CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

S YDNEY BLINKED .

Her heart was beating so loudly she was surprised that Tiger couldn’t hear it. If only she had stayed upstairs. It was the latest in an ongoing, ever-growing list of regrets she had about the last few days. But there was nothing she could do about that now.

She cleared her throat. ‘Is that what this is called?’

Tiger nodded, and then he walked towards her and every single cell in her body exploded with panic, except it wasn’t panic. She knew panic all too well, and this was more complicated.

And contradictory.

‘It’s a Tuscan bread salad. I have my chef make it every time I visit.’

‘Here, you have it.’ She held it out towards him, and then wished she hadn’t as the movement made the robe part around her throat and she felt the flick of his gaze lick her skin like a flame.

‘Or,’ he said after several beats of silence, ‘we could share it.’

They ate in the kitchen. Tiger didn’t bother to decant the salad onto a second plate so it was a case of sharing.

‘My bad—’ Her pulse twitched as his fork collided with hers as they both tried to spear the same piece of tomato at the same time.

‘You have it,’ she said quickly, fingers tightening around the handle of the fork. She couldn’t remember the last time she had shared a plate of food with anyone and it felt oddly intimate. Too intimate. It was the kind of thing a new couple might do on their first date, order a dessert and then smugly ask the waiter for two spoons.

But she and Tiger were not a couple and, even though superficially this had all the component parts of one, this definitely wasn’t a date. More it was a ceasefire.

‘You’re the guest,’ he countered.

Her eyes flicked to his face. ‘I thought I was a pain.’

In the low lighting of the kitchen, his hair and eyes were dark, only his skin looked golden. ‘Oh, you’re that too.’

She had been here before with a different man who had made it his mission to point out her flaws. But this didn’t feel like that at all. Absurdly it felt as if his words were meant as a compliment.

‘I mean, it’s kind of what you do, isn’t it? Being two things at once.’

That wasn’t a compliment but his voice lacked the sting it would have if he were digging at her and the slight uptilt to his mouth made her want to lean closer and trace the curve of his lips—

Shying away from the ridiculousness of that thought, she let her gaze drop to the plate, staring down admiringly at the olive-oil-strewn chunks of bread and glossy tomatoes, as if that, not him and his all too fascinating face, was the most important thing in the room just then.

‘But I was being a bit of a pain too,’ he said softly.

Glancing up, she found him watching her in that incisive way of his.

‘A bit?’ She raised an eyebrow.

Tiger leaned back in his seat, his strong fingers stroking the rim of his water glass, and she suddenly wished that it were New York time here so that Silvana or some other member of staff would be bringing them food just as they had on the plane, and there would be something to distract her from this intense and intensely beautiful man sitting opposite her.

‘Okay, I was a pain earlier. I hadn’t thought through some of the hands-on practicalities of our arrangement.’

Hands-on. Remembering the seeking press of his fingers as he had pulled her against him, she felt her face get warm.

‘I didn’t think about it either,’ she said quickly.

He tilted his chin back. ‘True, but as you so rightly said, this was my idea.’

It was more of an acknowledgement than an apology but that in itself felt seismic. During her brief, exhausting and terrifying marriage, she had always been wrong and it had taken years to shift that thinking.

‘And I should have realised that you might not be comfortable sharing a bed.’ She must have tensed because she felt his eyes flick to her face.

‘So, I was thinking maybe you might be happier in another room.’

Now her eyes flicked to his. She hadn’t expected that and something of her surprise must have shown on her face because he frowned. ‘I know I haven’t offered you much in the way of evidence but I’m not a monster, Sydney.’

‘I don’t think you’re a monster,’ she said quietly. ‘And I get why it makes sense for us to sleep in the same room.’

His eyes were steady and precise on her face. ‘I can take the sofa.’

‘Or you could share the bed.’ Her voice sounded different, and now his gaze enveloped her, holding her captive with hypnotic intensity.

‘Like you said, it’s big enough.’

‘It is.’ His voice was different now too. ‘But only if you’re okay with that.’

She nodded. ‘I am.’ She was. And she knew that shouldn’t make sense, and yet it did. Because of him.

Maybe he hadn’t formally apologised but Tiger had admitted to going too far; what was more, he was trying to make amends for how he’d acted.

Only this wasn’t just about him, it was about her too. About how, even though she was divorced, she hadn’t put her relationship with Noah behind her. For so long now, she had been too scared to let anyone get close but, probably because none of this was real, she felt safe enough with Tiger to do so. Not just physically, but emotionally.

After all, she was playing a role. Her actual feelings weren’t involved.

And a part of her did miss being intimate, being held, being close to someone, which was completely understandable. Although it was surprising that it should be Tiger who had made her finally admit that to herself. To cover her confusion she said quickly, ‘But thank you for giving me the choice.’

‘So, you believe me now?’ He was watching her with a narrow sort of gaze as if he cared about her answer. ‘That I’m not a monster?’

‘You’re not a monster. I mean, you like getting your own way.’

‘You sound like my housekeeper.’

That smile.

She felt her stomach lurch, only this time it had nothing to do with hunger and her heart thudded hard as heat surged through her. A dizzying, dangerous heat that she felt everywhere, almost as if those callused hands were touching her, caressing her—

‘What do you mean?’ She didn’t really care. It was just something to say to clear her head but as his eyes met hers, she was suddenly curious.

A knot formed lower down in her belly as he shifted back in his seat and the crooked smile curving his mouth deepened a fraction at the corners. ‘When I came downstairs, she guessed we’d had a row about where you were sleeping. I think it’s fair to say that she was surprised, but also pleased. She thinks I have things too easy. With women. She thinks it’s bad for me.’ His smile twisted. ‘She doesn’t say so to my face, but she has a way of conveying her opinion with an eyebrow or the slightest of shrugs.’

‘And do you? Have things too easy? With women?’ she blurted out before her brain could apply the brakes.

Her whole body tensed, the reaction both a learned response and a survival instinct hardwired in her DNA to the sudden tautness in the air that followed her question.

Tiger shifted in his seat.

‘I like women. And they like me,’ he said, putting down his fork. ‘Or they think they do until they realise that I’m not in it for the long haul.’

‘And that’s a problem, is it? The long haul?’

He nodded. ‘I think relationships are best kept simple.’

She agreed. Simple was good but safe was better. Not that she was interested in relationships. For any relationship to work there had to be trust and outside her family she didn’t trust anyone. And yet she was having this surprisingly frank conversation with Tiger.

‘By simple, I’m guessing you mean that you just want sex?’

He laughed. ‘That’s maybe putting it a little too simply. But yes, I suppose in an ideal world, I think it would be easier for most people if they accepted that sex was all they wanted a lot of the time. Only humans seem determined to make things more complicated, so we have marriage and romance and love.’

Been there, done that, she thought bleakly, and once was enough. And for her it had not been complicated at all.

Marriage was a cage; romance was a hoax. As for love?

Love was the most dangerous of them all. So much more dangerous than you were told. It was a promise that got broken every single day.

‘I’m not interested in any of that.’ He pushed the empty plate away from him as if to underscore that sentiment.

‘I’m not interested in any of that either.’ She hesitated for a moment then, putting her fork down, she said quietly, ‘What does interest you, then?’

Her heart slowed to a crawl as silence stretched between them.

‘Work. Building my business. And the moon. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to go there—’ He glanced past her to the dark square of sky outside. ‘It always felt like it was watching me, seeing me.’

It seemed like an odd thing to say. She couldn’t imagine a situation where Tiger wasn’t seen.

‘I suppose it would be quiet.’

He nodded and there was another long, shifting silence and then abruptly he leaned forward, his eyes suddenly very golden. ‘So, was it the truth?’

She stared at him, confused, not just by his question, which made no sense at all, but by the way he was looking at her so closely as if she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out. ‘Was what the truth?’

‘What you said about your family being strict. Are they?’

No, she thought. Her childhood home had not quite been lawless, but there had been very few rules. And she had hated it, because every morning when she’d woken, anything could have happened. Maybe that was why she was so good at hacking. She accepted the impossible, the random, the topsy-turvy and she had learned to let it flow round her while she restored order.

But she could imagine how that would sound to Tiger, how he would react. She had heard it so many times already, some version of the ‘apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’. She didn’t need to hear him say it too.

‘They’re not strict,’ she said slowly. ‘But they have lines they won’t cross.’

Her family might turn a blind eye to selling car parts that might be stolen. But they weren’t violent or controlling or abusive. For example, they wouldn’t bang someone’s face against a steering wheel because they had missed a spot of dirt on the windscreen.

The memory had crept in uninvited, but she couldn’t look away. One tiny little tooth, white like a pearl, and blood, red, slick, gleaming in the Nevada sunlight. So much blood.

She shoved the memory back forcefully into the margins because obviously she wasn’t going to tell Tiger any of that.

Or could she?

The question shocked her almost out of her skin. She was definitely suffering jet lag, she told herself, if she thought that was an option. It was the only possible explanation for why she was considering something that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

She had never told anyone about Noah, not even the police.

And she especially couldn’t tell Tiger. He wasn’t her confidant.

He wasn’t even her friend.

He was the man who had offered her a way out of the fire into the frying pan. And he would walk her straight back into the fire without a qualm because nobody got as rich as Croesus by being soft and simpatico . It didn’t matter that he had sat and shared a salad with her or that she had momentarily imagined feeling safe with him.

If she told him about Noah, then he would ask questions and any answers she gave would raise more questions. Only how could she answer those questions? To do so would mean revealing more than she was willing to share and she didn’t want to think about the person she had been back then. Didn’t want to show weakness when it felt as though they had reached some kind of equality.

‘What about your family? Are they strict?’

For a fraction of a second, she thought he wasn’t going to reply but then he did another of those infinitesimal shrugs.

‘I have no family.’

He glanced at the expensive watch on his wrist. ‘You should probably be able to sleep now.’

It was a dismissal, just as if they were back in the office. Except she was wearing a bathrobe.

‘Is there a dishwasher?’ She stood up, reaching for the plate—

‘You don’t need to.’

He moved at the same time, his chair scraping against the floor as he got to his feet, his hand covering hers.

Move , she told herself. But she couldn’t. It was as if the touch of his hand had stopped time. Stopped everything. There was nothing but the silence and the darkness and the heat of his skin and his nearness as the air grew thicker.

For a second they both stared at each other. Every single nerve ending in her body was flickering like a malfunctioning circuit board.

Only she didn’t feel broken.

She felt whole and right and sure, and she stepped forward and clasped his head between her hands and fitted her mouth against his.

And everything just stopped.

She felt a jolt of shock as if she hadn’t decided to kiss him. But then in a way she hadn’t. It had been more of an imperative, a challenge to be met, a need to be satisfied. Curiosity and desire in their most primitive and basic form.

She couldn’t remember any kiss feeling like this. It was a wildfire tearing through the darkened outback, torching everything in its path. A wall of flame that altered everything it touched. It was possessive and intoxicating. Devastating and reckless and so necessary.

And that was shocking in a different way. That she should want his mouth on hers. That there was no terror pulling her under at his closeness.

For the first time in six years, she wanted this, wanted him.

He was pulling her towards him now, his hand fumbling clumsily at her waist, anchoring her body against his so that she could feel the hard press of his chest and thighs.

The lights beneath the kitchen units spun and blurred behind them, bright and fast like a carousel, but the real world, the world of lawyers and contracts and threats and failure, was so far away.

There was only him.

Tiger.

Here. With his free hand sliding upwards through her hair in one smooth motion, fingers warm and strong, his mouth rough and tender. He parted her lips and deepened the kiss and the fierceness of him took her breath away and she heard herself moan. Then he was lifting her against him and her few remaining thoughts grew gauzy, weightless, unimportant.

Somewhere in the house a clock chimed loudly and she jerked backwards and her heart, which had stopped beating when he had touched her, started up again at twice the pace.

‘If you’ve changed your mind about where you want me to sleep—’ He sounded as shell-shocked as she felt. Nervous almost, although she must be imagining that.

She cleared her throat. ‘I haven’t,’ she said quickly.

‘Okay, then.’ He was back in control. ‘Like you said, the bed is big enough.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Why don’t you go on up? You don’t need to wait for me,’ he added. ‘I have some work to finish up.’

His dark gold gaze held her captive momentarily and then he turned to pick up the plate and she didn’t quite run but she moved swiftly through the silent house and back into the bedroom. Undoing the robe, she let it drop to the floor and climbed into bed, her body shimmering and strange to her, and she stayed that way when he slid in beside her as the light began to creep beneath the shutters.

‘Dovrei preparare una caffettiera fresca, Signor McIntyre? Questo è freddo.’

Glancing up at his housekeeper, Tiger shook his head. ‘No, grazie , Silvana.’

Normally he could drink any amount of coffee without any noticeable side effects at all, but today he had barely drunk more than a quarter of the French press that Silvana had brought to the table and he was already suffering from a sensory overload.

Or maybe the cause of his twitching pulse and headache was not the contents of the coffee press but the contents of the yellow shirtdress sitting opposite him in the soft Venetian sunlight.

He had woken early, but when he’d rolled over, the bed had been empty and the sheet smoothed flat as if she had never been there. As if he had dreamt her.

But she wasn’t a figment of his imagination, any more than that kiss.

Yet here she was sitting opposite him, calmly sipping her coffee as if nothing had happened in the kitchen. And he didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. When he’d strolled onto the terrace, he hadn’t expected her to smile but her mouth had curved up at the corners because Silvana was there too, he’d realised a moment later. But then she’d tilted her head up so that he’d caught a glimpse of the smooth arc of her throat and he’d leaned in and brushed his lips against hers.

She had stiffened fractionally and then her lips had parted and he’d had to fight against every urge to deepen the kiss because this arrangement was on his terms and that meant being able to pull back.

‘Buongiorno,’ he’d said softly, lifting his mouth and pulling out a chair in one smooth moment as Silvana had returned with a bowl of freshly baked cornettos . Sydney had selected an almond-flavoured one and as he watched her pull it apart, he wondered why the process of sharing breakfast with her today seemed so much less of a big deal than it had done on the plane.

No doubt it was because they had already eaten off the same plate last night or the early hours of this morning, depending on which time zone you applied. Although, right now, nothing seemed to matter as much as getting her to keep looking up at him like that so that he could see the pale underside of her neck.

He leaned forward casually. ‘Did you sleep well?’

She nodded. ‘ Ho dormito come un ghiro. Like a dormouse?’

He raised an eyebrow. It was an Italian phrase, but Sydney didn’t speak Italian. ‘Where did you pick that up?’

‘I did some miming to Silvana.’ She pressed the palms of her hands together and rested her head on them. ‘She told me what to say in Italian and then I checked on my phone to make sure I hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Or mistaken fireflies for lanterns. Prendere lucciole per lanterne. It’s the closest to getting the wrong end of the stick in Italian.’

He leaned a little closer, drawn to the flicker of curiosity in her brown eyes because, other than himself, he couldn’t think of a single person he knew who would be interested in learning idiomatic Italian for a week-long trip.

‘So, you like languages? I thought hackers were all maths nerds.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Do I look like a nerd to you?’

No, he thought. She didn’t. In that dress, with that hair and those toenails, she looked as if she were about to sashay down the Rio Terà de le Carampane to meet some girlfriends for lunch at Terrazza Cattana.

She shrugged. ‘Coding is like a language. Equations are just sentences with numbers. At school I never really understood that. I thought words weren’t my thing. Reading, writing was always such a struggle, so my teachers told me to focus on maths.’ She glanced away as if she was remembering a classroom somewhere and he found himself trying to picture her as a child. Skinny, he thought. Plaits and maybe a brace, he thought, remembering the way she had covered her mouth sometimes.

‘What changed?’

Her shoulders stiffened. It was the smallest of movements, so subtle that another man might not have noticed it. But thanks to his father, he was an expert at reading people and there was something about that infinitesimal shift that made his chest tighten.

‘I realised that letting other people set your boundaries was the easy option. Pushing back feels harder at the time. And it feels like an unnecessary risk to take, because you might fail.’ There was an odd undertone to her voice that pulled at something inside him. She was choosing her words with care, he realised, not just because she wanted to be clear about what she was trying to say. She was also trying to conceal some things too.

‘But if you don’t push back, you stop being you. And then every day a little piece of you will disappear until finally there’s nothing left.’

Sydney felt her stomach tighten. Tiger was lounging back in his chair, his face bathed in sunlight, one arm resting lightly along the back of the chair beside him, his long legs stretching out casually beneath the table. He was wearing a pale blue, short-sleeved linen shirt and loose cream-coloured trousers and he looked every inch the relaxing business mogul on vacation.

Except his eyes. Which were staring at her intently.

‘That’s quite a theory,’ he said at last.

She forced herself to shrug but inside her head was spinning. It was true, she did feel that way, but she had never articulated it out loud because it wasn’t just reading and writing she found hard. Speaking her mind, making herself heard, was also a problem. It was another reason why she liked working with computers. Coding didn’t require actual speech.

But there was something about this man that made her eloquent.

No , not this man, she corrected herself quickly. It was the situation. Being here, in Italy, on this island. It felt as though she were outside space and time, outside herself.

‘In my job, there’s a lot of sitting around waiting for things to reveal themselves so I get a lot of time to think.’

Or she could just say the first, stupid thing that came into her head.

Her words reverberated loudly around the terrace and her jaw clenched tight as Tiger’s eyes flicked to her face.

‘Am I to assume by job you mean the part in the day when you hack my server in order to steal my IP? Rather than what I was paying you to do?’ Tiger said softly. He hadn’t moved a muscle but the air around them seemed to shudder a little and she swore silently because they had come full circle. The guarded rapprochement of moments earlier had evaporated and Tiger was once again the man who had stared down at her in his office with such contempt.

‘I was just trying to—’ she began, but he cut her off.

‘No matter. You’re here to do a different job now and time is moving on.’ His gaze sharpened. ‘I’ll give you a quick tour of the house and then we need to go over a few things, get our stories straight.’

The villa was beautiful and she would have liked to stop and admire the gilt and the marble and the tapestries and the glittering chandeliers, but the tour was brief and perfunctory, with Tiger opening doors and listing off rooms at breakneck speed so that she had little more than a blurred impression of pink and dark red and burnished gold.

Finally, they made their way upstairs and he ticked off the various bedrooms and bathrooms until they reached their bedroom, where the housekeeper stood waiting by the door.

‘Ah, Silvana, è tutto pronto ?’

The housekeeper nodded. ‘Quasi.’

‘Bene.’ He turned back to Sydney, gesturing through the door. ‘Shall we?’

She stepped into the bedroom and stopped. There was a rail in the middle of the room and hanging from the rail were clothes. Not her clothes, but fluid, figure-hugging couture that came without price tags because only people who didn’t care about money would buy them.

‘What are these?’ She turned towards Tiger, who frowned, unsurprisingly, because it was obvious what they were.

‘They’re for you to wear this week. It’s not just the regatta and the ball, there are other events and you need to look the part. You’re welcome,’ he added, his mouth twisting, clearly underwhelmed by what he perceived as a lack of gratitude on her part.

‘What’s wrong with my clothes?’ she said, pushing back against the memories of Noah throwing her favourite jeans in the trash. As on everything else, her ex-husband had had opinions on what she should wear. And now Tiger seemed to think he could have an opinion too. Only it was more than that. Ever since she’d talked about her job at breakfast, his mood had shifted. But why was he so angry about something he already knew? It made no sense, only that was the worst kind of anger to manage.

‘I knew I was going to have to borrow something for the ball, because I don’t have a ball gown, but—’

‘Are you being serious?’ he said after a moment, his tone cool and sardonic. ‘What you’re wearing is fine for here, but you need something more high-end.’ He flicked the sleeve of a beautiful dark green dress.

‘You said smart-casual.’

His golden gaze seemed to tear into her. ‘I meant for the flight. Obviously, I’m not expecting you to wear your own clothes when we’re in public.’

Sydney stared at the contents of the rail, a small shiver winding through her body. ‘Why “obviously”? My backstory is that I’m someone you met through work. We’re not pretending that I come from money.’

‘Because that’s how this works.’ He was impatient now. ‘Because I’m not just a guest, I’m a sponsor of the race and the ball and you’re going to attend those events as my girlfriend, which means you have to wear the kind of clothes that a girlfriend of mine would wear. Most women would be happy, grateful, excited.’

Trying to stay calm and centred, Sydney let her gaze move over the shimmering silks and gauzy wisps of chiffon. ‘But I wouldn’t wear anything like this. It’s not who I am.’

‘You are who I say you are.’

His voice was harsh but it was the shrug accompanying that blunt statement that made the floor ripple beneath her feet as if it were made of quicksand, because that tiny, careless shift of his shoulders was more than just proof that he was unmoved by, and impervious to, her point of view, her wishes, her feelings.

It was a sharp, stomach-churning reminder of how quickly her world had shifted and shrunk six years ago.

‘Think of it like Halloween. Only there’s an upside. You don’t have to return the costume.’ Now he picked up the green dress and let it dangle mid-air from the hanger like something broken. ‘You can keep it. Keep all of them.’ He gestured to the rail. ‘And as they’re “not who you are”, you can sell them. Because they’re worth a lot of money and we both know that’s what matters to you, isn’t it, Sydney?’

In the past she would have kept quiet, tried to defuse the situation, but Tiger had reduced her life, her ambition, her essence, into one cutting rhetorical question. Because as she already knew it was only his opinion that mattered.

‘Says the billionaire who stays up until three a.m. working.’

A muscle pulsed in his jaw and he looked as if he might move closer. ‘This is going to come as a shock to you, Sydney, but some people actually work hard for a living.’

‘I work hard.’

His face was like stone. ‘In this instance, working two jobs is not some sign of your diligence. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your position at McIntyre was about deceit and ultimately theft, and all theft is about entitlement and greed.’

‘I’m not entitled or greedy.’

‘Then why were you stealing from me?’

‘I told you I needed—I need the money. Or are you deluded enough to think I want to be here with you, that I would for one moment consider pretending to be your girlfriend if you weren’t continually threatening to hand me over to the police?’

His eyes were burning a hole in her retinas. He didn’t like that, but she didn’t care.

‘Do you think I want you here?’ he said coldly. ‘You’re just the lesser of two evils.’

That hurt more than it should have done but that wasn’t why she flinched. It was the fury in his voice.

‘But,’ he continued in that same cold voice, ‘if this is all such a trial to you, Sydney, then why don’t I put you out of your misery and call the police?’

‘Because I can’t help my brothers if I’m stuck in prison.’

There was a moment of stillness and she knew from the way Tiger was looking at her that her face had gone pale, but she was already spinning on her heel, moving, legs reacting before her brain even knew what she was doing—

She heard Tiger swear, sensed him moving, his hand reaching for her.

‘Scusi, signorina.’

Silvana had returned with a trolley laden with boxes and she caught a glimpse of the housekeeper’s startled face and then she sidestepped past her and did what she should have done all those years ago when Noah had first made it clear that her feelings didn’t matter. That she only mattered in relation to him, and then only if she put his needs above her own.

Never again.

Never.

Again.

Her strides lengthened and as she pushed open a door into the sunshine, she started to run, feet pounding against warm stone, then grass, stumbling, then running, once, then twice. She had no idea where she was going. All she could think about was getting as far away from that scene in the bedroom as possible. She had shown too much emotion, given too much away. Given him more than she had wanted to.

Too late, she realised she should have gone to the jetty, but instead she had reached a beach.

She slowed, slightly out of breath, her heart shuddering against her ribs, her gaze moving past the dancing white-tipped waves to the pale, shimmering city hovering like a mirage beyond it.

Venice.

It was too far away to make out anything specific but even at a distance she felt its calming effect and, a moment later, she reached down and unbuckled her sandals. Pressing her feet into the sand, she felt a wave of homesickness, and guilt. Because she had let them down. Her brothers had needed her and she had failed them.

What had she done?

Tiger was no pussycat, but he wasn’t violent. Except his anger, that blind fury she’d heard in his voice and seen on his face, it had panicked her in a way she couldn’t control.

It was still rippling through her now, making her want to cry, because it was all such a mess. Being here with him was so far from the worst place she had ever been. But she had been there before and back then she hadn’t acted, hadn’t defended herself and everything had got so hard, so fast. She hadn’t wanted to make the same mistake again.

So she had made a different one.

And there was no point in trying to take it back.

‘I don’t do second chances, Ms Truitt. You cross me once, we’re done.’

Tiger’s voice seemed to echo down the beach and, needing to get away from the consequences of her actions, she started to walk beside the tiny, tumbling waves.

Her feet slowed. Set back slightly from the shoreline was a small stone building. It looked too small to be a home, and anyway who would be living there?

Sliding her feet back into her sandals, she walked towards it cautiously, but as she got closer it was obvious it was empty. Abandoned? Tiger had kicked the owners off when he bought the island?

And then as she turned her head a fraction, she saw him. Her stomach plummeted and she lifted a hand to cover her pounding heart.

He was standing there, watching her, his dark head tilted to one side as if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing there.

He still wasn’t sure why he had gone after Sydney, just that watching her leave had pulled at something inside him. Without any kind of conscious decision, he had made his way through the villa and onto the terrace, his gaze fixed on the comet’s tail of Sydney’s hair.

‘It used to be a fisherman’s cottage. If that’s what you were wondering. It was empty when I came here.’

It was actually one of the main reasons why he had bought this particular island. It was a reminder of how fragile the things you took for granted could be. For years people had pushed their boats away from this shoreline to cast their nets. They had made their homes here, earned a livelihood and then just like that it was gone.

And Venice itself was one of the most perilously situated cities in the world. Anything could be lost and you had to remember that and do anything and everything to stop that from happening.

Sydney was staring at him as if he were a particularly dangerous animal that had escaped from some local zoo and he couldn’t really blame her. Even as he had been talking to her, he’d known that he didn’t like how he was acting but he’d still been riled by that comment she’d made at breakfast. Casually mentioning how she derailed businesses as if it were nothing. As if she hadn’t been planning to do that to him. It was a blunt reminder of who she was, only, with the imprint of that kiss still front and centre in his brain, he had let himself forget.

And then he had expected her to be excited and grateful when he’d shown her the clothes, but she had acted as if it were a bad thing. What woman didn’t like new clothes?

Glancing up, he found Sydney watching him, her face pale and still, her hands clenching at her sides.

‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Emotions he couldn’t name moved swiftly across her face and he felt a flicker of irritation that he couldn’t read them and that she could keep herself out of reach, defying him, even now.

‘You know this would be a lot easier if you stopped turning everything into a fight.’

‘There is no “this” any more,’ she said, lifting her chin in that maddening way of hers.

‘Because I bought you some clothes?’

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. He knew that the clothes were not important. As for the money?

Her hair had come loose and the breeze lifted it away from her small, stiff face, and he held back. Not to savour the moment but because he knew it would hurt her. He knew because he’d heard the hurt in her voice when she had talked about her family.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said quietly.

‘Tell you what?’ Her voice was fierce, hostile.

‘About your brothers?’

Her skin looked like paper. ‘Because people like you think you’re different from people like them. Because you don’t want to hear that you’re the same.’

His heart twisted, which was strange because that particular organ usually functioned solely as a life force but she was so defiant, standing there with her brown eyes.

‘What if I did?’

Her hands were like tight balls now and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she took a step closer, her eyes narrowing on his face.

‘They run a chop shop. They buy and sell stolen parts.’ Her voice was fierce, combative, as if defying him to show his disgust, but it only seemed to root him deeper to the spot. ‘They do other stuff. Stupid, small-town, small-time stuff with their idiot friends. And now they’ve been arrested and with their record they’re going to go to prison.’

He opened his mouth to speak but she cut across him, fiercer still, ‘Let me guess what you’re thinking now. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Only it’s not a tree, is it? The Truitts have a whole orchard. Misdemeanours. Warnings. Arrests. We’re all the same. Rotten to the core.’

‘You don’t know what I’m thinking. We’re talking about your brothers and you. And given how much you loathe being here with me, I’m guessing you must love them very much.’

Her eyes were storm dark but there was a tremble to her mouth that made his chest pinch because she was trying to hide her feelings and failing. Only he wasn’t sure if it was the trying or failing that felt like a blow.

‘I know how it looks but they’re not bad people. They just make bad decisions. I don’t expect you to understand,’ she said after a moment, as if she needed to manage her voice.

But he did understand. Tiger felt his chest tighten. He understood only too well.

She hesitated. ‘I didn’t mean what I said earlier about being your girlfriend. I mean, obviously I didn’t want to do it but you’re not who I thought you were.’

Ditto, he thought as she met his gaze.

‘Are you going to the police?’

He shook his head. ‘But we have to find a way to make this work. We might not be friends but we can’t be strangers.’

‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘I could take another look at the clothes.’

‘And you could wear some of your own clothes if that would make you feel more comfortable. Or I could get the stylist to select some other options, and you could choose something more “you”.’

It was easy to offer that, and he wondered why it had seemed such a point of contention back at the villa. But then that was before he knew the truth. That she wasn’t just the grabby little thief he’d assumed her to be. She had a motive, so, yes, she had still tried to steal from him, but at least he understood why. It wasn’t greed that had motivated her but love, and loyalty. She had put everything she had on one desperate spin of the roulette wheel. Her job. Her professional reputation. Her freedom. Gazing down into her face, he felt a stab of something like envy. Who would do that for him? Who would sacrifice anything to save him?

He pushed the thought away. This wasn’t about him. It was about Sydney, and that look on her face when she’d turned and seen him on the beach. She’d looked like he used to feel. Lost, alone, angry and scared, but trying not to show it and he’d hated it.

‘Your brothers, do they have a lawyer?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘But they need a better one. I did go to the bank, but I’d already taken out a loan to set up the business. And my parents don’t have that kind of money. That’s why I was trying to hack your system.’

‘Then maybe now is a good time to rethink our arrangement, tweak it a little.’

She stared at him warily.

‘Look, if you’re still willing to help me, then maybe I can help you. I know plenty of good lawyers. I can make some calls, that way your brothers will get proper legal representation.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Why would you do that?’

He held her gaze. ‘Because you highlighted the vulnerabilities in my system when you hacked it. So, in a way, you did me a favour. Plus, it would be awkward if something came out about your family while we’re together, so if I can stop that from happening... I mean, what’s the point of being rich if you can’t bully and buy your way out of trouble?’

He watched her cheeks flush as she recognised her words.

‘That would be such a relief,’ she said after a second or two, as if she’d needed a moment to pull herself together, and it wasn’t that he was surprised, because he knew her better now, but hearing the tremble in her voice felt like a blow.

‘Why did they leave?’

He frowned, then realised she was looking at the stone hut.

‘The fishermen? I think it was around the time Venice grew. Other islands were just geographically closer to the city. Times change.’

‘It’s strange to think that people lived and worked here and then they just disappeared.’

‘They didn’t take everything. There’s some graffiti on the wall.’

Her face shifted then, mouth curving into a smile of such sweetness that he felt momentarily light-headed. ‘Here, let me show you.’

He held out his hand and, after a second, she took it and he led her into the hut. Maybe it was because the shutters were closed or perhaps it was the shafts of light slicing through the cool air, but he felt as if he were in a dream.

‘Look here.’

Crouching down, she gently touched the writing on the stone. ‘What does it say?’

‘My Latin is pretty basic but I think it’s something about a woman he likes. Wants,’ he corrected himself. ‘He wants her.’

There was a beat of silence and then she took a step forward into the wavering light and the flush on her cheeks was the realest thing he had ever seen.