Rafael’s lips were tight as he stared back at Devon. “And what then?”

Devon blinked. “Well, that depends on the outcome of the tests.”

Rafael shook his head. “If it turns out that I’m the father, if everything she claims is true, then I will have effectively denied her for the entirety of the time I wait for the test results. If she’s telling the truth, I’ve already dealt her far too much hurt as it is. How can I expect to mend a rift if I have my lawyer sit on her while we wait to see if I’m going to be a father?”

Devon blew out his breath. “It sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind that she’s telling the truth.”

Rafael dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what the truth is. My head tells me that she couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. That the idea of me falling head-over-ass for her in a matter of weeks is absurd. It sounds so ludicrous that I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

“But…?”

“But my gut is screaming that there is definitely something between us,” Rafael grimly admitted. “When I get near her, when I touch her…It’s like I become someone else entirely. Someone I don’t know. I hear the conviction in her voice when she talks of us making love by the ocean and I believe her. More than that I want to believe her.”

Devon let out a whistle that sounded more like a crash-and-burn. “So you believe her then.”

Rafael sucked in his breath. “My head tells me she’s a liar.”

“But your gut?”

Rafael sighed because he knew what Dev was getting at. Rafael always went with his gut. Even when logic argued otherwise. And he’d never been wrong.

“My gut tells me she’s telling the truth.”

CHAPTER 8

“Do you feel well enough to travel?” Rafael asked Bryony over dinner.

Bryony looked up from the sumptuous steak she was devouring to see Rafael studying the bruise on her face.

“Rafael, I’m fine.”

“Perhaps you should see an obstetrician before we leave the city.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll go see my doctor as soon as we get to the island, but I’m certainly capable of traveling. Unless you have matters to attend to here? I can go ahead of you if you can’t get away yet.”

Rafael frowned and put down his fork. “We’ll go together. It’s important we retrace all our steps and follow the same pattern we did when I was there before. Perhaps the familiarity will bring back my lost memories.”

Bryony cut another piece of her steak, but paused after she speared it with her fork. “What does your doctor say?”