0263249026 (R)

by Bella Frances

  He ran for miles. Kept going well past the point where he normally doubled back. The surfers were out in force, riding the pretty big waves that spilled up and soaked him time and again as he pounded along the beach. A couple of riders passed, their horses galloping in the foam, and he made a mental note to take Frankie out riding in the surf before she left. She’d love it.

  His head was still pounding, and still full of conflicting thoughts, but at least he’d cleared up one thing and he felt a hell of a lot better for it.

  He trudged up from the beach, thinking about a long drink and a cool shower. Thinking about whether it should be alone or not. Thinking about Frankie and the conversation he was definitely going to have with her. Picking up from where they’d left off last night. God knew he had said it often enough in the past—no commitment past a sexual relationship. No expectations. And definitely no one getting any ideas about buying a hat. He liked her. A lot. But it was best if they were both really clear about what was going to happen next. He had to make sure she had no stupid notions brewing after last night.

  But first he was going to get that drink.

  He rounded the corner of the garden onto the terrace—right into the middle of a cosy scene.

  Dante and Frankie. They were huddled together, staring at something. And the closeness of them, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh on the swing seat, brought a bitter taste to his mouth. What was Dante playing at? Happy families?

  ‘Oh, my God, he’s not going to like this.’

  ‘Not going to like what?’ he asked, aware of the growl in his voice—aware and not giving a damn.

  They both looked up sharply. Dante couldn’t hide the moment of surprise on his face, but then, as ever, he slipped right back into easy charm.

  ‘Hey, bro, that’s some dynamo you’re operating. Wall-to-wall private partying and a ten-mile run before breakfast? I’ve been here for ages, waiting for you. Good job Frankie was here to look after me.’

  Don’t let him wind you up, he told himself. But even though he knew Dante was deliberately baiting him, he still rose.

  ‘You’re here earlier than I thought,’ he said, walking towards them, still sitting there all cosy together. ‘You should have messaged me. I’d have made sure I was here.’

  ‘Well, normally I wouldn’t rush, as you know, but with Frankie here just now I can hardly stay away.’

  Frankie laughed and punched the side of his arm playfully. ‘You’re hilarious. You only just got here!’

  And then Dante slid his arm around her and squeezed her against his side, blue eyes flashing and smile beaming. A look of complete joy on his face.

  ‘This is still early for me, sweet cheeks. Normally my first meal after Turlington is dinner. Today I’m going for brunch. Impressed?’

  Rocco was so, so unimpressed. Dante had gone right past flirting and moved into some kind of buddy brother-in-law role. The last thing Frankie needed was any more in the way of invitations to be part of Team Hermida. Rocco needed to bring him up to speed on things—and fast.

  ‘Frankie, can you leave us for a moment? Dante and I have a little business to discuss. In private.’

  Which was true, but he could have handled it a lot less awkwardly than that, he supposed. The look that flashed over her face told him he’d hurt her, but she rose up with a serene little smile.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it. I’d better say goodbye, Dante—I’m not sure when I’ll next see you. I have to get back to work soon.’

  He stood, too, grabbed her shoulders and held her.

  ‘Ah, parted so soon … I didn’t realise. Sorry—I thought you were here for a while. Okay … Well, I’m sure this will only be a temporary goodbye—and it would be great to keep in touch anyway. Hermanos Hermida is always on the lookout for new cheerleaders.’

  Had he lost his mind? What the hell was he doing?

  Rocco watched as Dante pulled her in for a squeeze that lasted far too long, and had the fists in his hands curled into tight, angry balls. If that punching bag was at hand it would get a blasting!

  Finally he let her go, and she sauntered off with that sexy little walk, wearing yet another of his shirts. Beautifully.

  He turned to Dante.

  ‘Sweet-cheeks? Cheerleader? What the hell are you up to, Dante? Since when do you lead any woman on to thinking they’re going to be part of this family?’

  Dante walked towards him.

  ‘Relax. You’re like a caged beast. I had to smooth over your clumsy move. What was all that about? Sending her away the way you did? Who treats the woman they love like that?’

  He froze. Dante had sat down again and picked up a newspaper, flicked it open and started to scan through it. He lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth and sipped. As if he had merely asked him about the weather instead of firing a volley of emotionally charged bullets. And striking his target—bull’s eye.

  ‘You can forget that.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, flicking on, sipping on. ‘Are you going to try to pretend you’re not in love with her? It’s as obvious as Carmel’s fake boobs. Talking of which—you might want to break the habit of a lifetime and check out the latest media reports. If you say you’re not in love, you’d better put out a press release.’

  And he tossed him his phone.

  Pictures of him and Frankie. His eyes scanned them—leaving the villa, entering the Turlington Club, and then the one that he himself had staged, kissing passionately. His eyes widened at how hot they looked. And then there were more—of them staring into each other’s eyes, thinking they were unobserved, smiling and hugging. Okay, it did look like love caught on camera, but they were just lovers out together. It was no big deal. He’d been with other dates before and there were probably dozens of pictures just like these.

  But as his fingers scrolled down he saw what Dante was pointing out. There were pictures of him with other women, but he held them at a distance and his face was rigid. And the headlines screamed, The Hurricane Has Been Tamed!

  La Gaya—the Magpie—that was what they were calling Frankie, thanks to her striking dark hair and her pearl-pale skin—and to stealing from the nest of the glorious Carmel. Brilliant. Just what he needed.

  He tossed Dante his phone.

  ‘It’ll blow over. No big deal. There’s more important stuff to deal with. Like what did you find out?’

  Dante dropped the humour like a soaked blanket.

  ‘It was the longest of long shots. Might still be something in it, but I don’t know. I got the feeling from our guy that they’re doing as much fishing as we are. Someone’s claimed to have shared a cell with a guy who knew Chris Martinez. Said he’d been inside and then released after only serving a couple of months. The talk was that he’d done a deal and been given a new identity. But that’s all it was. Talk.’

  ‘Sounds pretty likely, though.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. But there was nothing else to get from the guy. He didn’t have any more intel on Martinez. And he started to ask too many other questions. I reckon he was fishing for info about you.’

  Rocco mulled that over. He’d been so careful about this. He didn’t deal directly with investigators himself. This was the first time Dante had stepped in for him but otherwise he always used a proxy, kept his distance, organised everything via a separate email account and phone number. The last thing he wanted was to bring any shame on the Hermida family. Not after all they’d done for him. So for all that he was picking through the detritus of a nasty world, he’d done it carefully—very carefully—up until now.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What next?’

  Rocco rubbed the back of his neck, stretched out his shoulders, flexed his hands. Shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should leave it for a while? It’s not as if the trail is red-hot. Spend some time with Frankie and fix that before she goes. Don’t leave loose ends, or you might …’


  He frowned at Dante.

  ‘Might what?’

  ‘Lose her.’

  They stared at each other across the table, the newspaper spread out between them like a matador’s cloak. And Rocco was definitely the bull.

  ‘I’m just saying—I know you. When you get information—any information—about Martinez you go into these moods, lash out at people. Like I just saw. And someone like Frankie isn’t going to hang around to take it.’ He put his hands up in a mock surrender. ‘Just sayin’ …’

  ‘I’ve got it covered,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you have.’ Dante reached for him, slapped his back, the way they always did. ‘I’m going to head off now. Are you travelling back to BA today? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Later today, if you want a lift. Frankie has a meeting set up with a trader to check out some aloe samples before she flies back to Madrid.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll leave you two alone. Time must be precious.’

  Dante lifted his phone, drained his coffee and pulled out his car keys. One final slap on the back and then he walked away, tripping down the steps as if he was dancing in a damn Hollywood musical. How did he make every moment of his life look like a movie? He pulled him out of his moods every time.

  Rocco smiled to himself. God, he loved that man. He headed indoors. Time to shower, shave and then bundle them both back to La Colorada and their full and frank, no-holds-barred discussion.

  Frankie finished the last part of her email and reread it for the tenth time. Her finger hovered for two whole seconds above the keyboard—and then she pressed Send.

  Gone. Too late to do anything about it now.

  She had taken almost two hours to think it through, come to a final decision and then write the damned thing. Two hours in which she had written out a list of pros and cons that had Rocco Hermida’s name in both columns.

  Staying here was a pro because it gave her more time with him—time to get to know him better, to explore every part of his fabulous estancia, to go riding, to take in the next polo match and to lie in his arms after it and revel in the gorgeous feeling of being Rocco’s girl.

  But staying here was also a con, because if she did all of those things it meant that she was going to fall deeper and deeper in love. And she wasn’t stupid enough to think that was a two-way street—yet. It might be … in time. But after opening up to her last night, lifting the lid on his box of secrets, he’d slammed it shut again, nailed it down and buried it deeper than it had ever been.

  He’d prowled through the house on the phone, moving into empty spaces and closing glass doors, literally shutting her out. He’d spent nearly all morning running on the beach, and a good part of the afternoon in the gym. He’d been curt, verging on rude when Dante had been there, and though he’d apologised he’d offered no explanation or softening. It was almost as if he was angry at himself for sharing his story, for making himself seem a little more human, a little more mortal than godlike.

  And in a way that just added to the allure. He was so complex, so dark, so vulnerable. And she ached to help him slough off this crown of thorns he wore. She’d never felt more moved than when she was lying in his arms, making love in the early hours of the morning. It was like opening her eyes after the longest sleep, glimpsing a beautiful sunrise, seeing a glorious future—and then feeling darkness seep back as night fell prematurely, suddenly. Leaving her stumbling about in the dark, unable to find the light.

  So what to do? What to do …?

  In the end one thing had tipped the balance—he enriched her. But more than that he needed her. She knew how hard it had been for him to talk about his early childhood. Maybe he never had before. And if she didn’t make an effort for him now she might never take the chance again. Because it was a chance. There was no guarantee that he was going to revisit any of that trauma with her or anyone else. It broke her heart to think that he carried that guilt. But it was so him. To shoulder everything himself. And keeping everyone else at a distance was probably the only way he could handle it.

  Did she really expect him to treat her any differently than any of the countless women she’d seen on those pictures that she and Dante had scrolled through earlier? She knew what she felt, but getting him to a point where he might admit the same was like trying to reroute a hurricane. It was only going to go where it wanted. And when it hit land everybody had better stand back.

  She sighed and clicked on her sent box to confirm that the email had indeed been delivered. Knowing that in approximately two hours’ time her boss was going to read it and probably go into some kind of tailspin himself.

  The timing couldn’t be worse. She was asking for leave at a time when she should have been parcelling herself up to be sent express delivery back to Madrid. She could feel in her bones the resistance to her proposals already. The emails that had been coming from head office were getting more and more cautionary. She could detect a derisory sniff in the air, and now she was seven days away from a one-to-one with her boss.

  But she was going to use this extra time to polish her proposal until it shone. Going organic was the only way. Natural products were everywhere. There was nothing to commend Evaña to the modern savvy shopper. If she could develop an organic line and hook in a couple of bloggers, they’d be off to a flyer. If not they were going to continue to lose customers like skin lost elasticity, and none of the big stockists would look twice at them. At least this way the ageing geriatric company might have a future. And if it had a future, so did she.

  That had to remain her number one priority. Being here with Rocco was enriching, but it wasn’t real life. Real life was waiting for her when she jumped out of the metro in Madrid and picked her way along the calle to head office and her moment in the spotlight.

  She packed up her briefcase in readiness for their early-morning helicopter ride. Rocco’s helicopter … Rocco’s pilot. Hopefully their journey would go by unnoticed. The last thing she wanted was any more media interest as a result of her being with him. Her poor mother was already contending with whatever it was that had tipped Danny over the edge and into wedded bliss. He was playing his cards very close to his chest, as he always did. But thankfully what had happened in Punta seemed to be staying in Punta—for now anyway.

  She braced herself every time she got a message, thinking it might be her mother, wailing and crossing herself over her daughter’s loose morals—or even more likely her father, who would be happy to finally be proved right.

  She zipped up the black leather case, stacked it beside the gorgeous old desk in the study she’d settled herself in and smiled. Strange how she’d begun to see things slightly differently after hearing Rocco’s words. For a moment she let herself bask in all the sweet things he’d whispered to her at night. Let herself feel that she was unique in a positive way, rather than freakily different from all the local girls. Feel proud of what she’d achieved rather than ashamed that she didn’t want what had been mapped out for her. An inspiration, he’d called her once. And more than a tiny part of her wanted to believe that.

  She traced her way back through the expansive masculine home. Polished parquet floors with silk runners spread out along long narrow hallways. Console tables punctuated the burgundy silk walls, highlighting fabulous black-and-white photographs of gauchos and dancers and patent-coated stallions. It was so him—so darkly, elegantly, brutally beautiful.

  His bedroom threw the house’s dark arteries into airy relief. High ceilings, wide windows and sumptuous silk carpets—and the bed that they had christened after that disastrous pony ride two days earlier.

  She smiled, looked at it and straightened the pony-skin cushions, setting them against the vast wooden headboard. The little photo of Lodo was back in place on the bedside table. She picked it up and looked at it—really looked at it. What a beautiful boy he had been … but so solemn. God only knew what terrors he’d seen—what terrors Rocco had seen and continued to see. He might have clammed up again, but those flashe
s of truth had given her such insight—personal nuggets she’d hold dear and treasure.

  She sighed. Blew out a huge breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding. She glanced over at the door to the dressing room and her battered little carry-on and suit bags. She had to remember she was here for a purpose, and it wasn’t all about taming the Hurricane—and the more she read the subtext of her directors’ bulletins the more she felt the enormity of that task, too.

  But she could nail this, she thought as she moved over and ran a hand down her best summer suit, smoothing down the fabric and straightening the seams. She could actually make a difference—not only to Evaña but to herself, too. She could talk terms with traders, strike reasonable deals and put the stats into a really slick presentation. She could do some groundwork with bloggers and a beauty editor she’d begun to get friendly with. She really could pull this off.

  And then she’d have banked more than enough to ride back to County Meath with her head high and her pride intact and demand a very long overdue apology from her father.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER Frankie jumped out of the helicopter, kept her head bent, clutched her briefcase to her body and hurled herself across the parched grass to the driveway. Her heels stuck in mud-baked crevices and the rotors thundered over her head, throwing up the skirt of her dress. But she didn’t care. She just wanted out of it. Out of the helicopter and away from her stinging reflections on the crucifying day she’d forced herself to relive on the hour-long flight back.

  Coming in to land, she’d spotted riders cutting through the head-high grass fields and moving into the rougher countryside that she’d crossed herself a few days earlier. Clouds of dust swirled and settled as they rode through green-and-yellow grassland. Rocco was sure to be with them. She’d left him this morning, after another night of frenzied passion—another night when she’d longed to cry out her heart into the hot dark night, to whisper her love and bask in the emotions that rolled through her when she lay in his arms.