British Bachelors: Gorgeous and Impossible: My Greek Island Fling / Back in the Lion's Den / We'll Always Have Paris

With startling suddenness he turned away from her and started down the track, but the sadness and need in his voice were so powerful that Lexi stayed frozen to the spot.

Two things were clear. He loved those boys. And Mark Belmont was going to be a wonderful father to the lucky children he so clearly wanted in his life.

And her poor heart cried at the thought that she would probably never experience that joy.

Just as the thought popped into her head Mark glanced back towards her, and Lexi slid the book back into her bag and pretended to rummage around as she casually replied, ‘I don’t have any food with me except breath mints.’ Then she looked around her and raised her eyebrows. ‘And, while I appreciate that this is a lovely spot, and I’m enjoying the countryside, something tells me that there won’t be a restaurant at the end of this very winding footpath. Am I right?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s a long story.’

He gestured with his hand down the path and set off slowly. ‘You were talking earlier about collecting impressions about a person by where they liked to live and what they read. And it struck me that you might find it easier to understand who Crystal Leighton was when she wasn’t being a famous actress if I showed you her favourite place on the island. I haven’t been here in a long time, but this is very special. If we’re lucky it won’t have changed that much.’

‘What kind of place are you talking about?’ Lexi asked, astonished that Crystal had chosen somewhere other than her lovely villa. ‘And what makes it so special?’

‘Come and see for yourself,’ Mark replied in a hushed voice that she had never heard him use before.

Lexi followed him through a cluster of pine trees, pushed through some fragrant flowering bushes next to a stone wall, and stepped into a private garden.

And what she saw there was so astonishing that she had to clutch on to Mark for support. His reaction was to instantly wrap one long muscular arm around her waist to hold her safe against his body.

They were standing about six feet from the edge of a cliff. A real cliff. As in the type of cliff where, if you stepped forward one inch, you’d find yourself flying through space for a long time before hitting the sea below.

Their only protection from the dizzyingly close edge was a waist-high stone wall, which had been built in a wide curve in front of a low stone bench.

But it was the view that grabbed her and held her even tighter than Mark. All she could see in each direction was an unbroken band of sea and the azure sky above it. She felt like an explorer standing on the edge of a new world, looking out over an ocean no one had ever seen before, with nothing but air between her and the sea and the sky. And all she had to do was reach out and it would be hers.

To her right and left were high white cliffs of solid rock, studded with occasional stunted pine trees like the ones she was standing next to now. Far below, the sea crashed onto a collection of huge boulders at the foot of the cliffs.

‘There are huge caves under the cliff here,’ Mark said as though he was reading her thoughts. ‘Big enough for the tourist boats to go into. But we’re quite safe. There are hundreds of feet of solid rock below us.’ As if to prove the point he grabbed her hand and practically dragged her to the stone wall, so that they could look out together over the tops of the hardy bushes and bright flowering plants clinging to the cliff face at the open sea.

‘This is the nearest I’ve ever come to being on the prow of a ship,’ Lexi breathed. ‘Oh, Mark. This is … wonderful. I can see now why she chose this spot.’

‘You should come back at dusk and watch the sun setting. It turns the whole sky a burning red. It’s a wonderful sight. And, best of all, it’s totally private. No cameras, no people, just you and the sea and the sky. That was why she loved it so much here. That’s why she spent hour after hour on her own up here with just a picnic and a book. Alone with her thoughts. Away from the press and the movie business and everything that came with it.’

Lexi glanced up at Mark’s face but his attention was totally fixed on the horizon, where the sky met the sea. His eyes were the colour of the ocean. His fingers were still locked on to hers and she could feel his heart pound with each breath.

And her heart melted like cheese under a grill.

She had not intended it to. Far from it.

She couldn’t help it. The fire in his voice and in his heart burned too hot to resist.

Which was why she did something very foolish. She squeezed his hand.

Instantly he glanced down at his fingers, and she caught a glimpse of awareness and recognition that he had revealed a little too much of himself before he recovered and released her with a brief twist of his mouth.

‘Last Christmas she tried to persuade me to take some time off to celebrate Easter with her on the island. Just the two of us. But I said no. Too much work.’ He sniffed, looking out towards the islands in the distance. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? I have the time now.’

‘She knew you wanted to come back. I’m sure of it. How could you not? When you write about the last few months of her life you should put that in. It would be a lovely touch to end her story.’

She instantly sensed his solid-steel defences moving back into place.

‘I’m not ready to write about how her life ended. I’m not sure I ever will be.’

‘But you have to, Mark,’ Lexi urged him softly, ignoring just how close the cliff edge was so she could step in front of him, forcing him to look down at her face. ‘You’re the only one who can tell the truth about what happened that day. Because if you don’t someone else will make it up. I know that for a fact. Your mother is relying on you. Don’t you want the truth to come out?’

‘The truth? Oh, Lexi.’

She lifted her hands and pressed her fingertips to the front of his shirt.

He flinched at her touch, but she didn’t move an inch and locked her eyes on to his.

‘I was only there for a few seconds that day, but you saw what happened in its entirety, and you know why it happened. That makes you unique.’

‘What happened?’ he repeated, his eyes scanning her face as though he was looking for permission to say what needed to be said and finding it. ‘What happened was that I was half a world away from London when my mother collapsed with a brain aneurysm. Dad had sent me over to Mumbai to negotiate with the owners of a start-up technology firm, so I was in India when Mum’s friend called me out of the blue. It was the middle of the night, but there’s nothing like hearing that your mother’s been rushed to hospital to wake you up pretty fast.’

‘How awful. No one should have to take a call like that when they’re so far away.’

‘The next twenty-four hours were probably the longest and most exhausting of my life. But if anything it got worse when I finally arrived. Cassie had met me at the airport. I’ll never forget walking into that hospital room. I hardly recognised her. She had tubes coming out from everywhere, she was surrounded by medical staff, and I couldn’t understand why she was still comatose. She looked so lifeless, so white and still.’

He shook his head and closed his eyes as Lexi moved closer towards him.

‘I think I must have been too exhausted at that point to take things in, because I remember asking Cassie if she was sure there hadn’t been some terrible mistake—this wasn’t our mother after all. But then the doctors whisked us all out to one of those beige and green so-called relatives’ rooms and the truth finally started to hit home.’

He half opened his eyes as Lexi looked into his face. ‘Our lovely, beautiful mother hadn’t come to London to stay with her old friend and talk charity fundraising. She’d come to have plastic surgery. She didn’t tell us in advance because she knew we’d try and talk her out of it. According to her friend, she’d planned the surgery months earlier, as a Christmas present to herself. Because she needed the boost to her confidence.’

‘Oh, Mark.’

‘She had the operation Monday morning, collapsed on the Monday evening, and slipped away from us on Thursday morning. While I was standing in a police station in central London, being cautioned for attacking a member of the press. Your father.’

Mark snapped his fingers, and the sound ricocheted out into the serene calm air and seemed to penetrate Lexi’s body. She jerked back in shock.

‘That’s how fast your life can switch.’

Lexi felt tears roll down her cheeks, but she couldn’t speak. Not yet. Not until he was ready.

‘The surgeon kept telling us that if she’d survived the aneurysm she could well have been brain-damaged or disabled, as if that would help in some way. It didn’t.’

‘How did your dad get through it?’ Lexi asked.

‘He didn’t,’ Mark whispered. ‘He fought off cancer a few years ago, and was in remission until her death destroyed him. He’s never been the same since. It’s as though all the light went out of his world. He’s fighting it, but he’s determined to do it alone and there’s not one thing Cassie or I can do except make his days as bright and positive as possible.’

‘And do you think this book will help? Is that why you agreed to do it?’

‘Cassie thinks it’s the one thing keeping his spirits up. He wants it to be a celebration of her life instead of some nonsense tabloid journalists will put together from media press kits to make a profit from some scandalous headline.’