Melanie had been so excited about it all that she’d totally failed to pump Hannah for information on the man himself. The last thing Hannah wanted was for her sister to think she had a crush on him. It was bad enough knowing her entire family thought she was a closet lesbian without giving them proof of her heterosexuality—one sniff and they’d start trying to marry her off to any man with a pulse.
The bouncer scanned his clipboard before taking a step to one side and unclipping the red cordon acting as a barrier.
‘Enjoy your evening, ladies,’ he said as they filed past, actually smiling at them.
Another doorman led them straight through to the club, which heaved with bodies and pulsated with loud music, leading them up a cordoned-off set of sparkling stairs.
Her heart lifted to see one of the man mountains who’d been guarding the club the other afternoon standing to attention by a door marked ‘Private’.
Surely that meant Francesco was here?
A young hunk dressed in black approached them and led them to a large round corner table. Six iced buckets of champagne were already placed on it.
‘Oh, wow,’ said Melanie. ‘Is this for us?’
‘It is,’ he confirmed, opening the first bottle. ‘With the compliments of the management. If you need anything, holler—your night is on the house.’
‘Can I have a glass of lemonade, please?’ Hannah asked, her request immediately drowned out by the hens all badgering her to have one glass of champagne.
About to refuse, she remembered the promise she’d made to herself that it was time to start living.
She, more than anyone, knew how precarious life could be, but it had taken an accident on her bike for her to realise that all she had been doing since the age of twelve was existing. Meeting Francesco in the flesh had only made those feelings stronger.
If heaven was real, what stories would she have to tell Beth other than medical anecdotes? She would have nothing of real life to share.
That was something she’d felt in Francesco, that sense of vitality and spontaneity, of a life being lived.
Settling down at the table, she took a glass of champagne, her eyes widening as the bubbles played on her tongue. All the same, she stopped after a few sips.
To her immense surprise, Hannah soon found she was enjoying herself. Although she didn’t know any of them well, Melanie’s friends were a nice bunch. Overjoyed to be given the VIP treatment, they made sure to include her in everything, including what they called Talent Spotting.
Alas, no matter how discreetly she craned her neck, Hannah couldn’t see Francesco anywhere. She did, however, spot a couple of minor members of the royal family and was reliably informed that a number of Premier League football players and a world-championship boxer were on the table next to theirs, and that the glamorous women and men with shiny white teeth who sat around another table were all Hollywood stars and their beaus.
‘Thank you so much for getting knocked off your bike,’ Melanie said whilst on a quick champagne break from the dance floor, flinging her arms around Hannah. ‘And thank you for coming out with us tonight and for coming here—I was convinced you were going to go home after the meal.’
Hannah hugged her in return, holding back her confession that she had originally planned on slipping away after their Chinese, but that the lure of seeing Francesco again had been too great. It had almost made up for the fact Beth wasn’t there to share Melanie’s hen night. She wouldn’t be there to share the wedding, either.
The wedding. An event Hannah dreaded.
She felt a huge rush of affection for her little sister along with an accompanying pang of guilt. Poor Melanie. She deserved better than Hannah. Since Beth’s death, Hannah had tried so hard to be the best big sister they both wished she could be, but she simply wasn’t up to the job. It was impossible. How could she be anything to anyone when such a huge part of herself was missing? All she had been able to do was throw herself into her studies, something over which she had always had total control.
But now her drive and focus had been compromised.
Never had she experienced anything like this.
Hannah was a woman of practicality, not a woman to be taken in with flights of fancy. Medicine was her life. From the age of twelve she’d known exactly what she wanted to be and had been single-minded in her pursuit of it. She would dedicate her life to medicine and saving children, doing her utmost to keep them alive so she could spare as many families from the gaping hole that lived in her own heart as she could.
At least, she had been single-minded until a car knocked her off her bike and the most beautiful man in the universe had stepped in to save her.
Now the hole in her heart didn’t feel so hollow.
Since that fateful cold morning, her mind had not just been full of medicine. It had been full of him, her knight in shining armour, and meeting him in the flesh had only compounded this. She wasn’t stupid. She knew she would never fit into his world. His reputation preceded him. Francesco Calvetti was a dangerous man to know and an exceptionally dangerous man to get on the wrong side of. But knowing this had done nothing to eradicate him from her mind.
That moment when she’d been lying on the cold concrete and opened her eyes, she had looked at him and felt such warmth.... Someone who could evoke that in her couldn’t be all bad. He just couldn’t.
‘Come on, Han,’ said Melanie, tugging at her hand. ‘Come and dance with me.’
‘I can’t dance.’ What she really wanted to do was search every nook and cranny of Calvetti’s until she found him. Because he was there. She just knew it.
Melanie pointed at the dance floor, where a group of twenty-something men with more money than taste were strutting their stuff. ‘Nor can they.’
* * *
Francesco watched the images from the security cameras on a range of monitors on his office wall. Through them, he could see everything taking place in his club. The same feeds were piped into the office where his security guys sat holed up, watching the same live images—but the only eyes Francesco trusted were his own. Tomorrow he would head back to Palermo to spot-check his nightclub and casino there, and then he would fly on to Madrid for the same.
A couple of men he suspected of being drug dealers had been invited by a group of city money men into the VIP area. He watched them closely, debating whether to have them dealt with now or wait until he had actual proof of their nefarious dealings.
A sweep of thick blonde hair with pink bunny ears caught his attention in one of the central feeds. He watched Hannah get dragged onto the dance floor by another pink-tutued blonde he assumed was the hen of said hen party, Melanie.
Not for the first time, he asked himself what the hell Hannah was doing there.
She looked more than a little awkward. His lips curved upwards as he watched her try valiantly to move her body in time to the beat of the music. He’d seen more rhythm from the stray cats that congregated round the vast veranda of his Sicilian villa.
The half smile faded and compressed
