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He approached the person closest to him and asked for Hope. He began, for the first time, to wonder what the woman would look like. Outlandish, head in the clouds, wearing an artists’ smock and daubing something unrecognisable on a canvas?

His brother was twenty-three. He was guessing that whoever he was dating was his age or younger. He mentally added ditzy and giggly to the description he had just conjured up in his head.

Carlos might be smart, might be applying himself to his business degree at Javier’s insistence, but privately Javier had always thought that his brother could do with more grounding. Any girlfriend would likely be equally scattered, but who cared?

He kept a watchful eye on his brother’s financial expenditure, so he knew that he wasn’t being ripped off by an unscrupulous gold digger. If anything changed on that front, then he would regrettably have to get involved but there was no point trying to cross bridges that weren’t there.

Javier was here for one reason and one reason only.

He needed information and he intended to get what he needed. Even if the woman had three heads and wore a space suit, it wasn’t his business.

She would tell him what he needed to know.

Or else.

* * *

Hope saw the man before he saw her.

He was standing at the top of the stairwell, looking as out of place as a fish up a tree.

It was always icy in the room. No matter how much she cranked up the heating, in winter the cold still seeped through the windows, which weren’t double glazed. It was so cold that everyone ended up wearing their full winter ensemble to avoid hypothermia.

Cold as she was, though, she felt herself break out in nervous perspiration as she continued to look at the man until their eyes met and held.

Carlos’s brother.

Of course he was.

It was impossible not to see the resemblance, although this man was taller and more aggressively masculine with the tough, forbidding menace of a predator.

By comparison, Carlos was a minnow. He was the softer version, blurrier at the edges, with features that were less harshly chiselled and a body that was not as whipcord lean.

Carlos also never dressed in the sort of clothes his brother was wearing—dark trousers, handmade shoes, black cashmere coat. Trademark billionaire nonsense. What else could be expected from the guy Carlos respected but also feared and disliked?

For just a few seconds, Hope no longer heard the buzz of voices or saw the sketches and the prints pinned up on the exposed brick walls.

Hope’s classes were always fully subscribed, with everyone getting a taste of photography, graphic art and fashion. Right now, there must have been twenty people at the long rectangular tables but they all disappeared as she continued to stare at the man who was staring right back at her.

She blinked and began walking towards him. As she crossed the room, pausing to comment on some of the works in progress, she quietly made up her mind to buy some time by pretending not to know who he was.

Carlos had told her that there was the slimmest of chances his brother might descend to find out where he was.

‘It’s unlikely…’ Carlos had said, bags packed and ready to leave, ‘…because he doesn’t know anything about you. At least, not much. I may have mentioned you but only in passing. But Javier can be determined and if he decides he wants to find me, then he’ll be like a dog with a bone. He might just make it his mission to track you down in case you know anything.’

He had looked at her with pleading, puppy dog eyes.

‘I’m going to be incommunicado. Even if you don’t know where I am, promise me you won’t be bullied by Javier into telling him anything we’ve talked about. Warn him against trying to hunt me down. I just need…time. I don’t want to end up frogmarched into a life I don’t want…’

She’d promised because Carlos was dear to her. Everything about him, every insecure, vulnerable streak, brought out a caring side in her that was deeply embedded. Hope came from a fragile background. She’d known what childhood instability had looked like and had often felt like her mother’s caretaker when it should have been the other way around. She could understand his anxieties, so she looked out for him. She had his back.

She hated bullies. His secrets would always be safe with her.

Besides, she’d personally doubted his brother would go to the trouble of hunting her down. From everything Carlos had told her about his brother it seemed that Javier Mendoza only cared about one thing and that was money. Carlos and Javier appeared to have almost no fraternal bond.

Yet, surprisingly, there he was.

* * *