Max Carter was lying in the hot sun on the terrace, wearing black Speedos and nothing else. He loved basking in the sun. It refuelled him, made him stronger. At teatime he would take a shower and dress for dinner, until then this was his time and he was all alone, blissfully alone at the villa with the sun warming his skin and no sound but the lap of the waves on the narrow crescent of white sandy beach.
He let his mind meander into freefall. He had a good life out here in Barbados. His villa was one of a select few situated on the west coast up near Prospect, away from the encroaching luxury hotel complexes, shaded by manchineel trees and palms. He passed his time easily, developing the odd property or two around the islands, doing a few deals, swimming off Prospect beach and target-shooting in his garden among the mango and breadfruit trees to keep his eye in.
He was living the Bajan dream of hot sands and turquoise-blue seas. And there were other diversions too, very pleasant diversions – like the women who sometimes shared his bed, but never his life. Nevertheless there were times – though he would never admit this to a living soul – when he woke up and she was there in his mind, even after all these years. That annoyed the hell out of him. Sex with other women shifted her image, but somehow it always returned. He’d even find himself reaching for her in the night before it hit him that she wasn’t there, that they were divorced, that she was involved with another man and living half a world away.
The fact that she was so far away was a good thing, he knew. Their fights, his suspicion of her, her defiance – they had caused each other nothing but pain. Jealousy had made him vicious, verbally attacking her: she had retreated into coldness, had become as responsive as a block of stone.
No, they were better apart.
This was the life…
The peace was shattered by the ringing of the phone.
He got to his feet, his movements lithe and easy. With his deep tan and his muscular, compact body, his predatory hook of a nose set under black brows, his dark curling hair, he didn’t look English. ‘My little Italian’, his mother Queenie had always called him, though he was English to the core. Even his eyes were dark – a dense yet piercing navy blue.