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His attention shifted to his assistant. ‘Gràcies, Lucia,’ he said, his voice deep and rich and undeniably masculine. ‘Leave us, please.’
He looked to the guard and said something in Spanish—or perhaps he spoke in Catalan, since she’d read that he spoke both languages fluently, along with English and French—and she tried to pretend her knees hadn’t just gone a little weak. She loved the romance languages, and despite his forbidding demeanour there was something indescribably sexy about the way Xavier de la Vega spoke in his native tongue.
The guard responded, but whatever he said it only drew a terse, dismissive word from his boss, and he quickly joined Lucia in vacating the room, closing the door on his way out.
Those grey eyes—a shade or two darker than Camila’s, she realised now—settled on her again.
‘My staff are concerned for my safety.’
It wasn’t the start to their conversation she’d anticipated. She blinked, confused. ‘Why?’
‘They believe you might pose a threat,’ he elaborated, watching her closely. ‘Do you, Ms Walsh?’
Her eyes widened. ‘A physical threat, you mean?’ The notion was so preposterous a little laugh bubbled up her throat. ‘Hardly.’
‘Indeed.’ His tone and the way his gaze raked over her, as though assessing her physical capabilities, implied that he too considered the idea ludicrous. ‘Are you a journalist?’ he asked abruptly.
‘No,’ she said, trying to ignore the disconcerting pulse of heat that fired through her body in the wake of his cursory appraisal. ‘Why would you think that?’
His penetrating gaze locked onto hers. ‘Journalists have a tendency to get creative in their attempts to access whomever they’re pursuing.’
She frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’
‘You claim to be my stepsister.’
‘Ah...’ She felt her cheeks grow pink. ‘I can explain that...’
‘Can you, Ms Walsh?’ His tone was hard. ‘Because the last time I checked my parents were still happily married—to each other. To my knowledge, neither of them is hiding additional spouses or secret stepchildren.’
Her blush intensified. She had expected this to be tricky. It was why she’d put such careful thought into what she would say and how she’d say it if she ever got the chance. But now that she was here and he was standing before her, so much more imposing in the flesh than she’d imagined, she couldn’t recall a single one of the sentences she’d so painstakingly crafted in her mind.
She swallowed. ‘Um... Maybe we could sit down?’ she suggested.
For a long moment he didn’t move, just stood there staring at her, eyes narrowed to slits of silver-grey as if he were debating whether to have her thrown out or let her stay. Finally, just as her composure teetered on the brink of collapse, he gestured to a chair in front of his desk.
Relief pushed a smile onto her face. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and noted that he waited until she was seated before sitting in his own chair.
It was a simple, old-fashioned courtesy that made her warm to him a bit—until he opened his mouth again.
‘Start talking, Ms Walsh. I don’t have all evening.’
The smile evaporated from her face. Good grief. Was he this brusque with everyone? Or only with strangers who dared to ask for a piece of his precious time?
She sat up a little straighter and said, ‘Jordan.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘My first name is Jordan.’
He drummed the long, tapered fingers of his right hand on the top of the desk, then abruptly stopped, curling his hand into a loose fist. ‘Your accent—is it Australian?’
‘Yes. I’m from Melbourne.’
She paused, took a deep breath, then opened her tote bag and pulled out her red leather-bound journal. She undid the clasp and lifted the cover. The sealed envelope and the two photos she’d carefully tucked inside the journal were still there, safe and sound.
‘Until recently I lived there with my stepmother.’ She picked up one of the photos and held it out, her arm extended across the desk. ‘Camila Walsh.’
He glanced at the photo, but no flicker of recognition showed on his face. Jordan didn’t know why that should disappoint her. Of course he wouldn’t recognise her stepmother.
But her eyes...
Could he not see they were his eyes?
‘Her maiden name was Sanchez,’ she added. ‘She was originally from a small village north of here.’
‘Was?’
A stillness had come over him and Jordan hesitated, all the doubts she’d thought she’d laid to rest suddenly rearing up again, pushing at the walls of her resolve. For the past ten days she’d ridden a wave of certainty, firm in her belief that what she was doing was not only the right thing but a good thing.
After weeks of feeling lost and alone, adrift, with no job, nothing and no one left in the world to anchor her, she’d booked her flights to Spain almost with a sense of euphoria.
‘She died six weeks ago.’
Somehow she managed to say the words without her voice wobbling. She lowered her arm and stared down at the photo of her stepmother.
‘I am sorry for your loss.’
She looked up. The sentiment in his deep voice had sounded genuine. ‘Thank you.’
Her gaze meshed with his and the intensity of those sharp, intelligent eyes made her breath catch in her throat. She shifted a bit, unsettled by her escalating awareness of him. He was so handsome. So compelling. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. And that preternatural stillness in his body... It was disconcerting, making her think of the big, predatory cats in the wildlife documentaries her dad had loved to watch.
She took another deep breath, in through her nose, out through her mouth, the way Camila had taught her to do as a child to combat stress. He was waiting for her to speak—to spell out why she was here. Did he already have an inkling? She searched his face, but the chiselled features were impassive, giving nothing away.
Adopting the tone she often used at work when a mix of practicality and compassion was required, she said, ‘Camila was your birth mother.’
The statement landed between them like a burning stick of dynamite tossed into the room. Jordan braced herself for its impact, her whole body tensing, but if Xavier de la Vega was even mildly shocked he hid it well.
‘You have proof of this?’
She blinked at him. It was such a cool, controlled response—far less emotional than anything she’d expected—but she counselled herself not to read too much into it. At twenty-six years of age, and after five years of working as a trauma nurse, she’d seen people react in all kinds of ways in all sorts of life-altering situations. Often what showed on the surface belied the tumult within.
She slid the other photo from her journal across the desk to him. This one was older, its colours faded, the edges a little bit worn.
He leaned forward, gave the photo a cursory glance, then drew back. ‘This tells me nothing,’ he said dismissively.
Jordan withdrew her hand, leaving the photo on his desk. ‘It’s you,’ she said, and it gave her heart a funny little jolt to think that the tiny, innocent baby in the photo had grown into the powerful, intimidating man before her.
His frown sharpened and he flicked his hand towards the photo, the gesture faintly disdainful. ‘This child could be anyone.’
She reached forward and flipped the photo over. The blue ink on the back had faded with time, but Camila’s handwriting was still legible. ‘It says “Xavier”,’ she pointed out, and waited, sensing his reluctance to look again. When he did, she saw his eyes widen a fraction. ‘And the date of birth underneath... I believe it’s—’
‘Mine,’ he bit out, cutting her off before she could finish. He sat back, nostrils flaring, a white line of tension forming around his mouth. ‘It is no secret that I am adopted. An old photo with my forename and my birth date written on it proves nothing.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she conceded, determined to hold her nerve in the face of his denial and the hostility she sensed was gathering in him. ‘But my stepmother told me things. Details that only your adoptive parents or your birth mother could know.’
His eyes darkened, the grey irises no more than a glint of cold steel between the thick fringes of his ebony lashes. ‘Such as?’
Her lips felt bone-dry all of a sudden, and she moistened them with her tongue. ‘Thirty-five years ago Regina Martinez worked as a housekeeper for your parents,’ she began, carefully reciting the details Camila had shared with her for the first time just a month before she had died. ‘She had an eighteen-year-old unmarried niece who fell pregnant. At the time, your parents were considering adopting a child after your mother had had several miscarriages. A private adoption was arranged, and soon after you were born—at a private hospital here in Barcelona which your parents paid for—they took you home.’
And the young Camila had been devastated, even though she had done the only thing she could. The alternative—living as an unwed mother under her strict father’s roof in their small, conservative village—would have heaped as much misery and shame on her child’s life as on her own.
Knowing first-hand how it felt to be genuinely unwanted by one’s biological mother, Jordan hoped Xavier would see Camila’s decision not as an act of rejection or abandonment, but one of love.
She waited for him to say something. It was perfectly understandable that he might need a minute or two to process what she had told him. Something like this was—
‘What do you want, Ms Walsh?’
Her thoughts slammed to a halt, the question—not to mention the distinct chill in his voice—taking her by surprise. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Money?’
She stared at him. ‘Money?’ she echoed blankly.
His gaze was piercing, the colour of his eyes the dark pewter of storm clouds under his lowered brows. ‘It is common knowledge that my family is one of the wealthiest in Spain. You would not be the first to claim a tenuous connection in hopes of a hand-out.’
A hand-out? Her head snapped back as if he’d flung acid at her face. She gripped the edges of her journal, shock receding beneath a rush of indignation. ‘That is offensive,’ she choked out.
‘Quite,’ he agreed. ‘Which is why I will ask you again—what do you want, Ms Walsh?’
Jordan felt her heart begin to pound. How on earth could this arrogant, imperious man be her stepmother’s son?
Camila had been a kind, gentle soul, who’d always looked for the best in people despite the heartbreak she’d suffered early in her life.
Jordan looked at the envelope she’d placed with such reverent care between the pages of her journal. She’d carried the envelope halfway around the world and not once had she been tempted to snoop inside it. The letter it contained was private, sacred—the precious words of a dying woman to her son.
Lifting her chin, she looked him in the eye, letting him know he didn’t intimidate her—that she had nothing to feel ashamed about. She held up the envelope. ‘I came here to give you this.’
‘And what is “this”?’
‘A letter from your birth mother.’
‘Camila Walsh?’
‘Yes—your birth mother,’ she reiterated.
A muscle worked in his jaw. His gaze flicked to the photo that lay face-down on his desk, then back to her. ‘A claim which is, at present, unsubstantiated.’
Jordan let her hand fall back to her lap, her frustration so great she wanted to slap her palm against the top of his desk and demand to know why he was being so bloody-minded. Instead, she clamped her back teeth together and waited for the impulse to pass.
She was not someone who flew off the handle at the slightest provocation. She might have been saddled with her mother’s unruly flame-coloured hair but she hadn’t, thank goodness, inherited her fiery personality.
Suddenly she felt as cross with herself as she did with him. Why hadn’t she been better prepared for this kind of reaction? Had she imagined that because she and Camila had been close she would automatically feel some sort of instant kinship with this man?
Sadly, she had. She’d tucked her grief away in a safely locked compartment of her heart, donned those silly rose-coloured glasses she should have learnt to distrust years ago, and set off on her mission to deliver Camila’s letter and scatter her ashes in the homeland she’d left thirty-three years before.
It was the final thing Jordan would be able to do for her stepmom—for the woman whose love and kindness had helped to heal the wound Jordan’s mother had inflicted years earlier with her abrupt, unapologetic departure from her daughter’s life.
And, embarrassing though it was to admit it, Jordan had built up a little fantasy in her head—imagining herself striking up a friendship with Camila’s son, having a kind of stepsibling relationship with him—which, now that she was here, seemed totally laughable.
This was not a man she could imagine having such a relationship with. Girls did not look at their brothers and feel their skin prickle and heat or their mouths go dry.
He wasn’t even the sort of man she liked. In fact he was everything she disliked. Arrogant. Superior. Unfeeling. A self-appointed demigod in a power suit, ruling his kingdom from the top of his gilded tower.
And Jordan knew all about men with god complexes, didn’t she? She’d dated a surgeon whose ego was the size of the Sydney Opera House and then—even worse, because she should have known better—she’d moved in with him and decided she was in love.
Jamming the brakes on her runaway thoughts, she focused on the cold, handsome face of the man in front of her and made a snap decision. ‘I don’t think you’re ready for this letter, Mr de la Vega.’
And in that moment she knew she wasn’t ready to relinquish it—because what if he didn’t treat it with the respect it deserved? What if he threw it away without even reading it?
Stiffening her resolve, she tucked the envelope into her journal, then tore out a blank page from the back, pulled a pen from her tote bag and scribbled down her mobile number. ‘I’ll be staying at the Hostel Jardí across town for a few more days and then I’m travelling to Mallorca and then Madrid.’ She put the piece of paper on his desk. ‘If you want to reach me, here’s my number.’ She bundled her things back into her tote and slung the strap over her shoulder. ‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr de la Vega.’ And she turned to go.
‘Ms Walsh.’
His deep, commanding voice brought her to a standstill and her heart leapt with hope. Had he had an epiphany? Realised, perhaps, that he’d behaved abominably?
Breath held, she turned back...and her heart landed with a heavy thud of disappointment.
He was standing, arm extended, holding out the photo she’d left on his desk—the one of himself as a baby. ‘You forgot this.’
Releasing her breath, she shook her head. ‘It’s yours. Keep it—or throw it away. Up to you.’
She continued on to the door, and for a few agonising seconds her nerveless fingers fumbled with the handle while her nape prickled from the unsettling sensation of his gaze drilling into her back.
But he didn’t call her name again. Didn’t attempt to stop her.
As she walked past his assistant’s desk and the stunning Lucia half rose out of her chair, Jordan held up her palm. ‘I can see myself out, thanks.’
Her chest was so tight it wasn’t until she stepped onto the street forty-four storeys below that she felt able to draw a full, oxygen-laden breath into her lungs again.
But as she set off across the city no amount of deep breathing could lift the weight from her heart.
Damn him.
What was she supposed to do now with her stepmom’s letter?
CHAPTER TWO (#u47945a35-0dc7-5049-9cb5-14a18a34fd8a)
‘I’VE LOCATED THE PAPERWORK,’ said Roberto Fuentes, long-time solicitor and a trusted friend to the de la Vega family for over forty years. He paused, and a ripple of disquiet ran beneath the surface of Xav’s iron-clad self-control.
