And then the impact of what he was asking got through to her muddled brain.
Mark had not recognised her. He had no clue that she was the girl he had met in the hospital corridor only a few months earlier.
They had only met for a few fleeting moments, and she had certainly changed since then. They both had. And her sunglasses were a genius idea.
She inhaled a couple of breaths, but the air was too warm and thick to clear her head very much. It was as though his tall, powerful body had absorbed all the oxygen from the room.
A flicker of annoyance flashed across his full, sensuous mouth before he said, ‘I don’t take kindly to uninvited guests, so I suggest you answer my question before I ask you to leave.’
Uninvited guests? Oh, God, the situation was worse than she’d realised. He didn’t seem to be expecting a visitor—any visitor. He had no idea that his publisher had sent a ghost writer out to the island! No wonder he thought that she was some pathetic burglar or a photojournalist.
Okay, so he had treated her unfairly in the worst of circumstances, but she was here to do a job. She glanced down, desperate to escape his laser-beam focus, and her eyes found the image of a happy family smiling back at her from behind the glass in the picture she had almost dropped.
It could have been a movie set, with a perfect cast of actors brought in for the day. Gorgeous film-star mother, handsome and tall aristocratic father, and two pretty children—with the cutest toddler on the planet waving at the camera. All grouped in front of a tall Christmas tree decorated in red and gold and a real fire burning bright in a huge marble fireplace.
What did Mark Belmont know about broken families and wrecked dreams?
Guilt about the pain her father had caused the Belmont family pinched her skin hard enough to make her flinch. But she ignored it. What her father had done had never been her fault, and she wasn’t going to allow the past to ruin her work. She needed this job, and she’d be a fool to let her father snatch away the chance to make her dream come true.
Lexi opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it again, and then pinched her thumb and forefinger tightly against the bridge of her nose.
‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head slowly from side to side, eyes closed. ‘The agency would not do this to me.’
‘The agency?’ Mark asked, his head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Have you got the right villa? Island? Country?’
She chuckled, and when she spoke her voice was calmer, steadier.
‘Let me guess. Something tells me that you may not have spoken, emailed or in some other way communicated with your publisher in the past forty-eight hours. Am I right?’
For the first time since she had arrived a concerned look flashed across his tanned and handsome face, but was instantly replaced by a confident glare.
‘What do you mean? My publisher?’
Lexi dived into her huge bag, pulled out a flat black tablet computer, and swiped across the screen with her forefinger—being careful not to damage her new fingernails, which still carried the silver and purple glitter that had been the hit of the last show party in Hong Kong.
‘Brightmore Press. Sound familiar?’
‘Maybe,’ he drawled. ‘And why should that matter to me?’
Lexi’s poor overworked brain spun at top speed.
He was alone in the villa. This was the correct address. And Mark was familiar with Brightmore Press. Lexi put those three factoids together and came up with the inevitable conclusion.
Mark Belmont was the mystery celebrity she had been assigned to work with.
And the bubble of excitement and enthusiastic energy that had been steadily inflating on the long journey from Hong Kong popped like an overstretched balloon.
Of all the rotten luck.
She needed the job so badly. Running a home in central London wasn’t cheap, and this bonus would have made a big difference to how quickly she could start the renovations. All her plans for the future relied on having her own home office where she could write her children’s books full-time. Walking away from this job would set her back months.
She stared at him wide-eyed for a few seconds, before sighing out loud.
‘Oh, dear. I hate it when this happens. But it does explain why you didn’t meet me at the harbour.’
Mark shifted his legs shoulder-width apart and crossed his arms. ‘Meet you? No, I don’t think so. Now, let me make myself quite clear. You have two minutes to explain before I escort you from my private home. And please don’t think I won’t. I’ve spent more time than I care to think about giving press conferences. My office has a catalogue of past interviews and press statements, covering every possible topic of conversation. I suggest that you try there—because I have absolutely no intention of giving you an interview, especially when you seem intent on damaging my property. Am I getting through to you?’
‘Your property? Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, scrabbling to pick up the picture and brushing off any dust from the silver frame. ‘I did knock, but there was no answer, and the door was open. This is a lovely family photo and I couldn’t resist peeking at it, so …’ She gave a quick shrug of the shoulders and lifted her chin slightly. ‘You should be more careful about security.’
‘Really?’ He nodded, his voice calculating and cool enough to add a chill to the air. ‘Thank you so much for the advice, but you aren’t in the city any more. We don’t lock our doors around here. Of course if I’d known I was to have visitors I might have taken additional precautions. Which brings us to my earlier question. Who are you, and why are you here? I’m sure the two charming police officers who take care of this island would be delighted to meet you in a more formal setting. And, as you have probably realised, Gaios is only about three miles from here. And they are the proud owners of both a police car and a motorcycle. So I would suggest that you come up with a very convincing excuse very quickly.’
Police? Was he serious?
She looked warily into those startling blue eyes. Oh, yes, he was serious.
Her chest lifted a good few inches and she stared straight at him in alarm. Then she sucked in a breath and her words came tumbling out faster than she would have thought possible.
‘Okay. Here goes. Sorry, but your peeps have not been keeping you up to date on a few rather crucial matters. Your Mr Brightmore called my talent agency, who called me with instructions to get myself to Paxos because one of their clients has a book to finish and they—’ she gestured towards his chest with her flat hand ‘—are apparently a month past the final deadline for the book, and the publishers are becoming a little desperate. They need this manuscript by the end of August.’
She exhaled dramatically, her shoulders slumped, and she slid the tablet back into her bag with a dramatic flourish before looking up at him, eyebrows high, with a broad grin.
‘Right. Now that’s out of the way I suppose I should introduce myself. Alexis Sloane. Otherwise known as Lexi. Ghost writer extraordinaire. And I’m here to meet a client who needs help with a book. I take it that would be you?’
‘Well, of course I didn’t tell you what the publisher had organised, darling brother, because I knew exactly what your reaction would be.’
Mark Belmont sat down hard on the end of the sun lounger, then immediately stood up again and started pacing up and down the patio, the sun-warmed stone hot under his bare feet. The temperature was a perfect match for his mood: incendiary. His emotions boiled in a turmoil of resistance, resolution and defiance touched with fury. Cassandra Belmont had a lot to answer for.
‘Cassie,’ he hissed, ‘I could strangle you. Seriously.