but the smile on his lips told her that wasn’t entirely how he’d put it. ‘To be honest, it doesn’t much matter to me what you believe, any more.’
It had once, though. For one brief, shining month in time, what Rosa had believed had mattered to Jude Alexander. And what he’d believed about her had mattered to her, too.
Which had only made it harder to let him down when she’d walked away.
Of course, that was how she knew it was the right decision, too. But that didn’t mean there hadn’t been moments since, days when she’d been lost and alone and confused, when she’d wondered how different things would be if she’d gone back to him when she’d left La Isla Marina, instead of hightailing it for the Middle East, then Australia, then the Americas.
A whole life she’d thrown away and never lived. Of course she thought about it. She just didn’t let herself imagine it too often, or in too much detail. She didn’t want the regrets—not when she’d done the right thing, and found the life she’d always promised herself because of it.
She wondered if Jude would understand that, if she told him. Or maybe he’d been relieved when she hadn’t come back. After all, he’d chased and caught his own dreams, too. But they’d come at a high price.
Rosa picked up a few of her father’s Scrabble tiles, and began rearranging them on the rack, spelling out Spanish words he’d never use, for her own amusement, trying to find the words she needed to say.
In the end, she settled for blunt. It was her style, after all.
‘I heard about Gareth. I’m sorry. You know how fond I was of him.’ It had been hard not to adore Gareth. His optimism, his openness, the joy he’d found in the world... It was hard to imagine the band without him.
Hard to imagine Jude without his best friend.
Jude looked away. ‘Yeah.’ The curt word told Rosa her sympathies weren’t enough. Of course they weren’t.
Nothing could make up for Gareth’s death. Certainly not anything she had to offer.
It wasn’t her place to ask what happened, to tell Jude he could talk to her, if he needed to. Wasn’t her place to comfort him for a three-year-old tragedy that obviously still cut him deep.
She’d given up that place when she left.
Time to move on. She was never good at the touchy-feely stuff, anyway.
‘So, where are the others?’ Always a good way of figuring out whether a person was lying to her—ask a question she already knew the answer to. ‘Jimmy and Lee and Tanya?’ The rest of The Swifts. After all, Jude hadn’t got this famous all on his own, whatever the gossip magazines seemed to think.
And right now, the gossip sites didn’t seem to know what to think. Rosa didn’t make a point of following Jude’s every career move, or anything—in fact, she made a point of not listening to his music any more than she had to, which was made more difficult by the fact it seemed to be playing everywhere at the moment. Even in the rainforest, someone had brought speakers and been playing The Swifts when they’d set up camp the other week.
But even she hadn’t been able to avoid the news that Jude Alexander had dropped off the face of the earth. The rest of the band had been photographed out and about in New York City, but there had been no sign of their lead singer.
Not that Rosa had been concerned about that. Much.
‘New York, I think.’ Jude looked away again, down at his own tiles. He wasn’t lying, so maybe just hiding something? Rosa couldn’t tell, any more. ‘I’m working on some...different stuff.’
‘Solo stuff?’ Because that she hadn’t read anywhere online. ‘You’re planning on leaving The Swifts?’
‘No,’ Jude said, too quickly. ‘I’m not. I couldn’t. I just... I needed some time away, is all.’
‘And you picked La Isla Marina?’ Because, really, that was too much of a coincidence to not bear some investigation.
‘I heard someone talk about this place once. I can’t remember who, exactly. One of Sylvie’s friends, maybe.’
Sylvie. That would be Sylvie Rockwell-Smythe, Rosa’s ever-helpful brain for useless knowledge filled in. Jude’s beautiful, red-headed, heiress and model girlfriend. Exactly the sort of woman a celebrity like Jude should be dating.
Except, if he was here in paradise, and she was still in New York... ‘How is Sylvie?’
‘We split up,’ Jude said, shortly.
‘Ah. Sorry.’ There was that old talent for putting her foot in it, rearing up again. One day she’d learn not to just say the first thing that popped into her head. Maybe.
Jude shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be.’
‘Like that, huh?’
‘Pretty much.’
Rosa sat back and surveyed him, taking in the changes the last three years had wrought on a face she’d known so well, once. He looked thinner. No, not thinner, exactly. Leaner. As if some stylist had decided to play up his pale and interesting aspect. But they couldn’t style away Jude’s broad shoulders, or the muscles in those arms.
But he looked tired. Worn down, maybe.
‘So. How’s fame going?’
‘Overrated.’ Jude met her eyes. ‘Haven’t you heard the latest? The entire of the continental US is talking about it.’
‘I’ve been kind of out of touch,’ Rosa admitted. ‘I was working on a story down in South America...wait.’ Hadn’t she read something about a book, somewhere? A kiss-and-tell sort of a book, all about Jude? Maybe Sylvie had something to do with that... ‘Is this about the book?’
‘Jude: The Naked Truth.’ Jude shook his head in disgust as he quoted the title. ‘That’s the one.’
Whoever had written it should have come and found Rosa. She could have told them plenty of secrets about Jude Alexander.
She wouldn’t have, of course. That was just one of the many differences between her and Sylvie. That and the fact that the other woman was a supermodel. And at five feet three and with too many curves, Rosa would definitely never be that.
‘I haven’t read it.’
Jude didn’t respond, and Rosa resigned herself to looking him up on the internet once she’d got her laptop hooked up to the island Wi-Fi. It wouldn’t be the first time, anyway. And Jude didn’t have many secrets from the media these days, it seemed to Rosa. She could probably download the eBook and know everything she wanted to about him in a couple of hours of reading.
Except she didn’t want to. Those books never told the whole truth, anyway. And she knew more about him than any pages could contain.
Or she had. Once.
Before.
She turned back to her father’s Scrabble tiles, and ignored the letters ‘s’ ‘e’
