If Miranda had asked her this question halfway into the holiday Catherine would have bristled with indignation and disbelief. But the pain of losing Peter was significantly less than it had been. Significantly less than it should be she thought—with a slight feeling of guilt. And you wouldn’t need to be an expert in human behaviour to know the reason why. Reasons came in different shapes and forms, and this one had a very human form indeed.
Catherine swallowed, wondering if she was going very slightly crazy. Finn Delaney had been on her mind ever since she had driven away from the small hotel on Pondiki, and the mind was a funny thing. How could you possibly dream so much and so vividly of a man you barely knew?
The only tangible thing she had of him was his card, which was now well-thumbed and reclining like a guilty secret at the back of her purse.
‘Got any photos?’ demanded Miranda as she nodded towards the chair opposite her.
Catherine sat down and fished a wallet from her handbag. It was a magazine tradition that you brought your holiday snaps in for everyone else to look at. ‘A few. Want to see?’
‘Just so long as they’re not all boring landscapes!’ joked Miranda, and proceeded to flick through the selection which Catherine handed her. ‘Hmmm. Beautiful beach. Beautiful sunset. Close-up of lemon trees. Blah, blah, blah—hang on.’ Behind her huge spectacles, her eyes goggled. ‘Well, looky-here! Who the hell is this?’
Catherine glanced across the desk, though it wasn’t really necessary. No prizes for guessing that Miranda hadn’t pounced on the photo of Nico grinning shyly into the lens. Or his brother flexing his biceps at the helm of the pleasure-cruiser. No, the tousled black hair and searing blue eyes of Finn Delaney were visible from here—though, if she was being honest, Catherine felt that she knew that particular picture by heart. She had almost considered buying a frame for it and putting it on her bedside table!
‘Oh, that’s just a man I met,’ she said casually.
‘Just a man I met?’ repeated Miranda disbelievingly. ‘Well, if I’d met a man like this I’d never have wanted to come home! No wonder you’re over Peter!’
‘I am not over Peter!’ said Catherine defensively. ‘He’s just someone I met the night before I left.’ Who saved my life. And made me realise that I could feel something for another man.
Miranda screwed her eyes up. ‘He looks kind of familiar,’ she mused slowly.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Finn Delaney.’
‘Finn Delaney…Finn Delaney,’ repeated Miranda, and frowned. ‘Do I know the name?’
‘I don’t know, do you? He’s Irish.’
Miranda began clicking onto the search engine of her computer. ‘Finn Delaney.’ A slow smile swiftly turned to an expression of glee. ‘And you say you’ve never heard of him?’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ said Catherine crossly. ‘Why, what have you found?’
‘Come here,’ purred Miranda.
Catherine went round to Miranda’s side of the desk, prepared and yet not prepared for the image of Finn staring out at her from the computer. It was clearly a snatched shot, and it looked like a picture of a man who did not enjoy being on the end of a camera. Come to think of it, he had been very reluctant to have her take his picture, hadn’t he?
It was a three-quarter-length pose, and his hair was slightly shorter. Instead of the casual clothes he had been wearing in Pondiki, he was wearing some kind of beautiful grey suit. He looked frowning and preoccupied—a million miles away from the man relaxing with his ouzo at the restaurant table with the dark, lapping sea as a backdrop.
‘Has he got his own website, then?’ Catherine asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. He hadn’t looked like that sort of person.
Miranda was busy scrolling down the page. ‘There’s his business one. This one is the Finn Delaney Appreciation Society.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Nope. Apparently, he was recently voted number three in Ireland’s Most Eligible Bachelor list.’
Catherine wondered just how gorgeous numbers one and two might be! She leant closer as she scanned her eyes down the list of his many business interests. ‘And he has fingers in many pies,’ she observed.
‘And thumbs, by the look of it. Good grief! He’s the money behind some huge new shopping complex with a state-of-the-art theatre.’
‘Really?’ Catherine blinked. He had certainly not looked in the tycoon class. Her first thought had been fisherman, her second had been pin-up.
‘Yes, really. He’s thirty-five, he’s single and he looks like a fallen angel.’ Miranda looked up. ‘Why haven’t we heard of him before?’
‘You know what Ireland’s like.’ Catherine smiled. ‘A little kingdom all of its own, but with no king! It keeps itself to itself.’