Page 79 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

She was glorious.

“If you are even contemplating forcing yourself in here, sir, I will break every bone in your body, starting with your—”

“I need your help.”

She paused.

“Please,” he added.

He knew the moment it worked because she slowly uncoiled, her body loosening, her stance relaxing a fraction as she regarded him with curiosity and suspicion.

“With what?”

He hesitated. Where to begin? He’d obviously done something to her in his previous life. Hurt her somehow.

Her eyes narrowed. She started to push the door shut. He had to plant himself to keep her sudden shove from knocking him off balance.

“I don’t know who I am.”

She stopped. Her eyes moved over his face.

His relief at sharing his predicament proved short-lived.

“Look, I can’t help you.” She glanced away, the first time she had done so, as if it made her uncomfortable to look at him. “I understand you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure, not to mention the engagement—”

Disappointment speared his chest.

“We’re not engaged?”

A stricken look passed over her face, pain flashing in her eyes as her lips parted in shock. He swallowed past the sudden thickness in his own throat.

“How can you even ask that?”

“Esme... Miss Clark,” he amended as her lips thinned. “When I say I don’t know who I am, I mean that literally.”

Silence descended between them, thick and heavy. Dimly he heard the distant roar of the surf, the melancholy coo of a nearby bird, the thudding of his own heart. She stared at him, as if waiting for him to break character, to laugh and say it was all a joke.

“If this is some sort of scheme or manipulation—”

He reached down and grabbed her hand, ignoring her gasp and the electric awareness that surged up his arm. He leaned down and pressed her hand against the wound at the base of his skull. The initial touch made him bite back a hiss of pain. Her fingers tensed then gentled, tracing the swelling with a touch so soft it calmed some of the turmoil that had been churning inside him for the past twenty-four hours. As she leaned closer, he breathed in, smelling the salty scent of the sea clinging to her skin. Sea and something else...something floral and feminine that made him want to drag her against him and bury his face in her hair.

Mine.

The word shot through him, awoke something lodged deep in his chest. A possessiveness that felt right even as it unsettled him, to have such strong emotions for a woman he couldn’t remember anything about.

“Turn around.”

He kept his surprise at her sudden brusque demeanor hidden and followed her direction. Even though his mind resisted taking orders, took umbrage at being talked to like that, he forced himself to be vulnerable, to surrender something of himself.

“Crouch down, please. Sir,” she added.

“You worked for me?” he asked as her fingers probed the wound once more, her touch now efficient.

“I did.”

“What happened?”

“You fired me.”

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