She quickly brushed off any men who flirted with her or tried to charm her. Not that Leandro was super-charming or anything. He was polite but distant. Aloof. And as for flirting...well, if he could learn to smile now and again it might help.
Miranda wasn’t sure why she was pushing so hard for an invitation. Maybe it was because she had never spent any time with him without other people around. Maybe it was because he had recently lost his father and she wanted to know why he hadn’t told anyone before the funeral. Maybe it was because she wanted to see where he had spent the first eight years of his life before he had moved to England. What had he been like as a child? Had he been playful and fun-loving, like most kids, or had he been as serious and inexpressive as he was now? ‘So would it be okay to stay with you?’ she said. ‘I won’t get in your way.’
He looked at her in that frowning manner he had. Deep thought or disapproval? She could never quite tell. ‘There isn’t a housekeeper there.’
‘I can cook,’ she said. ‘And I can help you tidy things up before you sell the place. It’ll be fun.’
A small silence ticked past.
Miranda got the feeling he was mulling it over. Weighing it up in his mind. Doing a risk assessment.
He finally drew in a breath and then slowly released it. ‘Fine. I’ll email you those flights.’
She rose from the table and began to shrug on her coat, tugging her hair free from the collar. ‘Do you mind if I walk out with you? There was a pap crew tailing me earlier. I ducked in here to escape them. It’d be nice to get back to work without being jostled.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’m heading that way anyway.’
* * *
Leandro walked beside Miranda on the way back to the gallery. He was always struck by how tiny she was. Built like a ballerina with fine limbs and an elfin face, with big tawny-brown eyes and auburn hair, yet her skin was without a single freckle—it was as white and pure as Devon cream. She had an ethereal beauty about her. She reminded him of a fairy-tale character—an innocent waif lost in the middle of a crazy out-of-control world.
Seeing her hiding in that café had tripped a switch inside his head. It was like he’d had a brain snap. He hadn’t thought it through but it seemed...right somehow. She needed a bolthole and he needed someone to help him sort out the mess his father had left behind. Maybe it would’ve been better to commission someone local. Maybe he could have sold the lot without proper valuation. Hell, he didn’t really know why he had asked her, except he knew she was having a tough time of it with her father’s love-child scandal still doing the rounds.
That and the fact he couldn’t bear the thought of being in that villa on his own with only the ghosts of the past to haunt him. He hadn’t been back since the day he’d left when he was eight years old.
It wasn’t like him to act so impulsively but seeing Miranda hiding behind that pot plant had made him realise how stressed she was about her father’s latest peccadillo. He had heard from her brothers the press had camped outside her flat for the last month. She hadn’t been able to take a step without a camera or a microphone being shoved in her face. Being the daughter of famous celebrities came with a heavy price tag. Or, at least, it did for her.
Leandro had always felt a little sorry for Miranda. She was constantly compared to her flamboyant and glamorous mother and found lacking. Now she was being compared to her half-sister. Kat Winwood was stunning. No two ways about that. Kat was the billboard-beautiful type. Kat would stop traffic. Air traffic. Miranda’s beauty was quiet, the sort of beauty that grew on you. And she was shy in an endearingly old-fashioned way. He didn’t know too many women who blushed as easily as her. She never flirted. And she never dated. Not since she had lost her first and only boyfriend to leukaemia when she was sixteen. Leandro couldn’t help admiring her loyalty, even if he privately thought she was throwing her life away.
But who was he to judge?
He hadn’t got any plans for happy-ever-after either.
Miranda was the best person to advise him on his father’s collection. Of course she was. She was reliable and sensible. She was competent and efficient and she had an excellent eye. She had helped her brother Julius buy some great pieces at various auctions. She could spot a fraud at twenty paces. It would only take a week or two to sort out the collection and he would be doing her a favour in the process.
But there was one thing she didn’t know about him.
He hadn’t even told Julius or Jake about Rosie.
It was why he had gone to his father’s funeral alone. Going back to Nice had been like ripping open a wound.
There’d been numerous times when he could have mentioned it. He could have told his two closest friends the tragic secret he carried like a shackle around his heart. But instead he had let everyone think he was an only child. Every time he thought of his baby sister his chest would seize. The thought of her little chubby face with its dimpled, sunny smile would bring his guilt crashing down on him like a guillotine.
For all these years he had said nothing. To anyone. He had left that part of his life—his former life, his childhood—back in France. His life was divided into two sections: France and England. Before and After. Sometimes that ‘before’ life felt like a bad dream—a horrible, blood-chilling nightmare. But then he would wake up and realise with a sickening twist of his gut that it was true. Inescapably, heartbreakingly true. It didn’t matter where he lived. How far he travelled. How hard he worked to block the memories. The guilt came with him. It sat on his shoulder during the day. It poked him awake at night. It drove vicious needles through his skull until he was blind with pain.
Speaking about his family was torture for him. Pure, unadulterated torture. He hated even thinking about it. He didn’t have a family.
His family had been blown apart twenty-seven years ago and he had been the one to do it.
‘YOU’RE GOING TO FRANCE?’ Jasmine Connelly said, eyes wide with sparkling intrigue. ‘With Leandro Allegretti?’
Miranda had dropped into Jasmine’s bridal boutique in Mayfair for a quick catch-up before she flew out the following day. Jaz was sewing Swarovski crystals onto a gorgeous wedding dress, the sort of dress for every girl who dreamed of being a princess. Miranda had pictured a dress just like it back in the day when her life had been going according to plan. Now every time she saw a wedding dress she felt sad.
‘Not going with him as such,’ she said, absently fingering the fabric of the wedding gown on the mannequin. ‘I’m meeting him over there to help him sort out his father’s art collection.’
‘When do you go?’
‘Tomorrow... For a couple of weeks.’
‘Should be interesting,’ Jaz said with a smile in her voice.
Miranda looked at her with a frown. ‘Why do you say that?’
Jaz gave her a worldly look. ‘Come, now. Don’t you ever notice the way he looks at you?’
Miranda felt something unhitch in her chest. ‘He never looks at me. He barely even
