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CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHATISTHIS?’
Back in Rome, Nico wasn’t certain he had read things right and was immediately on the phone.
Aurora had resigned.
Aurora Eloise Messina. Now aged twenty-five. With a passion for the hotel like no other and a hunger to succeed, had left.
It made no sense.
He knew full well that she was furious with him. And after the stunt she had pulled Nico had been furious too and had stayed well back.
But his anger was fading now—so much so that whenever he re-read that note he almost smiled.
‘Why did she resign?’ he asked.
‘She was headhunted.’
Vincenzo sounded taken aback that the rather absent owner of the business was immediately on the phone to him the moment the email went out.
‘By whom?’
‘Aurora would not say. Apparently she was tired of her ideas being dismissed.’
They hadnotbeen dismissed. Had she turned up for dinner that night then she would have known that.
Nico called her. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Scusi?’Aurora asked.
She was sitting in her little pink bedroom as she awaited a taxi to take her to the station.
Her parents had not taken the news of their daughter’s pregnancy well at all—especially as Aurora refused to name the father. A terrible row had ensued.
Nico had been right: her parentsdidsnoop, and they had gone through her phone and found the dating app she had downloaded in Rome.
And now she had Nico on the phone.
It was too much for her nerves today.
‘Why have you resigned without speaking first with me?’ he demanded.
‘Nico, I resigned and I have left. I don’t have to answer to you when you are no longer my boss.’
‘All right, then. Forget that I was once your boss and tellme. Why did you resign?’
‘So from what standpoint are we talking, Nico? As friends?’ Aurora’s voice was incredulous and angry, though she struggled to keep the hurt from it. ‘Because we arenotfriends, Nico. You yourself told me we could never be.’
‘Aurora—’
‘Or are we speaking as lovers?’ she interrupted. ‘But that can’t be because you have so many—surely you don’t expect them all to give you career updates?’
‘Aurora!’
She would not let him in. ‘Or are we in arelationship, Nico? Oh, but that’s right—no. Because you don’t want one. You told me—’
‘Andyoutold me you would never leave Silibri.’
