CHAPTER ONE
‘THIS IS A private beach...’
Rosie had to raise her voice to reach the big, brutal-looking man lowering the anchor on his sleek black launch off shore. He’d stilled, so she was sure he’d heard her, but for some reason he’d chosen to ignore her. Waving her arms made no impact at all.
‘Damned invaders,’ Rosie’s late elderly employer, Doña Anna, would have said as she waved her walking stick at any sailors bold enough to drop anchor near her private island. ‘You can’t swim here! This is my island!’ Standing belligerently, with her crab-like hands planted firmly on her bony hips, Doña Anna would continue to berate visitors—whom Rosie had always thought couldn’t do much harm if all they wanted to do was enjoy the crystalline waters and sugar-sand beach for an hour or so—until they took the hint that they weren’t welcome and left for kinder waters.
Rosie tensed as the man stared straight at her. With maybe fifty yards between them, his penetrating assessment stabbed her like an arrow.
Her body reacted in the craziest way, softening and yearning as the force of his personality washed over her. The effect was as powerful as if they were standing toe to toe.
She was instantly in ‘fight or flight’ mode. Her brain sharpened to make that call. Only what they’d called her pure, damned stubbornness at the orphanage was keeping her rooted to the spot. She might not have had the best of starts in life, but she wasn’t a victim and never would be.
And a promise was a promise, Rosie vowed. Her promise to Doña Anna, that she would keep the island safe, was sacrosanct. However intimidating the man seemed, until she knew what he wanted, he wasn’t getting any further than the shore.
The man had other ideas.
Her heart thundered as he sprang lightly onto the bow rail, preparing to dive into the sea. Keeping the island safe would take more than good intentions, she suspected. He was twice her size and built like a gladiator.
His dive made barely a ripple in the water. Surfacing, he powered towards the shore. There was something hard and ruthless about him that stole away her earlier confidence, replacing it with apprehension. Crew of a mother yacht generally wore some sort of uniform with the name of their boat emblazoned on it. He wore no identifying clothing. Stripped to the waist in cut-off shorts, he was maybe thirty...older than she was, anyway.
Rosie was in h
er early twenties. She couldn’t even be sure of her date of birth. There was no record of it. A fire at the orphanage had destroyed all evidence of her history shortly after she arrived. Her life experience was limited to the strange, isolated world inside an institution, and now a small island off the southern tip of Spain.
She’d been lucky enough to be offered a job on Isla Del Rey by a charity that ran a scheme for disadvantaged young people. The post involved working on a trial basis as a companion/housekeeper for an elderly lady who had driven six previous companion/housekeepers away. On the face of it, not the most promising opportunity, but Rosie would have jumped at anything to escape the oppressive surroundings of the institution, and the island had seemed to offer sanctuary from the harsh realities of the outside world.
That world was back with a vengeance now, she thought as the man drew close to shore.
She took up position, ready to send him on his way. Doña Anna had given her so much more than a roof over her head, and she owed it to the old lady to keep her island safe.
Against all the odds, Rosie had become close to her employer, but in her wildest dreams she could never have predicted that in one last act of quite astonishing generosity Doña Anna would leave orphan Rosie Clifton half of Isla Del Rey in her will.
Rosie’s inheritance became an international scandal. She hadn’t been exactly welcomed into the land-owning classes, more shunned by them. Even Doña Anna’s lawyer had made some excuse not to meet her. His formal letter had seemed impregnated with his scorn. How could she, a lowly housekeeper and an orphan to boot, step into the shoes of generations of Spanish aristocracy? No one had seemed to understand that what Rosie had inherited was an old lady’s trust, and her love.
Doña Anna’s generous bequest had turned out to be a double-edged sword. Rosie had come to love the island, but without a penny to her name, and no wage coming in, she could barely afford to support herself, let alone help the islanders to market their organic produce on the mainland, as she had promised them she would.
The man had reached the shallows, and was wading to the shore. Naked to the waist and muscular, his deeply tanned frame dripping with seawater, he was a spectacular sight. She couldn’t imagine a man like that going cap in hand for a loan.
Rosie had failed spectacularly in that direction. Every letter she’d sent to possible investors for the island had been met with silence, or scorn: Who was she but a lowly housekeeper whose life experience was confined to an orphanage? She couldn’t even argue with that view, when it was right.
He speared her with a glance. She guessed he could open any door. But not this door. She would keep her deathbed promise to Doña Anna, and continue the fight to keep the island unspoiled. Which, in Doña Anna’s language, meant no visitors—especially not a man who was looking at Rosie as if she were a piece of flotsam that had washed up on the beach. She would despatch him exactly as Doña Anna would have done, Rosie determined, standing her ground. Well, perhaps not quite the same way. She was more of a firm persuader than a shouter.
Her heart pounded with uneasiness as he strode towards her across the sand. She was alone and vulnerable. He’d chosen the best time of day to spring his surprise. Rosie had never made any secret of the fact that she liked to swim early in the morning before anyone was up. When she was alive, Doña Anna had encouraged this habit, saying Rosie should get some fresh air before spending all day in the house.
Snatching up her towel from the rock where she’d spread it out to dry, she covered herself modestly. Even so, she was hardly dressed for receiving visitors. The house was half a mile away up a steep cliff path, and no one would hear her cry for help—
She wouldn’t be calling for help. She owned fifty per cent of this island, with the other fifty per cent belonging to some absentee Spanish Grandee.
Don Xavier Del Rio was Doña Anna’s nephew, but as he hadn’t troubled to visit his aunt during Rosie’s time on the island, not even attending her funeral, Rosie doubted he would inconvenience himself now. According to Doña Anna, he was a playboy who lived life on the edge. As far as Rosie was concerned, he was a hard-hearted brute, who didn’t deserve such a lovely aunt.
Admittedly, when it came to his business, he seemed to be successful. But, billionaire or not, in Rosie’s view, he should have made some effort to visit Doña Anna—or perhaps he was just too important to care.
* * *
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The girl had set herself up on the beach as if he were the intruder. ‘You’re right,’ he barked at her. ‘This is a private beach. So what the hell are you doing here?’
‘I own—I mean, I live on the island,’ she said, tipping her chin a little higher in what he supposed was an attempt to stare him in the eyes.