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The little boy looked forward to his visits…but was he the only one? Why would anyone look forward to a visit from someone who blew hot and cold? Who was cold and remote one moment and relaxed and friendly the next?
As they approached the crossroad Alex slowed for a red light. Isandro shut down the tablet and looked through the window, dragging a hand through his dark hair. He had planned to spend the weekend in London, but at the last moment had decided to drive down to Ravenwood, reasoning he could spend the weekend reading the report without distractions. Sure, no distractions at all, mocked the voice in his head.
‘Is that…?’
Pushing away the thought, Isandro followed the direction of his driver’s nod. ‘Yes, it is, Alex,’ he confirmed.
‘Are they alone?’
Isandro, who had been looking for that glossy dark head attached to a body he had spent some time thinking about, nodded. All right, not just some time—a lot of time. He was finding it pretty much impossible to think about anything but his housekeeper, who did not know the meaning of ‘unobtrusive’.
‘It looks like it.’
Which in itself was strange. While Zoe Grace might not be about to win any prizes for her housekeeping skills, when it came to her youthful charges she took the role extremely seriously. He could not imagine her allowing the twins to wander around town unaccompanied.
‘Shall I pull over?’
Isandro nodded and unclipped his seat belt as the car drew to a halt on a double yellow. When he reached the twins they were still on the pavement. They appeared to be arguing—and more significantly there was still no sign of their aunt.
It was Harry who saw him first. Seeing the relief on his freckled face, Isandro experienced an emotional tightening in his chest.
Isandro controlled his strong inclination to hug him, aware that the boy had already measured him up as an unlikely male role model. It would be nothing short of cruel to allow the boy to become reliant and then fade out of his life.
Instead he gave the boy a manly pat on his painfully skinny shoulder. The kid could do a lot better than him for a father substitute. Did his aunt’s determination to sacrifice her own needs for her charges extend to her choice of partner? Would she choose the ‘good father’ material over a good lover? The woman was probably determined to be a martyr. She’d probably end up alone or with some boring loser whom she deemed solid and responsible.
‘We’ve lost Aunty Zoe. Actually, we ran away and now we’re lost, too.’
For which Isandro correctly read his sister had run and he had followed. There was no doubting who the dominant and reckless twin in this equation was.
‘We’re not lost,’ his sister interrupted. ‘And if you hadn’t made me come back…’
‘It was stealing!’
‘It was not stealing. We were bringing it back, and that’s borrowing, isn’t it?’ she appealed to Isandro for support.
‘Borrowing without permission is stealing. And running away from your aunt is…Have you any idea how worried she will be?’ An image of a terrified Zoe flashed into his head and he hardened his heart against their stricken expressions. ‘She will be frantic!’
The twins exchanged worried glances.
‘We didn’t think,’ Georgie admitted.
Isandro steeled himself against the quiver in her voice and struggled to maintain his stern expression as he ushered them towards the car. The sniff was too much for the ruthless captain of industry to withstand.
‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll ring your aunt and let her know—’
‘You can’t,’ they said in unison.
He shook his head. ‘Why can’t I?’
‘Her phone wasn’t charged. It died on her when Aunt Chloe was talking.’
He exhaled. If he had been in Zoe’s position—which was unlikely, because not only would he not have let his phone battery run down, he certainly wouldn’t have taken on responsibility for this pair of demons—he would now be retracing his footsteps.
The demons regarded him with the expressions that said they had total faith that he would come up with a solution.
‘Right, then, where were you when you ran away, and where were you before that?’
The terrible clawing panic in her stomach when she had turned to tell the twins to get a wriggle or the car would be clamped would stay with Zoe for ever. When she found them she would never let them out of her sight again…always supposing she didn’t throttle them.
She jogged along the pavements, retracing her footsteps, stopping occasionally to ask people if they had seen two children, oblivious to the stares that followed her progress. She kept telling herself over and over like a mantra, Tomorrow this will just be a memory. I’ll laugh about it with Chloe.
Tomorrow seemed a hell of a long way away, though, and Chloe was still in Boston!
By the time Zoe had worked her way to the boat-hire booth her heart was thudding so hard she felt as if it would crack her ribs. She was only kept going by the strong conviction that had gradually taken hold that the twins were out there on the river.
It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she smelt a rat when the wilful youngster who would never take no for an answer had not argued or even tried to cajole when she’d refused to take them out in a kayak. Now of course it made sense. Georgie hadn’t suddenly become malleable, she’d simply cut out the arguing, and she’d dragged Harry with her.
The ticket booth was closed, but before a frantic Zoe could think of what to do next a boy came around the corner carrying a padlock and a large bunch of keys. He removed the earphones from his ears when he saw her.
‘Sorry, we’re closed.’
‘I’m looking for my niece and nephew,’ she said before he could put the earphones back in. ‘They’re seven years old. I think they might have gone out in one of your kayaks.’ The effort to stay calm and not sound like an unbalanced lunatic made her voice shake, but she was pretty proud of her effort.
‘Sorry, we’re closed.’
She watched, her pent-up fear tipping over into rage, as he began to insert the earphones.
Her eyes narrowed, she stepped forward and snatched them out, drawing a yelp from the boy. ‘My niece and nephew—they wanted to go out in a kayak. Have you seen them?’ she yelled, fighting the impulse to shake the information from the stupid boy who was backing away from her.
‘I don’t know what your problem is, miss, but the public are not allowed here. There’s a sign. It’s health and safety.’ He pointed to a no-entry sign on the wall of the booth.
Give me strength! ‘I’ve been trying to tell you what the problem is. I’m looking for two children, a boy and girl. So high…’ She held her palm at the appropriate height. ‘They wanted to go out…’ She closed her eyes, seeing Georgie’s expression when she had refused their request. God, but she really should have seen this coming. ‘I think they might be out there.’ She swallowed as her eyes moved to the horizon where the grey water of the river met the darker grey sky. ‘In one of your canoes.’
‘No children allowed in the kayaks without a responsible adult. Besides, we’re closing early—there’s a storm coming.’ His phone rang and he wandered away with it pressed to his ear.
When Zoe took the situation into her own hands the youth was close enough for her to hear him say, ‘No way…outside the pub at five.’ But not close enough, thanks to a tree, for him to see her wade into the shallow water and push out a stray canoe that had not yet been dragged onto the artificial beach.
She’d been kayaking before, she reminded herself as she managed on the third try to clamber into the swaying boat. Of course on that occasion Laura had been paddling, and she’d been only five years old, but this was a detail. How hard could it be?
Five minutes later Zoe had gone several hundred yards. But she had no idea whether she was heading in the right direction. She didn’t have the faintest idea where they were! She was acting on intuition, but wasn’t that another name for blind panic?
She squared her shoulders and dipped her oar into the water. She had to stay positive.
The obvious sensible thing to do would have been to go to the police…so why was she just realising that now when she was literally up the creek? Then the rain started.
The downpour was of biblical flood proportions. Within two minutes she was drenched. Her hair plastered against her skull; the water streamed down her face, making it hard to see. More worrying than her wet clothes was the water sloshing around in the bottom of the canoe.
Trying to see past the rain that was now being driven horizontally by a gale-force wind into her face, she recalled the weather man’s prediction of light showers and laughed.
The hysterical sound was whipped away by the wind, which was again blowing her in the wrong direction. Head bent, she paddled hard but, despite the fact her arms felt as though they were falling off, she made no headway. She put oar down for a moment to ease the burning pain in the muscles of her upper arms and shoulders, flexing her stiff fingers as she balanced it across the canoe.
She saw it happening as if in slow motion. She lunged forward, one arm outstretched and the other holding onto the edge of the wildly rocking kayak. Just as her fingers touched the oar a current carried it away out of reach. Her centre of gravity lost, Zoe struggled to pull back, but just when it seemed inevitable she would be pitched into the grey swirling water she managed to recover, collapsing back with a sob of laughing relief into the canoe.
It hardly seemed possible that a couple of weeks ago she had decided that this stretch of the river, with its series of shallow waterfalls and half-submerged stone slabs where people sunbathed and children paddled in shallow pools, made for a really lovely afternoon stroll. Pretty, but not dramatic.
Today it did not lack drama. The river was wild white water, full of dark swirls and hidden obstacles. The boulders she strove to avoid were only just visible above the foaming white water. Zoe paddled with her hands but soon recognised it was hopeless. The kayak would never survive.
Feeling surprisingly calm in the face of impending disaster, Zoe was in the middle of telling herself she was overreacting when the kayak hit a submerged rock. The jarring motion as it glanced off sent the flimsy craft rocking sideways. Thrown off balance, Zoe lurched sideways, throwing her body weight sharply to one side to right the canoe. For a moment it seemed to work, but it was hit by an extra-strong squall of wind and simply carried on going.
This time there was no reprieve and the immersion in the shockingly cold grey water took her breath. For a moment she panicked, flailing around blindly as she tried to free herself from the upturned canoe, hampered by clothes that dragged her downwards. When she did she surfaced almost immediately, choking as she gasped for air. Behind her the canoe was making its way upside down through the churning white water, before it vanished over the top of a weir.
That could have been me.
But it won’t be. The twins would be all alone, they need me. Focusing on that one thought and not the cold seeping into her bones, she struck out strongly, aiming for the opposite bank, where she would be likely to see someone who could raise the emergency services. Zoe was a strong swimmer with no fear of the water, but even so the going was tough and her progress, hampered by her clothes, was torturously slow.
As she swam she was distantly aware of a sound above the echoing roar of the water and her own heartbeat but she didn’t allow it to distract her. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep going. Every second she wasted the twins could be…No, she wouldn’t think like that. She needed to focus.
‘Focus, Zoe,’ she said to herself—but the water filled her open mouth and, choking, her head went under.
As she was lifted unceremoniously out of the water she continued to kick feebly, right up to the moment she was hauled over and left utterly disorientated in an inelegant heap in the bottom of what seemed to be a small motorboat.
She grunted as the boat swerved, sharply throwing her against a wooden seat. The locker underneath was open and a child’s inflatable vest spilled out. Oh, God, the children were out there somewhere!
She began to cry great silent, gulping sobs that racked her entire body.
Once the boat was away from the immediate danger of hitting the rocks and in the relative safety of open water, Isandro cut back on the throttle and turned his attention to the sodden bundle of misery sitting in the bottom of the boat.
He experienced a gripping sensation in his chest almost as strong as the one he had felt when he had seen her head vanish under the grey water—though without the soul-destroying terror.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ he blasted.
She recognised the voice but was convinced she was dreaming. Except in her dreams he hadn’t sounded angry…Zoe dragged her hair back from her face. My God, it was him!
It was Isandro! Looking furious, very wet and not dressed for sailing!
‘Isandro…how…?’ She stopped. It didn’t matter how he came to be here. ‘No,’ she croaked, grabbing at his leg and tugging. ‘I’ve got to go back.’
‘You want me to throw you back in the water? Do not tempt me,’ he growled, seeing her vanish beneath the grey water again and feeling the visceral kick of fear in his gut again. He never wanted to relive the moment when he saw her go under.
‘No, Isandro, you don’t understand! I think the twins…’
Some of the anger died from his face as he placed his hands on her shoulders and dragged her up onto the wooden bench seat beside him. Shaking so hard that her teeth chattered, she transferred her desperate grip to his jacket. Frantic to communicate the urgency of the situation, she grabbed his lapels and pulled.
‘The twins—’
‘No, Zoe—’
‘Listen, will you?’
He caught hold of her hands. ‘The twins are with Alex, who is not, I admit, the most likely child-minder. In fact it is highly likely that he is even now teaching them to play poker. But they are safe.’
Zoe blinked as she shook her head, trying to clear the fog in her brain. Why couldn’t she think straight?
‘The twins are all right?’ Without waiting for a reply, she pushed her head into his chest and began to cry in earnest.
His arms went out wide as he looked down at the head of tangled hair. His anger had vanished and he refused to recognise the feelings that had rushed in to fill the vacuum as tenderness. Her cries tore at him; finally the mewling sounds as she burrowed in deeper snapped his resistance and his arms closed around her. He lifted her body into the warmth of his.
‘Madre di Dios, you’re an imbecile, a raving…You make me want, you make me feel—’ He stopped and thought, you make me feel…too much. Digging his fingers into her wet hair, he stroked her scalp and let her cry herself out.
He had stopped resisting the sexual desire he felt for her. Physical desire was normal, not complicated. It was something that he understood and accepted, not a weakness. It did not require that he surrender any control; it was not about trusting. He wanted her on his terms—he would have her on his terms. He would not fall into the trap of allowing emotions to cloud his judgement.
He was not his father.
Finally peeling herself away, Zoe straightened up, blinking like someone waking up.
‘I’m…’ She gulped and shook her head again as he removed his jacket and draped it around her shoulders.
‘It’s wet but better than nothing.’
The lining was still warm. ‘Sorry,’ she said, not meeting his eyes. She was too embarrassed by her total meltdown. Why did she always make a total fool of herself around him?
He kept one hand on her shoulder, the other on the tiller, guiding the boat towards the mooring.
‘Sorry…I…I thought…’ Her lips quivered as she struggled for composure. ‘I thought they’d gone on the river…’ She gave a frown, trying to remember the sequence of events as much for her own benefit as for his. ‘We’d been to the craft fair in the park. When we started back it was late and I thought they were with me. I was running—they were going to clamp the car…’ Wrong tense, she realised, they probably already had clamped the car. But having faced what she had thought was a real disaster, car clamping faded into insignificance.
She pushed the wet strands of hair from her eyes and pressed the heels of both hands to her temples before slowly turning her head to stare at him.
‘What the hell made you go out on the water? Are you suicidal?’
‘The twins—’
‘And what would have happened to the twins if you had drowned?’ Her horrified little gasp felt like a knife sliding between his ribs, but Isandro didn’t allow his expression to soften as Zoe went several shades whiter. The only colour in her face was her dramatic sapphire eyes and the blue discoloration around her lips.
‘I was not going to drown,’ she protested through chattering teeth.
Faced with this refusal to acknowledge, let alone show any remorse for, the total bloody selfishness of her reckless actions, Isandro was tempted to throw her back in the water.
‘My mistake,’ he gritted through clenched teeth. ‘I can see now that you had the situation totally under control.’
Unable to tear her eyes off the nerve that was throbbing in his lean cheek, she shook her head. ‘No, really, I’m a strong swimmer…obviously I’m grateful but…’
‘But really you didn’t need my help at all.’ He gave a shrug and, cutting the engine, steered the gliding boat expertly between the moored vessels.
Before Zoe could respond he leapt out of the boat, landing lithely on the wooden pier where he proceeded to tie off the boat.
‘I really am grateful, Isandro. It was really lucky you had a boat.’
‘I don’t have a boat.’ A faint smile flickered across his face. ‘Not here anyway.’
