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would hope so,’ Santo said without contrition. ‘And preferably without too many hang-ups and issues.’

      ‘You can go on your own dating sites….’

      ‘I don’t go on dating sites,’ Santo said. ‘I don’t need to, and anyway, I don’t have time,’ he retorted. ‘I want someone who is good at their job, who is pleasing to the eye, and someone who doesn’t pin everything on what happens between the sheets.’ And with that he walked out and slammed the door.

      He was right.

      Ella sat shaking on the bed.

      Her disappointment was on a professional level but it was personal too.

      It was she who couldn’t separate things, but of course, with Santo, she’d never been able to.

      Ella admitted it herself then—every woman he’d dated, every time he’d crooned into the phone to his latest lover as she drove, she’d had bile black and hissing in her stomach and it had felt like a personal slight.

      She had known what she was getting into but had completely ignored it, just to have the refuge of work. had chosen to keep her days busy when she should have lain on a beach and somehow healed from all that had happened with her father. When she should perhaps have curled up and hid for a while to process things, instead she’d insisted to herself she was fine and had looked for a job, had ignored what now she could not.

      A hotel room was not a nice place to be gripped by panic and unlike Santo’s there was no private terrace, just shuttered windows which Ella flung open and gulped in night air. She wanted to ring home, wanted to scream, wanted to run to Santo and batter down his door, for she could not stand to be alone with her thoughts.

      She could not bear to remember the feel of her father’s fist in her face and the screams and shouts from her mum and the feeling of being twenty-seven and feeling as if she were six.

      Except right now she was doing exactly that.

      Remembering every horrible moment, every terrible feeling, crying and sobbing for the first time since it happened, reliving the nightmare when she didn’t want to…

      …and in a hotel room alone.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      FOR THE FIRST time since she had started working for him, Ella wondered if she could face breakfast with Santo and going through his diary. They always started the week like that, and as she’d had yesterday off, it would be assumed she would meet him in the hotel restaurant at 6:00 a.m., as they did when on location.

      Ella stood in front of the mirror after a very sleepless night. A cool shower had done little to reduce her swollen eyelids and the tip of her nose was bright red.

      She looked like a woman who had spent the night crying.

      Except she hadn’t, as Santo would no doubt assume, been crying over him—it was the issues that he had alluded to that had finally made her break down.

      It had been six months without tears.

      Six months of telling herself that she was strong, that she would not let what her father had done affect her, would not let his fists bruise her soul.

      But they had.

      It wasn’t just the beating that had left its mark. It was the years that had.

      Years of watching her mother suffer, years of walking on eggshells so as not to upset him, years of scrimping and saving to afford a home where she could take her mother away from him.

      Ella was in danger of crying again, so she chose not to think about that awful day. Instead she attempted magic with a make-up brush, but nothing was really going to work. So, once dressed, it was Ella who donned huge sunglasses this morning and took the elevator down, fervently hoping that Santo would be polite and pretend not to notice the state of her face.

      ‘Jesus!’ He stood up as she approached the table. Of course he looked immaculate and well rested. Because it was Santo he promptly took her glasses off—he was just so bloody Italian—and wrapped her in his arms. ‘Sorry, baby…’

      ‘Stop it.’

      ‘I went too far.’ He was talking into her ear, slowing her heart that had been beating frantically all night. ‘Hire someone ugly—’ she felt tears fill her eyes at his attempt to help ‘—a man, I don’t care.’

      ‘Santo.’ She pushed him off a little, took a seat. ‘I wasn’t crying about that.’ A waiter poured her coffee and Santo sweetened it for her. She took a drink of it and wished he wasn’t being so nice, because it would be so easy to again break down. ‘I’ve got stuff going on. You were right.’

      ‘Of course I was right,’ Santo said. ‘About what?’

      ‘You know…’ God, but she hated the word. ‘Issues…’

      And where most men would run Santo was over in a flash. He moved his chair right beside her and wrapped an arm around. ‘Tell me.’

      ‘No!’ She did not want his arm, did not want a man who was so comfortable in his own skin that he could sit in a restaurant and not care who saw, nor one who thought she could discuss such things.

      ‘I’ll tell you mine.’

      ‘No.’ She was not going to let him make her smile.

      ‘I’ve got hundreds of them,’ Santo said, and yes, he made her smile. Then he was terribly kind. ‘But right now, my main issue is you.’

      ‘We’ve got to head over to the set.’

      ‘I’ll say when we go.’

      ‘I can’t talk about it.’

      ‘You could.’

      ‘No.’ Ella shook her head. She didn’t have to explain her choices to him, except she found herself trying to. ‘You don’t talk about things you don’t want to, you don’t discuss your family.’

      ‘You know my family are…’ He didn’t finish and she looked over, watched his hand move to the collar of his shirt as he struggled to come up with a suitable answer, but Ella found it for him.

      ‘You’re a Corretti,’ Ella said. ‘So your troubles are far darker and far more serious than mine could ever be.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I was being sarcastic, Santo.’

      ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And so was I, but what I’m trying to tell you is that there is little that hasn’t happened in my family. My nonno, Salvatore, started with nothing and died one of Sicily’s most powerful men, so yes, there are things that I cannot talk about. His sons—my father, Carlo, and his brother, Benito…’ Santo stopped then. ‘You know what they say about loose lips…’

      ‘Speaking of ships…’ She went to tell him about an arrangement for the film but he stopped her.

      ‘Don’t change the subject.’

      ‘I am changing it, Santo, because in being so open about your family and issues, you’ve told me precisely nothing.’

      ‘I’m trying to let you know that you can tell me if you want to,’ he said. ‘And if you can’t, that is fine, but you are never to spend a night like that alone again when I am a short elevator ride away.’

      ‘Santo…’ Someone was calling out to him, telling him it was time to head off, but he called over his shoulder that he would catch up with them there.

      ‘Do you understand me?’

      ‘Sometimes it’s better to be on your own.’

      ‘You prefer what you went through last night to making love with me?’ He kissed her temple. ‘Then you are mad.’

      ‘Sex isn’t the answer to everything.’

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