Chapter One
THE DOOR SLAMMED shut in the autumnal breeze, and Amelia groaned under her breath. There were ten minutes left before closing and she’d been hoping to make it out on time for once. What were the chances a patron would appear at this late hour?
She pasted a smile on her face at the same time she balled the cloth into her palm, and turned to scan the shabby diner.
But the second her eyes landed on the man just inside the door, every cell in her body seemed to jolt into hectic disarray.
He was nothing like their usual guest. This man was almost impossible to describe.
She’d seen handsome men before. On television, usually, or occasionally in the wild, in the distance, on the Tube, or at a bar, but this man was something else.
He wasn’t just handsome, he was scorch-your-eyes-out hot, with his tall, broad frame, and dark, swarthy complexion.
His hair was thick and a deep brown, almost black, his eyes obsidian, his jaw square, as though it had been sculpted by clay to be as imposing as possible, and his cheekbones were slashed high in his face.
He wore a suit that was definitely not off the high street, and his shoes were polished to a gleam.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, staring at him, lips parted, before she collected herself and said, ‘Hiya. Can I get you something?’
His dark eyes narrowed, so a shiver ran the length of her spine. Not from fear, but rather because of the electricity that seemed to have dumped itself into the small room.
‘You are Amelia Rossi,’ he said, disapproval in the deep and accented syllables. She startled at the jarring use of her mother’s maiden name.
‘Amelia Redgrave,’ she corrected automatically, even when she knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. Somehow, and for some reason, someone from her mother’s past had reached out to her.
One corner of his mouth moved in what was almost a sneer, but he covered it quickly. ‘Your mother is Aria Rossi?’
Amelia’s heart began to thump. She’d stopped thinking of herself as a Rossi a long time ago, had wilfully turned her back on her Italian heritage, just as her mother had turned her back on Amelia.
‘Why are you asking?’
He moved deeper into the diner and, somehow, having his immaculate form in the room made her aware of things she wasn’t usually. Like how shabby it was. The flickering fluorescent light above the counter. The faint smell of bleach, from the kitchen.
She refused to feel ashamed, though. Why should she?
Amelia had an honest job, and she was working her fingers to the bone at it.
Because it felt good to be busy. Good to be distracted.
Important not to have too much free time to think about her dad’s death after a long battle with cancer, and how empty her life now was.
‘Why are you refusing to answer?’ he countered, closer still, so she caught a hint of his masculine fragrance over the wafting bleach and her body cried out to inhale again, to breathe in more of him.
‘Well, for one thing, you’re some random guy who’s walked in off the street. Why should I answer?’
At that, his lips flickered with something like amusement. It was removed from his face so quickly, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
‘Do you serve coffee?’
She blinked at his sudden change in conversation.
‘I—yes.’
‘I’ll take one.’
‘To go?’
‘I’m in no rush.’
She expelled a soft sigh as she turned away from him. ‘How do you have it?’ she asked, but her voice shook a little, because the last thing she’d expected was to have a man walk in and ask about her mother. Pain lashed her.
‘Black.’
Of course. Why was she not surprised? Everything about this man exuded masculine strength, right down to his coffee choice.
She set about making it but her hands were trembling and she wasn’t focused on the job, so twice she had to start from scratch, having made simple mistakes.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, after a beat, eyes sweeping his face.
‘Massimiliano Moretti.’
She stared at him, a solid, stable object in a room that had started to spin.
Even Amelia, who’d spent the last several years in a cacophonous whirlwind of brightly lit hospitals, increasingly dingy flats and exhausting jobs, knew who Massimiliano Moretti was.
Who wouldn’t? One of the richest men in the world, he owned everything from hotel chains to airlines, shopping malls and sports teams.
The shaking of her fingers was abundantly clear as she lifted the coffee cup and saucer onto the counter and placed them down.
‘How do you know my mother?’
‘I don’t.’
Amelia tamped down on the flash of hope. ‘Yet you came here and asked about her.’
‘I know her parents.’
Firelight exploded in her belly. Her maternal grandparents were Amelia’s last surviving relatives, besides her mother—though she didn’t count, as she’d all but died to Amelia when she’d walked out on them. She hadn’t thought of her grandparents, though, as family, ever. She didn’t know them.
Sometimes, she’d looked in the mirror and tried to pick out the unfamiliar features, the expressions that she’d never seen on her father or mother, and wondered if those belonged to her faraway family, the people she’d never meet.
‘Do you know anything about your family, Amelia?’
Her hands formed fists by her side. ‘I have no family.’ The words were said with ice-cold finality. ‘We close in five minutes.’
He continued to stare at her, almost as though he were seeing deep inside her soul, so she turned away and continued packing up the counter.
‘Your mother’s family is one of the oldest and most respected in Europe.’
She closed her eyes on a wave of feeling. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘It would kill your grandparents to see you like this.’
She whirled around. ‘Like what?’
‘Working this job, in this place,’ he said, gesturing to the diner.
She flinched. ‘How dare you sit there and judge me?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I am not judging you, Contessina. Calm down. I am stating the facts.’
Contessina. Memories of Aria calling her that speared Amelia’s side. She blinked quickly to clear the visceral recollection. ‘Yeah, well, we all do what we must, don’t we?’
He continued to stare at her in that unnerving way. ‘Precisamente. I’m glad you understand that.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘You are Amelia Rossi,’ he said, so she shook her head.
‘I told you; I’m Amelia Redgrave.’
‘To the world, you are Amelia Rossi.’
‘The world?’ she spluttered. ‘Who in the world knows or cares about me? No one, Massimiliano.’ She stumbled over his multi-syllabic name, making it sound clunky, so he grimaced slightly.
‘It’s true, no one knows you exist.’
‘You knew.’
‘Sì.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your grandfather was once a close friend of my grandfather’s. When your mother left, and then, when you were born, they discussed it.’
Amelia’s heart felt weak at the thought of that. She pressed her back into the full-length fridge, needing support.
‘My grandparents know about me?’
His eyes roamed her face. ‘Yes.’
Pain lashed her. They knew about her, and had never reached out. She closed her eyes, twisting the key in the lock that kept her Rossi heritage deep down in her chest. Fresh rejection stung.
‘So what?’ she asked, needing this man to go now. Needing to forget he’d ever been here, stirring up a hornets’ nest of her past. ‘What is this all about?’
‘I think you and I can both give one another something we need.’
She blinked. ‘I don’t need anything from you.’
He looked at her from head to toe, his gaze raking over her as though she were some object—and an object he found wanting. ‘Is that so?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You do not think you could be doing more with your life than this?’
She flinched at his statement, at the accusation contained within.
At the dreams she’d long since given up on, because life—reality—the cost of living—had pushed them aside.
‘How dare you judge me?’ she repeated, shaking her head.
‘You have no idea who I am, what I’ve been through, what this job means to me. ’
‘I know enough,’ he said, voice low and accented.
She stared back at him as realisation bloomed. This was not a stranger. At least, she wasn’t a stranger to him. He knew about her. He’d done his research.
‘How did you find me?’
His lips shifted in something like admiration. ‘It was not difficult.’
‘What else did you find out about me?’
His eyes moved with cold determination. ‘Everything.’
She closed her own eyes on that, trying to blot him out.
‘I know that you’re twenty-three years old and drowning in debt, that you lost your father six months ago.’
She blinked back tears.
‘Well, you’ve certainly done your research,’ she said, voice uneven. She made her way around the counter, towards the front door. ‘And now, we’re closing. Please don’t worry about paying for your coffee. You need to leave.’
He stood, but, instead of walking towards the door, placed his elbow on the counter, regarding her with a look of indolent interest. ‘Would you like to know why I’m here, first?’
Curiosity sparked inside her, but she shook her head. ‘I stopped thinking of myself as Italian the day my mother left. Whatever you’ve come to say, if it has anything to do with her side of the family, I’m not interested.’
‘Even when your grandparents are no different from you?’
She stared back at him.
‘They were hurt by her, too. You are not the only person she abandoned.’
Amelia closed her eyes against that, a wave of pain washing her from the inside out. ‘Please leave.’
‘Not until you’ve heard what I came to say.’
She wanted to argue, but the shock of his arrival, of the things he was bringing up, made her feel weak and light-headed, so she let go of the door and stood there.
Now he moved, stalking towards her and turning the lock, so that they wouldn’t be interrupted. She was in too much of a state of shock to argue, or to feel anything like fear.