The Billionaire’s Love List (The Bellamare Billionaires #1)

1. Claire

CLAIRE

I test the front-door lock twice before I let myself look toward the windows.

This is less romantic than the listing photographs promised, but the listing photographs also failed to mention that the lane to Casa Ginestra narrows to approximately the width of a determined goat.

After forty minutes in a small rental car, three wrong turns, and one exchange with a delivery driver conducted entirely through hand gestures, romance can wait until I stop sweating.

I put my camera bag on the kitchen table, check the terrace door, then the shutters on the guest room I have already decided will hold equipment instead of guests.

Only after that do I unzip the bag.

Two camera bodies. Three lenses. Batteries. Cards. Laptop. Backup drive.

All present.

I plug the drive in before I unpack a shirt.

Some people need to know where the nearest hospital is when they arrive somewhere new. I need to know whether I can lose a camera and still make deadline.

The cottage is warmer inside than outside, which seems impossible until I realize every shutter has been closed against the afternoon sun. I open them one by one. Light slides across old tile, a scratched wooden table, pale walls, and a blue ceramic bowl someone has filled with lemons.

That, at least, looks exactly like the photographs.

I lift one lemon, turn it in my hand, and put it back.

“Very Italian,” I tell the empty kitchen.

The empty kitchen declines to be impressed.

I am sweaty enough that my T-shirt is sticking to my spine, my hair has given up on every promise I made it this morning, and there is a red mark across my shoulder from the camera bag. I should shower.

Instead I check the refrigerator.

Water. Half a bottle of local white wine left as a welcome gift. A small wedge of cheese. Nothing that qualifies as dinner unless I have become a woman who eats cheese over the sink and calls it rustic.

I have done worse.

My phone buzzes on the table.

Tessa: Alive?

I send her a photograph of the lemons.

Me: Possibly. If I die, tell everyone I was defeated by a road designed before cars.

Three dots appear immediately.

Tessa: Send proof of sea.

I look toward the terrace doors.

That is how I end up leaving the groceries for later.

Outside, the air smells like hot stone, rosemary, and something sweet I cannot place.

The cottage sits above the coast, tucked behind a low wall and a spill of green that has been encouraged rather than controlled.

Beyond the terrace, the land drops in uneven layers toward a blue so bright it looks edited.

I take one photograph for Tessa.

Then another because the first has too much roof in the lower left corner.

Then I stop, because I am supposed to be here for my own work, not to produce evidence of a beautiful life for people who are not living it.

Eight weeks.

That is the deal I made with myself.

Eight weeks without racing between assignments. Eight weeks to work on Return, which currently exists as several thousand images, too many notes, and an idea I have been circling for almost a year.

Why do people go back to certain places?

The places are not always famous or even beautiful.

A diner with bad coffee. A grandmother’s porch. The same beach every August. A street somebody insists on walking even after the reason for walking it is gone.

I keep noticing what people repeat when nobody is paying them to.

I am also interested, at this exact moment, in getting closer to the water.

There are two paths beyond the cottage. One curves uphill beside a stone wall. The other appears to run down toward the sea through an opening between lemon trees.

Shortest-looking path wins.

I grab my smaller camera, lock the cottage, and start down.

For the first few minutes, I am pleased with myself.

The path is shaded. Cicadas buzz somewhere above me. Dry leaves crack under my sandals. Through the trees, the Mediterranean flashes in pieces, blue and silver and impossible to photograph without making it look like every postcard ever printed.

I resist lifting the camera.

Barely.

The old stone wall beside the path lowers, disappears behind a cluster of shrubs, then returns on the other side. I assume the route has crossed through some harmless property boundary and keep going.

There is no gate.

No sign.

No dramatic warning involving armed guards or trespasser-eating dogs.

Just a man standing twenty feet ahead of me like the path has produced him to object to my presence.

I stop.

He is tall, dark-haired, and dressed in a white linen shirt with the sleeves folded neatly to his forearms. Not rolled. Folded. There is a difference, and unfortunately I notice it.

His trousers are dark despite the heat, his shoes are the kind that have never apologized to gravel, and not one part of him looks as though he has spent the last hour fighting a rental car, a suitcase, or humidity.

I dislike him a little on principle.

His gaze moves from my face to the camera in my hand, then back.

“You took the wrong path.”

No hello.

I glance behind me. “Did I?”

“Yes.”

There is a beat in which I consider asking whether he has a certificate.

Instead I look past him.

The path opens onto a wider terrace of old stone bordered by lemon trees. Beyond it I can see part of a large villa, cream walls, green shutters, deep shade under an outdoor arcade. Nothing about it looks public.

That would have been useful information six minutes ago.

“Right,” I say. “The invisible border.”

“It is visible from the other direction.”

I look back again.

From this side, half-hidden by leaves, there is a small brass plaque fixed to the wall.

PRIVATE.

I press my lips together.

He notices.

That is irritating too.

“I came from that direction,” I say.

“I assumed.”

“Good. I’d hate for this to become a mystery.”

Something changes around his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like he considered one and rejected it for scheduling reasons.

I adjust the camera strap on my wrist. “I’ll go back.”

“The public path is above the cottage, not below it. Take the uphill turn, then the stone steps on the left.”

“How many stone steps?”

“Seventy-three.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

“You counted them.”

“They do not change.”

I laugh before I can stop myself.

His expression does change then, briefly. It makes him look less severe and somehow more dangerous to my concentration.

“Of course they don’t.”

He looks at my camera again. “Are you photographing the estate?”

“No.”

“You were holding the camera.”

“I often do. Occupational hazard.”

“What do you photograph?”

“Things that hold still long enough.”

His eyes narrow a fraction.

I add, “Sometimes things that don’t.”

“People?”

“Sometimes.”

“Without permission?”

The question lands differently from the rest.

The question feels more personal than he has earned.

I shift my weight and look at him properly.

Up close, or close enough, the precision starts to look deliberate: the shirt, the posture, even the pause he leaves between each question and my answer. He looks like a man who would prefer to know where a conversation is going before it gets there.

I’ve photographed people who perform for cameras and people who hate them.

He’s the second kind.

“If a person is recognizable and the image is not part of a public event, I ask,” I say. “If someone asks me not to take a photograph, I don’t.”

“And if you’ve already taken it?”

“I delete it if they ask.”

That seems to matter.

His shoulders do not visibly relax. I am a photographer, not a magician. But his attention shifts off the camera for the first time.

“Good.”

The word annoys me.

“Was I being graded?”

“No.”

“That sounded a lot like a grade.”

“It was an answer.”

“You give very efficient answers.”

“I try to.”

“I can tell.”

This time the almost-smile appears.

I have the absurd urge to photograph it.

He is handsome, inconveniently so. More interesting is the evidence that he is not as humorless as he first appears.

I want the moment because it vanished so quickly.

Which is precisely why I do not lift the camera.

He notices that too.

I wish he would stop noticing things.

“I’m Claire,” I say, mostly because we have reached the point where continuing to argue with a nameless man on private property will make me the strange one.

“Matteo.”

Of course he is Matteo.

He looks like a Matteo.

I have no idea what that means.

“Do you live here, Matteo?”

“During the summer.”

“Then I apologize for trespassing during your season.”

“It is not only mine.”

The correction makes me glance toward the villa again.

Voices carry faintly from somewhere deeper inside the property. Male laughter. A burst of music. Someone shouts something in Italian, followed by a louder response.

Not a hotel, then.

Or not the quiet kind.

“I rented Casa Ginestra,” I say.

“I know.”

My eyebrows lift.

He gestures toward the low stretch of wall between the properties. “The owner told us someone would be next door this summer.”

Us.

I glance once more at the villa, then at him.

“I promise to keep my criminal path-taking to a minimum.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“You’re very welcoming.”

“You’re standing on the wrong side of a private boundary.”

“Temporarily.”

His gaze drops to my sandals, then to the dusty path behind me.

“You should not take that route after dark.”

I wait.

He seems to realize how it sounded.

“Because the stones are uneven,” he adds.

There it is.

A practical correction, delivered one second too late.

For some reason, that makes me like him more.

A little.

Very little.

“I’ll write it down.”

“You won’t need to. You’ll see it once.”

“Confident.”

“Accurate.”

I laugh again, quieter this time.

A cicada starts screaming somewhere above us, and I remember I am sweaty, dusty, and holding the camera strap too tightly around my wrist. Matteo still looks offensively cool.

“Seventy-three steps,” I say.

“On the left.”

“After the uphill turn.”

“Yes.”

“I think I have it.”

“I think you do.”

His voice is still precise, but this time it lands less like a correction.

I step backward, then turn before I can make the interaction stranger by looking at him again.

“Claire.”

I look over my shoulder.

He points to my lens cap sitting on the low wall beside me.

I close my eyes for half a second.

Of course.

I retrieve it.

“Thank you.”

His mouth moves.

This one is definitely a smile, brief and annoyingly worth seeing.

“You’re welcome.”

I take the correct path home.

There are, in fact, seventy-three steps.

I count because I am petty.

By the time I get back to Casa Ginestra, the groceries have become a more urgent problem than my dignity. I shower, change into shorts, and unpack enough to make the cottage look occupied.

My sandals end up beside the terrace door instead of in the bedroom.

Two camera batteries charge on the kitchen counter.

My laptop takes over half the table.

A pencil rolls under a chair and stays there because retrieving it would require getting up.

I put the cheese on a plate, add bread from the bag I bought near the airport, and pour half a glass of the welcome wine.

Then I send Tessa the sea photograph.

Tessa: Okay rude.

Me: I suffer for my art.

Tessa: You are drinking wine in Italy.

Me: Exactly.

The light changes while I eat.

That catches me faster than hunger.

I carry the plate outside and sit on the terrace steps with my camera beside me. The hard brightness of afternoon has softened. Shadows lengthen across the cottage wall. The sea loses some of its glare.

From somewhere beyond the eastern boundary, music starts.

Old pop, maybe Italian. I do not recognize the song.

A few minutes later, somebody laughs so loudly that another voice tells him to shut up. There are at least four men over there, maybe five. The sound travels oddly across stone, close enough to feel social and far enough that I cannot make out most of the words.

I do not photograph it.

There is nothing to photograph.

Still, I sit there longer than I intended.

The cottage was supposed to feel separate. That was part of why I rented it. Close enough to Ravello to work, far enough from everything else to hear myself think.

Now there is a private estate next door full of male laughter and one man who counts stone steps.

My phone is inside.

My wine is getting warm.

I stay where I am.

By the time I finally carry my plate back to the kitchen, the sky over the water has gone peach at the edges.

I rinse the plate, abandon the wineglass beside the sink, and walk back outside to pull the shutters before mosquitoes decide I am dinner.

A figure moves beyond the low section of boundary wall.

I recognize Matteo before he speaks.

Apparently white linen at sunset is even more irritating.

He has changed nothing except the angle of his sleeves. One has come slightly loose at the fold.

I notice that too.

“Did you find the path?” he calls.

I lean one shoulder against the terrace door.

“Eventually. Your seventy-three steps were where you left them.”

“Good.”

“You sound relieved.”

“I dislike giving inaccurate directions.”

“That is a very specific character flaw.”

“It is not a flaw.”

I laugh under my breath.

He stops near the boundary but does not cross it.

He could have walked closer. He doesn’t.

“How long are you staying at Ginestra?” he asks.

He asks it casually, then watches me too closely.

“Eight weeks.”

For the first time since I met him, Matteo has no immediate answer.

It lasts less than a second.

Maybe I imagine it.

Then his gaze flicks toward the cottage, the open shutters, the camera on the terrace table, the wineglass visible through the kitchen doorway.

When he looks back at me, his expression is controlled again.

“Eight weeks,” he repeats.

I should go inside.

Instead I stay where I am.

“Is that a problem?”

His eyes hold mine.

“No.”

It comes too fast.

I wait.

Matteo glances once toward the path between our properties.

Then he says, “Good night, Claire.”

“Good night, Matteo.”

He turns back toward Bellamare.

I watch him go for three steps before I catch myself and pull the shutter closed.