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sly, knowing look from under her eyelashes that reminded Kate how similar physically Susie and their mother were. ‘ Friend of Javier Montero. Why, I didn’t even know you knew him!’ she exclaimed with another girlish giggle that grated on Kate’s frayed nerve-endings. ‘I suppose that’s why you left dinner early, to meet him…’ She clicked her tongue in annoyance. ‘Though why you should think all the subterfuge was necessary is beyond me… It’s not as if we’d object, is it?’ She laughed heartily at the notion. ‘Not that you’ve ever worried about my feelings before.’ A note of misuse entered in her voice.
    â€˜You’re pleased I know him?’ Kate echoed in a strangled voice.
    â€˜Katherine Mary Anderson, I wonder about you sometimes, child. The Monteros must be one of the wealthiest families in Europe!’ she exclaimed in a scandalised tone.
    â€˜Oh, my God!’ Kate breathed faintly as enlightenment dawned in blinding splendour. The mental leap required to transfer Javier from her mental file marked ‘member of theshady underworld’ to one marked ‘member of a rich and powerful dynasty that could trace its origins back centuries’ left her reeling.
    â€˜You always were a sly, secretive child.’ She heard Elizabeth reflect in a long-suffering manner. ‘You and your father, always so serious about something or other, but he swears he didn’t know either… Is it true? Haven’t you told him?’
    â€˜Told him what?’
    Ignoring her daughter’s shaky query, Elizabeth looked admiringly around the room. ‘The honeymoon suite, ’ her mother exclaimed, in a voice loaded with significance.
    Honeymoon suite —oh, God! Being familiar with the way her mother’s mind worked, Kate could see where she was going. Marriage was the only career any woman needed, in her mother’s eyes, and a woman who hadn’t snagged her man by thirty was a failure. Much to Kate’s relief, her frustrated parent had written her off before she’d reached that milestone and concentrated her efforts instead on her more malleable sibling.
    â€˜Mum, please don’t read anything into that!’ Kate pleaded. ‘I had an accident; this was the most convenient place…’
    With a display of selective deafness that was her forte, Elizabeth continued to examine the décor. ‘Very impressive and extremely tasteful,’ came her final verdict. ‘And that Jacuzzi in the deck overlooking the sea, it’s just like the one your father and I had when we were in Jamaica last year. Isn’t it marvellous to lie there and listen to the waves?’
    At that moment Kate could think of worse things than her hot, sticky body being immersed in cool water. She dwelt dreamily for a moment on an image of her naked body being caressed by the soft water, no sounds—especially not her mother’s voice—but that of the sea. It wasvery soothing, until her fertile and wayward imagination added a disruptive element to the picture in the shape of… Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to think about shapes, she decided, as images of long, glistening, lean limbs and taut masculine muscles floated around suggestively in her head. Suffice it to say, she wasn’t alone in the tub! Her heart began to thud frantically against her ribcage as she shook her head to blank out the depraved activities her illusionary couple were indulging in.
    Elizabeth turned, with a charming smile that could still dazzle, to the doctor. ‘How is she, doctor?’ she asked casting a critical eye over her glassy-eyed eldest born. ‘She looks a bit strange to me…’
    Strange! If this indeed wasn’t some strange and bizarre nightmare from which she would awaken any moment, then the man she’d taken for a sinister crime lord was actually a prominent member of the legendary family