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“Why?” I said again, keeping my voice clipped.
“Our engagement...”
“We’re not engaged,” I said wearily. “We never were—you know it was just a charade to make Granda happy. Now that he’s gone, there’s no need for any more pretense.”
“It wasn’t just pretense on my part. I love you,” he said earnestly. “I still want to marry you.”
I just looked at him for a long moment, wondering what I had ever seen in him. He was very handsome—there was no doubt on that score. But there was something...empty about him, all that surface charm and nothing beneath it.
Whereas his brother was his complete opposite. No charm at all, but emotion and torment and anger seething beneath him, and all that anger was directed at me.
“You don’t,” I said. How could he look at a stranger and think it was the woman he loved? Because he never looked beneath the surface. Anyone who looked like Bella would do.
But Marcus wasn’t easily cowed. “Come for a drive with me. You haven’t even tested your new car. We could drive along the cliffs, watch the birds.”
“I don’t want the car.” My, I was being selfless nowadays, considering I was basically penniless. Not only was I giving up a fortune, I was tossing aside a car worth...God, I didn’t even know what an Alfa cost, but it was certainly more than an aging Subaru.
“Just come for a drive with me,” he insisted. “We can talk...”
“No. I’m going for a walk. Alone.” I decided it on the spur of the moment.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Alone,” I repeated. A walk in the wood would do me good, away from bickering relatives and Ian, who’d simply disappeared.
He looked crestfallen, like a child deprived of a treat. “At least tell me where you’re going. Someone needs to keep track of you, so we can find you if you don’t come back.”
“Why wouldn’t I come back?” I demanded uneasily.
He shrugged his massive shoulders in the perfectly-tailored dark gray jacket. “You could get lost. Twist your ankle in one of the rabbit holes that litter the place. Remember when you fell in the cave?”
I remembered all too well. I remembered who had abandoned me and who had rescued me. “I’m not going anywhere near the caves.”
There was a sudden odd expression on his face. “Keep away from Pinnacle Point. No one would see you or hear you if you got into trouble. It’s too wild out there. Promise me.”
“I’m just going for a walk,” I said wearily. “I need time to think.”
“Ian wouldn’t want you to go off on your own.”
He couldn’t have said anything more likely to get me going. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what Ian does or does not want.” I was losing what little calm I had. I needed to go somewhere and cry, somewhere no one would find me.
“Bella,” he said with long-suffering patience, and I wanted to scream at him. I’m not Bella, I’m Kitty!
“Just leave me alone!” Without another word, I stomped away from him, down the hallway and through the deserted kitchen to head straight back toward Pinnacle Point. I was going to cry again, and I was damned if I was going to let anyone see me.
The olive groves were empty—no workers in sight. I glanced around to see whether my watcher was anywhere around, but I didn’t see him, and I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I could have an afternoon of peace, away from everyone, to figure out what I was going to do next.
I reached the narrow trail that led up to the point, moving into the deeper forest as I tossed solutions around in my brain. Maybe I should just go to the lawyer and explain the situation. The ugliness of that conversation made me cringe, but there was no way getting around it. I was going to have to come clean to everyone, and I dreaded it.
Unless I could simply disappear and send word through lawyers that I was relinquishing the bequest, turn myself back into Kitty. Back into Podge.
I no longer knew who I was. Was I vain, beautiful Bella with the charm and trustworthiness of a snake, was I plump and awkward Podge, or was I a failed academic hopelessly in love with her wretched cousin-by-marriage? Or some miserable combination of all three?
I needed to step out from the trap I’d willingly walked into, I needed to find myself first, before I began to deal with losing Ian.
Not that I’d ever had him. Heightened emotions and sorrow had thrown us into bed, and that wasn’t going to happen again. We were all learning to deal with the loss of Granda, each in our own way, and we’d be very careful to avoid such mistakes.
And then I heard it. The snap of a branch, the shuffle of leaves. I wasn’t alone in the woods.
