imogen wasn’t sure how her father had known the ins and outs of the Diamandis negotiations with Avalon, or especially how he’d found out that Philip Avalon, the ninety-year-old magnate who had finally agreed to sell his company, had had one ultimate condition before agreeing to the deal with Zephyr. That the man acquiring his beloved company not be a ‘philandering womaniser with more money than sense and no ties to keep him in line’.

Imogen would’ve laughed at the archaic concept, perhaps even pondered why a man as enlightened as Zeph Diamandis was agreeing to it, if she weren’t the one directly in the crosshairs of that agreement. If her family’s once thriving but now struggling company hadn’t been at serious risk, too.

That the Avalon deal had included its subsidiary, Callahan Shipping, had been a minor incentive, but an incentive nevertheless because, in one fell swoop, he’d been able to deliver the sucker punch every Callahan family member had been bracing for for almost two decades. Zeph had acquired Avalon, and with it her beloved company, the company she’d earned a business and marketing degree for and had poured blood, sweat and tears into, despite every single deprecatory put-down from her father.

And in the months before his disappearance, Diamandis Shipping had become one of the largest individually owned companies in the world, making her husband one of the wealthiest, most influential men on the planet.

Did he even realise how powerful he was? This man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt who was asking about her activities as a normal run-of-the-mill husband who cared for his wife would?

Except there was nothing run-of-the-mill about the look he continued to level at her, the expectation of an answer heavy in the air and growing weightier by the second.

‘If you must know, I was out with your...with the company’s clients last night.’

His gaze raked over her once more, his nostrils flaring. ‘And are you in the habit of regularly entertaining these clients outside office hours?’

She shrugged. ‘Not often but...’ She stopped, a touch of anger and disconsolation riling her anew as she was reminded of why she’d needed to act out of the ordinary. ‘None of the other board members were available.’ A very convenient result of every last one of them scattering to their various plush villas and summer homes and leaving her to handle these particularly demanding clients.

‘And these clients, they were that important?’

‘So far they’ve been...challenging, but yes, they are.’ And the board had pulled rank over her, the youngest member, and despite her title as acting CEO in her husband’s absence, the one most responsible.

It hadn’t factored that she’d had a million other responsibilities to take care of. Plus a missing husband to find. They’d merely shrugged and told her if she cared that much about securing the Canadian brothers’ business then she needed to step up.

Zeph’s eyes narrowed as he no doubt attempted to read between the lines. Afraid that he’d do just that, that he’d see how much of a battle she’d had to fight to retain her seat on the all-male board, and how debasing she’d found their treatment of her, she rose and turned away, discarding the stilettos that were killing her feet before striding to the rail.

For several seconds, she let the sweet, mid-morning breeze wash over her. Then, when everything that had happened crowded in, reminding her that there were a million other things to take care of, least of which was announcing Zeph Diamandis’s return from the dead to the world, she squared her shoulders and turned.

Only to gasp when she found him behind her, hands shoved in his pockets as he watched her. ‘What...did you need something?’

‘Other than the full picture I suspect you’re not showing me?’ he rasped, one eyebrow quirked upward.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she hedged.

His lips pursed. ‘Of course you do but I’ll leave it alone, for now. Tell me, what was the outcome of this evening’s entertainment?’

She breathed a sigh of relief to answer straightforwardly, choosing to bat away the horrendous hours she’d spent socialising with the twin Canadian brothers who took the play harder part of the saying to a whole new level. ‘Somewhere around dawn, the terms of the deal were agreed. It’s with our lawyers right now. Pending a green light from them, we’ll sign a substantial supply contract with them later this week.’

Imogen wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Indifference? Apathy? That clinical coldness he used to address her with.

The mixture of pride and fury that flashed through his eyes threw her for a loop. Before she could query it, he was speaking. ‘While I congratulate you for getting the deal done—and I look forward to seeing the net result for myself—I find myself dissatisfied with the process.’

She shrugged, attempting not to take the criticism personally. ‘For success to be guaranteed, execution is everything,’ she muttered, still disturbed by his proximity and what it was doing to her equilibrium.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Sounds like a talking-head quote. Anyone you know?’

‘You. In a Forbes magazine article when you were named Man of the Year three years ago.’

Instead of basking in the accolade, as most would’ve, he sharpened his scrutiny even more. ‘Are you testing me, matia mou?’ he drawled. ‘Perhaps you hold your reservation about my memory loss?’

She hadn’t but, now he mentioned it, perhaps subconsciously she’d thrown his own words at him to attempt to elicit a response. Because an indifferent husband was one thing.

This new, equally enigmatic but emotionally expressive edition of Zephyr Diamandis was quite another.

Yiannis...no, Zeph—he needed to remember that he was no longer Yiannis the fisherman—watched her flush and do that gaze-avoiding thing that sent wariness shooting through him.

And yet it was that pink tongue slicking her lower lip that affected him more. Telling himself it was natural—after all, if they were married, the attraction was justified, wasn’t it?—didn’t quite ring true. Sure, he’d only just returned to this purported life he’d missed ten months of. And if the crew, who’d respectfully and almost reverently referred to him as Kyrios Diamandis were to be believed, he was their boss, the owner of this impressive vessel and a whole lot more assets in the great wide world.

But instinct blared wildly that he was missing a whole subset beneath the reality his mind was hiding from him. And in this moment, he couldn’t seem to see beyond that.

‘I don’t think we should have any...um...in-depth conversations until you’ve been checked out medically,’ she said, her glances starting out furtive, and then, as he watched her straighten her spine, meeting his boldly.

‘I feel fine,’ he dismissed with a wave of his hand.

Her head shake was immediate. Impressive, even, considering most of his employees had all but cowered even as they stared at him with wide, marvelling expressions.

Was he a man who was feared?

Something suspiciously distasteful soured his mouth. But he dismissed it in the next breath. No point inventing unsavouriness where there might be none.

What was more interesting was the way Imogen’s gaze rushed over him, as if she was confirming for herself that he was indeed in shape, at least outwardly, before she responded. ‘Be that as it may, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s prudent to get a doctor’s opinion...’ She paused. ‘Unless you did that already. On the island?’

He frowned, then shook his head. ‘Petros and Yiayia—the old woman—saw to my recovery in the weeks after they took me in,’ he said.

‘So a doctor didn’t officially check you out? Weren’t you curious to rediscover who you were?’

He almost smiled at the hint of disapproval and bewilderment in her voice. But her eyes were roving over him again—did she even know she was doing it?—and that charge he’d experienced when he’d taken her hand and helped her off the boat returned, stronger. More visceral. Awakening senses he hadn’t even thought about, they’d been so surprisingly dormant.

But if he was to take back control of his life—and didn’t it feel as if he’d been holding his breath to do just that ever since he opened his eyes to feel Petros hauling him out of the grasp of a watery death?—he needed to control the demands of his raging libido.

For now.

‘Just because you stormed into a sleepy village to stake your claim on me doesn’t mean everything and everyone there was backward.’

Her eyes darkened with a flash of affront. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘But I do take your point. The medical attention I received when I was rescued was enough to put me on the road to physical recovery. That took the better part of four months.’ Memory rushed in, making his skin clammy and his gut tighten. Those first days, when pain had been his constant companion, and Petros’s questions had only drawn blanks, a part of him had offered to just...be if he was spared death.

Should he have made a better bargain? Perhaps.

‘As to my mental state...’ He paused, unsure why he was unwilling to mention the debilitating headaches that sprang up whenever he dug too hard into his psyche. ‘You are living proof that things work out the way they’re supposed to.’

Her eyes widened. ‘So you were relying on the...cosmos to work things out for you?’

He gave a low laugh, which also seemed to surprise her. ‘You tell me, matia mou. Has biding my time in the past worked to my advantage or not?’

She blinked, then swallowed. Then her gaze dropped from his in a searing display of avoidance that gave him the answer he needed. ‘I guess it has,’ she murmured eventually.

‘There you have it. I will see this doctor you wish me to. If that is what will please you?’ he tossed in, just to witness what her reaction would be.

Heat flowed into her face and she licked her bottom lip again—a gesture that pinpointed her nervous state, while driving him quietly insane—and nodded. ‘I do... I mean it will...for prudent reasons.’

He hid a grimace at that addendum. ‘Then we’ll get it organised in due course. But first...’ He looked around, then back at her, his eyebrow raised.

She jerked forward, clearing her throat delicately. ‘Yes. I’ll show you around, then I’ll let you rest while I get in touch with your doctor.’ She paused a few feet from him and he realised that without her shoes she was petite, the top of her head barely coming up to his chest.

A small, delicious morsel.

He gritted his teeth against the heat that pounded his groin and concentrated on the words she was speaking.

Yes, he was supposed to rest. When in fact relaxing in any way, shape or form was the last thing he wanted to do.

For the first time in his memory he felt alive. Truly alive. And with each breath he took, he felt the acute weight of everything he’d missed.

Still, he pursed his lips against protest and indicated she lead the way. From the flash in her eyes, Yiannis... Zeph was sure he’d riled her further.

And surprisingly...he wanted to keep doing it. Wanted to drag reaction out of her. Make colour continually stain her smooth cheeks. Make that bountiful chest rise and fall just so he could blatantly admire it.

Theós, he’d become an animal he didn’t recognise somewhere between leaving Efemia and boarding the yacht.

Or had he always been like this with her?

All thoughts ceased when she pressed a button for a lift and they stepped into it. A delicate scent assailed his nostrils and he didn’t hesitate to breathe it in. To infuse his senses with it. Hunger was clawing its way through his veins when the doors slid open and she hurried out, her own nostrils flaring delicately as if she’d been unable to help herself but to breathe him in too.

Forcing himself to concentrate, he dragged his gaze from the bouncy pertness of her ass, still enshrouded in that peculiar green sequin, and glanced around the space he purportedly owned.

The muted shades of rich dark wood and gold trimming and cream tiles followed them everywhere. It pleased and soothed, the theme striking a note of satisfaction that compelled him to believe he’d chosen this decor himself. He must have if he’d named the yacht after his mother.

‘My parents,’ he asked abruptly, his senses skittering in a different, urgent direction, a part of him shamed that he hadn’t thought to enquire until now. ‘Are they alive?’

She stumbled, then froze. The eyes that darted to his held an even greater measure of apprehension.

Just what the hell was going on?

Before he could grit that question out, her eyes shadowed, then dropped to the floor. Even before she spoke his gut was clenched against what he suspected would be unwelcome news.

‘I’m sorry. They’re not. Your father died about twenty years ago and your mother not long after that.’

Shards of loss cut through him. He breathed through it, his senses suddenly frantic for more information. ‘Any other relatives I should know about? Sisters? Brothers?’ His gaze dropped to her belly and an astonishing spear of yearning dug deep into him. ‘Do we have children, Imogen?’

Her green eyes shadowed in shock. She swallowed and again shook her head. ‘No, we don’t. And...you’re an only child so no siblings. You have a few very distant relatives working for you at Diamandis but, from what I see, you’re not close to any of them.’

Not close to his relatives.

No best friends or even close friends.

No parents.

The hollow in his gut expanded. Before he could come within a whisker of feeling sorry for himself, he suppressed the emotion. Just how he was adept at doing so, he refused to examine in that moment.

‘So you’re my only close attachment?’

Her eyes flew to his. Widened. As if it hadn’t occurred to her. Then her head jerked forward, threatening once again to dislodge the bun at her nape. ‘I guess so.’

As he absorbed the information, she grew restless again, her arm sweeping out to indicate the wide hallway behind her.

‘Shall we?’

‘One last question. How old am I?’

‘Oh. Um...you’re thirty-four. You turn thirty-five next month. On the tenth.’

He absorbed that for several seconds, nodded, then approached where she stood. Unable to resist, he raised his hands, drew a caress down her cheek with his knuckle. ‘And you, sweet wife?’

Her breath emerged shakily, gratifying him with the knowledge that he wasn’t experiencing his urgent, emotional unbalancing alone. ‘Me? I... I’m twenty-five. I’ll be twenty-six this Christmas.’

‘Twenty-five? And managing a global corporation on your own while chasing down your missing husband? Impressive.’

Again her eyes widened. And he could’ve sworn she was on the verge of blushing at his compliment when that wariness returned with a vengeance, snatching what felt like a prize right out of his grasp.

Disgruntlement settled deep within him when she stepped away, then pivoted her whole body from him. ‘Thanks.’

The response was cool. Almost flippant. As if she refused to allow herself to accept it. He reflected on that as they toured a vessel he’d named after a mother he couldn’t remember. As he was shown a level of wealth he knew most of the people he’d left behind on Efemia would give a limb to possess.

But what struck Zeph most as he grasped the burnished steel handles of his personal dressing room, in a stateroom fit for kings, and pulled a partition open to observe row after row of dark bespoke, impressive suits, priceless watches and hand-stitched shoes, was the stark emptiness he suspected wouldn’t disappear even if his memories returned. Because it was an emptiness shrouding that recurring dream every night since his rescue.

That of a boy abandoned to loneliness, pain, devastation. And fury. A lost boy seeking that same meaning with a desperation that had Zeph tearing awake with a thundering heart and an empty soul.

Perhaps it was to deny those substantial emotions that he turned, reached out, and did what he did.

Everything inside Imogen shrieked awake when Zeph lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers.

She gasped, her fingers rising to touch her lips when he retreated almost immediately. ‘Wh-what was that for?’

He shrugged, a rich and fluent movement that was mesmerising and arousing in equal and shocking terms. ‘An experiment. Seeing if I can shake something loose.’

She took a step back. Then several. Pivoting, she headed determinedly for the phone on the bedside table.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Scheduling an appointment with your doctor like we discussed.’

Narrow-eyed displeasure feathered over his face. ‘I didn’t think it would be this soon.’

She paused. ‘You don’t want to be checked out immediately? You have amnesia!’

‘And what is the doctor going to do exactly? Give me a pill that miraculously restores my memories?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the whole point. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. Surely you’ll want to know so you’ll know how to start getting better?’

His head canted to one side, a gesture she remembered well. It was a pre-taunt tell. Which should’ve adequately warned her what was coming. It didn’t. ‘Are you that opposed to kissing your husband that you’ll instigate medical intervention to avoid it?’

‘I...what? That’s absurd!’ She shook her head, to get common sense reinstated and the memory of how sizzlingly good his lips had felt on hers out of her mind. ‘This...your health should be our priority. Not...not...’ She stopped, took a deep breath, then cringed when she realised she was blushing.

‘Not discussing why my wife blushes crimson when I so much as look at her legs?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m intrigued by it all, truth be told. And I’d much rather delve into that than...’ His long fingers gestured at his head and he grimaced in distaste and frustration.

Slowly, she returned the receiver to its cradle. If she didn’t know better, she’d think Zeph didn’t want to find out exactly what was wrong with him. Which was absurd. And puzzling.

The ruthless shipping magnate who’d delivered ultimatum after ultimatum, turning a chillingly blind eye to all her pleas for mercy, wouldn’t have hesitated to get to the bottom of why he’d lost ten months of his life.

Ten months.

In which he’d been content to idle his life away on a fishing isle. Perhaps he truly didn’t want to know. But...if he didn’t, where did that leave her?

That softening feeling she’d had when he asked about his age and his parents and their children still lingered. While she’d cautioned herself then that it was dangerous to let it, she hadn’t been able to help the swell of empathy. And then yearning. And that way lay her ruin, if she wasn’t careful.

She couldn’t flounder under his mercy for ever.

The three years they’d agreed to remain married was coming up in a little over a year. And come hell or high water, she would stick to her goals.

Pursing her lips, she snatched up the phone again.