‘No.’ Charlie put a hand on his arm and with a jolt Matteo realised how little she’d touched him all day. ‘I promise you he’s fine. Fighting fit. It’s you who needs to take things easy now, and it’s his turn to give you the time and the space to do that. That’s what I’ll be telling him later; it might be a little bit easier now he’s had a night to sleep on it. The only thing I’m keeping from you is that I’m a complete coward who is secretly relieved that Jo was the one who broke the news to him. But I’ll take my medicine later and call him, and you can take yours and stop worrying. Deal?’
Matteo paused, the familial duty instilled in him by his grandfather making it hard for him to respond. How could he relax when his grandfather, the business needed him?
‘Look, Matteo,’ Charlie said softly, ‘we are all hoping you get your memory back sooner rather than later but, even if you don’t, at some point you’ll return to work. And if your memory doesn’t come back then you’ll need an entire year’s worth of decisions and plans explaining to you so you can get up to speed on any changes. It’ll take you time to get to full effectiveness quickly, even without the tiny fact of a severe concussion. I know how hard it is for you to rest, I know you see relaxation as a dirty word, but if you really want to be back at full capacity then you need to recover properly. The last thing anyone needs is for you to have some kind of terrible relapse and be out for even longer just because you didn’t do the right thing now.’
Matteo frowned but he couldn’t deny the sense in her words. ‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’ Her mouth curved into a teasing smile. ‘Does that mean you’ll do as you’re told?’
‘I’m not sure I’ll go that far, but I will try to relax and not worry about what’s going on back at the office.’
‘I guess that’s as much as any of us can ask for.’
Charlie lapsed into silence again, her focus on her own phone, which had barely left her hands since she had picked him up from the hospital that morning. Matteo leaned back and studied his wife.
Some things were familiar. The mint-green three-quarter-length trousers had a distinct fifties vibe, especially teamed with a pink flowery twinset, a matching scarf twisted in her hair, but there were changes too. Charlie seemed a little thinner and had deep shadows under her eyes that he devoutly hoped were a result of the last twenty-four hours and not something more permanent. The last time he remembered seeing her—just two days ago to him—she’d had platinum blonde hair, the tips a bright pink, replacing the sky-blue streaks she’d previously sported. Her hair was still blonde, but shorter, just past her shoulders and a darker honey shade, with strands of copper and bronze running through it. A little more sophisticated maybe, but he missed the pink.
‘When did you change your hair?’
She put a hand up and self-consciously pulled on a lock of the shoulder-length waves. ‘A few months ago. The way I usually wore it was okay for a primary school teacher, but I looked a little bit out of place at some of the dinners and events I attended with you.’
‘That’s a shame. I love never quite knowing what colour your hair will be, how you will wear it.’
‘I…’ She paused, still pulling the silky strand through her fingers. ‘All that bleach takes a toll. I decided to give it a rest and a chance to restore. You know me. I’ll be ready for something new sooner rather than later. Maybe I’ll be a redhead for a bit.’
‘Sounds fun.’ But as the car continued purring along the twisty narrow roads Matteo realised that in many ways he didn’t know his wife at all.
His wife. He’d always known he’d marry one day—there was the title and the company after all. A baronet needed an heir and there had been a Harrington at the head of Harrington Industries for over two centuries. Matteo had known his duty. But he’d assumed he would pick one of the perfectly nice women from his wider circle at some point and they’d spend a perfectly pleasant life together. Nothing exciting, nothing dramatic, just like his previous perfectly pleasant relationships. And that was what he’d thought he’d wanted—after all, he’d grown up seeing all the fireworks and the subsequent messy fallout passion brought. He didn’t need anything like that in his life.
But then he’d met Charlie and everything he’d thought he’d wanted, thought he’d known, had been swept away. A whirlwind romance, the papers had said, and now he understood what that meant because it had felt as if he had been taken over by uncontrollable forces from the moment he’d walked through the elegantly austere lobby of Harrington Industries to see a vivacious young woman doing her best to disarm their fierce receptionist. Charlie had been wearing a bright paisley shift dress straight out of the nineteen-seventies in lurid swirls of purple and green, her blonde hair sporting matching purple highlights.
‘Can I help?’ he’d asked, only to see the brightest smile he had ever witnessed light up vivid features as Charlie explained that she was trying to hand-deliver a box of brownies along with her application to the charitable trust Harrington Industries ran as part of their corporate responsibility programme.
‘I promise you, it’s not a bribe,’ she’d said, the bluest eyes he’d ever seen fastened earnestly on him. ‘I just want to show the trustees what’s possible with the kitchen we have now so you can imagine just what we could do with bigger premises.’
Charmed, he’d offered to take her out for dinner to hear more and found himself captivated by her tales of village life and the small community centre that desperately
