‘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 inmoreof 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?’
