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She quickly gathered that this man was a manager as he directed various waiting staff through the kitchen and around the house, and before he could give Evie a direct order she picked up a tray and decided that the safest option was to collect empty glasses. She exited the kitchen into the hallway just as Mateo came towards her with a phone pressed to his ear.
Her heart thudded once, hard, and then seemed to stop for a second. He was much taller in person, the width of his shoulders—which clearly hadnotbeen a trickery of Photoshop—taking up nearly the entire breadth of the hallway. He wasn’t bulky, but lean. His features, even creased into a scowl, were alluring, the richness of brown in his eyes so deep, she nearly tripped. Her gaze went to the sharp cheekbones and strong jaw he’d inherited from his father. But, unlike the unruly mess the professor had barely bothered with, Mateo kept his beard trim, cut close to the skin—as if he’d made absolutely sure to be as different from the man he’d shared those features with. Everything in him was contained. Neat.
Apart from his hair, which was thick, dark and unruly, as if a lazy hand had flicked a slow curl and it had stuck that way. It matched the way the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, as if he’d just pulled off his tie after coming home from the office.
Once again, her cheeks heated to an almost painful sting, and she pressed a palm to her skin there, for once thankful that her hands were always cold.
‘I don’t want this,’ she heard him say into the phone.
She slowed her steps, worried they might actually collide, as it didn’t seem that he’d seen her.
The groan he sent down the phone raised the hair on the back of her neck, and it turned into a shiver that fell down her spine.
‘Yes,darling,’ he growled as he disconnected the call and slipped his phone into his pocket. Evie had to press herself against the wall and nearly lost the tray of glasses as he passed her, barely sparing her a cursory glance.
Oof.
She struggled to right the tray—and her equilibrium—and just about managed it as Mateo Marin disappeared up the large staircase in the middle of the house. Fury pounded in her chest. That was the second time she’d been ignored by Mateo Marin. And the poor woman he’d been speaking to, Evie thought, shaking her head. To have to put up with a man like that! Evie clenched her teeth together. So much for being a bachelor.Charming, the magazine had called him. The man was a menace!
Mateo removed his cufflinks and flicked open the buttons of his shirt, tossing it aside onto his bed. There were strangers in his house. There werewaitersin his house. He rolled his shoulders, trying to ward off the tension headache beginning to form at the back of his neck and temples.
He stared at the half-empty bottle of whisky on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. This was the one safe haven he had. His suite. He had bought the estate for his mother, but she had never lived there, instead claiming to prefer the smaller apartment in the heart of Almería. Rather than sell it on, Mateo had moved in himself, mainly just for this room. His sanctuary.
If the photographer hadn’t promised that it would only be the two of them taking the pictures, and not the army the journalist had brought with him to do the interview his CFO had badgered him into last month, Mateo would never have agreed to doing the shoot in here. Thankfully the suite was large enough so that his bed had been out of the picture.
Reaching for the bottle of whisky and the glass beside it, he poured himself a couple of fingers’ worth. Maybe he could just hide out here for the rest of the night, he thought, before huffing out a reluctant laugh. Henri would track him down and pull him out by the ear, no matter what he was wearing.
He took a sip of the amber liquid, relishing the explosion of taste and heat of the alcohol on his tongue, and turned to look at the shelves that lined the entire side wall of the room.His library. There were several serious work tomes—hardbacks, academic books from his degree—and there were many history books, which would have surprised most of his acquaintances, and were also academic rather than recreational. There were even the adventure stories he’d loved as a child and had somehow not been able to part with all these years.
On those shelves also sat the compass his uncle had given him on his fourth birthday, the magnifying glass his grandfather had given him when he had first returned to Spain with his mother, the wooden box that had held the cufflinks his mother had given him on his sixteenth birthday, and the watch—the first thing he’d bought himself with his first pay cheque. All of those he knew had been captured by the photographer’s keen eye. But in the far corner, was an old beaten-up leather-bound notebook that he was barely able to look at, let alone think about.
With a sigh, he threw back the remainder of the whisky and put the glass down on the side. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea that Henri had decided to host a party. Mateo flicked the top button of his trousers and stalked into the en suite. Worried about what on earth Henri would get up to next, he decided he didn’t have time for a shower before getting back downstairs to check what havoc his best friend had wreaked upon his life.
He ran the taps in the sink and splashed water over his face and neck, and in his haste got water in his eyes.
Cristo!
This just wasn’t his day.
He slammed his eyes shut, hoping that the water wouldn’t do enough damage for him to need to change his contact lenses, when his phone beeped. Prising open his clear eye, he peered at the screen to see a text message from Henri.
I left your birthday gift in your room. Indulge away, but don’t stay up there all night! It’s YOUR party after all.
Mateo bit back a groan. Henri was in one of his Shakespearean-level nefarious moods and frankly Mateo could expect anything from a peacock to a Picasso when he opened his bedroom door.
Although it couldn’t have been that big, or surely he would have seen it before he came into the bathroom. Frowning, he pocketed the phone and gingerly opened the door to his bedroom. With one eye still clenched tight to ward off any damage to the contact lens, he peered into the gloom, his gaze finally resting on the outline of a woman’s figure.
Bare hands. He would use his bare hands to kill Henri.
Evie had checked all the rooms on the ground floor and there wasn’t even sight of a bookcase in any of them. Biting back an internal groan, she’d realised that she would have to follow Mateo upstairs to the second floor. An area that she’d been told was ‘strictly off-limits’. Forcing a confidence she didn’t feel, she took the stairs one at a time, the gentle sounds of music and easy conversation dying away as she reached the upper floor. Her heart was thumping so loudly and painfully in her chest that the moment she stepped out of sight, she put down the silver tray and rubbed her sternum, taking slow, deep breaths, just as the therapist had taught her.
She’d never once not been thankful to Carol and Alan for making that resource available to her. While they had never been demonstrably affectionate or even comfortable with emotional intimacy, they had done the best they could to meet her practical needs, with nannies who engaged her interest, or tutors to engage her intellect, and a therapist after recognising that being adopted from birth might result in a certain amount of trauma that would need processing.
As she waited for the breathing technique to work, she wondered once again why they had adopted her. They seemed only to want some kind of legacy that befitted them and Evie was never sure that she’d been able to live up to that kind of expectation, no matter how high her IQ.
She brushed the old hurt aside and focused on what she had decided to do. She doubted Mateo would give her the time to explain why she needed the notebook, and with her flight booked for Shanghai tomorrow morning, rather than risk his refusal, Evie had no other option but to simply take it. The idea of something as illegal as theft rankled, but, given that he had ignored his father for the last three years of his life, Evie had a hard time believing he would even notice the notebook’s disappearance.
The corridor stretched out to the left and right of her, four doors on each side. She started with the right-hand side of the corridor and pressed her ear against the first door she came to, her hand resting on the doorknob. Mateo Marin had disappeared intooneof these rooms. But what were the chances he wanted to seek out the library in the middle of a house party? They weren’t, after all, in a Victorian romance novel. Her hand paused on the door handle, heart racing, when...
