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Jimmy…nice, kind Jimmy. Everyone had assumed her heart had been broken when they’d split up but in the end Jimmy just hadn’t been enough to hold her interest. She’d felt guilty and ashamed about that but her body had never responded to him the way it was responding right now to this man. This wholly unsuitable man…

She felt weak as memories of her mother’s poor decision-making about men assailed her.

She wasn’t ever going to repeat her mother’s mistakes.

‘I don’t have time…’ she said breathing shakily. ‘I have commitments…’

‘Really?’ Javier frowned, his dark eyes were still lingering on her flushed face. ‘I thought there was no inconvenient man on the scene.’

‘Not all commitments for a woman involve a man,’ she said tartly. She gathered herself but not before wondering whether he had been able to discern just how affected she had been by him. ‘Not all women go around thinking about men and tailoring their lives around them. That happens to be a very arrogant and chauvinistic take on women, Javier!’

‘Not sure that’s what I said…’

There was still the shadow of a smile on his lips that stoked her anger at herself for temporarily being derailed by his looks and charm.

‘I have financial commitments!’ she snapped. She pulled back away from him, and thankfully so did he, just as the pilot informed them they would have to buckle up. ‘Every penny counts, which is why I can’t just go gallivanting all over the globe on overseas holidays!’

‘Is that so?’ Javier murmured. ‘That’s why the money I’m paying you was so eagerly accepted?’

‘I meant what I told you about not having my livelihood disrupted for free…’

‘Isn’t it strange that my brother has known you as a good friend for years and yet I know nothing about you but your name?’

‘No,’ Hope said flatly, meeting his dark gaze and not looking away. ‘Why would you know the first thing about me when you don’t really know the first thing about your brother?’

CHAPTER FOUR

FAIR POINT, JAVIER THOUGHT, but it still stung.

He barely knew his own brother. What was he going to discover when he saw him again? Who was he going to see? Who was the man he would be meeting? It had been months since he’d seen Carlos. Even then it had been a fleeting visit with polite small talk exchanged before they shook hands and walked off in opposite directions.

It was clear that Hope knew a great deal more about Carlos than he did. While it would have been easy for him to reject any help from her, he knew, in his heart, that he couldn’t afford to do that.

‘Do you come here often, Javier?’

He recognised her attempt to pour oil on water she felt she might have troubled.

His instinct was to retreat behind cold indifference but this was no place for his instincts to take over.

‘Not as often as I’d like. Follow me, by the way. We clear customs at a private terminal.’

‘Why don’t you?’

It was hot out here, despite the darkness all around them, but not for long. The glass doors in front of them slid open to a cool, deserted lounge where some uniformed guards checked through the bags that had preceded them without fuss.

There were Christmas decorations inside, discreet, tasteful and expensive to accommodate a discreet, tasteful and expensive clientele.

‘The very same reason you don’t do a lot of globetrotting,’ he drawled, ushering her out of the terminal and towards an SUV that was waiting for them outside.

‘Lack of money?’

‘Sometimes, I think a lack of money would be easier to deal with than a lack of time.’

‘You have no idea how wrong you are,’ Hope said with feeling. ‘The smells here are so different, aren’t they? The air is fragrant. How long will it take to get to your villa?’

The sleek, black car came with its very own driver, who was dressed in an equally sleek, black uniform. He held the passenger door open for her and she ducked in, feeling a little as if she were royalty.

‘An hour, give or take,’ Javier said as the car was soundlessly moving off. ‘We’ll drive through desert, and then eventually we get to the coastline and the sea.’