Suddenly he glanced up.
His gaze seized Anna’s and held her fast like a rat in a trap. Her mouth fell open, but words didn’t come out.
“How could you do this?” His voice rang coldly through the huge foyer. “How could you accuse my sister of this terrible crime?” Isabela pressed her head to his shoulder, and he stroked her disordered hair.
“As I suspected, it was your van that started the fire. That deathtrap on wheels had an electrical malfunction and that is what started the blaze. The accelerant on the grass occurs only in places where you’d parked your van and carelessly allowed its leaking fuel tank to spill gasoline onto the grass where it could feed the flames.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip.
Hard.
Until it hurt.
He’d offered to call his mechanic. She knew the van leaked a bit, but never thought much of it. Didn’t all old cars leak?
“The cottage,” she stammered. “Did anything survive?”
“Nothing.” Naldo held her gaze for one more searing moment, then turned and walked toward the living room, his arm around his sister.
Throughout this exchange Isabela was uncharacteristically silent. In fact she seemed somehow…pathetic.
Even Anna couldn’t imagine this shaking, weeping woman being the type to slosh gasoline around a house and set a match to it.
Isabela was wealthy and had a life in Europe. Sure, she wanted Anna gone, but enough to jeopardize her freedom?
Hardly.
And would someone so neurotically concerned about her reputation risk making the papers as a jealous arsonist?
No way.
The grave error of her accusation began to sink in, turning her fingers and toes to ice. She slid back into the bedroom and closed the door.
Family and the estate were everything to Naldo. She’d injured both in ways that could never be put right.
In that instant she knew nothing would ever be “okay” again.
Eleven
Naldo didn’t come to her room. Eventually she crept downstairs, heart in her mouth. She heard voices on the other side of the living room door, which was uncharacteristically closed. Should she go in and apologize?
I’m sorry about my pigheaded refusal to maintain my van or admit that I couldn’t afford it. I’m sorry I wouldn’t let your gardener cut the grass. I’m sorry I kept the gems in the cottage. I’m sorry I didn’t just take your money and go when I had the chance…
She clenched her hands so tight that her nails dug into the skin of her palms.
I’m sorry I fell in love with you and didn’t want to leave.
It was all her fault. And now all her hopeful fantasies of living here in Paradiso had come to smoldering ruin.
She’d accused his sister of arson. Yes, Isabela was an opera diva to the core, but an arsonist and potential murderer?
Anna blew out a hard breath. She needed to apologize to Isabela.
She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and marched to the living room door.
Her hand shook as she reached for the ornate brass knob and turned it. The voices hushed as she pulled open the heavy door. Everyone turned to stare.
Isabela lay on the sofa, her head resting on Pilar’s lap while Pilar braided her long hair.
An older man she recognized as a lawyer from the will reading sat in a wingback chair while Tom refilled his glass with iced tea from a large jug.
No sign of Naldo.
As soon as Isabela saw her she sat up, tugging her braid from Pilar’s fingers. “You? What are you still doing here? You gold-digging whore, get out!”
Anna’s apology evaporated into a mist of indignation. “I’m not a gold digger. I’ve never wanted anything but what’s rightfully mine.”
“Dennis, how much exactly did you say the contract gave her?”
The lawyer placed his hand on a sheaf of papers in his lap. “Four million dollars.”
“Four million dollars.” Isabela’s eyes narrowed. In pants and a plain shirt, and without her usual glossy makeup, she looked younger and more ordinary, and somehow far more dangerous. “My brother offered you four million dollars, but that wasn’t enough for you, was it?”
“I was planning to accept the money.”
“Oh? You were planning to take it? And there was my poor brother thinking you were too noble or some such rubbish. I knew better all along. Give me the contract, Dennis.”
She leaned forward and snatched it from his hand. “Four million dollars.” She looked up at Anna. “For the jewels, which are now destroyed.”
Anna bit the inside of her mouth. Isabela traced a line in the contract with a nail. “For the cottage, which is a heap of charred rubble.” Her icy stare made Anna’s shoulders tighten. “For some cookbook that is now a pile of cinders, and for the land.”
Isabela rose to her feet, which were uncharacteristically bare. She walked around the coffee table and pointed an accusatory finger at Anna. “That’s my brother’s land, and you know it. Do you still mean to try to extort money from him after all the destruction you’ve caused? Five acres of orange groves burned. Do you know how much that hurts Naldo? He loves those trees, like, like-”
“Like family.” Anna heard her own voice as if it was someone else’s. The room and everyone in it felt strangely disconnected from her, as if she’d already left it. “May I have the contract?”
“You can’t sign it now.” Isabela’s eyes narrowed. “You have nothing to bargain with.”
“Here’s another copy.” Dennis fished one out of a leather case on the floor beside his chair. “I’m sure Mr. De Leon would like to resolve the matter of the land if you could see your way to-”
“Do you have a pen?” Anna interrupted him, her voice shaking.
“Of course.” He produced a tortoiseshell ballpoint pen from an inner pocket of his suit jacket.
She flipped through the contract to the page where the amount of money was printed. $4,000,000. It didn’t look real, even as she crossed out the full amount with the ballpoint pen and wrote in the number one. “The land is his,” she croaked.
She cleared her throat. “Does anyone have a dollar to pay me for it? I want it to be legal and I know the exchange of money is an important part of-”
“Here.” Dennis whipped a dollar out of a billfold inside his jacket.
Anna took the single dollar bill and signed her name on the final page. “It’s done.” She handed it to the lawyer.
Isabela’s mouth sat in a grim line, but satisfaction shone in her eyes.
“Where’s Naldo?” It took the rest of Anna’s courage to ask the question.
“He’s at the courthouse.” Isabela spoke calmly. “Trying to persuade them to drop the charges against me. I’m accused of assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.” She stared at Anna for a withering second. “Of course we both know why I resisted arrest, don’t we? Because I was being falsely accused of a crime I did not commit.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Please, don’t wait for Naldo. He does not wish to see you.”
Anna blinked. Her usual fire seemed to have flickered out and there was nothing left but smoke and ash. Like the smoke and ash that remained of her mother’s precious things and all her hopes and dreams.
Isabela strode past her and pulled open the door to the room. She held it, and gestured for Anna to leave.
She left.
