Raye Morgan - The Italian's Forgotten Baby

“I don’t have any idea who you are. I feel like I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

For a second or two Shayna felt sick. The room seemed to sway. She closed her eyes and steadied herself, then looked him in the eye again, searching hard. The man she’d spent all that time with just a few weeks ago had to be in there somewhere, but she couldn’t find any sign of him at the moment.

“Is this some kind of game, Marco?”

“No. It’s not.” He shook his head, holding her gaze. “I’m serious as a midnight clock.”

She pulled her arms in close around her. It was a steamy, warm tropical day, but she was shivering. Something in his words, something in his attitude, had chilled her to the core.

“I do not know who you are. I can’t remember a thing.”

Dear Reader

Living on a South Pacific island is different. Those of you who do it know this very well. You live with lush trade winds, elegantly swaying palm trees in the silver moonlight, the thunder of surf on the reef, dancing sunlight glinting on the ocean in the distance. It’s all the background music of your life. I know—I grew up on an island.

Of course there’s also the feeling of isolation, the heat and humidity, the mildew, the bugs and the coconut crabs and the huge snails—but never mind all that. We’ll leave that part out and concentrate on the romantic side of island living.

There’s also a nice earthy innocence to island life. That’s what Shayna Pierce finds when she comes to Ranai to escape the media firestorm lifestyle she’s been living in New York. She finds what she’s searching for among the down-to-earth islanders, but she also finds love when Marco DiSanto appears in her lagoon. Will his presence ruin the idyllic life she’s made for herself? Or will she find her own voice and make a stand for her choices?

So, are you ready to take a little vacation? Hop aboard. We’re heading for an island where anything can happen!

Regards!

Raye Morgan

Raye Morganhas been a nursery school teacher, a travel agent, a clerk and a business editor, but her best job ever has been writing romances—and fostering romance in her own family at the same time. Current score: two boys married; two more to go. Raye has published over seventy romances, and claims to have many more waiting in the wings. She lives in Southern California, with her husband and whichever son happens to be staying at home at the moment.

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to Jenn and her Vespa.

MARCO DISANTO lowered his long, elegantly lean body into the rickety bamboo chair and rested one elbow casually on the little round sidewalk café table. The heavy heat was offset a bit by the afternoon trade winds. Still, it was a good bet he was the only man on the island crazy enough to be wearing an Italian business suit in this climate.

Was he here on business, or was this a search for lost love? Maybe it was time he made up his mind and acted accordingly. With his free hand, he pulled a crumpled photo out of his pocket and flattened it on the surface of the table. Bracing himself, he glanced at it again.

No matter how often he looked at the picture, the shock of seeing those mesmerizing blue eyes gazing back at him sent a quiver of excitement through him. Eyes like that didn’t belong in real life. He was pretty sure they only existed on the covers of science fiction books or on fantasy movie posters.

But the ticket agent at the Ranai airport had recognized her right away when he’d shown him the photo.

“Oh sure. That’s Shayna. You can probably find her at Kimo’s Café. She works there off and on.”

So here he was, wondering why nothing looked familiar. Out of the corner of his vision, his attention was caught by crisp white shorts encasing a firmly rounded female bottom and set off by long and lovely tanned legs. He didn’t want to make eye contact—not yet—but he turned enough to see a bit more, including a loose, gauzy top that fell provocatively off one lovely shoulder, giving a teasing glimpse of full breasts. Waves of blond curls cascaded almost to her shoulders and framed a pretty face that was alive with laughter. He drew his breath in sharply, muttered something slightly obscene in Italian and looked down at the picture.

Yes, he had the right woman. But he’d never seen her before in his life. Not in the flesh, at any rate.

Who the hell could she be? The man at the airport had called her Shayna, so he supposed that must be her name. Other than that, he knew nothing about her.

He slid the picture into the pocket of his suit coat and sat back at the remote table on the patio of the fashionably shabby waterside café. He would wait. She would have to get to him eventually.

Funny that he couldn’t remember her. Funny that he couldn’t remember anything from the recent two weeks he’d spent here, on vacation in the Traechelle Islands. He’d tried. It just wouldn’t come. Something about the accident—or maybe something about what had happened while he was here—had caused his brain to block it out. The psychiatrist who’d been assigned to him during his recovery had a name for this kind of thing: selective amnesia.

“It will probably begin coming back to you bit by bit,” he’d said, frowning at Marco as though he were a specimen in an experiment. “Interesting case. I hope you’ll keep me apprised as to your progress.”

That was doubtful. If modern science had no answer for him, he would have to deal with this on his own. In the meantime, it was damn annoying. Those two weeks loomed like a black hole in his life. He found it very difficult to try to move on when he had this empty place that needed filling. He knew he’d come to this island resort, but he didn’t know what he’d done while he was here—or whom he’d done it with.

An added problem—he was missing some very important designs he’d been working on. Had he left them here? He needed to know, and he needed to find them, quickly. And so he’d come back to see if he could reconstruct just exactly what had happened to his missing two weeks.

She came out of the café carrying a tray bristling with tropical drinks, all pastel colors and tiny exotic umbrellas. He watched as she set it down on a table crowded with tourists and began to pass the drinks out. Someone said something to her and she laughed, throwing her head back so that her thick blond curls caught the breeze and flew around her face. He could hear her laughter, hear her voice, though she was too far away for him to understand just what she was saying. He stared at her, hard, even pulling off his dark aviator’s glasses for a moment to get a better look. Surely this should strike a chord with him if anything would.

But no. There was nothing.

He pulled the photo out again and looked at it. Yes, it was definitely the same woman. There she was, laughing the same way, and there he was, his arm around her shoulders in a manner that spoke of intimacy. One look said it loud and clear—at the time the picture had been taken, the two of them had been lovers. Just knowing that sent a hot current of interest through his pertinent regions. How could he have wiped his memory clean of something like that?