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‘She said her name is Edwards and she’s already been waiting an hour.’
‘An hour?’ Mateo groaned. He’d wanted to give the young assistant a chance, but clearly he was out of his depth. ‘I’m about to go into back-to-back meetings for the rest of the afternoon. She won’t rearrange?’ he asked, half hopeful.
‘She says she can’t, as she has to leave for Shanghai tomorrow.’
Mateo cast a look over his afternoon schedule. ‘Tell her that I’ll try and fit her in, but I can’t guarantee it.’
Any other day of the year he had wiggle room in his schedule for things just like this, but not today.
‘Did she say what it was about?’ he asked just as the young assistant was leaving.
The temp shook his head. ‘Only that it was personal.’
Mateo frowned. He made very sure not to have ‘personal’ turn up at his office, so he couldn’t begin to think what it might relate to. Edwards. The name sounded as if it should be familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He dismissed the assistant, picked up the file for the Lexicon deal and left his office by the opposite door to the one his assistant used to take him more quickly to the meeting rooms on the floor below.
Evie crossed her legs again and pulled at the form-fitting white shirt she’d thought suitable to make her look professional enough to approach Mateo Marin in his office. But four and a half hours of waiting and she was feeling distinctlyunsuitable. The seating area she was in was out of direct line of sight of the assistant’s desk, but she could hear him typing away, answering phone calls and sighing. A lot.
She’d arrived at the office as early as possible after her flight from London and had come straight to the imposing building that bore Professor Marin’s son’s name. It should have been familiar, but the sleek, industrial feat of architecture was so far removed from the world she’d shared with Mateo’s father, it felt unnerving. And she wished for the hundredth time that he’d answered one of her many calls, or replied to the several emails she’d sent in the last twenty-four hours so that she hadn’t had to come in person.
She glared at the picture of Mateo looking out of the magazine cover with one eyebrow cocked arrogantly, his arms folded across a broad chest that must have had some kind of Photoshop trickery done to it to make it look so imposing. She’d turned to the first page of the article and there he was again, staring directly at the reader—half-arrogant, half-dismissive and all ego—and the first time she’d seen it, the sudden intense heat that had flashed across her cheeks had stung. By the second look the flutter in her stomach had morphed into an angry buzz as she remembered how hurt the professor had been by Mateo’s absence from his life. His son’s refusal to resume even the most basic communication had devastated Professor Marin, who had not once blamed or resented his son’s choice.
But it was the third time she scanned the article that made her gasp—because there in a picture captioned as ‘The Library’, she caught sight of several objects sitting on the wooden bookshelves. A magnifying glass, a watch, a wooden box, a compass. They looked as if they had been placed there absentmindedly. Things that had been chosen to be preserved, but easily accessible. Things that had made her wonder about their significance, in the same way as she wondered at a copper bracelet at an ancient burial site, or the earthenware jugs recovered from a lost village. Evidence left behind, for years to come. Like the item in the corner of one shelf that pulled on her heart.
The professor’s notebook.
The sight of it so familiar that she’d nearly reached out to touch it on the glossy page of the magazine. She heard the assistant sigh and checked her watch. Frowning, she saw it was nearly six pm. Rising uncertainly, she approached the young man’s desk, when he looked up at her half in horror.
‘You’re still here?’ squeaked the assistant.
‘Of course. I said I’d wait,’ Evie replied, unaware why he would think anything different.
‘But Mr Marin has left.’
‘Left?’ Evie asked. ‘He left?’ she repeated, her voice rising an octave in outrage. ‘But I need to see him. It’s matter of the utmost urgency.’
‘I... I...’ the assistant stammered, and Evie couldn’t help but feel sorry for a man who was so clearly terrified of his boss. Her anger at being so easily dismissed by the professor’s son receded behind the practicality of what she needed to do now that he had left.
There was no way the assistant would share his employer’s home address with her, a complete stranger. She had one night to get the notebook before flying to Shanghai and she couldn’t waste it.
‘Would you...? I’m sorry,’ she said, feigning sudden weakness, not even feeling a little bit bad about brushing her palm across her forehead. ‘I’ll leave, I don’t want to be a burden,’ she forced sincerity into her words, ‘but I feel a little... Could you make me a cup of tea? And then I’ll leave?’ she offered.
‘Of course, of course, I’m so sorry, Ms Edwards,’ the assistant rushed out and practically fled from his desk.
Checking the corridor, Evie bit her lip at the act of deception that came worryingly naturally and, heart pounding in her ears, she flicked through the stacks of paper on the desk. She was about to reach for a drawer when she saw a green Post-it note on what looked like a contract with a company called Lexicon.
Courier to M. M, Villa Rubia, Sant Vicenç de Montalt.
Without a second thought she grabbed the note, fisted it in her hand and, grabbing her bag from the sofa where she’d wasted an entire afternoon, she ran to the lift and pressed the button, desperately praying it would arrive before the assistant returned.
When the doors closed and the lift began its descent, she exhaled her relief at not getting caught in a little laugh, and warned herself from getting too addicted to the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She still had to face down Mateo Marin and get him to hand over his father’s notebook. But she would do it, because shehadto.
CHAPTER TWO
MATEOFLICKEDANangry gaze from the road to the display of his ridiculously expensive car. He wasn’t ostentatious by nature, but when it came to travel, he liked luxury. He cursed as he palmed the wheel to take the turn that led to his home. He was twenty minutes late. Henri would probably have let himself in already and made himself comfortable, but one thing Mateo detested was making people wait.
It was because of that that he was late himself. He’d got to the underground car park of his office building when he’d remembered the woman waiting for him in the office. By the time he’d got back up to the sixteenth floor, both his assistant and the unknown woman were gone.
