She had wanted a chance to make him understand how much she cared for the island, and how lucky she felt to have been given the chance to live here. Helping the islanders was just her way of thanking them for their kindness towards her. Her dream was to share the island one day with other young people who’d had no advantages in life. She guessed that would have to wait, as her tiny pot of money would run out soon—
A sound distracted her. She couldn’t identify it at first. Then she realised it was the sound of rotor blades approaching fast. As she sprang to her feet a gleaming black craft appeared over the cliff at the far end of the bay. She remained motionless as it wheeled onto its side, at what appeared to her to be an impossibly acute angle.
She exhaled with relief when it levelled off to skim the surface of the sea, driving up spumes of water in glittering clouds. It kept on coming towards her, and only wheeled away at the very last minute. Rising rapidly, it banked steeply before turning inland. The pilot seemed to be flying on the edge of what was possible.
So it could only be one man, Rosie reasoned. Who else would take such risks with his life and company property?
And she shouldn’t be here on the beach daydreaming, but up at the house ready to greet him—or to hold him off!
To hell with greeting him! She should be up at the house to establish her right to call the hacienda home—the only home she’d ever known. More importantly, the hacienda had meant everything to Doña Anna, and no patronising, nose-in-the-air grandee was going to bulldoze it, to build yet another of his glitzy hotels. Kicking off her flip-flops, she began to run.
Rosie scrambled up the cliff path as if the hounds of hell were after her, and she didn’t stop until she reached the boundary to the property—a fence she hadn’t realised was quite so broken down. She picked her way carefully through the broken struts of a barrier that was supposed to divide a once beautiful formal garden from the glorious wilderness. As of now, it was all glorious wilderness, she saw with concern.
Imagining Don Xavier seeing the same thing made Rosie wince. She’d known things were bad, but not this bad. She’d meant to do something about the garden, but had no money to pay a gardener, and there was so much to do inside the house. Any spare time she had was spent researching grants and subsidies for the islanders, to help them get their plans for marketing their organic produce off the ground.
She glanced up to see the helicopter hovering over the hacienda. It looked like a giant black hand come to claim its rightful property. Its shadow was like an omen. Descending slowly from the sky, it looked like a malevolent locust as it settled on its widespread skids. It seemed to Rosie to be the clearest signal yet that she had no money, no power, no influence, while Don Xavier Del Rio had a cash register for a heart. What was going to happen to the island if she didn’t stand firm? Why had Doña Anna set them against each other like this? She couldn’t have expected them to work together. Don Xavier would never consider it. Doña Anna hadn’t been exactly noted for her willingness to compromise, and yet that was what she expected them to do.
So was she going to disappoint the woman who had given her a fresh chance in life?
Drawing a deep steadying breath, Rosie smoothed her hair and straightened her dress, ready for her second meeting with Don Xavier.
THE KITCHEN DOOR was open so he walked straight in. It smelled clean, but looked shabby. He leaned over the pristine sink to see if the window really was in as much danger of falling out as he’d first thought. He heard a faint noise behind him—just a breath, a slight shift in the air. He turned and she was there.
His good intentions counted for nothing. His body responded instantly to the sight of Rosie Clifton, his groin tightening as blood ripped through his veins. She was so young, so innocent—and so not his type, but it seemed that no argument he could put up could take anything away from her appeal. The low-slanting sun was shining straight into her face. She looked like an angel waiting to fall, in shades of white and gold—and yellow? As she came deeper into the kitchen he took more notice of the dress. It was a hideous dress that must have hung unloved in a thrift shop for years, but on Señorita Clifton it served a very definite purpose, which was to cling to her shapely form with loving attention to detail.
‘Don Xavier,’ she exclaimed in a calm, clear voice, walking forward to greet him.
‘Señorita Clifton.’ His tone was cool.
‘Rosie, please,’ she insisted, forming the words with the kissable lips he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind.
‘Rosie.’ He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement of her arrival, and then he remained still, waiting for her to come to him.
He could try every trick in the book, but she was never dismayed. The power of her easy-going personality was undeniable. As she extended her tiny hand for him to shake, she tipped up her chin to look him in the eyes, and he felt the force of that stare in his groin, which didn’t just tighten now, but ached with the most urgent need.
‘Welcome to Hacienda de Rio,’ she said with a smile, as if he were the interloper. And then, having realised her mistake, instead of blushing or showing how awkward she surely must feel at the blunder, she put her hand over her mouth and giggled before exclaiming, ‘That was a bit of a clanger, wasn’t it?’
He stared coolly into her eyes, trying to read her. He could read every woman he’d ever met, from the mother who had barely made eye contact with him, to Doña Anna’s scathing and ironic stare, and, after them, the legions of women who knew very well how to flirt with their eyes; they were all transparent to him, but Rosie Clifton was an enigma, and she intrigued him. She was also extremely self-possessed for a girl from nowhere, who had owned nothing but the clothes she stood up in until a few weeks ago.
Seeing the cold suspicion in his eyes, she had taken a step back. Feeling the table behind her legs, she reached behind her to rest her palms on the scrubbed pine surface, making her breasts appear more prominent than ever. Had any other woman done the same thing, he might have wondered if it was an invitation, but Rosie Clifton only succeeded in making herself look younger and more vulnerable than ever. Perhaps that too was a ploy of sorts, he reflected.
‘So, you got here at last?’ she challenged him lightly.
He shrugged. ‘I came as soon as I could.’
She pressed her lips together in a wry, accepting smile. ‘Your aunt mentioned that you’re a workaholic.’
He had forgotten how self-possessed she was. But now there was a faint blush on her face, and her amethyst eyes had darkened. He watched her breathing quicken, displaying the shape of her full breasts quite graphically in the close-fitting dress.
‘This is, of course, as much your home as mine,’ she said candidly.
‘How kind of you to say so.’ He resisted the temptation to state the obvious: that his claim went back a thousand years.
‘You haven’t forgotten the ice cream I promised, have you? I made two flavours.’
Rosie wasn’t sure when she had decided to treat Don Xavier as a normal human being, rather than as an aristocrat with centuries of breeding behind him. They were wildly unequal in every sense, but, as nothing could change that, she had decided to be herself.
Maybe it was the Doña Anna effect, Rosie reflected as she reached for two bowls. In this one precious inheritance Doña Anna had made sure they were equals. The Spanish Grandee and the orphan housekeeper shared a huge responsibility thanks to the way that Doña Anna had drafted her will, but the more Rosie thought about it, the more it seemed to her that Don Xavier’s need for an heir gave her some leverage over him.