Phoebe sat back and grinned. ‘Accepted. It sounds like you’re out of practice.’
‘Could be,’ he said dryly. ‘I don’t often have reason to apologise.’
‘It must be wonderful being right all the time.’
‘Most of the time,’ he said with a grin and hit the accelerator.
‘So this island must be privately owned,’ said Phoebe, clinging onto the top of the windscreen in a futile effort to lessen the jarring on her poor battered body as they bounced over the terrain.
‘It is.’
She gave up and went with the motion. ‘Who by?’
‘Me.’
As she’d suspected. ‘Of course. What billionaire would be without one?’
‘If I’d wanted a status symbol I’d have bought a playground in the Caribbean.’
Hmm. ‘So what is this deserted peaceful island with no interference from the outside world? An escape?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘From what?’ she asked.
‘The city.’
She had the impression the island was an escape from more than just the city because she’d found no mention of it in her research. ‘How much time do you spend here?’
‘Not enough.’
That seemed a shame, she thought, drinking in the spectacular scenery spreading out before her. The shoreline jutted in and out, shaped by millennia of buffeting winds. After the carefully landscaped gardens of the night before last, the rugged beauty of the island took her breath away.
As did Alex’s profile. Phoebe took advantage of the fact that he was staring out of the windscreen to study him. Despite the concentration etched on his face, the lines around his mouth and eyes seemed to have softened, as if the serenity of the place had seeped into him too. The wind ruffled his hair and as she ran her gaze over the hint of the bump on his nose it struck her how much Alex suited this landscape.
‘When were you here last?’
‘About a year ago.’
‘Why so long?’
‘Busy. Work.’
‘What made you buy a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic?’
‘It’s a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic,’ he said dryly. ‘I like my space. I value my privacy.’
That figured. Given the press attention he received she guessed he wasn’t a great fan of journalists. Or nosy PRs, judging by the brevity of his answers to her questions. Still, she hadn’t got where she had by being deflected by evasiveness.
‘No man is an island,’ she said solemnly.
‘Are you romanticising me, Phoebe?’
Heaven forbid. ‘Just thought I’d mention it.’
‘It’s not completely isolated.’
He’d pointed out the other islands in the archipelago as they’d flown over them. ‘Who lives on the other ones?’