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Eva had been saddened by this loss. She’d only met Pieta a few times but he’d been greatly respected by everyone in the aid community.
She and the other staff at the Blue Train Aid Agency had been overjoyed to learn his family wished to proceed with the hospital. The people of the island badly needed more medical facilities. They and the other charities and agencies did the best they could but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
Pieta’s sister, Francesca, had become the new driving force for the project. Eva had liked her very much and admired the younger woman’s determination and focus. She’d expected to like and admire his brother too. Like Pieta, Daniele was a world-famous name, but his reputation had been built through his architecture and construction company, which had won more design awards than any other in the past five years.
She’d found nothing to like or admire about him. Although famed for his good humour and searing intellect, she’d found him arrogant and entitled. She’d seen the wrinkle of distaste on his strong—now busted—nose when he’d come to the camp to collect her for their one evening out together, a date she’d only agreed to because he’d assured her it wasn’t a date and that he’d just wanted to get her input on the kind of hospital he should be building as she was something of an expert on the country and its people. He’d flown her to his exclusive seven-star hotel on the neighbouring paradise island of Aguadilla, spent five minutes asking her pertinent questions, then the rest of the evening drinking heavily, asking impertinent questions and shamelessly flirting with her.
She would go as far as to say his only redeeming features were his looks and physique and the size of his bank account. Seeing as she was immune to men and cared nothing for money, those redeeming features were wasted on her.
The look on his face when she’d coldly turned down his offer of a trip to his suite for a ‘nightcap’ had been priceless. She had a feeling Daniele Pellegrini was not used to the word ‘no’ being uttered to him by members of the opposite sex.
He’d had his driver take her back to the airfield without a word of goodbye. That was the last she’d seen of him until she’d walked into the medical tent ten minutes ago and found him already there, waiting for her. It was immediately obvious that someone had punched him in the face. She wondered who it was and if it was possible to track them down and buy them a drink.
‘I’m not a nurse,’ she’d said when he’d told her he needed her to fix it.
He’d shrugged his broad shoulders but without the ready smile she remembered from their ‘date’. ‘I only need you to stop the bleeding. I’m sure you’ve seen it done enough times that you have a basic idea of what needs to be done.’
She had more than a basic idea. Principally employed as a co-ordinator and translator, she, like most of the other non-medical staff, had often stepped in to help the medical team when needed. That didn’t mean she felt confident in patching up a broken nose, especially when the nose belonged to an arrogant billionaire whose suit likely cost more than the average annual salary of the Caballerons lucky enough to have a job.
‘I’ll get one of the nurses or—’
‘No, they’re busy,’ he’d cut in. ‘Stem the bleeding and I’ll be out of here.’
She’d been about to argue that she was busy too but there had been something in his demeanour that had made her pause. Now, as she gently placed the second strip on his nose, she thought him like a tightly coiled spring. She pitied whoever would be on the receiving end of the explosion that was sure to come when the coil sprang free.
Taking the third and last strip, she couldn’t help but notice how glossy his dark hair was. If she didn’t know it was a genetic blessing, having the same shine as the rest of the family members she’d met, she’d think he took a personal hairdresser with him everywhere he travelled. And a personal dresser.
If she was feeling charitable she could understand his distaste for the camp. Daniele lived in luxury. Here there was only dirt and squalor that everyone’s best efforts at cleaning barely made a dent in. Being in front of him like this made her acutely aware of the grubbiness of her jeans and T-shirt and the messy ponytail she’d thrown her hair back into.
Who cared about her appearance? she asked herself grimly. This was a refugee camp. All the staff were prepared to turn their hand to anything that needed doing. Dressing for a fashion shoot was not only wholly inappropriate but wholly impractical.
It was only this hateful man who made her feel grubby and inferior.
‘Keep still,’ she reminded him when his foot started its agitated tapping again. ‘Almost done. I’m just going to clean you up and you can go. You’ll need to keep the strips on for around a week and remember to keep them dry.’
Reaching for the antiseptic wipes, she gently dabbed at the tiny drops of blood that had leaked out since she’d first cleaned his nose and cheeks.
Suddenly a wave of his scent enveloped her. She’d forgotten to hold her breath.
It was perhaps the most mouthwatering scent she’d ever known, making her think of thick forests and hanging fruit, a reaction and thoughts she would have laughed at if anyone had suggested such romantic notions to her.
How could such a hateful, arrogant man be so blessed? He had more talent in his little finger than she could spend a lifetime hoping for.
And he had the most beautiful eyes, an indecipherable browny-green, his surroundings dominating the colour of them at any particular moment. Eyes that were suddenly focussed on her. Staring intently into hers.
She stared back, trapped in his stare before she forced herself to blink, push her stool back and jump down.
‘I’ll get an ice pack for your eye,’ she murmured, flustered but determined not to show it.
‘No need,’ he dismissed. ‘Don’t waste your resources on me.’ He dug into his inside suit jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. From it he took some notes and thrust them into her hand. ‘That’s to replace the medical supplies you used.’
Then he strolled out of the medical tent without a word of thanks or goodbye.
Only when Eva opened the hand that tingled where his skin had brushed it did she see he’d given her ten one-hundred-dollar bills.
* * *
‘There has got to be an alternative,’ Daniele said firmly, pouring himself another glass of red wine, his grip on the bottle tight enough to whiten his knuckles. ‘You can have the estate.’
His sister Francesca, who he’d directed this at, shook her head. ‘I can’t. You know that. I’m the wrong gender.’
‘And I can’t marry.’ Marriage was anathema to him. He didn’t want it. He didn’t need it. He’d spent his adult life avoiding it, avoiding any form of commitment.
‘Either you marry and take control of the estate or Matteo gets it.’
At the mention of his traitorous cousin’s name, the last of his control deserted him and he flung his glass at the wall.
Francesca held out a hand to stop Felipe, her fiancé, an ex-Special Forces hard man, who’d braced himself to step in. Her voice remained steady as she said to Daniele, ‘He’s the next male heir after you. You know that’s a fact. If you don’t marry and accept the inheritance, then Matteo gets it.’
He breathed deeply, trying to regain control of his temper. The red liquid trickled down the white wall. Looking at it from the right angle, it was as dark as the blood that had poured from his nose when anger had taken possession of him and he’d flown at Matteo, the pair exchanging blows that would have been a lot worse if Felipe hadn’t stepped in and put a halt to it. Since that exchange he’d felt the anger inside him like a living being, a snake coiled in his guts ready to spring at the slightest provocation.
Matteo had betrayed them all.
‘There has got to be a legal avenue we can take to override the trust,’ he said as the wine, splattered over the wall, obeyed the laws of gravity and trickled to the floor. He’d have to get it repainted before he got new tenants in, he thought absently. He owned the apartment in Pisa but his sister had lived in it for six years. Now she was marrying Felipe and moving to Rome, and unless he thought of an alternative he would be forced to marry too. ‘It’s archaic.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘We all know that. Pieta was working with the trustees to get it overturned but it isn’t as easy as we hoped it would be. The trust is cast-iron. It’ll take months, maybe years, to get that clause overturned and while we’re waiting, Matteo can marry Natasha and take the inheritance.’
The bloody inheritance. The family estate, which included a six-hundred-year-old castello and thousands of acres of vineyards, had belonged to the Pellegrini family and its descendants since the first stone had been laid by Principe Charles Philibert I, the original bad-boy Prince of the family. The family had renounced their titles decades ago but the castello remained their shining jewel. To keep the estate intact, primogeniture ruled and thus the eldest male descendant always inherited. This ruling hadn’t been enough to satisfy Principe Emmanuel II, a particularly cruel and mad prince from the nineteenth century, who had suspected his eldest son of being a homosexual and so had drawn up a ruling, still enforced to this day, that the eldest male descendant could only inherit if he was married. Principe Emmanuel must have had some insight to how social mores would evolve in the future because the marriage clause had specifically stated the spouse had to be female.
This archaic marriage clause had never been an issue. After all, everyone married eventually. It was what people did, especially those of the aristocracy. But times, along with social mores, changed.
Daniele had been a toddler when his grandfather had died and his own father had inherited the estate. Being the second son, Daniele had always known Pieta would inherit when their father died. He was comfortable with that. He didn’t want it. He hated the draughty old castello that leaked money as quickly as it leaked water, and he especially hated the idea of marriage. It had given him perverse satisfaction throughout his adult life to remain single, to be the antithesis of the dutiful, serious Pieta.
But now Pieta was dead.
For two months Daniele had clung to the hope that Pieta’s wife Natasha might be pregnant—if she was and the child was a boy, the child would inherit the estate and Daniele would be free to continue living his life as he’d always enjoyed.
It transpired that Natasha was indeed pregnant. Unfortunately, Pieta wasn’t the father. Before her husband was even cold in the ground, she had embarked on an affair with their cousin Matteo, the cousin who had lived with them as a sibling from the age of thirteen. The disloyal bastard himself had told Daniele that she was pregnant with his child.
Now there were two routes that could be taken. Daniele either found himself a wife and gave up all his cherished freedoms to inherit an estate he didn’t want, or their disloyal cousin inherited everything his father and brother had held dear.
He clenched his jaw and rolled his neck, thinking of his mother and her own love and pride in the family and the estate she had married into as a nineteen-year-old girl.
When it came down to it, there was only one route.
‘I have to marry.’
‘Yes.’
‘And soon.’
‘Yes. Do you have anyone in mind?’ Francesca asked quietly. She knew how much he loathed the idea of marriage. She had an even sharper legal mind than Pieta had done. If she couldn’t think of a way to overturn the clause without Matteo taking everything, then it couldn’t be done.
One day it would, he vowed. The next generation of Pellegrinis would never be forced into a deed they didn’t want, a deed that came with such a heavy price.
Daniele’s mind flickered through all the women he’d dated throughout the years. He estimated that of those who were still unmarried, approximately one hundred per cent of them would high-tail it to a wedding dress shop before he’d even finished proposing.
And then he thought of his last date. The only date he’d been on that hadn’t ended in the bedroom.
Unthinkingly, he touched his bruised nose. The steri-strips Eva had so carefully put on him were still there, the wound healing nicely. He remembered the distaste that flashed in her crystal-clear blue eyes whenever she looked at him.
She’d acted as a translator for him on his first trip to Caballeros a month ago. On an island surrounded by so much destruction, the prevalent colour brown with all the churned-up mud, she’d shone like a beacon in the gloom. Or her scarlet hair had, which she wore in a girlish ponytail. It was a shade of red that could only have come from a bottle and contrasted with her alabaster skin—she must lather herself in factor fifty sun cream on an hourly basis to keep it so colour free—so beautifully he couldn’t see how any other colour, not even that which nature had given her, could suit her so well.
Despite dressing only in scruffy jeans and an official Blue Train Aid Agency T-shirt, Eva Bergen was possibly the most beautiful and definitely the sexiest woman he’d met in his entire thirty-three years. And she hated his guts.
Daniele looked at his sister’s worried face and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes,’ he said with a nod. ‘I know the perfect woman to marry.’
When he left the apartment an hour later, he reflected that whatever else happened, at least his mother would finally be happy with a choice he’d made.
* * *
Eva queued patiently at the staff shower block, playing a game on her phone to pass the time. There was limited fresh water at the camp and the staff rationed their own use zealously. She’d become an expert at showering in sixty seconds of tepid water every three days. Like the rest of the staff, she experienced both guilt and relief when she took her leave, which was every third weekend, and she had the luxury of flying over to Aguadilla and checking into a basic hotel. There, at her own expense, she would laze for hours in sweet-smelling, bubbly, limitless water, dye her hair, do her nails and cleanse her skin, all the while trying to smother the guilt at all the displaced people at the camp who couldn’t take a few days off to pamper themselves.
One thing that wasn’t in short supply at the camp was mobile phones. It seemed that everyone had one, even the tiny kids who barely had a change of clothes to their name. The current craze was for a free game that involved blasting multiplying colourful balls. A technology whizz had linked all the camp players together, refugees and staff alike, to compete against each other directly. Eva had become as addicted to it as everyone else and right then was on track to beat her high score and crack the top one hundred players. At that moment, playing as she waited for her turn in the skinny showers, she had three teenagers at her side, pretending to be cool while they watched her avidly.
When her phone vibrated in her hand she ignored it.
‘You should answer that,’ Odney, the oldest of the teenagers, said with a wicked grin. Odney was currently ranked ninety-ninth in the camp league for the game.
‘They’ll call back,’ Eva dismissed, mock-scowling at him.
With an even wickeder grin, Odney snatched the phone from her hand, pressed the answer button and put it to his ear. ‘This is Eva’s phone,’ he said. ‘How may I direct your call?’
His friends cackled loudly, Eva found herself smothering her own laughter.
‘English?’ Odney suggested to the caller, who clearly didn’t speak Spanish. ‘I speak little. You want Eva?’
Eva held her hand out and fixed him with a stare.
Glee alight on his face, Odney gave her the phone back. ‘Your game didn’t save,’ he said smugly to more cackles of laughter.
Merriment in her voice—how she adored the camp’s children, toddlers and teenagers alike—Eva finally spoke to her caller. ‘Hello?’
‘Eva? Is that you?’
All the jollity of the moment dived out of her.
‘Yes. Who is this?’
She knew who it was. The deep, rich tones and heavy accent of Daniele Pellegrini were unmistakable.
‘It’s Daniele Pellegrini. I need to see you.’
‘Speak to my secretary and arrange an appointment.’ She didn’t have a secretary and he knew it.
‘It’s important.’
‘I don’t care. I don’t want to see you.’
‘You will when you know why I need to see you.’
‘No, I won’t. You’re a—’
‘A man with a proposal that will benefit your refugee camp,’ he cut in.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Meet me and find out for yourself. I promise it will be worth your and your camp’s while.’
‘My next weekend off is—’
‘I’m on my way to Aguadilla. I’ll have you brought to me.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight. I’ll have someone with you in two hours.’
And then he hung up.
CHAPTER TWO (#ud9a1c7ce-ae91-55a7-8593-20efb6e66f41)
EVA’S HEART SANK at the sight of the plush hotel at the end of the long driveway Daniele’s driver was taking her down. It was the same hotel Daniele had tricked her into dining with him in at on their ‘date’. She supposed anywhere else would be beneath him. The Eden Hotel was the most luxurious hotel in Aguadilla and catered to the filthy rich. She was wearing her only pair of clean jeans and a black shirt she’d been unable to iron thanks to a power cut at the camp. She couldn’t justify using the power that came from the emergency generators to iron clothing when it was needed to feed thousands of people.
When Daniele had driven her—he’d actually deigned to get behind the wheel himself then—into the hotel’s grounds the first time her hackles had immediately risen. She’d turned sharply to him. ‘You said this was an informal discussion about the hospital.’ She’d thought they would dine in one of the numerous beachside restaurants Aguadilla was famed for that served cheap, excellent food, upbeat music and had an atmosphere where anyone and everyone was welcomed.
‘And so it is,’ he’d replied smoothly, which had only served to raise her hackles further. They’d walked past guests dressed to the nines in their finest, most expensive wear. She’d been as out of place as a lemming in a pigpen.
Dining in the restaurant had been a humiliating experience the first time around but this time she at least had that experience to fall back on, and it served to steel her spine as she walked into the hotel’s atrium with her head held high. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel inferior even if she did look like a ragamuffin, despite her sixty-second shower.
A hotel employee headed straight for her. At close sight she saw the title of ‘General Manager’ under his name on the gold pin worn on his lapel.
‘Ms Bergen?’ he enquired politely, too well trained to even wrinkle his nose at her.
She nodded. She guessed she’d been easy to describe. Just look for the scarlet-haired woman who doesn’t fit in.
‘Come with me, please.’
Like a docile sheep, she followed him past an enormous waterfall, past the restaurant she’d dined in a month ago, past boutiques and further restaurants and into an elevator that came complete with its own bellboy. It was only when the manager pressed the button for the top floor that warning bells sounded.
