hours, Dr Gray. Bring your lists.’ And he stood up. ‘Thank you, Sancia, that was delicious.’ He bowed over Sancia’s hand and tossed another wink in Anna’s direction before sauntering away, fully aware that Anna was glaring at him. His back prickled with awareness; he could almost feel the burn as her eyes bored into him.
Funny to think he had had no agenda this morning beyond popping over to what he had assumed to be a perfectly run luxury resort in order to reassure his sister. Now he had a month’s work ahead of him and a hostile colleague. He couldn’t wait to get started.
* * *
Anna stared down at the bucket of tepid, dirty water resentfully. She’d decided not to waste the two hours her mother and Leo were choosing to spend sleeping and instead had got started scrubbing down the outside of a couple of bungalows. Not that she had got very far. Right now getting the island into any kind of order seemed like a Sisyphean task—especially if long lunches and longer siestas were going to be the order of the day.
Still, at least she had made a start. She would get the groundskeeper and chambermaid to continue while she was on the mainland; but she really needed to talk to her mother and find out when the seasonal staff were due to start, and how many they were expecting. Without adequate staffing they would never get the island ready in time. Luckily the interiors of the bungalows were in a better state than she’d expected. They needed some cosmetic work, a good clean, taps and showers fixing, a quick paint, but the furniture was still good, simple, but well-crafted. A few luxurious touches, new cushions, rugs and accessories should bring them up to date. After all, if Valentina wanted marble and gilt she would have booked a hotel. She was after an authentic Spanish touch and that, at least, La Isla Marina could provide.
Picking up the bucket, Anna tipped the water down the drain. She’d worked her way through several buckets of water, lugging them to the desired spot, sloshing water down her legs as she did so. Her hands were red, two nails already broken. She made a mental note to add gloves to her list.
Had it really only been half an hour of work? It felt like eternity and she had barely started. This morning she’d been full of a sense of purpose, if a little daunted. Now she just felt like Cinderella, toiling away while the rest of the household slumbered, and just because she had volunteered for domestic drudgery didn’t mean she couldn’t help feeling resentful. She wouldn’t mind so much if Rosa weren’t swanking about somewhere, carefree, on the other side of the world, if her mother didn’t look at her as if she were being fussy, if Leo di Marquez hadn’t shown up...
Anna pushed her hair off her forehead, grimacing as she realised just how sweaty she was. What was Leo’s deal anyway? What kind of man just decided to put a month aside for his sister’s wedding with no planning, no notice? Placing the bucket on the floor, Anna tried to stop her mind dwelling on the planes of Leo’s chest, the strong, sensual mouth, his mocking eyes. He knew how attractive he was all right—and there was nothing Anna distrusted more than a man convinced of his own worth, his own desirability. After all, she’d been taken in before, been badly burnt before.
She’d mishandled him from the first, allowing him to put her on the back foot even though he was the trespasser. It wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen again. She needed weapons, she needed armour, she needed control, she needed facts.
Her mother and sister might rely on intuition and spontaneity, but there was much more comfort in knowledge and plans. That was why she had become an academic, not because of her father’s pre-eminence or because it was expected of her, but because she liked to dig deep, to find out the facts, to draw her own interpretation. If Leo’s sister was some kind of media star then it shouldn’t be too hard to find out exactly who he was, what he was. And then she would be prepared.
Mind made up, Anna headed back to the villa, letting herself through the hidden door that separated the public spaces from the family’s private rooms. The wooden staircase was narrow and dark as she climbed all the way to the top floor and the turret bedroom that had been hers since she was a baby. Nothing had changed: the same iron bedstead stood in the corner, the same pictures hung on the whitewashed walls, the same colourful blankets were heaped on the bed. It was sparse and small, but Anna liked the memories of when they had been a proper family, Rosa in the other turret, her parents nearby, her grandparents still alive.
A pang of guilt hit her at the thought of her father home alone, rattling around their huge Oxford house. She’d left him a schedule, all his pills laid out ready, labelled meals in the freezer for the evenings he didn’t dine in college. And she’d promised to text him reminders every day—he probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone. She bit her lip, his lined, grey face clear in her mind. The only time he had ever relaxed was here on the island, when he would push his research and work aside for a few days, sometimes even weeks. When had he last taken a real holiday? Not since Sancia had left him. Left them.
Her laptop was already set up on the desk, her notebooks stacked neatly by its side, colour-coded by theme. Anna averted her eyes from the notebooks, an all too visual reminder that she still had no book, not even the bare bones of one. The usual wave of nausea swirled low in her stomach, the age-old fear that she would be revealed as an imposter, a fraud, whispering in her mind. Had she really thought that if she ran away to the island her doubts would stay meekly in Oxford? They were just as strong as ever—except when she had been engrossed in painting. Except when she had been sparring with Leo di Marquez... Pushing her notebooks to one side, she switched on her laptop, typed in Valentina’s name and began to read.
Half an hour later Anna sat back and stared at the screen; she still had no idea what Valentina did or why she was famous. Sure, the curvy brunette modelled, but she’d started modelling after she had got famous; for all her prominence she was a little shorter, a little bustier than the usual top models. Valentina seemed to spend her time photographing herself, her friends, her clothes and her food and posting the pictures up for comment. And she received them in their thousands, more, hundreds of thousands. Anna frowned as she looked at the photo posted just this morning, a photo of breakfast laid out on a patio table, every colour popping off the screen. How on earth was this a job? Judging by the lavish apartment, the designer clothes, the parties, it was lucrative even if it made no sense.
Most of the recent posts and tweets focussed on the forthcoming wedding. Anna’s stomach clenched as she read through them; Valentina’s expectations were high and the results would be instantly seen around the world. If they could make it a success then the island’s fortunes would turn around overnight, but if they failed then they would fall very publicly. She had no choice; if there was to be any chance of pulling this off she simply had to work with Leo.
Except not once had she seen his name mentioned. Valentina made reference to growing up on the Barcelona coast, to working in a beach bar, to her mother, who had died a few years back—but there was no mention of a brother or a father. Not one.
Okay, then more research was needed. Anna poised her fingers over the keyboard for a second and then typed in Leo di Marquez y Correa.
‘Bingo,’ she said softly. The picture on the very first link looked very familiar indeed. The same close-cropped dark hair, the same sharp cheekbones set off by stubble too perfect to be completely natural. This Leo was dressed a lot more formally, in a light grey suit, a smiling blonde in a skin-tight dress hanging off his arm. Anna read the caption. ‘Leo’s new model.’ Hmm, it looked as if he was as at home in the gossip pages as his sister.
‘He’s not a pirate, he’s a playboy,’ she muttered as she brought up article after article. Leo on his boat, bare-chested in the sun, Leo in a casino, on a superyacht surrounded by the most glamorous people Anna had ever seen, Leo spraying champagne. Her stomach tightened. ‘Spoilt, rich boys.’ She could taste the contempt, bitter on her tongue.
The facts were there
