Page 190

‘This won’t be a social trip. We won’t be best buddies by the end of it. Your friendship with the Mendoza family will be confined to my brother. We will no doubt have to share space overnight because of the travelling between places but I’ll have work to catch up on, so you won’t be seeing a great deal of me.’

‘Right.’

‘There’ll be no need to get in touch with the management services about our arrival at any of my villas. They’re maintained on a monthly basis, regardless of whether they’re being used or not. We’ll be free to show up without having to battle our way through cobwebs. If Carlos is hiding out in any of them, then the element of surprise would work.’

‘I guess so…’

‘If you’re not romantically involved with my brother, is there someone else on the scene? Someone who will want to trace your movements? If there is, then it would be helpful if he didn’t know them.’

‘Why?’

‘I would rather this doesn’t get leaked to the press. Share prices can get a little temperamental when it comes to rumours of drugs and the board members of the company.’

Hope looked at him in utter bewilderment and then burst out laughing with genuine amusement while he stared at her in stony silence.

‘What a dramatic life you lead. Just for the record, you’re safe as houses with me. I would never go out with a guy who would sell somebody else’s story for money. Just like I would never be interested in some man who wants a doll he can wrap round his fingers. What sort of world do you live in if you’re continually that suspicious of everyone? No one was ever interested in what Carlos got up to.’

‘Here’s the thing—I’m not my brother.’ He paused briefly. ‘You can’t trust people.’

His expression remained stony but there was something forlorn in that statement that gave Hope pause for thought.

She stared back at him.

She’d listened to all the things Carlos had said to her over the time they’d known one another and she’d believed him. She’d recognised his genuine distress when it came to the stuff he was trying to handle and his fear at the thought of letting his much older brother down.

Javier was the cold, unfeeling monster.

Carlos was the sensitive, torn brother.

Javier had shown up out of the blue demanding answers she wasn’t in a position to give him and his arrogance had immediately got her back up.

He’d proven himself within minutes to be exactly the sort of person Carlos had described. Worse, if anything.

And yet…

She felt that treacherous curiosity again. That weird feeling of being energised and really, really alive, as though she’d been plugged into an electrical socket.

‘I’m not going out with anyone,’ she admitted. ‘And you can trust me completely when it comes to revealing information about… Well, about anything. I’m not that sort of person.’

‘You’ll have to tell your students something.’

‘A family emergency. Which it is, in a manner of speaking.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll also have to find someone to cat-sit.’

‘You have a cat?’

‘She’s great company. We watch a lot of movies together. Rosie’s a great fan of the rom-com.’

Javier smiled.

It was a warm, genuine smile that smoothed the lines of his handsome, forbidding face and shaved years off him.

That smile did something peculiar to her. It made her bones turn to water and made her restless in her own skin.

Her heart rate picked up pace. She fiddled with her glass, which was empty, then watched as he topped it up with what was left in the bottle.

‘I shouldn’t,’ she protested for want of anything better to say because she seemed to have abruptly lost her power of speech.

‘Do you live on your own?’ he asked.