Jane Godman - Immortal Billionaire

He couldn’t do this now. He needed time—and plenty of it—to collect his thoughts before he could even think about being sociable. “Make my apologies. Explain that I have something urgent to attend to and I’ll see them at dinner. When they’ve finished their drinks, show them to their rooms, please.”

“I hope everything is well, sir?”

He hung up without replying, knowing she would be worried at his unaccustomed abruptness but not having the mental energy to deal with it. I need to find the strength to cope with what’s going on in my own head. The rest of the world will have to wait. That decision seemed to restore some of his equilibrium. One thing at a time. Losing the bloodstained clothing seemed to be a good starting point.

Standing under fierce jets of water in the shower, he replayed that heart-stopping, brain-numbing moment on the beach. Could he have dealt with the shock any differently? Hidden his feelings? He choked back a laugh. Not a hope in hell. Living his life in the public eye, Sylvester had developed plenty of coping strategies. The easy, unruffled persona he showed the world had become second nature. Up until half an hour ago he thought he was prepared for any eventuality. But a pair of wide, golden-brown eyes peeping shyly at him from beneath the brim of a straw hat had just shaken him out of that certainty forever.

Impatient now to find out more about her, he turned off the shower. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he returned to the bedroom. Opening a drawer in his dresser, he extracted the six identically bound files Arthur Reynolds had sent him. Each had a name written on the front in Arthur’s meticulous, sloping handwriting. The carefully made-up blonde had introduced herself as Lucinda. He discarded her file. So she must be either Ellie Carter or Constance Lacey.

Arthur had set each file out in the same way. As soon as Sylvester opened Constance Lacey’s file, a head-and-shoulders photograph—obviously taken some years earlier—gazed up at him from inside the buff cover. The same shock waves hit him immediately. Thankfully the sensation was muted, presumably because this was a picture and she wasn’t here in person. Nevertheless, the impact of looking at her face zinged through to his nerve endings once more. Good thing I’m not holding a glass this time.

In the black-and-white picture, it looked as if the photographer had caught her unawares. Like she was in midsentence. Her hand was raised to brush her dark mane of hair back from her face. Her lips were parted, her eyes just crinkling into laughter. She wasn’t beautiful in any conventional sense of the word. She was stunning in every unconventional sense.

Gazing at her for a protracted, aching moment, Sylvester was overcome with lust and longing. Really? The man who can have any woman he wants...so they say. Getting hard and drooling over an old photograph. Nice image, Sylvester. Even as he gave himself the mental lecture, another voice spoke up in his mind. You know that’s not what this is about.

Who was she? He remembered thinking when Arthur had sent him the files that Constance Lacey’s was thinner than any of the others. Of course, he hadn’t actually opened any of them until now. He hadn’t seen any reason to read about their backgrounds until they were actually here on Corazón. Would he come to regret that decision? What would he have done if he had seen this photograph before meeting her in the flesh? Changed his mind? Withdrawn his invitation? It was too late for those questions. She was here. He had to deal with the reality of her on his island.

Sitting in a chair close to the bed, he skimmed the brief paragraph on their family connection. Arthur, as always, had been meticulous in his research. Sylvester recalled their conversation two years ago. “You want me to find anyone who is remotely related to you?” The attorney had clearly been struggling to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “You do know we will be talking hundreds of people?”

“Theoretically, yes. With any other family, that might be the case, but you know how small my family is. You are then going to narrow it down those de León descendants who are between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Who are of sound mind and body, have no criminal record, no dependents, no marital ties and who are available to come to Corazón on the specified date. Given some of them will think I’m a raving lunatic, I imagine we’ll be talking a mere handful, don’t you?”

Arthur, still regarding him with a measure of disbelief, had agreed. Despite his misgivings, the attorney had done an outstanding job and Sylvester had been proved right. The handful had, of course, included Arthur’s own son. Hardly surprising, since the family connection was the reason Sylvester had entrusted the Reynolds family with his secrets for so many years.

Constance Lacey’s grandmother, Sylvester read now, had been some sort of de León second cousin, back in the mists of time. Could that be considered related at all? We aren’t related. The feeling brought a sense of profound relief, one that he instantly dismissed. The rest of the file contained frustratingly few biographical details. Her father, a Cuban immigrant, had died following a brief, violent illness when she was in her early teens. There was a newspaper cutting included in the file, and Sylvester glanced at. It told him Constance’s mother had been murdered a few years ago.

Constance had studied graphic design at college. Following that, she seemed to have a promising career as a model. Then she had simply...disappeared. Or deliberately made herself invisible. Clearly something traumatic had happened to her. That much was obvious from her appearance. When Arthur had tracked her down and traveled in person to Missouri to interview her, she had been working as a temporary clerk for a back street insurance company. None of this mattered. She might be something of an enigma, but her private life was her own affair. The task ahead of him was too important for Sylvester to be diverted by any imaginary connection he might feel to Constance Lacey. She was here now, in his space, on his island. It was an unexpected complication, but he couldn’t allow it to upset his meticulously laid plans. His lifestyle meant he’d had plenty of practice at keeping people at arm’s length when he chose. Doing the same to Constance Lacey shouldn’t be a problem. Should it?

Even as he asked himself the question, his fingertips strayed with a will of their own to one of the glossy photographs and traced the near-perfect oval outline of her face. But to find her now, after an eternity? He had always thought he was meant to suffer this alone. Determinedly, he put the picture aside. I am meant to suffer this alone.

* * *

They are a star-crossed family. With a name that brings bad luck to anyone who speaks it.

The words had been uttered with absolute finality by her usually unsuperstitious mother. Connie had been forced, therefore, to glean what she could about her famous relatives by scouring the gossip columns. Luckily, since Sylvester was a close friend of celebrities and princes, it had not been too difficult to follow his progress. Not a week went by without a photograph of him appearing in the press. Inevitably, he would have a drink in one hand and a woman on his arm. It was a different woman in each photograph, the common theme the adoring gaze up into his eyes. No matter who he was with, it was Sylvester on whom the paparazzi focused. He had that sort of charisma. His eyes indulged the world with a charming, if slightly cynical, smile. He was one of the elite, a member of that absurdly famous group of people known throughout the world only by their first names.

In addition to his wealth and celebrity lifestyle, Sylvester attracted attention for his determined daredevilry. He seemed to have an ongoing desire to kill himself in the most outrageous way imaginable. Now in his late twenties, he had climbed Everest, trekked to the North Pole, broken trans-Atlantic sailing records, flown around the world single-handed and had recently climbed one of the most perilous rock faces in the world. Those blue eyes scorned danger, their mesmerizing stare challenging death to try to take him if it dared.