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‘Is there room for me at your father’s place?’
Leandro’s frown deepened until two vertical lines formed between his bottomless brown eyes. ‘You don’t want to stay in a hotel?’
Miranda snagged her lip with her teeth, warm colour crawling further over her cheeks until her whole face felt on fire. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude if you’ve got someone else staying...’
Who was his someone else?
Who was his latest lover? She knew he had them from time to time. She had seen pictures of him at charity events. She had even met one or two over the years when he had brought a partner to one of the legendary parties her parents had put on at Ravensdene for New Year’s Eve. Tall, impossibly beautiful, elegant, eloquent types who didn’t blush and stumble over their words and make silly fools of themselves. He wasn’t as out there as her playboy brother Jake. Leandro was more like Julius in that he liked to keep his private life out of the public domain.
‘I haven’t got anyone staying,’ he said.
He hadn’t got anyone staying? Or he hadn’t got anyone?
And why was she even thinking about his love life? It wasn’t as if she was interested in him. She was interested in no one. Not since Mark had died. She ignored attractive men. She quickly brushed off any men who flirted with her or tried to charm her. Not that Leandro was super-charming or anything. He was polite but distant. Aloof. And as for flirting...well, if he could learn to smile now and again it might help.
Miranda wasn’t sure why she was pushing so hard for an invitation. Maybe it was because she had never spent any time with him without other people around. Maybe it was because he had recently lost his father and she wanted to know why he hadn’t told anyone before the funeral. Maybe it was because she wanted to see where he had spent the first eight years of his life before he had moved to England. What had he been like as a child? Had he been playful and fun-loving, like most kids, or had he been as serious and inexpressive as he was now? ‘So would it be okay to stay with you?’ she said. ‘I won’t get in your way.’
He looked at her in that frowning manner he had. Deep thought or disapproval? She could never quite tell. ‘There isn’t a housekeeper there.’
‘I can cook,’ she said. ‘And I can help you tidy things up before you sell the place. It’ll be fun.’
A small silence ticked past.
Miranda got the feeling he was mulling it over. Weighing it up in his mind. Doing a risk assessment.
He finally drew in a breath and then slowly released it. ‘Fine. I’ll email you those flights.’
She rose from the table and began to shrug on her coat, tugging her hair free from the collar. ‘Do you mind if I walk out with you? There was a pap crew tailing me earlier. I ducked in here to escape them. It’d be nice to get back to work without being jostled.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’m heading that way anyway.’
* * *
Leandro walked beside Miranda on the way back to the gallery. He was always struck by how tiny she was. Built like a ballerina with fine limbs and an elfin face, with big tawny-brown eyes and auburn hair, yet her skin was without a single freckle—it was as white and pure as Devon cream. She had an ethereal beauty about her. She reminded him of a fairy-tale character—an innocent waif lost in the middle of a crazy out-of-control world.
Seeing her hiding in that café had tripped a switch inside his head. It was like he’d had a brain snap. He hadn’t thought it through but it seemed...right somehow. She needed a bolthole and he needed someone to help him sort out the mess his father had left behind. Maybe it would’ve been better to commission someone local. Maybe he could have sold the lot without proper valuation. Hell, he didn’t really know why he had asked her, except he knew she was having a tough time of it with her father’s love-child scandal still doing the rounds.
That and the fact he couldn’t bear the thought of being in that villa on his own with only the ghosts of the past to haunt him. He hadn’t been back since the day he’d left when he was eight years old.
It wasn’t like him to act so impulsively but seeing Miranda hiding behind that pot plant had made him realise how stressed she was about her father’s latest peccadillo. He had heard from her brothers the press had camped outside her flat for the last month. She hadn’t been able to take a step without a camera or a microphone being shoved in her face. Being the daughter of famous celebrities came with a heavy price tag. Or, at least, it did for her.
Leandro had always felt a little sorry for Miranda. She was constantly compared to her flamboyant and glamorous mother and found lacking. Now she was being compared to her half-sister. Kat Winwood was stunning. No two ways about that. Kat was the billboard-beautiful type. Kat would stop traffic. Air traffic. Miranda’s beauty was quiet, the sort of beauty that grew on you. And she was shy in an endearingly old-fashioned way. He didn’t know too many women who blushed as easily as her. She never flirted. And she never dated. Not since she had lost her first and only boyfriend to leukaemia when she was sixteen. Leandro couldn’t help admiring her loyalty, even if he privately thought she was throwing her life away.
But who was he to judge?
He hadn’t got any plans for happy-ever-after either.
Miranda was the best person to advise him on his father’s collection. Of course she was. She was reliable and sensible. She was competent and efficient and she had an excellent eye. She had helped her brother Julius buy some great pieces at various auctions. She could spot a fraud at twenty paces. It would only take a week or two to sort out the collection and he would be doing her a favour in the process.
But there was one thing she didn’t know about him.
He hadn’t even told Julius or Jake about Rosie.
It was why he had gone to his father’s funeral alone. Going back to Nice had been like ripping open a wound.
There’d been numerous times when he could have mentioned it. He could have told his two closest friends the tragic secret he carried like a shackle around his heart. But instead he had let everyone think he was an only child. Every time he thought of his baby sister his chest would seize. The thought of her little chubby face with its dimpled, sunny smile would bring his guilt crashing down on him like a guillotine.
For all these years he had said nothing. To anyone. He had left that part of his life—his former life, his childhood—back in France. His life was divided into two sections: France and England. Before and After. Sometimes that ‘before’ life felt like a bad dream—a horrible, blood-chilling nightmare. But then he would wake up and realise with a sickening twist of his gut that it was true. Inescapably, heartbreakingly true. It didn’t matter where he lived. How far he travelled. How hard he worked to block the memories. The guilt came with him. It sat on his shoulder during the day. It poked him awake at night. It drove vicious needles through his skull until he was blind with pain.
Speaking about his family was torture for him. Pure, unadulterated torture. He hated even thinking about it. He didn’t have a family.
His family had been blown apart twenty-seven years ago and he had been the one to do it.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_451a4e10-8861-56bd-b75e-341b3e5907d6)
‘YOU’RE GOING TO FRANCE?’ Jasmine Connelly said, eyes wide with sparkling intrigue. ‘With Leandro Allegretti?’
Miranda had dropped into Jasmine’s bridal boutique in Mayfair for a quick catch-up before she flew out the following day. Jaz was sewing Swarovski crystals onto a gorgeous wedding dress, the sort of dress for every girl who dreamed of being a princess. Miranda had pictured a dress just like it back in the day when her life had been going according to plan. Now every time she saw a wedding dress she felt sad.
‘Not going with him as such,’ she said, absently fingering the fabric of the wedding gown on the mannequin. ‘I’m meeting him over there to help him sort out his father’s art collection.’
‘When do you go?’
‘Tomorrow... For a couple of weeks.’
‘Should be interesting,’ Jaz said with a smile in her voice.
Miranda looked at her with a frown. ‘Why do you say that?’
Jaz gave her a worldly look. ‘Come, now. Don’t you ever notice the way he looks at you?’
Miranda felt something unhitch in her chest. ‘He never looks at me. He barely even says a word to me. This is the first time we’ve exchanged more than a couple of sentences.’
‘Clues, my dear Watson,’ Jaz said with a cheeky smile. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no one’s watching. I reckon if it weren’t for his relationship with your family he would act on it. You’d better pack some decent underwear just in case he changes his mind.’
Miranda pointedly ignored her friend’s teasing comment as she trailed her hand through the voluminous veil hanging beside the dress. ‘Do you know much about his private life?’
Jaz stopped sewing to look at her with twinkling grey-blue eyes. ‘So you are interested. Yay! I thought the day would never come.’
Miranda frowned. ‘I know what you’re thinking but you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not the least bit interested in him or anyone. I just wondered if he had a current girlfriend, that’s all.’
‘Not that I’ve heard of, but you know how close he keeps his cards,’ Jaz said. ‘He could have a string of women on the go. He is, after all, one of Jake’s mates.’
Every time Jaz said Jake’s name her mouth got a snarly, contemptuous look. The enmity between them was ongoing. It had started when Jaz was sixteen at one of Miranda’s parents’ legendary New Year’s Eve parties. Jaz refused to be drawn on what had actually happened in Jake’s bedroom that night. Jake too kept tight-lipped. But it was common knowledge he despised Jaz and made every effort to avoid her if he could.
Miranda glanced at the glittering diamond on her friend’s ring finger. It was Jaz’s third engagement and, while Miranda didn’t exactly dislike Jaz’s latest fiancé, Myles, she didn’t think he was ‘The One’ for her. Not that she could ever say that to Jaz. Jaz didn’t take too kindly to being told what she didn’t want to hear. Miranda had had the same misgivings over Fiancés One and Two. She just had to hope and trust her headstrong and stubborn friend would realise how she was short-changing herself before the wedding actually took place.
Jaz stood back and cast a critical eye over her handiwork. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Miranda said with a sigh.
‘Yeah, well, I’m going cross-eyed with all these crystals,’ Jaz said. ‘I’ve got to get it done so I can start on Holly’s. She’s awfully nice, isn’t she?’
‘Gorgeous,’ Miranda said. ‘It’s amazing, seeing Julius so happy. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure he was ever going to fall in love. They’re total opposites and yet they’re so perfect for each other.’
Jaz looked at her with her head on one side, that teasing glint back in her gaze. ‘Is that a note of wistfulness I can hear?’
Miranda rearranged her features. ‘I’d better get going.’ She grabbed her tote bag, slung it over her shoulder and leaned in to kiss Jaz on the cheek. ‘See you when I get back.’
* * *
When Miranda landed in Nice she saw Leandro waiting for her in the terminal. He was dressed more casually this time but if anything it made him look even more heart-stoppingly attractive. The dark blue denim jeans clung to his leanly muscled legs. The rolled back sleeves of his light blue shirt highlighted his deep tan and emphasised the masculinity of the dark hair liberally sprinkled over his strong forearms. He was cleanly shaven but she could see where he had nicked himself on the left side of his jaw. For some reason, it humanised him. He was always so well put together, so in control. Was being back in his childhood home unsettling for him? Upsetting? What emotions were going on behind the dark screen of his eyes?
As he caught her eye a flutter of awareness rippled deep and low in her belly. Would he kiss her in greeting? She couldn’t remember him ever touching her. Not even by accident. Even when he’d walked her back to the gallery last week he had kept his distance. There had been no shoulder brushing. Not that she even reached his shoulders. She was five-foot-five to his six-foot-three.
Miranda smiled shyly as he came towards her. ‘Hi.’
‘Hello.’ Was it her imagination or was his voice deeper and huskier than normal? The sound of it moved over her skin as if he had reached out and stroked her. But he kept a polite distance, although she couldn’t help noticing his gaze slipped to her mouth for the briefest moment. ‘How was your flight?’ he said.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t have to put me in first class. I was happy to fly coach.’
He took her carry-on bag from her, somehow without touching her fingers as he did so. ‘I didn’t want anyone bothering you,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing worse than being a captive audience to someone’s life story.’
Miranda gave a light laugh. ‘True.’
She followed him out to the car park where he opened the door of the hire car for her. She couldn’t fault his manners, but then, he had always been a gentleman. She had never known him to be anything but polite and considerate. She wondered if this was difficult for him, coming back to France to his early childhood home. What memories did it stir for him? Did it make him wish he had been closer to his father? Did it stir up regrets that now it was too late?
She glanced at him as they left the car park and joined the traffic on the Promenade des Anglais that followed the brilliant blue of the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. He was frowning as usual; even his hands on the steering wheel were clenched. She could see the tanned flesh straining over his knuckles. The line of his jaw was grim. Everything about him was tense, wound up like a spring. It looked like he was in physical pain.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
He looked at her briefly, moving his lips in a grimace-like smile that didn’t reveal his teeth. ‘I’m fine.’
Miranda didn’t buy it for a second. ‘Have you got one of your headaches?’ She had seen him once at Ravensdene when he had come down with a migraine. He was always so strong and fit that to see him rendered helpless with such pain and sickness had been an awful shock. The doctor had had to be called to give him a strong painkiller injection. Jake had driven him back to London the next day, as he had still been too ill to drive himself.
‘Just a tension headache,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘When did you arrive?’
‘Yesterday,’ he said. ‘I had a job to finish in Stockholm.’
‘I expect it must be difficult coming back,’ Miranda said, still watching him. ‘Emotional for you, I mean. Did you ever come back after your parents divorced?’
‘No.’
She frowned. ‘Not even to visit your father?’
His hands tightened another notch on the steering wheel. ‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship.’
Miranda wondered how his father could have been so cold and distant. How could a man turn his back on his son—his only child—just because his marriage had broken up? Surely the bond of parenthood was much stronger than that? Her parents had gone through a bitter divorce before she’d been born and, while they hadn’t been around much due to their theatre commitments, as far as she could tell Julius and Jake had never doubted they were loved.
‘Your father doesn’t sound like a very nice person,’ she said. ‘Was he always a drinker? I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it. It’s just, Julius told me you didn’t like it when your father came to London to see you. He said your dad embarrassed you by getting horribly drunk.’
Leandro’s gaze was focussed on the clogging traffic ahead but she could see the way his jaw was locked down, as if tightened by a clamp. ‘He didn’t always drink that heavily.’
‘What made him start? The divorce?’
He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘It certainly didn’t help.’
Miranda wondered about the dynamics of his parents’ relationship and how each of them had handled the breakdown of their marriage. Some men found the loss of a relationship far more devastating than others. Some sank into depression, others quickly re-partnered to avoid being alone. The news was regularly full of horrid stories of men getting back at their ex-wives after a broken relationship—cruel and vindictive attempts to get revenge, sometimes involving the children, with tragic results. ‘Did he ever remarry?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Did he have other partners?’
‘Occasionally, but not for long,’ Leandro said. ‘He was difficult to live with. There were few women who would put up with him.’
‘So it was his fault your mother left him?’ Miranda asked. ‘Because he was so difficult to live with?’
He didn’t answer for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her over the noise of the traffic outside. ‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘That was my fault.’
Miranda looked at him in shock. ‘You? Why would you think that? That’s ridiculous. You were only eight years old. Why on earth would you blame yourself?’
He gave her an unreadable glance before he took a left turn. ‘My father’s place is a few blocks up here. Have you ever been to Nice before?’
‘A couple of years ago—but don’t try and change the subject,’ she said. ‘Why do you blame yourself for your parents’ divorce?’
‘Don’t all kids blame themselves?’
Miranda thought about it for a moment. Her mother had said a number of times how having twins had put pressure on her relationship with her father. But then, Elisabetta wasn’t a naturally maternal type. She was happiest when the attention was on her, not on her children. Miranda had felt that keenly as she’d been growing up. All of her friends—apart from Jaz—were envious of her having a glamorous showbiz mother. And Elisabetta could act like a wonderful mother when it suited her.
It was the times when she didn’t that hurt Miranda the most.
But why did Leandro think he was responsible for his parents’ break-up? Had they told him that? Had they made him feel guilty? What sort of parents had they been to do something so reprehensible? How could they make a young child feel responsible for the breakdown of a marriage? That was the adults’ responsibility, not a child’s, and certainly not a young child’s.
But she didn’t pursue the conversation for at that point Leandro pulled into the driveway of a rundown-looking villa in the Belle Epoqué style. At first she thought he must have made a mistake, pulled into the wrong driveway or something. The place was like something out of a gothic noir film. The outside of the three-storey-high building was charcoal-grey with the stain of years of carbon monoxide pollution. The windows with the ragged curtains drawn were like closed eyes.
The villa was like a faded Hollywood star. Miranda could see the golden era of glamour in its lead-roofed cupolas on the corners and the ornamental ironwork and flamboyance of the stucco decorations that resembled a wedding cake.
But it had been sadly neglected. She knew many of the grand villas of the Belle Époque era along the Promenade des Anglais had not survived urban redevelopment. But the extravagance of the period was still apparent in this old beauty.
It made Miranda’s blood tick in her veins. What a gorgeous old place for Leandro to inherit. It was a piece of history. A relic from an enchanted time when the aristocracy had flaunted their wealth by hiring architects to design opulent villas with every imaginable embellishment: faux stonework, figureheads, frescos, friezes, decorative ironwork, ornamental stucco work, cupolas, painted effects, garlands and grotesques. The aristocracy had indulged their taste for the exotic, with Italian and Classic influences as well as Gothic, Eastern and Moorish.
And he was packing it up and selling it?
Miranda looked up at him as he opened her car door for her. ‘Leandro, it’s amazing! What a glorious building. It’s like a time capsule from the Art Nouveau period. This was your childhood home? Really?’
He clearly didn’t share her excitement for the building. His expression had that closed-off look about it, as shuttered as the windows of the villa they were about to enter. ‘It’s very run-down,’ he said.
