to fame. Of Gareth’s last tour. ‘I’m in a band, you see.’
‘A band?’ Rosa scoffed. ‘Jude is the frontman of The Swifts, Dad. Hottest band of the decade, some are saying.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, and Jude tried not to squirm under it. Not just because of the inevitable uncomfortableness that always came when someone referred to him as the frontman, instead of Gareth. But because he had so been enjoying not being that Jude Alexander for a while.
‘You know I don’t follow popular culture, Rosa.’ Professor Gray dismissed his daughter’s words with a wave of his hand. ‘But Jude here is an almost competent Scrabble player, at least.’
Jude watched as Rosa’s gaze flicked over to him at her father’s words, meeting his for just a second. Just long enough for him to feel the same connection he’d experienced the night they’d met. It hit him deep, inside those tangled threads around his heart, a piercing guilt tied up with want and need and lust.
Still. Nice to know he hadn’t imagined it, that connection. Even if it clearly never had the same effect on Rosa as it had on him.
‘I’m so glad you’ve found a playmate, Father,’ Rosa said, her tone scathing. ‘But Jude’s Scrabble abilities don’t answer any of my questions. Where are Mama and Anna? And what on earth are you doing here?’ She glanced at Jude again as she asked the last question, leaving him uncertain as to whose presence she was most baffled by.
Jude didn’t blame her.
Now the initial shock of her arrival had passed, he found himself watching her more closely, looking beyond the familiarity of the woman he’d known so intimately—if, apparently, incompletely—three years ago. There were changes, ones he hadn’t initially spotted. She was leaner now, he realised, harder even. Her mass of long, dark curls had been tamed back into a braid that hung over her left shoulder, and her dark eyes were far more wary than he remembered. Even in her relaxed jeans and fitted T-shirt, her sunglasses dangling loosely from her fingers, she looked poised to run at any moment. As if this beautiful island resort was more of a trap than her home.
What had made her look that way? And why, after all this time, did he even care?
‘Your mother is talking with the cook about dinner, I believe,’ Professor Gray said. ‘And as for your sister, I have no idea.’
‘She went to Barcelona with Leo,’ Jude put in, since apparently he was paying more attention to the professor’s family than he was.
‘Leo?’ Rosa’s nose crinkled up as she said the name. ‘Who on earth is...? Never mind. Dad, why are you here?’
Professor Gray observed his daughter mildly. ‘Why, is it such a crime for a man to wish to spend time with his family?’
From the look Rosa gave him in return, Jude rather thought her answer might be yes.
‘Professor Gray?’ Maria, the only non-family member of staff that Jude had actually met on the island, appeared in the villa doorway. ‘There is a phone call for you at Reception? From Oxford?’
‘Still no mobile phone, huh, Dad?’ Rosa asked.
‘I have one,’ Professor Gray answered, loftily, as he got to his feet. ‘I merely do not see the requirement for it to always be on my person. Or switched on.’
‘Of course you don’t.’
As Professor Gray made his way into the villa, Jude found himself staring at Rosa again. What was it about this woman that captivated him so, that he couldn’t look away, even now, after everything that had happened because he’d fallen for her? He wished he knew. Maybe then he could break free of it. As it was...
‘So.’ Rosa moved to take her father’s chair opposite him, and Jude knew exactly what was coming next.
She was going to ask him a question, and he was going to have to decide how much of the truth he wanted to tell her. Given that last time he’d told her everything—opened up every part of himself and shared it with her—and she’d left anyway, he had a feeling that this time discretion might really be the better part of valour.
Or, as Gareth would have said, if he were still alive to say it, Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice...
Jude wasn’t going to let that happen. In any sense of the word.
Rosa sat down, and caught his eye across the table.
‘What are you doing here, Jude?’
Jude opened his mouth, and prepared to lie.
HE WAS GOING to lie to her.
Three years, and Rosa could still see the tell in the way Jude glanced to the side before speaking.
She supposed she couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t exactly done much to earn the truth from him.
But on the other hand, this was her home, her place—and she’d never told him about it. Had he been stalking her, searching for her, these last three years? Had he come here to find her? And if so, why on earth now, not three years ago?
No, that was ridiculous. She hadn’t known she was coming herself until two weeks ago, and she had a hard time believing that Sancia and Anna had teamed up to come up with some outrageous story to get her there, just to help Jude out.
Unlikely as it seemed, this had to be some kind of crazy coincidence.
Rosa wasn’t entirely sure if that made it better or worse.
‘Believe it or not, I came here to work on some new music,’ Jude said. Just the words conjured up memories of watching him composing, trying out new melodies on his guitar at the back of the tour bus, folded up to sit on the narrow bunk she lay in. Some of the most precious moments they’d spent together in that too-short month were times like that, when no one else was there or awake, when it was just them and the music.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Memories weren’t going to help her figure out what the hell was going on here.
‘So you had no idea that this was my mother’s family home?’ Rosa asked, her eyes narrowing. It didn’t hurt to double check these things, right?
‘None at all.’ That, at least, seemed to be the truth. So where was the lie? He was a musician, of course he’d come here to work on music. Except where was the rest of the band, in that case? Or what was left of it.
The memory hit her harder than she’d expected. An article online she’d caught by chance, that had left her crying in a foreign airport for a man she’d known and grown fond of. For another star gone too soon. And for Jude, left behind—the only time she’d let herself cry for him at all.
The band she’d known, when she’d toured with Jude that summer, wasn’t the same band he was with now. Not without Gareth.
No wonder he hadn’t come after her. He’d been dealing with his own tragedy, while she’d left to attend her abuelo’s funeral and had her whole world changed.
But
