LITMIR.BIZ

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the rites of passage her peers had taken for granted.

      As a consequence she had done a very silly thing seven years ago, and another silly thing when she’d convinced herself to marry a man she didn’t love.

      No, Bernard was not the right man for her. But neither was an oversexed soccer player who thought he could just pick up a woman like a coin in the gutter and put her in his pocket.

      Her fist opened to reveal the embossed card she’d been carrying around for the last half hour. She held it up and read the simply inscribed name and several contact numbers. A memory slid like a stiletto knife between her ribs. All those numbers—but she’d rung his numbers before, hadn’t she? None of them led to him.

      Giving herself a shake, Ava slipped away from the group. She was going back to the hotel.

      Everything was a mess and it was his fault.

      Not Bernard’s. What had she been thinking, being with Bernard for two long years? Going so far as to orchestrate a romantic proposal? Booking the plane fares, a luxury hotel, a driving tour of Tuscany...?

      What had possessed her to set up such a ridiculous romantic scenario with a man she didn’t love, in this city of all cities...?

      Ava’s heart began to pound, because she had the answer in her hot little hand.

      * * *

      What was she doing back in Rome?

      It was the million-dollar question and it had Gianluca entertaining scenarios that, frankly, were beneath him.

      Behind him the private party was in full swing—a welcome back to Rome for his cousin Marco and his new wife—but Gianluca found himself constantly scanning the piazza below for a certain dressed-down brunette.

      He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head all day. It wasn’t the fresh-faced girl who had lain down with him in the grass on the Palatino who was rifling through his thoughts, though, but the tense, angry woman who looked as if she hadn’t had a man between her thighs in a good many years. The sort of woman who, for whatever reason, had forgotten how to be a woman—although in this lady’s case he suspected it might be a wilful act.

      He smiled slightly, wondered how hard it would be to perform that miracle.

      Given the sexual attraction that had flared between them in the street today, not hard. Anger, he acknowledged, could be a powerful aphrodisiac.

      His smile faded. His parents had conducted that kind of relationship. Volatile, glass-breaking performances on his Sicilian mother’s side, and passive-aggressive acts of sabotage from his father as he withheld money, access to the family jewellery, use of the Benedetti palazzi dotted around the country. Yes, the married state had a great deal to recommend it.

      The irony was that he was here celebrating a wedding. The advent of a baby. The things that made up happiness in other people’s lives. Just not if you had Benedetti attached to your name.

      It was a lonely thought and he pushed it aside. Life was good. He was young, fit and obscenely successful. Women fell at his feet. Men scrambled to get out of his way. Everything he touched turned to gold these days. Forget the dragon. Forget the past. Take those lessons and apply them to what was to come now.

      He turned away from his contemplation of the famous square below and strolled across the terrace to join the party.

      * * *

      ‘Signorina, we sit here all night or I take you somewhere else? Give me something to work with!’

      Across the road Ava could see women in tiny scraps of nothing much going happily into the popular nightspot. She shoved money at the driver, took a breath and launched herself out of the cab. The cool air licked around her legs and she almost dived back in.

      She knew she was being silly. The burgundy red cocktail dress came to her knees and covered her shoulders and arms. It was perfectly acceptable. Perhaps it clung to her long thighs as she moved, and her calves in black stockings felt exposed as she made her way across the road, heels clicking on the pavement, but nobody was going to laugh at her and point.

      As she approached the glass front of the upmarket nightclub she began to feel a little differently. The pulsing blue and gold neon lights gave a dreamlike quality to the atmosphere, and far from feeling on show she realised for once that with her hair and her dress and her heels she fitted right in. There was nothing show-offish about her appearance.

      She had a very real fear of making a spectacle of herself in public. Growing up, she had seen her mum’s illness provide far too many opportunities for that to happen. She had set up her life to avoid social situations as much as possible, but tonight she didn’t have much choice.

      The doorman said something pleasant to her in Italian and Ava found herself inside, waiting behind the other patrons, relieved she had dressed up. For the umpteenth time her fingers went to the ends of her hair.

      This afternoon she’d taken her long brown plait to the hairdresser, and after a process of a great deal of pointing and gesturing her hair was now swinging with more bounce and life than it had ever had around her shoulders. She’d left that hairdresser feeling as chic as any Roman woman, very modern, and in control of her own destiny once more.

      As with cutting several inches off her hair, it had been her choice to wear a cocktail dress. That it was brand-new, bought today, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a frock had absolutely nothing to do with a man this morning telling her she had forgotten how to be a woman.

      She couldn’t see him anyhow as she came down the steps and made her way slowly through the crowded bar. Confusion assailed her. Should she wait? Should she ask for his table? Worryingly, the place seemed to be full of beautiful women not wearing very much clothing. She couldn’t possibly compete.

      As if to hammer this home a glamorous blonde slunk past her on stab-your-heart-out heels, scantily clad in a dress that looked sewn on. Ava followed her progress, along with every man in the vicinity, although her thoughts—She must be cold—probably didn’t align with theirs.

      Perhaps she’d over-estimated the transformative powers of a new hairstyle?

      Feeling her confidence slipping away, Ava scanned the room, spotted the winding stairs at either end. There was another level. She caught sight of the blonde making her wiggly way up and up. Should she go upstairs? Should she ask for his table?

      For the first time it occurred to Ava with a stab of unease that the invitation had been general, more along the lines of come along—enjoy yourself. Not specific—not I find you attractive, perhaps even on some subliminal level remember you, and I want to spend some time with you. It was entirely possible she had misinterpreted him.

      Yes, Ava, you’ve got it wrong again...

      But in that moment she caught sight of a dark-haired woman in a burgundy dress staring back at her across the room. Her eyes were made up with kohl and lashings of mascara, dark and mysterious, her mouth was a vivid splash of red colour like a full-blown rose, explosive and passionate. She was something other than beautiful. She was dramatic.

      It wasn’t until she lifted her fingertips once more to her hair that Ava experienced the little shock of recognition. It was a mirrored wall. The woman staring back at her was—well, her.

      She ignored the thundering voices that told her she was lining herself up for a fall and made her way upstairs.

      * * *

      Marco handed him a fresh beer. ‘To the future.’

      This was the first time Gianluca had been able to catch up with his cousin since the massive wedding back in Ragusa. They’d played professional football together in their early twenties. Marco had been dropped due to injury; Gianluca had cut his contract at the height of his career and fame to perform the military service expected of a Benedetti male.

      He was still feeling the reverberations of that early shot at sporting immortality. Soccer was his country’s religion, and for two short

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