For Penny

CHAPTER ONE

       ‘NACHO Acosta is back in circulation!’

      Screwing up her eyes as she stared at the screen. Grace blinked and tried to clear her vision. The virus she had contracted must be affecting her eyesight, she concluded, reading on: ‘Romily Winner, our Up-Town sleuth, reports on the trail of who’s hot and who’s not.’

       Oh, damn …

      Now there were white spots dancing in front of her eyes and the monitor screen was flashing. Pushing her chair back, Grace stood to stretch her aching limbs and inhale a lungful of stale basement air. She squeezed her eyes shut again and then blinked several times.

      Better.

      Relieved to find the problem had cleared, she checked the PC connections.

      All good.

      Tiredness, Grace concluded. It was almost one a.m. Working as a cocktail waitress in the half-light of a nightclub in Cornwall and then sitting in the club’s office working on accounts for half the night was hardly going to make for happy eyes.

      Tired or not, Grace made one last trawl over the countless images of aggressively handsome men featured on the society pages of ROCK! magazine, finding it hard to believe that she had met the infamous Nacho Acosta in the hard, tanned flesh. They could hardly be said to inhabit the same world, but fate played funny tricks sometimes.

      Finally managing to drag her gaze away from the photographs of Nacho, she got on with devouring every word the journalist had written about him …

       With the wild Acostas all grown up and fully fledged, this reporter doubts that Nacho—at thirty-two the oldest of the notorious polo-playing Acosta brothers—will be in much hurry to quit the London scene, where he seems to be finding plenty to keep him entertained!

      Grace felt a pulse of arousal even as her stomach clenched with jealousy at the thought of all the other women entertaining Nacho, as the reporter so suggestively put it. Which was ridiculous, bearing in mind she’d only met him twice, and on each occasion had felt so clumsy and awkward in comparison to Nacho’s effortless style she hardly had any right to feel so much as a twinge of envy.

      But she did.

      The first time they had met had been at a polo match on the beach in Cornwall, which Grace’s best friend and Nacho’s sister, Lucia, had arranged. Nacho had done little more on that occasion than lean out of the window of his monster Jeep to give Grace a quick once-over, but no man had ever looked at her that way before, and she could still remember the effect on her body of so much heat. She’d spent the rest of the day watching Nacho playing polo from the sidelines like some lovesick teenager.

      They had met for a second time at Lucia’s wedding, held at the Acosta family’s main estancia in Argentina. This trip had been the greatest thrill of Grace’s life—until she’d seen Nacho in the giant marquee and his keen black stare had found her. He’d been tied up for most of the evening, hosting the event, but she had felt the effect of his powerful charisma wherever she went, so that by the time he’d found a chance to speak to her she had only been able to stare at him like a fool, wide-eyed and stumped for words.

      Growing up with parents who had extolled her virtues to anyone who would listen had left Grace with crippling shyness, for the simple reason that she knew she could never be as beautiful or as gifted as they made her out to be. A lot of that shyness had been knocked out of her at the club, where the patrons appreciated her efficiency, but it had all come flooding back that night at the wedding in front of Nacho, transforming what could have been a flirty, fun encounter into a tongue-tied mess.

      Shifting her mind from that embarrassing occasion, Grace studied another shot of the man who’d once rocked her world. There was yet another beautiful woman at his side, and Grace had to admit they made a striking couple. And the girl’s expression seemed to warn every other woman off.

      ‘You can have him,’ Grace muttered, dragging her gaze away. Nacho Acosta might be gorgeous, but that night at the wedding had proved he was well out of her league.

      The sound of the nightclub pianist running through his repertoire provided a welcome distraction for Grace, who had always found company in music and books. Her parents had once had high hopes that Grace would become a concert pianist, but those dreams had ended when her father had died and there had been no more money to pay her fees at the conservatoire. Grace hadn’t realised how cossetted she had been until that moment, or what loss really meant. Losing her place at college had been devastating, but losing her father had been far, far worse.

      Leaving music college had forced Grace to find a job, and she had been grateful to find a position in a nightclub where one of the top jazz musicians of the day performed. Being close to music at that level had been a small comfort to Grace, who had still been suffering greatly from the death of her father.

      Turning back to the computer screen again, Grace studied the picture at the end of the article showing Lucia and her brothers. Lucia was smiling, while each of her brothers either appeared dangerous, brooding or stern. Nacho was at the dangerous end of the spectrum.

      It must have been hard for Lucia, Grace reflected. The only girl in a family of four men, how had Lucia ever made herself heard, or seen, or taken account of at all? Lucia had once mentioned that being alone in the Acosta family had never been an option. It was little wonder that she had made a bid for freedom, Grace mused, leaving the family home to work in the club where the two girls had met. Nacho had raised his siblings when their parents had been killed in a flood, and though Lucia was always upbeat by nature she referred to that time as like being under the heel of the tyrant.

      Grace shivered involuntarily as she studied Nacho’s face. Everyone knew Nacho Acosta to be a forceful man, who got everything he wanted.

      ‘Piano-time, Grace?’

      She turned at the sound of Clark Mayhew’s voice as he poked his head around the door. Clark was the club pianist she so loved to hear.

      ‘Come on, Grace,’ Clark prompted. ‘Shut that computer down and get out here. You’ve got a real talent.’

      ‘Not like you,’ she said, smiling.

      Clark shrugged. ‘The only difference between you and me is that I have more confidence.’

      ‘I wish!’ Grace exclaimed, laughing as she walked across the club, sat down and adjusted the piano stool. ‘I can’t even play without music like you. I only wish I could.’

      ‘But you can,’ Clark insisted. ‘Close your eyes and let the melody flow through your