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A harsh exhalation. ‘Sorry, querida, I can make no promises.’
‘Javier!’
For the second time in the space of half an hour, Carla was confronted with a disconnected line.
Rushing to her room, she located her laptop and opened up her email. Typing without the full use of all her fingers was frustrating in the extreme.
My full and final offer—thirty percent of the endorsement proceeds, and the Tuscany villa, in return for the truth about Mamma, and no press involvement. Also, you will no longer be my manager.
She and her father would never have a proper familial relationship. She was better off accepting it now and walking away, no matter much her heart shredded at the thought. Shaking, she pressed send to her father’s private email address, finally accepting that this was her only option if she wanted to draw a line under the acrimony they’d been living with for years.
She held her breath until she received notification that he’d opened it.
His response came within minutes. It reeked with a smugness that made her stomach turn.
Agreed. But I need the first payment within the next fourteen days.
Fine.
She closed her laptop, a wave of despair gripping her. She’d just negotiated her way out of her father’s life. She blinked away the tears that formed and straightened her spine. For years she’d yearned for a father who loved her. Today, she needed to accept that would never happen. For some reason, he was incapable of it.
She paced the penthouse for a full hour trying to come up with a cogent solution. She’d bought herself some time, but the next endorsement payment wouldn’t be for another two months.
Her heart broke as she settled on her next-best option. A quick call later and her mother’s beloved cottage was listed with the estate agent. Praying it was only a stopgap measure she wouldn’t need to use, Carla undressed and went into the bathroom to shower. Careful to keep her cast out of the spray, she shampooed her hair one-handed, the arduous task taking her mind off her turbulent thoughts.
It worked until she turned off the shower, then the memories from three years ago flooded back.
The training for the championship that had taken her away from Tuscany for several weeks. Her row with her father when she’d asked for some time off before the championship. Her appeal to her mother to intervene. Her time in Miami. Her father unexpectedly absenting himself from the tournament afterwards. His equally sudden return for the ceremony of her being crowned champion. His cold announcement that her mother was dead. And his unequivocal refusal to discuss how she’d died.
Carla shuddered, her skin clammy in the vast room where she stood in only a towel. Despite what the death certificate had said, she’d never managed to rid herself of the suspicion that there was more to her mother’s death than she’d been made privy to.
Her father’s thinly veiled comments over the years had only fed that suspicion.
The idea that he would make public whatever secret surrounded her mother’s death threatened to rip her in two. Javier had intimated that she was feeding the monster by giving in to her father. But the alternative was worse. She couldn’t let her mother’s memory be dragged through the mires of social media for the sake of financial gain. The knowledge that it was her own father making that threat wounded her deep and long, but she would suffer it. For the sake of the mother who had loved her for as long as she could.
Firm-jawed, she dried herself and went into her closet. Vast amounts of white dominated her wardrobe.
Deliberately bypassing the white, she reached into the corner of her closet and dragged out a pair of black leather pants, a gold-threaded black top she’d never worn because the cut had been too risqué and studded black boots. She pulled the top on, her face flaming slightly at the thought of going out without a bra. Catching her hair up, she secured it with a diamond pin that had belonged to her mother. Then she went to town with her make-up.
Where she’d only worn the very lightest shades and gloss, she brushed on smoky eye shadow, cheekbone-enhancing blush, and dark red gloss over her lips.
The end result was dramatic enough to stop her breath. Before the tiny speck of doubt could take hold and ruin her night out, she snatched up her gold lamé clutch and transferred her phone and personal items into it.
The sound of the buzzer brought the relief and shameless inevitability she needed. Answering it, she finished her ensemble with a leather jacket and left the penthouse.
Darren’s double take once she exited the lift buoyed her confidence and she smiled as she crossed the foyer.
‘Wow, you look amazing!’
‘Grazie,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’
‘What, this?’ He indicated his dark grey button-down shirt, black chinos, and the black jacket he wore over it. ‘It’s okay, but hardly the cutting edge of fashion. Not that you’re not worth going cutting edge for,’ he quickly amended. ‘I meant, I prefer to dazzle a woman with my wit, not my attire.’
She laughed, a little of her churning emotions subsiding under the
easy banter. He escorted her outside, then glanced over his shoulder. ‘Umm...will that BFG be accompanying us everywhere tonight?’
Carla grimaced. ‘He’s harmless... I think. And barely noticeable once you get used to him.’ She looked over her shoulder and smiled at Antonio. He cracked a return smile.
