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PROLOGUE

SALVATORE DI LUCA stared out at the bright blue Sicilian sea and felt his heart tith so to avoid With pain With regret And with a bitter awareness that he had never really loved this beautiful island as much as he should have done But how could he love it when it was bound up with so many bitter memories of the past? A past he had tried many times to escape, sometimes with more success than others

Because wherever he went, he always took the past with him

On this island he had possessed nothing and had known hunger Real hunger His clothes had been ragged and—when he hadn’t been running through the streets barefoot—his shoes second-hand It had been a long ti ti These days he had everything which had once been his heart’s desire There were properties around the world in addition to his San Franciscan home—a vineyard in Tuscany, a castle in Spain, and, up until very recently, a pied-à-terre in Paris He had planes and cars and an Icelandic river in which to fish, whenever the whi been in the ascendancy and these days he channelled his profits into his charitable foundation, which reached out to children the world over Dispossessed children Children who had never been loved Children just like him

And there oant women He dated lawyers and bankers Heiresses and scientists He was highly sought after as a partner—his skill as a lover, his quick mind and vast personal wealthhe couldn’t provide was love, because that had been reo and that hat inevitably proved to be the death-knell on any relationship, for wooing to be on the cards

In theory, he should have been perfectly content Didn’t his friends—and his eneed for himself the perfect life? And didn’t he allow the that? But occasionally he beca e away in the background, like an incipient thunderstorm on the dark horizon Sometimes he didn’t think that ache would ever leave him and sometimes he told himself it was better that way

Because the memories which provoked that pain made him certain of what he did want, but equally ie had turned hi, then so be it Let people think what they wanted

It was time to embrace his freedom and drink a toast to it

Turning away frolare of the ocean, Salvatore lifted his hand, and su within his eyeline for the last half-hour

The funeral was over and the inevitable introspection which followed such an event was also over It was time to move on

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re doing, Nicolina?’

The words sounded sharp Sharp as the tip of a needle or the sting of a bee Lina’s throat tightened as she pulled the thin cotton blouse over her head and turned to aze of the woman who had just entered her bedroom Not for the first ti in, but she guessed that would be like wishing for the stars

‘I thought I’d go for a drive,’ she said, winding a scrunchie around her thick hair, even though trying to get her black curls to obey her was a daily battle

‘Dressed like that?’

The as delivered viciously and Lina wondered what had caused this reaction, because no way could her outfit have offended her mother’s overdeveloped sense of decency ‘Like what?’ she questioned, genuinely confused

Herfrom the modest shirt, down to the perfectly decent pair of hand ed to find lying around the workshop According to the pages of one of the online fashion journals, which she devoured whenever she got the chance, they could have done with being at least five inches shorter, but ould have been the point in showing too much flesh? Why round noise of criticis to block it out?

‘You are supposed to be in !’

Lina felt the urge to protest that the elderly man who had recently died was someone she’d never even met and whose funeral she had only attended because that hat people did in this tiny Sicilian village where she’d lived all her life But she resisted the desire to say so because she didn’t want a row Not when she was feeling so flat and so vulnerable, for reasons she didn’t dare analyse

‘The funeral is over, Mama,’ she said quietly ‘And even the chief mourner has left’ For hadn’t Salvatore di Luca—the billionaire godson of the recently deceased—purred away in his car that very lumly as the shiny li she would never see hi why that should bother her so much

You knohy Because whenever he looked at you he made you feel alive Because that was his skill His special ability To aze over them

His occasional visits to her village had been so to look forward to Like Christht in the future, which she would never see again And so like a balloon which had just been popped