LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      GAZING OUT AT the sun-soaked, shimmering turquoise sea, Kitty Quested held her breath.

      It was strange to imagine that this water might one day be curling onto the shingle beach near her home in England. But then, even now, nearly four weeks after arriving in Cuba, everything still felt a little strange. Not just the sea, or the beach—this incredible scimitar of silvery sand—but the fact that for now this was her home.

       Home.

      Lifting the mass of long, copper-coloured curls to cool her neck, she felt her throat start to ache as she imagined the small coastal village in the south of England where up until a month ago she’d lived out her whole life.

      Birth.

      Marriage.

      And the death of her childhood sweetheart and husband Jimmy.

      Pushing back the brim of her hat to see better, she blinked into the sunlight as a light breeze lifted her hair, blowing fresh against her cheek and reminding her of everything she’d left behind.

      Her parents, her sister Lizzie and her boyfriend Bill, a two-month tenancy on a one-bedroom terraced cottage overlooking the sea. And her job at Bill’s start-up, distilling what had become their first product: Blackstrap Rum.

      She felt a sharp pang of homesickness.

      When Miguel Mendoza, director of operations at Dos Rios Rum, had called her three months ago to discuss the possibility of her creating two new flavours for the brand’s two hundredth anniversary, she’d never imagined that it would lead to her moving four thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

      If she’d allowed himself to think about it she would have refused. She’d been flattered to be asked but, unlike Lizzie, she was by nature cautious, and the hand she’d been dealt in life had taught her to be wary. Accepting the Dos Rios job would not just boost her salary, it would mean leaving everything and everyone she’d ever known. But, five years after Jimmy’s illness and death had put her life on hold, change was what she wanted and thought she needed in order to put her grief behind her and start living again.

      So, five minutes after putting the phone down, she’d called him back and said yes.

      And she didn’t regret her decision. Her new home, a white single-storey villa, was beautiful, and only a short walk from the beach. Everyone was friendly, and after three years in Bill’s cramped stillroom, working in the vast state-of-the-art Dos Rios lab felt like a treat. In so many ways it was absolutely the fresh start she’d imagined. She’d made new friends and was building a career. But one part of her life remained untouched—

      Her throat tightened.

      And it was going to stay untouched.

      Reaching up, she captured the dark red hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. At the airport she’d promised her sister that she would ‘let her hair down’. It was an old joke between them, because normally she tied it up, here in Cuba though she had started to let it hang free.

      But her hair was one thing...her heart was another entirely.

      Jimmy had been her first love, and she couldn’t imagine feeling about any man the way she had felt about him. Nor did she want to. Love, real love, was both a lightness and a weight, a gift and a burden, one that she didn’t have it in her to give or receive any more. Of course, nobody really believed her—her friends and family were convinced that it was just grief talking—but she knew that part of her life was over, and no amount of sunshine or salsa was going to change that fact.

      Glancing down into the water, she felt her pulse jump as she spotted a cantaloupe-coloured starfish floating serenely in the gin-clear shallows.

      Starfish! What was that in Spanish? she wondered. It wasn’t the kind of word she’d learned in the lessons she’d been taking back home—the lessons that had seemed less like a hobby and more like fate when Dos Rios had offered her this four-month contract.

      Star was estrella and fish was pescado, but that didn’t sound quite right. If only Lizzie was here to help. Her sister had studied Spanish and French at university and had a natural affinity for languages, whereas her own dyslexia had made even learning English a challenge.

      Pulling out her phone, she was just about to look up the word when it began to vibrate.

      Her lips curved upwards. Speak of the devil! It was Lizzie.

      ‘Are your ears burning?’ she asked.

      ‘No! But my feet are soaking wet. Will that do?’

      Hearing her sister’s burst of laughter, Kitty started to smile. ‘Why are your feet wet?’

      ‘It’s not just my feet. I’m soaked through. And please don’t tell me that you miss the rain!’

      ‘I wasn’t going to,’ Kitty protested—although she did, actually.

      ‘You were thinking it.’

      Kitty laughed. ‘It must be quite a downpour if you got that wet going from the house to the car.’

      ‘The car wouldn’t start so I had to walk to the station. I missed my train, and then the next train was held up, and the waiting room was closed for renovations, so me and all the other poor sad wage-slaves just had to stand on the platform and get wet.’

      ‘I thought you were going to get a new car?’

      ‘And when we need to, we will.’ Lizzie spoke calmly. ‘So stop fretting and tell me why my ears should be on fire?’’

      Kitty felt the tightness in her chest ease. Lizzie and Bill had basically supported her, not just emotionally but financially, for the last four years. When Jimmy had been admitted into the hospice she had moved into Lizzie’s spare room, and after his death Bill had asked her to help him with his latest venture—a micro rum distillery.

      It had been an act of kindness and love. They hadn’t really been able to afford her salary, and she’d had no experience and nothing to offer except a degree in chemistry.

      She could never truly repay them, but after all the sacrifices Lizzie had made the least she could do was convince her sister that they had been worthwhile and that her new life was fabulous.

      ‘I wanted to know what the Spanish word is for starfish,’ she said quickly. ‘And I thought you’d know.’

      ‘I do—it’s estrella de mar. But why do you need to know?’ Lizzie hesitated. ‘Please tell me you’re not adding starfish to the rum? Bill and I ate them in China—on sticks like lollipops—and I really don’t recommend it.’

      Kitty screwed up her face. ‘That is gross—and, no, of course I’m not going to put starfish in the rum. I just keep seeing them in the sea.’

      She heard her sister groan. ‘You’re looking at one right now, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be at work? Or have I got my times wrong again?’

      Kitty grinned. ‘I’m not

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