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‘I’m so sorry, Mr Caine.’
‘It’s fine, Paul. Just get the car parked and then get someone to drop off another one. Nothing too eye-catching.’
Mimi was shivering. Her teeth were chattering and she felt sick. It had all happened so fast. One minute she had been in the car, kissing Basa, and the next it had been as if time had gone into reverse, and she was back outside the home she had once shared with her mum and Charlie.
Basa was holding out a glass of tawny liquid. ‘Drink this.’
It was brandy. She didn’t like brandy. But she drank it anyway, and after a moment breathed out unsteadily.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said slowly. ‘How did they know we would be here?’
Basa’s face was like stone, and there was a roughness to his voice when he spoke.
‘Somebody saw us in that street in Buenos Aires. They took photos of us. I guess from a distance it must have looked like a lovers’ tiff.’
He held up his phone and she stared at the screen, wondering how something so small could cause so much damage. Her heart quivered. It felt strange, looking at herself and Basa together. The photo was nearly a week old, and in that week they had gone from enemies to lovers. But the camera didn’t lie, and even though they were clearly arguing, she could almost see the pulse of attraction between them, in the angle of their bodies and the tilt of her heads.
And someone else had noticed it too.
She felt a flare of panic and her hands balled into fists, but Basa didn’t notice. He was staring past her into the distance, as though he was watching something unfold that was visible only to him.
‘My PA got a call ten minutes ago, asking her to confirm that you and I are a couple. That was her on the phone. She was trying to warn me, but she was too late.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
She saw that his muscles were straining against his suit jacket, but even if they hadn’t been she could feel his frustration, his anger vibrating off his skin like radio waves. And she couldn’t blame him for being angry. He had warned her back in Buenos Aires about this happening and she had ignored him. And now they were all going to pay for her recklessness in leaving his home.
All of them—including Alicia.
Her best friend. Who was getting married in just a few months’ time.
Her heart stopped beating.
She felt a sharp stab of realisation as the air in her lungs seemed to thin. How was this going to affect the wedding? And how must Alicia be feeling now she had heard about Mimi and Basa allegedly having some kind of relationship? Of course she wanted to believe that Alicia would be happy, but even if she was the timing was so bad. Mimi felt as though the room was tilting, as though she was drunk, but it wasn’t the brandy making the world spin off its axis. It was her. She’d messed everything up.
His next words—or rather the distance in his voice as he spoke them—confirmed her fears.
‘It’s my fault. I should have made it clearer to you what was at stake if you left the house.’
But she had known what was at stake.
Her lungs seemed to shrivel, along with any hopes she might have had of making things work with Basa. Those hopes were gone now, thrown away by her in that smoke-filled street in Buenos Aires.
‘You did tell me,’ she said quietly. ‘I just didn’t believe you.’
It was a fitting conclusion to a relationship that had been destined not to happen. How could it when neither one of them had ever known when the other was telling the truth.
‘This isn’t about what I told you or what you believed. This is about you and me sleeping together—and that’s on me as much as it is on you. More so,’ he added. ‘I’m in the public eye twenty-four-seven, so I knew the risks. I ignored them because you were worth it. So don’t blame yourself.’
There was a beat of silence, and she felt a slow trickle of despair work its way down her spine as he pulled out his phone. He was being so reasonable, so nice, but whatever he said she knew he was just being kind out of guilt or concern.
She watched miserably as his expression hardened at the sight of something on his screen.
‘What matters now is damage limitation,’ he said. ‘But you don’t need to worry. I’m going to take care of this.’
Mimi stared at him, her heartbeat slowing. He was a good man. A good brother. A good son. He would work day and night to protect his family, to protect her, and she loved him for that. But she wasn’t his responsibility and she didn’t want to be his responsibility. Nor was she going to throw her best friend under a bus for the sake of a few passion-filled days in Patagonia.
So there were two ways of doing this.
