went back inside and sat down at the table.
‘Eat,’ he said, pushing a plate of food towards her, but it seemed the command was unnecessary. She had begun to devour the dish, falling on it with the fervour of the truly hungry.
He watched her in fascinated silence, for this, too, was a new sensation. In his company people always picked uninterestedly at their food. There were unspoken rules that were always followed. They waited for him to begin and they finished when he finished. It was all part of the protocol that surrounded him—and yet for all the notice she took of him he might as well not have been there!
She ate without speaking, unable to remember ever having enjoyed a meal as much. Eventually she put her fork down and sighed.
‘It’s good?’
‘It’s delicious.’
‘Hunger makes the best sauce,’ he observed slowly.
There was red wine in front of her, and he gestured towards it, but she shook her head and drank some water instead, then sat back in her chair and fixed him with a steady look. His eyes were as black as a moonless night and they lanced through her with their ebony light.
‘Now are you going to start explaining?’
Nico found that he was enjoying himself. He had played the rescuer—so let him have a little amusement in return. ‘Tell me what you wish to know.’
‘Well, for a start—who are you? I don’t even know your name, Mr…?’
There was a pause while he considered the question. It seemed sincere enough, although the Mr tacked onto the end could have been disingenuous, of course. Was it?
‘It is Nico,’ he said eventually. From behind the thick dark lashes that shielded his eyes he watched her reaction carefully, but there was no sign of recognition in her emerald eyes. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Ella.’
Ella. Yes. ‘It’s a pretty name.’
‘It’s short for Gabriella.’
‘Like the angel,’ he murmured, letting his eyes drift carelessly over the pale flames of her hair.
It was that thing in his voice again—that murmured caress that made her conscious of herself as a woman. And him as a man. A man who had seen her sick and half-naked. But he was the angel—a guardian angel.
‘Where am I?’ she asked slowly.
Now his expression became sceptical. ‘You really don’t know?’
She sighed. ‘How long are we going to continue with these guessing games? Of course I don’t know. One minute I was on a boat—and the next I’m in some kind of beach hut, eating…’ She stared down at her empty plate. Even the food had been unfamiliar, just as he was, with his strange accent and his exotic looks. Disorientated, she found herself asking, ‘What have I just eaten?’
‘Rabbit.’
‘Rabbit,’ she repeated dully. She had never eaten rabbit in her life!
‘They run wild in the hillsides,’ he elaborated, and then, still watching her very closely, he said, ‘Of Mardivino.’
‘Mardivino?’ She stared at him as it began to sink in. ‘Is that where we are?’
‘Indeed it is.’ He sipped from a tumbler of dark wine and surveyed her from eyes equally dark. ‘You have heard of it?’
It was one of the less-famous principalities. A sun-drenched Mediterranean island—tax haven and home to many of the world’s millionaires. Exclusive and remote and very, very beautiful.
‘I’m not a complete slouch at geography,’ she said. ‘Of course I’ve heard of it.’
Authority reasserted itself. ‘You were in forbidden waters. You should never have ventured onto this side of the island!’
She remembered Mark and one of the others blustering about navigation, and then they had started hitting the bottle, big-time. She remembered how frightened she had been, how she had stood on deck for what seemed like hours and hours, the blistering sun beating down on her quite mercilessly. She shivered. ‘But we were lost,’ she protested. ‘Genuinely lost!’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t disbelieve her. Off Mardivino’s rugged northern coast there were rocks and rip tides that would challenge all but the most experienced sailor. No one would have been foolish enough to deliberately put themselves in the danger in which he had found them. So why had they?
His eyes bored into her. ‘Those people with you…’
‘What about them?’
There was a long pause. ‘One of them is a journalist, perhaps?’ he questioned casually.
‘A journalist?’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Well, I don’t know any of them that well, but none of them said they were journalists.’ She met his eyes, which were hard and glittering with suspicion. ‘Why would they be?’
‘No reason,’ he said swiftly.
But Ella heard the evasion in his voice and stared at him. Nothing added up. She stared at him as if seeing him properly for the first time. His clothes were simple, but his bearing was aristocratic, and there was something about his appearance that she had never seen in a man before. Something in the way he carried himself—an arrogant kind of self-assurance that seemed innate rather than learned. Yet he wore faded jeans and a worn T-shirt…
He had brought her to this beach hut, where the shower dripped in a single trickle and yet the soap and shampoo were the finest French brands. She frowned. And he had called her cara, hadn’t he?
‘Are you Italian?’
He shook his head.
‘Spanish?’
‘No.’
‘French, then?’
He smiled. ‘Still no.’
Words he had spoken came back to her. ‘Yet you speak all three languages?’
He shrugged. How much to tell her? How long to continue this delicious game of anonymity? How long could he? ‘Indeed I do.’
‘And your English is perfect.’
‘I know it is,’ he agreed mockingly.
This time she would not be deterred by the soft, seductive voice. Ella leaned across the table, challenging him with her eyes. ‘Just who exactly are you, Nico?’
THE strangest thing was that Nico was really enjoying himself. It was like a game, or a story—the one where a prince disguised himself as a beggar and no one recognised him.
For
