Trial Run: Addicted To Love Romance Collection (17 page)

I made a big mistake… I love you, Ammy. You must believe that.
Had he been asking for forgiveness, back in the boat, when it must have looked like they weren’t going to make it? What about…
Marry me, Ammy.
Amelie’s vision began to blur. She concentrated on breathing. From far away, Jason’s voice sounded, deeper and more ominous than the tolling of a graveyard bell.

“And my wish is that he would never-ever-ever-ever say one more word to me or you again. Not one word. I don’t want to see him ever again as long as I live. Don’t worry, I’ve already passed on the message. He won’t darken our doorstep again. I’ve brought his stuff over, so he won’t have a reason to visit.”

“Rob,” Amelie sobbed, her eyes thick with tears. “What have you done?”

“Here you go,” Jason said, plonking the dismembered heart next to her fingers. “Have fun mending that!”

A fury wilder than she’d ever felt before descended over Amelie’s vision. Yet again, Jason was doing his best to destroy her. Why would he do that? What part of this twisted game gave him a kick?

“Asshole!” she shouted. Jason turned to face her, already by the door.

“Me?” he asked, pulling open the door. “I think you’ve gotten the wrong person, sister dear. I’m gonna go grab a burger. You want one?”

“Get out!” she screamed, and in one motion, she grabbed the wooden heart and threw it at him. Jason pulled the door shut just in time, and the puzzle shattered into its remaining pieces as it hit the wall in front of which, a second before, his head had been.

Amelie buzzed a nurse and instructed her not to allow any visitors, her brother included. Next, she apologized for the pieces of wood all over the floor and asked politely whether she could have help getting them all back. The nurse smiled and picked them all up for her.

She inquired about her health and the IV, and was told she would be given the all-clear as soon as the last of the saline was in her blood stream. The IV could come out then, and her discharge papers would be completed.

As she waited, Amelie contemplated the male mentality and whatever abnormality in their makeup made them believe they had the right to play with a person’s life as if they owned it. Instead of wasting her time on shedding tears, she found concentrating on her anger helped her focus.

There was more than one person who had wronged her, and more than one person she had to take care of now. The Amelie of before was too sweet and mellow for this world. Too tame. From now, she would be steel-strong Amelie, with only one goal in mind – to make her life and her baby’s future as safe and happy as possible. Alone.

Rob did not deserve to be invited to the party the rest of her life would be. As for Jason, he’d always been the manipulative, overprotective type. This time he’d surpassed himself, and in doing so, he also got what he’d always wanted – to be rid of his annoying little sister.

An exquisite calm spread through Amelie, body and mind. Now that she had ordered her thoughts and made her decisions, she could simply act, and not think anymore. Absentmindedly, she picked up the wooden puzzle pieces off the bedside cabinet and began fitting them together again.

“How bad is he?” Amelie asked the nurse bustling out of Rob’s room.

The woman gestured silently for her to wait and held the door open. Seconds later, Rob was wheeled out of the room. He was unconscious, lying naked on the bed, with many lines and cables attached to both his arms, and an oxygen mask on his face. A thin sheet covered his groin, and his leg had been bandaged, and also had a drain coming out of the wound.

Amelie twisted the wooden heart in her hands, watching the nurse run off to the elevators and assisting the team pushing Rob until the doors slid shut behind them.

“Are you a relative?” she asked.

“Wife,” Amelie answered, without batting an eyelid. “We were brought in together…”

Her head whirled. Where had that come from? Wife?
Wife?
Not that there was any chance of that happening anymore, but what was she thinking? Her blatant lie must have been delivered with such confidence, the nurse didn’t question it. Still staggered by her own nerve, Amelie watched the nurse shift some folders aside until she found a stack of papers she was clearly still working on.

For a few hours, it had been touch and go – she was informed. But the doctors had managed to get the infection under control. X-rays and ultrasound scans had shown barbs from the stingray’s tail had become lodged into the bone and ligaments in Rob’s foot. His inexpert DIY surgery with the tip of a knife had had no chance of success.

With no way to treat such a wound, infection had set in and spread, and eventually developed into septicemia. Rob was lucky to be alive. They were taking him for additional surgery now.

But he would live, and Amelie was thankful for that. For as badly as he’d hurt her, she loved him still, and knew she always would.

She asked to be shown his bedside, so she could leave him a message. Alone in the room, she slid a puzzle piece out of the wooden heart and placed it on his bedside cabinet. It seemed fitting. After all, Rob would always own a fragment of her heart.

Rob opened his eyes to the light of a neon strip shining dully behind a glass panel above his door, out in the corridor. His eyes searched for a window. Twilight. He wondered vaguely how long he’d been out of it. The memory of Amelie ramming a stick into the water, pushing them away from the island, was the only solid recollection he had.

It had been real, he was sure of it. Those two blissful weeks with Amelie had been real.

Slowly, he took in his décor. Sparse, as was to be expected. A chair pushed against the opposite wall, his bag by the window, a bedside cabinet just big enough for a glass of water and some personal effects…

His bag
. The bag he’d left at Jason’s before the trip.

The breath left his lungs in one long whoosh. There was only one reason why Jason would have brought his stuff here: he didn’t want him to go to his house again. Which meant he’d spoken to Amelie and was protecting her from the common enemy: him.

He cursed himself under his breath for ever getting drawn into a deal like that. Only an idiot could have believed it would all work according to plan and Amelie would be none the wiser. Of course Jason would tell all to his sister! Why wouldn’t he? Families protected their own, and Jason was the embodiment of an overprotective older brother.

Rob couldn’t think of a worse position to be in. Stuck in a hospital bed for goodness knew low much longer, barely able to turn from one side of his body to the other, how could he get hold of Amelie to explain everything?

She needed to know. He loved her. Genuinely loved her. Screw Jason and his protectiveness! He would get out of here and talk to her, make her see sense. Amelie was in love with him too. He knew it. She’d said so. Then he frowned. At least, she had been…

Impatient, Rob buzzed for a nurse, eager to figure out when he could get the damned wires out of his veins. Life moved on, and he had things to do.

Unfortunately, the nurse did none of the things he wanted her to do. She didn’t take out the IVs, she didn’t fill in any discharge papers, and she didn’t give him good news about Amelie either. All he’d managed to find out was that his wife had come to visit earlier in the day, before her shift had started, and had left a strange piece of wood on his bedside. The nurse held it up for him to see, and he took it from her hand, squeezing his fingers tight around it.

To him, that was a sign of forgiveness, a way of saying
‘I’ve left a little piece of myself in your care. Come find me when you’re ready to make me whole again.’

Then he tried to digest the other bit of news – that Amelie had passed herself off as his wife.
Wife?
Of course, he’d love nothing more than to be with her forever, but… marriage? Had he been so struck with delirium that he’d proposed? He wished he could remember. He wished he had a way of figuring out what her answer had been. He wished he could sit her on his lap and talk this through with her right here and now.

At the very least, he wished he knew what he wanted. But none of those wishes could possibly come true, not without considerable effort, and he was feeling exhausted just thinking about all this.

The following couple of weeks were sheer torture for Rob. He would have taken the pain of a stingray’s sting a hundred times if it meant he could get discharged so he could find and talk to Amelie.

More than once, he demanded to be discharged, and every time, it seemed, the same sassy nurse he’d spoken to the first time he’d opened his eyes threatened to have him committed if he didn’t behave. Eventually, he saw sense. There was no point in getting out too early, only to suffer a relapse and end up losing more of the time he could spend with Amelie.

He was well enough to leave the hospital on June 10
th
, and as soon as he got himself settled in the taxi cab, he gave the driver Jason’s address. Protective brother or not, he didn’t care about Jason’s feelings. Too much was at stake here, not to be thorough in his investigation.

Deep in his heart, he knew Amelie wouldn’t be there. He could feel it in his bones. She’d outgrown Jason’s kind of loving care, and was now a woman on a mission. Hurt by his own alleged betrayal and probably bewildered by her latest experiences, she would be even more determined to make her way in life alone and without anyone’s interference.

Rob had the driver wait with the engine running, so sure was he that he wouldn’t find Amelie under Jason’s roof.

Jason opened the door slowly, hesitantly at first, but then pulled it all the way back, striking an arrogant pose, hand on a hip, his expression defiant.

“What? You couldn’t take the hint?” he said.

Rob took in his demeanor. Under his haughty manner, he could see a hidden layer of hurt. Jason was aching, as well, and that meant he had been right. Amelie had left him, too.

Despite the chink of vindictive gratification he felt at seeing karma had not been completely selective in her retribution, Rob kept his cool.

“I’ve come to talk to Amelie. Do you know how I can find her?”

Jason laughed in his face. “No. And good riddance!”

He swayed slightly. Was he drunk? In the middle of the day? Rob took a deep breath and asked again. “I really need to talk to her. There is something of hers I want to return. Please, could you just give me a number? An address?” Jason shook his head. “A town even?”

“You… You have something of hers? Ha! That’s funny.” Rob kept silent, letting him talk. “’Cause she has something of yours! Very special, she says. Not giving it up.”

He wasn’t making sense. Rob struggled for a minute with Jason’s words, but nothing fitted. “What do you mean, something of mine?” he asked after a while. “I love her. Is that what you mean? My heart? I gave her my heart?”

Jason touched his finger to the side of his nose with some difficulty and smiled crookedly. Then his hand dropped to his belly and he rubbed it subconsciously, the way pregnant women often do.

Pregnant? Amelie was pregnant?

Rob swallowed and propped a hand against the house wall. He needed support. Amelie was going to have his baby?

His other hand shot to Jason and grabbed the front of his t-shirt. He pulled the drunk up until he stood an inch from his face.

“Listen to me, Jason. I don’t want to hurt you because you are my friend. And because I’m going to win Amelie back and she would probably kill me if I beat up her brother. So tell it to me straight. Is she pregnant? Is Amelie going to have my baby?”

Jason swayed in Rob’s grip and smiled, his grin a little slack because of his inebriation. “Got it in one, clever boy!” he slurred. “But she said to tell you to forget her. ‘Cause she has forgotten you. Like she has forgotten me…”

But Rob wasn’t listening anymore. He stalked right past Jason to the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker. Then he turned around, grabbed Jason around his middle and swung him up over his shoulder, carrying him to the pool like a sack of potatoes. Jason’s vomit hit the back of his shoes two steps away from the side of the pool. With a heave and a grunt, Rob pitched Jason straight into the deep end, then jumped in after him.