She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “So we’re back to what I said minutes after I regained consciousness. I wanted to forget.”

“Yes. You diagnosed yourself fresh out of a coma.”

“It wasn’t really a diagnosis. I was trying to figure out why I had no other symptoms. When I didn’t find an explanation, I thought either my medical knowledge had taken a hit, or that neurology was never my strong point in my parallel existence. I thought you would know that cases like mine exist. But they don’t. Turns out I don’t really have amnesia, I’m just hysterical.”

His gaze whipped to hers, fierce, indignant. “Psychogenic amnesia is no less real than organic. It’s a self-preservation mechanism. I also wouldn’t label the psychogenic ingredient of your memory loss as hysterical, but rather functional or dissociative. In fact, I don’t support the hysterical nomenclature and what it’s come to be associated with-willful and weak-willed frenzy.”

Hot sweetness unfurled inside her. He was defending her to herself. Pleasure surged to her lips, making them tingle. “So you think I have a repressed-memory type functional amnesia.”

He nodded, ultraserious. “Yes. Here, take a look at this. This is your last MRI.” She looked. “It’s called functional imaging. After structural imaging revealed no physical changes in your brain, I looked at the function. You see this?” She did. “This abnormal brain activity in the limbic system led to your inability to recall stressful and traumatic events. The memories are stored in your long-term memory, but access to them has been impaired through a mixture of trauma and psychological defense mechanisms. The abnormal activity explains your partial memory recovery. But now that I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about organically, I’m relaxed about when total recovery occurs.”

“If it ever does.” If he was right, and she couldn’t think how he wasn’t, she might be better off if it never did.

Psychogenic amnesia sufferers included soldiers and childhood abuse, rape, domestic violence, natural disaster and terrorist attack victims. Sufferers of severe enough psychological stress, internal conflict or intolerable life situations. And if her mind had latched on to the injury as a trigger to purge her memories of Mel and her life with him, she’d probably suffered all three.

But that still didn’t explain her pregnancy or the honeymoon they were heading to when they’d had the accident.

Rodrigo stemmed the tide of confusion that always overcame her when she came up against those points.

“Anyway,” he said. “While explanations have been proposed to explain psychogenic amnesia, none of them have been verified as the mechanism that fits all types. I prefer to set aside the Freudian, personal semantic belief systems and betrayal trauma theories to explain the condition. I lean toward the theory that explains the biochemical imbalance that triggers it.”

“That’s why you’re a neurosurgeon and not a neurologist or psychiatrist. Where others are content to deal with insults to the psyche, you dig down to the building blocks of the nervous system, cell by cell, neurotransmitter by neurotransmitter.”

“I admit, I like to track any sign or symptom, physical or psychological, back to its causative mechanism, to find the ‘exactly how’ after others explain the ‘why.’”

“And that’s why you’re a researcher and inventor.”

He focused on her eyes for a second before he turned his own back to the tests, his skin’s golden-bronze color deepening.

He was embarrassed!

She’d noticed on many occasions that, although he was certain of his abilities, he wasn’t full of himself and didn’t expect or abide adulation, despite having every reason to feel superior and to demand and expect being treated as such.

But this-to actually blush at her admiration! Oh, Lord, but he was delicious, scrumptious. Edible. And adorable.

And he ignored her praise pointedly. “So-I favor the theory that postulates that normal autobiographical memory processing is blocked by altered release of stress hormones in the brain during chronic stress conditions. With the regions of expanded limbic system in the right hemisphere more vulnerable to stress and trauma, affecting the body’s opioids, hormones and neurotransmitters, increased levels of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor density affect the anterior temporal, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampal and amygdalar regions.”

She couldn’t help it. Her lips spread so wide they hurt. “I bet you’re having a ball talking to a doctor/patient. Imagine all the translation into layman’s terms you’d have to do if you wanted to say that to someone who didn’t get the lingo.”

He blinked, surprise tingeing his incredible eyes. Then that incendiary smile of his flowed over his face, crooked his divine-work-of-art lips. “It has been a very freeing experience, spoiling even, not to keep looking for ways to explain what I’m doing or what’s happening and fearing I won’t be clear enough or that you’ll misinterpret it no matter what I say and develop false expectations, positive or negative.” He shook his head in self-deprecation, switching back to solemn in a blink. “But that was far too involved, anyway. My point is, you might have appeared or thought you were coping with your situation before the accident, but according to your current condition, you weren’t.”

She pursed her lips in an effort to stop herself from grinning uncontrollably and giving in to the urge to lunge at him, tickle him out of his seriousness. “So you’re saying I was headed for psychogenic amnesia, anyway?”

“No, I’m saying the unimaginable stress of experiencing a plane crash, plus the temporary brain insult you suffered, disrupted the balance that would have kept your memory intact in the face of whatever psychological pressure you were suffering.”

She raised an eyebrow, mock-indignant. “You’re trying very hard to find neurologically feasible explanations backed by complex theories and medical expressions to dress up the fact that you’ve diagnosed me as a basket case, aren’t you?”

“No! I certainly haven’t. You’re in no way…” He stopped abruptly when she couldn’t hold back anymore, let the smile split her face. Incredulity spread over his face. “You’re playing me!”

She burst out laughing. “Yep. For quite some time now. But you were so involved in your explanations, so careful not to give me any reason to feel silly or undeserving of concern or follow-up since my condition is ‘only in my mind,’ you didn’t notice.”

One formidable eyebrow rose, a calculating gleam entering his eyes, an unbearably sexy curl twisting his lips. “Hmm, seems I have underestimated the stage of your progress.”

“Been telling you so for-”

“Quite some time now. Yes, I get it. But now that I’m certain your brain is in fine working order, nuts-and-bolts-wise, being the guy who cares about nothing but the hardware, I think I can safely stop treating you like you’re made of fresh paint.”

A laugh cracked out of her at his metaphor. He kept surprising her. She’d be thinking he was this ultra-cerebral, all-work genius of a man, then out of the blue, he’d let this side of him show. The most witty and wickedly fun person she’d ever known. And she did know that for a fact. She remembered all of her life before Mel now.

She pretended to wipe imaginary sweat off her brow. “Phew, I thought I’d never get you to stop.”

“Don’t be so happy. Until minutes ago, I would have let you trampoline-jump all over me. Now I think you don’t warrant the walking-on-eggshells preferential treatment anymore. You deserve some punishment for making fun of my efforts to appear all-knowing.”

“Making fun of them, or debunking them?”

“Payback is getting steeper by the word.”

She made a cartoonish face. “What can you do to a poor patient who has expanded limbic system issues and increased levels of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor density messing with her anterior temporal, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampal and amygdalar regions?”

“That’s it. I’m exacting retribution.”

“What will you do? Make me go to my room?”

“I’ll make you eat what I cook. And that’s for starters. I’ll devise something heinous while phase one is underway.”

“You mean more heinous than your cooking?”

He rumbled something from his gut, devilry igniting in his eyes. She giggled and rushed ahead, felt like she was flying there, borne on the giddy pleasure of his pursuing chuckles.

When she reached the steps, his voice boomed behind her, concern gripping its rich power. “Slow down.”

She did, waited for him to catch up with her in those strides that ate up ten of her running steps in five.

She grinned up into his no-longer-carefree, admonishing eyes. “I thought I wasn’t getting the fresh-paint treatment any longer.”

“You’ve hereby moved to getting the uninsured, last-known-piece-of-Ming-dynasty-China treatment.”

He slipped a steadying hand around her waist as they scaled the steps. She felt she’d be secure if the whole country fell into the sea. Or he’d clasp her to his body and take off into the sky.

She leashed her desire to press into him. “Aha! I should have known you’d default on your declaration of my independence.”

He grinned down at her as they reached the barbecue house. “Tales of your independence have been wildly exaggerated.”

She made a face, ducked under the shade of the canvas canopy.

He gave her a smug look as he seated her, then went to the kitchen area and began preparing her “punishment.”

She watched his every graceful move as putting out cooking utensils and food items and chopping and slicing were turned into a precision performance like his surgeries. When he ducked inside to get more articles, she exhaled at the interruption of her viewing pleasure, swept her gaze to the sparkling azure-emerald waters of the magnificent, channellike part of the sea, the mile-long breathtaking sandy beach ensconced in a rocky hug.