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flicker in her eyes before she looked away.

      ‘And I have no intention of letting you touch me ever again.’

      He was almost tempted to prove her wrong, but he resisted the impulse. The sooner Sierra was out of his life, the better. ‘It seems we’re agreed, then. Now, we should get ready to go.’ Marco grabbed his keys and switched off the lights before ushering Sierra out of the kitchen. He followed her, locking the villa behind him, and then opened the passenger door to his SUV. As Sierra slid inside the car he breathed in her lemony scent, and his gut tightened. It was going to be a long three hours.

      They drove in silence down the sweeping drive, the villa’s gates closing silently behind them. Sierra let out a sigh of relief as Marco turned onto the mountain road.

      ‘You’re glad to leave?’

      ‘Not glad, exactly,’ she answered. ‘But memories can be...difficult.’

      He couldn’t argue with that. He had a truckload of difficult memories, from his father’s retreat from his life, to his mother leaving him at the door of an orphanage run by monks when he was ten years old, to the slew of foster homes he’d bounced through, to the endless moment when he’d stood at the front of the church, the smile slipping from his face as Arturo came down the aisle, his face set in extraordinarily grim lines.

      Sierra was staring out of the window; it was as if she’d dismissed him entirely. As he would dismiss her. For better or worse, last night’s episode would serve as a line drawn across the past. Perhaps he had evened the score between them. In any case, his tie to Sierra Rocci was cut—firmly and for ever.

      Setting his jaw, Marco stared straight ahead as he drove in silence all the way to Palermo.

       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘YOU NEED SIERRA ROCCI.’

      Marco swivelled around in his chair to gaze out of the window at Palermo’s business district as everything in him resisted that flatly spoken statement. ‘I’ve been Arturo’s right-hand man for nearly ten years. I don’t need her.’

      Paolo Conti, his second-in-command and closest confidant, sighed. ‘I’m afraid you do, Marco. The board isn’t happy without a Rocci to front the business, at least at first. And with the hotel opening in New York in a few weeks...’

      ‘What about it? Everything is going according to plan.’ He’d overseen the work on Rocci Enterprises’ first hotel in North America himself; it had been his idea to expand, and to take the exclusive chain of hotels in a new direction. His credibility as CEO rested on The Rocci New York succeeding.

      ‘That’s true,’ Paolo replied, ‘but in the seventy years of Rocci Enterprises, a Rocci has always headed the board.’

      ‘Things change.’

      ‘Yes,’ Paolo agreed patiently, running his hand through his silver hair, ‘but for the last seventy years a Rocci has opened each hotel. Palermo, Rome, Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘A Rocci at every one.’

      ‘I know.’ He’d seen a few of the grand openings himself. He’d started work for Rocci Enterprises when he was sixteen years old, as a bellboy at the hotel in Palermo. He’d seen Sierra walking with her parents up the pink marble steps to eat in the hotel’s luxurious dining room. He’d watched her walk so daintily, her hands held by both her mother and father. The perfect family.

      ‘Change is a part of life,’ Marco dismissed, ‘and Arturo Rocci willed his shares to me. The board—and the public—will simply have to adjust.’ It had been nearly a month since he’d left Sierra at the Palermo airport. Four weeks since he’d watched her walk away from him and told himself he was glad, even as he felt the old injustice burn. She hadn’t looked back.

      He wasn’t angry with her any more, but he didn’t know what he felt. Whatever emotion raged through him didn’t feel good.

      ‘It’s not that simple, Marco,’ Paolo said. He’d been with Rocci Enterprises for decades, always quietly serving and guiding. As Arturo had become more and more ill, Marco had relied increasingly on Paolo’s help and wisdom.

      ‘It can be,’ he insisted.

      ‘If the board feels there is too much separation from the Rocci name and values, they might hold a vote of no confidence.’

      Marco tensed. ‘I’ve been with this company for over ten years. And I hold the controlling shares.’

      ‘The board needs to see you in public, acting as CEO. They need to believe in you.’

      ‘Fine. I’ll appear at any number of events.’

      ‘With a Rocci,’ Paolo clarified. ‘And, as you know, Sierra is the only Rocci left.’ Arturo’s brother, a bachelor, had died a dozen years ago, his parents before then. ‘There needs to be a smooth transition,’ Paolo insisted. ‘For the board and the public. Arturo wasn’t able to manage it while he was alive—’

      ‘He was ill.’

      ‘I know. I’m sure he would have addressed this himself if he could have.’

      But Arturo hadn’t made Marco the beneficiary of his will until the very end. Marco suspected the old man had been hoping for Sierra to come back, to keep the business in the family. Restlessly, Marco rose from his chair and paced his office. Damn it, he’d given his life to Rocci Enterprises. He could still remember the sense of incredulous joy he’d had when Arturo had moved him from hefting suitcases to working in an office. Arturo Rocci had seen his potential and helped him to rise. And he’d paid his mentor back tenfold, by increasing Rocci Enterprises’ revenue and expanding its business concerns. But he feared that all his board saw was a street rat from Palermo’s gutters who had got ideas far above his station.

      Sighing, he sank back into his chair. He could see the sense in what Paolo was saying. A smooth transition from him being the second-in-command who worked invisibly behind the scenes to being the public face of Rocci Enterprises. All it would take was a few key appearances, some stage-managed events...with Sierra.

      Considering how they’d parted, he doubted Sierra Rocci was going to want to help him out in any fashion. He might not be angry with her any more, but she could very well still harbour a grudge for his ruthless semiseduction of her at the villa. Sighing, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, fighting off the tension headache that felt like a band of iron encircling his head.

      He didn’t want to need Sierra. He certainly didn’t want to go begging for favours. But Rocci Enterprises meant everything to him. He couldn’t afford to risk its well-being.

      ‘Well?’ Paolo asked. ‘Do you think Sierra Rocci will agree? I know the two of you have a history...’ He paused delicately, and Marco opened his eyes.

      ‘I’ll make her agree,’ he stated flatly. Already his mind was racing through the possibilities. How could he get Sierra to come to New York? She’d accused him of being manipulative seven years ago, of engaging her affections so he could secure his position with Rocci Enterprises. She’d been wrong then, or at least that hadn’t been the whole truth. But now it would be.

      Marco’s mouth curved coldly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told Paolo. ‘I know how to handle her.’

      * * *

      ‘Play it again please, Chloe.’

      Sierra shifted in her hard chair as her pupil sawed her way through ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ for the third time. Sierra tried not to wince. She loved her job tutoring children in music for a variety of after-school clubs, but it wasn’t always easy on the ears.

      Her mind drifted, as it had these last few weeks, to Marco Ferranti. It irritated and unnerved her that he was so often in her thoughts; the passionate interlude in the music room had haunted her dreams and left her aching with both desire and shame.