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‘Water, please. Don’t you ever use this kitchen?’

More comfortable now, Hope began investigating the cupboards, while he fetched them both two glass bottles of water.

‘So when you come here, do you try and avoid the kitchen at all costs? Because you hate cooking?’

‘Because I prefer other people to cook for me.’

Hope smiled. She handed him a couple of plates and looked at him briefly before saying, ‘I suppose some women would love that. You know what they say about the way to a man’s heart…’

She turned away to hunt down cutlery and was only aware of the silence after a couple of seconds.

Boundaries crossed. He put them up and removed them as and when it suited him. It annoyed her that instead of turning her off, his stupid tactic only made her more curious and keener to find out what made him tick.

She turned to face him.

‘Well, the food smells good.’ She tactfully changed the topic and moved towards the table to unpack whatever was in the containers. Tapas and way too much for the two of them. Mini corn tortillas, a million different empanadas, ceviche, salads…

‘We’ll never be able to eat all of this.’

She looked at him as he strolled over to inspect what was on offer.

‘I mean…’ She tentatively began helping herself. Her mind kept swinging back to the taut silence that had greeted her joke about some women loving to cook for a man.

‘I mean…’ she said, picking up where she’d left off ‘…we won’t be here long enough for us to eat leftovers.’

‘I’m not a fan of leftovers.’

‘Yes, I’m not surprised. If you’re not a fan of cooking, then you’re not going to be a fan of warming things up from the night before, which is a lot more boring than cooking. Especially not when you have people at hand to produce new and varied meals every day of the week.’

‘How well you know me after such a short space of time.’

‘Carlos loves to cook.’

‘Does he?’

Their eyes met and held for a few seconds.

So much you don’t know about your brother, Hope thought. She remembered what he’d said about trying to make Christmas special for a five-year-old child deprived of his parents and her heart twisted.

‘He does quite the Christmas spread for about ten people just before we all disappear off to our homes to spend the rest of the holiday.’

She tucked into the food but was keenly aware of him opposite her.

The table was very big, a rectangular table long enough to seat ten. The top was the same veined marble as the kitchen counters and it was as coldly beautiful and elegant as every stick of furniture she’d seen in the house.

They would have needed megaphones if they’d been sitting at opposite ends of it but they were opposite one another in the middle where they could at least hear one another without having to shout.

‘And what does he do? For Christmas? My brother? Where does he go?’

Hope suddenly wished that she could be honest and tell Javier where Carlos had spent last Christmas. Where, in fact, he spent most of his time. With his partner, Dominic, who was four years older than Carlos. Dominic was a lawyer with just the sort of sensible head on his shoulders that Javier expected his brother to have on his.

It had been easy to pre-judge Javier, even without the background story from Carlos. Javier was a man who represented many of the things of which she personally disapproved.

But now…

How could someone so rich, so arrogant, so downright infuriating most of the time, also elicit such depths of sympathy in her?

It couldn’t be his looks. She had never been the sort of girl who was influenced by appearance.