Bound By Her Ring (21 page)

Her memory was returning. With each passing second the pieces of the puzzle shuffled around until they all fell into place.

Her heart ached as she remembered how happy she’d been when Lukas proposed and when she’d shared the news of her pregnancy with him.

Then the devastation on hearing the words spoken by the emergency doctor—
“She’s going to lose the baby there’s nothing we can do but wait until the bleeding stops and then evaluate the situation. If the internal injuries are severe she may never have another baby again.”

She’d never wanted to remember those words.

It had been her last thought before blacking out with pain once again. That was why she’d suffered amnesia. Her brain had simply followed her heart’s desire—to forget she’d lost the baby because of her carelessness.

But it still didn’t make sense why Lukas believed she would have a termination. How could he have thought that? What did her father show Lukas to believe she could act so cruelly? Take the life of an innocent child without any thought or remorse.

Her mind whirled as she tried to process everything that was going on. Jasmine knew her father had never liked Lukas and she could never understand why. But for him to say that she, his own daughter, had so callously destroyed a child was beyond comprehension.

The time for confrontation had come. She would find him; there was no way he’d leave his business unattended for this long. He was in hiding and had been ever since Lukas had arrived into town and crashed the opening party.

Her father was running scared. And so he should be. This time she wasn’t going to be fobbed off she was going to get answers.

Then she was going to come back and fight for her marriage.

A light was shining in her father’s study as she turned her car into the driveway. So much for him being away, with the benefit of her full memory she should’ve realised he was playing games.

Jasmine parked her car and took a deep breath. She’d taken the time to calm herself after her argument with Lukas. Now she was composed and ready to do battle.

She didn’t knock she just used her key to let herself in and marched straight into her father’s study. He was sitting behind the desk and looked up in surprise.

“Jasmine, I didn’t know you were coming for a visit. What a pleasant surprise.”

His charm was false and it grated on her senses. The anger she thought she had under control, flared to life. She went up to his desk and thumped her hand on it. “How could you?”

Whatever he expected it wasn’t anger, he reared back as if she’d slapped him and not the desk. “Don’t you speak to me that way, young lady.”

“Oh cut the ‘offended school principal’ crap, Father. How could you have lied and deceived me the way you have, your own daughter. I deserve better.”

“I take it your memory has returned?”

His tone was condescending. It was like he didn’t care, that he was proud of all the anguish he had caused her over the last months.

“Yes my memory has returned and with it so have all the ways you’ve abused your position as my father. Instead of helping me you deliberately, without any remorse, kept vital information from me.”

“I did it for your own good Jasmine, the doctors kept telling me not to feed you information.”

“That’s a cop out and you know it. One of the main causes of my distress was that I couldn’t remember who I’d married but you knew the whole time. How was keeping that from me supposed to help me heal?”

He crossed his arms and set his chin. “If I had my time over again I’d do it all the same.”

“Even telling my husband I had aborted his child. Which was your grandchild, by the way, or don’t you care about that?” Her voice broke and she took a deep breath before continuing. “Would you do that again too? Destroy all our lives?”

“Yes. In the name of love I would.”

Jasmine shook her head in amazement. She should’ve realised though, her father believed he would always control her life. “You’re unbelievable, my own father happy to destroy his only child’s life and not mourn the loss of his grandchild. Do you have any idea what pain you’ve caused not only to me, but Lukas?

“Bah, don’t give some sob story about Morelli feeling sorry for himself. I didn’t destroy his life, he was about to destroy yours.”

“He was never, ever going to destroy it, he enhanced my life and I
love
Lukas with my whole heart.” The tears started to well again as she thought about all the time they had lost, because of her father. “The thought of having his child filled me with insurmountable joy. But what you did was the lowest of lows. How can I ever think of you as my father again?”

She stepped back from him as he came towards her, arms outstretched as if he wanted to comfort her.

She held out her hand to stop him. “No, don’t even think about it. Don’t you even dare try and comfort me. Right at this moment I think I hate you.”

And just like that her father seemed to die right before her eyes. His shoulders slumped and the skin across his face tightened, aging him in an instant. His whole demeanour went from assurance and confident to defeat and despair.

“I love you, Jasmine,” he whispered. “I only want what’s best for you.”

“If you love me like you claim you do then you wouldn’t have done what you did. You would’ve let me have my husband by my side when I needed him the most.”

A little bit of fight appeared back in her father. “But how do you know he would have been there?”

“Because he came to the hospital when I was unconscious, he told me that and don’t deny you didn’t know that.”

“I won’t. He came and I told him what I thought he needed to know.”

“What you wanted him to know, that’s the real story. But what I still can’t understand is why tell him I had an abortion when I lost the baby because of the accident?”

Her father looked everywhere but at her. Tension between them amplified so much so she could’ve cut it with a carving knife.

“No answer Father? Could it be because you’re ashamed of what you’ve done? Or are you thinking up some other lie to feed me?”

“He was cheating on you, did you know that? That is why I did what I did.”

She didn’t believe for a minute Lukas had cheated on her. Instinct told her he was too honourable for that sort of behaviour.

“You know what? That’s a stupid reason for your actions. Lukas wouldn’t do that to me. I know it.”

“Then you are more naive than I thought.”

“So when did you see him actually committing this offence?” she asked.

“It was in all the papers the day after you left on your trip. Pictures of him and some other woman sharing a kiss at
La Bella Rosa
. How much more proof did I need to know he’s not the sort of man I want for my daughter.”

Jasmine searched her memory and could recall the day she and Lukas had shared lunch with his cousin before she flew back to Italy—at
La Bella Rosa
.

“If the photographer had arrived a few minutes later he would have seen me arriving. The
other
woman was Lukas’s cousin not his mistress.”

“Well it won’t be long before he does get a mistress. He’s slimy and charming and has you so besotted you can’t see straight. He’s exactly like the man who stole your mother from me.”

Bitterness laced his voice, he’d hit her with both barrels fully loaded. But his outburst had given her information she hadn’t known before—who her mother had left with.

She’d returned home from her boarding school for a term break to find her mother and everything she owned had been removed from the house. Her father refused to tell her why and what had happened.

Part of the truth came out a few days later when the police turned up on their doorstep advising of an accident where her mother and the person she was travelling with had perished.

There had been a ban on all papers and gossip magazines from being allowed in the house for months. She’d never known, until now, that her mother had left with another man.

An Italian man.

“So that’s what this is all about, I fell in love with an Italian? You want to punish me because you can’t punish mother.”

“No I didn’t want to punish you,” her father pleaded. “I wanted to protect you from the same sort of hurt and humiliation I endured after your mother left me. What sort of father would I be if I didn’t do that?”

She’d had enough of this conversation—it was going nowhere. Around and around and around in circles all leading back to two words she now found repulsive,
protecting you
.

“There’s being protective and there’s being vindictive. Do not use some warped sense of fatherhood to justify your actions.”

She collected her handbag off the desk and slung it over her shoulder. “You know what Father, you’ve now lost me too.”

“Jasmine, please don’t go like this. Surely we can sort it out?”

She sighed, she was hurt and disillusioned. The one man she trusted had betrayed her in the cruellest of ways. It would be a long time before she found it in her heart to forgive him.

“No, it’s too late. I’m giving you my notice effective immediately. I can’t work with you any longer.”

Jasmine looked at her father before she walked out the door. The man standing in front of her was a shadow of his former self. “Goodbye father.”

She heard him call her name again but she continued walking, down the hallway towards the door. Her footsteps echoing eerily around the spacious foyer. Even the house knew the gravity of the situation.

She swiped at her eyes as she left behind her childhood home. Would she ever return? She didn’t know. Maybe one day.

As she got into the car she looked up and saw her father standing at the door. Their eyes met. Pain met pain. Anger met anger.

A chapter closed in her life. She only hoped she would be able to salvage her marriage.

As she opened the garage door, she noticed Lukas’s car wasn’t there. A quick glance at the car clock gave her a start of surprise. It was only just after nine in the evening but so much had happened she felt sure it should be closer to midnight.

What should she do? Should she do as he’d asked and pack or should she stay and talk?

No, she wasn’t going to shy away from facing Lukas. She would wait for him and plead her case. If he didn’t believe then she would leave.

Jasmine walked into the house and headed straight for the wreckage of the kitchen. She walked over to the pot of food, the congealed mess at the bottom resembling her emotions. All bound so tightly with no escape.

She scraped the spoiled food into the garbage and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher. It took her less than a half an hour before the kitchen was sparkling, no evidence of a failed meal anywhere.

She made her way upstairs, her feet dragging the whole way, her heart heavy and she kept one ear cocked to hear if Lukas opened the door.

She wasn’t going to pack, not yet anyway. Not until she’d had the chance to talk to Lukas, explain to him all that she’d learned from her father. And to tell him her memory had returned. How would he take it, she wondered. Would he believe her? Or would he still think it was all a game.

Jasmine walked aimlessly around the master suite, touching the cherry wood furniture, remembering just what had gone on in the sumptuous king bed just twenty four hours ago.

She kept moving and eventually found herself standing in front of the wedding photo of her and Lukas. She remembered the moment clearly now. They’d just been pronounced
man and wife and had shared a kiss. Her eyes were full of love and the same emotion was beaming out to her from Lukas’s eyes.

She wanted to capture that moment again. She wanted to see love shining out of his eyes, not hate.

She wanted Lukas.

“I thought I told you I wanted you gone before I returned.”

She whirled at the sound of his voice. So engrossed in the picture she hadn’t heard his footfall on the steps.

“I wanted to talk, that’s why I’m still here.”

“Well I don’t want to talk,” he turned and headed back down the stairs.

She followed him, determined not to let him disappear again. She’d lost him once she wasn’t going to lose him again.

She cornered him in the den, he was reaching into a cabinet and extracting a crystal decanter and glass. He poured a generous amount of clear liquid into the glass and tossed it back in one hit.

“Getting drunk isn’t going to solve anything,” she said as she closed the distance between them.

“Your wifely concern is touching but,” he poured more liquid into the glass. “Totally unnecessary.”

He gave her a salute before once again downing the contents.

“Oh stop being pathetic, will you. I’ve remembered everything about our past, our marriage and the aftermath of my accident.”

As he quirked his eyebrow she knew she was going to have a hard time convincing him of the truth. “Well now isn’t that convenient. So tell me when did this miraculous recovery occur, just after I left?”

Jasmine couldn’t help it, her face flushed, the heat starting low in her neck before rising to the tips of her eyebrows.

“Ahh I see I’m correct. I repeat again, how convenient.”

“So what, it returned after you walked out, but you unlocked it fully this time by accusing me of having a termination.”

“I saw the paperwork, Jasmine. The print is etched indelibly on my mind. The words “Foetus terminated” will haunt me forever.” He slammed down the glass with such force; she was surprised to see that it didn’t shatter.

Her heart broke at the look of total devastation on his face. She wanted nothing more than to comfort him but knew if she made any move he’d shut her out.

“I’m so sorry you had to be put through that, Lukas.” She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. The muscles beneath tightened but he didn’t pull away. Maybe there was hope after all. “My father is totally responsible for you seeing that piece of paper. He wanted you out of my life and told me he did what he had to do to achieve that.”

“Why should I believe anything you have to say, Jasmine? How can I trust you when, for all intents and purposes, you’ve been lying to me. Faking every single emotion?”