“You keep mentioning these issues, but never actually expand on them. Are they really that sensitive that you can’t tell me about them in any detail?”
He fidgeted uncomfortably under her scrutinising gaze. “It is complex. There is a lot of baggage between my father and his children that is best remaining within the family. All I can promise you is that once I get back from Sicily, things will be resolved to a satisfactory point so that he won’t be able to interfere with our plans.”
“Can you be sure whatever concerns you have now about keeping me secret from your father will be truly alleviated? After everything I went through with my father, I can’t live with the constant worry of someone else’s causing problems in my life as well.” Her voice wavered up and down.
“I understand your apprehension, but it will be okay.”
Indi was silent for a few moments and then offered him a weak smile. Inwardly, Xander sighed in relief as she seemed to accept his reassurance without any more questions.
“You look dead on your feet,” she remarked. “Why don’t you go back to your villa and catch up on some sleep before she discovers that you’re gone.”
Xander shook his head stubbornly. “Sleep can wait. I need to hold you close before I’ve to endure that woman again.” He paused. “Come, I’ve an idea of how to relax and get rid of the tension from the last twelve hours.” He held out his hand to her, encouraging her to place her small one within his.
Wordlessly, Xander opened up the glass doors and led Indi out onto the patio that was still draped in the remaining gleams of moonlight before they became outshone by the rising dawn. “I thought we could watch the sunrise from the Jacuzzi,” he suggested as he turned and caught her confused expression. “It is perfectly secluded from the other villa, so you don’t have to worry about being spotted.”
“Am I going to get to see the sunrise this time?” Indi smirked teasingly, remembering how they had missed several previous ones, distracted by each other’s bodies.
Xander returned her grin, beginning to enjoy himself for the first time since the previous evening’s grim turn of events. “I didn’t hear you complaining about missing them at the time. In fact, if I remember rightly, you were doing another kind of moaning!” Pulling her into a quick embrace, he swatted her bum lightly with his palm.
“Ouch!” she protested, rubbing the place where his palm had landed.
“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll kiss it better,” he said, picking Indi up and dumping her into the already bubbling water, fully clothed. “Now hurry up and get naked!”
It was not long before they were both submerged in the water, naked. Indi sat on his lap as they kissed any doubts over their future away. Catching his breath, Xander smiled down at Indi as they moved back into an embrace, not wanting to spoil the moment quite yet. “I guess I should apologise for distracting you from yet another sunrise.”
Laughing, she replied, “I rather prefer your distractions. Anyway, we will share plenty more sunrises in the future.”
“Yes, we will.”
They were silent for a while, conscious that this would probably be their last opportunity to see one another before Indi caught a flight home the following morning.
Catching Indi yawning, Xander carried her out of the Jacuzzi and off to the bedroom, intent on making sure she drifted off to sleep before he headed back to his own villa. Instead, the enormity of what lay ahead and her tiredness made Indi quite emotional, and he ended up curling up next to her, trying to soothe her worries. Exhausted, his own tiredness got the better of him. Luckily, Adam woke him an hour later with a call on his mobile, warning him that he had been gone for quite a while.
“Try not to worrying about everything,” Xander told Indi.
She nodded. “I’ll keep myself busy. Do you think you might be able to come see me again later?”
He shrugged dejectedly. “I’m actually not sure. I’ll try my best, but I don’t want to do anything to heighten her suspicions in case she says something to my father. If I can’t get away during the daytime, I promise to come to you tonight.”
They shared one last lingering kiss before he headed out of her room.
Chapter Nine: Numb
Indi
This time Indi managed to drift off into a more comfortable continuation of her own sleep. She awoke some hours later, just after twelve. Upon checking her phone, her heart missed a beat when she noticed a flashing message notification, indicating an unread text message, which she hoped was from Xander.
Her heart dropped with a thud when she saw it was from Angel, confirming that he would pick her up at Manchester Airport when her plane landed the next day. She tapped in a quick response before wrapping her body in a short, silk wrap that matched her Babydoll nightwear underneath. She was determined to enjoy her last full day in the villa with or without Xander.
After making a batch of pancakes with a sprinkling of berries over the top, Indi plated up a portion and took it out on to the terrace to enjoy her breakfast in the morning sun. Next, she changed into a cream summer dress and lazed out by the breakfast table, typing some email replies on her laptop prior to settling down to finish reading the book she had started at the beginning of the holiday, before she became distracted by Xander.
Indi was disturbed from her reading by the shrill female voice of the previous evening. Looking up from her book, she was glad the breakfast table was tucked away from view. With the voice getting louder and nearer, curiosity overtook her senses; she wanted to get a proper view of the Wicked Witch of the West for herself.
Getting up from the table, Indi moved discreetly to the hammock area where she could stand and observe the gardens of Xander’s villa while being obscured from sight for the most part. All she could see was a bleach-blond, willowy woman dressed in a vulgar orange swimsuit, sat with her back to her as she dipped her legs in the pool.
“Xander, come and join me by the water,” the English-accented woman spoke.
“Caitlin, has none of what I’ve been saying sunk into your head?” the recognisable tones of Xander retorted. “I don’t want to be in the same town as you, let alone by the same pool!” His voice dripped distaste at the mere thought.
Not even flinching, the loud woman continued, “Come now, Xander, you know it is best we try to get along. I’ve already told you what the doctor said about me not getting stressed over the next few months.”
“The best way to do that would be to stay the hell away from me then. You don’t fool me, Caitlin, if you even think for one second I believe it’s even mine.”
The woman let out a chilling laugh as she rose to her feet and turned sideways to step out of view in the direction of Xander’s voice. “You wound me,” the bleach blonde declared as she casually swept her hand over the prominent bump sticking out of her lower abdomen, which could not be mistaken for anything other than a baby.
A baby... a baby growing inside this woman’s belly! Could it really be Xander’s baby?
Thoughts thundered through Indi’s mind as she tried to make sense of what she had seen. This woman had to be at least five months pregnant. Maybe the child had simply been a mistake, but why hadn’t he told her? Was all the talk of a future together just a façade that he never planned to see through? That was the only possible reason she could come up with for him not being truthful about something so fundamental to their future. If he had been serious about making a life with her, Xander would have known she would find out about this eventually. Perhaps all the father issues were another exaggerated excuse.
A sense of overwhelming betrayal tormented Indi’s senses as realisation swept over her. She could not stand to be in the villa another second and had to get away before there was any chance of him appearing. There was no way she could face him now that she knew he had not been honest with her.
Blinded by tears, Indi gathered up her belongings that were scattered around the villa as quickly as she could manage and placed them messily in her luggage. Her
racing mind planned to drive to the airport now, rather than tomorrow, even if she could not get on an earlier flight, preferring to sleep at the airport than stay here a moment longer.
Grabbing her cases and the keys to her rented car, Indi slammed the door to the villa and accelerated away from the last three weeks of her life as fast as she could manage.
***
Indi arrived at Catania-Fontanarossa Airport just after 5pm, only to find there were no evening flights. She had no alternative but to stay at a nearby hotel and fly out on the original ticket.
Once she had eaten some dinner in her room, Indi felt it was late enough in the evening to be able to turn on her phone and check her messages quickly without Xander trying to call her. She expected he would have discovered her gone by now and she dreaded hearing what he would say. Indi felt a sense of anger over his deceit, but at the same time she experienced guilt for just upping and leaving.
Perhaps Xander would have shared a reasonable explanation with her if she had stayed and confronted him, instead of running off. However, Indi reasoned that she should not have had to confront him over it – he should have been upfront with her from the start, without the need for prompting.
Despite the strength of her feelings for him now, Indi could not help wondering if they had been heightened by the idyllic location and the freedom from any sense of reality – their lifestyles were really different after all. She realised there was no point in dwelling on what might have been as he would probably have replaced her with someone else soon enough.
Indi discovered two messages waiting on her phone. The first was from a polite, but slightly abrupt Xander, asking her to call him back when she was on her way back to the villa. The second was from a more anxious-sounding Xander, simply asking why she had left without saying a word, but still asking her to return his call urgently.
Hearing his voice the first time caused Indi’s heart to ache and made her regret rushing off so hastily, but the second made her remember the mistrust he had caused, and she felt angry towards him again. She felt on an emotional rollercoaster between the two emotions. Despite all the reasoning her mind put forth to her feelings, she missed his presence.
Deleting the messages, Indi promptly turned off her phone again, wishing to avoid seeing Xander’s name flash up on the screen if he attempted to contact her for a third time; not trusting her willpower to hold up against the temptation to answer it if he did.
With nothing else to do, but head to bed, Indi tossed and turned until the early hours before her brain gave into the exhaustion caused by the turmoil of her thoughts.
Chapter Ten: Unravelling I
Xander
Xander could not get away from Caitlin until early in the evening, under the pretence of going out for dinner with Adam and Hayden, and refusing to let her join them. The three men drove off together. Xander got out of the car a sufficient distance away to be able to double back and enter Indi’s villa, unseen by Caitlin. As he turned into her driveway, he was perplexed by the absence of the hire car, followed by the obviously unlit building. Normally, the lighting from the lounge and kitchen streamed through the shutters.
He had not expected Indi to sit in all day, waiting for him to show up, but he’d thought she understood that he would get away to see her by the evening. Frowning, Xander pulled out his phone and tried to call her number, but her voicemail was the only greeting he received. He left her a brief message, asking her to call him back; the irritability of feeling left in limbo by her sudden disappearance crept into his voice as the device recorded his words.
Contemplating what to do next, Xander realised that he couldn’t very well go back to his villa as Caitlin would bombard him with twenty questions over his quick return without his security detail. He considered asking them to come back and collect him, but that would also require an explanation as to the absence of Indi, and he remained unsure of what he would tell them. He wasn’t even sure of the reason himself, but he had started to feel a sense of disquiet that she hadn’t simply gone out for the evening.
Xander decided to call a taxi, using the local directory enquiries, and take a walk along the Siracusa harbour front to clear his mind before meeting up again with Adam and Hayden to head back to Caitlin. He spent the next couple of hours sitting on a bench, looking out over the sea, and watching boats manoeuvre back and forth while his mind ran through the events of the last three weeks, and particularly the last twenty-four hours.
He recognised that Indi seemed to be a skittish type of person from the way she reacted quite emotionally to everything, but he honestly had not expected her to leave without word before her holiday was even over. She had appeared to be interested in a future with him, so he could not comprehend this abrupt ending. Obviously, she had not felt as close to him as he had to her, he mused bitterly.
Thank fuck he’d held back over telling Indi about Caitlin and her pregnancy if this was how she reacted without knowing the full sordid truth. He might have had a real crisis on his hands. The vibration of his mobile phone interrupted his deliberations. Without checking the screen, he spoke half-heartedly into the microphone, “Hello.”
“Hey, big boy, why do you sound down in the dumps?”
Xander’s jaw tightened. He was seriously not in the mood for David’s jovial ribbing. “David, I hope this is important,” he said brusquely. “Otherwise, can we postpone this for another time?”
“Sure, we can do this another time if you wish, but it’s about your mystery woman’s safety, so you might consider it vital information.”
Wait, did David know something about Indi’s disappearance? “What do you know about her safety?”
“Your little friend had a Zak Ellis stalker problem before you met her,” David answered, matter-of-factly.
Zak Ellis was any woman’s worst nightmare if he started to take an interest in her as he did not understand the word no. He was well known to the police, but he had always been shrewd enough to avoid leaving enough evidence to be charged. The man had been a named suspect in Freya’s kidnapping, but again, the police could not prove a strong enough connection with Guy Levine, the man who was successfully prosecuted for the crime.
Guy Levine had known his sister since she was a little girl, but it had not developed into a sinister obsession until he started working for their father. Fusion had just started to take off and the band had been away gigging, so neither Xander nor his brothers were aware of what was going on until it was too late.
It seemed that Guy had been doing something shady for John Keats and when he stopped being useful, his employment was terminated. As vengeance, he and his crony, Zak, had set about planning to kidnap Freya to get her father to pay up. It was only recently that Livvie had unearthed some forgotten bank statements showing immense payments made just the day before Freya’s return. Livvie had used a contact and found out that the name on the bank account was none other than Guy Levine, thus proving their father had given into blackmail and got Freya back before the police were alerted.
Xander had always wondered why his sister had been returned so quickly without any contact from the kidnappers. At the time the family were just relieved and did not question it any further. But now it just proved even more in his mind that his father was to blame for Freya’s kidnapping and consequent breakdown. Yet another error Xander planned to use against him.
“She mentioned that her parents had hired someone to harass her to give them money and that he’d been put away, but she never told me who it was.” Xander’s blood boiled at the mere mention of the detestable man’s name, especially knowing that he had touched Indi as well. “How long did he get?”
“Just two years,” David replied.
“I knew that scumbag was trouble. I should’ve dealt with him years ago.” Xander’s fist clenched tightly as it hung down the side of his body. “I want you to set up some discreet security protection for Indi for the time being. I don’t trust either of them not to have people on the o
utside that will connect Indi to Freya, or to me. I don’t want her to be any more traumatised by that association than she has been already.” While he did not understand why Indi had gone without saying goodbye, he still wanted her to be safe.
“Discreet, meaning that she isn’t to know about it?”
“Yes. I need to know she’s safe until things are settled.”
“Okay, I’ll get on to it.”
Checking his watch, Xander realised that he needed to catch up with Adam and Hayden in town soon, so he wound up the conversation. He then sent a quick text to his assistant, Sam, who worked far beyond normal five-day-a-week hours, requesting that he try to get him on a flight back to England tomorrow, or the day after.
Xander detected a note of surprise in Hayden’s voice when he called to say he was in town, rather than back at Indi’s place. Now, walking towards the car, he noticed he and Adam exchange raised eyebrows. Xander knew they must have guessed something was up, but he was not ready to talk about it.
“Did your evening’s plans change for some reason?” Hayden asked casually.
“I would rather not discuss it,” Xander said stiffly; an impassive expression plastered on his face as he coached his emotions down to where he could tighten his control over them.
“No problem,” Hayden replied.
The car journey took place in silence, except for the odd comment passing between Adam and Hayden, but a brooding Xander did not pay any attention to what they said. He remained too solemn to care what was going on around him, intent on preparing his speech to Caitlin.
As they vacated the car, Xander spoke up and asked for some privacy with Caitlin for a while. Progressing into the house, Adam and Hayden adhered to this request, disappearing into their rooms to wait out the storm they realised was brewing.
Starstruck (Fusion #1) Page 9
