Page 139 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

She tilted her chin. ‘Explain that to me.’

He shrugged, a nonchalant dip of his too-broad shoulder. ‘My wife doesn’t remember me. Our marriage. And when I brought you home from the hospital, being in the same house with you and not being able reach you...’

‘Reach me?’ she asked. ‘I was right there.’

His lips flattened. ‘I meant what I said, Emma,’ he reiterated. ‘All of it.But it does not ease...’

‘The reality of our situation,’ she finished for him, and shame gripped her. She hadn’t considered any of that. Only her own feelings. Howshewould navigate her way through this.

‘Our relationship is starting...backwards,’ he said. ‘So we will start somewhere different. A different country. Different rooms. Different beds. In an environment where it will not be...’

‘So hard?’ she asked. ‘Because inthathouse all you can see are memories of what we were before?’

‘The house—’ He grimaced. ‘We don’t need to be there to help you remember. Or find our...feet.We only need to be with each other. But away from the house...’

‘It will be new for us both?’

He studied her face for a beat too long. ‘Something like that.’

The jet levelled out.

‘I’m sorry too,’ she said, because she owed him an apology. She sighed. ‘I was so wrapped up in navigating my amnesia for myself,’ she explained, ‘I hadn’t contemplated how difficult this must be for you too. Because it’s not just me starting again, it’s both of us. I should have considered that. I should have consideredyou. And for that,Iam sorry.’

‘No apology required, Emma,’ he dismissed with a raw edge to his voice. ‘You were hurt—’

‘Iwashurt,’ she interrupted. ‘And you came for me. I appreciate you didn’t have to. I left you without an explanation. You had every right to not come, but you did. And for that—’ she swallowed tightly ‘—thank you.’

His eyes held hers and she couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t slow her pulse. He was right, wasn’t he? There was something crackling between them. A heat drawing her in...

She dragged her gaze from his. ‘You said you own hotels...’ she said, forcing her attention to something real. Not the energy between them she couldn’t see, couldn’t understand. She peeked up at him from behind lowered lashes. ‘Are you a hotelier?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m the CEO and owner of a luxury travel company,’ he replied.

‘A travel company?’

‘The Cappetta Travel Empire specialises in providing adrenaline-fuelled adventures catered specifically to each client. We provide the whole experience, transport, opulent accommodation and we plan their—’ he shrugged ‘—their holiday for them.’

‘You plan it for them?’ she asked. ‘Like tourist excursions?’

‘The Cappetta experience is not an excursion, but an expedition into the unknown,’ he corrected. ‘It changes men, women, from the inside out.’

‘Changes them?’ She frowned.‘How?’

‘It depends on the client.’ His eyes moved over her and her body tightened in all the places it shouldn’t. His gaze moved back to her eyes. ‘Expeditions vary from extreme sports, mountaineering, trekking through unmapped canyons to eat and sleep in places that shouldn’t exist, and yet they do, Emma, because I’ve seen them.’

‘And then they are changed?’ she asked.

His eyes blazed. ‘The Cappetta experience gives the mind the right tools to jump out of an aeroplane when the ultimate fear is heights,’ he explained. ‘It teaches the mind to allow the body to be free. To reach a higher plane of existence. To...transcend.’ His lips lifted.

Her stomach somersaulted. Is that what he’d done to her—given her the tools to take what she needed from what she feared most?Marriage?

‘And who gave you the tools to teach others to live this way?’ she asked.

‘My grandfather. He was a pilot. He built a domestic airline to respectability. My...father.’ He swallowed and she watched the heavy drag of his Adam’s apple. And she recognised it. Heard the tension around the wordfather. The difficulty in saying the word.

‘Your father?’ she said, curiosity taking hold.

‘He was many things. Pilot. Captain. Adventurer. He travelled the world on any mode of transport that brought him to his destination. To a place that fulfilled whatever particular need he had at the time,’ he replied, and the shadows were gone from his eyes. His face a mask of unreadability. ‘He revolutionised his father’s small domestic airline into a travel empire with a backpack and a blog when the Internet was in its infancy. Others wanted to experience his way of life. His ceaseless desire to...’

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