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And recently, since the disappearance of his brother into thin air, he realised he hadn’t had much sleep either. He’d been running on a mixture of stress, adrenaline and gnawing worry. His life was so high-pressured anyway that he’d barely recognised anything out of the ordinary about that.

Now, oddly, although he was on this mission to find Carlos, and facing an inevitable bust up when they finally did meet, he couldn’t have been more content.

He cruised into the protected cove, which was very similar to his own but completely inaccessible by land.

‘We’re here.’

‘You don’t like talking about yourself, do you?’

‘Are you going to open your eyes and look at where I’ve brought you?’ He nudged her elbow with his.

‘In a minute. Right now, I just want to savour this with my eyes closed. I can tell you really enjoy being here, on this boat. You’d probably enjoy it more if I wasn’t here, but even so…’ She opened her eyes.

Javier met her easy, curious, interested gaze and stilled. He knew she was going to say something that crashed right through his boundaries and yet he’d never felt so alive as he waited for her to spit it out.

‘Can I stop you before you start annoying me by breaching my boundary lines?’ He heard the amusement and indulgence in his own voice and was mystified by it.

She smiled.

Javier was riveted to the spot. The pinkness of her lips, those pearly white teeth, the satiny sheen of her smooth skin.

‘Why do you work so hard and deny yourself the pleasure of all of this? It’s masochistic, you know that?’

‘Never thought of myself as a masochist. Hedonist sometimes… But masochist? No.’

‘I’m not talking about women,’ Hope said as she reached into her backpack, fumbled a bit and extracted her sunglasses, which she promptly stuck on. ‘You clearly like being here and yet it sounds as though you might feel guilty for stealing the occasional window in your schedule to enjoy it. To sail your boat, lie in the sun and just relax in your incredible villa.’

‘You don’t know the first thing about me.’

Hell, Javier thought, was that the best defence he could muster?

‘I know you work hard and you probably play hard with loads of women, but I also suspect you don’t really know how to just let life flow past you without doing anything at all.’

‘Let’s get off this boat,’ Javier said roughly.

She didn’t budge but she half-smiled.

‘Sure. In a minute. And by the way, you really don’t have to answer my question.’

‘Was it a question? It sounded more like a pronouncement.’

This should be getting on his nerves. It wasn’t.

‘I’m not programmed to relax,’ he admitted gruffly when she remained silent.

‘I didn’t know that was something a person had to be programmed to do.’

‘I’ve always had responsibilities. It’s impossible to shake them off, even if…’

‘Even if?’

‘Even if I might sometimes have wanted to, might sometimes want to.’

‘We can do anything we want to do, if we want it enough.’

‘Are you exactly where you want to be in your life?’ Javier asked, torn between shutting down an uncomfortable conversation and running with it. He felt suddenly fed up with a life that suddenly looked a little lacking in challenges.

‘Not exactly but I’m still pretty pleased that I’ve got to where I am now considering the disadvantages I had to face growing up.’