Free Island of Darkness by Rebecca Stratton

in her cheeks. She shook her head, resisting the temptation to do as he said, and instead bit her lip firmly. “I can’t come again, Scottie,” she said quietly. “I was told in no uncertain terms to go back where I belonged and not dare to go near Isola de Marta again, and I intend to do just that.”
    “You’ll not give him another chance?” he asked, and she shook her head.
    “I doubt very much if he’ll care whether I come or not,” she told him, her pulse tapping nervously at her temple as she watched his face. “You’ve got a visitor, Scottie, didn’t you know?”
    He took his eyes off the road for a long moment and looked at her steadily. “What gives you that idea?” he asked then in a cool, quiet voice.
    “Because - there was a woman in the cafe I phoned from.”
    Scottie looked dismayingly grim and she wished she had said nothing about it. “A woman?”
    “A rather chic and elegant woman,” Leonora enlarged, seeing nothing for it but to go on now that she had started. “Not English, I’d say, perhaps Italian or Spanish and very rich, if her clothes were anything to go by.”
    “Veronique Tomaso,” Scottie said, so softly that she barely heard it.
    “French?” she ventured, and he shook his head, but did not offer to enlighten her.
    “I’d better put my foot down,” he declared, suiting the action to the word so that they shot forward at an even greater speed, and Leonora clung to the car door and gazed at him in amazement. “God knows what Jason will do if she manages to get past Lucia!” he said.
    Her heart was tapping urgently at her ribs as she looked at his grim, set face and she wondered what drama was about to be enacted with the arrival of the glamorous Veronique Tomaso. “But surely he can’t do anything except - behave normally, can he?” she said, and Scottie laughed shortly.
    “He’s taken that hideaway up there with the express purpose of avoiding people,” he said in a cold harsh voice. “He’ll cut my throat for not being there to stop Veronique getting to him!”
    “Oh, Scottie, I’m sorry!” It was, she supposed, her fault in a way that he had not been there when the unwelcome visitor arrived, and she felt quite inexplicably guilty about it.
    Scottie shook his head and spared her a smile over his shoulder. “Oh, don’t let it worry you, Leonora,” he told her. “You weren’t to know just how much Jason hates letting anyone see him the way he is now.”
    “But you and Lucia see him,” she said, still strangely disturbed by the thought of Jason’s possible reaction to being alone when his caller arrived. “I’ve seen him too,” she added, trying to diminish his fears. “Although I suppose that’s really why he ordered me to go away and stay away.” “Nothing of the sort,” Scottie denied with surprising firmness. “I’ve told you he’d welcome you back, Leonora, and I meant it — I know him!”
    “But it doesn’t make sense,” she insisted. “Wanting to see someone he scarcely knows, like me, and not welcoming someone he’s known—” She looked at him curiously. “Does he know this - Veronique Tomaso quite well?”
    “Very well,” Scottie declared grimly, and there was no mistaking his meaning as he put his foot down harder on the accelerator. “That’s why he won’t want to see her — she wants to marry him!”
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Several times during the next couple of days, Leonora was tempted to take her boat across to Isola de Marta as Scottie had suggested she do, but the thought of Veronique Tomaso still being there deterred her. She was curious to know the outcome of her visit, but not to the extent of going over there and probably finding herself involved in a situation that could prove embarrassing.
    Scottie had said that Veronique Tomaso wanted to marry
    Jason Connor, but he had not enlightened her about Jason’s feelings in the matter, whether before his accident he had been in favour of the idea or not. She could not