Page 32 of For Better or for Ransom

Divya rolled her eyes. “She does,” she deadpanned.

Luke was aware of his heart rate rapidly increasing. He leaned forward on the dark wooden table. “How do you know?”

“I do.” Her face was serious. She wasn’t joking. “You know I’m good at reading people.” She was the best at reading people. That was one more reason why she was such an invaluable asset for their detective agency.

“I still should make sure that she really wants to marry me though, no?” Luke tried reasoning.

Divya groaned. Threw her arms in the air. “Just propose, mate. Isn’t that what proposals are for?”

“I cannot be the one proposing,” he admitted, practically gritting his teeth. If there was something he’d learned from Sol after almost a year together, it was that, for a third marriage to even be mildly possible, it would have to be her asking him. That was the Sol way. “It has to be her.”

Divya whistled. “So you need to make her believe like the whole marriage was her idea in the first place and ask you to do it…”

He smiled. If Divya had been able to figure it out, it wouldn't be such a crazy idea. “Exactly.”

“You do realize if your plan succeeds and you secure the title, you’d probably have to spend more time away from your beloved London, right, mate?” Divya asked the most unexpected of questions.

“What do you mean?” He genuinely didn’t understand but wanted to. They should stop with the chat soon though, Sol would be there any minute now.

His detective partner blinked at him. “Sol likes this. She may want to relocate to Barcelona in the future to be closer to her family and friends in the city. Maybe spend part of the year here at least…”

As usual, Divya’s deductions made absolute sense but why hadn’t he reached them as well? How was it possible that he had to be told about something that was more than evident if you knew Sol? Did that information change anything? Was he all right with the possibility of having to be away from London for extended periods of time?

He was still thinking about the implications of what Divya had just made him realize when a waiter brought the appetizers. Sol made her entrance to the restaurant at the same time, wearing wide-legged jeans and a black leather jacket. Luke’s face lit up. She was stunning.

Sol

“The woman I was hoping to see,” Divya told her with a smile when Sol got to the table for three where Divya and Luke were already seated.

Sol kissed the Mancunian on both cheeks, kissed an absent-minded-looking Luke on the lips, and sat in front of the two of them in one of the booth-like tables on the restaurant’s ground floor.

“This looks great,” Sol said, trying a bite of the smoked sardines and eyeing the shrimp and potato salad that had already been served. “Thanks for getting me out of the house. I know you guys are working.”

“We were counting on you helping us with something,” Divya said, enigmatically.

“We were?” Luke snapped out of his thoughts.

Divya smiled, smugly. “We did,” she said, and then proceeded to tell Sol about their chat with Sandro Palau. “Do you want to know my plan to figure out if Sandro was the one Leo was seeing?”

“Been curious about it. Thought you were never going to tell me how you were planning on figuring it out.” Luke said.

He was in full working mode. Whatever it was that had been worrying him when Sol got to the restaurant seemed to no longer be on his mind.

Divya rolled her eyes at Luke, turned to Sol, and smiled at her. “You wouldn’t mind calling the instant celebrity Sandro Palau and asking him a couple of questions, right?”

“Sure, want me to figure out who his publicist is?”

Divya shook her head, took her cell phone from her pocket, and started scrolling. “No need for that. We have his personal mobile number.”

The detective told Sol what she needed from her. Sol took some notes, thought about it, nodded in agreement, and dialed Sandro’s number.

“¿Hola?” Sandro answered the phone after a couple of tones. His voice was eager.

“Hi, Sandro? This is Sol Novo,” the journalist said, also in Spanish, clutching the phone in her hand against her ear. Luke and Divya would only be able to hear her part of the conversation, but they wouldn’t have understood Sandro even if Sol had put him on speakerphone. Fortunately it was still early enough, barely one in the afternoon, that so far they were the only ones in that area of the restaurant, so there was no risk of anyone eavesdropping on the phone conversation.

“I’m a journalist,” Sol continued, not wanting to mention the name of the outlet she currently wrote for and preferring to keep things vague. “I just did a profile on Leonardo Pascual and I’m trying to double-check something about him to add it to my story.”

“Ah.” There was a note of disappointment in his voice. A silence followed after the realization Sandro’s caller wasn’t bringing good news about Leonardo. Then he said: “I read the profile you wrote on Red Carpet.” Sol held her breath. “You captured Leo’s essence perfectly.”