“But you hadn’t sold it.”

“No, not yet, but I…Am I suspected of something?”

“We’re investigating the cause of the fire. There’s a possibility that accelerants were used. Traces of gasoline were found on the lawn near the cottage.”

A single name instantly tumbled into Anna’s mind.

Isabela.

Naldo’s sister obviously hated her and wanted her gone. She’d planted the article in the paper, wanting to stir up trouble. She might be just crazy enough to start a fire in order to get rid of her.

She drew in a breath to steady herself. “I think I know who might have started it.”

Anna hovered behind the closed door of her room as all hell broke loose.

Predictably, Isabela didn’t take well to being questioned by an officious young policeman. Finally, she insulted Officer Davis in French and slapped him hard across the cheek, which led to her being taken to the station.

The way she screamed and cried in protest as they dragged her away made Anna even more sure that she was guilty.

Once Isabela was gone, a painful silence fell over the house. Anna slipped out of the bedroom to see if she could get any news on the fire and on Naldo.

She found Pilar weeping at the large granite island in the kitchen with Tom, one of the other staff members, consoling her.

“Poor Miss Isabela. Naldo will be so upset when he finds out. First the fire, and now this!” She let out a wail.

Anna froze in the kitchen doorway. “Did they take her for questioning?”

“They arrested her! She assaulted an officer.” Pilar sobbed into a paper towel. “She has a terrible temper, she’s so proud, but she’d never do anything like this, never!”

“The fire, is there any news?”

“Yes. Thank goodness, they have it under control. Naldo just called. They’re soaking down the ground and breaking the cottage apart to make sure there are no burning embers.” She looked up at Anna with teary eyes. “I’m sorry about your mother’s cottage.”

“Me, too.” But relief roared through her that Naldo was alive and that the fire was over. All she wanted was to feel his strong arms around her again, to hear him reassure her once more that everything would be okay.

“Naldo’s back!” A young employee burst through the door with the news that made Anna jump to her feet. She ran out into the hallway.

“Naldo!”

He was filthy from head to toe but alive and unharmed. “They took Isabela.” Disbelief echoed in his voice. He strode up to Anna and seized her arm. His eyes shone with a look she’d never seen there before. “Why?”

“They think she may have started the fire.”

He shook his head and incredulity creased his smudged features. “It’s ridiculous.” He let go of her arm. “I’m going to the station.”

Adrenaline zipped through her at the thought of losing him again already. “But Naldo, think about it. She might have started the fire to get rid of me. She came to me last night and told me that by staying I’d only bring disaster-”

His black stare withered the rest of the words on her tongue. “You think my own sister would start a fire on the estate? She’s a difficult woman, I won’t deny it, but she’s family and I know her like I know myself. She would never do something like this.” He’d already turned and strode toward the door.

“If she’s innocent, she’ll be fine. Please don’t go-” The front door slammed behind him as he swept out into the night.

Of course Isabela started the fire. Naturally, that was hard for Naldo to accept, but once he thought about it, he’d see the sense in it.

Unease prickled along her arms to her fingers and made her shiver in her borrowed robe.

“You accused Miss Isabela?” Pilar’s voice, right behind her, made her jump.

“I…She came to me yesterday evening, threatened me.” She turned to face her.

Pilar looked stunned. One of the most respected employees on the estate, she had reputedly come from Spain with Naldo’s mother some forty years earlier. No doubt her loyalty to the family prevented her from seeing what Isabela was capable of.

The older woman stared at her, lips parted.

Tom stepped between them and placed his hand on Anna’s arm. “Everyone’s safe from the fire. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

She nodded, anxious to get away from the housekeeper’s accusing eyes. No way could she sleep, but maybe she could just lie down and catch her breath until Naldo got back.

As a thick, warm finger of sun crept across the bed and pointed directly at her face, Anna opened her eyes.

She sat up with a jolt, heart pounding.

I fell asleep?

How had she managed to drift off amidst all the drama? She scrambled out of bed and padded across the cool, polished wood to the wide, arched window. By the height of the sun it must be at least nine o’clock.

She turned and saw her clothes, freshly laundered and laid out on the chaise at the end of the bed. Next to them was that morning’s issue of the Sunshine Post.

Fire at De Leon Estate screamed the headline. Her heart in her throat, Anna scanned the byline. Different reporter, thank goodness.

Fire ripped through an old estate cottage, sparking a brushfire that destroyed several acres of orange groves late last night. The Round Lake fire department responded along with engines from several nearby companies, and the blaze was reported to be under control at the time of going to press.

Known as Paradiso, the De Leon estate boasts more than four hundred years of existence, so this is not the first setback they’ve weathered, but could it be the last?

Elder daughter Isabela De Leon was questioned by police last night amid rumors that she’s bitter about her brother inheriting the entire estate. Is she suspected of setting the blaze?

Gossip that the fire in the dilapidated worker’s cottage could be a scam to collect insurance on the old structure were soon quashed by the disturbing news that the De Leons have always scorned insurance, like the British Royal family whose Windsor Castle was uninsured when it burned to the tune of 90 million dollars in 1992.

Will Round Lake’s “royal family” survive this latest blow in the wake of patriarch Robert De Leon’s death? Or will the younger family members-beset by inheritance squabbles and lacking the experience of their forebears-decide to throw in a four-hundred-year-old towel and sell up? There are plenty of developers who’d like to bite off a piece of the largest privately owned estate in Central Florida.

Anna closed her eyes and leaned against a bedpost. Naldo would go through the roof when he saw this. It amounted to a personal insult to him and his ability to run the family and the estate.

Her name wasn’t mentioned, which probably only meant they hadn’t figured out the cottage that burned was the one she and Naldo were wrangling over. But when they did…

Her heart thumped so hard she had to gasp for air. Where was Naldo? She needed to see him, to see his face, to reassure herself-

Of what? That he didn’t curse her and the ground she walked on?

Someone had obviously put a lot of effort into cleaning her clothes and sneakers, which was good as they were the only clothes she had in the world right now. The grim thought drove home the ugly desperation of her predicament.

No van. No cottage. No gems. No money.

Somehow it was all too awful to seem real, and wouldn’t really sink in. She kept trying to reassure herself that things would “be okay,” as Naldo had predicted.

Would they?

As she ran her fingers through her uncombed hair and wished she had a scrap of makeup to paint a brave face on, a commotion from downstairs made her ears prick up.

She turned the brass doorknob and stepped out into the second-floor hallway. Silhouetted below in the sunlit doorway stood Naldo, his arm wrapped tightly around a weeping and obviously hysterical Isabela.

Anna shrank back into her room for a second.

“Fetch some iced tea,” Naldo barked. “Get some food for her. Those beasts had her up all night.”

He’d found the time to shower and change. He looked crisp and elegant in a dark suit.

His face, however, looked blacker than ever. Not from soot, but from dark, seething anger. Anna’s empty stomach started to knot.

Isabela looked shockingly tragic, leaning in her tall brother’s arms, her long black hair hanging wild to her waist and her eyes ringed with smudged mascara. Naldo spoke some soft words to her that Anna didn’t catch, then began to help her across the wide, marble-floored foyer toward the living room.

Suddenly he glanced up.

His gaze seized Anna’s and held her fast like a rat in a trap. Her mouth fell open, but words didn’t come out.

“How could you do this?” His voice rang coldly through the huge foyer. “How could you accuse my sister of this terrible crime?” Isabela pressed her head to his shoulder, and he stroked her disordered hair.

“As I suspected, it was your van that started the fire. That deathtrap on wheels had an electrical malfunction and that is what started the blaze. The accelerant on the grass occurs only in places where you’d parked your van and carelessly allowed its leaking fuel tank to spill gasoline onto the grass where it could feed the flames.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip.

Hard.

Until it hurt.

He’d offered to call his mechanic. She knew the van leaked a bit, but never thought much of it. Didn’t all old cars leak?

“The cottage,” she stammered. “Did anything survive?”

“Nothing.” Naldo held her gaze for one more searing moment, then turned and walked toward the living room, his arm around his sister.

Throughout this exchange Isabela was uncharacteristically silent. In fact she seemed somehow…pathetic.

Even Anna couldn’t imagine this shaking, weeping woman being the type to slosh gasoline around a house and set a match to it.