AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Ella...’ Santo came out then. ‘At last, you’re here.’
‘I am!’ She was suddenly awkward, embarrassed that she had thought he’d ordered flowers and champagne for her room. ‘There’s been a mistake at reception. I think they thought I was sharing with you.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I spoke in Italian when I made the booking. I must remember not to in future.’
‘There’s no mistake.’ Santo smiled. ‘I asked them to send you to here. I thought we could have dinner, talk—there has been so much happening....’
‘You can’t just move me in.’
‘I am not just moving you in,’ Santo said.
‘So where’s my room?’ Ella asked.
‘Ella, we will be working fifteen-hour days...or at least I hope that we will.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The director quit.’
Ella’s mouth gaped open, her living arrangements temporarily forgotten.
‘He quit?’
‘He gave ultimatums. I do not like ultimatums.’
Ella had seen him clash with directors now and then, but to lose one on the first day of filming...it must have been a pretty spectacular row. She asked him what had happened.
‘It’s finished with now.’ Santo shrugged. He was never one to go over the past, as always he moved easily on. ‘I have been chasing around trying to think of who would be best to direct the movie, and who is available too, but I think that finally it is sorted.’ He was pouring champagne and there was a small flurry in Ella’s stomach as he handed her the glass that had bubbles rising in it, like the sudden hope that for Ella flared. ‘I have found someone good, someone who I think shares my vision, who really is keen to bring out the very best in Taylor.’ He smiled at Ella and she gave a tentative one back. ‘Tomorrow we have a new director starting, Rafaele Beninato.’
‘Rafaele Beninato?’ He must have heard the disappointment in her voice. She simply was too upset to hide it. Because of the champagne, the smile, the conversations they had had about the movie, the visions they had shared, Ella really had, for a blind, stupid moment, thought that Santo was going to give the role to her.
‘Ella...’ Not only did Santo hear her disappointment, he saw the burn of her cheeks. ‘You didn’t think—’
‘No.’ She was embarrassed to admit that yes, she had thought he might consider her. After all, this was a major movie they were talking about, as if he was going to trust it to her. But then Ella was suddenly angry too, that he hadn’t. ‘It’s that you didn’t think! That you didn’t even consider me for the role.’
‘How could I?’ He was incredulous. ‘Ella, you have no experience whatsoever.’
‘No!’ She was beyond hurt now. They had lain in bed just yesterday, acting it out, going over scenes. But clearly, not once had it entered his head that she might make a good director.
Yes, it hurt.
‘Santo, I love that movie. I have gone over and over the script. I know it inside out. I know exactly what’s needed.’ She put down her glass, missing the coaster, her feelings raw, because while his words made perfect sense, were completely logical, Ella wasn’t thinking logically right now. ‘I’m going to change the booking....’ She just wanted away before she said too much, wanted to think, and she couldn’t with Santo so close. Ella, who never cried, was dangerously close to doing so as she picked up the phone and asked that the booking be reverted back to the one she had made. She told the receptionist that she’d come down and get the key now.
‘So you’re storming out because you didn’t get the part?’
‘No!’ Ella snapped. ‘I was leaving already. That’s the whole point of separate rooms, Santo—there’s somewhere to go when you row!’
Ella’s bags arrived then and she quickly diverted them, but there was her room key to collect and it took forever until she was finally alone. Ella attempted to gather her thoughts, but even that didn’t last for long, because in no time at all, Santo was rapping on her door, refusing to budge till she let him in.
‘You want it both ways.’ It was Santo who was angry and aggrieved now. ‘You insist that we keep work separate—you make this great song and dance as to how we cannot work and sleep together, that we are to keep things professional at work, yet when it suits you want all the favours of being my lover.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Yes.’ Santo stood firm. ‘It is true. You want it both ways,’ Santo said. ‘I want it only one. I am myself now and in the bedroom, but at work I make the best decisions for my movies.’ She heard the passion then, the absolute single-mindedness that made him so brilliant. ‘When I am at work I choose only the best for my films and I make decisions with my head only at all times, and if you think I am going to hand over a director’s role because we have good sex, then you are the one who has an issue, not me.’
‘I wanted that role long before yesterday.’
‘And I did not consider you for that role long before yesterday too, because the fact is, Ella, you have no experience.’
‘Because you won’t give me any.’
‘When a suitable vacancy comes up, it will be yours, but the world is not waiting for you to debut, Ella. You have to earn your stripes in the industry to be respected and not in the bedroom.’
She wanted to slap him, his words burnt so, but instead Ella stood with her face scalding, because what he was saying was true and he hadn’t finished yet. ‘So, to reiterate, I enjoyed our time together. I hoped to take things further today. I hoped to share a meal, to talk, to make love. But instead, because you cannot manage to separate work from the bedroom, instead we sleep alone.’
‘I’m handing in my notice....’
‘More fool you,’ Santo said. ‘Go work for Luigi, go let him dangle you the promise, and you will find out I am not such a bastard after all. And at least you enjoy sleeping with me.’
‘Luigi is nothing like that,’ Ella flared. ‘He’s a brilliant director and he’s keen to have a willing assistant—’
‘Hey,’ Santo interrupted, ‘you know when people wait while their potential employers ring for references. I often wonder why don’t the potential employees do the same? Why don’t they take a little while to find out what they are getting into before they jump?’
‘I wish to hell I had.’
‘No.’ So swift was his retort. ‘You knew exactly what you were getting into. As I said, I don’t hide my supposed mistakes and I don’t expect favours and neither do I give them for sex.’ For a man who appeared to have no morals, he stood there and proved otherwise. ‘For all the bastard you seem to think I am, think carefully, Ella—because your job has never depended on sleeping with me and it still doesn’t. I know how to close the bedroom door and carry on with my work.’
Her back was to the wall, and not just literally, because he was right.
‘How much notice are you giving?’
‘Four weeks.’
‘Fine,’ Santo said. ‘Ring the agency tomorrow for your replacement, see if you can get someone who can start ASAP so that you can train them up. And, this time, can you tell them I want someone fully fluent in Italian, please?’
How that stung but she refused to jump.
‘Anything else?’
‘With a lot of experience.’
‘Good looking too?’ Ella jeered.
‘I 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.
