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suite.
    “Just a minute.”
    Less than two seconds passed and he knocked again. “Check your makeup in the cart, Gabi. We can’t be late.”
    He was about to knock a third time when the door swung open. “I just need to gather my purse.”
    Before Gabi could turn away, Val grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the sunshine. “There’s no need for a purse.”
    “Val!”
    “The plane will land in ten minutes. There’s no time.”
    Gabriella pushed out her bottom lip in a full pout. His sister’s beauty would make the
Mona Lisa
cry with envy. Lush black hair, dark watchful eyes, and olive skin that many women worked their entire lives to achieve. Gabi was born to it. They both were.
    “I don’t understand why you’re in such a rush. You’ve had other, more important guests come to the island.”
    “Michael Wolfe is in a class by himself. The paparazzi will search him out en masse if they learn he’s here.”
    “Your guests never tell the media where they’re vacationing.”
    “Yet the press always hunts for them.” Sometimes they found them. But not on Sapore.
    They stepped into the open bench seat of one of the villa’s golf carts.
    The driver took off the moment they were secure.
    Sapore di Amore was Val’s pride. In five years, he’d taken a simple island getaway and turned it into one of the most exclusive resorts in the world.
    Screening all of his clients to ensure their privacy was of utmost importance.
    Some clients, like the one arriving today, weren’t on his top list of wanted guests. Well, he was intrigued with Margaret’s tenacity and thinly veiled jabs. Val looked through them and expected to dismiss her. Yet he couldn’t, and since he’d had no choice but to accept her presence, he was determined to learn as much as he could about her in a few short hours and decide for himself if she was a security risk. Keeping his temper in check if her demeanor was the same in person as it was in an e-mail would prove challenging.
    Between the wind blowing off the sea and the speed that their driver managed on the narrow road, Gabi’s hair blew in every possible direction. “I don’t know why I bother with anything other than a tie in my hair,” she said.
    A long cascade of trees lined the road. It opened to a small airstrip where only private jets and the occasional helicopter would land. “If you didn’t primp, I’d know something fatal was on the horizon.”
    Gabi clicked her tongue. “Such drama, Val.”
    He lifted the left corner of his mouth and glanced to the sky.
    The private jet carrying his guests descended on the island on a rapid approach. The runway was short, not giving the pilot much time to bring the plane down.
    The landing gear hit the tarmac, the engines screamed as the pilot reversed the engine thrust.
    Gabi smoothed back her hair once the golf cart came to a complete stop.
    Val offered his hand to his sister and led her to the welcome cabana as the plane taxied into position and an attendant secured the wheels. The airport employees scrambled to assist the onboard flight crew as they opened the hatch and lowered the stairway.
    Val tapped his index finger along his thigh and lifted his chin.
    His sister laid a hand on his, stopped his tapping. “They’re just people,” she reminded him.
    Yet as his gaze fell on the heeled foot of the female passenger and slowly made its way up, he knew this woman was much more than
just
anything.
    Her sundress, all polka-dotted red and cut in the style of the twenties, was anything but understated.
    He swallowed, hard.
    Val decided the slim-fitting dress wasn’t a sundress after all . . . it was something that belonged on Hollywood’s glamour queens from days past.
    He liked it . . . all the way from the tops of her shapely knees—since when did he notice the shape of a woman’s knees?—to the slim belt at her waist. The cut of the dress emphasized her breasts . . . happy, healthy specimens that overflowed the bounds of