by Julia James
A sense of emptiness gaped in him. He’d achieved his goal—now what? What was he going to do with his life? What purpose was going to drive him now? There was nothing there for him. Nothing.
I thought I’d found what I was going to do with the rest of my life. And then she left me. Again.
Even though he’d been appalled to discover she was Grantham’s daughter, dismayed by her taste in design, despite all that he’d come to terms with it. He’d made himself accept it because of the way he felt about her.
And she still rejected me.
Fernando was closing the lid of the large suitcase, fastening it securely. Then he straightened. ‘What are your instructions in respect of the bracelet left in Miss Talia’s room?’ he enquired blandly.
Luke started. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded. ‘What bracelet?’
‘I believe it is the one you had delivered yesterday,’ Fernando elucidated.
Luke stared. ‘The ruby bracelet?’
Fernando nodded in his stately fashion.
Luke frowned. ‘She left it here?’
Again Fernando nodded.
Luke’s face hardened. ‘Send it on to her,’ he said tersely.
He walked out of the bedroom, heading downstairs with a heavy tread. He had no idea why she’d left it—to make a point, perhaps? But what point? Why was she angry at him?
Perhaps it was insufficiently valuable?
His mouth twisted, his mood becoming blacker than black as he stalked out of the room, heading downstairs to the car waiting to take him to the airport. To take him anywhere in the world that was not this island where, for a brief space of time, he had thought he had found happiness.
What a fool he had been.
Well, never again. Never again.
* * *
Talia walked around the villa for the last time. It was empty now of all their possessions, right down to the kitchenware. Everything of value had been sold to raise some much-needed cash to tide them over. All Talia and her mother were taking with them were the bare necessities. It was all they could afford.
As she gazed about her Talia still could not believe what had happened since she had collapsed into desperate sobs on her mother’s lap. When she’d finally stilled, the sorry tale told, her mother had been very quiet. At the edge of exhaustion—emotional, physical and mental—Talia had known, though she hadn’t been able to face it, that she would have to cope with another complete collapse from her beleaguered mother.
Yet what had happened had been the complete opposite.
Maxine had finally patted her daughter’s shoulder, and got to her feet. ‘We,’ she’d announced, ‘are leaving. The moment we can. I will not stay for a day longer than it takes us to move out in any place owned by a man who has broken my daughter’s heart. Nobody does that to my daughter. Nobody!’
That was all Maxine had said, but not all that she had done. She had conferred with Maria, returning to announce, with a straightening of her thin shoulders and an air of firm resolution, that Maria had come up with a wonderful solution to their dilemma.
‘Her brother runs a café bar—not here in Marbella, down the coast in one of those tourist places. He needs someone to run it since he opened another one last month. And,’ she continued triumphantly, ‘it comes with an apartment above! We’ll move in the minute we can.’
Talia had stared disbelievingly. This was not the mother she had known all her life. Nervy, brittle, and totally dependent on her daughter and husband.
‘Mum, are you...are you sure you could cope?’
The change in lifestyle would be absolute. Terrifying, surely, for her mother?
Maxine’s eyes had flashed. ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘It’s time—way beyond time—that I faced the truth about what has happened.’
Talia still couldn’t believe the change in her mother, but she was abjectly grateful for it—and to Maria, who was giving them a way forward. It would be hard work, but right now—a choking sob tried to rise in her throat, but she pushed it back with determination—anything that blocked her mind from going where it kept trying to go was to be clung to with all her might.
Exhausting herself by running a café—waiting on tables, keeping it clean, doing everything except the cooking, which Maria’s nephew was going to be doing—surely would leave her no time to think of Luke?
Please, God...
* * *
Luke flipped open the locks of his suitcase, intent on extracting a clean T-shirt to sleep in. Beyond the soundproofed windows in this most prestigious hotel in Hong Kong the glittering skyline of the city was like jewels glistening against the night. It was a city with millions of inhabitants, but he had never felt more alone in his life.
Emptiness gaped all around him.
Being on his own had become a way of life for him. He’d spent ten years focussed on making money and hunting down his enemy. There had been neither the time nor the inclination for relationships. His affairs—if they could even be called that—had been fleeting...strangers who met and parted again, never finding anything to keep them together. For what woman would want to attach herself to a man as driven as he had been? As he had had to be in order to achieve what he had promised his parents he would do in their name?
But now that was all over. He was free—finally, blessedly free—to find someone to share his life with.
And I found her! I found her and wanted her and offered her everything I thought would make her want me too—
The cry came from deep within but he cut it off. There was no use listening to it. No use staring around this anonymous hotel bedroom and wanting, with a longing that was a physical pain in his gut, the one person who would make it the most wonderful place in the world for him.
She didn’t want you. She left you.
He would force himself to stop wanting her. After all, she wasn’t exactly the woman of his dreams, was she?
He knew what he was doing—that his mind was seeking ways to dull the pain by finding fault with Talia. But he forced himself to think of all the things that were wrong with her, to think about whose daughter she was, about what that had turned her into.
Do you really want to have a woman like that in your life? A hothouse flower unable to survive without the shelter of a man to provide her with the luxuries of life, to look after her and cosset her? A woman who’s only ever played at life? Who’s never had to hold down a job, earn a living, work for what she has? Who’s never had to take any responsibility? A show pony living off her father’s wealth? Who panicked and collapsed when she was faced with losing her luxury lifestyle?
The questions seared in his head but he would not answer them. Dared not.
All he wanted now was a shower, a shave, and then to drink himself to oblivion from the bar in the room. Alcohol and sleep would silence the torment in his head. Because he was sure nothing else could.
He frowned. What the—?
On top of his neatly folded clothes was a large, stiff art folder. He stared angrily. Why on earth had that been packed? Talia’s tasteless amateur daubs were the last thing he wanted to see!
Roughly, he yanked the portfolio out, flinging it onto the desk beside the suitcase stand. But he’d been careless in his aim, and as he fetched a clean white T-shirt the toilet bag in his hand caught the corner of the portfolio. It clattered to the floor, its contents spilling out. With an oath, he stooped to scoop it all up, glad the sheets had fallen face-down. All except one, which he had to reach for.
He straightened, holding the sketch in his hands. Staring. Frowning.
Shock went through him.
This was no amateur daub. Nor was it anything remotely like any of the interiors he’d seen at the Grantham Land properties.
This was good! The vision was immediate, impactful. The wide space of the hotel’s atrium was just the way it had been b
efore the storm, but brought back to life in startling relief. He went on staring, taking it all in.
The deep cobalt-blue-tiled floor and the emerald-green walls made one vast fresco, bringing the lush rainforest indoors, splashed with the vivid colours of tropical flowers, of birds darting through the foliage with rainbow plumage. The huge arched opening to the terrace framed the gardens leading out to the sea, as azure as the tiling was cobalt, blending the interior with the exterior, making it one seamless whole.
And in his mind’s eye it was instantly real—he could see it, feel it. Feel just what a newly arrived guest would experience on entering the hotel. It would stop them in their tracks. There was no question this design had the total wow factor.
Mesmerised, he turned over the other sheets one by one, discovering what she had done for the restaurant, the bar, the bedrooms. All had been designed to have that same vivid, vibrant impact.
He spread them out on the desk, gazing down at them. Then he realised there was a transparent folder amongst them. Frowning again, he unfastened it to study its contents. There was an envelope of fabric swatches, each labelled carefully, and another envelope of downloaded illustrations from potential furniture, flooring, and fabric suppliers. And there, too, were multiple, neatly set out sheets—costings, prices, delivery schedules, names and contact details for suppliers and shippers, even notes about import licences and customs duties.
The information had been methodically researched and laid out, comprehensively covering all that would be required for him to make a decision on whether to go with her designs or not, and what it would cost him if he did. It was as thorough and as professional as her artistic vision was brilliant.
Numbly, he went on staring at Talia’s work, his thoughts in chaos.
* * *
‘Buenas tardes!’ Talia smiled cheerfully at another customer arriving at the busy café.
She was glad it was busy because it gave her no time for thoughts of Luke. Run off her feet, she could keep her misery at bay. Only in the long reaches of the night, attempting to sleep on the settee in the sitting room of the tiny flat above the café, her mother in the single bedroom, would it devour her in muffled, useless sobs.
What use was crying? But that didn’t stop her from doing it anyway.
Instead she must focus on her work: serving customers with drinks and relaying the dishes emerging from the kitchen, where Maria’s nephew Pepe was in charge, and keeping an eye on her mother, who sat at a small desk off to one side and, to Talia’s continuing astonishment, pored assiduously over the café’s accounts.
‘Darling, I’m good at accounts—you know I had to justify every penny I spent to your father!’
Talia did remember bleakly how her father had interrogated her own costings, brutally knocking off anything that he’d thought she’d overspent on, taking it out of the allowance he paid her instead of a salary.
But she shouldn’t let herself think of that, because that made her remember how enthusiastically she’d worked out the costings for the ruined Caribbean hotel. Anguish tore at her—and not just for the waste of her efforts. For a reason so much more unendurable.
But endure it she must—and so she hurried back out to the pavement tables to take orders there.
The café was in a side street of this busy tourist town, with nothing to remind her of the showy glitz of Marbella and Puerto Banus. Which was why the logo on the side of a delivery van turning into the road caught her eye. It was that of an upmarket courier company she remembered from the days when expensive items had used to be routinely delivered to the Marbella villa.
The driver was getting out, looking uncertainly at the modest café. ‘I am looking for Señorita Grantham,’ he said to her, his voice doubtful. In his hand he held a small package.
Talia stared, then walked slowly forward. She took the package and signed for it with a confused frown. Her heart started to beat heavily, and on impulse she tore at the packaging. Then, as the tell-tale contents were revealed, confirmed by the glittering river of fire as she lifted the hinged lid of the box, she gave a cry of revulsion.
Slamming the lid back down, she dashed to the driver, who was climbing back into his van. ‘Take it back!’ She thrust the package at him. ‘I don’t want it! Take it back!’
She whirled away, her heart slugging with a furious hammering. She bolted back inside the café, her face black with anger. Bleak with it.
That’s all he ever thought I was: a silly, spoiled princess who wanted rubies from him.
The pain of it pierced her like a blade in her heart—her stupid, stupid heart.
* * *
Luke was in his office in Lucerne, sunlight bathing the high peaks visible from the windows. But he did not see them. His entire attention was focussed on what was being said to him on his phone.
‘It was refused?’ he snapped. ‘And what the hell do you mean, the villa was empty? It can’t have been!’ He drew a sharp breath. ‘Then where—?’ He listened. ‘What? They were located where?’
He dropped the phone on to the huge mahogany desk, still staring, uncomprehending.
I told her she could stay another three months.
So why, when she had got exactly what she’d come begging for, would she have vacated the villa after all? His frown deepened, lines indenting around his mouth grimly. And why the hell had she ended up in some dump of a café in a cut-price tourist town, waiting on tables?
Why leave the villa? Why end up in a dump instead? And why, above all, refuse the damn rubies I sent her?
That bracelet was worth thousands. To refuse it when she had been reduced to waiting on tables... It didn’t make sense.
A space hollowed out inside him, as if a skewer had ground it from him.
But then, nothing about her made sense. Nothing at all.
Dimly, he became aware that his phone was ringing again, and he snatched it up. Only pre-screened calls came through on this line, so his PA must have cleared the caller. And when he answered it, he knew why. He listened with a gradual steeling of his body, his expression grim.
Then, as the call came to an end, he simply nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.
A single word. But in it was a wealth of meaning. More than ten years’ worth of meaning.
He set the phone down again and crossed to the window. He looked out across the lake to the cold snow-topped mountains beyond. The same snow seemed to be around his heart, inside his lungs. Memories from long ago pierced him—and a single word in his own mother tongue. A single name.
Nemesis.
Over ten years it had taken, and it had turned him from a carefree young stripling, full of eagerness for life and all that it could offer, to what he was now—to what he had become. An agent of the dark, unforgiving goddess of vengeance. Nemesis.
Justice, he tried to tell himself. Justice was more noble than vengeance.
He turned away, walked back to his desk, and threw himself into his chair, pressing his hands over the arms, his face set in steel.
Remembering.
Remembering what Grantham had done to his family had always been a kind of absolution for whatever sins Luke had committed in his pursuit of the man and his ill-gotten riches. But now, as his dark and troubled thoughts finally sank from his consciousness, another thought came.
His expression changed.
She needs to know.
He took a sharp, incising breath.
And I need to know, too.
To know why Talia had not stayed on in the villa when she’d begged him for it. Why she had refused the rubies he’d sent her to wait on tables instead.
His mouth tightened to a thin line.
And why I thought she hadn’t a shred of talent or professionalism when what she produced is blazing with it!
But there was one question above all that he had to have the answer to�
�whatever it took to find it.
Why did she leave me?
CHAPTER TEN
TALIA WAS MOPPING the café floor, chairs piled on the tables, before finally closing up for the night. Pepe had left, her mother had long gone to bed, and Talia was yawning, too, tired as ever from the long working day.
Her glance went to the café’s large windows. A car had drawn up outside—a long, low, luxurious black car. A car that suddenly, urgently, caused her to abandon her mop and dash over to shut and bolt the café door.
Too late.
He was getting out of the car and striding across the pavement to her as she fumbled with the locks and bolts. He effortlessly pushed the door open before she could get there. Stepped inside.
‘I need to talk to you.’
Luke’s voice was terse, his face grim. He’d known she was at this café, but to see her with a mop and bucket, swabbing the floor, had been a shock for all that.
She backed away—an instinctive, automatic movement. Shock was crashing through her—and so much more than shock.
‘Go away! Leave me alone!’
Talia’s voice was high-pitched and she stepped back from him, clutching at a table as if for support. Her legs were suddenly weak, the blood was drumming in her veins, and faintness was dimming her vision.
I can’t bear for Luke to see me here. I can’t bear to see him at all.
He was speaking again, stepping forward.
She tried to push past him, but his words stopped her.
‘Listen to me—please. I have something important to tell you.’
‘I don’t want to hear it!’ she cried out in that same high-pitched voice, shaking her head violently.
He ignored her. He had to say this—whether she wanted to hear it or not.
‘There is something you need to know.’
Was that hesitation? Uncertainty.
She stared at him. Her heart was still thumping like a hammer in her chest. He was looking at her with an expression in his face she did not recognise. She could not get her brain into gear because all her senses were firing, overloaded with the closeness of him that was causing her lungs to seize and her breath to come in short pants.