Read Carides's Forgotten Wife for Free Online Page A

hosting these events with her husband, to recapture a part of her life that was clearly past.
    Both of her parents were gone. She had made no mention of any siblings. He appeared to be all that she had left, and yet he had seen no evidence that he did very much at all to support her emotionally.
    That bothered him. Regardless of whether or not it bothered the man he had been before the accident was irrelevant to him in the moment. She was caring for him. And she clearly felt uncared for in many ways.
    He felt compelled to remedy that. If he had to sit around this manor and do nothing but heal for the next several weeks he might as well focus on healing his marriage as well as his body.
    It was deeper than that, too. Deeper than just a desire to right a wrong from the past.
    Rose was his only touchstone. She was the only person who knew him. The only person he really knew. She was his anchor in an angry sea. And without her, he would be swept away completely.
    He needed to shore up the connection between them.
    He had lost himself. He could remember nothing of who he was. And from the sounds of things, their connection was much more tentative than it should be.
    She was all he had. He could not lose her.
    There was only one solution. He had to seduce his wife.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I T HAD BEEN nearly a week since Leon’s return to the manor and he still hadn’t remembered anything. Rose was fighting against restlessness, hopelessness and the growing tenderness in her heart whenever she was around him.
    As if that tenderness is anything new.
    True. She had always felt...something for him. More than she should. He didn’t care for her like that. He never had. But she could never quite stamp out that...that hope . That need. For someone who had been confronted with so much loss she retained rather more than a normal amount of idealism.
    There was some part of her that believed steadfastly in happy endings. And being rewarded for good behavior. That was probably why she had always done exactly as her father asked. Why she had done her best to wait for Leon to come around to the idea of being her husband.
    And why she had never actually sat down and told him how she felt. Better to close the door herself than have him do it.
    “Don’t start hoping again now. Once he remembers...everything will go back to the way it was.”
    She lay down on her back on her favorite settee, staring at the ornate ceiling. Then she heard heavy footsteps on the marble floors. She sat up, clutching the book she had been reading to her chest.
    “Rose?” Leon strode into the room, looking much more alert and able than he had only a few days ago. He had been resting quite a bit, and had taken several meals in his room since that first night here. It seemed to have paid off.
    “Just reading,” she said.
    “What are you reading?”
    “Nora Roberts.”
    “I don’t think I’ve read her. Maybe I have. I wouldn’t know.”
    She laughed in spite of herself. “I doubt it.”
    “It’s not the sort of thing I would usually read?”
    “Unless it’s business-related literature you don’t strike me as the sort of man who reads.”
    “You don’t think?”
    “You’re usually very confident about who you are, and how you see yourself. What do you think?”
    “I think that... I cannot imagine myself going to university. But that’s impossible. Being in the position that I’m in I must have gone.”
    “You didn’t,” she said, imagining that it was all right to confirm this.
    But you don’t think it’s okay to confirm that your marriage is not quite what it seems?
    She gritted her teeth and banished that thought. One thing at a time. And anyway, she intended to have this discussion with him. She intended to end their marriage. But she doubted news of a divorce would be overly welcome to him right now. Especially not when they needed to keep his condition a secret. Especially not when he would have no one else looking out for him. No one else who