Her jaw dropped.
‘Don’t look so surprised. I wouldn’t have given up my own independence for anyone else. Is Alex The One?’
‘I think he might be.’ Her heart leapt and then plummeted. ‘But I’m not sure I am.’
Her mother tilted her head. ‘Did you ever look at the pictures in that magazine?’
‘Of course.’
‘Properly?’
‘Not that closely.’
Her mother got up and rummaged around in the stack of papers on the counter. ‘Look again,’ she said, opening the magazine and putting it in front of Phoebe.
Phoebe ignored the grainy photo that had been taken while she and Alex had been kissing beneath the pergola and concentrated on the picture in the restaurant.
An empty bottle of wine sat on the red and white checked tablecloth. They’d been talking and laughing and desperately trying to keep their hands off each other. The way they hadn’t been able to hold back any longer and had rushed back to his house for a night of passion made her breathless just thinking about it. The dreamy expression on her face… The light in her eye… It was obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that she was nuts about him. Up until now, she’d clearly been lacking even that half a brain cell.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Just look.’
She huffed and switched to the picture of the two of them strolling in the park. Alex’s arm was around her shoulders, pulling her into him and she was smiling up at him.
She leaned closer. Oh, goodness. Phoebe’s heart began to thump crazily. The expression on his face…the look in his eyes… Exactly the s
ame as hers had been in the restaurant.
‘He adores you.’
Phoebe went very cold. The image of his face, white and stunned, when she’d told him to go away for good flashed into her head. Maybe he’d have told her if she’d let him. But she hadn’t given him the chance. She’d just pushed him away.
She began to shake uncontrollably. What had she done? What had she done?
‘You’d better go and find him.’
Finding Alex was easier said than done. He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
Phoebe staked out his house but he didn’t show up. His secretary must have known where he’d gone, but if she did she was keeping the information to herself, despite Phoebe’s best attempts at trying to wheedle it out of her. And Jo was as much in the dark as she was.
It was driving Phoebe demented.
Now she’d acknowledged that she was in fact in love with Alex all she wanted to do was tell him. Get down on her knees and grovel. Persuade him to admit he loved her too and see if they couldn’t make something of whatever they’d had before.
Simple. Or it would be if she only knew where he was.
Maybe she could hire an investigator. Whoever Alex had used to check her out had produced incredible results in a breathtakingly short period of time. She could do the same.
Or perhaps she’d resort to desperate measures and contact each and every one of the people who’d attended his party on the island. Someone was bound to know where he was.
What the hell. She was desperate. This was no time for dignity. She’d beg if she had to. She opened the relevant file on her computer and then went very still.
A flashbulb went off in her head. Her heart pounded and she felt more alive than she had in days. That was where Alex was.
He’d escaped. To the Ilha das Palmeiras.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN