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Even so, I was used to my Asics, and I missed them. I’d tried to sneak a pair into the elegant luggage, but Bella had sternly removed them. “It’s less than a week,” she said. “For a few days, you can survive anything.”
Survive. The word gave me an errant chill, and I shook it off as I stepped into the terminal. At least I would only have to face Granda. As sharp as he was, the failings of his sight and hearing would keep me safe from detection. I would spend one last day with him, with Mariposa, and leave.
The small commuter plane would have been nerve-wracking, but I was much too tense about going home to even worry about the glorified flying tin can. We arrived in St. Maria de Fe far too soon.
The first thing I planned to do, I thought as I managed to stride à la Bella through the busy terminal, was to find Granda. After that, I wanted to explore the old house once more, go out into the olive groves, roam the countryside. Pack a lifetime of memories into the short time I would be there.
In four-inch heels.
It was a long walk to the baggage section, and I shoved my soft curls away from my perfectly made-up face, channeling my inner Bella. It seemed to work—I was getting looks from the men as I walked by, glares from the women. I usually walked through airports in complete anonymity. Now I was a goddess.
A driver would be waiting, Bella had assured me. All I had to do was make it to baggage claim and some nice, uniformed man would be holding up a sign. He would take care of everything, delivering me to the villa and returning to fetch me. I didn’t have to worry about a thing.
It took me a moment to find the baggage carousel. Bella would have known exactly where it was, but no one was perfect. I’d been so busy sashaying through the terminal, plus using the toilet, checking my makeup, and applying a fresh coat of the cherry-red lipstick she favored, that the carousel had stopped and most of the luggage removed. There was no uniformed man holding a sign with my name on it. Only Bella’s expensive Prada luggage piled neatly on a luggage cart.
I glanced around, uneasy. Had I taken too long? But no, I was Bella the Magnificent, I reminded myself, stiffening my shoulders. People waited for me.
And then I saw him, leaning against the wall, watching me. He was a stranger, but there was too much insolence in his posture, too much speculation in his eyes to be a hired driver. I glanced at him, dismissed him, and reached into the Hermès handbag for the iPhone, definitely my favorite part of this entire ruse.
Programming the face recognition had almost been enough to make me change my mind. “If your own phone knows I’m lying, how can I manage to fool people?”
But Bella had once again calmed my doubts, and here I was, about to call for a car when the man moved, coming toward me, and I looked up, letting my eyes drift over him. He was tall, with one of those lean bodies that were deceptively strong. He was wearing rough clothes—faded jeans and a work shirt—and his brown hair was sun-streaked, matching the deep tan of his face.
A good mouth, I thought absently, if it was curled with faint contempt. The same for his eyes, dark, dark eyes, with the kind of ridiculously long thick lashes that proved the universe was unfair. Women had to work for lashes like those; men came by them naturally. He had a nose that would have overwhelmed a weaker, prettier face, but seemed to fit just fine in his, and the kind of high cheekbones that would have made me swoon as a child.
I’d never seen him before in my life. Was he one of the people who was after Bella? Had she miscalculated?
He came up to me, moving with a lazy sort of grace that still managed to convey complete disinterest in my reaction, and stopped right in front of me. I held my ground.
“You don’t look particularly happy to see me, Bella,” he drawled, and he had a faintly British accent.
I looked at him warily. And so it begins, I thought. “I arranged for a driver,” I said stiffly, hoping to Christ he wasn’t the chauffeur working at Mariposa.
“I cancelled your arrangements. We need to talk.”
O-kay, I thought. Hostility from first contact. Not good. “All right,” I said in a faintly frosty voice. Bella wouldn’t like attitude that wasn’t hers.
He nodded his head toward the piled-up luggage. “Where’s the rest of your stuff?”
I laughed, though I wasn’t feeling particularly cheerful. “I’m only staying one night, and then going on to Paris for a couple of days.”
“You usually have three times as much luggage.”
I looked at the cart in astonishment. It was piled high with suitcases, three full-size ones, two smaller, and even an old-fashioned makeup case that I secretly found adorable. “I’m working on cutting back,” I said vaguely.
Wong thing, I realized, by the way his high forehead wrinkled. “Bella the Goddess cutting back? Surely not! There are only a few things I count on as constants—the ocean, mortality, and Bella’s determination to have her own way at all times.”
So this was an enemy. But why was he able to speak so rudely? Definitely not a hireling. “Since you know me so well, then you’ll realize I said that I wanted to cut back, not that anyone was forcing it on me.”
“Point taken. I’ve parked nearby—follow me.” We almost collided as we moved to the luggage cart in concert. He grabbed the handle, almost yanking it away, and gave me a speculative look out of those incredibly dark eyes. “Bella managing her own luggage? Say it isn’t so!”
“I didn’t realize I could count on you,” I countered, reasonably certain this was appropriate.
“You can’t,” he said, turning away. “Push it yourself.”
I was about to snap that I had had every intention of doing so when I realized that wasn’t Bella. I needed a little elastic bracelet with the initials WWBD—What Would Bella Do? I glanced around me, raised an eyebrow, and immediately three luggage porters fell over themselves to reach me. A moment later, two of them were trundling after me as I sauntered in the unpleasant stranger’s wake.
He disappeared a moment later. He was a tall man, and his legs were longer than mine, plus the unaccustomed shoes would have had me sprawling on the sunbaked walkway. When I finally caught up with him, he was leaning against a battered old farm truck, and I stared at it in a delight which I quickly hid. When we were young, one of our favorite treats was to be taken for a ride in the back of one of the noisy old pickups, down through the vineyards, into town on market days, trips to the ocean for picnics and swimming.
