LITMIR.BIZ

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too long. Everyone had regrets—and he was hers. But she was twenty-six, not the naïve eighteen-year-old who had scrambled back into her clothes and fled from his room with his mocking taunt that she was a gold-digger, like her mother, ringing in her ears.

      In the intervening years she had survived an abusive marriage, and she would survive meeting Torre again and be stronger when she discovered—as she was confident she would—that all she had felt for him eight years ago had been an embarrassing teenage crush.

      Ten minutes later, when they turned through the gates of Villa Romano the sports car was on the driveway but there was no sign of its owner, Orla noted thankfully. Jules parked the hire car and as Orla opened the passenger door the heat outside felt intense. She grabbed her wide-brimmed straw hat from the back seat, aware that her skin would burn—or, worse, freckle—if she spent any time in the sun. Her milky complexion and pale red hair were a legacy of her Irish heritage on her father’s side—although on those precious visits to Liam Brogan’s home on the wild, wet, west coast of Ireland when she’d been a child, sunburn had not been a problem, she remembered ruefully.

      She gathered her long hair in one hand and piled it on top of her head before jamming the hat on. An evocative citrus scent from the lemon groves drifted on the slight breeze and mingled with the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle that grew over the walls of the villa. On her first visit to the Amalfi Coast a month before her nineteenth birthday, Orla had fallen in love with the stunning scenery and intensity of colour—the vivid pink of the bougainvillea, the dark green of the elegant cypress trees and the cerulean blue of the sea surrounding the rocky headland where Villa Romano had stood for two hundred years.

      Eight years ago she had come to Amalfi when her mother had become the third wife of Giuseppe Romano, the billionaire head of Italy’s largest construction company. But the marriage—like most of Kimberley’s marriages—had been short-lived and Orla had not been back to Villa Romano since her mother had returned to London and set about spending her divorce settlement.

      Initially when she had received an invitation to Giuseppe’s seventieth birthday party, she’d planned to invent an excuse for why she couldn’t attend—knowing that Torre was bound to be there. But she had grown fond of her stepfather while her mother had been married to him. He had made her feel welcome at Villa Romano whenever she’d visited—only after she’d ascertained that Torre would not be at his father’s home—and she had kept in touch with Giuseppe after he and her mother had divorced.

      When Jules had suggested that she could travel to Amalfi with him, Orla had decided it was time she faced her nemesis. Meeting Torre again was something she needed to do so that she could put the past behind her and move on with her life.

      A member of the villa’s staff came down the steps to greet them and Jules strolled over to speak to the man while Orla looked around at the beautiful formal gardens.

      ‘There seems to be some confusion over which rooms we have been allocated,’ Jules told her when he returned to her side. ‘Apparently some distant relatives of Giuseppe have arrived unexpectedly and Mario is not sure where to take our bags. I’ll go and talk to the housekeeper and find out what’s happening.’

      ‘I’ll join you inside in a minute. I want to stretch my legs after the journey.’

      ‘All right, but keep in the shade. You are not used to the heat of the Italian sun, chérie.’

      Orla smiled as she watched Jules walk back to the house. French by birth, he had a gentle Gaelic charm, and he had always been kind to her when she had visited her mother at Villa Romano, even though Kimberly had been the reason that Giuseppe had divorced his mother. Jules had continued to have a good relationship with his stepfather and six months ago he had been appointed chief accountant at the English branch of the Romano family’s construction company. Orla lived in a studio flat not far from ARC UK’s offices after she’d been forced to sell her mother’s luxury apartment to pay off Kimberley’s debts. She had got into the habit of meeting Jules for dinner once or twice a week and he had proved to be a good friend while she had struggled to cope with her mother’s serious health problems.

      At the same time Orla had been vilified in the tabloids for supposedly receiving a huge divorce settlement from her wealthy ex-husband. She had not asked for or received a penny from David, but that hadn’t stopped the lurid newspaper headlines speculating on how much money she had ‘earned’ for ten months of marriage.

      No, she was not going to think about the past, she ordered herself. She was finally free from David, and in many ways her disastrous marriage had made her stronger. Never again would she allow a man to control her as her ex-husband had done.

      She strolled across the drive, inexplicably drawn towards the sports car. For the first time she understood how a car could be described as sexy. The sleek lines and scarlet bodywork demanded attention and the black leather interior was rampantly masculine. The car promised excitement and danger, and no doubt its owner would promise the same. But she did not want excitement, Orla reminded herself as she ran her hand over the sensuous curves of the vehicle.

      She had thought that her marriage to David would give her the security she had craved all her life, but she had felt vulnerable and sometimes even afraid for her safety when he had been at the red wine. His mood could change in an instant, and for a long time she had thought she’d done something wrong that had triggered his outbursts of temper.

      A flash of pain crossed her face and she instinctively lifted her hand and traced her fingers over the slightly raised three-inch scar that ran from the edge of her eyebrow up to her hairline. She wore her hair parted on one side so that it covered the scar, and make-up disguised its redness. But it would always be there, an ugly reminder of why she dared not trust her own judgement and would never trust a man again.

      She had never told anyone about the mental and physical abuse she had been subjected to during her short, unhappy marriage to an English professional cricket player. David Keegan was popular with fans and the media for his affable nature on the cricket pitch and during post-match interviews. Orla was sure no one would believe that David had a drink problem, or that alcohol turned him into an aggressive monster.

      The press had accused her of callously breaking David’s heart and ruining his career when she had left him days before he had captained the England cricket team against Australia in the famous Ashes series. England had lost the series and David had lost his captaincy. In an interview he had blamed his heartbreak over his wife’s desertion for his dire performance on the cricket pitch.

      It had been easy to blame herself for the problems in their relationship when David had constantly undermined her confidence and made her believe she was as useless as he told her she was. It had taken a physical assault by him to bring her to her senses. She’d stopped pretending that everything was all right in her marriage and acknowledged that David had killed her feelings for him. If she had stayed with him, she’d been scared that the next time he hit her, he might kill her.

      Taking back control of her life had been a hard process but Orla had discovered that she possessed a strong will and a gritty determination to survive. Returning to Villa Romano when she knew that Torre would be here was another step away from the girl with a head full of romantic dreams she had once been to the independent woman she was now.

      ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’

      The voice from behind Orla was rich and dark like bitter-sweet chocolate laced with a hint of sardonic amusement that made her nerves jangle. She had heard the voice in her dreams countless times, but now it was real and her stomach lurched. She snatched her hand away from the car.

      It was said that some men bought high-powered, piston-throbbing cars to compensate for their own inadequacies. The last time she had seen Torre he had been twenty-four or -five, but now he was in his early thirties, and he was probably losing his hair and gaining a paunch, she told herself.

      Heartened by the thought, she spun round to face him and her heart slammed into her ribs as her eyes collided with his glittering grey gaze. She had an odd feeling that he had been staring at her rather than the car.

      Eight

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