Triplets Under The Tree. Kat Cantrell

paused in front of the pristine eggshell-colored suede sofa in the formal living area, he immediately dropped vertically onto the cushions without hesitation. Groaning, he covered his eyes with his arm.

      “Water,” he murmured and lay still as death.

      And now for the second dilemma. Leave him unattended while she fetched a glassful from the wet bar across the foyer in Antonio’s study? It wasn’t that far, and she was being silly worrying about a near comatose man posing some sort of threat. She dashed across the marble at breakneck pace, filled the glass at the small stainless-steel sink and dashed back without spilling it, thankfully.

      “Here it is,” she said to alert him she’d returned.

      The arm over his eyes moved up, sweeping the long, shaggy mane away from his forehead. Blearily he peered at her through bloodshot eyes, and without the hair obscuring his face, he looked totally different. Exactly like Antonio, the man she’d secretly studied, pined over, fantasized about for years. She gasped.

      “I won’t hurt you,” he muttered as he sat up, pain etching deeper lines into his face. “Just want water.”

      She handed it to him, unable to tear her gaze from his face, even as chunks of matted hair fell back over his forehead. Regardless of her immense guilt over his presumed identity, she couldn’t go on arguing with herself over it. There was one way to settle this matter right now.

      “Do you think you’re Antonio?” she asked as he drank deeply from the glass.

      “I...” He glanced up at her, his gaze full of emotions she couldn’t name, but those dark, mysterious eyes held her captive. “I don’t remember. That’s why I’m here. I want to know.”

      “There’s one way.” Before she lost her courage, she pointed to her chest over her heart as her pulse raced at the promise. “Antonio has a rather elaborate tattoo. Right here. Do you?”

      It wouldn’t be impossible to replicate. But difficult, as the tattoo had been commissioned by a famous artist who had a unique tribal style.

      Without breaking eye contact, he set his water glass on the side table and unbuttoned his shirt to midchest. Unbuttoned his shirt, as if they were intimate and she had every right to see him unclothed.

      “It says Falco. What does it mean?” he asked.

      The truth washed through her even before he drew his shirt aside to reveal the red-and-black falcon screaming across his pectoral muscle. Her gaze locked on to the ink, registering the chiseled flesh beneath it, and it kicked at her way down low with a long, hot pull, exactly the way she’d always reacted to Antonio.

      She blinked and refocused on his face. The sight of his cut, athletic torso—sun browned and more enthralling than she’d ever have expected—wouldn’t fade from her mind.

      That tattoo had always been an electrifying aspect of his dangerous appeal. And, oh, my—it still was.

      “It means that’s proof enough for me to know you’re Antonio.” She shut her eyes, unable to process the relief flooding through his gaze. Unable to process the sharp thrill in her midsection that was wholly erotic...and felt an awful lot like trouble. Stunning, resplendent, forbidden Antonio Cavallari was alive. “And we have a lot of hurdles in front of us.”

      Everything in her world had just slid off a cliff.

      The long, legal nightmare of the past year as she’d fought for her right to the babies had been for nothing. Nearly two years ago, she’d signed a surrogacy agreement, but then a year ago Vanessa and Antonio had crashed into the South China Sea. After months of court appearances, a judge had finally overturned the rights she’d signed away and given her full custody of her children.

      Oh, dear Lord. This was Antonio’s home. It was his money. Her children were his. And he had every right to take them away from her.

       Two

      Antonio—he rolled the name around on his tongue, and it didn’t feel wrong like Falco had. Before Indonesia, he’d been called both Antonio and Falco by blurry-faced people, some with cameras, some with serious expressions as they spoke to him about important matters. A crowd had chanted Falco like a tribal drum, bouncing off the ceiling of a huge, cavernous arena.

      The headache nearly flattened him again, as it always did when he tried too hard to force open his mind.

      Instead, he contemplated the blushing, dark-haired and very attractive woman who seemed vaguely familiar but not enough to place her. She didn’t belong in his house. She shouldn’t be living here, but he had no clue where that sense came from. “What is your name?”

      “Caitlyn. Hopewell,” she added in what appeared to be an afterthought. “Vanessa is—was—my sister.” She eyed him. “You remember Vanessa but not me?”

      “The redhead?” At Caitlyn’s nod, he frowned.

      No, he didn’t remember Vanessa, not the way he remembered his house. A woman with flame-colored hair haunted his dreams. Bits and pieces floated through his mind. The images were laced with flashes of her flesh as if he’d often seen her naked, but her face wouldn’t quite clarify, as though he’d created an impressionist painting of this woman whose name he couldn’t recall.

      Frustration rose again. Because how was it fair that he knew exactly what an impressionist painting was but not who he was?

      After Ravi had knocked loose the memories of his house, Antonio had left Indonesia the next morning, hopping fishing boats and stowing away amidst heavy cargo containers for days and days, all to reach Los Angeles in hopes of regaining more precious links with his past.

      This delicate, ethereally beautiful woman—Caitlyn—held a few of these keys, and he needed her to provide them. “Who is Vanessa to me?”

      “Your wife,” she announced softly. “You didn’t know that?”

      He shook his head. Married. He was married to Vanessa? It was an entire piece of his life, his persona, he’d had no idea existed. Had he been in love with her? Had his wife looked for him at all, distraught over his fate, or just written him off when he went missing?

      Would he even recognize Vanessa if she stood before him?

      Glancing around the living room for which he’d instantly and distinctly recalled purchasing the furnishings—without the help of anyone, let alone the red-haired woman teasing the edges of his memory—he asked, “Where is she?”

      “She died.” Grief welled up across her classical features. The sisters must have been close, which was probably why Caitlyn seemed familiar. “You were both involved in the same plane crash shortly after leaving Thailand.”

      “Plane crash?” The wispy images of the red-haired woman vanished as he zeroed in on Caitlyn. “Is that what happened?”

      Thailand. He’d visited Thailand—but never made it home. Until now.

      Eyes bright with unshed tears, she nodded, dark ponytail flipping over her shoulder. “Over a year ago.”

      All at once, he wanted to mourn for this wife he couldn’t remember. Because it would mean he could still experience emotions that stayed maddeningly out of reach, emotions with clinical definitions—love, peace, happiness, fulfillment, the list went on and on—but which had no real context. He wanted to feel something other than discouraged and adrift.

      His head ached, but he pressed on, determined to unearth more clues to how he’d started out on a plane from Thailand and ended up in a fishing village in Indonesia. Alone. “But I was on the plane. And I’m not dead. Maybe Vanessa is still alive, too.”

      Her name produced a small ping in his heart, but he couldn’t be certain if the feeling lingered from before the crash or if he’d manufactured it out of his intense need to remember.