Free The Secret She Can't Hide by India Grey Page A

her, not wanting to think about what had happened next.

    ‗Do you feel scared now?‘

    In the velvet darkness behind her closed lids Cristiano‘s voice was like gravel. But still it made her shiver, because it was the voice that she had heard in her dreams for so long.

    Mutely she shook her head.

    Not of the car or the road anyway. But the strength and force of her own longing, held in check for all these years, terrified her.

    As they drove further north the clouds parted and the stars came out. It was suddenly much colder. Stopping for petrol and to fit snow chains on the tyres, Cristiano could feel the ice in the air. The mountains lay all around, like giant slumberous beasts.

    Walking back to the car, after paying the awestruck teenage boy in the kiosk for the petrol, he flexed his cramped shoulders, putting off the moment when he‘d have to get back into the driving seat. The Campano CX8 might be hailed as one of the fastest and most desirable cars in the world, but it wasn‘t going to be winning any awards for its spacious interior. Something about the intimacy of the small space; the warmth inside and the cool scent of Kate Edwards‘ skin, the darkness and cold outside, made him feel restless and edgy.

    As he reached the car he saw that she was still asleep, and felt an unfamiliar clenching sensation in his chest. Frustration, probably, he told himself sourly as he opened the door and slid into the driver‘s seat. If he‘d been alone he would have reached the chalet ages ago.

    Starting the engine, he thought about what she‘d said. She‘d been afraid in the car with him before, because of her brother. Did that explain why, from the moment they‘d left Monte Carlo, he‘d been driving with such uncharacteristic caution? On some level did he know about her fear? Somehow, somewhere in his head, did he remember ?

    His mind raced as possibilities rushed through it. And hope. He‘d recognised her. Not consciously, but as soon as he‘d seen her at the party earlier he‘d responded viscerally—physically, dammit—proving that his body remembered her even if his head didn‘t. That was a good sign, wasn‘t it? All those memories were there. He just needed to access them, and hopefully spending the next twenty-four hours with her would see to that.

    The powerful V8 engine gave a gratifying roar as he pulled away from the garage, the kiosk attendant watching open-mouthed through the window.

    There were lots of tunnels on the road up into the mountains, and every one he drove through brought his thoughts back to the one at Monaco, where his car had left the track and hit the barrier. He‘d watched the footage countless times, but still he couldn‘t remember it. Six weeks until the start of the season, he thought bleakly. Abandoning his rigorous training schedule at this stage was a huge gamble—God only knew what Silvio would say when he found out. But ultimately he had no choice. He‘d do whatever it took, gamble everything he had, to get his life back.

    Because if he lost this, he lost everything. There was nothing else. Never had been. He had been a sixteen-year-old on a fast track to self-destruction when he‘d spotted Silvio‘s car parked outside the theatre in Naples on that hot summer night and hotwired it. If Silvio hadn‘t given him a chance, hadn‘t seen some glimmer of potential in him that had singularly eluded both his mother and the nuns at school, Cristiano would almost certainly have been in prison long ago. Or dead.

    Racing wasn‘t just his career, it was his life. It was his means of proving to the world that he wasn‘t the failure everyone had told him he was as a boy. And winning was his justification for destroying his mother‘s life. His vindication.

    A not-quite-complete moon had broken free from behind the mountaintops and now floated above him, turning the road ahead into a river of silver and making diamonds glitter in the snow at the side of it. Eventually a sign