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      PROLOGUE

      A FEVER of hopeful expectancy had spread through the crowds waiting to see if the race would begin. Suited up and ready to go, Franco Tolle stood inside the White Streak team marquee with his safety helmet held in the crook of his arm and his eyes fixed on the monitor, watching for the race organisers’ decision to show up on the screen. The wind had picked up, whipping the glass-smooth surface of the Mediterranean into a turbulent boil—not ideal conditions in which to race notoriously temperamental powerboats at sixty metres per second.

      ‘What do you think?’ Marco Clemente, his co-driver, came up beside him.

      Franco offered a shrug in response. The truth was he wasn’t worried so much by the racing conditions as he was by Marco’s determination to race with him today.

      ‘Are you sure you are up for this?’ he questioned, keeping his voice level and his eyes fixed on the monitor screen.

      Marco hissed out an impatient breath. ‘If you don’t want me in the boat with you, Franco, then just damn well say so.’

      And there was the reason why Franco had asked the question in the first place. Marco was on edge, uptight, volatile. He’d spent the last hour pacing the marquee, snapping at anyone who spoke to him, and now he was snapping at Franco. It was not the best frame of mind for him to be in control of the boat’s powerful throttle.

      ‘In case you have forgotten, Franco, half of White Streak belongs to me—even if you are the one with the design and build genius.’

      The petulance in his tone made Franco set his teeth together to stop him saying something he might regret. So they co-owned White Streak. So they’d raced both her and her sister boat across Europe under the co-owned White Streak company name for the last five years. But this would be the first time in three of those years that they would be climbing into the same boat together. This was the first time that Franco had given into the pressure and agreed to let Marco take the seat next to him.

      And why had he done that? Because the championship hung in the balance with this one last race of the season and his usual co-driver had gone down with the flu yesterday. Marco was, without question, the best man to have sitting in Angelo’s place when the stakes were this high, so he’d convinced himself that despite the rift in their friendship the two of them could be professional about this. What he had not known until he’d turned up here today was that Marco was not behaving like the laid-back guy everyone was used to seeing around the place.

      ‘We used to be good friends,’ Marco husked with low-voiced intensity. ‘For almost all our lives we were the closest of friends. Then I made one small mistake and you—’

      ‘Sleeping with my wife was not a small mistake.’

      As if the wind outside had found its way into the tent, the chill of Franco’s voice struck through his own protective clothing to his skin.

      Marco seemed to breathe that chill in deep. ‘Lexi was not your wife back then.’

      ‘No.’ Franco turned his head to look at Marco for the first time since the conversation had begun. They stood the same height, shared the same lean athletic build, the same age and the same nationality—but there the similarities ended. For where Marco was fair-haired, with blue eyes, Franco was dark: dark hair, dark eyes, a darker demeanour altogether. ‘You, however, were my closest friend.’

      Marco tried to hold his gaze. Remorse and frustration vied inside him for a couple of seconds before he sighed and looked away.

      ‘What if I told you it never happened?’ he posed abruptly. ‘What if I said I made up the whole thing to break the two of you up?’

      ‘Why would you want to?’

      ‘Why would you want to throw your life away on a teenager?’ Marco hit back, and revealed that frustration had won out over remorse. ‘You still married her anyway, and left me feeling like the worse bastard alive. And Lexi did not even know I’d said anything to you, did she? You didn’t tell her.’

      As grim and silent as a corpse, Franco looked back at the monitor screen, the naturally sensual shape to his mouth clamping into a hard straight line.

      ‘She can’t have known,’ Marco muttered, as if he was talking to himself. ‘She was too nice to me.’

      ‘Is there a purpose in this conversation?’ Franco asked with a sudden flash of irritation. ‘We have a race to attend to, and it must be obvious that I have no wish to discuss the past with you.’

      ‘OK, signori, we have the go!’