Ethan looked up at her. His expression was not the shock or the panic Hayley had expected. He was still typing away, glancing down at the computer screen again.
‘Did you hear me?’ Hayley demanded, certain that he must not have. He always spoke as much with his hands as with words. It was his Italian heritage, she guessed. And now it felt like he wasn’t paying her attention, even if the reason for that was that he was typing.
‘I said Katy’s not here!’ she repeated. ‘She’s gone!’
‘I heard you.’ Ethan cocked his head to one side, watching her closely as he tapped more emphatically on the enter key and then stood.
‘There’s something you need to know,’ he said, too slowly.
‘There’s something you need to know! You’re not listening to me. It must be shock or —’
‘I know Katy’s not here.’
‘What?’
‘I said I know Katy’s not here.’ He walked towards her and took her elbow in his hand. ‘Come and sit down over here.’
Hayley stood still. She didn’t want to sit. She was tired and she was in a foreign country and she was staying with a man she barely knew and she had been shot at.
‘That alarm?’ she asked. ‘Was that the sound of Katy leaving?’
‘That alarm, thankfully, was false,’ Ethan said. ‘We get those from time to time. I have the sensitivity of the alarm system set to very high. For obvious reasons. Sometimes it’s an owl that sets it off at nighttime. Sometimes just the wind.’
Hayley considered this. Finally, she allowed him to lead her towards a couch that rested against a side wall.
He gave her a glass of water as well. ‘You look exhausted,’ he said.
She sipped it. ‘I’ve had quite a day.’
He sat beside her. He looked exhausted, too, as he gave a dry laugh. ‘Welcome to my life.’
‘You often have your alarm going off in the middle of the night, and guests who are shot at?’
‘I’m always waiting for Tomasi’s next trick. At the moment, I’m worried because he seems to have become so unpredictable. I’ve heard rumours that the family might be in even more trouble than I thought. Alvaro Tomasi is new to power.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would that matter?’
‘There are rivals in his family. He might feel he has to prove himself.’
Hayley took a moment to consider the fact that she had been caught up in someone else’s power game. This did not sit well with her idea of herself at all.
‘So where’s Katy?’ she asked at last.
Ethan regarded her for a long minute.
‘Is she okay?’ asked Hayley, feeling a tightening in that knot of anxiety in her chest.
Ethan stood. ‘We need to go up to your room before we discuss this.’
‘What?’
Truly, he was the most astonishing man she had ever met. There seemed to be so little connection between the information she was requesting and the demand he was making.
‘Your bedroom,’ he repeated. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. I…’
This time, Hayley let the sentence trail off because she had no idea of what she wanted to say next. Instead of talking, she led the way back upstairs to the bedroom that Ethan had shown her to so recently.
At the door, she turned towards him. This time his hand was on the doorknob. There was no doubt he planned on entering too. Hayley felt a little frisson at the realisation.
‘Why are we doing this?’ she asked.
‘Because you asked me a question.’ He held the door open for her and she walked in.
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘I have to be sure who’s going to be hearing the answer,’ Ethan explained.
Hayley scratched her head, trying to work that out as Ethan followed her into the room.
‘That’s one of my bathrobes?’ he asked, waving his finger up and down in her direction.
Hayley nodded. ‘It was on the bed. I thought that meant for me to —’
‘It was.’
‘I can’t work out what you mean.’
‘You talk too much.’
‘Everyone says that,’ Hayley admitted, feeling a little nervous. ‘I think it’s because I —’
‘Take it off.’
‘What?’
Ethan sighed, pushing his hands into his pockets. ‘In particular, you ask too many questions.’
‘Well, that’s because you ask me to do the strangest —’
‘I’m not asking. I’m telling you. If you want to talk to me about Katy, you have to take the bathrobe off.’
Hayley thought quickly. Beneath the robe, she was clad in a pink and orange striped bra and a pair of pink knickers with an orange frill around the outside. Those were what she had put on this morning…
This morning.
Hayley froze. That bra and those knickers were what she had been wearing until her shower, a short while ago. She had been getting into bed when the alarm sounded. It was the knickers only.
She folded her arms across her chest and glared at Ethan. ‘You’ll only talk to me if I’m nude?’ she said. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. What possible reason —’
‘You’re curious about Katy,’ Ethan reminded her.
He perched on the end of the bed and crossed his arms too, mirroring her. She nodded at him.
‘Well, I’m not going to tell you anything unless I’m certain you’re not bugged.’
Hayley shook her head. ‘Bugged? Of course I’m not bugged. Why would I be —?’
‘You’re here because Alvaro Tomasi sent you.’
‘Alvaro Tomasi shot me!’
‘Alvaro Tomasi missed.’ Ethan spoke slowly. ‘I could be suspicious about that too, you know. After all, the information I have is that Tomasi — all the Tomasis — are very good shots.’
‘It doesn’t feel like he missed me,’ Hayley said, rubbing her arm. ‘Anyway, why would he do that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe so I would trust you and let you into my house and once inside, you could ask me all these questions!’
Hayley thought about that for a long moment. No one had ever judged her badly for being so inquisitive about people before. She had always attributed her interest in people to the fact that she cared about them. Because she did care about people.
But maybe Ethan was right. Maybe she did ask too many questions.
Then she turned and fought with the bathrobe’s tie for a moment. She had knotted it in a hurry as she ran, and knotted it, it now seemed, rather too well.
‘You sure you can’t just feel me through the robe?’ she asked, looking over her shoulder.
It was a thick and fluffy robe and as Hayley spoke the expression in his eyes suggested he’d like, very much, to touch it. He leaned forward towards her and uncrossed his legs. Hayley closed her eyes and for one brief moment imagined him standing and stepping towards her, lowering his head towards hers as his hands explored her body through the thickness of the robe, as his fingers joined hers in trying to untie it.
When she opened them, Ethan was still sitting on the bed, watching her. Hayley made one last go at loosening the knot. The cotton now felt coarse beneath her fingertips but finally the knot gave and the two ends came loose. She shrugged her shoulders to shake the bathrobe free and used her hands to cover her breasts as it slithered down her back towards the floor.
As she watched him, his eyes darkened.
Hayley moved her arms slightly so he could see her chest was free of wires.
‘You will tell me now?’ she asked. ‘I have no link to Tomasi, I promise you.’
Ethan coughed. ‘Something tells me I would answer any question you might care to ask while you’re standing, looking like that,’ he said.
She raised an eyebrow questioningly. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Yes you do. Every beautiful woman recognises a compliment.’
She stepped a little closer, her head leaning to one side. Beautiful? Was he playing games with her? Hayley wasn’t beautiful and knew it. His first wife, Erica — the woman whose photo she had seen — had been beautiful, with long, wavy near-black hair and lips with the juicy colour of bitten cherries. But she knew better than to argue with him about it. If he wanted to pretend for a while that she was beautiful, no harm would come from it.
‘Is Katy safe?’ Hayley asked.
She was surprised by how much she cared to hear the answer. Something in the sad story of this man living out here in a country that was not his own, trying to keep his young daughter safe from the people who had killed her mother, was almost unbearably touching. Without even meeting Katy, she had developed a real interest in the little girl’s wellbeing.
Ethan nodded. Then he closed his eyes.
‘You can do up your robe again now,’ he said. ‘In fact, it might be a good idea if you do.’
Suddenly embarrassed, Hayley wrapped the robe around her and reached for the two ends of the waist tie. This time, she did it up far more loosely.
‘You can look again now,’ she said, sitting beside him on the bed.
‘Katy’s safely at school,’ Ethan told her.
‘At school? But it’s the middle of the night.’
‘Boarding school.’
‘Yes. I should have… She left this evening?’ Hayley asked. ‘Where is it? It must be fairly close by.’
She paused, suddenly aware that she was doing it again. Asking too many questions. She had to admit to herself that Ethan’s suspicions weren’t entirely groundless.
‘I haven’t been completely honest with you about that,’ Ethan said now.
‘Katy wasn’t at dinner,’ Hayley remembered. ‘She hasn’t been here at all, has she?’
‘Not today, no.’
‘So where is she? Why did you —’
Ethan raised a hand. ‘Where she is, is safe,’ he said. ‘It’s a location I am not divulging to anyone.’
‘Not even someone wearing a completely unwired bathrobe?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference for you to know,’ Ethan said, simply. ‘Katy is virtually my whole family, you know. I have a sister but we aren’t close. And Katy is…’
‘I do understand,’ Hayley felt even more touched. Her own family was very small and, with her father’s illness, threatened to shrink further still. She understood what it was to have all your love poured into one person and how at once fragile and vital this could make that one person seem.
‘I’m not going to tell anyone what you’ve told me, I promise. I came to you tonight because I was worried about her. I was worried about you. My father brought me up on his own. When I hear you talk about her, it’s the first time I really appreciate why my father was always so good to me. How he must have felt. Maybe that’s why I find myself caring so much that she is safe.’
‘I can understand that you care. I can even understand why you care.’
‘You do?’ asked Hayley, who had been wondering about this herself. ‘I don’t even know Katy. But I…’
‘Feelings aren’t always rational,’ Ethan explained. ‘You had no idea what Tomasi really wanted to know, but all the same, you must feel slightly responsible for coming here under false pretences. And I feel slightly responsible for you being shot, because it happened on my property.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Hayley said.
She leaned back on her elbows and looked at him from the side. He looked quite different from this perspective. His jaw was very square and his forehead and his shoulders very wide but there was a set about his arms and his strong hands that was almost gentle.
‘It’s not like a man to be so perceptive.’
He grinned suddenly. ‘Maybe I’m no ordinary man.’
‘I’m beginning to get that idea.’
Now that Katy was safe, it dawned on Hayley that she had nothing to do until morning. And she was alone in a big, empty house, with a very attractive man. What was that line she had heard once about Las Vegas? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That was it. She was not ready for any sort of relationships right now, particularly not with a man who was not ready for any sort of relationship with her. But she wondered all the same if that Vegas comment was the sort of comment that could also be made about Siena. The city seemed to be made for drama. The Renaissance here hadn’t only been significant in the artistic skills of perspective and the capturing of light and dark that Hayley tried to incorporate in her photographs, but also of political power games. The city leaders had wielded immense power over lesser citizens, and blood feuds had lasted generations.
Was she part of something like that now? Or was she in a holiday destination, as so many tourists seemed to think, free here to do just as she liked, and to forget about the consequences?
She leaned towards him slightly, testing the water. Ethan turned, a little more. Hayley began to lean his head towards his shoulder. Then his phone rang.
Damn.
Hayley wasn’t sure if she said that, or Ethan said it, or if neither of them said it, or both. They both knew that in the current circumstances, the call could not be ignored. Ethan reached into the pocket of his jeans for his phone and flipped it open.
‘Yes?’
‘Ethan.’ There was a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. Beyond his name, Hayley couldn’t make out what the woman said but felt a sliver of jealousy go through her all the same.
Who was this woman that knew Ethan — who Hayley sensed was a very secretive man — well enough to have his mobile phone number and to feel confident calling him on it in the middle of the night?
‘Thanks, yes it is me. It is a secure line,’ Ethan said. Then he stood to leave the room, and closed the door behind him.
At least the voice on the other end of the line had changed before he left, deep male tones replacing the woman who had made the call. All the same, Hayley felt her heart sink at the idea that Ethan didn’t trust her enough to take the call in here. She tossed her legs out and regarded her toes as though they were beings she could talk to.
You’ve only known him for one day, she told them. Make that just a few hours. You came into this house pretending you were after one thing when really that was fraudulent. Of course he doesn’t trust you. Something tells me that his trust is something that you have to earn.
Through the strong, timber door, she could hear snippets of conversation. Ethan was talking to someone named David, she soon worked out.
‘What did he say?’ Ethan was asking. ‘The corporate crime division had been going from strength to strength? Well, that’s very kind of him but I still can’t come back just now.’
Silence. Hayley tried to imagine what the invisible David might be saying.
‘I really can’t,’ Ethan repeated a moment later. ‘I’ll do what I can from here but first I have to work out how Tomasi is getting his information. This case needs to be my first priority, David, no matter what Michaels thinks. Katy’s safety depends on it. Sometimes these things do get personal.’
A few moments later, farewells were said and there was a knocking noise on her door.
‘Come in,’ said Hayley, feeling that the formality was unnecessary given that he had already walked in here all by himself. Not to mention that soon afterwards, he had seen her virtually naked.
‘Sorry about that,’ Ethan said, swinging the door open but barely walking into the room. ‘Work.’
‘The Tomasis are involved with your work as well?’ Hayley asked. ‘How did that happen?’
He sighed and she realised she had asked another question. More than one. Had she always been like this, she wondered, or was it some change in her character, brought on by her new association with this man?
At least, this time, Ethan didn’t seem to mind.
‘They are involved now,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working with the Corporate Crime Division of a private industry body back home. They recruited me after Erica died. Thought I might know something about the Tomasis and care enough to find out more.’
Hayley nodded. She tried to imagine how Ethan’s life must be. All these different layers of concerns, all centring around the one family he had married into, and had not been able to separate from even after his wife had died.
‘And have you?’ she asked.
‘Enough to discover that he won’t stop at anything. Alvaro Tomasi wants Katy. So does the rest of his family.’
‘I’m not the first person he has sent here, am I?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘And I doubt you will be the last. Please don’t feel bad about it. He is a powerful and influential man. You need to spend some time now working out how to keep yourself safe now you have disappointed him. Tomasi does not take disappointment lightly.’
Icy fingers seemed to clutch around her heart. Yes, she had been shot at, but Hayley had not really believed until this moment, when the stern set to Ethan’s features confirmed what he was saying, that she might continue to be in danger. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he’s a cruel man and not all of his methods are as easy to identify as a bullet from a gun.’
‘You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.’
‘Are you going to sleep?’
Hayley regarded him for a moment. ‘You know, I might ask a lot of questions, but you ask the most random ones.’
‘It’s not completely random.’
‘Well, the answer is that I don’t completely know. I might sleep eventually. Why do you want to know?’
‘There’s something I can show you. If you want to see it.’
***
Ethan pushed a DVD into the player in the sitting room and stood back with the remote control to turn the television on. Hayley was sitting on the sofa behind him, her legs curled beneath her. She was still wearing the bathrobe. He had never before realised how attractive one of those could be. Not to mention that he was acutely aware of how little she was wearing beneath it.
‘This video is taken from a family Christmas three years ago,’ he said.
The screen flickered to life. He looked over his shoulder to check that Hayley was watching.
The sound started a moment before the picture. It showed an outdoor scene on a sunny day. There was a well-watered lawn, a background of trees, and part of what looked like a stone wall. Ethan felt himself swallowing as a little girl ran onto the screen.
‘Katy?’ Hayley asked.
Ethan nodded. ‘She’s a lot bigger now.’
‘Is she still that pretty?’
‘I think so.’
A moment later the camera panned out and the complete exterior of this house came into view. A wide stone wall broken up with a long door. A woman walked into the shot, emerging from one of those long doors with a platter of sandwiches.
Ethan looked at Hayley. She was frowning. Perhaps she had realised that the film had been shot here but, of course, she wouldn’t know who anyone was.
‘That’s my sister,’ he explained. ‘Pearl.’
Hayley’s expression cleared. Ethan felt a pang of regret in case he had given her any feelings of jealousy. And then another pang that came from an awareness that Hayley would only feel jealous of another woman if she had feelings about him herself. Could that be the case?
He was annoyed with himself when he realised how much he hoped this was true. It had been a long time since he had allowed a woman in his life, because the prospect was so full of danger both to him and to any woman who might be concerned. That situation hadn’t changed. Even if Hayley were interested in him, he couldn’t allow that interest to develop. Anyone who got close to him was a likely target for Alvaro Tomasi and his guns.
Hayley leaned forward, peering more closely at the screen as the camera zoomed in. Pearl stood there now, laughing as the wide lens caught her dark hair and tossed it about her shoulders. She was saying something to the camera but the sound was not quite good enough quality to make out what it was.
When Pearl began to turn and raised her platter, as though offering her sandwiches to Hayley and Ethan as they sat on the opposite side of the screen, Ethan hit pause. Pearl’s image was frozen in time before them, the image of healthy and smiling young womanhood.
Without saying any more, Ethan leaned towards the DVD player and, slipping in another disk, pressed play. On the screen before them, Pearl’s happy face was replaced with that of a much older woman. She was tall and thin to the point of being angular, with skin that seemed to bear the signs of having been continuously sunburned for at least thirty years. She looked like she could have been the mother of the young woman they had seen on the previous disk. Maybe even her grandmother.
Hayley was still leaning forward. There was the beginning of a puzzled frown beneath her brows.
‘Pearl!’ the voice echoed out from the high quality sound system with the same resonance as if it had been spoken in the next room.
Ethan felt that familiar jolt of surprise many people get when they hear their own voice as it has been recorded. The woman on the screen turned.
‘That’s Pearl?’ Hayley asked. Her voice was sharp with surprise.
Ethan nodded.
‘What happened to her?’ Hayley clamped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, that sounded rude.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘It’s startling,’ he agreed.
‘She obviously isn’t well in the second DVD.’
‘She isn’t,’ Ethan said. ‘You aren’t rude, it’s true. That change was what I wanted to show you.’
‘This has something to do with Alvaro Tomasi?’
Ethan paused the image again. Now Pearl’s eyes were gazing towards them, wide and dark and mute in her wasted face.
‘Something to do with Alvaro Tomasi and with crack cocaine.’
Hayley’s mouth dropped open into an expression of horror. Ethan could tell that she knew what he meant.
‘Pearl became an addict?’ she asked.
‘It wasn’t her fault. Tomasi is a very wealthy man. Perhaps if I tell you a bit more of her life story, you’ll understand more clearly,’ Ethan said.
Hayley nodded.
‘Pearl was involved in a relationship with a successful lawyer. They were planning on getting married. But Tomasi wanted to show me what he was capable of.’
‘He made her get addicted?’ Hayley asked.
She was still staring at the screen. Ethan moved to the side of the room. His hand was shaking as he poured himself a drink. From here it looked like Pearl was staring back at Hayley, too. He took a deep mouthful of the whisky.
‘How can someone do that?’ Hayley asked.
He passed her a drink too. ‘Crack cocaine isn’t like other drugs,’ he said. ‘It’s instantly addictive. Pearl’s fiancé turned out to be addicted both to drugs and to a high-living lifestyle. Tomasi was able to find this out without too much trouble. And once he knew that, he was able to pay Pearl’s fiancé…’ His voice faded.
Hayley was holding her glass near in her lap but she hadn’t taken a sip. Her face was turned towards Ethan, her mouth open in a horrified ‘O’.
‘Pay him to do what?’ she prompted.
‘Pay him to introduce Pearl to drugs,’ Ethan said, his eyes closed. It was a crushing story to tell, and never got any easier. ‘Once she tried the drug, it wasn’t long before her life was ruined.’
‘Is she still with this man?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘The relationship fell apart too. It was bound to. Eventually Pearl discovered that her fiancé had sold her health to Tomasi. But she wasn’t able to discover how to get her health back.’
‘How awful.’
‘People aren’t always kind about it. After all, Pearl did have some complicity in taking the drugs…’
‘Some women will do anything for the man they love,’ Hayley said. ‘Especially if her fiancé presented it like it was no big deal. Like it was just something as harmless as a drink.’
‘That’s pretty much what Pearl said he said.’ Ethan sat beside Hayley on the sofa. He was impressed by Hayley’s rapid comprehension of the situation, and also by the compassion that she showed.
‘Is she all right now?’
‘I hope she is.’
‘You don’t know?’
Ethan gazed down at his fingers. The truth was that this was something he felt guilty about, too. After all, just as Pearl was his only sibling, so he was hers. But she had made it very clear that she wanted to be left to her own resources. And she was an adult woman with the right to make her own choices about things like that.’
‘I paid for her to go to rehab. She left half way through saying she’d prefer to do the rest on her own.’
‘Do you think it helped?’
‘I don’t know. She’s been in rehab before.’
‘It didn’t work?’
‘She didn’t really want to be there. She escaped. I had to go pick her up from hospital a couple of weeks after she disappeared. She’d taken an overdose. That time, she went back into rehab. She might be making progress. I don’t know.’
‘How awful for her. For you too. And your parents can’t help?’
‘They died in a car accident when I was a teenager. It was Pearl who looked after me then. She’s three years older than me.’
He turned away from her for a moment, frightened to let too much of his pain show. Hayley was all but a stranger. He wanted to warn her about Tomasi, but he did not necessarily want to make her see how badly affected he was by all of this.
‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ Hayley said. ‘Do you think she’ll recover eventually?’
‘The truth is, I don’t know if she will ever be all right again.’
He turned towards her and took her hand in his. It was only a few hours since they had met but already the gesture seemed both natural and necessary.
‘You can’t let yourself get any more involved with Tomasi than you already have,’ he said. ‘He is a violent and dangerous man and he has the means at his disposal to ruin your life in ways you couldn’t even imagine. What he did to Pearl wasn’t even because he was angry with her. He has no real connection to her at all. He did it as a message to me. And of course…’
‘Yes?’
‘Also, of course, to make sure that if anything ever happens to me, that custody of Katy won’t go to Pearl.’
Hayley was perfectly still beside him. Even her hand was as motionless beneath his touch, as if she were asleep. What was she thinking? It was impossible to tell.
Then suddenly she leaned towards him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, drawing him close. A hug.
Ethan felt himself shaking slightly. He had lived on his own for long enough to forget how comforting physical contact could be. Her arms were long and light around his shoulders, her hair sweet-smelling as she leaned her head close to him.
‘I’m so sorry I came here today and brought all this back to you,’ she said.
Her face was turned away from him. She would not see what he did with his mouth. He could not remember the last time he had held a woman like this. He brushed a kiss across the top of her hair before speaking.
‘I’m not,’ he said.
‘Not sorry?’ She looked up at him. Up this close, she was even lovelier. And even more vulnerable.
He pulled away. If there was one thing his relationship with Erica had taught him, it was that relationships were fraught with danger anyway. In a way it would have been easier if he had still been able to convince himself that Hayley was somehow complicit in a Tomasi game. He would have been free to make love to her now if she was already involved with Tomasi and with the danger he represented. But he was not the sort of selfish beast who would take a woman like this and endanger her further.
‘I’m not sorry,’ he said, pulling away. ‘I’m glad to have met you. Glad to have had the chance to show you this.’
Hayley looked slightly surprised, and very confused. She was clearly trying to decide whether or not she should be offended by the distance he had suddenly put between them.
‘You’re glad,’ she repeated.
Yes, there was distance, but she was still too close. The expression on her face suggested imminent danger. He pulled away. He stood. He had to make himself clear.
‘Glad to have had the chance to warn you to keep away from the Tomasis,’ he said. ‘As far away as you can.’
The changing expressions on her face — and her surprise at his sudden withdrawal — were heartbreaking. Ethan was angry with himself. He should not allow himself to wonder what might have happened between them if they had met under different circumstances, because the truth was there were no different circumstances under which they could have met. Hayley was here because Ethan’s enemy had sent her, and if Ethan took advantage of that, he would just be placing her in the same type of danger he already faced.
‘Is that all?’ she asked. ‘Those are the only reasons that you’re glad I’m here?’
He nodded, his eyes lowered.
Hayley stood, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. ‘Thanks for showing me, thanks for letting me stay,’ she said. ‘I might go back to my room, if you don’t mind.’
He followed her up the stairs out of courtesy, but she was in front of him and walking very quickly. He could tell that she wanted to keep her face averted from his. She reached her door and closed it against him, all without turning.
‘Sleep well,’ he said to the solid timber.
There was no sound from beyond except what might have been gentle sobs. Hayley was obviously feeling this intense attraction just as much as he was. The difference was that she didn’t yet understand enough about the situation to realise how impossible it was for anything to happen between them.
Ethan waited beside the door for a moment, fighting the urge to go in and comfort her. He could not allow himself to do that. Then he squared his shoulders and went back downstairs to check once more on the villa’s security.