Midnight in the Desert Collection. Оливия Гейтс

flowers, a brilliant contrast against the painted yellow walls. He stepped out and looked around, feeling the Tuscan sun on his shoulders. Kinder than the desert sun, he registered, even in the early afternoon when it was at its most potent. Or maybe it was always cooler at this height.

      She didn’t wait for him to finish his appraisal and open her door, or maybe she was just as impatient as him for this ordeal to be over.

      ‘This is where you live?’ he asked as he pulled her bags from the trunk.

      She reached for them but he held them firm and her lips tightened again. ‘It’s my home, yes.’ She sighed with the resignation of one who knew he was going to see his duty to the bitter end, and led the way down a set of stairs on one side of the house that led to a crazy-paved terrace and covered pergola. From here the views were even better. Across a valley between the ridges, a small village clung in colourful array against the dense green of orchards and forest, and before them the land slipped away, lush and green, fading through to grey with each successive range.

      Then from the house he heard footsteps, squeals and cries of ‘Mama, Mama!’ before a door flew open and two dark-haired children exploded from the house shrieking and laughing.

      ‘Mama!’ cried the first, a boy that collided full force against her legs, a tiny girl behind packing no less a punch as she flung herself at her mother.

      He felt a growl form at the back of his throat as she knelt down and wrapped her arms around them, felt his gut twist into knots. So these were her children? It was one thing to know about them—it was another to see them.

      He looked away, waiting for the reunion to be over. He didn’t do families. He certainly didn’t want to think about the implication of hers, of the men she had fallen into bed with so quickly after expressing her undying love to him. So much for that.

      ‘You’re home at last, thank the heavens,’ he heard someone say. And he swung round to see an older woman of forty-something, wiping her hands on a flour-covered apron, standing at the door, not looking at the tableau in front of her, but squarely at him. She raised a quizzical eyebrow at the visitor before turning to Marina. ‘Lunch is almost ready. Shall I set another place?’

      Marina kissed each of her children and rose, taking their hands in hers. ‘Bahir, this is Catriona, my nanny, housekeeper and general lifesaver. And these,’ she said, looking down, ‘are my children, Chakir and Hana. Bahir was nice enough to make sure I got home safely,’ she said to them. ‘Say ciao to our visitor, children.’

      Nice enough to see her home safely? Not really. But this time he had no choice but to look down at them—such a long way down, it seemed. Neither child said anything. The girl clung to her mother’s skirts, her eyes wide in a pixie face, her thumb firmly wedged in her mouth and clearly not impressed.

      But it was the boy who bothered him the most. He was looking up at him suspiciously, eyes openly defiant, as if protective of his mother and prepared to show it; eyes that looked uncannily familiar …

      ‘I’m not staying,’ he said suddenly, feeling a fool when he realised he was still holding her luggage like some stunned-mullet bellboy. He set the cases down by the door and took a step back. She could no doubt manage them from here herself.

      ‘You—should stay,’ Marina said, her words sounding strangely forced, as if she was having to force them through her teeth. ‘Stay for lunch.’

      ‘No, I …’ He looked longingly up the stairs to where he knew the car was parked.

      ‘You should …’ she said tightly, trailing off. There was no welcome in her words, but rather an insistence that tugged on some primal survival instinct. Some warning bell deep inside him told him to run and keep right on running.

      But he couldn’t run.

      The nanny-cum-housekeeper was watching him. Marina stood there, looking suddenly brittle and fragile, and as though at any moment she could blow away, except that she was anchored to the ground by the two sullen-looking children at her hands—the wide-eyed girl and the boy who looked up at him with those damned eyes …

      And with a sizzle down his spine he realised.

      His eyes.

      The high, clear mountain air seemed to thicken and churn with poison around him, until it was hard to breathe in the toxic morass. ‘No,’ he uttered. ‘Not that.’

      And he was only vaguely aware of Catriona ushering the children inside and closing the door, leaving Marina standing as still as a pillar of salt, her beautiful features gaunt and bleached almost to white.

      ‘It’s true,’ she whispered. ‘Chakir is your son.’