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“International lawyers and five-star hotels. He is pulling out all stops,” she said.

“It must be love.” He raised an eyebrow, seeking information.

“Or one definition of it.”

“A bribe so you’ll work with me?” He frowned as if considering the idea.

It wouldn’t pay to underestimate the hired help’s perceptiveness.

Hamish McGregor messed with her mind. His red-clay hair and few errant freckles were a touch too ordinary to merit the term handsome. His rock-hard determined jaw gave him a rugged look, and she’d guess persistence rather than stubbornness provided its strength. The kink in his nose suggested he’d been on the losing end of a fight at some point in his career, whereas his broad shoulders and easy carriage made the statement he could defend himself. Not cocky—self-assured—marking another change from Papa’s usual selection of goons.

“Why would Papa need to bribe me?” Lela pretended to be puzzled. Emotional blackmail was Papa’s preferred strategy.

His mouth curved into a warm smile, softening the angles of his face. His eyes crinkled with humour at her question, fascinating lines fanning out from the corners to distract her. Such unusual eyes, with impossibly long lashes, which he used more effectively than a geisha’s fan to signal advance and retreat, to tempt sense and sensibility.

His smile, those eyes, his sheer persistence were stuck on a loop in her head.

“Give me time,” he said, “and I’ll work that out. I’d like to make a move. Do you want a lift?”

“You’re like one of those all-terrain vehicles, relentlessly rolling over mountains and down ravines.” Lela picked up her cup, remembered it was empty, and set it down. “I need a minute to think.”

“While you’re a pushover,” he muttered, lifting his gaze to the roof. “Take all the time you need.”

MacGregor’s confidence that he’d get his way was a minor irritation. Papa’s reaction if she accepted his hospitality was the larger consideration. The money she’d save by staying at Papa’s expense, rather than her own, was enough to pay for a youth worker at the foundation she part-funded for a week.Papa knows how to target his incentives.

Bankrolling her was also a sign he’d pit his resources against Lela’s. No contest there; his resources were greater, and she didn’t need his offer to bankroll her to understand the risks. Accepting the offer of accommodation wasn’t surrender, although Papa might read it as that, giving her a short-term advantage. With Papa, you took any advantage on offer.

“Stalemate,” she murmured, more to herself than the man opposite. “I’ll accept your offer of a lift after all, Mr. MacGregor.”

How long would it take Papa, or his henchman, to figure out that accepting lavish accommodation was, at heart, her way of saying money wouldn’t influence her decisions or determine Sophie’s future?

* * *

“WHAT CHANGED YOUR MIND, Miranda?” Hamish muttered under his breath.

Grabbing the handle of her suitcase, he grinned at the name that had popped into his head when she’d rebuffed his overtures.

After directing her towards the car park, Hamish was content to follow his Miranda, a name he’d keep until she gave him an alternative. His grin widened recalling her reaction. The original actress held her place in the Hollywood pantheon because of her crazy headgear. But there were similarities between the Brazilian bombshell and the mysterious woman cutting a path ahead of him, not least the determination evident in her straight shoulders and the follow-me sway of a nicely curved butt.

Hamish had taken the chance she’d walk while his back was turned at the café. He’d glanced over his shoulder when he joined the coffee queue. She’d been sitting motionless, her face propped on one hand, shoulders slightly hunched forward. Even motionless, with her face the dead spit of the social media images, he’d known they and the pose were wrong. Her energy was like a slow throb, a bass rhythm that gave life meaning.

“I said I’d stay.” A simple truth. The answer and the look accompanying it, told him more about Ms.—Don’t-Call-Me-Carmen—Vella than the quick search he’d done on her. The lady’s word was her bond. Her smile had been wry when he’d offered to delay their conversation, but her heroic effort to push back fatigue had gained his sympathy, scuttling his intention to push for immediate explanations.

“Stalemate.” Crossing the terminal, the contradiction of her cat-that-got-the-cream expression and her last words gnawed at him. If the lady played chess, stalemate marked a draw, whereas her complacent smile had beamed a victory.

She was a mass of contradictions. Was the hotel room a bribe, and why would she need an inducement? He hadn’t missed the strain in her eyes when she’d asked if he’d found her niece. Worried as hell, yet she’d procrastinated about accepting help from him. Calculation, wariness, her eyes reflecting light and dark in line with her thoughts so that by the time she’d agreed to accompany him, they’d reminded him of the colour of burnt toast.

Who’d have guessed burnt toast could be such an appealing colour?

“Stalemate.” She’d been speaking to herself more than to him. Hamish could work with a draw, a compromise between Giovanni Vella and his daughter, if it put Sophie—not Sophia—first.

Papa Vella had talked about punishment and retribution, and the evidence he’d laid before Hamish was compelling enough for him to take the job, even when commitments were backing up in Australia. Sophie was underage, in an unfamiliar country, and from the medical reports he’d seen, extremely vulnerable.

“It’ll take about twenty minutes,” he said, hefting her suitcase into the boot of his rental car.

“I can just wait that long for a shower.” Her husky sigh rolled over him, triggering a needy thrum through his blood, while an unbidden image of her curvaceous body stretching under hot spray jets swam into his mind.

When the disembodied voice of his phone’s satellite navigation system told him to go left, not right, he joined the traffic exiting the airport and knew real gratitude. The subtle perfume of his passenger gave substance to his fantasy, scrambling any sense of direction he might have had.