The Runaway Bride And The Billionaire

Immi made herself a mug of coffee, unpacked her stuff in Sofia’s faded yet comfortable downstairs bedroom, then headed for the garden with a notebook and pen so she could walk round and start making a list of what needed doing and where.

Alberto, Sofia’s old gardener, was too old and frail now to keep everything under control. According to Andie, one of his and Elena the housekeeper’s sons cut the grass every spring, and it didn’t tend to grow much during the summer. The shrubs and the roses, however, were well out of control, overgrown and with whippy stems that could catch the unwary and draw blood. It was just as well that she’d brought her own secateurs and gardening gloves from home, and she might need something even sturdier than that to tackle the thicker stems. Hopefully there was a saw or something in the garage.

She found an ancient and slightly rusted wheelbarrow in the garden shed, and hauled it over to the border nearest the house. Might as well get a bit of weeding in; and then tomorrow she’d put her list in order and start working her way through cutting back the tangle.

The physical work did her good; by the time she’d spent a couple of hours weeding, she was tired and ached all over.

Bath and an early night, she decided. She made herself some toast, then waited for the massive bath to fill. Back in the day, this must’ve been really special, she thought. Now, the bath had patches where the enamel had worn away, and several of the sumptuous peacock-blue-and-gold tiles had cracked. The grouting was nothing short of horrible, and no amount of scrubbing was going to fix it. Some of the black-and-white-chequered lino had cracked. The whole place was going to need a lot of love to bring it back to its former glory—and probably more money than she, Posy, Portia and Andie had between them.

Unless maybe Portia could use some of her contacts to get a television programme made about the restoration, with experts and tradesmen giving their time and labour in return for the national or even international exposure on TV... Immi made a note on her phone to suggest it to Portia, then stepped into the bath and scrubbed herself clean.

Without a shower, she’d had to use a jug from the kitchen to rinse the shampoo from her hair; she tucked a towel sarong-style around herself and wrapped her wet hair in a smaller towel before going back to Sofia’s bedroom, where she tripped over something and pitched head-first onto the bed.

‘Way to go, Immi,’ she said, rolling her eyes, and got back onto her feet. She could hear a bell clanging somewhere, and assumed it was the church in the village. Maybe that was somewhere to explore tomorrow.

She changed into her pyjamas and combed her hair, then headed for the kitchen to make herself a mug of hot chocolate. But as she reached the doorway she could see torchlight flashing. For a second, she froze. Was it a burglar? There was nothing here to steal. Sofia’s jewellery was gorgeous, but it was all costume and not worth anywhere near what the value would’ve been if it had been real.

All the same, she couldn’t let the house be ransacked. She ran into the kitchen and snatched up the first thing to hand, then yelled, ‘Va via! Ho chiamato la polizia!’

Hopefully the burglars wouldn’t know she had no landline and no signal for her mobile phone, and would believe that she really had called the police. And hopefully they’d make a run for it.

To her shock, the kitchen light was slammed on. She shrieked and was about to whack the burglar with the saucepan she was holding, when she suddenly recognised him.

Matt Stark.

She blew out a breath and put the saucepan down on the nearest worktop. ‘You scared me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his dark eyes filled with sincerity, ‘but you rang the bell. I assumed you needed help.’

‘I thought you were a burglar,’ she said, and then his words sank in. ‘Rang the bell? What bell?’

‘There’s a cord fixed by Sofia’s bed and in the living room by her chair,’ he explained. ‘Her phone line came down several years ago and has never been fixed.’

Probably, Immi thought, after Ludano’s death Sofia had no longer had any access to the palace staff to fix any problems. And Posy’s godmother had been too proud to admit that she couldn’t afford to fix the phone line.

‘And she wouldn’t let me rig up any kind of satellite phone for her,’ he continued, ‘so we compromised on her ringing a bell if she needed me.’

‘I didn’t pull any cord,’ she said, and then wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh. That’s what I must’ve tripped over. And I did hear a bell—I just didn’t connect it with tripping over. I thought it was the village church.’

‘Well, now you know,’ he said.

Her skin prickled with awareness—of him, and of the fact that she was only wearing thin cotton pyjamas that didn’t exactly hide her shape. She sucked in a breath. She needed to calm herself down. Remembering her manners would be a good start. ‘Thank you for the bread and the milk,’ she said. ‘I was going to call in tomorrow to say thank you and give you the money for it.’

‘There’s no need. I think I can afford to buy a neighbour a couple of pints of milk and a load of bread.’ He paused. ‘So why were you tackling what you thought were burglars on your own?’

She looked at the saucepan she’d just put down. ‘That wasn’t going to be much use against a determined intruder, was it?’

‘Hardly,’ he said dryly.

* * *

Imogen looked amazing in those pyjamas. The soft strappy top revealed her curves, and although her shorts were demure enough he could see just how long her legs were. And Matt really had to remind himself that she was off limits.

‘So why wasn’t your fiancé tackling the burglars?’ he asked. It was like a scab he couldn’t stop picking at.

‘He’s not here.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And he’s not my fiancé any more.’

She was free?

But the split must’ve been recent. He’d seen her only two months before, with that massive rock on her left hand. Had she been the one to instigate the break-up, or had her fiancé called off the engagement? Right now Matt knew he needed to tread carefully. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Marrying Stephen would’ve been the biggest mistake ever.’

‘So you called it off?’

She spread her hands. ‘Some people would say that was enough to make me the Runaway Bride.’

He somehow didn’t think that Imogen Marlowe would run away from anything. There was a lot more to this than she was telling.

Not that it was any of his business. And he didn’t need to get involved. ‘Well, if you’re not being attacked by burglars, I guess I’d better leave you be,’ he said.

‘Or,’ she said, ‘I could put some proper clothes on and make you a cup of hot chocolate.’

* * *

Why on earth had she said that?

Wasn’t the whole point of her stay in L’Isola dei Fiori to be on her own, and to think about her future without having to talk to a single person? Why was she asking Matt to stay? This was particularly stupid of her, given that almost-kiss at Andie’s wedding reception. This was playing with fire.

His expression was unreadable. Then he nodded. ‘You’re probably wearing more right now than the average tourist would on the beach, but I’ll make the hot chocolate while you get changed.’

‘Deal. The hot chocolate’s in the top cupboard to the right of the stove, the milk’s where you put it, and the pan...’ She smiled. ‘Well. Let’s just say it hasn’t been used to smack a would-be burglar round the head.’

‘Indeed.’

He smiled back, and all of a sudden she was covered in goosebumps. Which was ridiculous. For pity’s sake, she was nearly twenty-five, not fifteen. She shouldn’t be flustered just because a seriously attractive man smiled at her.

She went upstairs and changed into a clean T-shirt and jeans. When she came back down into the kitchen, the milk was just on the boil. Matt stirred the milk into the hot chocolate powder, then handed one of the mugs to her.

‘There’s a good spot in the garden,’ he said, ‘to look at the stars. Because there are so few homes on this part of the island there’s hardly any light pollution so you get an excellent view of the night sky.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ she said. She’d been too busy around Andie’s wedding—and too miserable—to notice the stars.

She slipped on a pair of canvas shoes but didn’t bother lacing them up, then followed him and his torchlight out through the garden. The path wound through more of the overgrown shrubs, and a couple of times she started to wonder if this fabulous viewpoint of his even existed. She certainly didn’t remember it from her childhood stays here. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to sit on the ancient pink rocking chair she’d noticed on the terrace? But Matt seemed completely sure-footed, and eventually she found herself next to an old wooden bench in front of the wall that ran round the edge of the garden.

‘I know it looks as if it’d be more sensible to just follow the wall,’ he said, ‘but the tremor a couple of years back caused the wall to crumble in places, so it’s not brilliantly safe. Especially when it’s not daylight, when you can’t see where you’re going and you’re less likely to avoid tripping over a branch and going over the edge.’

‘Right.’ She knew the island was on a volcanic ridge. A tremor explained the cracks in the house; and they probably hadn’t been fixed for the same reason as the phone line. ‘I’m assuming the house needed attention before the wall round the garden did.’

He nodded. ‘Cleve’s done a bit of repairing—well, after almost burning down the kitchen—and when Javier was here with Portia he fixed the glass in the conservatory and plastered some of the walls.’

Immi had known Cleve for years and wasn’t surprised that he was good with his hands, but she couldn’t quite get her head round the idea of a movie star doing building work. Particularly as, from what she’d seen, the job looked pretty professional. But Portia had kept a lot of things about her new husband quiet, including the wedding: it was the only way to get real privacy when one of you lived so much in the public eye.

As Matt had promised, the bench that was perched on the edge of the cliff, facing out to sea, provided an expansive view of the star-filled sky and it was utterly beautiful.

It was a relief that he didn’t fill the silence with small talk, either; they just sat there together in companionable silence, sipping hot chocolate and watching the stars twinkling brightly above.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘I think I needed that.’

‘Time and space to think?’ he asked, his voice equally soft.

‘Yes. I’m pretty much at a crossroads in my life right now.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘The plan is to sort out the garden here; if you’re having to concentrate on physical work, you’re giving your subconscious time to deal with the problem.’

‘It’s a plan,’ he said.

‘It sounds as if you don’t think it’s a good one.’

He lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘No judgements. I’m doing the same kind of thing myself right now.’

There was something like sadness in his dark eyes and she wondered why he was at a crossroads. Though it was none of her business and it felt too intrusive to ask. ‘Maybe I ought to paint the walls instead of tackling the garden,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to talk to Posy about paint.’

‘Are you good at painting?’ he asked.

‘I’m better at pruning,’ she admitted.

‘Then do the garden,’ he advised. ‘If you need space to think in the back of your head, it’s easier to do it while you’re doing something you love.’

What did he do when he needed to think? she wondered. Again, she felt too awkward to ask. Which was weird, because normally she got on well with people and never had a problem chatting to them.

But she knew what it felt like to be stuck.

And he’d been kind to her sisters and to Sofia. Time for payback. Maybe she could help him. ‘I’m normally good at sorting things out,’ she said, ‘so if you want a non-judgemental neighbour to bounce ideas off...’

‘Someone who doesn’t know me and is outside the situation so might see it more clearly? I like that. Thank you.’ He paused. ‘I’m pretty good at sorting things out usually, too. So if you want...’ He left the offer hanging open.

‘Thanks, but it’s a pretty tangled web.’

‘They’re the sort that could do most with an outside viewpoint.’

‘I guess.’ She paused. She could tell him what had happened. And that might put enough of a barrier between them to stop her doing something stupid. Like giving in to the pull she felt towards him. Or maybe it wouldn’t. ‘But maybe not today?’

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