The Flaw in His Diamond(2)

'He's on the island for the wedding of his cousin,' Britt pointed out.

'He could still have seen me before he went when I asked him to,' Eva  insisted. 'If he had explained things clearly, perhaps we could all  understand what's happening at the mine.'

'Perhaps if you had listened instead of protesting,' Britt suggested,  but gently this time, because no one doubted Eva's genuine concern for  the pristine landscape the new drilling was putting under threat. 'You  can't expect him to drop everything to attend a meeting with you. He has  a life, as well as all his other business interests. There are huge  sums of money involved-'

'Oh, yes, it always boils down to money,' Eva observed with a dismayed shake of her head.

'I'm afraid it does,' Britt agreed calmly. 'We like to keep people in jobs around here.'

'That's all I care about,' Eva assured her sister. 'But I also care  deeply about a land that has remained unchanged for millennia.'

'Why don't you talk to Roman face to face instead of discussing it with us?' Leila suggested.

'I've tried that.' Eva pulled a face. 'He won't see me.'

'For all the aforementioned reasons,' Britt said. 'But there's nothing  to stop you trying again,' she pointed out, exchanging a hopeful look  with Leila once she was sure Eva wasn't looking. They had both noticed  the chemistry between Roman and Eva at the wedding as they fired angry  glances at each other from opposite sides of the aisle. 'You never know,  you might even get on better with him when you meet him again.'

'That's hardly likely,' Eva scoffed, tugging angry fingers through her  tangle of red-gold hair. 'He's about as ready to listen to a woman like  me as he is to eat tacks for breakfast.'

'You'll never know unless you try,' Leila pointed out as Britt got up to give Eva a reassuring hug.

'Come on,' Britt cajoled as she drew Eva into her arms. 'Don't get so  upset about everything. Even you can't save the world single-handed.'

'But I can try.'

'That's right, you can-at least, your tiny bit of it,' Britt agreed.

'Then that's what I'm going to do,' Eva mumbled, her face buried in the shoulder of her older sister.

'What are you going to do?' Britt said suspiciously, holding Eva at  arm's length so she could stare into her sister's eyes. 'Should we  discuss this first?'

'No. I don't think we should,' Eva said, sniffing loudly as she took a  pace back. 'No more coffee for me, thank you, Leila. I've got a trip to  make.'

* * *

He never drank. He chose not to lose control. Ever. He had seized the  opportunity during the champagne reception following the wedding  ceremony to slip away. Everyone would be getting ready for the party in  the evening, which gave him a chance to shower and change, and maybe  take a refreshing dip in his pool.

He stopped where he always stopped on the cliff path. It was a place of  particular significance to him, for it was here on his fourteenth  birthday he had contemplated throwing the gold chain he wore around his  neck into the sea. And then maybe he would follow, his youthful  infuriated self had seethed impotently.                       
       
           



       

Thankfully, he had proved stronger than that, and had resisted the  teenage impulse to vent his grief in a way that would hurt others as  much as himself.

It was a hot day for a wedding. Shrugging off his formal jacket, he  opened the neck of his shirt. His hand stole to the slim gold chain. His  adoptive mother had given him the necklace on his birthday. That was  the same day she explained to him haltingly that his real mother had  died, and had wanted Roman to have her only decent piece of jewellery.

That was the first time he heard he had a 'real' mother. What else was  the woman sitting in front of him? He could still remember his shock and  the pain. Discovering his father was not his father, any more than the  woman he adored was his mother, had been life-changing. His adoptive  father had been furious to discover Roman had learned the truth about  his birth, but the damage was done by then. His adoptive father had  believed Roman would crumble now he knew the facts. His adoptive mother  had argued with this, knowing how strong he was. He was her son just as  much as he was the son of his blood mother, and she knew him.

He had stood here on the cliff, fierce as a lion on that day, full of  the passions of youth, and then he had stormed home and demanded they  tell him the truth-all of it. And so he had learned about his blood  father, the count, the drunken gambler who had sold his son to the  childless wife of a mafia don in settlement of his gambling debts.

'You're not blood so you can't take over the family business,' his  adoptive father had thought it timely to explain while Roman was still  reeling from these facts. 'But I couldn't love you more if you were my  blood and so you will inherit my island and all my property, while your  cousin takes over the business after me. Your job is to protect him-'

It was only then Roman had realised how fast he could turn off his  emotions. He couldn't have cared less about owning an island, or  inheriting a vast property portfolio. All he cared about was his life up  to now having been a lie. He'd changed on that day. His adoptive mother  accused him of becoming distant and aloof. Unreachable, his adoptive  father had raged with frustration, hating to see his wife devastated by  Roman's treatment of her.

Roman still carried the guilt to this day and wondered if his behaviour  had hastened her death. He would never know, but sometimes he could  still hear her gentle voice in his head, insisting that his blood mother  had no choice, and that in those days, in their society, women had no  choice but to do what the men told them.

Now he thought of those two women, his mother and his adoptive mother,  as sisters beneath the skin, looking down on him. His only desire was to  make them happy and proud of him.

An alarm on his phone jolted him back to the present. Scanning the  screen, he pressed a key. Watching for a moment, he felt a surge of  anger. It would take him half an hour to reach the palazzo from here if  he stuck to the path, but not if he took a short cut.





CHAPTER TWO

SHE HAD NEARLY reached her destination and paused for a moment to catch  her breath. She could see the count's magnificent home on the top of  the cliff, a citadel of power glittering white and menacing in the heat  haze. The steep path she was climbing snaked up a white cliff  overlooking an azure sea. It might be someone's idea of a heavenly walk,  but she was hot and sweaty and had to keep her mind firmly fixed on her  goal and her reasons for coming here so that anger powered her steps.

Having researched the fastest route from Arctic Skavanga to the count's  island, she had unfortunately given rather less thought to local  topography, let alone the climate. And a hill was a hill was a hill,  anywhere but here, it seemed, where the path to the count's eyrie was  treacherous and packed with slippery shale.

Throwing herself down on a prickly bank, she threw her arm over her  face. The sun was like a flaming torch and she hadn't even thought to  bring a bottle of water with her from the plane. There had been very  little forward planning. She had rushed into the trip after a furious  row with Britt, during which she told her caring older sister to butt  out and mind her own business-something she now felt sick and wretched  about. Why did she always shoot off her mouth and then spend the rest of  her time regretting it?                       
       
           



       

She had left without apologising, jumping on the first flight out of  Skavanga. She caught a connecting flight to the Italian mainland, and  from there a ferry to the count's private island. It was a ferry packed  with exuberant wedding guests, all of whom were in a very different mood  from her, though they'd got round her in the end. They were all so  happy as they headed for what they described as the wedding of the year.  She had ended up playing a round of darts with a group of older men,  and had scored the winning double. She was one of the boys, they had  assured her, patting her on the back as she glowed with pride.

Now she just glowed. All over.

Getting up, she brushed herself down and started determinedly up the  cliff again. The closer she got to the palazzo, the faster her heart was  beating. She wasn't frightened of anything or anyone, but just to  herself she would admit she was a little bit scared of the count-mainly  because she had never met anyone like him before. He'd towered over her  at Britt's wedding, his face tough and battle-hardened. He was older  than she was, and Roman centurion rather than Roman effete. She  remembered the lips of a sensualist. She'd thought of little else since.  His hair was glorious-too long, too thick, too black. Perfect. And his  eyes were keen, dark and dangerous. He had a ridiculous amount of  stubble on his swarthy cheeks, considering it couldn't have been long  since he shaved when she met him. But it was that something behind his  watchful eyes that had intrigued her, because that had hinted at  something hidden and dangerous in his past.