Rachel Bailey - MILLION-DOLLAR AMNESIA SCANDAL

She took a deep breath, drinking in his forest-fresh scent, glad she’d decided to see him despite the danger. “I slept right through. My body is obviously still healing.”

“We’ll take it easy.” He ushered her through to his room’s dining suite. “I thought you might prefer breakfast here, instead of under the prying eyes in the restaurant.”

There was that pattern of doing the right thing by her again. “That was considerate.”

“I’ve been known to be considerate before. On occasion.” One end of his mouth hitched, almost a grin, but not quite.

He passed her the menu but she shook her head. “Just toast, please. My appetite hasn’t returned properly yet.”

Seth picked up the phone and placed their orders before inviting her to sit on the overstuffed couch. “I wonder if you’d like a tour of the hotel today?”

She sank into the couch, then looked up at him. “Surely you don’t have the time to play guide to me. You have a large business to run.”

“This is my business.” He lowered himself onto the couch beside her, resting his arm along the back. “I need your memory to return so we can freely discuss the ownership of this hotel, and I can go back to the task of running it and the others.”

She smiled wryly. “I’m the fly in your ointment that needs extraction.”

The half grin returned for an instant before being pulled back into a smooth smile. “I prefer to think of you as my focus for the time being. A pleasant focus, if you don’t mind me saying.”

April studied his face. He was using charm to disarm her, trading on their acknowledged attraction, and regardless of how it set her stomach aflutter, she couldn’t forget its purpose. He’d just admitted he needed her to give the hotel back, so he was trying to eliminate any adversarial elements to their relationship, making her believe they were after the same thing, on the same team.

To get what he wanted.

She smiled the same smooth smile he’d granted her. “So what do you have in mind for your day with your focus then?”

His raised eyebrow said he knew she was aware of his strategy, and it didn’t faze him. “I thought, after breakfast I could give you a tour of the hotel. Perhaps it’ll remind you of why you wanted to buy it. Or you’ll see it’s just a hotel, hardly worth your bother.”

She batted her lashes. “Thoughtful of you to consider my needs so selflessly.”

“I thought so.” His dark blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “Some more documents you might find interesting have arrived.” He reached to the side table and picked up several thick reports, then handed her the first one. “This is a guide to the day-to-day running of the Lighthouse Hotel.”

April took it and leafed through. It seemed to be designed to scare her with charts, tables and spreadsheets. Sewerage problems, bottles of mustard ordered, roof repairs, employee pension plans.

He passed her a second report. “A summary of the assets you relinquished in exchange.”

She took the second report and opened to the first page. A photo of her at the piano, singing. And photos of a modern steel-and-glass house, and a state-of-the-art studio-obviously her home. It didn’t look familiar. The next pages had a list of the artists signed to her label, Fairchild Creative, along with the songs they’d released and pictures of their CD covers-though she noted her own songs weren’t listed. She must have kept the rights to those.

Whoever had put these reports together had done a good job of making one look more attractive than the other-following what were surely Seth’s orders.

A knock at the door and the call of “room service” brought Seth to his feet. While he was unaware of her scrutiny, April watched him guide the young man in. He moved with masculine elegance, but also with stark efficiency-not wasting a single movement as he signed the bill and showed the man out.

He may be charming, but he was playing hardball. Playing for keeps.

She couldn’t forget that.

Seth watched April finish her toast. She looked better today-more color in her peaches-and-cream complexion. He’d dreamed last night of touching that skin, finding out whether it was as soft as it looked.

She wiped her hands on a napkin. “If you’ve finished, I’d like to have a look around.”

Interesting, that she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for her own house. Once again he wondered about the reality of her amnesia. Surely someone without a memory wouldn’t want an unfamiliar setting to be their first port of call?

“Such enthusiasm for a hotel,” he said mildly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, and the look in her eye said she had taken in his full meaning. “But reading through that dossier you gave me in the car, nothing seemed familiar besides grief for my father. Nothing else called to me. Even my own mother may as well be a stranger. But the Lighthouse Hotel-” she looked out the window to the windswept coastline “-there’s just something.”

“Perhaps Jesse showed you photos of it when you signed the contract. Then it would have been one of the last things you saw before the accident. That could explain the impact.”

“Careful, Mr. Kentrell. Any more suggestions like that and I’d be inclined to think you actually believe I’ve lost my memory.”

“It’s called ‘the benefit of the doubt,’ Ms. Fairchild.”

She considered him for a moment in silence. “It is. But it’s not a courtesy I expected you to extend to me.”

“I’ll admit I have my reservations,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Your amnesia is very convenient.”

“Convenient in what way?” She frowned. “If I’ve just bought a hotel, as you say, why wouldn’t I want to just take possession?”

He leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps you’re being cautious.”

“Cautious? I have a signed contract.”

“Your legal team may require time to build their defense,” he said, and watched her closely for a sign that he’d hit his mark. He was fairly sure this was her plan, but some part of him hoped it wasn’t. That she was as honest as she appeared.

“Ah. My defense.” Her smile was heavily laced with irony. “In the same way your legal team is at this moment mounting a challenge to the contract.”

He shrugged one shoulder. Of course he had his people on that.

“Then, if I have lost my memory, it’s more convenient for you than me. You have this time to prepare, but I’m in the dark and will be scrambling once my memory returns.”

A flicker of unease moved in his chest. “The easiest thing all around would be for your memory to return-” he emphasized the words to show he still hadn’t made up his mind “-so that we could discuss the matter in full, and you could sign the contract I had made up.”

“Does one hotel mean so much to you?” She cocked her head to the side. “I lost count of the number of hotels your company had listed in that report.”

“One hotel means more than you can understand at the moment.”

“Why?”

The last thing he would do was hand her knowledge of his vulnerabilities. He wouldn’t tell her that losing this one hotel could mean the difference between keeping the entire company and losing it to his half brother. He picked up a napkin, roughly wiped his hands and threw it onto the table. “Are you ready for a tour?”

She blinked slowly, as if analyzing his change of topic. Then she stood. “Lead the way.”

Seth watched April look around the commercial kitchen, focused on her growing frustration. It’d been a similar situation when he’d shown her the concierge desk and the indoor pool. “What is it?”

“I think I’ve stayed in this hotel before,” she said, turning in a slow circle.