Jessica Steele - An Accidental Engagement (2003)

Claire Farley wakes in hospital to find her memory has deserted her. Yet the biggest shock is her discovery that she's wearing a diamond engagement ring! Claire's fiance is the wonderful Tye Kershaw -- he's perfect husband material: caring, kind, not to mention handsome!

But when Claire's memory floods back there's one piece of the jigsaw that doesn't slot into place -- she's never, ever laid eyes on Tye before. So why is she now living in his house, wearing his ring -- and sharing his bed...?

Read Excerpt : 

She stirred in her sleep. She felt troubled, and her eyelids fluttered. She tried to recall what she was troubled about, but could not remember. She opened her eyes and lay there quietly, for a moment or two at relative peace with her world.

That peace was not to last. Suddenly her eyes widened-not only could she not remember what it was that troubled her, she could not remember anything ! Could not remember anything at all. Everything was a complete blank!

Striving hard to keep a lid on her feeling of panic, she fought to remember something, even the tiniest detail, but there was nothing there. She could not even remember her own name!

She looked around her, but the pink walls of the room were alien to her; she did not recognise them. Involuntarily she cried out and tried to sit up and discovered she barely had the strength to raise her head from her pillow.

But she was not alone. Alerted by her cry, a plump woman in a nurse's uniform came swiftly over to her bed. `You're back with us, I see,' she said softly, calmly.

The young woman in the bed did not feel calm. `Who are ... ? Where am ... ? I don't know where I am, who I am,' she whispered, her voice a panicking thread of sound.

The nurse was efficient and in no time a doctor was there in the room with them. After that, time passed for the young woman in a confusing semi-vacuum of visitors in white coats, of questions and tests, of medication and sedatives and a twilight world of drifting in and out of sleep.

Nurses attended to her healing cuts and bruises, but she made no progress in remembering who she was. She had lost her memory.

On different occasions she surfaced to find one or other of two expensively suited males in her room. They made frequent calls to her bedside. One was tall and comfortably built. He was somewhere in his mid-forties, and she seemed to vaguely realise that he was a consultant of some sort. From time to time he would arrive and shine a light in her eyes and while asking her questions would converse easily with her. Though what he made of her answers she could not tell. More often than not, whether it was because of whatever was wrong with her or because of the strong medication that was administered, she invariably floated off to sleep mid conversation.

Her other frequent male visitor was about ten years younger than the other man. That man was about thirty-five or thirty-six, was equally tall, but was trimmer, fitter-looking. But he did not ask questions. Instead he would come and sit by her bedside and would sometimes quietly chat to her or sit silently by her bed. She went to sleep on him too.

Days passed without her being aware of anything very much. They called her Claire; she supposed somebody must know her and had told them who she was. She had blurred recall of moments of panic, moments of near hysteria, before some injection or other would float her away to calmer waters. She had a hazy recollection of being transferred from one ward to another, and then of being moved from there to another hospital entirely but while she was in a sea of new faces and nurses she did not recognise the consultant and the other man were still constant visitors.

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