Her Last Night of Innocence Read Online Free Page A

complete sham. I wouldn’t be going myself if I had any choice.’
    Outside, the February dusk was falling early over Nice, and a thin slick of rain made the pavements glisten. In here, the lamps cast a soft glow over serious seascapes in oil, and a huge bowl of white hyacinths on the desk perfumed the centrally heated air. There was nothing remotely clinical about the room apart from the lightbox on the wall with its illuminated display of cross-sections of Cristiano’s brain.
    Dr Fournier sighed, slipping the invitation inside the cover of the file of notes that lay open on the desk in front of her. ‘It’s not a sham, Cristiano,’ she said, in the grave, low-pitched voice she used for breaking bad news to families. ‘It’s just a little premature, perhaps.’
    ‘Premature?’ Cristiano echoed hollowly, thrusting his balled fists into his pockets and walking over to look more closely at the X-ray images, as if he might be able to see something in the intricate whorls and dark spaces that Dr Fournier had missed. ‘By how long? A year? A decade? A lifetime? Because, from what you’ve just told me, I’m never going to be able to race again.’
    Francine Fournier was forty-eight years old, and had been happily married to her second husband for six years. She was also one of Europe’s most senior and well-respected brain injury specialists, but, in spite of all these things, she still had to steel herself against the spark of attraction as she looked from the images of the inside of Cristiano Maresca’s head to the face of the man himself.
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    The light from the X-ray box emphasised his pallor, and the lines of tension etched around his impossibly sexy mouth, but neither of those things detracted from his extraordinary good-looks.
    ‘Not in so many words,’ he said hoarsely. ‘But if you can’t find out what’s wrong with me and work out how to put it right, it amounts to the same thing.’
    ‘It’s not that simple, Cristiano. The good news is that you’re looking at a healthy brain. Those X-rays show that your recovery from the accident has been remarkably complete.’ She picked up the top sheet from the file and frowned slightly as she studied it. ‘All your stats are excellent—proving that your reflexes and responses far exceed those of the average fit male your age. My investigations have been exhaustive, and I can state categorically that there’s no physiological cause of the symptoms you’ve been having.’
    He gave a hollow laugh. ‘You’re saying that it’s all in my mind?’
    ‘The brain is a very complex organ. Physical injury is easy to see, but psychological damage is harder to measure. The palpitations and flashbacks you’re suffering while driving are very real symptoms, but their cause is nothing I can specifically identify or treat.’ She paused, rearranging the papers on her desk, her large diamond eternity ring flashing in the lamplight as her hands moved. ‘I believe,’ she began again carefully, ‘that they are directly related to your memory loss. In itself, that’s not a problem, but because your subconscious has blocked out memories of the crash you haven’t yet been able to process them and move on.’
    ‘But what about before the crash?’ Cristiano’s voice was like sandpaper. ‘Why can’t I remember that either?’
    ‘Retrograde amnesia,’ Dr Fournier said gently. ‘It’s not uncommon. Many people experience some degree of memory loss after a head trauma. The length of time that’s lost is significant—the fact that you’ve only got a gap of twenty-four hours is good news.’
    Cristiano gave a hard, abrupt laugh. ‘Is it?’ Silhouetted against the gathering darkness outside, his broad shoulders were absolutely rigid. ‘Will I ever get them back?’
    ‘It’s impossible to say. There are no guarantees. Sometimes memory comes back in its own time.’
    He swore in Italian, softly and savagely. ‘I can’t wait for that. The