.

stood at a large reception desk and did everything she could to keep the slight tremble from her voice. She was determined to get this right, even if it meant practising her cool façade on the receptionist

      ‘Is he expecting you, Ms...?’

      ‘No, he’s not expecting me.’ Sophie shook her head. ‘If you could just tell me what floor he is on...’

      ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Cavaliere won’t see anyone without an appointment.’ There was just a slight something about the receptionist’s voice when she said his name. Her words were tinged with affection and Sophie was quite sure she knew the reason for that.

      ‘For me he would make an exception.’ Sophie stared the woman down but it didn’t work.

      ‘There are no exceptions.’ The receptionist smiled her pussycat smile and Sophie glanced at her name badge.

      Amber.

      ‘Excuse me,’ Amber said as her telephone rang, ‘but I need to take this call.’

      Sophie stood there as she was summarily dismissed. The beautiful receptionist picked up the phone and started talking but when she had completed the call she blinked, as if surprised to see that Sophie was still there.

      ‘Can I help you?’ She frowned.

      ‘You can, Amber,’ Sophie responded. ‘Please let Mr Cavaliere know that his fiancée is here and that she wishes to see him.’

      ‘His fiancée?’

      Sophie watched two spots of colour spread over the woman’s cheeks and her cold blue eyes glance down at Sophie’s ring finger. ‘That’s right!’ Sophie was the one smiling a pussycat smile now. ‘If you could let him know...’

      ‘And your name is...?’

      Sophie didn’t respond to the question. Luka would know exactly who she was. She pictured his expression when he took the call that would tell him she was back in his life.

      A little flustered, the receptionist picked up the phone and relayed the news that Mr Cavaliere’s fiancée was there and then gave Sophie a guarded smile. ‘I’ve told his PA and she’s going to speak with Mr Cavaliere. If you’d like to take a seat...’

      Sophie walked across the elegant foyer to the large leather sofas. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and was relieved for all the effort that she and Bella had made to get to this day.

      Bella had, as it turned out, been raiding the bins that they emptied at the hotel for years. Anything that one of the rich guests had thrown out she had squirrelled away.

      Beneath Bella’s bed were two boxes packed with luxurious clothes.

      ‘This one,’ Bella had told her as she held up an ivory silk dress, ‘had a little lipstick on the front. She couldn’t even be bothered to send it to be dry-cleaned. And these...’ She held up some stunning stilettoes. ‘They needed to be reheeled, that is all.’

      There were coats, jackets, skirts, even nightdresses.

      Together they had selected her wardrobe for today and with Bella’s skilled hands the rather large ivory dress now clung to Sophie’s ripe figure.

      The shoes had been reheeled and Sophie’s toes had been painted to match her fingernails.

      She had flown into London that morning on the red-eye and would be flying back tonight.

      The little money they had been saving to fly her father’s body, on his death, back to Bordo Del Cielo they had decided to spend on making his last days a dream come true.

      Who would guess that Sophie’s regular clothes and shoes were in a hired locker at the airport?

      Luka must never know.

      She had been to a hairdresser’s to have her hair put up and then she had changed into the dress Bella had made for her and gone to the make-up counter at an exclusive department store.

      She stood as the receptionist came over. ‘Mr Cavaliere says you are to go straight up. I’ll walk you to the elevator.’

      Sophie wanted to turn and run, to ask for a couple of minutes to check her make-up, or for a glass of water for her very dry mouth, but instead she nodded and crossed the foyer.

      His office was on the twenty-third floor and her stomach seemed to have been left on the ground as she sailed closer to him.

      The elevator doors opened and Sophie was met by a tearful woman who told her that she was the final straw and then let her know that her fiancé was a cheating bastard...

      ‘You can tell him when you go through that his assistant just resigned!’

      Sophie merely smiled.

      Ah, Luka, she thought, just a little glad for the chaos she had made for him.

      Like a witch, she walked through the corridors of his life, delivering little hexes.

      She looked around for a moment, taking his world in. There was a large walnut desk, which presumably had been his assistant’s because a computer was on and there was half a cup of coffee by its side, as well as a mirror.

      There was the quiet hum of the air-conditioning and fresh floral displays stood on the side tables. The carpet was thick beneath her feet—luxury at every turn.

      And there, behind that closed door, Sophie knew, was Luka.

      The last time she had knocked on his door he had opened it holding a shirt over his cut and naked from the hips up.

      She doubted she’d be so lucky again.

      She refused to let him glimpse her nervousness by hesitating and she knocked confidently on the door.

      ‘Come in.’

      Confidence faded as, after years of self-imposed abstinence her senses momentarily flared in false hope at the return of his voice.

      Still, Sophie barely recognised her hand as it reached for the handle on the door, the nails glossy and painted, and it wasn’t shaking, as she had thought it would be.

      She was ready to face him.

      For her father she would get through this.

      Into his office she stepped and Sophie stood for a brief slice of time, accepting that again they shared the same part of the planet.

      It must be difficult for him also, Sophie knew, and that was confirmed when he didn’t turn around. She gave them both a moment to acclimatise to the other’s presence—the air was a little thicker there and made no room for the rest of the world.

      Still he did not turn and so she spoke to his straight back and broad shoulders.

      ‘Your assistant asked me to pass on the message that she’s just resigned. Apparently I’m the final straw.’

      Don’t turn around, she wanted to warn him.

      Not just yet.

      Don’t let my heart see you until it’s beating slowly again, but of course it was too late. Slowly he turned and she met navy eyes that, Sophie knew, were better served warm. Today, though, she was grateful they were cold, for it allowed her to maintain a necessary distance when instinct told her to run, though not from him.

      It would actually, Sophie thought, be easier to run across the room and hurdle the desk in her tight dress. It would be far more natural to be in his arms than to simply stand in a room apart from him.

      He offered her a seat and she took it.

      She told him the reason that she was there—that her father might be being released and of the lies she had told about them.

      He pushed every button and so, despite her very best efforts to stay cool, within a few moments she was standing, backed against the desk by him and jabbing her fingers in his chest, telling him that he would do whatever