Return to Mariposa

Chapter 2

Settling into my first-class space pod on Iberian Airlines, I had plenty of time to wonder what the hell I was doing. Bella had kept me on a dead run, from hairdresser to spa to eye doctor for colored contact lenses. I went through her matched Prada luggage and tried on her brand-new wardrobe. She favored Spanish designers, names I didn’t know, but I recognized the quality of the clothes and felt them seduce me.

They fit perfectly, which troubled me. Bella and I had similar bodies, though her boobs were smaller and my hips fuller. Clearly she’d been as aware of our differences as I was, for she had to have had the clothes adjusted for those changes. The thought both embarrassed and annoyed me.

But here I was, Isabella Maria Constanza Littlefield Whitehead, granddaughter of Augustin Whitehead, founder and patriarch of the Whitehead industry and the incomparable olive oil and sherry they produced. I was going to face the man who had broken my heart so long ago, betrayed the trust I’d always counted on. No, not the beautiful almost-cousin Marcus, but my grandfather, the epitome of family, who’d turned his back on me and yet always welcomed my doppelganger into his arms.

Though I suppose if anyone was the doppelganger, it was me. Bella was the real thing, I was the shadow version.

If I was going to carry this off, I would have to channel Bella a little more effectively. And in order to do that, I needed to stop brooding about the stupid choice that had brought me here. For three days, I needed to be Bella. Kitty Whitehead had been left behind.

The plane was taxiing down the runway, and I closed my eyes, ready to enjoy the sensation of being coddled for at least the next six hours, when a sudden thought made them fly open again in shock. If Bella’s extravagant ways had gotten her into real trouble, wouldn’t they come after her? And in looking for her, they’d find me.

I fumbled for my seatbelt, but it was too late—the plane was lifting into the air, and I sat back, trying to breathe. No, I was panicking over nothing. Bella was dealing with things—they would be busy with her, not looking for her imposter. And she had sworn it was all fool-proof and completely safe. Even if she wouldn’t tell me what her dire life-and-death problem was, she’d insisted none of it would come anywhere near me, and I believed her. Bella was no saint and never had been—she was perfectly capable of letting someone else take the fall for her mistakes and had when we were young.

But she would never, ever, put me at risk. Childhood games were one thing; life in the grownup world, as hard and difficult as it was, was another. We were sisters under the skin, not just cousins. We were the other side of the mirror, and she would never let me be hurt.

I closed my eyes again, still uneasy. I hadn’t had time to think this through—Bella had been a whirlwind of activity after my tentative “yes,” and even when I’d gone to bed, as the doubts began to insinuate themselves into my brain, I’d fallen asleep before they could coalesce.

Now I had nothing to do but think, and doubt, and worry. I had never been impulsive, and what I’d agree to was madness. When I landed in Malaga, I should turn around and immediately book a flight back home. In all decency I should pay Bella back for the cost of the ticket. The contact lenses. The soft, tawny curls that drifted past my shoulders and had cost five hundred dollars. Where the hell had Bella found a hairdresser who charged that much?

Not to mention the phony passport, the new clothes and shoes that were clearly made for me. Bella was a size seven and a half, I was close to size nine. And even I recognized the red-soled magnificence of Christian Louboutin.

I had no money. Well, barely enough to rent a new apartment, my Subaru was on its last legs, and there was no job on the horizon. Bella had taken over the Subaru, arranged for my meager belongings to be stored, switched cell phones with me, and seen me to the airport, a slim leather wallet full of euros pressed into my hand.

I was screwed.

Deep breaths, I reminded myself. Calmar. The Spanish phrase came back to me. Stay calm.

It was going to be all right. Instead of worrying about Bella, I should concentrate on why I was doing this. I would finally see Granda again, say goodbye. He would hear those words from Bella, but it would be Kitty who said them. I would be the one to hug him one last time, I would be the one to walk through the halls and the olive groves of Mariposa one last time, finding the closure that had always troubled me. I had been snatched from that life, that cocoon of love, without a chance to say goodbye. Now that I could, I would finally be able to move on with my life, no longer in thrall to a place that was no longer mine.

The two glasses of champagne from the flight attendant helped. I wasn’t used to drinking, but deep breathing and rationalization did wonders. What was the phrase from the old movie, The Big Chill? What was more important, rationalization or sex? The answer? When did you ever go a day without rationalizing?

I was rationalizing like mad, and it was working, thank God. This would be all right, and afterward, I would enjoy a few days in my favorite city before returning to reality. I would be homeless and unemployed with a great wardrobe. Things could be worse.

In just a few hours I would finally be back in Spain. I would smell the juniper trees, the roses that grew in abundance around the big old house, I would see the olive groves and the vineyards that stretched down to the sea. I would be home.

Amazingly,I slept in that strange little pod, like an astronaut on a hyperspace journey to Mars. At one moment, I was sipping champagne and forcing away my second thoughts, in another, I was being tapped on the shoulder by a flight attendant, reminding me to sit up and prepare for landing.

We landed hard, which should have been an omen, bouncing over the tarmac until we came to a halt beside Malaga Airport, aka Picasso Airport. I discovered that first-class passengers were allowed to depart ahead of everyone else, and I fought my instinctive Titanic-induced class sensitivity as I negotiated my almost-stiletto heels out of the plane. I had put my foot down, literally, when it came to the shoes. There was no way I could balance on the six-inch needles Bella tried to talk me into, to make up for the one-inch discrepancy in our heights. People were much more likely to notice me tripping and falling all over the place than a scant inch.

Even so, I was used to my Asics, and I missed them. I’d tried to sneak a pair into the elegant luggage, but Bella had sternly removed them. “It’s less than a week,” she said. “For a few days, you can survive anything.”

Survive. The word gave me an errant chill, and I shook it off as I stepped into the terminal. At least I would only have to face Granda. As sharp as he was, the failings of his sight and hearing would keep me safe from detection. I would spend one last day with him, with Mariposa, and leave.

The small commuter plane would have been nerve-wracking, but I was much too tense about going home to even worry about the glorified flying tin can. We arrived in St. Maria de Fe far too soon.

The first thing I planned to do, I thought as I managed to stride à la Bella through the busy terminal, was to find Granda. After that, I wanted to explore the old house once more, go out into the olive groves, roam the countryside. Pack a lifetime of memories into the short time I would be there.

In four-inch heels.

It was a long walk to the baggage section, and I shoved my soft curls away from my perfectly made-up face, channeling my inner Bella. It seemed to work—I was getting looks from the men as I walked by, glares from the women. I usually walked through airports in complete anonymity. Now I was a goddess.

A driver would be waiting, Bella had assured me. All I had to do was make it to baggage claim and some nice, uniformed man would be holding up a sign. He would take care of everything, delivering me to the villa and returning to fetch me. I didn’t have to worry about a thing.

It took me a moment to find the baggage carousel. Bella would have known exactly where it was, but no one was perfect. I’d been so busy sashaying through the terminal, plus using the toilet, checking my makeup, and applying a fresh coat of the cherry-red lipstick she favored, that the carousel had stopped and most of the luggage removed. There was no uniformed man holding a sign with my name on it. Only Bella’s expensive Prada luggage piled neatly on a luggage cart.

I glanced around, uneasy. Had I taken too long? But no, I was Bella the Magnificent, I reminded myself, stiffening my shoulders. People waited for me.

And then I saw him, leaning against the wall, watching me. He was a stranger, but there was too much insolence in his posture, too much speculation in his eyes to be a hired driver. I glanced at him, dismissed him, and reached into the Hermès handbag for the iPhone, definitely my favorite part of this entire ruse.

Programming the face recognition had almost been enough to make me change my mind. “If your own phone knows I’m lying, how can I manage to fool people?”

But Bella had once again calmed my doubts, and here I was, about to call for a car when the man moved, coming toward me, and I looked up, letting my eyes drift over him. He was tall, with one of those lean bodies that were deceptively strong. He was wearing rough clothes—faded jeans and a work shirt—and his brown hair was sun-streaked, matching the deep tan of his face.

A good mouth, I thought absently, if it was curled with faint contempt. The same for his eyes, dark, dark eyes, with the kind of ridiculously long thick lashes that proved the universe was unfair. Women had to work for lashes like those; men came by them naturally. He had a nose that would have overwhelmed a weaker, prettier face, but seemed to fit just fine in his, and the kind of high cheekbones that would have made me swoon as a child.

I’d never seen him before in my life. Was he one of the people who was after Bella? Had she miscalculated?

He came up to me, moving with a lazy sort of grace that still managed to convey complete disinterest in my reaction, and stopped right in front of me. I held my ground.

“You don’t look particularly happy to see me, Bella,” he drawled, and he had a faintly British accent.

I looked at him warily. And so it begins, I thought. “I arranged for a driver,” I said stiffly, hoping to Christ he wasn’t the chauffeur working at Mariposa.

“I cancelled your arrangements. We need to talk.”

O-kay, I thought. Hostility from first contact. Not good. “All right,” I said in a faintly frosty voice. Bella wouldn’t like attitude that wasn’t hers.

He nodded his head toward the piled-up luggage. “Where’s the rest of your stuff?”

I laughed, though I wasn’t feeling particularly cheerful. “I’m only staying one night, and then going on to Paris for a couple of days.”

“You usually have three times as much luggage.”

I looked at the cart in astonishment. It was piled high with suitcases, three full-size ones, two smaller, and even an old-fashioned makeup case that I secretly found adorable. “I’m working on cutting back,” I said vaguely.

Wong thing, I realized, by the way his high forehead wrinkled. “Bella the Goddess cutting back? Surely not! There are only a few things I count on as constants—the ocean, mortality, and Bella’s determination to have her own way at all times.”

So this was an enemy. But why was he able to speak so rudely? Definitely not a hireling. “Since you know me so well, then you’ll realize I said that I wanted to cut back, not that anyone was forcing it on me.”

“Point taken. I’ve parked nearby—follow me.” We almost collided as we moved to the luggage cart in concert. He grabbed the handle, almost yanking it away, and gave me a speculative look out of those incredibly dark eyes. “Bella managing her own luggage? Say it isn’t so!”

“I didn’t realize I could count on you,” I countered, reasonably certain this was appropriate.

“You can’t,” he said, turning away. “Push it yourself.”

I was about to snap that I had had every intention of doing so when I realized that wasn’t Bella. I needed a little elastic bracelet with the initials WWBD—What Would Bella Do? I glanced around me, raised an eyebrow, and immediately three luggage porters fell over themselves to reach me. A moment later, two of them were trundling after me as I sauntered in the unpleasant stranger’s wake.

He disappeared a moment later. He was a tall man, and his legs were longer than mine, plus the unaccustomed shoes would have had me sprawling on the sunbaked walkway. When I finally caught up with him, he was leaning against a battered old farm truck, and I stared at it in a delight which I quickly hid. When we were young, one of our favorite treats was to be taken for a ride in the back of one of the noisy old pickups, down through the vineyards, into town on market days, trips to the ocean for picnics and swimming.

If I remembered correctly, Bella had never liked the truck—she always wanted Granda’s Bentley. Bringing a farm truck to the airport was a deliberate slight, and I wiped my pleasure from my face, sniffing in disapproval. I was about to reach for the stack of euros Bella had given me when my newfound nemesis forestalled me, giving both the men a healthy tip as they loaded the expensive luggage into the back of the truck. It smelled of hay and manure, two scents I was used to from New Hampshire, ones I remembered from the olive groves. The Prada certainly wasn’t used to such undignified treatment, and beneath my feigned hauteur, it amused me. For some reason, the damned luggage even brought out my intermittent inferiority complex, and I’d developed a strong dislike for it. Riding in the back of a farm truck was a fitting comeuppance.

“What’s so amusing?” the man said.

I glanced up at him. He was unlocking the truck, and I automatically reached for the passenger side door, then stopped. It was a king cab—wouldn’t Bella expect to sit in the back seat, being chauffeured?

“You wouldn’t get it,” I said, hesitating. He’d probably think I’d gone crazy, imbuing luggage with personality. Then again, everything belonging to Bella seemed to have a certain air.

“Open the damned door, Bella,” he said. “Don’t think for a minute I’m coming around to do it for you.”

I opened the passenger door. Not that I wanted to cozy up to the irascible creature, but climbing into the back seemed needlessly petty.

The front seat was littered with papers, notebooks, tools. I was wearing a gorgeous pale gray suit, and I immediately got a dirt stain on my arm, a grease mark on one thigh, and my pantyhose shredded. The Bella-Barbie I’d become was made for more careful treatment.

“Fasten your seatbelt.”

I gave him a cool glance, perfectly calibrated to show my disdain for his behavior. “How long to Mariposa?”

“You act like you’ve never been there before. You know how long it takes.”

I didn’t show any reaction. After all, he was right, I had been there before, many times. “I haven’t been here for a while, and I usually arrive in more dignified vehicles. I don’t imagine this thing goes sixty miles an hour.”

Another sidelong glance. “You started measuring things in miles, Bella? When did you start spending time in the States? Last time I heard, you were living it up on the Riviera.”

Shit. I cast a worried glance at the truck, then smiled. “This is an American truck. The speedometer is in miles, not kilometers.”

He said nothing for a moment, then started the truck. It rumbled beneath me, a pleasant sort of vibration, and then I shut that thought out completely. I wasn’t going to be thinking about vibration while I sat next to this man. He slammed it into gear, and we were off, the tires squealing beneath us.

I reached out a hand to steady myself—the ancient seatbelt had seen better days. “You know, I never could manage to peel out like that. I’m impressed that you still remember how at your advanced age. Most boys outgrow their love of burnt rubber.”

He laughed, and some of the hostility faded for a moment. “You know perfectly well you had it down to a fine art. Your exits are almost as good as your entrances.”

Driving in Spain isn’t quite as terrifying as driving through the streets of Paris or Rome, but it was close. My companion clearly knew what he was doing, dodging cars, delivery trucks, carts, and chatting pedestrians with effortless ease, all the while I gripped my seat, a serene smile grimly plastered to my face while I tried not to scream. We were both silent as he left the city, but I didn’t relax. This man’s arrival at the airport was nothing less than an ambush, and I simply had to wait for him to make the first attack.

He waited until we were out on the high road that led along the coast before speaking. “Why are you here, Bella?” he said in a rough voice. It was an attractive one, low and musical, if it weren’t tight with tension.

I kept my gaze fixed on the countryside. “You know why. I’m here to see my grandfather.”

“You’ve kept away for five years. Why now?”

Jesus, why now? Wasn’t it obvious? Or had Bella been lying to me? “He’s not going to live forever.”

“He’s not going to make it through the summer,” the man said flatly.

“So maybe I wanted to say goodbye.”

“And maybe you wanted to make sure you were still in the will. Trust you to keep your eye on the prize.”

That was a surprise. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?” I countered.

“You tell me.”

God, he was making me want to scream. Every time I tried to pump him for information, he simply turned it back on me. I had absolutely no idea who he was, though I expected I ought to know. He certainly bore no resemblance to anyone I remembered from my childhood.

It was time to go All Bella on his ass. “I don’t see any reason to discuss this with a farmhand,” I said dismissively.

Another quick look, his forehead furrowed. “At least I earn my keep,” he said after a moment.

I glanced over at him. He was wearing sunglasses against the brilliance of the midday light, shielding at least part of his face, but the twist to his mouth was expressive enough. He had no use for Isabella Whitehead, and I wondered why.

He was nice-looking, and despite the darkness of his sun-bronzed face, I realized he wasn’t an England-educated Spaniard. Granda never had anyone but locals tend the vineyards and the olives, and I wondered where this man with his Oxford tones had come from.

He had strong, well-shaped hands. Narrow, with long fingers, they looked both strong and capable at anything he chose to do. In another time, another place, I might have found him attractive. Out of my league, but most definitely tasty. He’d rolled his work shirt up to his elbows, and his forearms were just as tanned, the hair on them bronzed by the sun, the scar...

For a moment, I froze, shock rendering everything around me into an odd stillness. And then I took a breath.

“Ian,” I said.